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I have been enjoying Silent Film for a long time now and one question keeps coming up. When exactly did the camera start to move and pan? I just can't seem to find the moment in time. Any early examples?

Danny

The motion picture camera began to move in 1896. Although a scene of Venice shot from a gondola is often credited as the first (released by Lumiere), my listing shows pride of place to the Lumieres' Panorama pris depuis une plate-forme mobile.

For the next decade, any moving shot was called a panorama. The earliest true pan shot -- in which the camera urned in a circle or portion thereof is, to my knowledge, Bitzer's Pennsylvania Tunnel Excavation from 1905.

Anyone who knows of earlier instances.... I'm be glad to hear of them too.

Bob

boblipton wrote:The motion picture camera began to move in 1896. Although a scene of Venice shot from a gondola is often credited as the first (released by Lumiere), my listing shows pride of place to the Lumieres' Panorama pris depuis une plate-forme mobile.

For the next decade, any moving shot was called a panorama. The earliest true pan shot -- in which the camera urned in a circle or portion thereof is, to my knowledge, Bitzer's Pennsylvania Tunnel Excavation from 1905.

Anyone who knows of earlier instances.... I'm be glad to hear of them too.

Bob

While it may or may not be the first to use camera movement for specifically narrative purposes, just as it is definitely NOT the first film to tell a story (there's the Lumieres' 1-minute one-scene short WATERING THE GARDNER from 1895 and Melies' more ambitious 6-minute multi-scene CINDERELLA from 1899 well before it), THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903) does incorporate a true pan combined with a tilt when it follows the robbers moving from the water tower the train is stopped by, running over to the left and down a hill. There's also, of course, the tracking shot of the fight on the coal car taken from atop the moving train, although in that case it's really focused on the stationary action which just happens to be on a train that's moving forward. In addition there are the in-camera matte shots that make it look like the studio set is really a moving boxcar and the one that makes it look like a studio set has a window opening onto the train arriving outside.

The DVD box set of Thomas Edison films does reveal some brief dolly-in and dolly-out shots used in dramatic films during the 1900s and early 1910s, which give startling extra interest to the characters it's dollying into, but I can't recall the titles or dates off-hand. By 1912 D. W. Griffith was using plenty of tracking shots from moving trains or cars in chase and race-to-the-rescue sequences. TRAFFIC IN SOULS (1913) has a nice dolly shot past the jail cells at the end. The Italian CABIRIA (1914) is noted for stately slow tracking shots, more to show off the sets than for dramatic reasons. But there was a much better-edited American movie in 1915, I think it was THE SECOND IN COMMAND, that used so many dolly shots you'd swear it was shot in the 1940s or 50s by Vincente Minelli or Max Ophuls.

An early example of moving the camera to follow action is Return of the Lifeboat, shot in the summer of 1897 by James White and Fred Blechynden for the Edison Company. White used a tripod which allowed him to pan left near the end of his shot. There's a poor copy on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sovt87-xN-M" target="_blank) and a better one on the Kino Edison box set.

Edison's 1912 THE PASSER BY has a nice use of a dolly shot to frame a flashback. An aged Marc McDermott begins a story and the camera comes close to him- he then dissolves into a younger man & the camera pulls back during the flashback. At the end we dolly in and dissolve back to the aged McDermott in the present. Very nicely done & reviews of the period commented on the effective technique. In the rest of the footage there is no camera movement.