Film Firsts
They presented a series of short films accompanied by a pianist even before their infamous projection of The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (also 1895).
The Lumière brothers
In the first famous director-composer collaboration, director L. Frank Baum collaborated with composer Louis Ferdinand Gottschalk on feature-length scores for his films for this famous franchise.
The Wizard of Oz
He wrote the first score for a dramatic picture.
Camille Saint-Saëns
This technique of simultaneous projection of film and sound eluded filmmakers for decades.
Synchronization
These TWO are behind the invention of the Kinetograph and Kinetoscope.
Thomas Edison and W.K.L Dickson
At the premiere of this groundbreaking film in the use of special effects, director George Méliès’s himself played piano.
A Trip to the Moon
Fritz Lang’s science-fiction epic about a futuristic dystopia originally featured a score by Gottfried Hupertz.
Metropolis
He “la-la-la’ed” the score for the early talkie City Lights.
Charlie Chaplin
Described by Peter Mark Roget in the 19th century, this phenomenon occurs when the brain retains an image for approximately one-fifth of a second after it is perceived.
Persistence of Vision
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took this first ever photograph.
“View from the Window at Le Gras”
This film produced by Thomas Edison marked the first instance of tracked-in, pre-existing classical music being used in cinema.
The Dickson Experimental Sound Film
It was the first film with synced-up dialogue, music and sound – Hollywood’s first “talking picture” or talkie.
The Jazz Singer
This technology first used in the adventure movie Don Juan had the first synchronized score.
Sound-on-disk
Introduced by Max Wertheimer, it allows images displayed in rapid succession to appear in constant motion (e.g. flip books).
The Phi Phenomenon
The invention by Louis Daguerre in 1839 significantly reduced exposure time to mere minutes, leading to the birth of practical photography.
The Daguerreotype
As vaudeville's popularity declined in the early 1900s, these storefront theaters emerged as the new favorite form of entertainment.
Nickelodeons
In 1928, Walt Disney employed sound-on-disk technology in this animated film.
Steamboat Willie
He composed an orchestral score for Grigori Kozintsev and Leonit Trauberg’s The New Babylon employing irony – grandiose waltzes to reflect bourgeois decadence.
Dmitri Shostakovich
These cylinders have sequential images that appear to move when spun.
Zoethropes
He captures a horse's motion using multiple cameras, each triggered by a tripwire, marking the inception of motion studies.
Eadward Muybridge
Charles le Bargy and André Clamettes’s film incorporated the first soundtrack – a score written specifically for the film by the most famous composer at the time in France.
L’Assassinat du duc de Guise
Edmund Meisel's atonal score was blamed for causing riots at the Berlin premiere of this film.
Battleship Potemkin
This band is behind the bubble gum hit “Stuck in the Middle With You” used int the torture scene of Reservoir Dogs.
Steelers Wheel
This dark chamber employs an optical phenomenon where light passing through a small hole into a dark space projects an inverted image of the outside world onto the opposite surface.
Camera obscura
Developed by the Lumière Brothers, it was a groundbreaking invention that allowed for both the filming and projection of moving images by the same device.
The Cinématographe