EDISON MOTION PICTURES

EDISON MOTION PICTURES
Author: MUSSER CHARLES
Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)
Total Pages: 730
Release: 1997
Genre: Art
ISBN:

"This book provides essential documentation of all known Edison films made between 1890 and 1900. Thomas Edison and his associates at the Edison Laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, invented the first system of commercial motion pictures." "Making the historical framework predominant while retaining traditional cataloging features, Edison Motion Pictures, 18901900 is of value to a wide range of scholars interested in American life at the turn of the century - those working in performance studies, film and media studies, cultural history, ethnic studies, and social and political history. Documentary filmmakers, film programmers, archivists, and librarians can also benefit from using this catalog." "Edison films from the end of the nineteenth century offer a unique visual record of American entertainment and popular culture - moving images that become much more interesting and useful when they can be examined in conjunction with pertinent documentation." "Scholars concerned with portrayals of war, depictions of the American presidency, and many other topics in the nation's political history will find much useful information."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures

The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures
Author: Paul Fischer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2022-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1982114851

One of the New York Times Best True Crime of 2022 A “spellbinding, thriller-like” (Shelf Awareness) history about the invention of the motion picture and the mysterious, forgotten man behind it—detailing his life, work, disappearance, and legacy. The year is 1888, and Louis Le Prince is finally testing his “taker” or “receiver” device for his family on the front lawn. The device is meant to capture ten to twelve images per second on film, creating a reproduction of reality that can be replayed as many times as desired. In an otherwise separate and detached world, occurrences from one end of the globe could now be viewable with only a few days delay on the other side of the world. No human experience—from the most mundane to the most momentous—would need to be lost to history. In 1890, Le Prince was granted patents in four countries ahead of other inventors who were rushing to accomplish the same task. But just weeks before unveiling his invention to the world, he mysteriously disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Three and half years later, Thomas Edison, Le Prince’s rival, made the device public, claiming to have invented it himself. And the man who had dedicated his life to preserving memories was himself lost to history—until now. The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures pulls back the curtain and presents a “passionate, detailed defense of Louis Le Prince…unfurled with all the cliffhangers and red herrings of a scripted melodrama” (The New York Times Book Review). This “fascinating, informative, skillfully articulated narrative” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) presents the never-before-told history of the motion picture and sheds light on the unsolved mystery of Le Prince’s disappearance.

Film: A Very Short Introduction

Film: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Michael Wood
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2012-01-26
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0192803530

Film is considered to be the dominant art form of the twentieth century. It can be considered many other things; a record of events, a modern mythology, a career, an industry, an art, a hobby, and much else. Michael Wood explores the history of film, its venture into the digital age, and its role and impact on modern society.

Vitagraph

Vitagraph
Author: Andrew A. Erish
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-06-08
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0813181216

Winner of the 2022 Peter C. Rollins Book Award and the 2022 Browne Best Edited Reference/Primary Source Work in Popular and American Culture Award In Vitagraph: America's First Great Motion Picture Studio, Andrew A. Erish provides a comprehensive examination and reassessment of the company most responsible for defining and popularizing the American movie. This history challenges long-accepted Hollywood mythology that Paramount and Fox invented the feature film, that Universal created the star system, and that these companies, along with MGM and Warner Bros., developed motion pictures into a multimillion-dollar business. In fact, the truth about Vitagraph is far more interesting than the myths that later moguls propagated about themselves. Established in 1897 by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith, Vitagraph was the leading producer of motion pictures for much of the silent era. Vitagraph established America's studio system, a division of labor utilizing specialized craftspeople and artists and developed fundamental aspects of American movies, from framing, lighting, and performance style to emphasizing character-driven comedy and drama in stories that respected and sometimes poked fun at every demographic of Vitagraph's vast audience. For most of its existence America's most influential studio was headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, before relocating to Hollywood. A historically rigorous and thorough account of the most influential producer of American motion pictures during the silent era, Erish draws on valuable primary material long overlooked by other historians to introduce readers to the fascinating, forgotten pioneers of Vitagraph.

