The History of Movie Photography

SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Auguste and his brother Louis Lumière (b. 5 October 1864 Besançon, France; d. 6 June 1948 Bandol, France) developed the photographic plate-making business founded by their father, Charles Antoine Lumière, at Lyons, extending production to roll-film manufacture in 1887. In the summer of 1894 their father brought to the factory a piece of Edison kinetoscope film, and said that they should produce films for the French owners of the new moving-picture machine. To do this, of course, a camera was needed; Louis was chiefly responsible for the design, which used an intermittent claw for driving the film, inspired by a sewing-machine mechanism. The machine was patented on 13 February 1895, and it was shown on 22 March 1895 at the Société d'Encouragement pour l'In-dustrie Nationale in Paris, with a projected film showing workers leaving the Lyons factory. Further demonstrations followed at the Sorbonne, and in Lyons during the Congrès des Sociétés de Photographie in June 1895. The Lumières filmed the delegates returning from an excursion, and showed the film to the Congrès the next day. To bring the Cinématographe, as it was called, to the public, the basement of the Grand Café in the Boulevard des Capuchines in Paris was rented, and on Saturday 28 December 1895 the first regular presentations of projected pictures to a paying public took place. The half-hour shows were an immediate success, and in a few months Lumière Cinématographes were seen throughout the world.

The other principal area of achievement by the Lumière brothers was colour photography. They took up Lippman's method of interference colour photography, developing special grainless emulsions, and early in 1893 demonstrated their results by lighting them with an arc lamp and projecting them on to a screen. In 1895 they patented a method of subtractive colour photography involving printing the colour separations on bichromated gelatine glue sheets, which were then dyed and assembled in register, on paper for prints or bound between glass for transparencies. Their most successful colour process was based upon the colour-mosaic principle. In 1904 they described a process in which microscopic grains of potato starch, dyed red, green and blue, were scattered on a freshly varnished glass plate. When dried the mosaic was coated with varnish and then with a panchromatic emulsion. The plate was exposed with the mosaic towards the lens, and after reversal processing a colour transparency was produced. The process was launched commercially in 1907 under the name Autochrome; it was the first fully practical single-plate colour process to reach the public, remaining on the market until the 1930s, when it was followed by a film version using the same principle.

Auguste and Louis received the Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in 1909 for their work in colour photography. Auguste was also much involved in biological science and, having founded the Clinique Auguste Lumière, spent many of his later years working in the physiological laboratory.

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SUBJECT AREA: Electricity, Electronics and information technology, Photography, film and optics

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Paul was educated at the City of London School and Finsbury Technical College. He worked first for a short time in the Bell Telephone Works in Antwerp, Belgium, and then in the electrical instrument shop of Elliott Brothers in the Strand until 1891, when he opened an instrument-making business at 44 Hatton Garden, London. He specialized in the design and manufacture of electrical instruments, including the Ayrton Mather galvanometer. In 1902, with a purpose-built factory, he began large batch production of his instruments. He also opened a factory in New York, where uncalibrated instruments from England were calibrated for American customers. In 1903 Paul introduced the Unipivot galvanometer, in which the coil was supported at the centre of gravity of the moving system on a single pivot. The pivotal friction was less than in a conventional instrument and could be used without accurate levelling, the sensitivity being far beyond that of any pivoted galvanometer then in existence.

In 1894 Paul was asked by two entrepreneurs to make copies of Edison's kinetoscope, the pioneering peep-show moving-picture viewer, which had just arrived in London. Discovering that Edison had omitted to patent the machine in England, and observing that there was considerable demand for the machine from show-people, he began production, making six before the end of the year. Altogether, he made about sixty-six units, some of which were exported. Although Edison's machine was not patented, his films were certainly copyrighted, so Paul now needed a cinematographic camera to make new subjects for his customers. Early in 1895 he came into contact with Birt Acres, who was also working on the design of a movie camera. Acres's design was somewhat impractical, but Paul constructed a working model with which Acres filmed the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on 30 March, and the Derby at Epsom on 29 May. Paul was unhappy with the inefficient design, and developed a new intermittent mechanism based on the principle of the Maltese cross. Despite having signed a ten-year agreement with Paul, Acres split with him on 12 July 1895, after having unilaterally patented their original camera design on 27 May. By the early weeks of 1896, Paul had developed a projector mechanism that also used the Maltese cross and which he demonstrated at the Finsbury Technical College on 20 February 1896. His Theatrograph was intended for sale, and was shown in a number of venues in London during March, notably at the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. There the renamed Animatographe was used to show, among other subjects, the Derby of 1896, which was won by the Prince of Wales's horse "Persimmon" and the film of which was shown the next day to enthusiastic crowds. The production of films turned out to be quite profitable: in the first year of the business, from March 1896, Paul made a net profit of £12,838 on a capital outlay of about £1,000. By the end of the year there were at least five shows running in London that were using Paul's projectors and screening films made by him or his staff.

