The Walturdaw Company Limited was a British film company in the early 20th-century. They manufactured film cameras and projectors, as well as published their own films, some 189 films were made.
The Walturdaw Company Limited was a British film company in the early 20th-century. They manufactured film cameras and projectors, as well as published their own films, some 189 films were made.
The name comes from a conflation of the surnames of the company's founders, J.D. Walker, Edward George Turner, and G.H. Dawson. [1]
The company manufactured film cameras and projectors, as well as dealing in a wide variety of equipment relevant to the "kinematograph industry" and distributing and producing films. [2]
According to IMDb, Walturdaw started making films in 1901, their first being The Life and Death of Queen Victoria. [3] However, the BFI suggests they only started making films in 1903. [4] It appears that the company began trading in 1904. [2] [5] According to the Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire website Walturdaw was considered to be one of the leading British firms before 1914. [1] Walturdaw was the sales agent for a number of continental film companies, including German, Hungarian, Italian and Russian ones. At various times they had offices at 3 Dean Street and at various addresses in Gerrard Street, both in Soho. [2]
In 1907 the company introduced their own synchronised sound film system, the Cinematophone. [6]
In total Walturdaw made some 189 films. [3] A number of these films were made in a studio in Sir Edward Watkin's pleasure grounds at Wembley Park, north-west London, after Walturdaw took over and adapted the old Variety Hall, a large wooden variety theatre, there in 1907. Others, such as The Lusitania at Liverpool (1907), [7] were presumably filmed outdoors.
E.G. Turner later wrote “we were buyers and sellers of everything in the kinematograph Industry, new or secondhand. There was one member, however, whose inclinations were photographically inclined, and so we took lease of Wembley Park and erected there something novel in the way of outdoor studios – a revolving platform, which allowed us to put up three sets of scenery at a time, when the wind allowed it, and each could be brought to the camera as required. Further, it was so constructed that we could always get the best of the light and sunshine. Ernest Howard took charge of this department – his lieutenants being J.B. McDowell and E. Bloomfield – these latter were our cameramen.” [8]
The company made a net profit of £1,160/0/8d in 1911 to 1912, but although profits continued in the first years of the First World War it made a net loss in 1916. [2]
There were various legal problems about Walturdaw’s licence, but they kept the studio until January 1911, when it was seriously damaged in a fire. Walturdaw stopped making films in the same year, but they continued as a distributor under the Walturdaw name until 1924. [5]
The company was wound up on 17 June 1925. [2]
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière and Louis Jean Lumière, were French manufacturers of photography equipment, best known for their Cinématographe motion picture system and the short films they produced between 1895 and 1905, which places them among the earliest filmmakers.
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson was a British inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison.
IMAX is a proprietary system of high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio and steep stadium seating, with the 1.43:1 ratio format being available only in few selected locations.
Vitagraph Studios, also known as the Vitagraph Company of America, was a United States motion picture studio. It was founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, as the American Vitagraph Company. By 1907, it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films. It was bought by Warner Bros. in 1925.
James Stuart Blackton was a British-American film producer and director of the silent era. One of the pioneers of motion pictures, he founded Vitagraph Studios in 1897. He was one of the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation, is considered a father of American animation, and was the first to bring many classic plays and books to the screen. Blackton was also the commodore of the Motorboat Club of America and the Atlantic Yacht Club.
New Line Productions, Inc., doing business as New Line Cinema, is an American film and television production studio owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). Since 2008, it has been operating as a unit of Warner Bros. Pictures.
Oskar Messter was a German inventor and film tycoon in the early years of cinema. His firm Messter Film was one of the dominant German producers before the rise of UFA, into which it was ultimately merged.
London Town is a 1946 Technicolor musical film directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Sid Field and Petula Clark, generally regarded as one of the biggest flops in the history of British cinema.
Distant Voices, Still Lives is a 1988 British period drama film written and directed by Terence Davies. It evokes working-class family life in Liverpool during the 1940s and early 1950s, paying particular attention to the role of popular music, Hollywood cinema, light entertainment and the public house within this tight-knit community.
Kinemacolor was the first successful colour motion picture process, used commercially from 1909 to 1915. It was invented by George Albert Smith in 1906. It was a two-colour additive colour process, photographing a black-and-white film behind alternating red/orange and blue/green filters and projecting them through red and green filters. It was demonstrated several times in 1908 and first shown to the public in 1909. From 1909 on, the process was known and trademarked as Kinemacolor and was marketed by Charles Urban’s Natural Color Kinematograph Company, which sold Kinemacolor licenses around the world.
George Albert Smith was an English stage hypnotist, psychic, magic lantern lecturer, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, inventor and a key member of the loose association of early film pioneers dubbed the Brighton School by French film historian Georges Sadoul. He is best known for his controversial work with Edmund Gurney at the Society for Psychical Research, his short films from 1897 to 1903, which pioneered film editing and close-ups, and his development of the first successful colour film process, Kinemacolor.
Actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that, like documentary film, uses footage of real events, places, and things. Unlike documentaries, actuality films are not structured into a larger narrative or coherent whole. In practice, actuality films preceded the emergence of the documentary. During the era of early cinema, actualities—usually lasting no more than a minute or two and usually assembled together into a program by an exhibitor—were just as popular and prominent as their fictional counterparts. The line between "fact" and "fiction" was not as sharply drawn in early cinema as it would be after documentaries came to serve as the predominant non-fiction filmmaking form. Actuality is a film genre that remains related to still photography.
Robert William Paul was an English pioneer of film and scientific instrument maker.
Fountain Studios was an independently owned television studio in Wembley Park, northwest London, England. The company was last part of the Avesco Group plc.
James A. Williamson was a Scottish photographer and a key member of the loose association of early film pioneers dubbed the Brighton School by French film historian Georges Sadoul. He is best known for The Big Swallow (1901), a trick film with innovative use of extreme close-up, as well as Fire! and Stop Thief!, dramas with continuity established across multiple shots.
The Gaumont-British Picture Corporation produced and distributed films and operated a cinema chain in the United Kingdom. It was established as an offshoot of the Gaumont Film Company of France.
Edward George Turner was a British entrepreneur who operated the first company in Britain to rent films and he invented one of the earliest sound synchronization systems.
British and Colonial Films was a British company making predominantly silent films in London between 1908 and 1924. It was also known by the abbreviation B & C.
The RMS Lusitania was a British-registered ocean liner that was torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat during the First World War on 7 May 1915, about 11 nautical miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland. The attack took place in the declared maritime war-zone around the UK, shortly after unrestricted submarine warfare against the ships of the United Kingdom had been announced by Germany following the Allied powers' implementation of a naval blockade against it and the other Central Powers. The passengers had been warned before departing New York of the danger of voyaging into the area in a British ship.
