The Science of Movies

The Science of Movies — page 3 — The Lego Movie used computer graphics to make it appear as though everything in the film were made of toy building blocks Today’s movies are filled with fanciful characters and heart-stopping action scenes There are magical monsters flying wizards and talking toys Creating movies is a complicated process It can take years to complete a full-length feature film Movie production is more than simply recording with a camera and microphone It takes human creativity and lots of technology to make the magical world of movies 6

The Science of Movies — page 4 — Moving Pictures The eyes and brain work together to produce what a person sees The eyes take in information that is then sent to and interpreted by the brain Sometimes what people think they see is not what is really there This is an optical illusion A movie is a series of still pictures But when we watch movies we see motion Two optical illusions make this possible First when we see a picture the image stays in our brains for a short time even after the image is taken away This is called persistence of vision It helps keep the world from going dark when we blink It also gives movies time to change the picture on the screen without us noticing The second illusion also helps us connect the pictures on-screen When we see a series of pictures our brains do not notice each and every one They connect the images Our brains interpret changes between the pictures as motion This illusion is called the phi phenomenon 7

The Science of Movies — page 5 — Early Inventions For centuries people wanted to make still pictures move In the 1800s inventors made moving pictures with optical toys One such toy is the thaumatrope It uses a disc or card with a different picture drawn on each side A piece of string attaches to each side of the disc When the strings twist the disc flips When the disc spins quickly the two pictures appear as one Optical toys were just the beginning Several inventors improved the methods and machines for photography and film projection One inventor was photographer Eadweard Muybridge He was hired to answer a question When a horse gallops does it ever have all four hooves off the ground It was impossible to tell by watching a horse It ran too fast But Muybridge had an idea He set up cameras along a racetrack Each camera had a wire that ran across the track As the horse ran it tripped the wires One by one the cameras took pictures The photos proved that indeed there was a moment when 8

The Science of Movies — page 6 — the horse had all its hooves off the ground In 1879 Muybridge unveiled a new projector He called it the zoopraxiscope The device projected light through a glass disc as it spun Muybridge put the images of the trotting horse onto a disc As it spun the images appeared to move In 1887 an American minister named Hannibal Goodwin developed a flexible film It was made from a plastic material called celluloid The celluloid was coated with light-sensitive chemicals The see-through film could be rolled on to a spool People started developing machines that used celluloid film Flammable Film Until the 1950s celluloid film was made with flammable ingredients Its main chemical cellulose nitrate was originally used as an explosive As the film ran through a projector it sometimes ignited from the heat of hot lightbulbs Aging film kept in canisters also became a problem When the film breaks down it gives off gases Gases built up in a canister can cause a fire if they get too warm Nitrate-based films are safely stored and preserved by keeping them in cold storage 9

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