The Lumière Brothers learned the art of photography in the photo studio run by their father, Lumière Sr. While their father was in charge of the photographic equipment factory, he developed the "moving picture machine". As photographers from the Lumière brothers, the treatment of the movie from the very beginning shows a completely different concept from Edison's thinking. This difference is not only manifested in the invention of "projection", for the improvement of film machinery and equipment, but more prominently expressed in their film works, there is a fundamental difference in the concept of space and time, the fundamental difference in aesthetics.
As an inventor, Edison made a great contribution to the movie. His development of movie machines and devices laid the foundation for the birth of a new art. His greater glory was to give this new art a charismatic, poetic, and hallucinatory name - film. However, Edison's conception of the movie, the new art, had great limitations.
First, most of the films Edison provided for his "cinematoscope" were shot in a device he set up called the "black van". In fact, his creation itself did not depart from the original model of the "photo studio". In front of the "peephole" that can only be viewed by one person, the viewer's "peeping" is merely a repetition of the photographer's "peeping" over and over again. Secondly, the first 50 or so works completed by Dixon: "The View from Bar Yama", "Annabella's Dance", "Pulling Teeth", "The Barber", "Bufalo Pierre" and so on, the content of the majority of which is simply to show the dancing, boxing, juggling, games and other entertaining scenes. The characters in the movie were performed for the camera by actors hired by Edison, like a "moving picture". This is a fictionalized version of a stage play.
In contrast, the Lumière brothers took a more realistic approach. They firstly got rid of the constraints of the closed man-made space that :photo studio photographers have, and stepped into the vast, open natural space. The content of the works, too, was a greater effort to represent and reproduce the things and life that actually existed in real life, rather than specializing in arranging and transposing for the camera things and life that did not actually exist. For example, Louis Lumière's first short films: "Factory Gate", "Train Entry", "Women Burning Grass", "Boat Leaving Harbor", "Delegates Logging In", "Police Parade", and so on, directly represent off-duty workers, passengers getting on and off the train, women at work, fishermen rowing a boat out to sea, photographers disembarking from the shore, and police officers marching in the streets. In these works, the Lumière brothers truly captured and recorded the real-life scenes, enabling people to see the real life and familiar people around them. As Georges Sadoul said: from Louis Lumière's films, people learned that the movie can be "a machine for reproducing life", not just a machine for creating action, like Edison's "cinematoscope".
Representation NarrativeThe Delegates' Entry
The Delegates' Entry has been called a "newsreel": in June 1895, when the French Photographic Association (APF) convened a photographic conference in Vail on the River Sauvignon, Lumière photographed the delegates as they left the boat and disembarked, and the film met with the delegates 24 hours later. For this, Lumière is known as the pioneer of the newsreel.
The Fireman
The Fireman has been called a "documentary": it consists of four segments: Hose Out, Hose on Fire, Fight the Fire, and Save the Victims (one minute each). Due to the limitations of the projection equipment and film length at that time, the work had to be cut up. And then re-connect the works, the result from a different angle, different places shot down the Lyon street firefighters to fight fires, save people's moving scenes, but the formation of a "montage" form, resulting in a dramatic change.
The Water Gardener
"The famous The Water Gardener was an embryonic comedy with a gimmick": based on a comic strip, the film was small in scale but contained many comedic elements, and was "the embryo and prototype of all the comedies that came later". In Lumière's films, you can also find other different styles of expression, for example: "False Knee Walker" can be regarded as the earliest "chase film" prototype; and by Lumière's cameraman Mezquierge, shot in the United States of America in the 39 scenes (New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Niagara Falls), but also can be regarded as the earliest "travel film" of the precursor, and so on.
FilmingFormally, most of Lumière's films are shot in a single shot from a fixed point of view. This does not, of course, include the later films that Lumière's cameramen shot with the aid of transportation, which had a moving effect. Among Lumière's "single shot from a fixed point of view" expressions, "Train in the Station" is the most typical one: the camera is set up on the platform, toward the train tracks extending in the distance. The platform is empty, the depth of the scene a train coming, the locomotive out of the painting left along the platform to stop, the passengers get on and off the train, in which there is a young girl in front of the camera hesitantly passes by, and reveals a natural, shy expression. The train leaves the platform and pulls out to the left, ending the movie. In this movie, the objects and characters are far away and close, and the visual changes of different scenes form a deep scene scheduling. This is precisely the "long shot" shooting method we usually use today, i.e., a single shot from a fixed point of view that creates a continuum of time and space. Interestingly, Jean-Luc Godard made another humorous parody of Trainspotting in his film The Carabinieri (1962). In Lumière's films, the use of depth-of-field shots in Delegates Logging In and The Fake Knee Walker, among others, are likewise extremely characteristic works.
