Cinematography Skills Workshop

Ray Harryhausen - Developer

Ray Harryhausen is one of the most successful stop motion animators in history. Many things inspired him from a young age such as king kong by Willis O'Brien and visits to the Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

Once he owned a camera he created stop motion animation films and took his interest in this subject further and studied photography and editing at university. Through doing this, he came up with the idea of creating a film. However his first idea was a flop as his idea on a film about an unusual creature, was unrecognised. His second attempt consisted of dinosaurs as one of the main aspects, which happened to be good quality although it was filmed in a garage. Stop motion animation pioneer George pal, recognised Rays work and hired him to create puppetoons.

From then on, Ray Harryhausen worked on a number of films. He created films which have been recreated today. This shows that his work has inspired and developed ideas into the modern world.

Willis O'Brien - Developer

Willis O'Brien was a famous special effects and stop motion animation pioneer. Willis is most famous for his creation of using stop motion animation on King Kong. This had an incredible effect on the audience as nobody had ever seen a stop motion animation so long and detailed before.

Willis had always been very interested in sculpturing. He would produce models with rubber connected on them to bring them to life, which lead on to his talent in stop motion. He then went on to produce some fantastic films using stop motion which proved to be inspirational to other animators and film makers.

The Lumiere Brothers - Pioneers

The lumiere brothers Auguste and Louis came from France. They were the first people to create a camera and a device called a cinématographe. They decided to design a camera, after getting inspiration from the kinetoscope. The cinématographe, was a device with a lantern, which projected films which the brothers had taken.

The films the Lumières' had taken, were approximately 50 seconds long. The video I have linked is the first film which was ever to shown to an audience. It was also the first time an audience had seen moving pictures projected onto a screen, so this obviously had a huge effect on people.

Later After their first public screening, the brothers began commercial production which was soon in demand across the world.

Eadweard James Muybridge - Pioneer

Eadweard James Muybridge ( 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904) was a famous English photographer. From a young age, he was experimental with his photography and discovering different forms of stop motion animation. He then went on to trying speed photography, which lead him to experiment with the horse in motion. Eadward set up a series of 50 different cameras all in a line, which was facing the horse track. He made sure the camera would capture each image by connecting the camera shutters to trip wires across the track. This was considered to be the first moving picture. In 1879 Eadweard Muybridge invented a device called the zoopraxiscope. This projected a series of images that gave the illusion of movement. The zoopraxiscope used discs to create movement which was similar to the phenakistoscope. However, the zoopraxiscope discs were made out of glass.

Eadweard's inventions gave inspiration to Thomas Edison and William Dickson to create another device called the kinetoscope. The kinetoscope viewing a sequence of images on a film strip by looking through a small window. It had a light positioned behind this and a high shutter speed. It was run by an electric motor which therefore provided movement of the images to go around the kinetoscope. The video below demonstrates how all the mechanisms work inside the kinetoscope.

 

 

 

Charles-Émile Reynaud - Pioneer

Charles-Émile Reynaud (8 December 1844 – 9 January 1918) created the first projected animated cartoon films. Reynaud created the Theatre Optique in December 1888 and the Praxinoscope in 1877.

The praxinoscope is an improvement to the zoetrope. A series of images, one slightly different to the other, are placed inside a drum. The difference between this and the zoetrope, is that instead of viewing the images through the slits, the images would reflect onto mirrors which are placed in the centre of the drum. Through this different method, the result of using the mirrors were that it proved to be defined, brighter and more effective.

Later on reynaud developed the  praxinoscope into the theatre optique. He wanted to expand his invention and present his moving images onto a screen. The praxinoscope only produced about a second of animation. Through using the theatre optique, reynaud was able to produce a longer amount of animation as he could use a long roll of film.  

William Horner - Pioneer

William George Horner was known for inventing the zoetrope, aswell as being a successful British Mathematician.

William based his invention on the phenakistoscope which therefore later made joseph plateau’s invention unsuccessful. The difference between Williams zoetrope and josephs phenakistoscope, Was that the zoetrope did not require a viewing mirror. The second improvement of the zoetrope was that more than one person could view the moving pictures at the same time.

 The zoetrope  works from a drum with an open top, the drum is spun, which creates an illusion of movement, the faster the spin, the smoother the image you see will be. However, if the drum is spun too fast, the image the viewer will see, would be a blur, so they would therefore not be able to see it.

Here is a video of a zoetrope and a demonstration of how it works: