Fake or real? The LUMIÈRE BROTHERS' Snowball Fight (1896)

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The Snowball Fight shot by the Lumière Brothers in 1896 is a fascinating little video that recently got restored and went viral. Whenever I see it I want to watch it over and over again. But why is it so special? And is it even real?
00:00 A closer look
01:37 Who shot the snowball fight?
02:01 Where was the fight shot?
02:40 Was the fight spontaneous?
03:48 Fake vs. real
05:36 Who are the two in the back?
SOURCES
- Upscaled video by Dmitriy Badin: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tuFu9-bfnQk.html
- La Bataille de Boules de Neiges, Lumière Brothers, 1897
- L’Arroseur Arrosé, Lumière Brothers, 1895
- L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, Lumière Brothers 1896
- Deepfake video footage: Aayush Bansal, researcher at Carnegie Melon University
- Aerial photo of the Institut Lumière: www.institut-lumiere.org/musee/discover-the-lumiere-site.html
- ‘Watch This Snowball Fight From 1897 for a Jolt of Pure Joy’, Sam Anderson, New York Times, Nov 5 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/magazine/snowball-video-fight.html
MUSIC
All music licenced by Epidemic Sounds
These Shoes only Go Backwards - Jerry Lacey
Antidote X - Van Sandano
Buster - Jerry Lacey
Portobello Road - David Celeste
Try and Catch us Now - David Celeste

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Опубликовано:

11 дек 2020

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Комментарии : 193

@Critter145 Год назад

“Cinematograph” has been preserved as a word in “Cinematographer” and “Cinematography”. Brilliant video.

@Poisson4147 9 месяцев назад

The Lumière brothers are often considered to be the founders of the movie industry.

@silver-ag4437 2 года назад

Its just kinda heartwarming that throughout wars, famines, and thousands of kilometers and many years ago, humans still are humans, kindness, laughter, and childish stupidity.

@rkabanlit 2 года назад

125 Years ago ... All of the People in this Video are dead, and yet we can still watch a Glimpse of a part of their Lives. This is our Version of a Time Machine ...

@macsnafu 3 года назад

The restored version looks so real that it's hard to believe that it was filmed in 1896.

@Critter145 Год назад

It elicits feelings of nostalgia and sadness.

@richardjx5442 Год назад

But it wasn’t ‼️It was recreated now based on some original footage and supplemented by 21st century AI and video‼️It even says artificial ‼️

@macsnafu Год назад

@@richardjx5442 As someone else has already pointed out in the comments, "The filler frames from the AI don’t really make this fake." The enhancement of the original footage wasn't used to change it into something different, but to make it as much like the original scene that was shot as possible.

@user-eb5cb6ud1p 9 месяцев назад

@@richardjx5442 The intelligence part of it is artificial. The mathematical part of it is real. It uses mathematical interpolation, just like the way engineers interpolated functions in the days before calculators. If interpolation created "fake" cosines and logarithms A LOT of engineering math would be wrong. .

@xfodude8511 3 года назад

Absolute BANGER of a video. Please do more videos like this in the future - going in-depth into old films... there's something great about the way you can put into words the exact feeling I get when I see this and help me notice more than I would've. Thank you!!

@firestriker3580 Год назад

Not a banger of a video

@Jadz-qd6re Год назад

@@firestriker3580 great input

@davidrees1840 3 года назад

I find the colorized version sells the spontaneity because the trees have green leaves, illustrating that snow is rare to these people. Great stuff -thank you.

@petermgruhn Год назад

I’m not convinced the ai didn’t insert the joy. Which kills your thesis.

@davidrees1840 Год назад

@@petermgruhn i guess that works for every video then :)

@erictaylor5462 3 года назад

Is the unrestored film seems less real because we, in the modern day, are used to movies that have much better quality? Did this film seem much more real to the people of 1896? They had nothing better to compare it too. For them a motion picture would have seemed much more real than a still photograph. It would have been utterly magical.

@PilkScientist 2 года назад

To be fair, it likely looke better at the time too. Much of that is due to age and wear, plus being recopied a few times. But... Beyond that, maybe. B&W film still can feel real, if we let ourselves believe. Looking new just makes it easier to believe in it.

@gregdowling2043 3 года назад

Rich, perceptive and nuanced reading of an exhumed artifact. Marvelous!

@TheGaze 3 года назад

Thanks Greg!

@61TomD 3 года назад

I'd like to think the two observers are the brothers.

@GrantTarredus Год назад

This goes straight into my “Best videos” playlist. I wasn’t aware of this phenomenal restoration, and having seen the original film a number of times I’m stunned by it. Many, many thanks.

@cedrigo Год назад

I used to live in Lyon when I was a student... it makes me feel so nostalgic! Thanx for the analysis :)

@executivesteps 3 года назад

Excellent job on the insights and narration. You got it just right. The two observers in the background remind me of images of bystanders watching the strange Google Streetview vehicle driving up their street. Just a brief moment of curiosity.

