WEBVTT - Invention Playlist: The Motion Picture, Part 3 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:09.080 Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, 0:00:09.200 --> 0:00:12.200 welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Land, and I'm 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:14.800 Joe McCormick, and we're back to finish out our discussion 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:17.960 of the invention in the early days of the motion picture. 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:20.880 Now last time I think should have been the episode 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:23.919 where we talked with Scott Benjamin about the murder mystery 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:27.280 or the maybe murder mystery, the disappearance mystery of louis 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:30.840 La Prince, the person who actually did shoot inventive film 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:35.560 camera and shot movies before anybody before Lumire Brothers, before 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:39.440 Edison and his team. But in the episode before that 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:43.640 we talked about the earliest commercially viable motion picture technologies. 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:46.840 So by the mid eighteen nineties you had the flourishing 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:50.839 of Thomas Edison and W. K. L. Dixon's kinematograph and 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:55.800 kinematoscope in America, which made roughly fifteen to sixteen second 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:58.280 movies that you could watch by sticking your head and 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:02.400 a viewfinder in a cabinet. Um Again, I love the 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:04.319 image like you just got your face down in the 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:06.360 cabinet and somebody walks up behind you and puts the 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:09.640 Kickney sign on or whatever happens in these parlors. I'm 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:11.560 sure it was a rowdy scene. And then around the 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:14.560 same time, you've also got the cinematograph of the Lumier 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.800 Brothers in France, which projected films on a wall. And 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:19.800 this is a kind of different thing because it allowed 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:23.240 this communal viewing experience, which is last time we talked 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:25.440 about how we think this is sort of important both 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:29.200 culturally and economically, that you can show films for a 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.120 for a big audience all at the same time. Yeah, 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:34.440 and and I think that when we look at the 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:38.320 history of film viewing and film technology, we see that 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:41.679 that push and pull between the communal experience and the 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:45.400 individual experience, whether it's the communal experience of of the 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:50.040 Lumiar Brothers invention, or movie houses or let's go, or 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:53.920 places where we go back towards the the individual experience, 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:57.320 such as suddenly being able to watch films at home 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:01.320 on television, or watch films on a vcr um other 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:04.760 home media advancements, right down to our our modern use 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:08.440 of smartphones where you can you can just crawl underneath 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:11.079 the blanket and watch whatever you want with your headphones in, 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:13.440 and it's you know, you're you're all but just shoving 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:16.799 the screen directly into your brain. And I do think 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.320 I would bet that film historians have some interesting thoughts 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.920 about how the changes in technology, especially like home video, 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:27.600 changed the art of film itself. Yeah. Yeah, I mean 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:30.280 it's had major certainly that I've I've read some about 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:34.240 its effects, say on the adult cinema industry, where they're 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:37.960 obvious clearly there, yeah, clear clearly there, you know, obvious 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:41.000 influences the technology on on that genre. But I was 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:45.320 thinking just the other night about a different avenue of 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:49.840 film enjoyment, that being writhing. Oh yes, So we're of 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:52.640 course both big fans of Mystery Science Theater three thousand. 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.119 If you've never seen it, it's well, you've probably seen 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:57.720 images of it. It's the old TV show where they 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:00.359 it was a sci fi comedy premise where they take 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.480 old movies that were generally very bad and poorly made, 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:06.000 and you'd have hosts who made jokes about the film. 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:08.280 As you watch, you'd see a little silhouettes bobbing in 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:10.480 front of the screen. A human and two robots forced 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:13.480 to watch bad movies, and in order to survive the experience, 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:15.359 they riff on and they make jokes, they talk back 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:18.720 to the screen. Um, you know, all the sort of 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.399 you know, humorous shenanigans created by the great Joe Hodgson. Yeah, 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:25.120 but this is of course turned into a wider genre 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:27.919 than just the show Mystery Science Theater three thousand that's 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.240 been off the air for twenty years or whatever. Well 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:33.360 it's back on Netflix. Well that's true, but so it 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:35.080 was off the air for a long time, but the 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:38.880 the tradition continued. I think it inspired a sort of 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:42.360 style of media presentation. And it wasn't the only one. 