Non-fiction film genre that uses footage of real events
Place des Cordeliers à Lyon (1895), a film by Louis Lumière which shows a street in Lyon, France
Actuality film is a non-fictionfilm genre that uses footage of real events, places, and things (essentially B-roll), in a similar way to documentary film. 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.[1] The line between "fact" and "fiction" was not as prominent in early cinema as it would become once documentaries became the predominant non-fiction filmmaking form. Actuality as a film genre is related to still photography.
Although actuality films production ceased around 1908, the term "actuality footage" is sometimes used in documentary production to refer to the raw footage.
The first actuality films date to the inception of projected cinema. The Lumière Brothers, in France, were the principal advocates for this genre and also coined the term—"Actualités"—and used it as a descriptor in the printed catalogs of their films. La sortie des usines Lumière (1895)—the first film exhibited by the Lumières—is by default the earliest actuality film; it might have not been the first one made, but it was definitively the first one shown publicly, on December 28, 1895.[2]
Although Thomas A. Edison, Inc. in the United States was producing films and exhibiting them via the Kinetoscope going back to 1893, the films themselves took place solely inside Edison's improvised studio, the Black Maria; although Bucking Broncho (1894)[3] was the first Edison subject to be filmed outdoors, it necessitated the construction of a special pen next to the Black Maria. The Edison and early Biograph motion picture cameras were bulky and could not be lifted or carried by a single person and required transport by way of a horse cart. The Lumière cameras—from the very start—were small, light, and also functioned as projectors. The Paul-Acres camera, registered in Britain in 1895, was likewise a smaller and more readily portable device than the Edison model, and Birt Acres filmed The Derby (1895) on it in May. But this, and Paul's other films, were not projected in public until February 1896.[4]
Edison's first principal film producer W. K. L. Dickson broke away from the company in late 1895 to act as a partner in his own concern, American Mutoscope and Biograph, which by 1897 had founded a British subsidiary that Dickson headed.[5] Although their cameras were even bulkier than Edison's at first, utilizing 68mm film, Biograph's very first subjects—a series of views of Niagara Falls—were actualities. (However, subjects filmed solely in a studio dominate the Biograph's years before 1900.) Other pre-1900 concerns such as Selig (Chicago), Lubin (Philadelphia), Vitagraph (New York), Méliès Star-Film, Pathé Frères and Gaumont (France), and Warwick Trading Company (UK) all made actuality films, though in varying degrees in relation to films made in other genres.
In the United Kingdom, Birt Acres was one of the first to produce films as well as being the first traveling newsreel reporter. In 1894, he created a 70mm format and filmed the Henley Royal Regatta.[6] He went on to make some of Britain's first films with Robert W. Paul with a 35mm movie camera, the Kineopticon, including Incident at Clovelly Cottage, The Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race and Rough Sea at Dover.[7][8] Birt Acres designed the first camera for amateur use in 1898. He called it the 'Birtac Home Cinema', and it used a 17.5mm gauge. Its purpose, in his words, was 'to place animated photography in the reach of everyone'.[9]
The most successful motion picture company in the United States, with the largest production until 1900, was the American Mutoscope company. This was initially set up to exploit peep-show type short movies displayed with W.K.L. Dickson's mutoscope, after he left the Edison company in 1895.[11] His equipment used 70mm wide film, and each frame was printed separately onto paper sheets for insertion into their viewing machine. The image sheets stood out from the periphery of a rotating drum and flipped into view in succession.[12][13]
Lumière genres
Lumière cameramen were trained to shoot in a specific type of framing and to be alert for certain kinds of action. Louis Lumière personally approved every subject released and rejected about 500 films made for the company that did not meet his standards. They were consciously building a document of the world around them in 50-second shots, and Lumière cameramen had the greatest reach worldwide of any motion picture company in the business, filming in Asia, Africa, and other hard-to-reach places. They were careful to preserve and properly store their films, and all but 18 of the 1,423 films they made have survived.
