History of Cinema

INFANCY (1830 – 1910)

Film is both an art and a science. The illusion of motion pictures (movies for short) utilizes scientific processes in optical phenomena such as persistence of vision and phi phenomenon.

Persistence of vision is the illusion of smooth movement.

Phi Phenomenon is where lights are turned on and off and perfect succession creating an illusion that it is moving.

With film, the first science deals in making the brain retain a specific image casted upon the viewer’s eyes for as quick as a second while the latter creates apparent movement. Together, these two sciences provide the succession of still frame on a motion-picture film strip to present continuous movement when projected in a proper speed.

The required speed is known as FPS or frames per second

Before the invention of photography, optical toys made use of illusion by mounting succeeding phase drawings of things in motion on the surface of a twirling disk (A), or inside a rotating drum (B). It was in 1839 that Louis Jacques-Mande Daguerre an apparatus using a camera obscura.

These are all illusions. There were no real live motion-picture made during 1870 as motion-capture wasn’t invented until around 1872 – 1877 when Eadweard Muybridge invented one just to prove to his boss Gov. Leland Stanford, that horses gallop with all legs.