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:44.880 I mean there's also you were talking before we went 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:48.000 on Mike Today about this other phenomenon of not people 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.480 talking during the movie, but the TV movie host what 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:54.440 do you call that? Like a daytime horror host. Yeah, 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:59.160 like Grandpa Monster hosting movies back back in the nineties 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:03.120 on like the Turn Channelsvira Helvira or Joe Bob Briggs 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.640 Monster Vision where they're not chatting during the movie, but 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:09.760 they're these bumper segments where they're saying, Hey, how about 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:11.960 that film you're just watched, how about those how about 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:14.080 that scene with that monster? And then maybe they crack 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.760 a few jokes. Right, So even if you're at home 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.440 alone watching the movie. It's kind of like when you 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:21.480 go out to the movies with your friends and if 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:23.720 it's a bad movie, lean over next to each other 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:26.120 and make jokes about what you're watching. Yeah, so I 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:31.560 wondered to what extent like these are reactions to to 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:36.040 these these different technological advancements where movie viewing has leaned 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.000 away from the communal towards the individual experience. But then 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:43.160 we compensate for that through the pseudo communal experience of 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:46.719 riffing or the host speaking to you about the film. 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:48.640 And then later on when we get more into the 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:51.839 DVD age, you of course have commentary tracks, which I 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:55.880 think the better commentary tracks I'm thinking of, particularly like 0:04:55.920 --> 0:05:00.280 the John Carpenter and Kurt Russell commentaries. That's commentary tracks, 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:01.960 you know, where it's it's like you're hanging out in 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:04.279 the room with them listening to them. You're watching the 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:07.120 film with them. To a certain extent, listening to any 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:11.159 Arnold Schwarzenegger commentaries track where it just explains what's happening 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:14.359 in the scene and it's in total re called the 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:18.360 the unbelievable distortion of the face. But yeah, even that 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:20.800 is you know, sort of a communal experience. It's like 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:24.560 you're you're watching the film with Arnold, So anyway, that's it. 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:27.360 I haven't researched that to see if anybody else's has 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:30.040 given you know, a lot more serious and structured thought 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:33.800 to the nature of riffing and when it's important. But 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:38.520 it came to mind thinking about the way the technology 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:41.080 influences our experience. Yeah, I have a hunch that you're 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:43.120 exactly right that there is this push and pull and 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:45.480 that we want, you know, we want to be able 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:50.080 to have privacy privacy bound experiences, you know, within our 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:54.839 own boundaries, within our own you know, the convenience of 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.039 being able to do it at home whenever we want 0:05:57.080 --> 0:05:59.720 to watch a movie or something. But also there's there's 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:01.760 part of us that cries out for that kind of 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:04.840 instant reaction. You're wanting to be able to lean over 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:06.599 to the person next to you and talk about what 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:09.080 you're seeing right like, and a counter to that would 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.400 of course be some of these examples that you've seen 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:16.720 of movie theater innovations designed to limit the communal experience. 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:19.880 When you're like dividers next to your head, that sort 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:22.520 of thing. Well, I mean I guess it's it's also 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:24.479 going to be annoying if you're just trying to pay 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:26.320 attention to the movie and the people right in front 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.000 of you or having a conversation about whatever. Yeah. Well, 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:31.080 it's the human experience as a whole. Right. We want 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:33.679 to be alone, but we want to be surrounded by people. 