A film, also known as a movie or motion picture,[a] is a work of visual art that
simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions,
emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally,
since the 1930s, synchronized with sound and some times using other sensory
stimulations.[1]
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Films are produced by recording actual people and objects with cameras or by
creating them using animation techniques and special effects. They comprise a
series of individual frames, but when these images are shown rapidly in
succession, the illusion of motion is given to the viewer. Flickering
between frames is not seen due to an effect known as persistence of vision,
whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source
has been removed. Also of relevance is what causes the perception of motion; a
psychological effect identified as beta movement.
Films are considered by many to be an important art form; films entertain, educate,
enlighten and inspire audiences. The visual elements of cinema need no
translation, giving the motion picture a universal power of communication. Any film
can become a worldwide attraction, especially with the addition
of dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue. Films are also artifacts created
by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them.
History
Main articles: History of film technology, History of film, and Precursors of film
Precursors
The art of film has drawn on several earlier traditions in fields such as
oral storytelling, literature, theatre and visual arts. Forms of art
and entertainment that had already featured moving or projected images such
as shadowgraphy, camera obscura, shadow puppetry and magic lantern.[2][3][4]
1830s–1880s: Before celluloid
Animated GIF of Prof. Stampfer's
Stroboscopische Scheibe No. X (Trentsensky & Vieweg 1833)
The stroboscopic animation principle was introduced in 1833 with the stroboscopic
disc (better known as the phénakisticope) and later applied in the zoetrope (since
1866), the flip book (since 1868), and the praxinoscope (since 1877), before it
became the basic principle for cinematography.[citation needed]
Experiments with early phénakisticope-based animation projectors were made at
least as early as 1843 and publicly screened in 1847. Jules Duboscq marketed
phénakisticope projection systems in France from c. 1853 until the 1890s.[citation
needed]
Photography was introduced in 1839, but initially photographic emulsions needed
such long exposures that the recording of moving subjects seemed impossible. At
least as early as 1844, photographic series of subjects posed in different positions
were created to either suggest a motion sequence or document a range of different
viewing angles. The advent of stereoscopic photography, with early experiments in
the 1840s and commercial success since the early 1850s, raised interest in
completing the photographic medium with the addition of means to capture color
and motion. In 1849, Joseph Plateau published about the idea to combine his
invention of the phénakisticope with the stereoscope, as suggested to him by
stereoscope inventor Charles Wheatstone, and to use photographs of plaster
sculptures in different positions to be animated in the combined device. In 1852,
Jules Duboscq patented such an instrument as the "Stéréoscope-fantascope, ou
Bïoscope", but he only marketed it very briefly, without success. One Bïoscope disc
with stereoscopic photographs of a machine is in the Plateau collection of Ghent
University, but no instruments or other discs have yet been found.[citation needed]
An animation of the retouched Sallie Garner
card from The Horse in Motion series (1878–1879) by Muybridge
By the late 1850s, the first examples of instantaneous photography came about and
provided hope that motion photography would soon be possible, but it took a few
decades before it was successfully combined with a method to record series of
sequential images in real-time. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge eventually managed
to take a series of photographs of a running horse with a battery of cameras in a line
along the track and published the results as The Horse in Motion on cabinet cards.
Muybridge, as well as Étienne-Jules Marey, Ottomar Anschütz and many others,
would create many more chronophotography studies. Muybridge had the contours
of dozens of his chronophotographic series traced onto glass discs and projected
them with his zoopraxiscope in his lectures from 1880 to 1895.
