''Roundhay Garden Scene'' is a short silent motion picture filmed by French inventor

Louis Le Prince Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (28 August 1841 – disappeared 16 September 1890, Presumption of death, declared dead 16 September 1897) was a French artist and the inventor of an early film, motion-picture camera, and director of ''Roundhay Ga ...

at Oakwood Grange in

Roundhay Roundhay is a large suburb in north-east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Roundhay had a population of 22,546 in 2011. It sits in the Roundhay (ward), Roundhay electoral, ward of Leeds City Council and Leeds North East (UK Parliament constituen ...

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

, in

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

on 14 October 1888. It is believed to be the oldest surviving film. The camera used was

patented A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

on 16 November 1888.

Cast

* Annie Hartley (credited as Harriet Hartley; 1873 – 31 March 1898) * Adolphe Le Prince ( – 20 August 1901) * Joseph Whitley (17 October 1816 – 12 January 1891) * Sarah Whitley ( – 24 October 1888)

Overview

According to Le Prince's son,

Adolphe ''Adolphe'' is a classic French novel by Benjamin Constant, first published in 1816. It tells the story of an alienated young man, Adolphe, who falls in love with an older woman, Ellénore, the Polish mistress of the Comte de P***. Their illici ...

, ''Roundhay Garden Scene'' was made at Oakwood Grange, the home of

Joseph Joseph is a common male name, derived from the Hebrew (). "Joseph" is used, along with " Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the modern-day Nordic count ...

and Sarah Whitley, in

West Riding of Yorkshire The West Riding of Yorkshire was one of three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the riding was an administrative county named County of York, West Riding. The Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, lieu ...

, on 14 October 1888. The footage features Adolphe, the Whitleys, and Annie Hartley leisurely walking around the garden of Oakwood Grange. Sarah is seen walkingor dancingbackward as she turns around, and Joseph's coattails fly as he turns also. Joseph (1817–1891) and Sarah (née Robinson, 1816–1888) were the parents of Elizabeth, Louis Le Prince's wife, and Hartley is believed to have been a friend of the Le Princes. Sarah Whitley died ten days after the scene was filmed. Oakwood Grange was demolished in 1972 and replaced with modern housing; the only remnants of it are the garden walls at the end of Oakwood Grange Lane. The adjacent stately home, Oakwood Hall, still stands, and is now a

nursing home A nursing home is a facility for the residential care of older people, senior citizens, or disabled people. Nursing homes may also be referred to as care homes, skilled nursing facilities (SNF), or long-term care facilities. Often, these terms ...

Preservation

''Roundhay Garden Scene'' was recorded on

Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak (), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated i ...

paper base

photographic film Photographic film is a strip or sheet of transparent film base coated on one side with a gelatin photographic emulsion, emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. The sizes and other characteristics of the ...

using Le Prince's single-lens camera. In the 1930s, the

Science Museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, Industry (manufacturing), industry and Outline of industrial ...

in London produced a photographic glass plate copy of 20 surviving frames from the original negative before it was lost. The copied frames were later printed on 35 mm film. Adolphe Le Prince stated that the film was shot at 12

frames per second A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent. Frame and FRAME may also refer to: Physical objects In building construction *Framing (co ...

(fps), but analysis suggests that it was shot at 7 fps. ''

The First Film ''The First Film'' is a 2015 British documentary film about cinema pioneer Louis Le Prince, made by David Nicholas Wilkinson. It argues the case that Le Prince, rather than the Lumière brothers, was the true inventor of moving pictures, making ...

'', a 2015

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

about Louis Le Prince, shows it at 7 fps.

References

External links

* *
''Roundhay Garden Scene''
on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

''Roundhay Garden Scene''
on RetroFlix * Denis Shiryaev'
60 fps color version
on YouTube
Louis Le Prince Centre for Cinema, Photography and Television
University of Leeds. (The university is near to the site of Le Prince's former workshop which was located at the junction of Woodhouse Lane and Blackman Lane.)
St John's of Roundhay
Details of memorial for Sarah (died 24 October 1888) and Joseph Whitley (died 12 January 1891) at St John's Church, Roundhay, Leeds.
map

{{Coord, 53.82587, N, 1.49526, W, scale:5000, name=Location of the Roundhay Garden Scene at Oakwood Grange, display=title 1888 films 1880s British films 1880s dance films 1888 short films Articles containing video clips British black-and-white films British dance films Films shot in Leeds Films shot in Yorkshire British silent short films Films directed by Louis Le Prince French black-and-white films French dance films French silent short films Louis Le Prince films Garden Scene, Roundhay

Cast

Overview

Preservation

See also

References

External links