When the Lumière films as a whole were submitted to the "Memory of the World" register at UNESCO,[14] they were subdivided into the following categories:
Military events
Everyday scenes
Official events
Fiction (comic or historical)
Circus or music-hall entertainment
The Lumière family
The first three descriptors nearly encompass the whole of the subject matter represented in actuality films, to which may be added "news events", though these were relatively rare, as it was difficult for any motion picture cameraman to make it, with his equipment, to an actual news event in a timely fashion, leading to the inception of event reconstructions. Nevertheless, both Vitagraph and Biograph released subjects filmed in Galveston after the hurricane of 1900; the aftermath of the San Francisco Earthquake was likewise filmed by at least three companies.
The Lumières never shared their camera system—with its 35mm film and round perforations—with anyone. But Pathé did begin to market its smaller, lighter camera to cinematographers around 1903, and even some cameramen employed by Edison and Biograph began to use them in defiance to the patent cameras owned by the companies that employed them. Biograph relented in 1903, discontinuing the use of 68mm and adopting the increasingly universal 35mm format at this time.[15] The significance of this was that it then became easier for filmmakers to record actuality films generally, though the genre's popularity decreased significantly soon after this.
Traveling actualities
A special kind of actuality film is the traveling actuality, in which a camera is placed on a kind of conveyance—such as a bus, or rail car—so that the scene can change by virtue of the movement of the vehicle which is transporting the camera. These films were among the first in which camera movement is involved. James H. White's' Panoramic View of the Champs Elysees (1900) appears to have been shot from a horse-drawn carriage. More notable examples include Frederick S. Armitage and A. E. Weed's Down the Hudson (1903), and several films by G. W. Billy Bitzer, Interior N.Y. Subway, 14th St. to 42nd St (1905), which was shot from the front of a New York City Subway car shortly after the system first opened. One notable traveling actuality is the Miles Brothers' A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire (1906), which was shot on a San Francisco streetcar and dropped off for processing on the day before an earthquake and fire severely damaged the city.
Related genres
Certain types of early films often considered within the actuality genre are merely related forms and do not entirely belong to the designation. While sporting events—particularly boat and yacht races—are within the actuality genre, fight films constitute their own genre. The first fight films, such as Edison's The Hornbacker-Murphy Fight (1894) actually precede the advent of actualities altogether and, as the genre evolved through 1916, consisted of a mixture of actual, re-enacted, and staged bouts. The fixed camera position common in early cinema was a good match for taking in even many rounds of boxing,[tone] and interest in such subjects was further supported by the fact that boxing itself was illegal in most places, and the films provided access to such entertainment where live boxing matches were prohibited by law.[16]
Reconstructions of various kinds typify early kinds of news coverage; as the camera could not be brought to so many events of public significance or interest, the events were brought before the cameras, with actors or models or both of various kinds employed. This was especially common during the Spanish–American War;[17] although cameras were dispatched to the front in Cuba, the footage sent back was often disappointing, so it was more effective to find a setting in New Jersey and to restage the battle scenes with actors.[18] These films were often promoted to exhibitors and the public alike as an actual recording of the event depicted.[citation needed]
Decline
In 1904, American-born English filmmaker Charles Urban produced Everyday London, a 12-minute travelogue designed to provide views of England to Australians. This film is an actual documentary; although rather roughly assembled, it consists of many short shots and is clearly shaped in the manner of a documentary. In 1905, the Lumières ended their production of actualities, and within the next two years, major producers such as Edison and Biograph began to abandon the actuality genre; by 1907, American Biograph was no longer making them, and new start-up companies such as Kalem never produced them at all, concentrating instead on fiction films with actors. When Gaston Méliès arrived in the United States to found the American division of Star Film, he started out making actualities, but swiftly moved into making Westerns.[19] This left production of actualities to smaller producers such as Mitchell and Kenyon in the UK, a company that made no other kinds of films, although Pathé continued to produce actuality films.
In mid-1908, French Pathé introduced the first newsreel.[20] The newsreel was a format in which actualities could be combined, and it provided a context for the views that was timely. Also that year, Charles Urban founded the Kinora Company, the first company established for the exclusive purpose of distributing documentaries and other kinds of non-fiction films. Although some actuality films continued to be made after 1910, the genre ceased to have much influence as public interest shifted toward newsreels and documentaries.
