VIDEO PRODUCTION HISTORY

By: Kenyanna Easter

Early production

Staring in the late 1970’s to the early 1980’s several types of video equipment were introduced, such as time based correctors.

Digital effects units .

1867

The first machine patented in the United States that showed animated pictures or movies was a device called the "wheel of life" or "zoopraxiscope". Patented in 1867 by William Lincoln, moving drawings or photographs were watched through a slit in the zoopraxiscope. However, this was a far cry from motion pictures. Modern motion picture making began with the invention of the motion picture camera.

1887

The year of motion pictures was born following the years of 1889 through 1950.

Television overtakes movies in popularity, color replaces black and white movies in theaters, theaters then attempt to win audiences back with 3-D pictures and replacing black and white movies with color.

1889

William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, commissioned by Thomas Alva Edison, builds the first motion-picture camera

and names it the Kinetograph.

1891

In 1891, the Edison company successfully demonstrated the Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures. Later in 1896, Edison showed his improved Vitascope projector and it was the first commercially, successful, projector in the U.S.

1892

Edison uses 1 1/2 inch film for his vertical-feed motion picture camera, which will be the foundation for 35mm film gauge.

1893

The Edison Corporation establishes the first motion-picture studio, a Kinetograph production center nicknamed the Black Maria (slang for a police van).

1894

The Holland brothers open the first kinetoscope parlor at 1155 Broadway in New York City on April 14. The brothers charge customers 25 cents a film. In a year they have earned receipts of over $16,000.

1895

The Frenchman Louis Lumiere is often credited as inventing the first motion picture camera in 1895. But, several others had made similar inventions around the same time as Lumiere. What Lumiere invented was a portable motion-picture camera, film processing unit and projector called the Cinematographe, three functions covered in one invention.

1897

The first television camera showed early version of the cathode ray tube invented in 1897.

1903

Edison Corporation mechanic Edwin S. Porter turns cameraman, director and producer to make The Great Train Robbery. With 14 shots cutting between simultaneous events, this 12-minute short establishes the shot as film's basic element and editing as a central narrative device. It is also the first Western.

1905

The first movie theater opens in Pittsburgh.

1909

The New York Times publishes the first movie review, a report on D. W. Griffith's Pippa Passes.

1910

Thomas Edison introduces his kinetophone, which makes talkies a reality.

1911

The first feature film is released when the two reels of D. W. Griffith's Enoch Arden are screened together.

1912

Photoplay debuts as the first magazine for movie fans.

1914

In his second big-screen appearance, Charlie Chaplin plays the Little Tramp, his most famous character.

Winsor McCay unleashes Gertie the Dinosaur, the first animated cartoon

1915

D. W. Griffith's technically brilliant Civil War epic, The Birth of a Nation, introduces the narrative close-up, the flashback and other things that endure today as the structural principles of narrative filmmaking.

1919

Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford establish United Artists in an attempt to control their own work.

1925

Sergei Eisenstein makes Potemkin, a revolutionary portrait of mutiny aboard a battleship. In the hands of Eisenstein, montage is raised to the highest role in filmmaking, serving as the element of the medium.

Ben-Hur, costing a record-setting $3.95 million to produce, is released.

1956

The Ampex corporation used magnetic tape technology by German scientist during World War II, which became the first video tape recorder.

1972

The RCA company led production of early video equipment in the U.S and invented the first hand held mobile video production camera the “TK-44 in 1972”.

1975

The first commercial available video cassette recorder was the Sony Betamax.

1986

Digital video was first introduced commercially in 1986 with Sony D-1