Precursors of film are concepts and devices that have much in common with the later art and techniques of cinema.
Precursors of film are often referred to as precinema, or 'pre-cinema'. Terms like these are disliked by several historians, partly because they seem to devalue the individual qualities of these media by presenting them as a small step in the development of a later invention. For instance: the flip book, zoetrope and phenakistiscope are very tactile devices that allow study and play by manipulating the motion by hand, while the projected image in cinema is intangible.Mary Ann Doane Movement and scale in Apparaturen bewegter Bilder (2006) Such devices as the zoetrope were not replaced by cinema: they were still used after the breakthrough of film. Furthermore, many early media examples are also part of a tradition that not only shaped cinema, but also home video, video games, computer-generated imagery, virtual reality and much more.Tom Gunning Introduction in Laurent Mannoni's The Great Art of Light and Shadow (p. XX) (2000) The study of early media devices is also part of a wider and less teleological approach called media archaeology.
Many of the devices that can be interpreted as precursors of film are also referred to as "philosophical toys", or "optical toys". Unlike film and cinema, viewing these moving images always involves brevity and repetition.
Theatre In the early days of film the word "photoplay" was quite commonly used for motion pictures. This illustrates how a movie can be thought of as a photographed play. Much of the production for a live-action movie is similar to that of a theatre play, with very similar contributions by actors, a theatre director/film director, producers, a set designer, lighting designer, costume designer, composer, etc. Much terminology later used in film theory and film criticism was already applied for theatre, such as mise en scene. Some forms of theatre, such as cantastoria, also utilize sequentially ordered pictures in a way that anticipates cinema.
Early motion picture shows were often screened in existing theatre venues and accompanied by live narration, music, and sound effects, thus combining the new medium with theatrical traditions.
Many early films by Edison's company, Max Skladanowsky and other pioneers, consisted of popular vaudeville acts performed in front of a camera instead of an audience. The famous movie pioneer Georges Méliès was a theatre owner and illusionist who treated film as a means to create spectacles that were even more impressive than stage shows, with lavish stage designs and special effects. The popular féerie theatre shows had often featured stage machinery for special effects (such as smoke, moving props, changeable set pieces) and magic tricks, but film allowed new tricks that were impossible to perform live on stage.
A few years after the introduction of cinema, movies started to deviate more and more from live performances when filmmakers became creative with the unique possibilities that the medium provided: editing, close-ups, camera movements and special effects.
The theatre form of puppetry has often been performed in front of cameras to create (children's) television shows, and is featured in some theatrical movies. It also spawned stop motion films, with puppets that seem to move all by themselves.
Shadow play
The earliest projection of images was most likely done in primitive shadowgraphy dating back to prehistory. It evolved into more refined forms of shadow puppetry, mostly with flat jointed cut-out figures which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen. The shapes of the puppets sometimes include translucent color or other types of detailing. Plato seemed to hint at shadow puppetry in his Allegory of the Cave (circa 380 BCE) but no other signs of shadow play in ancient Greece are known and Plato's idea was clearly a hypothetical allegory. Shadow puppetry was possibly developed in India around 200 BCE, but also has a long history in Indonesia (records relating to Wayang since 840 CE), Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, China (records since around 1000 CE) and Nepal. It later spread to the Ottoman Empire and seems not to have reached Europe before the 17th century. It became very popular in France at the end of the 18th century. Around the time cinema was developed, several theaters in Montmartre showed elaborate "Ombres Chinoises" shows that were very successful. The famous Le Chat noir produced 45 different shows between 1885 and 1896.
Camera obscura
Projection of images can occur naturally when rays of light pass through a small hole and produce an inverted image on a surface in a dark area behind the hole. This phenomenon is known as camera obscura or pinhole image. Its oldest known recorded description is found in Chinese Mohist writings dated to circa 400 BCE. However, people have probably witnessed and made use of occurrences of the phenomenon since prehistoric times. It has been suggested that distortions in the shapes of animals in many Paleolithic cave paintings were possibly based on distortions seen in pinhole images formed through tiny holes in tents or in screens of animal hide. Some ancient sightings of gods and spirits, especially in temple worship, are thought to possibly have been conjured up by means of camera obscura or proto magic lantern projections. In Arab and European science the camera obscura was used in darkened rooms since circa 1000 CE to study light and especially sun eclipses.
Very occasionally the camera obscura was thought of as an instrument for live projections of performances to entertain an audience inside a darkened room. Purportedly Arnaldus de Villa Nova did so at the end of the 13th century.
The use of a lens in the opening of a wall or closed window shutter of a darkened room to project clearer images has been dated back to 1550.