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:35.880 And if we're and we have we have whichever we are, 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:37.919 we want the other one exactly. The grass is always 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:40.440 a little greener, right, But so we should come back 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:42.080 to the early days of film and pick up on 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:45.480 this technological journey. Okay, So yeah, So we had the 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:50.280 Edison and Dixon kinematograph and kinematoscope, and then you had 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:54.640 the Lumier brothers with their cinematograph, and these established some 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:57.839 slightly different early traditions of films. And one of the 0:06:57.880 --> 0:06:59.960 things we talked about before is that there weren't already 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:02.560 films waiting to be shown. So the people who invented 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:05.760 these camera and projector technologies had to make their own 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:07.560 films to go in them. They had to be not 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:13.040 only inventors of the technology but media producers. So Edison 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:16.120 and Dixon's early films were usually like short recordings of 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:18.200 things that would be kind of like circus acts or 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:22.240 vaudeville performances. Here's the strong Man, here's a dancer, acrobats, 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:25.320 or something something quick and interesting to look at that 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:29.040 would be interesting without sound and last about fifteen seconds, 0:07:29.040 --> 0:07:31.600 because that's how long the films could be. Based on 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:35.000 the limitations of their technology, the loomis Are Brothers created 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.200 these short documentaries of real life with scenes like a 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:41.560 train approaching the camera, or I was reading about one 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:43.880 that's just five men diving off of a jetty and 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.520 bathing in the sea. There's one that's got a bunch 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.960 of photographers getting off of a riverboat for a photography 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:55.520 conference in Leone. It's riveting stuff, but people were really 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:58.880 into it. Yeah, I mean, just it's the magic of 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:02.520 seeing the moving picture or without with with without living 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:05.320 in an age of just ubiquitous moving pictures like we 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:07.960 have today, exactly. Uh. And so the Lumiar Oh, but 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:11.600 the Lumiar Brothers also created at least one fictional story 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:14.160 that we mentioned in that previous episode, the classic The 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:17.160 Sprinkler Sprinkled Yes, which is yeah, this is one of 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:20.600 the first ten films that they that they unleashed and 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:23.960 It is clearly a humorous little fiction piece where a 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:27.440 gardener's hose is uh is stepped on by a child 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:29.280 and then of course he does the natural thing, right 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:33.520 then I comedic clown choice and looks down the hose, 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:35.480 and then that's when the water squirts him in the face. 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:37.760 I actually watched it today, and not only does he 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:39.760 get squirted in the face, then he chases down the 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.080 child and beats the child savagely. That's how it ends. 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:45.960 You know, it was a different, different type of type 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:48.480 of humor back in those days. Uh, if only we 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:51.520 could have had the sprinkler sprinkled cinematic universe where they 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.080 come back and and and that would be explored in 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.960 a later film. But but you know, take the beating aside. 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:00.959 It is exactly the type of human that has continued 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:03.400 to be an important part of motion pictures like right 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:06.080 up until today. Oh of course, yeah, I mean slapstick humor. 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:08.280 It's still a very cheap way to make a movie 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:10.520 that can make a lot of money. But by the 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:13.680 mid eighteen nineties films, we we should say we're still 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:19.600 mostly something like a curiosity and a technological spectacle and 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.319 less like a fundamental medium. For stories and mass culture 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:25.880 the way they are in our culture today. So what 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:28.400 changed in between? You know, how do we get from 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.439 that point to this point? One thing that I think 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:34.880 is really important along that journey is that, of course, 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:37.400 there were plenty of technological upgrades that came along to 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:40.160 improve what people could do with motion picture filming and 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:43.480 projection early on. But the one innovation that I think 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:47.000 might be most important early on is something that is 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:51.320 usually called the Latham loop. Now, we've talked before about 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:54.280 how early films were less than a minute long, right there. 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:57.760 There were technical reasons for this. It wasn't an artistic choice. 