Understanding Cinema: History and Meaning

Study Notes

What is Cinema?

Cinema derives from the ancient Greek word "kinema", meaning movement.
Historically, it's a shortened version of the French "cinematographe", an invention of the Lumière brothers.
Cinema combines kinema with the Greek root "graphien", meaning to write or record.

Cinematography

Cinematography is the illusion of movement by recording and rapidly projecting many still photographic pictures on a screen.

Definition of Cinema

Cinema is a theatre where films are shown for public entertainment.
It's the production of films as an art or industry.
It's the art or technique of making motion pictures.

Brief History of Cinema

Cinema stands at the intersection of art and technology.
The mere ability to record a moving image would be meaningless without the art required to capture our imagination.

Cinematic Language

Cinematic language has fundamental and increasingly complex rules for how cinema communicates meaning.
These rules, as with any language, are iterative, forming and evolving through repetition, both within and between each generation.

Cinema as a Medium of Communication

Cinema is a powerful medium of communication that carries what it means to be human in a specific time and place.
It mediates our experience of the world, helps us make sense of things, and in doing so, often helps shape the world itself.

Motion Picture Technology of the Late 19th Century

Major precursors of motion pictures include Eadward Muybridge (1878) and his famous "Running Horse" sequence.
Nicephore Niepce and Louis Daguerre developed photoetching, capturing an image through a chemical process.
Thomas Edison developed the Kinetoscope in 1891, the first motion picture system.
The Kinetoscope was a device that would become the predecessor to the motion picture projector.

Development of Motion Picture Technology

William Dixson joined Edison's team to help develop the technology that would combine pictures and sound.
By 1893, Edison had built the first "movie studio", a small, cramped, wood-frame hut with a hole in the roof to let in sunlight.
The first public Kinetoscope demonstration took place in 1893, and by 1894, it was a commercial success.
The Edison Company began installing machines in hotel lobbies, amusement parks, and penny arcades, and soon kinetoscope parlors had opened around the country.
Edison's Kinetoscope evolved into Vitascope (life scope) in 1895, and the American Mutoscope Company was established in 1894.
The Lumière brothers presented the first projected moving pictures to a paying audience in December 1895 in Paris, France.

Description

Explore the origins and definition of cinema, from its ancient Greek roots to the modern-day concept of cinematography. Learn about the Lumiere brothers and the invention of the cinematographe, as well as the experience of watching films in a cinema theatre.