Giambattista della Porta's very popular and influential Magia Naturalis helped popularize the camera obscura. In the 1558 first edition of the book series, Della Porta advised to use a convex mirror to project the image onto paper and to use this as a drawing aid. The 1589 second edition added a "lenticular crystal" or biconvex lens to the setup. In this edition, Della Porta also described a way to scare people at night by projecting a scary image lit by torches in one room onto a white sheet or other surface in the dark nascent room. In a more elaborate daytime use of the camera obscura Della Porta proposed to project hunting scenes, banquets, battles, plays, or anything desired on white sheets. Trees, forests, rivers, mountains "that are really so, or made by Art, of Wood, or some other matter" could be arranged on a plain in the sunshine on the other side of the camera obscura wall. Little children and animals (for instance handmade deer, wild boars, rhinos, elephants, and lions) could perform in this set. "Then, by degrees, they must appear, as coming out of their dens, upon the Plain: The Hunter he must come with his hunting Pole, Nets, Arrows, and other necessaries, that may represent hunting: Let there be Horns, Cornets, Trumpets sounded: those that are in the Chamber shall see Trees, Animals, Hunters Faces, and all the rest so plainly, that they cannot tell whether they be true or delusions: Swords drawn will glister in at the hole, that they will make people almost afraid." Della Porta claimed to have shown such spectacles often to his friends. They admired it very much and could hardly be convinced by Della Porta's explanations that what they had seen was really an optical trick. Although there seem to be few records of the camera obscura being used for such elaborate spectacles, the scarier kind of "magic" was probably more or less commonplace by the start of the seventeenth century, mainly with actors portraying the devil, demons, witches or ghosts.
In 1572, the oldest known suggestion for the camera to become mobile was described as a lightweight wooden hut to be carried around on two wooden poles. More practical solutions followed in the 17th century in the shape of tents and eventually as portable wooden boxes with a viewing pane and a mirror to get an upright image. The camera obscura became increasingly popular as a drawing and painting aid for artists.
The box type camera obscura was eventually turned into the photographic camera by capturing the projected image with plates or sheets that were treated with light-sensitive chemicals.
Magic lantern and other image projectors
The "trotting horse lamp" [走馬燈] has been known in China since before 1000 CE. It is a lantern which on the inside has cut-out silhouettes attached to a shaft with a paper vane impeller on top, rotated by heated air rising from a lamp. The silhouettes are projected on the thin paper sides of the lantern and appear to chase each other. Some versions showed more motion with the heads, feet or hands of figures connected with fine iron wire to an extra inner layer and triggered by a transversely connected iron wire. The lamp would typically show images of horses and horse-riders.
Several scholars and inventors, like Giovanni Fontana (circa 1420), Leonardo da Vinci (circa 1515) and Cornelis Drebbel (1608) possibly had early image projectors before the invention of the Magic Lantern. Athanasius Kircher's 1645 first edition of Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae included a description of his forerunner to the magic lantern: the "Steganographic Mirror". This was a primitive projection system with a focusing lens and text or pictures painted on a concave mirror reflecting sunlight, mostly intended for long distance communication. Kircher also suggested projecting shadow puppets and living flies from the surface of the mirror. The book was widely distributed and may have offered some inspiration for Christiaan Huygens' invention of the magic lantern in 1659.
Moving images were possibly projected with the magic lantern since its invention; Christiaan Huygens' 1659 sketches for slides show a skeleton taking his skull off his neck and placing it back. Techniques to add motion to the painted glass slides were described since circa 1700. These usually involved parts (for instance limbs) painted on one or more extra pieces of glass moved by hand or small mechanisms across a stationary slide which showed the rest of the picture.
In 1770 Edmé-Gilles Guyot detailed how to project a magic lantern image on smoke to create a transparent, shimmering image of a hovering ghost. This technique was used in the phantasmagoria shows that became very popular in several parts of Europe between 1790 and the 1830s. Other techniques were developed to produce convincing ghost experiences. The lantern was handheld to move the projection across the screen (which was usually an almost invisible transparent screen behind which the lanternist operated hidden in the dark). A ghost could seem to approach the audience or grow larger by moving the lantern towards the screen, sometimes with the lantern on a trolley on rails, just like a tracking shot in films. Multiple lanterns not only could make ghosts move independently, but were also occasionally used for superimposition in the composition of complicated scenes. By experimenting with superimposition dissolving views were invented and became a separate popular magic lantern show, especially in England in the 1830s and 1840s.Heard, Mervyn. PHANTASMAGORIA: The Secret History of the Magic Lantern. The Projection Box, 2006 Dissolving views typically showed a landscape changing from a winter version to a spring or summer variation by slowly diminishing the light from one version while introducing the aligned projection of the other slide. Another use of dissolving views, projected with a triple lantern, showed a sleeping figure while images of dreams were superimposed above its head and dissolved from one scene to another. This is similar to the use of a dissolve in film.