Paul played a major part in establishing the film business in England through his readiness to sell apparatus at a time when most of his rivals reserved their equipment for sole exploitation. He went on to become a leading producer of films, specializing in trick effects, many of which he pioneered. He was affectionately known in the trade as "Daddy Paul", truly considered to be the "father" of the British film industry. He continued to appreciate fully the possibilities of cinematography for scientific work, and in collaboration with Professor Silvanus P.Thompson films were made to illustrate various phenomena to students.

Paul ended his involvement with film making in 1910 to concentrate on his instrument business; on his retirement in 1920, this was amalgamated with the Cambridge Instrument Company. In his will he left shares valued at over £100,000 to form the R.W.Paul Instrument Fund, to be administered by the Institution of Electrical Engineers, of which he had been a member since 1887. The fund was to provide instruments of an unusual nature to assist physical research.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Born of English parents and educated in Paris, Acres travelled to England in the 1880s. He worked for the photographic manufacturing firm Elliott \& Co. in Barnet, near London, and became the Manager. He became well known through his frequent lectures, demonstrations and articles in the photographic press. The appearance of the Edison kinetoscope in 1893 seems to have aroused his interest in the recording and reproduction of movement.

At the beginning of 1895 he took his idea for a camera to Robert Paul, an instrument maker, and they collaborated on the building of a working camera, which Acres used to record the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on 30 March 1895. He filmed the Derby at Epsom on 29 May and the opening of the Kiel Canal in June, as well as ten other subjects for the kinetoscope, which were sold by Paul. Acres's association with Paul ended in July 1895. Acres had patented the camera design, the Kinetic Lantern, on 27 May 1895 and then went on to design a projector with which he gave the first successful presentation of projected motion pictures to take place in Britain, at the Royal Photographic Society's meeting on 14 January 1896. At the end of the month Acres formed his own business, the Northern Photographic Company, to supply film stock, process and print exposed film, and to make finished film productions.

His first shows to the public, using the renamed Kineopticon projector, started in Piccadilly Circus on 21 March 1896. He later toured the country with his show. He was honoured with a Royal Command Performance at Marlborough House on 21 July 1896 before members of the royal family. Although he made a number of films for his own use, they and his equipment were used only for his own demonstrations. His last contribution to cinematography was the design and patenting in 1898 of the first low-cost system for amateur use, the Birtac, which was first shown on 25 January 1899 and marketed in May of that year. It used half-width film, 17.5 mm wide, and the apparatus served as camera, printer and projector.

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1 still.

2 freeze-frame, photogram.

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► nombre masculino

1 shot

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SM (Cine) still

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masculino still

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= frame, still, film still, movie still, shot.

Ex. The microfiche is a common form for catalogues and indexes, usually 208 or 270 frames per fiche, in a piece of film and with a reduction ratio of 42 or 48:1.

Ex. This speed is necessary in television, for motion pictures rather than stills as the object.

Ex. The author traces the history behind cinematic photography and film stills.

Ex. The images discussed are mostly photographs and movie stills.

Ex. Each video shot is logged using text descriptions, audio dialogue, and cinematic attributes.

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* de fotograma completo = full-frame.

* de fotograma doble = half-frame.

* fotograma a fotograma = shot by shot.

* fotograma de vídeo = video frame.

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masculino still

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still

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fotograma nm

still

(n.) = still, still image, still-picture, film still, movie still

Ex. This speed is necessary in television, for motion pictures rather than stills as the object.

Ex. The advantages of videodisc for storing still images as compared to microforms and optical discs are evident.

Ex. Consequently, a freeze-frame or still-picture effect can be achieved by simply halting the movement of the head across the disc.

Ex. The author traces the history behind cinematic photography and film stills.

Ex. The images discussed are mostly photographs and movie stills.

