Movies are Magic: Crash Course Film History #1

Summary

This engaging script delves into the history of film as a pivotal form of mass communication, intertwining art, industry, technology, and politics. Starting from the accidental origins of film through inventors' experiments, it discusses the transition from still images to the illusion of motion, driven by human perception phenomena like Persistence of Vision and the Phi Phenomenon. The script also touches on early animation tools, photography's evolution, and the progression to motion pictures, leading to the modern cinematic experience.

Takeaways

• 🎬 Film is a powerful medium that combines art, industry, technology, and politics, serving as a universal language for storytelling.
• 📽️ The term 'film' originally referred to the light-sensitive material used in photography, but it also describes the process and product of capturing moving images.
• 🔄 Over time, film technology evolved from physical film to analog formats like VHS and Beta, and eventually to digital video formats.
• 🎨 The illusion of motion in film is created by displaying a series of still images in rapid succession, leveraging the human visual phenomena of Persistence of Vision and the Phi Phenomenon.
• 👀 Persistence of Vision is the phenomenon where the human brain retains an image for about a fifth of a second after it disappears, which helps in perceiving continuous motion in film.
• 📚 The history of film is rooted in a series of accidental discoveries and innovations in photography and motion studies, rather than a single intentional invention.
• 🏇 The work of Eadweard Muybridge, who captured motion in a series of still images to settle a bet about horse gallop, marked a significant step towards motion pictures.
• 📸 George Eastman's invention allowed for photography on paper, making the process more accessible and less chemically hazardous.
• 📹 Thomas Edison and W.K.L. Dickson's kinetograph was the first motion picture film camera, a pivotal development in the creation of movies.
• 🎥 Filmmaking involves aesthetic choices that shape the audience's interpretation of reality, including shot angles, sizes, lens types, and lighting.
• 🌐 The evolution of film has led to a diverse range of cinematic works, from influential films like 'Citizen Kane' to contemporary blockbusters and experimental pieces.

Q & A

What is the universal language that the speaker refers to at the beginning of the script?

The universal language referred to is film, which serves as a medium for storytelling and making sense of the world and people around us.

What is the term 'film' originally used to describe?

The term 'film' originally described a specific technology: a thin, flexible material coated in light-sensitive emulsion that retains an image after exposure to light.

What are the two main ways the term 'film' is used in the context of the script?

The term 'film' is used both as a noun to describe the end product of the photochemical process (a movie) and as a verb to describe the process of capturing moving pictures.

What is the phenomenon that prevents us from seeing the black spaces between the frames of a projected film?

The phenomenon is called Persistence of Vision, which retains an image in our brain for about a fifth of a second after it's gone, allowing our brain to perceive continuous motion.

Who defined the Phi Phenomenon, and what does it allow us to see?

The Phi Phenomenon was defined by Czech-born psychologist Max Wertheimer in 1912. It allows us to see a series of images in rapid succession as continuous motion, creating the illusion of movement.

What is the significance of the zoetrope in the history of film?

The zoetrope is significant as it is an early animation tool that demonstrated the illusion of motion by spinning a bowl or cylinder with sequential images painted on the inside, viewed through slits, leveraging Persistence of Vision and the Phi Phenomenon.

What was the first commercially-available, mass-market means of taking photographs, and who was responsible for it?

The daguerreotype process, developed by Louis Daguerre, was the first commercially-available, mass-market means of taking photographs in 1839.

Who is credited with the invention of the method of taking pictures on paper, making photography more accessible?

George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak, is credited with the invention of a method of taking pictures on paper, which made photography more accessible and less chemical-intensive.

What was the purpose of Eadweard Muybridge's motion studies with a series of cameras along a racetrack?

Eadweard Muybridge's motion studies aimed to provide photographic proof to settle a bet about whether a horse at full gallop raises all four hooves off the ground at some point.

What is the kinetograph, and who were the key figures in its invention?

The kinetograph was the world's first motion picture film camera, invented by Thomas Edison and a scientist who worked for him named W.K.L. Dickson.

How do filmmakers use aesthetic choices to affect the audience's interpretation of reality in a film?

