# World First Film:Arrival of a Train (1895)



## AmtrakBlue (Mar 10, 2014)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M920yuiqtjY


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## Railroad Bill (Mar 12, 2014)

Great film Betty. Wish more of these would be preserved. So much of old film and movies have been lost to deterioration and time.


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## neroden (Mar 21, 2014)

Nice film.

Note that these are classic compartment carriages, with a door for every compartment, and no way to walk between carriages. I'm told that boarding times increased a lot when the change was made to open saloons, because people had to crowd through fewer doors.

The open saloons provide a more comfortable service by allowing people to walk through the train, which allows "service cars" like dining cars, etc. And they're probably cheaper to manufacture. But...

Given all the suggestions that we simply pack as many people in as possible and abandon quality-of-service, maybe Amtrak should go back to compartment cars. Faster boarding, more people in the train... all trapped in their seats for the entire trip without even access to the conductor. (Not a serious suggestion.)


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## fairviewroad (Mar 21, 2014)

So how did people know which compartment to board. Were you assigned a specific one, or did you have to go up and down the platform to find one with enough space?


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## WhoozOn1st (Mar 28, 2014)

A number of very early films featured trains. They MOVE, which was the whole idea then, less now (sound).

I've seen one in which the locomotive is coming straight at the camera, and recall reading that audiences - who had never seen a film before - feared that the engine would leap from the screen and keep coming, panicked, and ran for the exits. Whether apocryphal or not...


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## Anderson (Mar 28, 2014)

WhoozOn1st said:


> A number of very early films featured trains. They MOVE, which was the whole idea then, less now (sound).
> 
> I've seen one in which the locomotive is coming straight at the camera, and recall reading that audiences - who had never seen a film before - feared that the engine would leap from the screen and keep coming, panicked, and ran for the exits. Whether apocryphal or not...


Considering the reactions to the Great Train Robbery (which had a "gimmick" shot often placed at the end which caused people to freak out), I can believe it.


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## jphjaxfl (Mar 28, 2014)

When I was in the UK in 1971, I traveled in a number of older compartment cars with no center or inside aisle. There were being used mostly on local trains with not a lot of time between stops. To board, you just opened the door of the compartment and step up and into the compartment. You got to know the others in your compartment quickly.


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## chakk (Mar 28, 2014)

I think this film has been "doctored" somewhat for display on Youtube. All of the early films I have seen displayed have the people moving faster than normal speed, because the film recording was always done at a film transfer speed that was much slower than the film playback speed. Showing the playback at "normal" speed of action required projectors with variable speed rates, which tended to cause the film play to "jitter" or display "blank" portions between the images.


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## trainman74 (Mar 28, 2014)

chakk said:


> I think this film has been "doctored" somewhat for display on Youtube. All of the early films I have seen displayed have the people moving faster than normal speed, because the film recording was always done at a film transfer speed that was much slower than the film playback speed. *Showing the playback at "normal" speed of action required projectors with variable speed rates, which tended to cause the film play to "jitter" or display "blank" portions between the images.*


The jitter or blank frames aren't a problem if they do the transfer correctly.

Early film equipment was hand-cranked, and camera operators tended to get somewhere between 14 and 20 frames per second. Once things were electrically operated, they still weren't quite standardized, although 16 frames per second was probably the most common. The projectionist, though, would always try to match the speed the camera operator had used -- one major exception would be comic/slapstick scenes, which were often intentionally "undercranked" by the camera operator so that the action would be sped up when they were played back.

When the technology for putting a soundtrack on the film together with the picture came about, it turned out that the film needed to be running a bit faster to get the proper sound fidelity, so the industry settled on 24 frames per second.

For many years, those old 16 FPS films, when they were seen, were usually played back at 24 FPS -- but that was never really the correct thing to do.

Fortunately, especially since the "DVD era" began, they've been taking more care in transferring older films to newer media, and you're seeing them at the speed at which they were intended to be seen.


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## WhoozOn1st (Mar 28, 2014)

chakk said:


> Showing the playback at "normal" speed of action required projectors with variable speed rates, which tended to cause the film play to "jitter" or display "blank" portions between the images.


In 1895 hand-cranked was the order of the day, for cameras (also wind-up) and projectors. So a smooth playback required somebody who could match the speed at which the film was shot, and keep it up for as long as the early reels lasted. Team Whooz got to see a hand-cranked "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (1928, Buster Keaton) at a museum, and it was majorly different in appearance from a standard electrically driven version.

Here's a very dark video of the hand-cranked occasion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVcXfvsOZiY The cranking is visible at upper center.

How the hell do you embed a YouTube video anymore? Seems to change with every forum "upgrade" that's really nothing of the sort.

Anyway, that hand cranking was accompanied by live playing of the museum's Wurlitzer pipe organ - an amazing monster!

EDIT: Nice this topic has been moved into Normal Space, where it belongs. For that other forum the question is: Whooz the Lunkhead who doesn't know how to spell discussions, so that it's Random Discussons!? I mean _really_...


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