The history of film chronicles the development of a visual art form created using film technologies that began in the late 19th century.
The Motion Picture Patents Company, founded in December 1908 and effectively terminated in 1915 after it lost a federal antitrust suit, was a trust of all the major US film companies and local foreign-branches, the leading film distributor and the biggest supplier of raw film stock, Eastman Kodak. The MPPC ended the domination of foreign films on US screens, standardized the manner in which films were distributed and exhibited within the US, and improved the quality of US motion pictures by internal competition. It also discouraged its members' entry into feature film production, and the use of outside financing, both to its members' eventual detriment.
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson was a British inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison.
Gottfried Wilhelm Bitzer was an American cinematographer, notable for his close association and pioneering work with D. W. Griffith.
The following is an overview of the events of 1895 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.
The following is an overview of the events of 1896 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.
The following is an overview of the events of 1897 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video: it created the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab in New Jersey also devised the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations.
The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1916. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over 3000 short films and 12 feature films. During the height of silent film as a medium, Biograph was the most prominent U.S. film studio and one of the most respected and influential studios worldwide, only rivaled by Germany's UFA, Sweden's Svensk Filmindustri and France's Pathé. The company was home to pioneering director D. W. Griffith and such actors as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore.
Vitascope was an early film projector first demonstrated in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. They had made modifications to Jenkins' patented Phantoscope, which cast images via film and electric light onto a wall or screen. The Vitascope is a large electrically-powered projector that uses light to cast images. The images being cast are originally taken by a kinetoscope mechanism onto gelatin film. Using an intermittent mechanism, the film negatives produced up to fifty frames per second. The shutter opens and closes to reveal new images. This device can produce up to 3,000 negatives per minute. With the original Phantoscope and before he partnered with Armat, Jenkins displayed the earliest documented projection of a filmed motion picture in June 1894 in Richmond, Indiana.
Edison Studios was an American film production organization, owned by companies controlled by inventor and entrepreneur, Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films, as part of the Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) and then Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (1911–1918), until the studio's closing in 1918. Of that number, 54 were feature length, and the remainder were shorts. All of the company's films have fallen into the public domain because they were released before 1928.
Robert William Paul was an English pioneer of film and scientific instrument maker.
Herman Casler was an American inventor and co-founder of the partnership called the K.M.C.D. Syndicate, along with W.K-L. Dickson, Elias Koopman, and Henry Marvin, which eventually was incorporated into the American Mutoscope Company in December 1895.
The decade of the 1890s in film involved some significant events.
Sherlock Holmes Baffled is an American silent trick film created in 1900 with cinematography by Arthur Marvin. It is the earliest known film to feature Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character Sherlock Holmes, albeit in a form unlike that of later screen incarnations. In the film, a thief who can appear and disappear at will steals a sack of items from Sherlock Holmes. At each point, Holmes's attempts to thwart the intruder end in failure.
Elias Bernard Koopman was a founder of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. He was also a founder of The Magic Introduction Company. He later headed the Runsyne Corporation, a maker of electrical signs.
The Latham Loop is used in film projection and image capture. It isolates the filmstrip from vibration and tension, allowing movies to be continuously shot and projected for extended periods.
Wallace McCutcheon Sr. was a pioneer cinematographer and director in the early American motion picture industry, working with the American Mutoscope & Biograph, Edison and American Star Film companies. McCutcheon's wealth of credits are often mixed up with the small handful of films directed by his son, Wallace McCutcheon Jr. (1884–1928).
The Invisible Fluid is a 1908 American silent science fiction comedy film produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company of New York, directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr., and starring Edward Dillon. The short's plot relies extensively on the filming and editing technique of substitution splicing, also known as "stop trick", a special effect that creates the illusion of various characters or objects suddenly vanishing on screen.
References
↑ "The Actuality Film". Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897 to 1916. Library of Congress.
↑ Burns, Paul (1999). "Chapter 15, 1895–1900". The History of the Discovery of Cinematography. Archived from the original on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
↑ Billy Bitzer. "The Biograph Camera". The Operating Cameraman. Society of Camera Operators (Spring 1995). Archived from the original on 1 November 2004. Retrieved 30 November 2004.
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