Movies (Silent)

The horse’s name was Sallie Gardner, a Kentucky-bred mare, and Muybridge used multiple cameras to photograph her as she galloped past. The project was financed by Leland Stanford, who owned a farm where he bred, trained, and raced horses. Eadweard Muybridge, 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first name "Eadweard" as the original Anglo-Saxon form of "Edward", and the surname "Muybridge", believing it to be similarly archaic. Born in Kingston upon Thames, England, at the age of 20 he emigrated to the United States as a bookseller, first to New York City, then to San Francisco. In 1860, he planned a return trip to Europe, but suffered serious head injuries en route in a stagecoach crash in Texas. He spent the next few years recuperating in Kingston upon Thames, where he took up professional photography, learned the wet-plate collodion process, and secured at least two British patents for his inventions. He returned to San Francisco in 1867, a man with a markedly changed personality. In 1868, he exhibited large photographs of Yosemite Valley, and began selling popular stereographs of his work. In 1874, Muybridge shot and killed Major Harry Larkyns, his wife's lover, but was acquitted, in a controversial jury trial, on the grounds of justifiable homicide.[4] In 1875, he travelled for more than a year in Central America on a photographic expedition. Today, Muybridge is best known for his pioneering chronophotograph of animal locomotion between 1878 and 1886, which used multiple cameras to capture the different positions in a stride; and for his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting painted motion pictures from glass discs that predated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography. From 1883 to 1886, he entered a very productive period at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, producing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion, occasionally capturing what the human eye could not distinguish as separate moments in time. In his later years, Muybridge gave many public lectures and demonstrations of his photography and early motion picture sequences, travelling frequently in England and Europe to publicize his work in cities such as London and Paris.[6] He also edited and published compilations of his work (some of which are still in print today), which greatly influenced visual artists and the developing fields of scientific and industrial photography. He retired to his native England permanently in 1894. In 1904, the year of his death, the Kingston Museum opened in his hometown, and continues to house a substantial collection of his works in a dedicated gallery.

Individual photographs of the running of a buffalo shot in rapid succession. A viewer pointed out this is actually a Bison. :)

Annie Oakley is an 1894 black-and-white silent film from Edison Studios, produced by William K. L. Dickson with William Heise as cinematographer. Synopsis The film shows Oakley performing trick shooting as she was known for in her live shows. The first scene was of Oakley shooting her Marlin 91 .22 caliber rifle 25 times in 27 seconds. There is also a scene of her shooting composition balls in the air. The man assisting her is likely her husband, Frank E. Butler. Both were veterans of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.  Cast Frank E. Butler as Self (uncredited) Annie Oakley as Self (uncredited) Background The film is most notable for being Annie Oakley's first appearance on film. Thomas Edison had wanted to see if his kinetoscope could capture the smoke from a rifle, so he employed Oakley to film some of her shooting.  In 1894, kinetoscopes were installed in 60 locations in major cities around the country.  Viewing the films cost a nickel. It was filmed on a single reel using standard 35 mm gauge at Edison's Black Maria studio in New York, November 1, 1895. The original film had a 90-second runtime. The surviving film is preserved by the Library of Congress.

Men Boxing is an 1891 American short silent film, produced and directed by William K. L. Dickson and William Heise for the Edison Manufacturing Company, featuring two Edison employees with boxing gloves, pretending to spar in a boxing ring. The 12 feet of film was shot between May and June 1891 at the Edison Laboratory Photographic Building in West Orange, New Jersey, on the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, through a round aperture on 3/4 inch (19mm) wide film with a single edge row of sprocket perforations, as an experimental demonstration and was never publicly shown. A print has been preserved in the US Library of Congress film archive as part of the Gordon Hendricks collection. Directed by William K. L. Dickson, William Heise Produced by William K. L. Dickson, William Heise Cinematography William K. L. Dickson, William Heise Production company: Edison Manufacturing Company Release date : 1891 Running time 5 seconds Country United States Language Silent

