T H E N A I V E F I L M M A K E R

I sometimes find that if I’m being too self-serious about my nonsense filmmaking attempts, I like to remember that the whole artform that has dominated my life essentially started as a party trick. That filming people walking in and out of a factory wasn’t an artistic statement, it was a cool thing that nobody else could do! It makes me chuckle to think that filmmaking started as a means to test out the Lumiere’s most exciting new toy “The Cinematographe”. However, such an invention wasn’t without its predecessors, archaic contraptions without which might well not have the cameras that we use today.

Victorian children probably didn’t realise it at the time (Probably too busy getting ready for work to think about it), but their toys were among the essential stepping stones in creating cinema as we know it.

Among the toys deserving of such credit is THE MAGIC LANTERN. An early projector prototype that would shine photographs, paintings and prints onto the wall. The ancestor of the Cinema Projector we use today.

It was however only a matter of time before children and dinner guests got bored of the static images on the screen! Because what’s the point of a painting that uses up so many lightbulbs?

DECEPTIVE VIEWERS like the PHENAKISTOSCOPE became widely popular animation device. The original ancestor to today’s GIFS, it utilised a few images to create a fluent illusion of motion. It was usually made up of various decorated spinning discs compact enough to carry around if desired, I’d say this was cooler than a DS, but probably not as good as a PSP.

THE ZOETROPE invented by Walter Horner in 1834 was a widely popular contraption that would display a sequence of drawings or photographs creating the illusion of motion. (This contraption would also inspire the name of Francis Ford Coppola’s Production Company). Like countless train sets today I rather imagine this to be something that a father bought for his children, but wouldn’t allow to leave his study.

Eventually we all have to grow up and it’s no longer good enough to play with century old toys! Now we have to start using cameras and making the pictures go faster. Moving images were a commodity and the development of film was about to become a big part of that!

As the productions became more advanced, so did the “Toys” used! William K.L Dickson’s development of the KINETOSCOPE was used to screen his hit film Fredd Ott’s Sneeze (The first film to be Copyrighted by Corporate Psychopath Edison himself).

THE CINEMATOGRAPHE as used by the Lumiere Brothers was a camera capable of shooting action and displaying it as it’s predecessor THE MAGIC LANTERN. A device they used to entertain Parisians in The Grande Café. They would soon go on a world tour with their series of short films including Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon and The Photographical Congress Arrive in Lyon. Having unwittingly created Actuality Filmmaking and creating the first stepping stones to Documentary & Fictional Filmmaking as we know it today.

The era of experimental toys was long over, cameras were now a serious business and filmmaking even in its earliest form was becoming lucrative and competitive! A business and an artform that would evolve in ways that its founders would never recognise, dominating the world in the process.