duVoyage - Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma
duVoyage - Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma
duVoyage - Fondation Groupama Gan pour le Cinéma
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Georges Meliès<br />
1861<br />
Georges Méliès is born in<br />
Paris, 3 rd arrondissement, on<br />
December 8 th . His father is a<br />
wealthy shoe manufacturer.<br />
1880<br />
As a student at Louis <strong>le</strong> Grand<br />
high school in Paris, he displays<br />
a gift for drawing and<br />
painting. He obtains his high<br />
school diploma in 1880, comp<strong>le</strong>tes<br />
his military service,<br />
and joins the family business.<br />
1884<br />
Sent to London by his father<br />
to <strong>le</strong>arn about sa<strong>le</strong>s techniques<br />
and practice English, he takes<br />
the opportunity to attend a<br />
well-known theater of magic,<br />
and becomes a magician. He<br />
forges relationships with a<br />
number of performers and other<br />
show business professionals.<br />
1878<br />
Eadweard Muybridge has the<br />
idea of aligning twenty-four cameras<br />
to break down the movement<br />
of a galloping horse.<br />
The photographs are then placed<br />
in a device he invented, the<br />
Zoopraxiscope, which is used<br />
to animate the horse’s running<br />
motion.<br />
1882<br />
Étienne-Ju<strong>le</strong>s Marey is also<br />
working on the movement of<br />
animals, and creates a photographic<br />
gun which he then<br />
equips with a glass plate: this<br />
process is ‘chronophotography’.<br />
1884<br />
Eastman invents film, a f<strong>le</strong>xib<strong>le</strong><br />
medium for animated<br />
images, placed on the market<br />
in 1889 (the Kodak trademark<br />
is registered in 1888).<br />
1885<br />
He marries Eugénie Génin, a<br />
wealthy heiress, who will bear<br />
him two children.<br />
1886<br />
He performs at the Musée Grévin<br />
and the Ga<strong>le</strong>rie Vivienne.<br />
1888<br />
Birth of his daughter Georgette,<br />
who will later assist<br />
him as a cinema operator<br />
and theater director. Thanks<br />
to funds received from his father,<br />
in July he buys the Robert-Houdin<br />
theater of magic<br />
and becomes its director.<br />
1888<br />
Emi<strong>le</strong> Reynaud creates optical<br />
theater. He is better versed in<br />
drawing than photography.<br />
He makes up stories, draws<br />
them directly on gelatin,<br />
strings them together in sequence,<br />
and shows them to an<br />
audience. Showings at the<br />
Musée Grévin from 1892 to 1900.<br />
Louis Aimée Augustin Le Prince<br />
(1841-1890) builds a movie camera<br />
and submits a patent<br />
application for it on January<br />
11 th 1888. He shoots on the Leeds<br />
Bridge and at Roundhay, his<br />
home in England, in October<br />
1888. These litt<strong>le</strong>-known experiments<br />
could be the oldest<br />
existing films.<br />
1889-90<br />
Whi<strong>le</strong> creating or modernizing<br />
magic shows in his theater, he<br />
also draws political caricatures<br />
for a newspaper founded<br />
by his cousin, Adolphe Méliès.<br />
This weekly paper, La Griffe, opposes<br />
General Boulanger, who<br />
is trying to mount a coup<br />
d’état in France. After his failure,<br />
the paper disappears.<br />
1891<br />
He founds the Académie de<br />
Prestidigitation (Academy of<br />
Conjuring), conferring a status<br />
on illusionists, previously<br />
viewed by the authorities as<br />
mere nomads or pedd<strong>le</strong>rs.<br />
Birth of motion picture<br />
1891-92<br />
USA / First motion picture camera,<br />
the Kinetograph, designed<br />
by W.K.L. Dickson for<br />
Thomas Edison, marketed in<br />
1894.<br />
1892<br />
Eastman Co. becomes Eastman<br />
Kodak, world <strong>le</strong>ader in film<br />
for photography and cinematography.<br />
1894<br />
USA / First movie studio, the<br />
Black Maria, built by Edison.<br />
USA / First (individual) projections<br />
of films using the Kinetoscope<br />
(peep show device).<br />
96<br />
1895<br />
The Lumière brothers, inventors<br />
of the Cinematograph,<br />
give their first public performance<br />
on December 28 th at the<br />
Grand Café, near the Robert-<br />
Houdin theater. Georges Méliès<br />
is invited to the premiere by<br />
their father, Antoine Lumière,<br />
a photographer he knows well.<br />
Feb 1 st 1895<br />
The Lumière brothers patent<br />
the cinematograph, but do<br />
not present it until March,<br />
followed by an official public<br />
presentation in December.<br />
August 1895<br />
France / L.Gaumont & Co.<br />
founded by Louis Gaumont.<br />
Nov 1 st 1895<br />
Germany / Max von Skladanovsky<br />
gives a public demonstration<br />
of his invention,<br />
the Bioscope, before demonstrating<br />
it at the Salon Indien,<br />
but the machine is heavy and<br />
impractical, and does not survive<br />
the competition with the<br />
Lumière machine.<br />
1895<br />
France / December 28 th , first<br />
on-screen projection by the<br />
Lumière brothers, who present<br />
a recording and projection<br />
system.<br />
1895-1896<br />
USA/Creation of the first major<br />
American movie companies:<br />
Vitagraph, Cineograph (Lubin),<br />
Polyoscope Company (Selig)<br />
and American Mutoscope Company,<br />
founded by W.K.L. Dickson<br />
among others (this later became<br />
American Mutoscope and<br />
Biograph (AM&B), and then<br />
Biograph Co).<br />
1896<br />
Creation of the Pathé Frères<br />
company by brothers Char<strong>le</strong>s<br />
and Emi<strong>le</strong> Pathé, marketing<br />
phonographs, cinematographs,<br />
and precision instruments.<br />
1896<br />
He uses this scientific invention<br />
for the purpose of enhancing<br />
the illusions in his<br />
shows at the Robert-Houdin<br />
theater. He manufactures his<br />
own filming device, the Kinetograph,<br />
and records his<br />
first films in April. His first<br />
film using ‘trick’ cinematography<br />
(by stopping the camera),<br />
Escamotage d’une dame<br />
(‘Vanishing Lady at Robert<br />
Houdin’s Place'), is produced<br />
the same year. Over the years,<br />
he invents the set of cinema<br />
tricks known today as ‘special<br />
effects’.<br />
Early 1896<br />
Launch of the Biograph, a<br />
projection device, by the American<br />
Mutoscope Company,<br />
which spreads all across the<br />
USA, as well as Europe from<br />
1897 onward.<br />
March2 nd 1896<br />
In the United Kingdom, Robert<br />
William Paul markets the<br />
Theatograph, a projector that<br />
will be acquired by Méliès.<br />
April20 rd 1896<br />
France / Louis Henri Char<strong>le</strong>s<br />
fi<strong>le</strong>s a patent application for<br />
a moving picture projection<br />
device.<br />
1897<br />
He orders the construction, to<br />
his own blueprints, of Studio<br />
A in the vegetab<strong>le</strong> garden of<br />
his property in Montreuilsous-Bois.<br />
This is the world’s<br />
first purpose-built, fully<br />
equipped movie studio.<br />
1898<br />
Edison starts ‘patent wars’<br />
with all of his competitors in<br />
the USA (projection and recording).<br />
97