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SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology, Photography, film and optics

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At the age of 19 Marey went to Paris to study medicine, becoming particularly interested in the problems of the circulation of the blood. In an early communication to the Académie des Sciences he described a much improved device for recording the pulse, the sphygmograph, in which the beats were recorded on a smoked plate. Most of his subsequent work was concerned with methods of recording movement: to study the movement of the horse, he used pneumatic sensors on each hoof to record traces on a smoked drum; this device became known as the Marey recording tambour. His attempts to study the wing movements of a bird in flight in the same way met with limited success since the recording system interfered with free movement. Reading in 1878 of Muybridge's work in America using sequence photography to study animal movement, Marey considered the use of photography himself. In 1882 he developed an idea first used by the astronomer Janssen: a camera in which a series of exposures could be made on a circular photographic plate. Marey's "photographic gun" was rifle shaped and could expose twelve pictures in approximately one second on a circular plate. With this device he was able to study wing movements of birds in free flight. The camera was limited in that it could record only a small number of images, and in the summer of 1882 he developed a new camera, when the French government gave him a grant to set up a physiological research station on land provided by the Parisian authorities near the Porte d'Auteuil. The new design used a fixed plate, on which a series of images were recorded through a rotating shutter. Looking rather like the results provided by a modern stroboscope flash device, the images were partially superimposed if the subject was slow moving, or separated if it was fast. His human subjects were dressed all in white and moved against a black background. An alternative was to dress the subject in black, with highly reflective strips and points along limbs and at joints, to produce a graphic record of the relationships of the parts of the body during action. A one-second-sweep timing clock was included in the scene to enable the precise interval between exposures to be assessed. The fixed-plate cameras were used with considerable success, but the number of individual records on each plate was still limited. With the appearance of Eastman's Kodak roll-film camera in France in September 1888, Marey designed a new camera to use the long rolls of paper film. He described the new apparatus to the Académie des Sciences on 8 October 1888, and three weeks later showed a band of images taken with it at the rate of 20 per second. This camera and its subsequent improvements were the first true cinematographic cameras. The arrival of Eastman's celluloid film late in 1889 made Marey's camera even more practical, and for over a decade the Physiological Research Station made hundreds of sequence studies of animals and humans in motion, at rates of up to 100 pictures per second. Marey pioneered the scientific study of movement using film cameras, introducing techniques of time-lapse, frame-by-frame and slow-motion analysis, macro-and micro-cinematography, superimposed timing clocks, studies of airflow using smoke streams, and other methods still in use in the 1990s. Appointed Professor of Natural History at the Collège de France in 1870, he headed the Institut Marey founded in 1898 to continue these studies. After Marey's death in 1904, the research continued under the direction of his associate Lucien Bull, who developed many new techniques, notably ultra-high-speed cinematography.

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See also: Demenÿ, Georges

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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The son of a Wesleyan minister, Mees was interested in chemistry from an early age and studied at St Dunstan's College in Catford, where he met Samuel E.Sheppard, with whom he went on to University College London in 1900. They worked together on a thesis for BSc degrees in 1903, developing the work begun by Hurter and Driffield on photographic sensitometry. This and other research papers were published in 1907 in the book Investigations on the Theory of the Photographic Process, which became a standard reference work. After obtaining a doctorate in 1906, Mees joined the firm of Wratten \& Wainwright (see F.C.L.Wratten), manufacturers of dry plates in Croydon; he started work on 1 April 1906, first tackling the problem of manufacturing colour-sensitive emulsions and enabling the company to market the first fully panchromatic plates from the end of that year.

During the next few years Mees ran the commercial operation of the company as Managing Director and carried out research into new products, including filters for use with the new emulsions. In January 1912 he was visited by George Eastman, the American photographic manufacturer, who asked him to go to Rochester, New York, and set up a photographic research laboratory in the Kodak factory there. Wratten was prepared to release Mees on condition that Eastman bought the company; thus, Wratten and Wainwright became part of Kodak Ltd, and Mees left for America. He supervised the construction of a building in the heart of Kodak Park, and the building was fully equipped not only as a research laboratory, but also with facilities for coating and packing sensitized materials. It also had the most comprehensive library of photographic books in the world. Work at the laboratory started at the beginning of 1913, with a staff of twenty recruited from America and England, including Mees's collaborator of earlier years, Sheppard. Under Mees's direction there flowed from the Kodak research Laboratory a constant stream of discoveries, many of them leading to new products. Among these were the 16 mm amateur film-making system launched in 1923; the first amateur colour-movie system, Kodacolor, in 1928; and 8 mm home movies, in 1932. His support for the young experimenters Mannes and Godowsky, who were working on colour photography, led to their joining the Research Laboratory and to the introduction of the first multi-layer colour film, Kodachrome, in 1935. Eastman had agreed from the beginning that as much of the laboratory's work as possible should be published, and Mees himself wrote prolifically, publishing over 200 articles and ten books. While he made significant contributions to the understanding of the photographic process, particularly through his early research, it is his creation and organization of the Kodak Research Laboratory that is his lasting memorial. His interests were many and varied, including Egyptology, astronomy, marine biology and history. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society.

