Roundhay Garden Scene (1888)


Filmed using a single roll of film in Roundhay (near Leeds, England), by Louis Le Prince, Roundhay Garden Scene shows Le Prince's family and friends walking in a circle.

As an early pioneer of photography, Le Prince experimented with "motion" photography and his first techniques echoed Eadweard Muybridge's The Horse in Motion (1878), where multiple lens captured footage at slightly different times before being pasted together to form a perceived moving picture.

Roundhay Garden Scene is believed to be one of the first films caught using the same lens on celluloid film, and therefore the same perspective. However, Le Prince would never watch his film, disappearing shortly before its first public screening in 1890.

One of the "actresses", Sarah Whitley, was Le Prince's mother-in-law. She was born in 1816, the year after the Napoleonic Wars, and is believed to be the oldest person to be featured in a surviving film.

You can watch Roundhay Garden Scene in full below.


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