Filmmakers use aesthetic choices such as shot angle, shot size, lens type, lighting style, and even character design to influence how the audience perceives and interprets the reality presented in a film.

Outlines

00:00

🎬 Introduction to Film History

The script opens with an enthusiastic introduction to film as a significant form of mass communication and a universal language for storytelling. It touches on the multifaceted nature of film, intersecting art, industry, technology, and politics. The narrator, Craig Benzine, sets the stage for a journey through film history, starting from its accidental origins with inventors and artists. The concept of 'film' is explained in its technological and creative senses, and the script delves into the transition from the original film technology to modern digital formats. The paragraph concludes with an exploration of the illusion of motion in film, attributing it to human perception phenomena like Persistence of Vision and the Phi Phenomenon.

05:01

📸 The Dawn of Photography and Motion Studies

This paragraph delves into the history of photography, highlighting its role as a precursor to film. It describes the camera obscura and the early experiments with photosensitive chemicals. The script mentions Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's achievement of capturing the first known camera photograph and Louis Daguerre's improvements that led to the birth of photography. The paragraph also discusses the challenges of early photographic processes and George Eastman's innovation of using paper for photography. It then explores the use of photography to study motion, with Eadweard Muybridge's work on capturing a horse in motion and Étienne-Jules Marey's chronophotographic gun, which allowed for sequential images to be taken at a higher frequency. The paragraph concludes by setting the stage for the invention of the kinetograph by Thomas Edison and W.K.L. Dickson, which marked a significant step towards the creation of motion pictures.

Keywords

💡Mass Communication

Mass communication refers to the process of transmitting information to a large audience through various media channels. In the context of the video, it highlights the reach and influence of film as a powerful medium that can convey stories and ideas to a global audience. The script mentions film as 'one of the most influential forms of mass communication the world has ever known.'

💡Persistence of Vision

Persistence of Vision is a phenomenon where the human eye retains an image for a short time after the light source is removed, creating the illusion of continuous motion from a series of still images. The video explains this concept as the basis for the illusion of motion in film, where the brain perceives a sequence of frames as a smooth, continuous image, especially when they are flashed at a rate of 24 frames per second.

💡Phi Phenomenon

The Phi Phenomenon is an optical illusion that allows the perception of continuous motion from a rapid succession of static images. It is related to the Persistence of Vision and is a fundamental principle behind the creation of motion pictures. The video script uses the example of flip books to illustrate this concept, where flipping through still images quickly creates the illusion of movement.

💡Zoetrope

A zoetrope is an early animation device that demonstrates the Persistence of Vision and the Phi Phenomenon. It typically consists of a rotating cylinder with a series of images painted on the inside, viewed through slits. When spun, the images appear to move due to the rapid succession of images. The video script mentions zoetropes as one of the pre-film animation tools that contributed to the development of motion pictures.

💡Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura is a Latin term for 'dark chamber,' referring to an optical device used in the early history of photography. It uses a lens or pinhole to project an inverted image of the outside scene onto a surface inside a darkened box. The video script describes the camera obscura as a precursor to photography, where it was used to capture images for study or tracing, setting the stage for the development of photographic technology.

💡Photography

Photography is the process of capturing and preserving images using light-sensitive materials or digital sensors. In the video, photography is highlighted as a significant technological advancement that allowed for the capture of still images, which later contributed to the development of motion pictures. The script discusses the evolution of photography from early experiments with light-sensitive chemicals to the invention of the daguerreotype and the subsequent improvements by George Eastman.

💡Kinetograph

The kinetograph was the first motion picture film camera, invented by Thomas Edison and W.K.L. Dickson. It marked a pivotal moment in the history of film, as it allowed for the recording of moving images. The video script mentions the kinetograph as the device that paved the way for filmmakers to experiment with motion picture technologies, leading to the creation of movies as we know them today.

💡Aesthetic Choices

Aesthetic choices refer to the artistic decisions made by filmmakers that influence the visual and emotional impact of a film. These choices include shot angles, shot sizes, lens types, and lighting styles. The video script discusses how these choices can affect the audience's interpretation of reality within a film, emphasizing the creative control filmmakers have over presenting a specific point of view.

