A Brief History of Documentaries

Great Train Robbery 1903;

- the 1900's saw the dawn of cinema.

- the first still image was taken in 1897.

- during this period, there was really no structure to a film.

- because of this, one can now witness how framing, shot types and editing are all vitally important processes when creating the narrative.

- when watching 'The Great Train Robbery', it's easy to see how - when taking any shot - it needs to be really tightly shot.

- this way, the audience are in no doubt of where they should be looking when watching a film.

The Lumiere Brothers;

- invented their own type of processing for films and documentaries.

- produced a series of films called "actualities" - massively focused on the idea of realism for an audience member.

- one such documentary titled "A Train Pulling into a Station" caused riots when it was released, as the way in which the shot was taken made it appear to audience members as though the train was going to quite literally come into the cinema.

- it scared people so much, that they ran out of the cinema screaming.

- this was because people at the time had only either seen a train in real life or in a photograph - not as a moving image.

- they were French inventors and the pioneer manufacturers of photographic equipment, who devised an early motion-picture camera and projector - the 'cinematographe'.

- they created the film 'La Sortie des ouvriers de l'usire Lumiere' - which consisted of a single camera used for both photographing and projecting 16 frames per second.

- their first films were titled "actualities" and focused on real life e.g; 'The Arrival of A Train", "A Game of Cards", "Feeding a Baby" etc.

- then at the start of 1896 they sent a trained crew of innovative cameraman-projectionists to cities throughout the world to show films and shoot new material.