Sherlock Holmes Baffled is a very short American silent film created in 1900 with cinematography by Arthur Marvin. It is the earliest known film to feature Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character Sherlock Holmes, albeit in a form unlike that of later screen incarnations. The inclusion of the character also makes it the first recorded detective film. In the film, a thief who can appear and disappear at will steals a sack of items from Sherlock Holmes. At each point, Holmes's attempts to thwart the intruder end in failure. Originally shown in Mutoscope machines in arcades, Sherlock Holmes Baffled has a running time of 30 seconds. Although produced in 1900, it was only registered in 1903, and a copyright notice stating this is seen on some prints. The identities of the actors playing the first screen Holmes and his assailant are not recorded. Assumed to be lost for many years, the film was rediscovered in 1968 as a paper print in the Library of Congress. Plot Sherlock Holmes enters his drawing room to find it being burgled, but on confronting the villain is surprised when the latter disappears. Holmes initially attempts to ignore the event by lighting a cigar, but upon the thief's reappearance, Holmes tries to reclaim the sack of stolen goods, drawing a pistol from his dressing gown pocket and firing it at the intruder, who vanishes. After Holmes recovers his property, the bag vanishes from his hand into that of the thief, who promptly disappears through a window. At this point, the film ends abruptly with Holmes looking "baffled". Production An 1899 advertisement for the mutoscope reading "The Mutoscope and how it makes money" in large, stylized letters with "for pennies, a moving picture machine, popular in all public places" in smaller lettering around a central picture. In the image, a lady wearing a long early 20th century dress and hat peers down the mutoscope viewfinder. An 1899 trade advertisement for the Mutoscope The film was produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company and was intended to be shown on the Mutoscope, an early motion picture device, patented by Herman Casler in 1894. The Mutoscope worked on the same principle as a flip book, with individual image frames printed onto flexible cards attached to a circular core which revolved with the turn of a user-operated hand crank. The cards were lit by electric light bulbs inside the machine, a system devised by Arthur Marvin's brother, Henry, one of the founders of the Biograph company. Earlier machines had relied on reflected natural light. To avoid violating Edison's patents, Biograph cameras from 1895 to 1902 used a large-format film measuring 2-23/32 inches (68 mm) wide, with an image area of 2 × 2½ inches, four times that of Edison's 35 mm format. Biograph film was not ready-perforated; the camera itself punched a sprocket hole on each side of the frame as the film was exposed at 30 frames per second. The director and cinematographer of Sherlock Holmes Baffled was Arthur Weed Marvin, a staff cameraman for Biograph. Marvin completed over 418 short films between 1897 and 1911 and was known for filming vaudeville entertainers. He later became known as the cameraman for the early silent films of D. W. Griffith. The identities of the first screen Holmes and his assailant are not recorded. Biograph films before 1903 were mostly actualities (documentary footage of actual persons, places and events), but Sherlock Holmes Baffled is an example of an early Biograph comedy narrative film, produced at the company's rooftop studio on Broadway in New York City. According to Christopher Redmond's Sherlock Holmes Handbook, the film was shot on April 26, 1900. Rediscovery The film was assumed to have been lost for many years until a paper copy was identified in 1968 in the Library of Congress Paper Print archive by Michael Pointer, a historian of Sherlock Holmes films. Because motion pictures were not covered by copyright laws until 1912, paper prints were submitted by studios wishing to register their works. Analysis A frame of the black-and-white film. Sherlock Holmes enters his parlour and taps the shoulder of a burglar who is collecting Holmes' tablewares into a sack. Holmes is wearing a dressing gown and smoking a cigar, the thief is dressed in black. Holmes first encounters the intruder. The plot of Sherlock Holmes Baffled is unrelated to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's canonical Sherlock Holmes stories; it is likely that the character's name was used purely for its familiarity with the public. Shot from a single point of view on a stage set, the intention of Sherlock Holmes Baffled was probably to act as a showcase for basic film trickery and film editing effects, particularly the stop trick first developed four years earlier in 1896 by French director Georges Méliès.

