What Are Movies

Movies are not made of one continuous image, but thousands of still pictures that create the illusion of movement. The illusion works because our eyes need a little time to take in what they see. Every minute of a movie requires more than 27m of film. Thanks to the success of movies, an entire industry exists just to meet the film demand. Most modern movies are shot on a standard gauge of 35mm film.

To create smooth movement means taking at least 16 photographs per send with the advance in film equal between frames to keep the picture steady. Early cameras failed to solve these problems. However in 1889, Thomas Edison and William Dickson perfected a working camera with which they made a short movie of a man. This camera was the basis of most modern cameras.

Thomas Edison showed his movies in coin operated machines that allowed only one person to watch. These movies were still very popular even with their limitations. In France, the Lumiere brothers saw the potential of movies with large audiences and in 1895, they built a movie camera that also worked as a projector.

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