Further US Development
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The key years in the development of the cinema in the U.S. were in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the Edison Company was competing with a few other burgeoning movie companies. The major pioneering movie production companies, mostly on the East Coast, that controlled most of the industry were these rivals:
The Edison Company - began producing films for the Kinetoscope in 1891, with its headquarters in West Orange, NJ (see above); afterwards, Edison intensely fought for control of 'his' movie industry by harrassing, sue-ing, or buying patents from anyone he thought was threatening his company.
Additionally, there was the Zoopraxiscope, developed by photographer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, which projected a series of images in successive phases of movement.
These images were obtained through the use of multiple cameras. The invention of a camera in the Edison laboratories capable of recording successive images in a single camera was a more practical, cost-effective breakthrough that influenced all subsequent motion picture devices.
While there has been speculation that Edison's interest in motion pictures began before 1888, the visit of Eadweard Muybridge to the inventor's laboratory in West Orange in February of that year certainly stimulated Edison's resolve to invent a motion picture camera. Muybridge proposed that they collaborate and combine the Zoopraxiscope with the Edison phonograph. Although apparently intrigued, Edison decided not to participate in such a partnership, perhaps realizing that the Zoopraxiscope was not a very practical or efficient way of recording motion.
Edison's assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, was given the task of inventing the device in June 1889, possibly because of his background as a photographer. Charles Brown was made Dickson's assistant. There has been some argument about how much Edison himself contributed to the invention of the motion picture camera. While Edison seems to have conceived the idea and initiated the experiments, Dickson apparently performed the bulk of the experimentation, leading most modern scholars to assign Dickson with the major credit for turning the concept into a practical reality.
The work of others in the field soon prompted Edison and his staff to move in a different direction. In Europe Edison had met French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey who used a continuous roll of film in his Chronophotographe to produce a sequence of still images, but the lack of film rolls of sufficient length and durability for use in a motion picture device delayed the inventive process.
This dilemma was aided when John Carbutt developed emulsion-coated celluloid film sheets, which began to be used in the Edison experiments. The Eastman Company later produced its own celluloid film which Dickson soon bought in large quantities. By 1890, Dickson was joined by a new assistant, William Heise, and the two began to develop a machine that exposed a strip of film in a horizontal-feed mechanism.
The Black Maria, Edison's first motion picture studio
(The Black Maria's era came to an end in January 1901 when Edison inaugurated a new glass-enclosed studio on a rooftop in New York.)
The first motion pictures made in the Black Maria were deposited for copyright by W. K. L. Dickson at the Library of Congress in August 1893. The earliest copyrighted film that still survives is Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, January 7, 1894, also known as Fred Ott's Sneeze, which records Fred Ott, an Edison employee, sneezing comically for the camera. This motion picture was not submitted to the Copyright Office on celluloid film, but rather as a series of positive photographic prints.
On April 1, 1894, the manufacture and sale of Kinetoscopes and films were assigned to the Edison Manufacturing Company, thus moving them out of the experimental laboratory. The Kinetograph Department, a new division in the Edison Company, was launched.
The first Kinetoscope parlor, owned by the Holland Brothers, opened on April 14, 1894, in New York. Five machines were placed in a row, and a customer could view the films in each for a total of 25 cents. Kinetoscope parlors soon opened around the United States.
American Mutoscope Company, founded in 1895 in New York by William K. L. Dickson, Herman Caster, Harry Marvin and Elias Koopman; their first motion picture machine was the Mutoscope - a peephole, flip-card device similar in size to a Kinetoscope. Instead of using film, a spinning set of photographs mounted on a drum inside the cabinet gave the impression of motion. This was followed by a projector - the Biograph, that was demonstrated in New York City in 1896. They devised a camera called the Mutograph (originally called the Biograph) that didn't use sprocket holes or perforations in the motion-picture film. Soon, they became the most popular film company in America, causing Edison to file a patent-infringement lawsuit against them in 1898. They were formally renamed the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1899; in 1903, they began making films in the 35mm format (rather than 70mm); they employed D. W. Griffith in 1908 (who became one of the pioneers of silent film), and were re-named the Biograph Company in 1909.
American Vitagraph Company (1896), formed by British-born Americans J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith; its first fictional film was The Burglar on the Roof, filmed and released in 1897.
The American Vitagraph Company made many contributions to the history of movie-making. It was one of the original ten production companies included in Edison's attempt to corner movie-making, the Motion Pictures Patent Company. Major stars included Florence Turner (the "Vitagraph Girl"), Maurice Costello (the first of the matinee idols), and Jean (the "Vitagraph Dog" and the first animal star of the Silent Era). Larry Trimble was a noted director of films for Turner and Jean (he was also the dog's owner). John Bunny made films for Vitagraph in the 1910's most of them co-starring Flora Finch, and was the most popular film comedian in the world in the years before Chaplin; his death in 1915 was observed worldwide. In 1910, a number of movie houses showed the five parts of the Vitagraph serial The Life of Moses consecutively (a total length of almost 90 minutes), making it one of many to claim the title of "the first feature film". A long series of Shakespeare adaptations were the first done of the Bard's works in the U.S. (the surviving A Midsummer Night's Dream is considered one of the classics of the Silent Era). The 1915 feature The Battle Cry of Peace (written and directed by Blackton) was one of the great propaganda films of World War I--ironically, after America declared war, the film was modified for re-release because it was seen as not being sufficiently pro-war; thus it also earns a place in the history of censorship.
