A movie camera records successive frames at a set rate. During projection, the frames appear in sequence, and their rapid presentation creates the movement the audience sees.
Film technology combines photography, light-sensitive materials, and mechanical film transport. Different researchers developed devices for filming, viewing, and projection in the late 19th century.
History
Screen practice itself goes back to the 1600s, when images were first projected by various means, including the magic lantern. The development of this screen practice went through several technological stages, including the invention of the magic lantern, the projection of photographic images, the motion picture, and eventually the synchronization of sound and film. The earliest research into image projection was Athanasius Kircher's 1645 work Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, which described images being reflected onto a wall in a darkened room. Kircher described and illustrated his designs, intending to demystify the technology and effect for viewers of such apparatus. He emphasized that the combination of narration and images granted the ability to express narrative.
The development of the motion picture camera comes from this tradition of technological development, and the desire to create more life-like images to project on screen for audiences. Magic lantern shows would have slides that moved, being manipulated by the projectionist. Other devices, developed by photographers like Eadweard Muybridge and Coleman Sellers II, focused on sequential images that when shown in rapid succession created the illusion of movement through what was then described as the persistence of vision but is now considered a result of phi phenomenon and beta movement.
Development
In 1845, Francis Ronalds developed a photosensitive machine at the Kew Observatory. A photosensitive surface was drawn slowly past the aperture diaphragm of the camera by a clockwork mechanism to enable continuous recording over a 12- or 24-hour period. Ronalds applied his cameras to trace the ongoing variations of scientific instruments and they were used in observatories around the world for over a century.
In 1876, Wordsworth Donisthorpe and his cousin William Carr Crofts proposed a camera to take sequential pictures on glass plates, later to be printed on a roll of paper film. In 1889, he would patent a moving picture camera in which the film moved continuously. Both devices were called the Kinesigraph. In June 1878, Eadweard Muybridge created sequential series of photographs with a battery of 12 cameras along the race track at Stanford's Palo Alto Stock Farm (now the campus of Stanford University). John D. Isaacs, a technical expert at Stanford's Central Pacific Railway, was brought in to design the electromagnetic shutters and trip-wire system for the cameras. The subjects to be photographed stood against a white background with black vertical lines. Each frame was exposed for 1/500th of a second, and each exposure was separated by 1/25th of a second.
The cameras were activated by the subjects (animals) snapping strings. By June 1878, Muybridge was able to photograph the racehorse Sallie Gardner. In 1879, Muybridge would develop an elaborate magic lantern attachment that he named the Zoopraxiscope, capable of replaying his photograph sequences. Around this time he began to photograph other animals and human subjects.
In 1882, Étienne-Jules Marey, a French scientist developed the chronophotographic gun, which could shoot 12 images per second and was the first photographic device to capture moving images on a plate using a metal shutter. Around 1888, Frenchman Louis Le Prince designed and described multiple camera systems with varying numbers of lenses. One prototype included a 16-lens system, which was developed at his workshop in Leeds. The first 8 lenses would be triggered in rapid succession by an electromagnetic shutter on the sensitive film; the film would then be moved forward allowing the other 8 lenses to operate on the film. After much trial and error, he was finally able to develop a single-lens camera in 1888, which he used to shoot sequences of moving pictures on paper film, including the Roundhay Garden Scene and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge.