Key Concepts

• When the technologies of chemistry, optics, photography, precision machinery, electricity, and sound recording came together in the second half of the nineteenth century, they made movies possible.
• Movies evolved from photography by way of series photography, or the taking of a rapid series of still images. The first movie on record, Fred Ott’s Sneeze (1894), was made in Thomas Edison’s lab.
• This chapter presents five fundamental principles of movies:
  • Movies manipulate space and time in ways that other art forms cannot.
  • Movies depend on light.
  • Movies provide an illusion of movement.
  • Movies can depict worlds convincingly.
  • Movies generally result from a complex, expensive, and highly collaborative process.

Learning Objectives

Once you have read this chapter, you should be able to

• identify the kinds of technology essential to movies.
• compare the ways in which movies and plays differ in their handling of space and time.
• explain the principle of “co-expressibility.”
• compare the way the human eye sees images with the way the camera sees them.
• describe the stages of the filmmaking production process and their components.
• list and describe the various types of movies.