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Annotated Bibliography Assignment SAMPLE

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SAMPLE PAPER:

The Invention of the Motion Picture: An Annotated Bibliography

This research project seeks to determine who, if anyone, deserves to be called the inventor of the motion pictures.   Among the questions that will need to be addressed during the course of this investigation is this: What qualifies as the first motion picture?  Film history books that cover the origins of motion pictures name Thomas Edison, W.K.L. Dickson, Eadweard Muybridge, Augustin LePrince, William Friese-Greene,  August and Louis Lumiere, among others as contenders for the title of “Inventor of the Motion Pictures,” but these books never identify a particular film as definitively having been the first ever made.  Today’s most widely-read film history textbook, Thompson & Bordwell’s Film History, An Introduction, concludes that no single individual invented the motion picture, rather that movies were collectively created by the combined contributions of all of these inventors (pp. 5-11).  The consensus among writers of general film histories seems to be that the cinema’s origins are too murky for us to identify any one piece of film definitively as the first motion picture.  But is this really so?

We know a surprising amount of detail about the early inventors if the sources in this annotated bibliography are any indication.  General books on film history only give us the overview, but as you will see, these specific historical studies reveal much more.   I remain hopeful that the very first film can be identified by a careful comparison of these sources, and correspondingly, that the creator or creators of that first film can reasonably be considered the inventor(s) of motion pictures.

Ten Sources

Braun, Marta.  Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904).   Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.  Print.

This book is about the career of Etienne-Jules Marey, a French scientist who studied the mechanics of motion.  In 1882 he invented a means of taking photographs of moving objects at split-second intervals called chronophotography.  This book includes a detailed record of hundreds of Marey chronophotographs.  At the time of the book’s writing, author Marta Braun was a Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto.  I will use this book to determine whether or not chronophotographs qualify as motion pictures, and if so at which date the first successful chronophotographs were taken.

Corliss, Richard. “Lights, Camera… Edison! (Cover Story).” Time 176.1 (2010): 50-54.  Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Mar. 2012.

This article covers the contributions of Thomas Edison and W.K.L. Dickson to the invention of the motion picture.  It is written by Time’s chief film critic for general readers rather than for film scholars.  I would like to determine just why the magazine made this their cover story (indeed, why a film history topic made it into a news magazine at all).  I will probably use this article to understand the current popular understanding of Edison’s role in the invention of motion pictures.

de Vries, Tjitte.  “The Genesis of Cinematography Establishes Two Dates.”  The ‘Cinematographe Lumiere’ a Myth?”  5 Oct. 2009.  Web.  9 Mar. 2012.

This web article argues that the origin of motion pictures must be understood as having two dates: one for the invention of the first camera, the other for the creation of moving images that “aesthetically” qualify as the first movie.  It appears to question the validity of the Lumiere brothers’ December 28, 1895 screening as the birth of the movies, and it identifies numerous other inventors and provides photographs of early films and film equipment.  The author has written for the Photographic Society of the Netherlands.  I will use this site to cross-check names, dates and contributions of various inventors.

Hendricks, Gordon.  The Edison Motion Picture Myth.  Berkeley: University of  California Press, 1961.  Print.

This book attempts to disprove the long-held claim that Thomas Edison invented the motion picture.   It argues that Edison unethically back-dated his motion picture patents and that the credit for work on motion pictures at Edison’s labs should really go to his assistant, W.K.L. Dickson.  Author Gordon Hendricks claims to have been the first film historian to have been given access to the archives at the Edison labs.  I will use this book to help determine exactly when the first successful motion pictures were taken at Edison labs and who was responsible for the invention of Edison’s motion picture equipment.

Musser, Charles.  The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907.  Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1990.  Print.

This book is Volume I in the History of the American Cinema series, and it offers a minutely detailed account of the invention of cinema on this side of the Atlantic.  According to the index it only devotes a few pages to any European inventors.  Nevertheless, it promises to provide a context that books which focus on Edison alone do not. The author was an Assistant Professor of Film and American Studies at Yale when he wrote this.  I will use this book to learn about Edison’s early film activities as well as to learn of other America-based contributors to the invention of motion pictures.

