venture you ’re the director of a movie . You require to indicate to the audience that something important is happen . perhaps your hero sandwich is front off against his or her mortal foeman for the first sentence , or is reunite with a long lose love after many long time . Naturally , there are a telephone number of filming technique at your disposal , butshould you choose dull movement , you ’d bein good caller ; it ’s a favorite proficiency of filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa , Sam Peckinpah , John Woo , and Wes Anderson .
Of naturally , metre is n’t literally slowing down for your characters — it just feel that way for the audience . There are a few unlike technique that a director or cinematographer can use to achieve dull movement , each of which probably strays very far from what August Musger , the original inventor of the effect , could have imagined .
A PRIEST, PHYSICIST, AND MOVIE LOVER
August Musger
was born in 1868 in Eisenerz , an older minelaying town in Styria , Austria . A gifted student throughout his childhood , he graduated from the Faculty of Theology and was ordained in 1890 , after which he spent two twelvemonth dish up as a Kaplan , or apriest ’s assistant . He beganstudying mathematics , physics , and drawing in Grazduring this clip , eventually becoming a teacher of these subjects in 1899 . When he was n’t teaching , he was likely take in a film .
In the former 1900s , motion moving-picture show were a relatively new art contour . Not much time had passed since one of the reality ’s first film , the Lumière brothers’sL’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat(1896 ) , allegedly direct audiences screaming out of the theater , but motility pictures were becoming a popular pastime . The first “ jukebox ” open on June 19 , 1905 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , allowing grudge of hoi polloi access to the cinema for only five cent a pop . By 1907 , some 2 million Americans had visit a moving-picture show theater .
Still , the technology was primitive . projector used intermittent motion , in which a mechanism hold a frame of the motion picture in place for a schism second before the film advanced . The hand - crank machines had shutter that block light and caused fanfare of duskiness between form , which was necessary to trick the eye and brain into seeing motion . If all was manoeuver swimmingly , and the cranking was moving at a consistent pace of around 16 to 24 frames per secondly , the flashes would be imperceptible to the human eye — but they became apparent when the moving-picture show was moving slowly . Because the projectors were cranked by hand , the frame rate was highly variable , causing moving picture to flicker and jerk . ( That ’s one theory for why we call film “ flicks . ” )
CONTINUOUS MOTION
Musger cogitate he could pay off the flickering by creating continuous motion — or having the film move with the shutter open — within a projector . It was easier enounce than done . Just dally movie without the shutter made the image icon blur , so he developed a method of “ ocular compensation ” for the movement of the pic . To do this , Musger divided a dark sleeping accommodation into two area : In one was a conical crystalline lens , a rack of mirrors , and a rotatable prism ; in the other were the tumbler pigeon that , along with the wall , guided the film strip .
During projection , a lightheaded source placed outside the apparatus shone into an opening ( n ) contrive to let visible light to move into . The brightness level illuminated a soma of pic ( e ) that was bring out by a gap ( cholecalciferol ) in the rampart along which it run , projecting that trope onto a mirror on the rotating mirror cycle ( c ) . The image bounced off the mirrored steering wheel onto an angled mirror ( located at u ) that projected it through a lens ( b ) and onto the aerofoil where the moving-picture show was being catch . Rather than using a shutter to block the sparkle in between frame of film , as in intermittent motion , Musger ’s setup fed the picture continuously , using wheels that rotated at the same speed as the mirror wheel . The mirror from the wheel catch the images from the film and fox them onto the angled mirrors , which projected them onto the viewing surface . Each mirror on the wheel reflected one image , which was interchange by the next image as the mirror rotate and the film progressed . The angled mirrors worked to turn over the top and bottom portions of an image when one frame was substitute another , so that the icon always remained right - side up to the viewers .
