Sallie Gardner at a Gallop

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.

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.

Sometimes ascribed as "The Father of the Motion Picture", Eadweard Muybridge undeniably accomplished exploiting and sometimes introducing a means of instantaneous and serial images to analyze and synthesize animal locomotion. In part, the reasons for and the claims made of his work support Virgilio Tosi's thesis that cinema was invented out of the needs of scientific research. Conversely, they're informed by Muybridge's background as an artistic location photographer and, as Phillip Prodger suggests, in book sales and more useful to art than to science, as Marta Braun has demonstrated (see sources at bottom). Additionally, Muybridge quickly exploited their entertainment value via projection to audiences across the U.S. and Europe. Muybridge pursued both of these paths of invention: the path taken by Jules Janssen, Étienne-Jules Marey and others for science and the path taken by Ottomar Anschütz, Thomas Edison, the Lumiére brothers and others for fame and profit.

Muybridge began taking instantaneous single photographs of multi-millionaire railroad magnate Leland Stanford's horses in motion in 1872. It was disputed at the time whether all four of a horse's legs were off the ground simultaneously at any time while running. Although no surviving photographs prove it, contemporary lithographs and paintings likely based on the photographs, indeed, show the moment of "unsupported transit". In between and interrupting these experiments, Muybridge was found not guilty of the admittedly premeditated fatal shooting of his wife's lover and possibly her son's father.

Publication of Marey's graphic measurements of a horse's movements reignited Stanford's interest in the gait of horses. In turn, Marey was convinced to switch to photography in his motion studies after witnessing Muybridge's work (see "Falling Cat" (1894)). This work in "automatic electro-photographs" began in 1878 at Stanford's Palo Alto Stock Farm. Multiple cameras were stored in a shed parallel to a track. A series of closing boards serving as shutters were triggered by tripped threads and electrical means. The wet collodion process of the time, reportedly, could need up to half a minute for an exposure. For the split-second shutter speeds required here, a white canvas background and powdered lime on the track provided more contrast to compensate for less light getting to the glass plates. Employees of Stanford's Central Pacific Railroad and others helped in constructing this "set" and camera equipment.

Contrary to unattributed claims on the web, this so-called "Sallie Gardner at a Gallop" wasn't the first series photographed by Muybridge. Six series of Muybridge's first subjects were published on cards entitled "The Horse in Motion". The first is of the horse Abe Edgington trotting on 11 June 1878. Reporters were invited for the next two series on June 15th, and, as they reported, again, Abe went first—trotting and pulling the driver behind in a sulky, which is what tripped the threads. The second subject that day was Sallie Gardner running and, thus, the mare had to trip the threads. Reporters noted how this spooked her and how that was reflected in the negatives developed on the spot. As one article said, she "gave a wild bound in the air, breaking the saddle girth as she left the ground." Based on such descriptions, it doesn't seem that this series exists anymore. The animations on the web that are actually of Sallie are dated June 19th on "The Horse in Motion" card. Many animations claimed to be Sallie on YouTube, Wikipedia and elsewhere, as of this date, are actually of a mare named Annie G. and were part of Muybridge's University of Pennsylvania work published in 1887, as the Library of Congress and other reliable sources have made clear. The early Palo Alto photographs aren't as detailed and are closer to silhouettes. The 12 images of Gardner also include one where she's stationary. The Morse's Gallery pictures are entirely in silhouette, while the La Nature engravings of these same images show the rider in a white shirt.

The shot of the horse stationary, as Braun points out, was added later and is indicative of the artistic and un-scientific assemblages Muybridge made of his images—with the intent of publication, including in his own books. This was especially prominent in his Pennsylvania work, which included many nude models that were surely useful for art. Muybridge influenced artists from Realists like Thomas Eakins and Meissonier, Impressionists like Edgar Degas and Frederick Remington, to the more abstract works of Francis Bacon. His precedence has also been cited in the photography of Steven Pippin and Hollis Frampton, as well as the bullet-time effects in "The Matrix" (1999).

Muybridge lectured on this relationship with art when touring with his Zoöpraxiscope, which was a combination of the magic lantern and phenakistoscope. With it, he projected, from glass disks, facsimiles of his photographs hand-painted by Erwin Faber. Without intermittent movement, the Zoöpraxiscope compressed the images, so elongated drawings were used instead of photographs. Muybridge and others also used his images for phenakistoscopes and zoetropes. The first demonstration of the Zoöpraxiscope was to Stanford and friends in the autumn of 1879. A public demonstration was given on 4 May 1880 for the San Francisco art association, and Muybridge continued these lectures for years—personally touring the U.S. and Europe. Although there were predecessors in animated projections as far back as 1847 by Leopold Ludwig Döbler, in 1853 by Franz von Uchatius, and with posed photographs by Henry Heyl in 1870, the chronophotographic and artistic basis offered some novelty for Muybridge's presentations. They also led him to meet Edison and Marey and inspire the likes of Anschütz and others—those who took the next steps in the invention of movies.

(Main Sources: "The Inventor and the Tycoon" by Edward Ball. "Eadweard Muybridge" and "Picturing Time" by Marta Braun. "The Man Who Stopped Time" by Brian Clegg. "Man in Motion" by Robert Bartlett Haas. "The Father of the Motion Picture" by Gordon Hendricks. "The Stanford Years, 1872-1882" edited by Anita Ventura Mozley. "Time Stands Still" by Phillip Prodger. "Cinema Before Cinema" by Virgilio Tosi.)

She never stops galloping, HUGE movie in its time.

...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.