Musser, Charles.  Thomas A. Edison and His Kinetographic Motion Pictures. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995.  Print.

This short book (only 60 pages) was commissioned by the Friends of the Edison National Historic Site and seems to have been intended primarily for visitors to the gift shop at that site.  Although brief, it contains numerous photographs and illustrations that do not appear in any other books on this topic.  Author Charles Musser was an Assistant Professor of Film and American Studies at Yale when he published this book.  I will use this source to help determine when the first films were made at Edison Labs, and also to gain an understanding of how the labs, the equipment, and the films actually looked.

Nekes, Werner.  Film Before Film.  New York: Fox Lorber Home Entertainment, 1986.  DVD.

Respected film critic J. Hoberman called this documentary film “an exhilarating and amusing look at the ‘pre-history’ of cinema.”  The film presents an array of optical toys including the magic lantern and flip books which inspired the inventors of the motion picture.  No information is available about the director, but Fox Lorber Home Entertainment is a prominent distributor of a wide range of films on DVD and Blu-Ray, including popular Hollywood releases.  I will probably use this source to gain a better understanding of the physics, mechanics, and theory behind motion picture equipment.

Rawlence, Christopher.  The Missing Reel: The Untold Story of the Lost Inventor of  Moving Pictures.  New York: Penguin, 1990.  Print.

This book tells the story of inventor Augustin LePrince, who may have created the first motion picture as well as the first motion picture camera, but who disappeared before ever sharing his invention with the world.  It contains images and witness testimony that purport to prove that LePrince achieved motion picture photography before any of the other claimants, including Thomas Edison.  At the time of this book’s writing, the author was a documentary filmmaker working for the BBC.  I will use this source to help determine whether LePrince was truly the first to achieve motion pictures.

Spehr, Paul.  The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson.  London: John Libbey, 2008.  Print.

This book attempts to improve upon and contradict Gordon Hendrick’s The Edison Motion Picture Myth.  It is an exhaustive study that utilizes Edison Lab records that were not available to Hendricks when he did his research in the late 1950s.  It is a well-illustrated book with meticulous notes that seems to focus as much on Thomas Edison as it does on W.K.L. Dickson.  Author Paul Spehr was an archivist in the motion picture and photography division of the Library of Congress for thirty years.  I will use this book to help determine the exact dates of the first films made at Edison labs.

Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell.  Film History: An Introduction.  New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.  Print.

This book is the most widely used film history text in college courses.  Its first chapter is dedicated to the motion picture’s origins where it summarizes the contributions of Edison, Dickson, Muybridge, Marey, LePrince, Friese-Greene, and others.  However the book does not attempt to compare and contrast all of these inventors’ precise achievements at a date-specific level.  The authors are renowned film scholars who have separately published many works on film history and theory.  I will use this book to establish what our current understanding is regarding the origins of motion pictures.

What I still need to find 

The sources I have found so far should provide me with good coverage of Edison, Dickson, Marey, and LePrince.  I still need to find specific histories of Friese-Greene, Muybridge, and the Lumiere Brothers.   I may also uncover the names of inventors as yet unknown to me in these sources and will then have to track down detailed information on them as well.  Once all the inventors have been studied, I hope to have narrowed down all the possible “first” films to a short list.  However, before identifying one motion picture as the very first, I must take my research in a different direction.

No doubt other film researchers have asked the question “what was the first motion picture?”  In their efforts to answer that question they must have established criteria for what qualifies as a film.  For instance, how many frames must a motion picture film consist of in order to distinguish it from a still photograph?  Is two frames enough?  And does a “film” have to have been shot on celluloid?  Some of the earliest fragments were shot on rolls of photo-sensitive paper.  Others were shot on glass plates.  I will search for sources that address the theory of defining what constitutes a film.  To do this I will use such search terms as “invention,” “innovation,” “definition of film,” “origin theory,” and others.  I might even find useful information in sources that are about technological development in general, but not specifically about film.

Finally, I am prepared to narrow my topic from “Inventing the Motion Picture” to something more specific.   For example, “inventing” might be too large a concept.  Answering the question “what is the first film?” might be all I can do in one paper, and “who is the inventor of motion pictures?” might be another paper entirely.  We’ll see where this investigation leads.