The vast majority of Lumière's films record the movement of the world around him, and he did not intend "moving pictures" to be a narrative art. Mesquite has said: "The Lumière brothers have aptly defined the true domain of the film. The novel and the theater are primarily expressions of the human mind. As for the movie, it expresses the dynamics of life, nature and its phenomena, crowds and the movements of people. Everything that is in motion is within the range of the movie camera. The lens of the movie machine is open to the world." This quote accurately summarizes Lumière's conception of cinema, but it also reflects the innate documentary nature of cinema.
However, it was only after the 1950s that film theorists and film historians began to pay due attention to this point. The French film theorist Bazan and the German film theorist Krakauer, who advocated a deep exploration of film aesthetics from the perspective of "film ontology", and regarded Lumière's "active cinema", with its "photographic nature" of "nature seized on the spot", as the nature of cinema. From then on, people have a more appropriate evaluation of Lumière's films. Although the history of the art of cinema has been y influenced by traditional art, it has continuously developed in the direction of exploring the "human mind". However, Lumière's point that "the lens of the movie camera is open to the world" lays a broader and more scientific foundation for the study of film aesthetics.
"The Lumière brothers, though, still considered themselves makers and scientists, not artists". They used the "movable cinema" to shoot and project films, more to show the world their scientific inventions and the performance of their machines. They never changed their method and purpose of recording the scenery, which was "the wind blowing the leaves and making waves of its own". However, in Lumière's films there is an undeniable potential for the use of film as a narrative, as a storytelling tool. As a result, film was quickly utilized by artists. As Gorky predicted when he first saw Lumière's films:
"The realism of these shots is about to be discarded in favor of a less naturalistic approach," and will be "replaced by films of other genres". In this sense, perhaps, it also exemplifies the difference between the artistic medium of film itself and other traditional arts. It is so easily evocative, so lucrative to the artists of traditional cultures. In turn, other forms of art media are extended in the movie, so that the ancient art medium itself gains new life again. In the face of the grand traditional culture, the movie in its infancy could not help but shy away. It is even impossible to explore the abstract system of the movie itself, as a new art form.
Main Inventions Inventing the Movie CameraIn the nascent period of cinema, there existed two different photographic tendencies: one, represented by the Lumière brothers, captured the phenomena of life in reality, and what was shown on the screen was the trivialities around people; and the other, represented by Méliès, recorded fictionalized pictures of life that had already been processed on the stage. Along these two ways of creation, developed into the later documentary and feature film two kinds of films. These two tendencies were reflected in feature film photography, which gradually formed two different schools: the pictorial school and the documentary school. The Lumière brothers summarized the experience of their predecessors, and through their own creation, invented in 1894 the world's first relatively perfect, flexible and lightweight portable "movable movie camera". This is a kind of both photography and screening and printing machine. Movie machine consists of a dark box, inside the 35-millimeter perforated film intermittent movement of the traction mechanism and the rotation mechanism of the shade. It is equipped with a camera lens that takes photographs at a frequency of 12 frames per second. When the frame is still, the stopper is opened and the film is exposed, and when the stopper is closed, the film is moved forward so that a negative is obtained. The lens is then removed and the negative is loaded onto the machine, pasted together with another strip of unexposed film, run under a light source, and exposed to obtain a positive film. The movie machine is also equipped with a projection lens, which is loaded with film so that the machine is placed under the irradiation of a light bulb, the beam of light passes through the film and the lens, and the camera becomes a projector.
It was in the whirring of this "moving picture machine" that the Lumière brothers and their cameramen produced the first documentaries, including "Train in the Station" and "Factory Gate", which became the founding fathers of documentary film.
Invention of the three-color photographOn June 10, 1907, the Lumière brothers invented the three-color photograph. The method, developed in a factory run by their family in France, was based on the use of three separate images of the scene being photographed. Each of the three images was used with an appropriate color filter to produce a negative of one of the basic red, green, and blue colors, and then a particulate screen was placed on the tricolor negative, and when the screen was added to it and the light was made to illuminate them, a full-color image appeared. Although color photographs were made as early as 1861, when James Maxwell performed this pioneering film-making process in the field at the Royal Society in London; their application was still limited because, the process used to make full-color photographs was too expensive and cumbersome.
Story of the inventionOne day in 1872, in a hotel in California, two men got into a heated argument over "whether a horse's hooves hit the ground when it gallops." A horse always has one hoof on the ground when it runs and leaps." said one man." All four hooves are free at the moment the horse leaps." The other man countered. The two men argued so much that they decided to make a bet. They went to the racecourse first and tried to see what happened, but unfortunately the horse ran so fast that it was impossible to see whether the hooves touched the ground or not.
