The Art of Light
The Lumiere Brothers (March 22, 1895)August and Louis Lumiere, sons of a renowned French artist and inventor, took Thomas Edison's invention and patented their own, a smaller, more efficient model. This was the Cinematograph, an invention that allowed for moving images to go beyond the device and be projected in front of the masses. Their first film, "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory", debuted at 44 Rue de Renees in Paris. It was almost 50 seconds of just that, watching people leave the factory, but is regarded as one of the first actual projected films of all time. The screening itself is considered to have founded modern cinema.
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The Silent Era (1895-1927)The first films at the time of the Lumiere brothers were usually non-fiction, minutes long, and made of one shot or camera angle. Eventually, filmmakers began to edit shots together manually, creating longer films and sketches, or recording Vaudeville acts. At the time, there was still no way to record sound along with motion, although there were ways to record it alone. There was still a large interest in silent films, just for the visual illusions. To compensate, many silent films were produced, with long scores of music played over them either recorded or played live. Dialogue was commonly shown on slides of text like the one shown above. Most of these films took place in New York, where many film studios began to spring up. The silent era developed many kinds of films and storytelling, and offered many actors like John Wayne, Charlie Chaplin, and Mary Pickford the chance to develop a career in acting.
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The Rise of Hollywood (1910-1930)Since Edison's film studio was located in New York, many filmmakers were made to pay for the rights to film there. This became expensive, causing big directors of the time like D.W. Griffith to move with their acting troupes to other parts of the country. In 1910, the Biograph Company sent Griffith to southern California to film their new movie. They did this in the then quiet village of Hollywood, California. Because of the space and mild climate, Griffith went on to shoot many more movies there in the months that followed. In Los Angeles, the film studios in Hollywood grew rapidly. From this migration, the movie studio was born, and the industry began to churn out movies that premiered at theaters called nickelodeons around the country, charging a nickel as admission. Through this, profit could be made in the movie industry.
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Talkies (1927)Filmmakers had been struggling with the addition of sound to their movies for years, developing technology to record both sound and motion. There were many attempts, failures and successes. In 1927, what is regarded as the first motion picture synchronized with sound was released. This was the Warner Brothers musical, The Jazz Singer. The sound was recorded on Vitaphone technology. The sound would be recorded on phonograph records and played back in sync with the film. This technology lead to the fall of the silent era, as talkies quickly became more popular. They held a value of entertainment that the industry had not seen before. This development propelled America to the spot of number one in film production worldwide by the 1940s.
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