History Of Short Film Research

The art of Short Film making is a huge pillar in British Cinema history, without which cinema would be very different today. Before the film we know and love today, films were much shorter but due to the huge advances in technology and the ability to watch these pictures alot of people never really noticed how short these films were due to the novelty of the experience they were having. The first short films were viewed using Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope (pictured right) which could only be viewed by one person at a time. The reason all the earliest films we're short was due to the fact men such as Edison thought audiences would not be able to withstand the "flickers" for more than ten minutes. Edison loved the idea of these films and eventually created the first movie projectors so more audience could all view films at the same time. Edison and his assistant W.K.L. Dickson designed the world's first movie studio, The Black Maria completed in 1893. This was to feed Edison's thrist to create more film. The Balck Maria was the home to between 200 and 300 works of Edison and his assistant. One of the most famous and memorable works of his was the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895). Which you can view below
This 55 second clip allegedly sent audiences running in terror as the locomotive steamed towards them. The fact this simple short film of ladies and gentleman disembarking a train can kick off such a huge surge of cinema. Without such a simple film as that we wouldn't get as much classics as we do today.