As a Popular Culture a Media Production major here at High Point University, movies are everything to me. Once I graduate I hope to be making my own movies and being able to show them to the world. While researching technology for my class presentation, I learned a lot about the history of motion pictures that I had no idea about. I found it incredible how film had gotten its origins over 100 years ago.
In the 1800s, the idea of moving images was something of a fascination. The closest thing people had back then to a film though was a children's toy that flipped through several images of the same thing in different points of motion, giving the illusion of motion. Once photography became a big thing in the 1860s, showcasing parts of the American Civil War in ways people had never been able to see before, the thought of taking those images and putting them all together to make motion was not far behind. In the late 1800s, many inventors began trying to make the first successful and working video cameras. Some early iterations could even take even 40 frames per second, a difficult task to complete with that kind of technology. The other invention that had to be made was the movie projector. There had to be a way of showing these images in quick succession and some early projectors were even capable of showing these films at 16 frames a second.
Films became a part of everyday society in France during this time where the Lumiere Brothers had made a cost-efficient film projector. Their invention allowed people all over Paris to see movies in theaters and the public loved them. Films began to be made with plots and stories and by the 1910s, the movie industry was everywhere. Silent films debuted with famous, recognizable actors and music to set the mood. Then in the late 1920s, Talkies came to theaters and swept the world by storm with movies like The Jazz Singer and Lights of New York. Color in motion pictures became normalized after the release of The Wizard of Oz in 1939, and thus began the modern form of movies.
Motion pictures today make up a large part of our culture and can even impact the public's view of the world. Whether it is movies, TV shows, or even videos on social media like YouTube and TikTok are readily available and consist of most people's entertainment. Trying to imagine what life would be like today without being able to see moving images of just about anything and everything is almost impossible. Our society has become completely reliant and infatuated with motion pictures.
https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture
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