The Earliest Surviving Motion Picture : Roundhay Garden Scene

The story of Cinema is at the heart of the Media Revolution. The history of Cinema spans over 100 years, from the latter part of the 19th century to the present day.

Today it is one of the most important tools of communication and entertainment, and mass media.The first glimpse of a movie astonished people in the early 1890s in the US and Europe, when short clips in Nickelodeon parlors were all the rage. Within a decade, the “movie” industry quickly became the most popular art form of the 20th century — and the most controversial.

Until the 1890s , parlor toys like flip books the Zoetrope (US), and the Daedalum (England) were the closet anyone could come to having recorded images that could be played over and over.Cinema was    invented during the 1890’s, during the industrial revolution. It  was considered a cheaper, simpler way to provide entertainment to the masses.  After the advent of Cinema people wouldn’t have to travel long distances to see major dioramas (A three-      dimensional miniature or life-size scene in which figures, stuffed wildlife, or other objects are arranged in a naturalistic setting against a painted background)  or amusement parks. During the first decade of the cinema’s existence, inventors worked to improve the machines for making and showing films.

One of the first technological precursors of film is the pinhole camera, followed by the more advanced camera obscura. Moving images were produced on revolving drums and disks in the 1830s with independent invention by Simon von Stampfer (Stroboscope) in Austria, Joseph Plateau (Phenakistoscope) in Belgium and William Horner (zoetrope) in Britain.

On June 19, 1878, under the sponsorship of Leland Stanford (California governor), Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse named “Sallie Gardner” in fast motion using a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras.

The second experimental film, Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed by Louis Le Prince on October 14, 1888 in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK is now known as the earliest surviving motion picture. It was recorded at 12 frames per second, and runs for 2.11 seconds. It was shoot using the Le Prince single-lens camera made in 1888. It was taken in the garden of the Whitley family house in Oakwood ,Grange Road, Roundhay, a suburb of Leeds, Great Britain.

With this blog i’ll try to bring to your notice Cinema Trends, feature and short films, adverts and documentaries that need to be acknowledged and appreciated.