Video Production History

VIDEO PRODUCTION HISTORYBy: 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