Louis Le Prince is widely credited with creating the first recorded motion picture in the film, although he is still somewhat unknown, probably due to his bizarre disappearance in 1890. Although this image was shot at 12 frames per second in just a few seconds, this black and white film marks the first incredible step towards the development of technology. During this time, Van Gogh was making his masterpieces, Jack the Ripper was terrorizing and beating the streets of London, and the Eiffel Tower was still under construction!
Running at just a few seconds in length and shot at 12 frames per second, the black-and-white clip marks an incredible step in the development of technology. Think about it: in 1888, Van Gogh was drawing his masterpieces, Jack the Ripper was walking the streets of East London, and the Eiffel Tower was still in the middle of construction. Although the film did not win an Oscar today, 1888 was a very different world. To recreate the legendary video, YouTuber Denis Shirayev colored the original video frames using an enamel of neural networks. As explained in the video, he started getting stills from the video from the Science Museum UK website collection. Individual frames were then centralized using algorithms and their brightness levels were further streamlined.
After adding color hints to the frame, neural networks were used to effectively “fill in the blanks” of the missing frame, giving the film a more realistic flow. The work was completed with about 250 frames from just 20 original frames. Finally, ambient background sounds were added to give the film extra depth.
In the film’s veteran woman, Sarah Whitley, died 10 days after the scene was filmed. To add to the haunting vibes, Le Prince disappeared with secrecy in 1890 during a train journey to the French territory of Disney. His body and luggage were never found. For the past 130 years, the YouTube channel has had equally impressive uncovered videos from the streets of Moscow in 1996 to Tokyo in 1913, so check it out for sure.