Blue Beard (French: Barbe-Bleue) is a 1901 French silent film by Georges Méliès, based on Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Bluebeard". Plot A sinister aristocrat, Blue Beard, is looking for a beautiful woman to become his wife. Lured by his great riches, many noble families bring their most eligible daughters to meet him. None of the young women want to marry him, both due to his ghastly appearance and because he has already had seven previous wives – all of whom have mysteriously vanished without a trace. Bluebeard's great wealth, however, persuades one father to give his daughter's hand to him. She has no choice but to marry him, and after a lavish wedding feast, she begins her new life in his castle. One day as Blue Beard is going away on a journey, he entrusts the keys to his castle to her and warns his wife never to go into a particular room. Caught between the fear of her husband's wrath and her own curiosity, she is unsure of what to do regarding the forbidden chamber. Her curiosity manifests itself as an imp who taunts and mocks her with potential promises that the room might contain. In contrast, her better judgment comes in the form of a guardian angel, who attempts to dissuade her from entering the locked door. When her curiosity finally gets the best of her, she realizes that she has placed herself in great danger. She enters the dimly lit room, making out strange bag shapes. The room is a torture chamber, and these bags are dead bodies: the seven past wives of the murderous Blue Beard hanging on hooks, dripping stale blood onto the floor. The new wife drops the key in her horror and is stained with dead wives' blood which the wife relentlessly tries to wash off. Later that night, she dreams of seven giant keys haunting her. On Blue Beard's return, he discovers his wife's untamable curiosity and violently shakes her. She runs to the top of the tower and calls to her sister and brothers. Her relatives save her from death and pin Blue Beard with a sword to the castle walls. The angel appears to restore the murdered wives to life, and they are married to seven great lords. Production Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Bluebeard" had previously been adapted for film in 1897, in a short version for the Lumière Brothers' studio. Méliès may have known and remembered this film in preparing his elaborate ten-scene version, which adds several elements characteristic of his films, including the appearances of a good Fairy and the Devil. The film features Jehanne d'Alcy in the leading role of Blue Beard's wife, identified as Fatima in the French and American catalogues. Bleuette Bernon plays the fairy. Méliès himself appears in three roles: Blue Beard, one of the kitchen assistants, and the Devil. Méliès's production design for the film is eclectic, mixing Renaissance, Medieval, and Moorish elements as well as a giant modern-day bottle of Champagne Mercier. The final shot is an apotheosis in theatrical style, as would be used at the conclusion of a stage spectacular at Paris venues like the Théâtre du Châtelet.[1] The special effects are created with substitution splices, dissolves, stage machinery, and pyrotechnics. The exaggerated size of some props, particularly the Mercier bottle and the key to Bluebeard's chamber, point to Méliès's wish to emphasize certain details in the complex, sprawling wide shots of the film. In later cinema, when a grammar of narrative film editing became prevalent, such emphasis would often be given using closeups. Similarly, to clarify the film's plot within its spacious format, Méliès drew freely on 19th-century theatrical techniques, including exaggerated mime-based acting, carefully layered groupings of actors, and scenery painted with sharp, high-contrast detail. According to Méliès's recollections (as reported by his granddaughter, Madeleine Malthête-Méliès), the filming process was marked by an accident: during production of the penultimate scene, in which one of Bluebeard's brothers-in-law prepares to stab him, Méliès was knocked over, fell on the guard of his sword, and broke his femur. He finished the film but had to get an orthopedic cast on his leg that night. He was still wearing the cast at the grand re-opening of his stage venue, the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, on 22 September 1901. Release Blue Beard was sold by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 361–370 in its catalogues.[3] A surviving print of the film, restored by the film preservationist David Shepard, was released on home video in 2008.

Jack and the Beanstalk is a 1902 American silent trick film directed by Edwin S. Porter. With ten sequential shots, Jack and the Beanstalk was twice as long as any previous studio film. According to Porter, "It took in the neighborhood of six weeks in the spring of 1902 to successfully make this photograph." Plot summary Duration: 10 minutes and 29 seconds.10:29 Jack and the Beanstalk (1902) In this earliest known adaptation of the classic fairy tale, Jack first trades his cow for the bean. His mother then makes him drop them in the front yard, and go to his room. As he sleeps, Jack is visited by a fairy who shows him glimpses of what will await him when he ascends the bean stalk. In this version, Jack is the son of a deposed king. When Jack wakes up, he finds the beanstalk has grown and he climbs to the top where he enters the giant's home. The giant finds Jack, who narrowly escapes. The giant chases Jack down the bean stalk, but Jack is able to cut it down before the giant can get to safety. He falls and is killed. Jack celebrates. The fairy then reveals that Jack may return home as a prince. Cast Actors Characters James H. White Farmer Thomas White Jack Elsie Ferguson Fairy Reception In The First Twenty Years: A Segment of Film History, Kemp Niver notes that "the sets were extremely impressive, for they showed considerable ingenuity in their design... Throughout the film, Porter used the possibilities of a moving picture camera in a new way through the spectacular use of dissolves between scenes, stop camera action to allow people to appear and disappear, and the use of lantern slides as a projector of thought within a moving picture production." Similarly, Charles Musser wrote that the film "contains all the elements that historian A. Nicholas Vardac sees in Life of an American Fireman: the pictorial development of two lines of action, spectacular devices such as the vision that introduces the second line of action, dissolves between scenes, and a change in camera position showing interior and exterior as the action moves from one space to the next."