Still

Still
Author: David S. Shields
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2013-06-18
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 022601343X

The success of movies like The Artist and Hugo recreated the wonder and magic of silent film for modern audiences, many of whom might never have experienced a movie without sound. But while the American silent movie was one of the most significant popular art forms of the modern age, it is also one that is largely lost to us, as more than eighty percent of silent films have disappeared, the victims of age, disaster, and neglect. We now know about many of these cinematic masterpieces only from the collections of still portraits and production photographs that were originally created for publicity and reference. Capturing the beauty, horror, and moodiness of silent motion pictures, these images are remarkable pieces of art in their own right. In the first history of still camera work generated by the American silent motion picture industry, David S. Shields chronicles the evolution of silent film aesthetics, glamour, and publicity, and provides unparalleled insight into this influential body of popular imagery. Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Still recovers the stories of the photographers who descended on early Hollywood and the stars and starlets who sat for them between 1908 and 1928. Focusing on the most culturally influential types of photographs—the performer portrait and the scene still—Shields follows photographers such as Albert Witzel and W. F. Seely as they devised the poses that newspapers and magazines would bring to Americans, who mimicked the sultry stares and dangerous glances of silent stars. He uncovers scene shots of unprecedented splendor—visions that would ignite the popular imagination. And he details how still photographs changed the film industry, whose growing preoccupation with artistry in imagery caused directors and stars to hire celebrated stage photographers and transformed cameramen into bankable names. Reproducing over one hundred and fifty of these gorgeous black-and-white photographs, Still brings to life an entire long-lost visual culture that a century later still has the power to enchant.

The Shape of Motion

The Shape of Motion
Author: Jordan Schonig
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2021
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0190093889

"Cinematic motion has long been celebrated as an emblem of change and fluidity or claimed as the source of cinema's impression of reality. But such general claims undermine the sheer variety of forms that motion can take onscreen-the sweep of a gesture, the rush of a camera movement, the slow transformations of a natural landscape. What might we learn about the moving image when we begin to account for the many ways that movements move? In The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement, Jordan Schonig provides a new way of theorizing cinematic motion by examining cinema's "motion forms:" structures, patterns, or shapes of movement unique to the moving image. From the wild and unpredictable motion of flickering leaves and swirling dust that captivated early spectators, to the pulsing abstractions that emerge from rapid lateral tracking shots, to the bleeding pixel-formations caused by the glitches of digital video compression, each motion form opens up the aesthetics of movement to film theoretical inquiry. By pairing close analyses of onscreen movement in narrative and experimental films with concepts from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Henri Bergson, and Immanuel Kant, Schonig rethinks longstanding assumptions within film studies, such as indexical accounts of photographic images and analogies between the camera and the human eye. Arguing against the intuition that cinema reproduces our natural perception of motion, The Shape of Motion shows how cinema's motion forms do not merely transpose the movements of the world in front of the camera; they transform them"

Fort Lee

Fort Lee
Author:
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738545011

A favorite locale of such film pioneers as D. W. Griffith and Mary Pickford, the historic borough of Fort Lee was the first center of the American motion picture industry. Studios lined both sides of Main Street, and enormous film laboratories fed the nickelodeon market with thousands of reels of comedies and cliffhangers. Broadway stars and producers came here to make many of their first feature-length films; but by the 1920s, Theda Bara, Fatty Arbuckle, and Douglas Fairbanks were gone. Yet even after the studios closed down, the film industry was still the backbone of the local economy, with hundreds working behind the scenes in the printing, storage, and distribution of movies being made in Hollywood.

History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope And Kinetophonograph

History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope And Kinetophonograph
Author: W. K. L. Dickson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 55
Release: 2000-08-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780756782733

This is a facsimile ed. of the first history of the cinema by W.K.L. Dickson & Antonia Dickson, & was reproduced from W.K.L. Dickson's own annotated copy of the book. When this book was first published in 1895, practical moving pictures were barely two years old, & film projection was yet to be perfected. Dickson had begun to work with Edison in 1883; within 5 years, he was leader of the team that was attempting to build an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the Ear.Ó The results of their labor were the kinetograph (the camera used for photographing motion pictures) & the kinetoscope (the means for viewing them). This book allows the reader to experience the wonder & promise of the cinema in its infancy. Illustrations.

Early Cinema and the "National"

Early Cinema and the
Author: Richard Abel
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2008-12-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0861969154

Essays on “how motion pictures in the first two decades of the 20th century constructed ‘communities of nationality’ . . . recommended.” —Choice While many studies have been written on national cinemas, Early Cinema and the “National” is the first anthology to focus on the concept of national film culture from a wide methodological spectrum of interests, including not only visual and narrative forms, but also international geopolitics, exhibition and marketing practices, and pressing linkages to national imageries. The essays in this richly illustrated landmark anthology are devoted to reconsidering the nation as a framing category for writing cinema history. Many of the 34 contributors show that concepts of a national identity played a role in establishing the parameters of cinema’s early development, from technological change to discourses of stardom, from emerging genres to intertitling practices. Yet, as others attest, national meanings could often become knotty in other contexts, when concepts of nationhood were contested in relation to colonial/imperial histories and regional configurations. Early Cinema and the “National” takes stock of a formative moment in cinema history, tracing the beginnings of the process whereby nations learned to imagine themselves through moving images.