💡Motion Studies

Motion studies involve the use of photography to capture and analyze movement. The video script cites Eadweard Muybridge's work with sequential photographs of a horse in motion as an example of motion studies, which provided a detailed breakdown of continuous motion into individual images. These studies were a significant step towards the development of motion pictures.

💡Chronophotographic Gun

The chronophotographic gun was an invention by Étienne-Jules Marey that allowed for the capture of multiple photographs in quick succession, at a rate of 12 per second. This device was an advancement in motion studies and contributed to the understanding of motion, which is integral to the development of film. The video script describes Marey's invention as a tool that enabled the taking of bursts of photographs on rolls of film, rather than individual sheets.

💡Zoopraxiscope

The zoopraxiscope was a device invented by Eadweard Muybridge to project motion studies as moving images. It demonstrated the potential of sequential images to create the illusion of motion when viewed in rapid succession. The video script mentions the zoopraxiscope as a precursor to motion pictures, showing that even though these were still just series of photographs, they were beginning to be used to simulate motion.

Highlights

Film as a universal language for storytelling, reflecting collective hopes and fears.

Film's position at the intersection of art, industry, technology, and politics.

The accidental creation of film as a cornerstone of modern entertainment.

Definition of 'film' as both technology and art form, and its transition from analog to digital formats.

Explanation of the illusion of motion in film through Persistence of Vision and the Phi Phenomenon.

Historical roots of film traced back to prehistoric cave paintings and zoetropes.

Development of photography in the 19th century as a precursor to film.

Joseph Niépce's pioneering work in photography with the first camera photograph.

Louis Daguerre's invention of the daguerreotype process and its significance in photography.

George Eastman's contribution to photography with the invention of paper-based photography.

Eadweard Muybridge's motion studies and their impact on understanding continuous motion.

Étienne-Jules Marey's chronophotographic gun and its role in capturing motion.

Thomas Edison and W.K.L. Dickson's invention of the kinetograph, the first motion picture film camera.

The role of filmmakers in crafting the illusion of film through aesthetic choices.

The evolution of film from a series of accidents to a sophisticated storytelling medium.

Crash Course Film History as a journey to discover the world of film and its impact on self-discovery.

Introduction to the beginnings of film and the technological leap provided by photography.

Anticipation of learning about the first motion picture cameras and the birth of modern movies in the next episode.

Transcripts

Hello there! How would you like a ticket to one of the most influential forms of mass communication the world has ever known?

It’s a universal language that lets us tell stories about our collective hopes and fears,

to make sense of the world and the people around us.

I’m talking about film.

You probably figured that out because of the title of this video, but, yeah, I'm talking about film.

This powerful medium sits in a sweet spot of human culture: at the intersection of art, industry, technology, and politics.

It’s inescapable, like FBI piracy warnings, and trailers that give away the entire movie.

I'm looking at you, Batman v Superman.

And also vs Wonder Woman, apparently, 'cause I learned that from the trailer.

But before we get to a mouse named Mickey, a little Tramp, and whether or not Han shot first, we’re going back to the beginning...

In a galaxy far, far– Well, right here

We have to go all the way back to the beginning because the creation of this cornerstone of modern entertainment was basically an accident.

We owe it all to inventors and artists who were experimenting with new technologies and

trying to capture snippets of reality, to see the world in a whole new way.

I'm Craig Benzine, and this is Crash Course Film History.

Ready? Lights! Camera! Action!

Roll the intro now. We should roll the intro, I think.

[Theme Music]

The term “film” was first used to describe a specific technology –

a thin, flexible material coated in light-sensitive emulsion that retains an image after it’s exposed to light.

It’s also the end product of that photochemical process.

A film is a movie.

But it’s also a verb to describe the process of capturing moving pictures, as in, “I’m going to film a movie today.”

Or, “Nick is filming me right this very second.”

Or, "I'm gonna film a film on film."

Over time, the original film technology has switched to analog and digital substitutes

– first things like VHS or Beta, and eventually digital video, like when you record something on your phone.

Now, at the very beginning of its history, before all these innovations existed,

film started out as a collection of still images viewed one after another in rapid succession, which creates the illusion of motion.

Like what you're seeing right now!

