.In 1895, the first moving picture, "The Departure of the Workers of the Lumire Factory", showed just that - employees leaving their place of employment. It was hardly a riveting subject one would have thought.

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The staggering cost of making a blockbuster movie makes one wonder how it all began. When did the studios decide to venture so much money on just one movie, and how do they know that we, the paying public, will want to watch it? Audiences have become much more discerning than they were in those heady days, just over one hundred years ago, when the first paying audience watched their first film.In 1895, the first moving picture, "The Departure of the Workers of the Lumire Factory", showed just that - employees leaving their place of employment. It was hardly a riveting subject one would have thought.
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However, the very first cinema audience viewed it with amazement. They were used to seeing magic lantern shows, but this showed real moving subjects. The cost to the early filmmakers, the Lumire brothers, was minimal, only the price of the film.Although they were not the first to project a moving image, the Lumire brothers invented the first portable motion-picture camera, film processing unit and projector all in one machine. They called it the Cinematographe and it made motion pictures very popular. Another of their early movies, "The arrival of a Train at the Station", showed the train coming in diagonally ...

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