The British photographer McBride knew about this and said he had a solution. He placed 24 cameras side by side on one side of the runway, the lens are aimed at the runway; on the other side of the runway, hit 24 stakes, each stake is tied to a thin rope; these thin rope across the runway, respectively, tied to the opposite side of the shutter of each camera. When everything was ready, McBride had the horses run from one end of the track to the other. When the horse passes through the section where the cameras are placed, it trips the 24 leads in turn, and at the same time, the 24 camera shutters take 24 pictures in turn. It was clear from this continuous strip of photographs that the horse always had one hoof on the ground as it ran, and the bet was won by the person who held this view. At the same time, McBride accidentally twitched the photo tape quickly, and as a result, the static horse in the photos was folded into a moving horse, and the horse actually "came" to life! McBridge and these photos made transparent, in order to evenly pasted on a glass disk, do a piece of the same size of the metal disk, and pasted in the position of the photographs, opened a hole and the same size as the photographs, and then use the slide to the white screen, and make the two discs reversed each other, so that the horse can be seen to run the continuous action. McBride called the machine he designed the "monitor". It utilizes the human eye's visual retention effect, that is, the human visual reflection can be retained in the brain for a short period of time, therefore, a static picture such as a rapid turn, the two neighboring can be coherent within a short period of time, the picture is "alive".
In 1887, the inventor Edison was inspired by the monitor, made the first "projector": it is shaped like a rectangular cabinet, equipped with a protruding lens, which is equipped with a battery and drive the film equipment; film around a series of criss-crossed on the slide, to move at the speed of 46 frames per second; the film through the lens of the place, the placement of a large magnifying glass. magnifying glass. When viewers look through the small hole in the lens, the fast-moving film will form a moving picture under the magnifying glass.
In April 1894, the first movie theater officially opened on Broadway in New York City. This movie theater only 10 projectors, only 10 tickets can be sold per show. As a result, there was a huge crowd in front of the movie theater, and people were proud to see a "movie". However, this "movie" could not be projected on a screen, so the number of viewers was limited and the images were not clear. Because it is to let the film constantly through the door, rather than "a move a stop, a move a stop" way through the door (i.e., in the movement of the film to cover the door, and when the film does not move to open the door). Edison's invention of this "projector" is also very dissatisfied, but also want to solve the problem of film transmission, but a moment of helplessness.
French scientists Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière brothers are also very interested in the development of the film, hoping to overcome the development of the problem, come up with a real movie to the end of 1894, late one night, Louis in the design of film transmission simulation suddenly thought: sewing machine sewing clothes, clothing is not precisely to do "a move a stop" type of movement? When the sewing machine needle *** brie, the material does not move; when the sewing machine needle sewing a stitch upward when the material moved forward a little, which is not very similar to the way the film transfer requirements? So he excitedly told his brother August that the motion created by a machine like the sewing machine presser foot could be used to pull the film strip. When this pulling mechanism rose again, the sharp claw exited the hole at the lower end, leaving the film stationary. On trial, Louis' idea worked. Auguste later said in an article, "My brother invented the moving picture machine in one night." In addition, the brothers also made use of the development of many scientists, the original movie made a number of improvements.
December 28, 1895 . A number of Parisian socialites were invited by the Lumière brothers to watch a movie in the basement of the Grand Café at 14 rue Capucine. In the darkness, the audience saw a realistic picture on a white cloth. One reporter reported, "A carriage was being drawn headlong by galloping horses, and a lady customer in my neighbor's seat was so frightened at the sight that she suddenly stood up." This was the world's first real movie, and it signaled the maturity of film technology. Later, this day - December 28, 1895 - was designated as the birth of cinema, and the Lumière brothers were also known as the "father of modern cinema".
Main worksDocumentary is the eldest son of the movie, the poorer brother of the feature film, it has always accompanied the journey of the movie, sometimes prominent, sometimes downtrodden, but always has a loyal customer base. Documentary film has gone through more than a century of wind and rain, during which the starry-eyed masters of record and the waves of aesthetic thinking have created a brilliant. Moreover, every ups and downs are always intertwined with the focus of social change. As Evans, the master documentarian, said, "I go wherever I am burning, and I am always in the midst of the world's great events. To reorganize all this, we have to go back to the original source of cinema, starting with the Lumière brothers, who, on December 28, 1895, in the "Salon des Indes" in the basement of the Café de la Grande at 14 rue de Capucine in Paris, showed their first short films, shot with a documentary approach, for the first time on public sale. Among them were "The Gate of the Lumière Factory", "Demolition of the Wall", "Place de Lyon Belcourt", "The Train is Coming in", "The Baby's Lunch", "The Gardener Pouring Water", and so on, 12 short films, each of which was only a minute of silent film. In particular, The Watering Gardener, which was one of the world's first films with a comedic element, set the precedent for the creation of later feature films.
