Directed by: Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince
What is the first film?
Some attribute it to the efforts of Thomas Edison and William Dickson. Others mark the dawn of moving pictures with the works of brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière. General consensus rests upon technicalities.
In the 1870’s, Eadweard Muybridge experimented with sequential imaging (chronophotography). He was hired by Leland Stanford, former governor of California, to produce a series of photographs chronicling a horse galloping to finally get an accurate depiction of the action. Efforts thus far in the art world left something to be desired when it came to realism, depicting a galloping horse with all legs extended and off the ground.
Muybridge set up multiple cameras along a track and produced a series of photographs published under the title of The Horse in Motion. The images could be translated onto a disc which, when played with the Zoopraxiscope, would produce animation. Although a significant precursor to movie projection, it consisted of a series of photographs each taken by a different device as opposed to footage captured by a single device. As such, it was more of an evolved version of the Phenakistiscope, introduced in 1833. If looser definitions are used, it is possible to keep working backwards until Ancient Greece where Aristotle first noted persistence of vision – still seeing the image of the sun despite no longer looking at it.
So why is Roundhay Garden Scene significant? Because of an important technicality: it was shot on a single-lens camera (LPCCP Type-1 MkII). For The Horse in Motion, Eadweard Muybridge used numerous cameras. Animations for the Phenakistiscope were a series of drawings presented in a loop (not much different from an animated GIF). Although Louis Le Prince shot Man Walking Around a Corner in 1887, it was done using a 16-lens camera (LPCC Type-16). Therefore, as far as the oldest surviving film as we would define it is concerned, the honor belongs to Roundhay Garden Scene.
The film was shot mid-October 1888 in the garden of Le Prince’s father-in-law in Roundhay, Leeds (West Yorkshire, United Kingdom). It features Adolphe Le Prince (Louis and Elizabeth’s son), Sarah Whitley (mother-in-law; died 10 days after the footage was shot), Joseph Whitley (father-in-law) and Annie Hartley (believed to be the friend of Louis and Elizabeth).
In terms of technicality, it was recorded on 1885 Eastman Kodak paper-based photographic film at 12 fps. The 20 surviving frames at the National Science Museum total 1.66 seconds at 12 fps, whereas the digital version produced by the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (now National Science and Media Museum) in Bradford contains 52 frames and a runtime of 2.11 seconds at 24.64 fps.
The film seems to focus on demonstrating movement, with each person performing an action. One can imagine Louis putting everyone on the spot by asking them to just move around to test his invention. It’s chaotic, if not somewhat awkward (think back to a time somebody prompted you to immediately perform an action). Despite the random movements, the film showcases a basic understanding of framing a shot in a way in which all actions are recorded successfully.
Louis Le Prince was set to showcase his camera and works in the United States when on September 16, 1890, he boarded a train from Dijon to Paris and vanished. Theories regarding his disappearance include fratricide over their mother’s will, secret homosexuality and escaping to start a new life, a murder orchestrated by Edison to prevent Le Prince from patenting and dominating the moving picture scene, and suicide due to debt and apparent failure of experiments in film. His disappearance remains a mystery.
Despite this, these 2 seconds remain, over 130 years later. The people in it have passed away, yet they move in front of us, as if we’re simply glimpsing through a time portal. We see film in the process of being born. It would take a couple of years until it learned to walk.
(Further from the original: Denis Shiryaev has upscaled and colorized Roundhay Garden Scene in an impressive video that can be viewed here.)
Bibliography
Dirks, T. (n.d.). ‘Greatest Film Milestones Pre-1900s’, filmsite. Available at: http://www.filmsite.org/milestonespre1900s.html [Accessed: 16 November 2021].
IMDb contributors (n.d.). ‘Roundhay Garden Scene (1888)’, IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0392728/ [Accessed: 16 November 2021].
Smith, I. (2016). ‘“Roundhay Garden Scene” recorded in 1888, is believed to be the oldest surviving film in existence‘, The Vintage News, 10 January. Available at: https://https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/01/10/roundhay-garden-scene-is-believed-to-be-the-oldest-known-video-footage/ [Accessed: 16 November 2021].
Wikipedia contributors (2021a). ‘Eadweard Muybridge’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 12 November. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge [Accessed: 16 November 2021].
Wikipedia contributors (2021b). ‘Louis Le Prince’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 15 October. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Le_Prince [Accessed: 16 November 2021].
Wikipedia contributors (2021c). ‘The Horse in Motion’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 October. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Horse_in_Motion [Accessed: 16 November 2021].
Youngs, I. (2015). ‘Louis Le Prince, who shot the world’s first film in Leeds’, BBC News, 23 June. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33198686 [Accessed: 16 November 2021].
Reel Lessons 