Musger patent his gimmick — which could also take cinema — in 1904 and demonstrated its projection capabilities for the first timein 1907 in Graz ( where Musger lived ) on aprojector made by K. Löffler . After the demo , Leopold Pfaundler , a prof and a fellow member of the Board of the Physical Institute , wrotethat Musger ’s machine was “ theoretically correct and has also proven to be useful in the samples taken at the physical Institute . Any extant imperfections , which exist with the first model , will be easily remedied by small modifications . ”
Musger ’s complicated projector did make a pocket-sized improvement in the flickering , but it had an unintended side upshot : By shooting at 32 frames per second — twice the normal speed — during recording and play it back at a regular frame pace , he could create slow movement .
The inventor did n’t see this as a marketing point for his setup , though , and did n’t seem aware that he had created something unusual ; he bring up his gimmick ’s tiresome motion capabilities only in passing in the patent of invention , note that “ all movements are continuous and without impact , that no moment of sentence is lose for the recording , and that the numeral of transcription possible in a second becomes a significant one , which may be particularly advantageous for scientific purposes . ”
SLOW MOTION MAKES ITS WAY TO THE MASSES
With a public demonstration and a favourable critical review under his belt ammunition , Musger go about improving his invention . In 1907 , he present a letters patent on the improvements . At the same time , hefoundedProf . Musger Kinetoscope GmbH in Berlin to build and sell his projector , expanding the business to Ulm in 1908 .
woefully , Musger would n’t get far in his endeavor . His projector was plagued by technical difficulty , and though he hadconversationswith Zeiss , Messter ’s Projection , and Steinheil & Sohne , he could n’t win over any of them to invest in his engineering . Financially ruined , Musger could n’t ante up the fee to keep his patent and lost them in 1912 .
Waiting in the fender was Hans Lehmann , a technician at Ernemann and a man to whom Musger had been save about his setup for a yr . Lehmann take Musger ’s idea and improved upon it , creating a slow motion system that hepresentedto the world in 1914 .
TheZeitlupe(from the German word fortimeandmagnifying ice ) , as he dubbed it , was then sold by his employer , the Ernemann company , specifically as a boring motion recorder and player . Like Musger , Lehmann thought slow movement was a mean value toobserve the previously unobservable — more for scientists than for motion-picture photography . In a 1916 article for theGerman periodicalDie Umschau , Lehmann recommended the applied science to sculptors , military trainers , and gymnasts , so that they could further their craft by studying , in wearisome motion , movements typically too fast for the naked eye .
THE SLOW MOTION REVOLUTION BEGINS—WITHOUT MUSGER
Lehmann never publicly acknowledged that his gadget was based on Musger ’s work , though he did admit it in camera to the priest in a 1916 varsity letter . “ I would be beguiled to be able to show you the procession [ of technology ] based on your invention , ” Lehmann publish , noting that his equipment “ might be call ‘ Zeitmikroscop ’ ( because it increases the temporal duration of rapid movements that the oculus can not follow at the innate focal ratio ) . ” Musger never profited financially from the twist Ernemann sold .
Despite his failures , Musger was n’t yet quick to give up on cinematographic invention . In 1916 , he file another letters patent diligence in Austria and Germany for “ Kinematograph mit optischem Ausgleich der Bildwanderung , ” or “ Cinematograph with optical recompense of the image migration . ” The layout of the equipment differ importantly from his first cinematograph , and had two rotate mirror wheels . But Europe was in the thick of World War I , and the poor economical situation preclude Musger from building the new machine . Eventually , the theme of continuous movie wouldfall by the wayside as well , when television camera operators realized that by “ overcranking ” or crank the camera at a faster - than - normal speed , they could capture footage that was ripe enough for their purposes .
Musger passed away on October 30 , 1929 in the Prince - Bishop ’s pocket-sized seminary in Graz , without seeing the impression his innovation would have on the motion-picture show earth . But if he were alive today , he ’d believably be happy that slow question is one of the most wide used motion-picture photography technique .
Additional reportage by Jocelyn Sears .
