The Lumiere Brothers: Crash Course Film History #3

As cinema started to take off, things like "single viewer" devices weren't going to cut it as the medium advanced. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks to us about the Lumiere brothers, their invention of the Cinematographe, and the idea of projecting a movie to an audience.

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Images used are in the public domain or purchased from ThinkStock. Films courtesy of The Library of Congress.

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[GVxoxo]

I'm really glad that you've mentioned the screaming audience story has been debunked.
A lot of film lecturers continue to tell that story.

[Raeve_Noir]

Wow, those Lumiere brothers were pretty bright.

[georginaswinford]

I'm a first year film student. My lecturer has set an assignment to talk about the birth of film and cinema and I've been so overwhelmed by all the various etc. However, these past 3 CrashCourse videos have so beautifully summed up everything I was struggling with I'm no longer panicking about my assignment! Thank you guys so much! ☺️

[chaimhn]

I don't even need school. Keep it up Crash Course.

[StepperBox]

"The family business, like all my businesses, teetered on the brink of bankruptcy until the brothers took over."

Wait, as in the brothers Green??

[thesingularity]

We need a music theory crash course and a music history crash course or at least a rock and roll history crash course.

[Lazy_Llama]

My respect for Thomas Edison has diminished considerably after watching this.

[privatethrace]

I really love this new format and the "what we learned" section at the end!

[ReallyEthan]

Its cool the parallels you can draw between the vaudeville skits and actualites and everything on Vine. Because the vines were short and the original movies were short creators seemed to do the same type of performances.

[hammphotography]

Thank you Crash Course my parents and I thought switching from public school to homeschool would hard. But with your help it's not as far as homework and studying.

[sogghartha]

Fun fact, in the Netherlands, a cinema is still called a bioscoop.

[therealquade]

My favorite thing is the way we went from black and white to color film. One lens goes to a beam splitter that is reflected through differently colored lenses. one is red, one is blue, and one is green, Then each of those filtered splits each goes to a separate film, and is developed separately, Then Rather than being finished as black and white, they are finished as white and tint, of red, green, and blue, and are layered together, resulting in color images. Later this would be done with different emulsions that develop with different specific frequencies of light, and in different colors. the first method I described is Technicolor, and the second is how Polaroids work. Of course now almost everything is digital and we just have grids of sensors that detect specific frequencies of light and cluster them together into pixels, which somehow just isn't as cool.

[vintiagrawal]

I just love his personal commentary. It’s so fun to watch 😂

[jimbrentar]

still no mention of Louis Le Prince.  NEED UPDATING!

[nedkuczmynda]

The alternate explanation of the train reaction makes sense. I tried to explain it to my brother once and realized how silly it was.
Me: It was so unfamiliar that they thought it was real and they were in danger
Him: Were they stupid?

[armchairrocketscientist]

Something that I love about this series is that it has given made me more confident in my opinions of games. Film was once viewed as a shallow fad like video games often are. Someday though, I'm positive that the general public will have a much higher view of them.

[AnnoyingMoose]

3:18 I LOVE how you point out that moving pictures should not be recorded in portrait mode!!!

[Davao]

am i the only one that gets goosebumps when you hear the intro music?

[aii]

It's weird. Midway into the video I strongly recalled the smell of popcorn and the night air.

[violetmoon]

Goddamnit crashcourse! Why must I love these series?!