Crash Course: Film History

The history of cinema, and how movies trick the brain into understanding that a movie is a movie.

After serial photography became a thing, it wasn't long before motion pictures started to develop; and, at the front of that development was Thomas Edison.

The Lumiere brothers invention of the Cinematographe, and the idea of projecting a movie to an audience.

After the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison got the ball rolling with Vaudeville acts and Actualites, the time was coming for movie magic and fiction to make an appearance; the time was coming for filmmakers like Georges Melies and Alice Guy-Blache.

The development of the language of films by filmmakers like Edwin S. Porter and his films, "Life of an American Fireman" and "The Great Train Robbery."

Movies transitioned from short novelties to big, epic, feature films; the birth of the feature film and the work of D.W. Griffith.