1888 - Oldest surviving film: Roundhay Garden Scene

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Uploaded by on Dec 20, 2008

The world oldest surviving film.
Roundhay Garden Scene is an 1888 British short film directed by inventor Louis Le Prince. It was recorded at 12 frames per second and is the earliest surviving motion picture.According to Le Prince's son, Adolphe, it was filmed at Oakwood Grange, the home of Joseph and Sarah Whitley, in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England on October 14, 1888.It features Adolphe Le Prince, Sarah Whitley, Joseph Whitley and Harriet Hartley in the garden, walking around and laughing. Note that Sarah is walking backwards and that Joseph's coat tails are flying.In 1930 the National Science Museum (NSM), London, produced photographic copies of remaining parts from the 1888 filmstrip. This sequence was recorded on an 1885 Eastman Kodak paper base photographic film through Le Prince's single-lens combi camera-projector. Le Prince's son, Adolphe, stated that the Roundhay Garden was shot at 12 frame/s (and the second movie, Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge, at 20 frame/s), however the later digital remastered version of Roundhay Garden produced by the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (NMPFT), Bradford, uses 52 frames and is only 2.11 seconds long, as the film runs at 24.64frame/s, the modern cinematographic frame-rate. The National Science Museum copy has 20 frames, giving a run time of 1.66 seconds at 12frame/s.
This historical film is surrounded with tragedy and mystery. On October 24, 1888, only ten days after being filmed in Roundhay Garden Scene, Sarah Robinson Whitley, featured actress and Le Prince's mother-in-law, died aged 72 and was buried nearby on October 27 at St. John's Church, Roundhay, Leeds. On September 16, 1890, while about to patent his invention in London and to perform his first official public exhibition in New York, Louis Le Prince, director, mysteriously vanished in a train between Dijon and Paris. In 1902, two years after testifying in the Equity 6928 brief, Alphonse Le Prince, featured actor and elder son of the inventor, was found shot dead in New York :(

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  • Is there a blu-ray version?

  • Still a better love story than Twilight.

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  • @kawana87 Yeah, I heard he walks to the left!

  • My favorite part was where the guy walked in a semicircle.

  • I heard there releaseing this in 3D this year

  • It's so short cause he filmed it on a 1 kilobyte flash drive

  • fun fact : all the people in this short film died mysteriously deaths, search it up

  • @Udany147

    Good point actually, i never thought about the camera limitation, just the film limitation.

  • @Clint945 Probably test film. This was probably all the camera was capable of - very short clips.

  • @Udany147

    Really, heh

    Was it just a test film to check the camera? or was it actually a 2.11 second long film.

  • @Clint945 You'd think so, but no. This was the whole 'film', it's 2.11 seconds long and consists of about 25 frames.

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