Motion Picture | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Motion Picture

The science of photography gave birth to modern motion pictures. This was not, however, a rapid process. The motion pictures we know today are the result of a long evolution of arts and sciences. Motion pictures are the product of a relatively complex illusion. The human brain perceives motion when pictures, taken in rapid sequence, are flashed at 15 or more frames per second--so we are able to amuse ourselves with the illusion of live action on the screen.

Sequential photographs were produced as early as 1860, but the true motion picture remained in the distant future. In 1877, Eadweard Muybridge, a student of animal motion, was attempting to prove that all four of a horse's hooves leave the ground when the animal gallops. A system of 24 cameras took sequential photographs of a galloping horse, and Muybridge indeed proved his theory. He also popularized this amazing illusion of motion by bringing it into homes in the form of a device called a zoetrope. His sequence of still photographs were published in strips, which were attached to the inside of the zoetrope's rotating drum. The viewer looked through a series of slots which acted as shutters as the drum spun, and the illusion of a running horse was brought to life. However, to produce an actual motion picture, even a very brief one, the exposure time necessary to take a photograph would have to be dramatically reduced.

In France, Étienne-Jules Marey was using paper film to shoot 120 frames with exposures as brief as 1/1000th of a second. This type of film helped lay the foundation for the science of modern cinematography. Once George Eastman developed strips of flexible celluloid camera film with fast exposure times in 1889, long series of pictures could be easily photographed in rapid sequence. American inventor Thomas Alva Edison and his collaborators were then able to combine these discoveries to produce the kinetoscope, a device that advanced a strip of film frame by frame in rapid succession to produce the illusion of fluid motion. Still, the images were not projected onto a screen as motion pictures are today.

The kinetoscope eventually found its way to Paris, where Louis and Auguste Lumière were the first to combine the flashing shutter of a camera with the bright light of projector to produce the cinematographe in 1895. The first American projectors using this technology of intermittent movement were produced by Thomas Armat (1866-1948) in 1895. Armat then struck an agreement with Thomas Edison, allowing him to produce these projectors under the name Edison Vitascope.

Though the motion picture had been achieved, attempts at the synchronization of motion pictures and sound had all but failed. Pianists tried to play music that matched the changing mood and tempo of the film but were unsuccessful, and recorded sound was played along with the film, but neither was consistent with the film's action. The quality of recorded sound was also unreliable due to the difficulty in maintaining a constant speed for both recording and playback. Fortunately, Western Electric Company was studying techniques of recording natural speech and other sounds for realistic reproduction. The company developed a wax phonographic disk and improved speakers and amplification systems for more accurate sound reproduction. The Warner Brothers studio, then a very small company, took a keen interest in these developments and formed the Vitaphone Corporation to introduce the complete sound system to the market. The integration of sound and motion pictures was complete.

The next step was to record the sound directly on film, rather than recording it on the wax phonograph disk, which made sound editing virtually impossible. Lee De Forest had already developed a sound-on-film process, patented as Phonofilm in 1919. Ironically, the major studios of the day considered it a mere novelty too expensive to be practical. In fact, all the major movie producers of the day rejected the idea of sound for motion pictures except Warner Brothers, which regarded it as something that could bring short-term profits. Seeing the success of Warner Brothers with its experiment in sound, Fox Film Corporation acquired the rights to a sound-on-film process based on that of De Forest. Almost overnight, sound dominated the cinema. By 1930, 95 percent of major new films had sound. It was at about the same time that photographic color was introduced.

Films had sometimes been colored by hand, but this was time consuming and impractical. As film lengths began to increase, the Pathecolor system of mechanized stenciling was developed, in which a stencil was cut for each color to be applied frame by frame. This led to faster processes of chemically tinting the film stock. However, this process interfered with the film's sound track and was abandoned. Finally, in 1922, the Technicolor Corporation introduced a new two-color method for joining two separate positive prints. This process was successfully used in the 1920s. Technicolor improved the process in 1928, making it possible to combine all the primary colors to produce the lifelike tones and hues that dominated the filmmaking industry for the next 25 years.

The combination of these new filmmaking technologies made it possible to simulate movement with an astonishing sense of reality. Smaller aperture plates in projectors and different lenses could even make the images appear wider, and wide-screen stereoscopic films were born, adding further to the illusion of reality on the screen. These processes include Cinerama, Cinemascope, and VistaVision, and rely on 70mm or modified 35mm film stock, while most films use 35mm film stock. In 1970, the largest motion picture image presentation technology to date was introduced. IMAX was originally developed for the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, that year. Shot on 65mm film stock, IMAX films are shot sideways and projected the same way, onto screens up to eight stories tall. IMAX theaters were found mostly in science museums, amusement parks, and the like, showing short documentary films about natural phenomenon until the 1990s when the company behind IMAX began expanding into the traditional motion picture market and making shot fictional films. Because of the limitations of equipment and technology involved in IMAX, as of 1998, IMAX films are usually less than an hour long.

While motion picture technology has moved forward, there has been two movements in the 1980s and 1990s that look back. In the 1980s, there was a controversial trend to colorize old black and white films, to make them, as its proponents argued, more accessible to the modern consumer. At the same time, restoration of old films became widespread. Before 1951, most motion picture film stock had a nitrate base, making the film susceptible to fire and chemically unstable. Many films, especially at the beginning of motion picture history, have been lost or faded. Several academic institutions and archives, including the American Film Institute, have spearheaded a movement to find, restore, and preserve these films. When they are found, they are transferred to safety film stock, as was used in the industry after 1951. But even films produced after 1951 have to be preserved to ensure a copy is available for future viewing, showing where the motion picture industry has been.