Sallie Gardner at a Gallop

I'm crediting Jordan Peele and the movie "Nope" for me even having an interest in this. "Nope" wasn't that good, but that's beside the point. In there one of the characters mentioned that the very first "movie" was of Black jockey on a horse.

Just on a quick search I found that on 19 June 1878, Muybridge decided to do an experiment. He rigged a race track with 12 strings and made a race-horse named Sallie Gardner gallop on the track. Sallie Gardner was a mare owned by Leland Stanford, governor of California. The galloping horse broke the strings one by one as it went through them. These 12 strings were attached with a series of 12 cameras. The associated camera took a photo as soon as the attached string would break. The result was a series of 12 photos in which 2nd and 3rd photos showed Sallie Gardner's all hooves off the ground. Once again, Muybridge was successful in answering the horse gallop question. But more importantly Muybridge was able to produce the world's first motion picture showing a galloping horse by quickly running these 12 photographs in sequence. Muybridge had actually laid the foundation of modern videography.

I think' reviewing' these old experimental shorts (such as this and the passage of venus) by adding star ratings to them and the like in a modern context is nothing short of weird. These were not films that were made for fun, for artistic purposes, to spread a message, or even to be' nice' as we currently understand the idea. This short was made especially for checking camera equipment! So, after watching this, two things come up in my mind: 1) The fact that this film still exists today is nothing short of a miracle. Whether it is actually entertaining or interesting (outside the sense of its making that is) is one thing, but it is literally awe-inspiring to see moving images like this from so long ago. 2) Cinema was created not because some artist had a story he / she wanted to tell, but because he / she felt that the available mediums were not up to snuff; it was invented because Eadweard Muybridge and some other weird guys thought it was fun! I can't imagine there was a lot of reason in 1878 to set up a bunch of cameras to see a horse in slow motion (that's how I think this short counts as the first use of slow motion), and Muybridge's kind of went roundabout. The methods used to produce this film do not qualify as filmmaking as we think of it today, (although using several different cameras to take an individual shot each represents the techniques that would later be used to construct the sequence of ' bullet time ' in The Matrix) meaning some contend as one of the first films ever made. It's true that Muybridge didn't set out with a camera and shot video that he then cut together (isn't it weird that there's a' pre-editing' period in the cinema?) but in my opinion the most basic cinematic concept is movement, and this short certainly captures a sense of movement that would have been impossible to imagine beforehand in film. If it's true that Muybridge basically made this short to win a bet (i.e. when all four legs were off the ground, there was a point in a horses gallop, then I think it's a perfect way to start a hulking, grotesque, stunning, art form like cinema.

Sallie Gardner at the Gallop (1878)

While this here isn't technically the first movie, it was certainly a great introduction of what was to come. We basically see a horse being filmed by twenty-four different cameras for what amounts to a moving image. I'm not about to rip off other people's work so it's best that you Google this title and read for yourself what exactly had to be done to give it the effect that we are seeing today. It's impossible to viewing this as a "movie" and it would be silly to do so especially since that's not what it is. It's just twenty-four images of a horse put together and of course we know what happens.

...There is the guy taking the academic standpoint and who wrote a film school master's thesis about this early experiment as a review. At the other end of the spectrum there is the guy who wrote his review as satire as though he'd seen this in a movie theater and was very upset for having wasted his time and money on it. So what's left to say at this point but - "Look at the pretty horsie"? Well, I'll try.

Leland Stanford was a horse enthusiast, industrialist, and railroad baron who became governor of California later in the 19th century and was the founder of Stanford University. He wanted to settle a bet as to whether or not all four hooves of a horse were off the ground at any point in time when running. He turned to noted photographer Eadweard Muybridge for that task.

Muybridge used multiple cameras to photograph Stanford's Kentucky-bred Sallie Gardner, galloping at the businessman's farm in Palo Alto, in the presence of the press. The shutters were controlled by trip wires triggered by the horse's legs. However, to correctly display the horse in motion required an invention by Muybridge that was completed the year after the photos were taken - the zoopraxiscope. It projects images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the illusion of motion, and is considered the oldest movie projector. The 24 photos Muybridge took of Sallie Gardner running were shown using this device. This invention inspired Edison's invention, the Kinetoscope, the first commercial film exhibition system. And the answer? Yes, there is a point when all four hooves are indeed off of the ground.

Later, when Muybridge was in Europe touring and demonstrating his technique and his images in motion, he was told that back in the United States Leland Stanford had published a book entitled "The Horse In Motion", basically claiming credit for the early motion studies as his own, with no mention of Muybridge. This left Muybridge bereft of reputation. This was a rather dangerous thing for Stanford to do since Muybridge had, in 1874, committed the premeditated murder of a man he suspected to be his wife's lover and yet was acquitted with a verdict of justifiable homicide. Stanford would have known about this because, among other reasons, he paid for Muybridge's defense.

If all of the colorful characters that went into this forerunner to moton pictures had not existed, then the motion picture industry would have eventually invented them. I give this an 8/10 for its importance to the history of motion pictures.

She never stops galloping, HUGE movie in its time.