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:01.520 One of the technical reasons was the strains put on 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:05.000 recording media, and so these early films were shot on 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:08.760 celluloid film strip and celluloid film was good. It was 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:11.760 more durable than the flimsy paper film of the past, 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:14.640 but still it had its limits, and one was this, 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:18.040 the more film you've got coiled up on a roll 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:20.400 and you know you're pulling on it, the harder it 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:23.040 is to pull to feed along past the shutter. Like 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.160 you can sort of imagine the physics of this, right, 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:27.720 you know, trying to pull tape off of a huge 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:31.000 role and pull it really fast. And the way film 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:34.000 cameras and projectors worked at the time was to grab 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:37.280 the film along these perforated holes along the side. So 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:39.280 if you've seen film before, you know you see these 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.280 sprocket holes along the side of it. That's so the 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:45.480 latch or the lever can grab the film advanced at 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:48.200 exactly one frame in front of the shutter and then 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:51.080 move it along another frame after that. Uh. And so 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:53.760 if you try to record or project a really long 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.920 piece of motion picture, you would inevitably end up tearing 0:10:56.960 --> 0:10:59.720 it in the process, often by ripping through the sprocket 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:02.640 hole as you tried to advance the film, and this 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:06.160 actually put an artistic limit on the medium. Yeah, I 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:10.719 was reading a article for the American Society of Cinematographers 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:14.720 by the film filmographer and film historian David Samuelson, and 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:17.920 Samuelson writes that in the nineties, the problem with the 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:21.960 tension on celluloid film meant that you couldn't pull more 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:24.600 than maybe like a hundred feet or so about thirty 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:28.199 meters of film through the camera projector without tearing it, 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.720 and this limited films to roughly two minutes run time. 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:33.960 Now in our brands that we're thinking like, how do 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:36.920 you tell the story of RoboCop in two minutes? This 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:40.480 is a robocopless world, you can't have it. But but 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:42.760 it was actually a different question that led to the 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:46.280 defeat of this technological hurdle. And that question was a 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.800 more I don't know, kind of maybe more mercenary economic one. 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:51.480 But maybe that's just me saying that because I'm not 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:54.880 a big, big sports fan. The question was how do 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:58.840 you shoot and play back an entire boxing match? Now, 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:02.520 it's funny that and this reveals how little, uh interest 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:04.800 I have in sports that I didn't even think about 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:08.240 the idea of filming and exhibiting sports matches as like 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:10.480 a major early use of film. But of course this 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:12.520 is this is going to be big money, right yeah, 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.160 I mean I was mainly thinking about the you know, 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:17.640 the artistic possibilities here and maybe do a certain extent 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:22.440 of journalistic opportunity possibilities. But then again, journalism would cover 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:25.000 sports as well. There will be an interest in capturing 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:28.600 what occurred exactly. So there's a family company run by 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:32.000 an American named Woodville Latham and his sons, and they 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:35.800 wanted to pioneer this process to make money off of 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:38.960 exhibiting boxing matches after they had happened. So the idea, 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:41.680 as you film the fight, you screen it later, and 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:45.360 you charge admission. And obviously most boxing matches would have 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:47.760 been too long, they would tear the film because they're 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:50.000 going to need more than a hundred feet there. So 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:53.480 the answer is something called a film loop or a 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:57.600 Latham loop. And this invention essentially used wheels to spool 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:02.120 out a kind of short, slackened loop of film ahead 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:05.280 of the camera or projector shutter, so that when the 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.640 lover grabs the film to pull it down rapidly advanced 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.520 it past the shutter frame by frame, it wouldn't be 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:15.040 pulling tight on the entire roll of film and just 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:17.800 be pulling down from this sort of slackened loop of 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:20.800 film right above it. Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.959 absolutely so. According to Samuelson, though Woodville Latham gets the 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:28.080 name credit for this invention the Latham loop, a sworn 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:30.640 statement by our old friend W. K. L. Dixon, who 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:35.559 remember invented Edison's kinetograph, indicated that the invention was actually 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:39.080 the work of a guy named Eugene Lost, who was 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:42.880 otherwise known for inventing the idoloscope, which was a wide 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.600 film projector, and also as a side note, Samuelson notes 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:50.640 that years later, in nineteen eleven, Lost would also travel 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:53.440 to America to quote give the first demonstration there of 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:58.080 a combined sound on film recording and reproduction system, though 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:01.520 his method was not ever success fully commercialized, and actually 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:04.880 synchronized sound didn't become mainstream in films until the late 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.160 nineteen twenties, so there was a ways to go before 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.959 that became big. Lost by the way, it spelled l 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:12.880 A U s T. Yeah, maybe that's Lost day or 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:15.360 maybe lust day. I don't I don't know either way, 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:18.640 he was quite the inventor. Yeah, totally double innovator here. 