It was a magic trick!

And from that trick came an art form that’s a blend of literature, drama, photography, and music.

So how does this illusion actually work?

It all comes down to a couple quirks of human perception, tricks your eyes play on your brain… or your brain plays on your eyes… or maybe both.

The 19th century British scholar Peter Mark Roget was the first to describe one of these tricks, called Persistence of Vision.

Basically, this is the phenomenon that keeps you from seeing the black spaces between the frames of a projected film.

Now, frame can mean a lot of things in film language, but in this case, it’s what we call one of the still images that make up a movie.

It turns out that if a frame flashes in front of your eyes, your brain retains that image for about a fifth of a second after it’s gone.

If another frame appears within that fifth of a second, your brain won’t register the black space between them.

You’ll just perceive the next image.

So when a film flashes 24 frames per second in front of your eyes, your brain doesn’t interpret it as 24 images separated by flashes of black.

Instead, it looks like a constant picture.

This effect can be combined with another oddity of perception called the Phi Phenomenon, defined in 1912 by the Czech-born psychologist Max Wertheimer.

Incidentally, "oddity of perception" – my nickname in high school.

The Phi Phenomenon is an optical illusion that lets you see a series of images in rapid succession as continuous motion.

Think of those flip books you played with as a kid:

Take a series of still pictures, shot or drawn in sequence, flip them quickly before your eyes and, voilá! The illusion of motion.

You have yourself a “motion picture,” or a “moving picture.”

In other words, a moving-picturey.

Better yet, a “movie.” Write that down, that's what we're going with.

Now, people have been telling stories since we’ve had language, and they’ve been using pictures – even animating them – for almost as long.

One line of thinking traces “movies” all the way back to cave paintings in places like Chauvet, France or El Castillo, Spain.

You know – those images of animals, trees, and human figures, painted on stone walls as far back as 32,000 years ago.

Scientists think the original artists might have used flickering torchlight to make them appear to move.

Fast forward to just 5000 years ago, and we find people inventing more sophisticated devices to create that same illusion of motion.

Among these pre-film animation tools, the ones we’re most familiar with are called zoetropes.

Think of these as a bowl or a deep cylinder with sequential images painted on the inside and small slits or windows cut into the edges.

Spin the bowl and peer through the slits and – thanks to Persistence of Vision and the Phi Phenomenon – the pictures seem to move.

Oooh!

Over the centuries, these devices came in lots of different forms and just as many names: phenakistoscopes, stroboscopes, stereoscopes...

All kinds of ‘scopes. But not Scope, the mouthwash – that's something else.

And for a long, long time, this is as close as we ever got to film.

Until photography came along.

Now, it’s important to remember that no one set out to invent movies.

There was no one mastermind, and no grand plan to revolutionize communication or art on a global scale.

If I was around, it would've been me, but there wasn't anyone.

Instead, film as we know it today exists because of a series of happy accidents, technical innovations, and scientific byproducts.

‘Cause really, at the beginning, nobody knew what they were doing.

Just like now!

I'm lookin' at you, Batman v Superman.

Photography came about in the early-to-mid-19th century, at a time of great scientific and artistic innovation.

People of means all over the world were tinkering in their spare time, playing around with technology

and seeing what they could create, combine, augment, or transform.

Before the photograph was invented, people were isolating images of the world around them with devices like the camera obscura.

From the Latin meaning “dark chamber,” a camera obscura is essentially a box, tent,

or room with a lens or pinhole in one end, and a reflective surface like a mirror at the other.

Light travels through the hole and displays an inverted image on the mirror.

Like most of these pre-photography technologies, the camera obscura was mostly a novelty, a toy, or sometimes a tool that let artists create images to study or trace.

As the 19th century dawned, folks started playing around with photosensitive chemicals,

to figure out their properties while trying not to melt themselves with acid.

Which we should all try to do, in practice.

In the 1820s, a French inventor named Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took the first known camera photograph.

He called it “View from the Window at Le Gras.”

Niépce used a camera obscura to project an image onto a pewter plate coated in a light-sensitive chemical.

The areas of the chemical that were hit with the brightest light hardened, but the areas touched by weaker light could be washed away,

so a crude permanent record of the original image survived.

