Movie projector

Magic lantern presentations may often have had relatively small audiences, but the very popular phantasmagoria and dissolving views shows were usually performed in proper theatres, large tents or especially converted spaces with plenty seats.

The oldest known successful screenings of stroboscopic animation were performed by Ludwig Döbler in 1847 in Vienna and taken on a tour to several large European cities for over a year.

In reply to the introduction of the phonograph and a magazine's suggestion that it could be combined with projection of stereoscopic photography, Donisthorpe stated that he could do even better and announce that he would present such images in motion.

For each scene, 24 glass plates with chronophotographic images were attached to the edge of a large rotating wheel and thrown on a small opal-glass screen by very short synchronized flashes from a Geissler tube.

He demonstrated his photographic motion from March 1887 until at least January 1890 to circa 4 or 5 people at a time, in Berlin, other large German cities, Brussels (at the 1888 Exposition Universelle), Florence, Saint Petersburg, New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

[citation needed] After investing much time, effort and means in a slow and troublesome development of a definitive system, Le Prince eventually seemed satisfied with the result and had a demonstration screening scheduled in New York in 1890.

His widow and son managed to draw attention to Le Prince's work and eventually he came to be regarded as the true inventor of film (a claim also made for many others).

The Eidoloscope, devised by Eugene Augustin Lauste for the Latham family, was demonstrated for members of the press on 21 April 1895 and opened to the paying public on May 20, in a lower Broadway store with films of the Griffo-Barnett prize boxing fight, taken from Madison Square Garden's roof on 4 May.

In 2014, numerous popular filmmakers—including Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan—lobbied large studios to commit to purchase a minimum amount of 35 mm film from Kodak.

[citation needed] For example, digital projectors contain no moving parts except fans, can be operated remotely, are relatively compact and have no film to break, scratch or change reels of.

The illusion of motion in projected films is a stroboscopic effect that has conventionally been attributed to persistence of vision and later often to (misinterpretations of) beta movement and the phi phenomenon known from Gestalt psychology.

The exact neurological principles are not yet entirely clear, but the retina, nerves and brain create the impression of apparent movement when presented with a rapid sequence of near-identical still images and interruptions that go unnoticed (or are experienced as flicker).

Silent films usually were not projected at constant speeds, but could vary throughout the show because projectors were hand-cranked at the discretion of the projectionist, often following some notes provided by the distributor.

[citation needed] When the electric motor supplanted hand cranking in both movie cameras and projectors, a more uniform frame rate became possible.

The birth of sound film created a need for a steady playback rate to prevent dialog and music from changing pitch and distracting the audience.

Using an aperture plate to accomplish a wider aspect ratio is inherently wasteful of film, as a portion of the standard frame is unused.

The anamorphic format uses special optics to squeeze a high aspect ratio image onto a standard Academy frame thus eliminating the need to change the costly precision moving parts of the intermittent mechanisms.

In a commercial theater, the screen also has millions of very small, evenly spaced holes in order to allow the passage of sound from the speakers and subwoofer which often are directly behind it.

One advantage of this system (at least for the theatre management) was that if a program was running a few minutes late for any reason, the projectionist would simply omit one (or more) reels of film to recover the time.

[citation needed] In the early years, with no automation, errors were far from unknown: these included starting a movie that had not been rewound and getting reels confused, so they were projected in the wrong order.

This is very useful when dealing with the mass crowds that an extremely popular film may generate in the first few days of showing, as it allows for a single print to serve more patrons.

The most popular home content were comedic shorts (typically less than 20 minutes in length in the original release) and bundles of cartoons previously seen in movie theaters.

In fact, the common 35 mm camera, developed by Leica, was designed to use this film stock and was originally intended to be used for test shots by movie directors and cinematographers.

In 16 mm, this optical soundtrack is a single mono track placed on the right side of the projected image, and the sound head is 26 frames after the gate.

The space between solid points represented amplitude and was picked up by the photo-electric cell on the other side of a steady, thin beam of light being shined through it.

Film prints equipped with CDS did not have the conventional analog optical or magnetic soundtracks to serve as a back-up in case the digital sound was unreadable.

The three formats that followed, Dolby Digital, DTS and SDDS, can co-exist with each other and the analog optical soundtrack on a single version of the film print.

Dolby Digital officially premiered with the film Batman Returns, but it was earlier tested at some screenings of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

The CDs are fed into a special, modified computer that syncs up with the film through the use of DTS time code, decompresses the sound, and passes it through to a standard cinema processor.

While neither a technical nor a commercial success, the business model survives as implemented by the documentary production, limited release locations, and long-running exhibitions of IMAX dome movies.