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:21.680 The Latham loop was a big deal. In addition to this, 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:26.480 this later uncommercialized sound on film process uh and the 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.120 Latham loop was such a big deal that Samuelson writes 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:31.400 about it, quote for filmmakers of the time, it was 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.960 as big a breakthrough as anything that has happened since. 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:39.040 And think about it again. This is so important because 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:42.120 this is what makes it possible to have long films. 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:45.600 Without it, we couldn't have long films right now, obviously, 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.880 I mean Obviously, prior to this technology, we we had 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:52.160 all these other storytelling mediums that were long form. We 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:56.960 had books, we had we had plays especially uh. But 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.320 but it but clearly like the medium was not to 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:05.240 receive uh, those longer form stories. Yet this allowed them 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:07.920 to receive those forms exactly. And I think this is 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:10.840 one reason early on you wouldn't have had people quite 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:14.400 yet thinking yes, this, you know, the film will become 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:17.320 the medium for visual novels, that we will adapt a 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:19.960 novel for film. If it would be like saying, look 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:22.280 at postage stamps, think of the stories we can tell 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:24.240 with postage stamps. And you're like, no, you can't. It's 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:26.600 just not that big. You can't put Macbeth on a 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:29.640 postage stamp. But then suddenly it's like, hey, we just 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:31.840 figured out whether a way that makes the stamps so 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:35.200 much bigger. And then suddenly the sky's the limit. Yeah. 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.320 And so there's another piece I read emphasizing the importance 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:40.440 of the loop that was pretty interesting. It's an article 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.440 I found in the Atlantic in two seventeen by Henry Giardina, 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:46.920 though originally it was from an essay series called object Lessons, 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:50.800 and its title is the Camera Technology that turned films 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:54.560 into stories and just talking about the Latham loop there. Uh, 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:58.000 and so it notes several things. Of course, I wanted 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:00.120 to know what's the deal with this boxing match that 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:02.840 the Lathams were into. Well, it's got the deets on that. 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.760 In May of eighteen nine, the Latham family successfully screened 0:16:06.800 --> 0:16:09.560 a boxing match in New York City and the boxers 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:14.000 were Charles Barnett and somebody named Young griff. Oh so, 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.200 I'm wondering, is this the inspiration of the character in 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:19.720 A Song of Ice and Fire. There's a young Griffo. 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:22.200 You don't remember Young griff He's in the books, but 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.080 not the show. I don't remember Young Griffin. Oh yeah, 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.280 well he's a young griff. I don't know who won 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:30.920 the fight. By the way, I'm pulling for Young Griffo though. 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:34.760 But so, this invention obviously wasn't just for boxing. The 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:38.080 film loop or the Latham loop, made longer motion pictures possible, 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:40.040 and we all know the stuff that came along with that. 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:45.200 Uh though. Giardina's article is also interesting in documenting the 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:50.280 obsessive tactics that Thomas Edison pursued in order to hinder 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:55.280 the early production of independent films and extract every dime 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:57.800 he could out of anybody trying to make a movie, 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:02.200 mostly through you know, uh, obnoxious patent claims, like you 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:05.000 try to patent every part of the process, and and 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:07.320 if somebody's doing it, he's going to be making money 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:10.840 on it. And remember early on, films were not thought 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:13.679 of yet as primarily as art or in terms of 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:18.080 copyright law. They were technology primarily framed in terms of 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:21.280 patent law. So ultimately they I mean, all these films 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:24.440 that are being produced, like there's still nothing but um 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:27.600 proof for the technology at this point, like that, like 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:29.879 the films have not really taken out of life of 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:33.240 their own, yeah exactly. I mean audiences were enjoying them, 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:35.919 but I don't think they thought of films yet. The 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:39.040 way we think of films is like this is another medium. 