Scientists now believe it took a couple days of exposing the plate to light for the image to finally show up.

So we’re still a long way from movies!

But we’re getting closer. Get excited.

Louis Daguerre – another Frenchman, and a close buddy of Niépce – was able to shorten the exposure time to just a couple of minutes.

His daguerreotype process became the first commercially-available, mass-market means of taking photographs in 1839.

And this is usually considered to be photography’s birthday.

Hooray! Happy birthday–

But hold on, the daguerreotype still had a few problems to work out:

the photographs were pretty fragile, they weren’t easy to replicate, and the chemicals were, shall we say, toxic.

Along came George Eastman, an American entrepreneur and the founder of Eastman Kodak, who invented a way of taking pictures on paper, rather than metal or glass plates.

This method also didn’t need as many chemicals, which probably saved a lot of snap-happy inventors from health problems.

Now photography was off to the races.

Literally.

So let’s go to the Thought Bubble and see how photographs were used to pause time and take a closer look at movement.

Take it away, Thought Bubble! Well, I– I will take it– I'm gonna narrate, so...

In 1872, Leland Stanford, the former governor of California and a horse race aficionado,

made a bet with another bigwig that a horse at full gallop raises all four hooves off the ground at some point.

To settle the bet, Stanford commissioned a photographer and inventor named Eadweard Muybridge to find photographic proof.

So, Muybridge set up twelve cameras along a racetrack, each triggered by a tripwire to capture a still image of a horse in motion.

His set of twelve photos was something brand new: rapid motion broken down into frozen, studiable moments.

Spoiler alert – Governor Stanford won his bet!

There were a couple images where that horse wasn’t touching the ground at all.

Muybridge’s experiment launched a wave of “motion studies,”

as photographers and inventors all over the world began using these new technologies to break down continuous motion into individual images.

And that was one giant step closer to motion pictures.

Thanks Thought Bubble! You're so great!

One of those photographers was yet another Frenchman – a man named Étienne-Jules Marey,

whose training in physiology led him to capture motion studies of birds in flight and human athletes in action.

Instead of tripwires like Muybridge, Marey invented what he called a chronophotographic gun (awesome)

and switched from sheets of photographic paper to rolls, allowing him to take bursts of photographs – 12 per second.

Even with all these increasingly-fancy techniques, it’s important to note that these were still just series of photographs.

Motion studies were sometimes projected, using devices like Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope, but nobody was trying to make movies yet.

So, the world was boring.

Each of these innovations set up Thomas Edison and a scientist who worked for him named W.K.L. Dickson to invent the kinetograph – the world’s first motion picture film camera.

And they, in turn, paved the way for the first filmmakers to experiment with motion picture technologies and storytelling.

We mentioned earlier that film is an illusion, but it’s an illusion that’s carefully crafted by people who want to show a specific point of view.

With aesthetic choices – from shot angle and shot size to lens type and lighting style

and how much hair you put on a wookie – filmmakers can further affect how we, as an audience, interpret reality.

In a real sense, film wasn’t invented, it was stumbled upon.

A series of happy accidents eventually led us to Citizen Kane, Grand Illusion, Black Girl, and the experimental works of Stan Brackage.

Not to mention, things like The Wizard of Oz, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Captain America: Civil War, and Sharknado!

There’s a whole world of film out there to discover, and there’s a lot that film can help you discover about yourself too.

And that’s the story we’ll continue, next time we meet.

Today we talked about how film is a sort of magic trick, thanks to the ways our eyes and brains work.

Thank you eyes and brains!

We introduced the very, very beginnings of film, when people started using sequential images to tell stories.

We discussed photography as a huge technological leap forward, since chemicals and light could

capture images and break down fast-moving reality like never before.

And next time, we’ll learn about the very first motion picture cameras, and the start of movies as we know them now.

Crash Course Film History is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios.

You can head over to their channel to check out a playlist of their latest amazing shows,

like BBQ With Franklin, PBS Off Book, and Indy Alaska.

This episode of Crash Course was filmed in the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio

with the help of these nice phenakistoscopes and our amazing graphics team, is Thought Cafe.