Lumière brothers were French inventors and manufacturers of photography equipment later on used for earliest motion-picture camera and projector called the Cinématographe, which then led to the appearance of the word cinema. Auguste Lumière along with his brother Louis Lumière created the film La Sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière relesed in 1895. English translation would be “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory”, which is exactly what the short film of 1 minute is about. This film is considered the first motion picture.
Louis Lumière
The two brothers demonstrated genius talents in science at their school in Lyon. Louis began working on the issue of satisfactory development of film and at the age of 18 he had great success. His father’s financial aid was a big contribution step towards opening a factory for producing photographic plates that grew popular and became people’s possessions. By the year of 1894, Lumière’s factory was making 15 million plates in just 1 year. Antoine, who was the father of two brothers was later asked to visit a showing of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope in Paris. After Antoine’s return, he described a peephole machine which became interesting enough for the brothers to work on the problem of combining animation with projection. Louis was the one who found the solution and got it patented in 1895. The brothers could not imagine how big of an opening they made and how much effect it would hold latter on in the cinema history.
Auguste Lumière
Their invention contained a single camera used for both photographing and projecting at 16 frames per second. They made more than 40 during 1896 recorded everyday French life like the arrival of a train, a game of cards, a toiling blacksmith, the feeding of a baby, soldiers marching, the activity of a city street. Their first films became phenomenons and one of the later most popular and well known films would be a science-fiction film called “Voyage dans la lune” of 1902. This unique film is only 12 minutes long but is definitely worth seeing. It was also hand coloured right on the tape. Colouring done in such a manner caused colour differences in he same theme but it only gave liveliness to the movie.
Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) by Georges Melies, 1902
Resources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lumiere-brothers
http://www.premiere.fr/Star/Louis-LUMIERE
http://www.artnet.com/artists/blanc-demilly/auguste-lumi%C3%A8re- wcmylSssB8azFyjORYKJuA2
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