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.560 It's like, you know, it's like the written word, and 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:44.800 we think of film as being something like that. And 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:47.399 before we move on, I just have to mention also 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:51.120 that in this Jardina piece, it talks about how it's 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:55.640 been alleged that Edison didn't just use patent harassment on 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:57.399 on people who were trying to make films at the 0:17:57.480 --> 0:17:59.960 around the turn of the twentieth century. UH. It's also 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:02.679 been alleged that he used sheer, muscle and intimidation to 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:05.760 control the early film industry, And the author here talks 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:09.080 about an interview between Peter Bogdanovich, the you know, the 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:13.320 nineteen seventies filmmaker and UH and an early film director 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:16.160 who was working in the earliest days named Alan Duan, 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:20.680 who said that quote Edison sent gangsters across the country 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.480 to follow them when they when they went west, and 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:27.480 that the gangsters would shoot at their cameras. Quote most 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:30.240 companies only had one. Sometimes they'd wait until a fellow 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:32.639 was cleaning the camera and take a shot at it, 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:35.919 anything to destroy it. So I don't know if that 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:38.919 story is accurate, but wow, it does seem like another 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:43.240 tally in the Edison as villain column. Absolutely absolutely the 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:45.920 idea that you, I mean, there's so much um, I mean, 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:49.080 any film that gets made, it's kind of a miracle, right, 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:51.800 There's so much work that goes into it. And in 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.000 these days that was that was still the case as well. 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:56.760 But on top of that, you're gonna have Edison's gangsters 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.560 allegedly showing up and UH and potentially messing your camera. 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:03.160 That's awful. Yeah, So whether or not that story is true, 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.560 of course, Edison couldn't stop, you know, independent films entirely. 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:09.840 Films continued to develop in France and elsewhere, and then 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.119 even in the United States, filmmakers moved west and spread 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:15.959 out all over the place, and Edison's power wane. So 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:18.200 he just he couldn't put a lid on all of it. 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:20.879 So I think it's clear that the film loop or 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:24.760 the Latham loop, was a crucial invention enabling the transformation 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:28.639 of motion picture from just a technological spectacle into a 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:32.240 mainstream storytelling medium in an art form. Like it allowed 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:36.119 the creation of longer films, and it made possible new 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:38.159 you know, things that you could do with film editing. 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:40.560 Now we'll have to ask the question in a minute 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.840 who who picked up on this opportunity, Like who were 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:47.240 the artists who realized I can make art, I can 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:50.600 tell stories with this new medium? Uh, you know who 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:53.720 took advantage of the technology. But also I was just 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:57.960 wondering first about a question about film history as an 0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:01.040 example of something that can be generalized, How does a 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:07.000 new media technology come to be perceived in culture as 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:10.440 a legitimate art form? Because I remember maybe you weren't 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:12.760 aware of this, but I remember some debate in the 0:20:12.800 --> 0:20:16.000 mid to late two thousands where people would go back 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:18.720 and forth about whether or not video games can ever 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:23.040 be considered art, And uh, I don't maybe people still 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:25.680 have that debate today. I would say that to me, 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:29.080 you know, most video games to me don't seem like 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:31.640 things that I really think of as art. But I 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:33.919 don't have any problem at all with the idea that 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.720 they potentially can be, and some probably are. And you're 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:40.359 talking about the piece itself being in its entirety of 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:44.200 work of art, not merely like encompassing nice production design. Yeah, 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:47.480 that's a good question. I mean, certainly video games today, 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.160 you know, a lot of them have some beautiful designs 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:52.639 in them that you would think of as visual art. 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:57.360 So the question is once it incorporates gameplay, mechanics and 0:20:57.400 --> 0:20:59.800 all that kind of stuff, like, does does it lose 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.000 some artistic quality? Then? I don't know. I mean people 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:05.600 have to work that out among themselves. But I also 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:08.400 think about the same thing with the virtual reality. Can 0:21:08.400 --> 0:21:12.880