These were made in the early stages of film development. Don't except anything earth shattering when watching. Lot of experimenting was going on then. Summary Opens on a stage with a painted backdrop of a forest or garden. On a park bench center stage sits a well-dressed woman with a dark veil obscuring her face, holding an open parasol overhead and a closed fan in her lap. A mustached cowboy enters, dressed in fringed chaps, boots, Western hat, neck kerchief, and pistol belt. When he spies the woman, he primps for a moment, arranging his mustache, and then approaches her. The cowboy takes off his hat and bows, then leans into the bench to talk with her. She rebuffs his numerous attempts to take her hand, but finally allows him to lift her veil. The cowboy reacts in horror as an animal face, perhaps a monkey's, is revealed, and then runs off the stage. A stylish gentleman in a suit with a straw boater and cane enters and sits familiarly beside the woman. He reaches over and removes what proves to be a mask as he and the now-beautiful woman have a good laugh. At one point, the gentleman gives her a kiss on the cheek. "A Western cowboy attempts to flirt with a veiled young lady sitting on a bench in the garden. After considerable persuasion she is induced to raise her veil, but to the cowboy's amazement she reveals a hideous face. The cowboy leaves in disgust, but his place is quickly taken by a dapper Eastern youth who removes the mask from the girl's face, and the two enjoy a hearty laugh over the cowboy's discomfiture. Names Bitzer, G. W., 1872-1944, camera. American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Paper Print Collection (Library of Congress) Created / Published United States: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, 1903.

The early days of cinematography. Don't expect much when watching except to see how history was about to change. Title: Stealing a dinner Other Title: Stealing a dinner by dogs Summary A man sits at the dinner table, with a row of dogs behind him and a black dog sitting near the table in the foreground. When the master rings a bell for service, a dog enters on her hind legs dressed in a servant's cap and apron. As she hops toward the table, however, a cat jumps upon the surface. The master tosses the cat off the table as the serving dog exits. The man rings the bell again but gets no response, so he takes off his dinner napkin and leaves the stage. Seeing this, the black dog turns and jumps on the table, where he promptly eats his master's dinner. The black dog then grabs the cat in his mouth and places it on the table. As the man returns to the table, he sees his empty plate and the cat crouched nearby. Thus blaming the cat for the stolen dinner, the man first scolds the feline and then draws a pistol aimed at the "thief." When the black dog sees the gun, however, he jumps on the table between the pistol and the cat, begging on his hind legs for the master to spare its life. The man grabs the dog by the collar, dragging him to the floor, and instead shoots the unlucky dog. A large dog--perhaps a Great Dane--in a policeman's uniform enters on his hind legs, grabs the man by the shoulders from behind, and chases him offstage. The other dogs follow in an excited pack. "Another exhibition by Prof. Leonidas' troop of cats and dogs. One of the dogs is shown stealing his dinner from the table in the master's absence. In order to cover his own crime, the dog places a cat on the table, where she is found when the master comes in. The master shoots the cat and is promptly arrested by a large dog dressed in policeman's clothes"--American Mutoscope & Biograph picture catalogue. Names Arniotis, Leonidas, 1862-1939, performer. Bitzer, G. W., 1872-1944, camera. American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Paper Print Collection (Library of Congress) Created / Published United States : American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1903.

Excursion to the Moon (French: Excursion dans la lune) is a 1908 French silent film directed by Segundo de Chomón. The production was supervised by Ferdinand Zecca, designed by V. Lorant-Heilbronn, and released by Pathé Frères. The film is an unauthorized remake, and an almost shot-by-shot copy, of Georges Méliès's 1902 film A Trip to the Moon. The film follows Méliès's scenario closely and includes many of its features, with some variations: for example, the Selenites are not vulnerable to umbrellas, but rather appear and disappear at will; the capsule lands inside the Man in the Moon's open mouth rather than hitting its eye; and the Selenite who returns to Earth is a "dancing moon-maiden" who is betrothed at the end of the film to one of the astronomers. This film has occasionally been misidentified as a work by Méliès. Of the film's 180 meters, 72 were colorized using a Pathé stencil process.