8mm Forum: The First Film

This is topic The First Film in forum General Yak at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on February 28, 2017, 02:43 PM:

The "The First Film" to be shown on Film4 on Sunday 5 March contends that the world's earliest film footage was shot in Leeds (UK) in 1888.

It was made by the French inventor Louis Le Prince, and it pre-dates anything by Edison or the Lumiere Brothers. But Le Prince is not famous due to his mysterious disappearance on 16 September 1890.

Posted by Joe Caruso (Member # 11) on February 28, 2017, 04:07 PM:

YouTube has it I think, runs bare seconds - Shorty

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on February 28, 2017, 05:10 PM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myQpkIlv_lw

Posted by Dominique De Bast (Member # 3798) on February 28, 2017, 05:51 PM:

There is no evidence that the "films" shooted by Louis Le Prince have actually ever been projected at his time. The machine he created was called "mk2" and there is a cinema joint in France that has this name. http://www.mk2.com/

Posted by Tom Spielman (Member # 5352) on March 01, 2017, 09:19 AM:

The youtube comments are interesting. Many remark how eerie the films are and suspect that it's the fact that the people are now dead that makes them way. But that's true of most films from the 30's and earlier unless the subjects are kids. Even then...

I think it's the way they are presented: Repeating endlessly while barely audible music plays through the mechanical noise of the primitive recording.

That and the fact that we just aren't used to seeing what amounts to home movies from that era.

Thanks for posting this. He's an interesting man. Apparently he had an earlier version of a motion picture camera that had 16 lenses. Not sure how it worked. Maybe each lens had a scrap of film behind it and they took pictures in sequence to capture motion?

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on March 01, 2017, 10:36 AM:

I have this sequence on some Blackhawk or other...

-to the shelves!

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on March 01, 2017, 11:20 AM:

... and to add to this post ... the very first three strip color produced in 1902 ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V0Vc5iRoLY

The really sad thing about this footage is that the inventor was never able to combine the three color footages together to ever see his own color film all together.

So while technicolor is touted as the first three strip color reproduction, this fellow had it in 1902, long before even the two strip technicolor! There used to be a longer youtube video about how they went through the process of combining his footage together, but i can't find it.

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on March 01, 2017, 04:41 PM:

That looks like frame sequential as with the 2 color Kinemacolor system. I think there are some stills from these in a BFI book on early cinema systems.

Posted by Ty Reynolds (Member # 5117) on March 01, 2017, 04:42 PM:

Science writer Steven Johnson hosted a series on PBS that dealt with, among other things, how the guy who comes up with the initial idea for the mechanism or process is not always the guy that history remembers.

Very often the forgotten man was unable to "put it all together." In the episode on recorded sound, he tells of a Frenchman who invented a device in the mid-1800's that used a needle to scratch a waveform of his voice onto carbon-coated paper. But he hadn't thought in terms of playback - he figured stenographers would learn to read the squiggly line like they read shorthand. Using modern technology, the national archive played the recording back on the program, and you can still make out the barely-audible voice.

Posted by Tom Spielman (Member # 5352) on March 01, 2017, 04:42 PM:

Very impressive color considering it was a VERY early attempt. Ty: I know that some people like to pit digital and film against each other, but as in your example, this is a clear case where one compliments the other.

The inventor managed to successfully develop a process for capturing color movies but he died before he managed to build a projector that would show them. But through digital technology, we can now see the film.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on March 02, 2017, 10:29 AM:

quote:
Science writer Steven Johnson hosted a series on PBS that dealt with, among other things, how the guy who comes up with the initial idea for the mechanism or process is not always the guy that history remembers.

It's true: for example what Thomas Edison very often did was take an idea that had been out there for a long time and make it practical. People had been running current through wires and making them glow for years, what Edison's research did was find the material (tungsten) that turned out to be reliable for use as a lamp filament.

He was kind of a pioneer in R&D, not because he was a Tesla kind of inventor, but because he developed a research and development organization that brought talent and resources together to work on problems.

-there are things some guy working in his barn just can't do!

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on March 02, 2017, 06:52 PM:

....AND Edison's original light bulb is still running, day and night, at the Edison Museum in Fort Myers Florida. [Smile]

And the last 6-pack of Sylvania 60 watt light bulbs that I purchased were all gone in six months!
[Frown]

Incidentally, am I alone in not liking LED lights in the home? I find they are very cold looking compared with incandescent lights - no warm ambience at all.

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on March 02, 2017, 11:45 PM:

can't stand the stuff aside from the economical and very powerful modern day flashlights we have been provided with,that can do a decent job of finding you a 4BA tap in the middle of winter from the inner bowels of your shed.

Tried replacing all of my halogen down lights in the kitchen etc with modern led versions and the light they give off is just so cold and insipid, I immediately reverted back to GU 10 Halogen.

I also despise the modern led headlamps. Too blinding to oncoming traffic but from the drivers perspective, they seem to hardly give off any light!

Street lights today, are a muggers delight now for the very same reasons and again, cause drivers unnecessary problems in urban built up areas, by giving off hardly any effective light output.

However, somehow, because they are cheaper to run, that makes them better in everyone's opinion!

Horses for courses me thinks.

Posted by Kevin Clark (Member # 211) on March 03, 2017, 02:29 PM:

Thank you for mentioning this film Maurice - I would have missed it were it not for your post and am really looking forward to watching it on Sunday - it was shown a year or so ago at a local film festival but I was too ill to attend at the time.

I always enjoy films about the history of science & technology and none more so that the cinema and electrical innovations around the turn of the 20th century.

Giving real originators and from-scratch inventors (Tesla, Swan etc) the exposure they have been robbed of by the more famous patent hungry industrial vultures of the era is heartening to see.

Regarding the slightly off topic part of this thread - I prefer LED home lighting now the warm tone lamps are available and affordable. We have all our downlights and lamps fitted with warm LED bulbs - they have the warmer glow of tungsten filaments yet cost almost nothing to run - really important in our household where 75% of family members have no concept of using the off setting on a lightswitch.

Kevin

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on March 03, 2017, 03:43 PM:

Yes, the new ones are very good. I am currently lighting a room with 1 or 2 (dependent on how bright I want it) theatrical lanterns
(Strand pattern 45s) as up-lighters fitted with 4.8w warm white LEDs and 12v electronic transformers.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on March 04, 2017, 11:32 AM:

Here is the full 5 minute or so documentary on how the museum restored this color film footage! It's quite fascinating, as well as the process that he came up with!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XekGVQM33ao

Posted by Dave Groves (Member # 4685) on March 05, 2017, 10:42 AM:

Osi, what a fascinating item. The Museum is to be congratulated for their painstaking work and patience to bring something dead to life. Digital has so many strings to it's bow that we don't readily appreciate.

Posted by David Hardy (Member # 4628) on March 05, 2017, 02:48 PM:

The earliest film I have shown was at the Belmont Cinema Aberdeen
Scotland.

It was a film showing the Gordon Highlanders marching along
Union Street Aberdeen on their way to the Boer War.

It was made by pioneer film maker William Walker in 1899.
It was made just three years after the moving image first came
to Aberdeen Scotland in 1896. [Smile]

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on March 13, 2017, 12:21 PM:

Dave ...

Although I am no fan of digital, you're right in this case. This could have done "mechanically", apart from digital work, but digital work certainly made the work much easier to do!

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