Talk:Auguste and Louis Lumière

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[edit] Some proposals for improvement

There are some things in this article that seem wrong to me.

This historical screening was based on their first film, the 45-second-long Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory)

This isn't correct, since they showed a total of ten films (as indicated later in the article). About the timing: most sources indicate 50 seconds, some say 1 minute. That's a bit theoretical anyway since the devices were activated by hand. So the duration was 50 seconds at 16 fps, or 60 seconds at 15 fps, or anything inbetween. Therefore there is no point in giving indications like 42 secs, 46 secs - those durations refer to the quicktime movies which have been captured at some arbitrary speed, it doesn't apply to the original movies which had all the same length: 17 meters of celluloid.

shot in 1895[2] with Léon Bouly's cinématographe device patented the previous year.

This isn't correct: as explained below, Bouly simply filed a patent, but the Lumière developed the Cinématographe by their own (although using ideas borrowed from Edison, Emile Reynaud, Marey, Demeny, Anschütz, Le Roy...)

Even though Max and Emil Skladanowsky, inventors of the Bioskop, had offered projected moving images to a paying public one month earlier (November 1, 1895, in Berlin), film historians consider the Grand Café screening to be the true birth of the cinema as a commercial medium. The reason is the Skladanowsky brothers' screening was not a motion pictures film but a slideshow of animated still photographs which is not cinematography. See also Chris Marker's La Jetée which is based on the same process.

This paragraph seems a bit too long. I would at least remove the reference to La Jetée, although it's an interesting reference, it doesn't have much to do with the articles topic... 1904.CC 03:25, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, and made several of these edits. --Jeremy Butler 13:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Léon Bouly's cinématographe

The article says that the Lumière shot their first film in 1895 "with Léon Bouly's cinématographe device patented the previous year" - that doesn't correlate with my references (Chardère, B.; Borgé, G. and M. (1985): Les Lumière). This book tells the following story: in the end of 1894/beginning of 1895 the Lumière built their own cinématographe, whith original features like the film-pulling mechanism. Also, in order to get good results, they had to invent their own brand of 35mm film! The technician who built the prototype, following the Lumière Brother's instructions, was Charles Moisson, mechanician at the Lumière Factory.

Léon Bouly indeed filed the first brevet for a machine called "cinématographe", on february 12th 1892 for the camera and december 27th 1893 for the projector. According to Chardère, this machine was never completed, and the Lumière didn't know about it at that time. (note: Bernard Chardère is director of the Lumière Institute, so his opinion could be biaised...)

The Lumière Brothers requested their brevet on feburary 13th 1895, for a period of 15 years (several improvements were aded to it during 1895 and 1896). Would be glad to hear if anybody has different information... bzzp 19:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi!

Can anyone give me any hints where this quote is from: "the cinema is an invention without any future". I spent some hours searching, but I couldn't verify it. --de:Benutzer:SoniC

This is attributed to the Lumière brothers, but I think we should rewrote this part. They were serious industrials, the ex-Lumiere company (merged with Ilford) is still an important actor today in the photographic industry. IMO they were not so stupid, simply movie industries wasn't a part of their industrial strategy. Ericd 20:39, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

According to Chardère (1985), pp.97-98, [quoting a letter by Louis Lumière] after the first projection, Antoine Lumière said this to Georges Méliès who asked to buy a prototype of the cinématographe. They were offered huge amounts (up to 50'000 francs) by the directors of Musée Grevin and the Folies Bergère, but refused because they wanted to market their invention by their own. So it looks like they simply tried to calm down the concurrence. From Mai 1897, the Cinématographe can be purchased at a retail price of 1650 francs. 1904.CC 02:53, 25 March 2007 (UTC)