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shot [ʃɒt]

1 pt & pp of shoot

2 noun

(a) (instance of firing) coup m (de feu);

∎ he fired four shots il a tiré quatre coups de feu;

∎ to have or to fire or to take a shot at sth tirer sur qch;

∎ he hit it with his first shot il l'a atteint du premier coup;

∎ also figurative a shot across the bows un coup de semonce;

∎ figurative it was a shot in the dark j'ai/il a/ etc dit ça au hasard;

∎ familiar to do sth like a shot (speedily) faire qch à tout berzingue; (with no hesitation) faire qch sans hésiter^□ ;

∎ familiar the dog was off like a shot le chien est parti comme une flèche;

∎ familiar would you marry him? - like a shot! est-ce que tu l'épouserais? - sans hésiter^□ ou et comment!;

∎ familiar I'd accept the offer like a shot j'accepterais l'offre sans la moindre hésitation^□ ;

∎ History the shot heard around the world = expression évoquant le début de la guerre de l'Indépendance américaine

(b) (sound of gun) coup m de feu;

∎ I was woken by a shot j'ai été réveillé par un coup de feu

(c) (UNCOUNT) (shotgun pellets) plomb m, plombs mpl

(d) (marksman) tireur(euse) m,f, fusil m;

∎ she's a good shot c'est une excellente tireuse, elle tire bien;

∎ she's a poor shot elle tire mal

(e) Sport (at goal → in football, hockey etc) tir m; (stroke → in tennis, cricket, billiards etc) coup m; (throw → in darts) lancer m;

∎ his first shot at goal hit the post son premier tir a touché le poteau;

∎ each player has three shots chaque joueur joue trois fois;

∎ good shot! bien joué!;

∎ to call the shots mener le jeu;

∎ American familiar to call one's shot annoncer la couleur

(f) Sport

∎ to put the shot lancer le poids

(g) Astronomy (launch) tir m

(h) Photography photo f; Cinema plan m, prise f de vue;

∎ you can get a good shot of the castle from here d'ici vous prendrez bien le château;

∎ the opening shots of the movie les premières images fpl du film

(i) familiar (try) tentative^□ f, essai^□ m;

∎ I'd like to have a shot at it j'aimerais tenter le coup;

∎ it's worth having a shot at ça vaut le coup;

∎ give it your best shot fais pour le mieux;

∎ I gave it my best shot j'ai fait ce que j'ai pu

(j) familiar (injection) piqûre^□ f;

∎ tetanus shot piqûre f antitétanique;

∎ figurative a shot in the arm un coup de fouet

(k) (drink) (petit) verre m;

∎ have a shot of vodka prenez un petit verre de vodka

(l) American familiar

∎ the whole shot tout le tremblement

3 adjective

(a) British (rid) familiar

∎ to get shot of sb/sth se débarrasser de qn/qch^□ ;

∎ I'll be glad to be shot of them je serai content d'en être débarrassé;

∎ I can't wait to be shot of this house j'ai hâte de me débarrasser de cette maison

(b) (streaked) strié;

∎ her dress was of a deep red shot through with gold sa robe était rouge foncé avec des stries dorées;

∎ figurative the book is shot through with subtle irony le livre est plein d'une ironie subtile

(c) esp American familiar (exhausted) épuisé^□, crevé; (broken, spoilt) fichu, bousillé;

∎ my nerves are shot je suis à bout de nerfs;

∎ that's another day shot! une autre journée de foutue (en l'air)!

►► shot glass petit verre m;

Sport shot put lancer m du poids;

Sport shot putter lanceur(euse) m,f de poids;

Sport shot putting (lancer m du) poids m;

Textiles shot silk soie f changeante

ⓘ THE SHOT HEARD AROUND THE WORLD C'est le titre d'un poème de Ralph Waldo Emerson, en hommage au premier coup de feu échangé entre les "Minutemen" américains et les forces anglaises, en avril 1775, à Lexington. L'écrivain y loue la détermination des colons et salue l'avènement d'une nouvelle nation.