The Great War spelled the beginning of the end for Vitagraph. With the loss of foreign distributors and the rise of the great production-distribution houses, Vitagraph was slowly but surely squeezed out of the business. On April 22, 1925, Vitagraph owner Albert E. Smith sold the company to Warner Brothers for a comfortable profit. The Flatbush studio (renamed Vitaphone) was later used as an independent unit within Warner Brothers.
The Selig Polyscope Company (originally called the Mutuscope & Film Company), was founded in 1896, in Chicago by William Selig. Initially, the company specialized in slapstick comedies and travel films.
William N. Selig was born March 14, 1864 in Chicago, Illinois. In 1894, he was part of a touring show billed as 'Selig, Conjurer' doing magic tricks. After viewing an Edison Kinetoscope in Dallas in 1895, Selig quit the minstrel circuit and headed for Chicago where he opened a photographic shop. Wishing to enter the film business with his own equipment, he experimented, but went nowhere. Finally, after seeing the Latham and Lumiere projectors, he, along with assistance from the Union Metal Works, began working on constructing his own projector and camera. Finally, he was able to build his camera and projector, based on the Lumiere system, and shot his first film in 1896 under the auspices of his new enterprise, the Selig Polyscope Company. By 1909, there were three studios in operation: one each in New Orleans, Louisiana, Edendale, California and Chicago, Illinois.
In 1913, Selig purchased 32 acres of land near Los Angeles that became a zoo to house the 700 animal species that appeared in his films. In 1915, the Chicago and Edendale studios were moved to the location of the zoo. The studio shut down production in 1918, although Selig himself continued to produce movies into the 1930's.
Edwin S. Porter - the "Father of the Story Film":
"Moving pictures" were increasing in length, taking on fluid narrative forms, and being edited for the first time. Inventor and former projectionist Edwin S. Porter (1869-1941), who in 1898 had patented an improved Beadnell projector with a steadier and brighter image, was also using film cameras to record news events. Edwin S. Porter emigrated from his native Italy to America in 1895 and joined the Vitascope Marketing Company where his experience with electrical engineering was called into use.
Whilst at Vitascope, Porter was central in the organisation of the first projected movie show in New York on the 23rd April 1896. He continued to use his engineering skills in the laboratory at Edison’s Manufacturing Company but left to become a freelance projectionist at the Eden Musee Theatre in 1898.
Whilst working as a projectionist, one of Porter’s many duties included the illegal duplication of Méliès films. He would take apart one act reels and combine several of these into a fifteen minute programme.
In addition, he attempted to create his own camera and projector but his efforts were in vain and in 1900 he returned to Edison’s Company not in an engineering capacity but as a producer and director at Edison’s East 21st Street Skylight studio.
A fan of the films of Georges Méliès, Porter tried to emulate the trick photography which Méliès had introduced to the world and had proved incredibly successful, in films such as 'The Finish of Bridget McKeen' (1901) and 'Jack and the Beanstalk' (1902). Porter was also one of the first directors to shoot at night in his 'Pan-American Exposition by Night'.
Porter’s skill with editing and methods of projection were used to great effect in some of his earliest films. He combined documentary footage with his own footage in films like 'The Execution of Czoyosz' (which he made with actor and set painter George S. Fleming); in 'Life of an American Fireman' he adopted a documentary style of filmmaking .
With the combination of film editing and the telling of narrative stories, Porter produced one of the most important and influential films of the time to reveal the possibility of fictional stories on film. The film was the one-reel, 14-scene, approximately 10-minute long The Great Train Robbery (1903) - it was based on a real-life train heist and was a loose adaptation of a popular stage production. His visual film, made in New Jersey and not particularly artistic by today's standards - set many milestones at the time:
it was the first narrative Western film with a storyline, and included various western cliches (a shoot-out, a robbery, a chase, etc.) that would be used by all future westerns [Note: the same claim was made for the earlier 21-minute Kit Carson (1903)]
it was a ground-breaking film - and one of the earliest films to be shot out of chronological sequence, using revolutionary parallel cross-cutting (or parallel action) between two simultaneous events or scenes; it did not use fades or dissolves between scenes or shots
it effectively used rear projection in an early scene (the image of a train seen through a window), and two impressive panning shots
it was the first 'true' western, but not the first actual western [Note: Edison's Cripple Creek Bar-Room Scene (1899) may actually be the first western.]
it was the first real motion picture smash hit, establishing the notion that film could be a commercially-viable medium
it featured a future western film hero/star, Gilbert M. Anderson (aka "Broncho Billy")
In an effective, scary, full-screen closeup (placed at either the beginning or at the end of the film at the discretion of the exhibitor), a bandit shot his gun directly into the audience. The film also included exterior scenes, chases on horseback, actors that moved toward (and away from) the camera, a camera pan with the escaping bandits, and a camera mounted on a moving train.
Porter also developed the process of film editing - a crucial film technique that would further the cinematic art. Most early films were not much more than short, filmed stage productions or records of live events. In the early days of film-making, actors were usually unidentified and not even trained actors. The earliest actors in movies, that were dubbed "flickers," supplemented their stage incomes by acting in moving pictures.
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