The Story of Communication:

Movies—Fascinating Facts

• The magic lantern, forerunner of motion picture projection, was once considered devilish magic.
• We see a series of still pictures as continuous motion because it takes the eye and the brain a fraction of a second to lose an image. It’s called persistence of vision.
• Draw a cage on one side of a disc and a canary on the other. When the disc is spun, the canary will appear inside the cage.
• Movies can be traced back to a bet by the railroad tycoon who founded Stanford University about the movement of a trotting horse.
• Thomas Edison did not invent motion pictures. He ordered his chief engineer to build a camera and projector.
• The first portable movie camera, a French invention, was also a projector and a film printer.
• The first paying movie audience, seeing ocean waves approaching, ducked in fear of getting drenched.
• The four Warner brothers got into the movie business by opening a nickelodeon. To seat patrons, they borrowed chairs from a nearby funeral parlor. During funerals, their patrons had to stand.
• One of the first news films was of a Spanish American War naval battle. It was a fraud, using toy boats in a bathtub.
• Silent film cinemas were usually quite noisy.
• Hollywood was created by independent movie makers hiding from detectives hired to shut down patent infringement.
• The Keystone Kops were especially popular with immigrant audiences who were delighted that they could laugh at police.
• Charlie Chaplin’s salary rose in one year from $125 weekly to $10,000 weekly plus a bonus.
• Warner Bros. introduced sound movies because they were nearly bankrupt and desperate.
• As a experiment in color, some movies had film scenes dipped in vats of dye, such as red for scenes of a burning building.
• Hollywood movies gained popularity in Europe during World War I when European studios shut down for lack of film stock. Cellulose was needed for explosives
• Bollywood, India’s film industry, turns out four times as many films as Hollywood.
• The film All Quiet on the Western Front, made a dozen years after the horrors of World War I, was denounced for its pacifism and was banned by a number of European governments.
• The movie industry fought the nascent television industry hard. Today, television provides a big slice of movie income.
• Some countries turn a blind eye to DVD piracy. Chief among the victims are their own movie industries, which attract fewer patrons.
• The Blair Witch Project was made for $31,000. It has earned close to $250 million.

Other Resources for Movies

• Websites to Explore

• Timeline

• Sample Chapter (you must have Adobe Reader)

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