Lost in the chaos of time and space, we may have forgotten that when Louis Lumière's brothers built the moving camera in 1895, weighing only 5 kilograms, it was the ideal tool for capturing real life as it happened. On that night, the first public release of the "train station", "factory door" and other short films, as the world of film as a pioneering work at the same time, but also the world of documentary film landing in the world's first voice, and even in the innate in the "folk documentary image" brand.
The Lumière Brothers sold tickets for commercial screenings in this basement for several years, and changed the program from time to time, showing more than 50 films such as Fire, Blacksmith, Playing Cards, Beach and Bathing, Playing Chess, Catching Goldfish, and Boat Out of the Harbor, some of which starred Auguste Lumière himself. In late February 1896, the Lumière brothers went to London to show their films publicly. Due to the technical perfection of this "movable movie machine" and the real novelty and action of the films, the Lumière Brothers gained a worldwide reputation. Not only was December 28, 1895 recognized worldwide as the birth date of cinema, making it "the only art whose date of birth we can know" (Béla Balázs), but it was also recognized as the date of the birth of the cinema, and the date of the birth of the Lumière Brothers. Balazy), and the great writer Gorky, after watching their films, predicted: "It will be able to serve the general scientific task, the improvement of people's lives and the development of their intelligence", and it will be widely developed.
The Lumière brothers were not only the first successful experimenters on the screen, finally completing the invention of the movie, but also made the first attempt to imitate the sound film movie, reflecting their strong desire to make the "great mute" speak soon.
In June 1895, the French National Photographic Conference, co-sponsored by 26 scientists, was held in the city of Nevers. Louis Lumière seized the opportunity to take a picture of his son. Louis Lumière seized the opportunity to film the delegates disembarking from a dock on the banks of the Sa?ne in the newsreel Delegates' Log-in, and showed it to the delegates 24 hours later.
Choice of Subject Work SceneThe first film in the history of world cinema, The Train is Coming in, was shot against the backdrop of the Lumière brothers' own factory in Lyon, as the workers were leaving work. As the factory gates open, women workers with aprons and men on bicycles come out of the factory talking and laughing, and then the factory owner drives into the factory in a carriage pulled by two horses, and the gates close again. Ordinary images of moving people appeared on the screen for the first time, which made people feel all surprised. The natural, simple scene of the daily life of the workers, even today, is infected by the charm of its simple art. In his later works, Lumière took the ordinary laborers as his subjects and enthusiastically expressed their lives. For example: "Carpenter", "Blacksmith", "Demolition of Walls", "Women Burning Grass", "Photographer", "Watering Gardener" and "Fireman" (four parts).
Family LifeFilms based on the family life that one knows best are undoubtedly the best choice for the early years of cinema. In this category: Baby's Lunch, Playing Cards, Chess, Fishing, Goldfish Bowl, Cat's Lunch, Children's Quarrel, Family Dinner, Quiet Family Life, etc., are the most representative.
Sadoul once commented on these films: "These films are like a family photo album, but at the same time like an unintentional shot - a social documentary about a wealthy French family at the end of the last century. Lumière has succeeded in capturing scenes that allow the audience to see on the screen a life like their own, or a life to which they aspire". These moody and poetic films are overflowing with the love of family life and at the same time full of bourgeois haunts.
Political CultureLumière and the cameramen he trained also showed a broad vision and interest in filming socio-political, religious, cultural, and factual news. For example, "Jerusalem Church," "Coronation of Tsar Nicholas II," "Japanese Residence," "Delegates' Login," "Launching of a New Ship," and so on. These photographs accurately capture the colors and characteristics of the foreign politics and culture of that era from different viewpoints and perspectives. At the same time, today, these works are the most intuitive and authentic examples of how we understand and recognize the end of the last century.
Natural LandscapesOutdoor location photography is a key feature of Lumière's work. In this part of his work, Lumière demonstrates even more the talent of a photographer and his thinking about cinema. Works: "Ship out of the harbor", "train station", "police parade", "street scene", "cavalry show", as well as by Lumière's two cameramen were shot by the two films "in the United States shot 39 scenes" and "Venice scene", etc., real, natural, "captured the actual scene of life", recorded the human survival of the charisma of the natural space and the behavior of people's daily life state. In the movie "The Boat Going Out", the people who go out to sea face the waves coming to the shore again and again, and row the boat out with difficulty. In the upper right corner of the picture, Mrs. Lumière and her children, standing on the embankment, wave their handkerchiefs to the rowers in the sea breeze, and their dresses flutter in the wind. Lumière's use of backlighting makes the whole image poetic. In this part of the film, the arrangement of the camera position and the picture composition of the treatment are very careful, Lumière more use of depth of field, mobile photography and other ways of expression, so that he deserves to win the reputation of the most outstanding cinematographer of the early film.