The First Film Ever Made

“Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.”, Martin Scorsese.

In the late 1880s, many people started experimenting with photo, by blending them together to give the illusion of a motion picture.

That is when the first motion picture films were born. That was several years before The Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison came onto the scene, even though they are often credited as pioneers of the moving image.

“Roundhay Garden Scene” 

It was the first motion-picture film. It was a short silent actuality film, recorded by French inventor Louis Le Prince, and shot in Leeds, England. 

It is just 2.11 seconds long! It is still technically considered a movie. It is the oldest surviving film in existence. 

That being said before that film, another motion picture clip had already been created.

The Horse in Motion

A major inspiration to creating motion picture, was the common Victorian question about the horse! 

Everybody at the time was wondering if all four of a horse’s hooves ever off the ground at the same time while the horse is galloping?  That question was popularly debated among scientists and casual observers back then.

That is how in 1878, Eadweard Muybridge shocked a crowd of reporters by capturing motion. He photographed a serie of horses in motion using multiple cameras, and assembling all of the pictures into a single motion picture. 

That film proved that indeed all four hooves do leave the earth for a fleeting moment, and motion picture was born!

His work of studying the animal movement was even used for scientific research, and the people were amazed by the advancements.

“Arrival of a Train” in 1895, an urban legend!

The 50 second silent film pictured the arrival of a train at a station in the French coastal town of La Ciotat. It was created by The Lumiere Brother in 1895.

The funny and popular story, is that the first time it was shown to a public, people screamed and ran away with terror thinking that a real life-sized train was barreling straight toward them! They were so scared, it caused fear and panic among all of the audience. The film became so famous.

Incredible how much we have come a long way, right? Those films might seem like nothing crazy but at that time, when nobody had ever seen anything animated on a screen, it was crazy! I can not imagine how proud they should have been of their production. A revolution!

Isn’t it amazing?