Screen Worlds- ACMI

SCREEN WORLDS AT ACMI

HISTORY OF FILMING AND TELEVISON, AND HOW IT ALL WORKS.

During out visit to ACMI we explored Screen Worlds where we learnt about the history of screening and movies and how it all started and how it works now.
In 1890 the Lumiere brothers invented the Cinematographer, which was a piece of apparatus that was both a camera and a projector. The brothers were inspired after seeing Edison's Kinetoscope. Differences between the cinematographer and modern cameras is that they were handwound instead of done digitally. Modern day cameras are computerised as opposed to cinematographers which used cellular flim. Also today you can just video something instead of having to draw each individual slide.
The first screened film by the Lumieres was Arrival of a Train and this was a frightening film as the auidence jumped back in fear as they watched it. We were then asked to chose what we would make our first publically screened movie would be and we decied we'd make a romantic comedy as they are popular amongst many people these days.
Gertie the Dinosaur was a short 12 minute flim we watched. It was animated so each slide was hand drawn. For one second of life-like animation, twenty-four frames are needed. This mean that 17,280 frames were needed for the entire film.
In 1906 on the 26th of December, The Story of the Kelly Gang was made but it was different to most films made during that time. This was because it was much longer than normal films so this caused a risk because it would've cost a lot more. Nitrate film decomposition, which can be seen on the last reel of this film, accounts for the loss of 90% of Australia's silent film heritage. This highlighted the need for film conservation.
The introduction of televison in Australia took a while but before you knew it, it was a true mass medium. The mechanical TV operated by transmitting instantaneous moving picutres of live action to a wireless transmitter which records the sent images. They then go to a reciever where a combination of apeture and discs reproduced the image.