Auguste and Louis Lumiere were French brothers who became
recognized as some of the first filmmakers.
The two brothers were born in the
city Besancon in France in 1862 (Auguste) and 1864 (Louis.) Growing up the
brothers’ father Antoine Lumiere ran a manufacturing business, which sold
photographic equipment. Their father opened this business after being a
portrait painter for so long, but then realized a photography business would
hold many more financial rewards. Louis was the first of the two brothers to
begin experimenting with photography along side his father. When Louis was 19
he developed a process to develop film known as the “Etiquette Bleue” process. This
process brought a great amount of business to their father’s shop. Their
inventions first began when the brothers father Antoine returned home from a
demonstration of Edison’s Peephole Kinetoscope and he showed Louis a piece of
the Kinetoscope film. Then Auguste started to make the first experiments, where
the two wanted to fix the problems they saw in Edison’s invention. The first
problem was to reduce the size and weight of the camera because the brothers
found it to be far too bulky for use. The second problem was to fix the
“nature” of the Kinetoscope, only one person could view the films at a time,
the brothers wanted multiple person to see them.
After a year of experimenting, the brothers had created an
invention called the Cinematographe, which combing a camera with a printer, and
a projector. The Cinematographe fixed all the problems the brothers found with
Edison’s camera.
One of the most well known short films (at the time regular
length films) is Le Squelette Joyeux or The Skeleton of Joy. This stop motion
film depicts a “joyful” skeleton leap and dancing around while loosing and
re-attaching his limbs. The minute long film shows a creature that is often
mis-interpreted as a dark and ominous character, but the Lumiere brothers
create a happy and joyful character.
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