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Near the end of the 1800s, he history of film all began with a bet to see if a racing horse while in full speed lifted all four of hoofs off the groud. It was proven to be true when they lined up multiple camera along a track and snapped pictures of each second the horse was on it's path. The results showed that the horse indeed lifted all of his hoofs off the ground but also that these pictures had displayed moving pictures.
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Once people realized that moving pictures could now be displayed, they created spaces where people could view these VERY short moving images. These places were called Kinetoscope Parlors. When people would view these images, only one person could view it at once.
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Once Thomas Edison got a hold of the idea of the parlors, him and his company invented the peephole kinetoscope. This provided him a bit of money selling these devices
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It was in the year of 1895 that the Lumeire brothers of France became famous for their invention of the cinematographe that projected moving images to a much larger point of view so that more than one person could watch them. These men are the men who are credited for the start of shorts films.
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Around this time of the discovery of the popular images projector, Vaudeville which were small theaters that displayed skits and comedic routines, came about and grew very popular. Vaudeville challenged competeition by showing short films as well.
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As rhe 1990s rolled around, Vaudville expanded into Nickelodeons that had one or two vaudeville acts with added sound effects made by people and piano tunes.
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The Great Train Robbery was the first U.S. narrative film that was created by Thomas Edison and Edwin Porter. This film lasted 12 minutes which was a big deal in that time considering all former "films" had been only about 30 seconds.
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By 1910, Nickelodeons were attracting about 26 million viewers per week. In just 5 years, that number had more than doubled. These numbers were tremendous and would eventually call for a monopoly controlled by Thomas Edison
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Around this time, Edison created the Motion Picture Patents Company that controlled every single thing in the filim industry. If you were caught attempting to make films on your own, Edison would find you and destroy all of your equipment and threaten you to never do it again. They created an internationally competitive motion picture industry.
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Before this, most films were filmed in New York and things had to change because the lighting in New York was poor due to most days being dreary and rain. Los Angeles provided many aspects that would make for better films and it was far away from the MPPA.
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The film industry in LA would tremendously pop up when the filmakers there would realize they want people to grow to love thier actors and pay them tons of money to make them famous where as the MPPA refused to pay their actors a lot and also refused to put their name out there.
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Around the early 1900s, stars such as Mary Pickford and Charlie Chapman would arise and easily rise to fame. These actors are examples of the amazing industry that came about when film was moved to LA. Movies and film became even more popular and this made Los Angeles the film capital of the world.