@TheGaze 3 года назад

That’s a great comparison!

@colinrickels201 3 года назад

The filler frames from the AI don’t really make this fake. Making some thing that is real appear more realistic and relatable to our time through the help of some guess work doesn’t make it any less real. Reminds me of that devs show where they enhance the quantum mechanical predictions of atom movement based on sound wavelengths and the grumpy dev lead goes on a tangent about how that version of Jesus Christ might have 3 hairs more on his head and therefore it’s not his Jesus. And like sure, technically that’s true but at the end of the day we live our lives off blissful ignorance. The amount of things we ignore for the sake of happiness.

@Cassie876 Год назад

Your video was literally shown almost in its entirety in a lecture on sensory history I attended at university yesterday! Thanks for the great video! and congratulations on your video being shown in a uni lecture!

@TheGaze Год назад

Wow, that's great! I'm curious: at which uni did they show it?

@Cassie876 Год назад

@@TheGaze University of Auckland. The lecture was a part of the New Zealand Cultural History course. It was used in the section explaining what sensory history was as an example, before looking at NZ examples of sensory history.

@jean6453 3 года назад

Excuse me, I just found your channel, where have you been all my life and why don't you have hundreds and thousands of subscribers ? Please continue to create these videos !

@VANTABL4CK 3 года назад

Am I the only one who feels kinda bad for the cycle dude

@realistindenial 3 года назад

I love your deep-dive analysis. I particularly enjoyed this and The Far Side videos. I'm looking forward to your future offerings.

@veremlim 3 года назад

Dude, welcome back, we missed you, great essay!

@alejoparedes2388 3 года назад

Yeaaaah, you're back! Glad to see you again. And great video!

@TheGaze 3 года назад

Haha, thank you Alejo! Glad you liked it 🙌🏻

@C.Abbenfield 2 года назад

Thanks a lot for this video!! So well researched and put together!! Super interesting.

@movin2585 Месяц назад

I had to send this around. Beautiful, distilled shot of pure meta information. Brilliant and necessary. Like watching fire. Instantaneous subscriber. More please..

@amac203 Год назад

The inserted frames are not really fake. They are rooted in reality. AI inserting a frame between two existing frames uses values from those two frames, to calculate a "middle ground" estimate. It's not just artificial. It's interpolated based on the values found in the actual frames.

@Poisson4147 10 месяцев назад

👍 It's no different from how engineers and scientists had to interpolate values of logarithms, roots, and other constructs in the days before calculators. The values aren't fake, they're highly-accurate estimates.

@jkapp374 Год назад

This is very quickly becoming one of my favorite RU-vid channels... Meantime definitely think it would be awesome to update and deoldify some of the Buster Keaton classics just so a new audience can get to maybe appreciate them more for their genius

@Arttective 3 года назад

Just a suggestion: Add captions to your videos (don't rely on the automated ones). Your videos will get more impressions. Love your work immensely.

@carlfalk7251 Год назад

Old photos and movies like this one always make me wonder about the people. What were their names, what did they do, how did their lives go?

@excelgazialimuhiddinhacibekir 3 года назад

Excellent examination, absolutely excellent, of a pioneering, mesmerizing piece of history of cinematographic art. Kudos to the narration and interpretation.

@lawrencetalbot55 Год назад

Man!! I love this channel!! New subscriber here, thanks for making these amazing videos.

@vertyisprobablydead 2 года назад

Enjoyable short breakdown, curious for more of your work.

@claudiosalib774 3 месяца назад

The guy on the bicycle is David Filby where he was on his way to meet his friend George regarding a new invention George had created. Upon finally meeting George, David was horrified in hearing about capturing people on a medium called film. David was so concerned that he told his friend George that if his contraption could do as he said it could, that it was to be destroyed before it destroyed him. Fortunately for us, George did not destroy the apparatus where we have been so fortunate to have utilised George's invention to this day. ☝️😮

@MrStefanHH 3 года назад

Wonderful. Thanks for the analysis and the background information!

@jrgenblom4286 2 года назад

I really like your way of approaching this brilliant Lumiere-movie. Bravo.

@theastronomersjournal948 Год назад

the building to the left of the fence in the background is still there and looks the same as well.

@jannarkiewicz633 3 года назад

Why would anyone do thumbs down? It was insightful.

@Seele2015au 3 года назад

Nice work! As recorded moving images are so commonplace nowadays, it is hard for us to cast our minds back to understand how they were like to their original viewers. The earliest footages such as the train arriving at station, workers leaving a factory etc, were more like proofs of concept, to demonstrations that the system created by Lumiere actually worked. Sure enough these earliest films, all lasting mere seconds, did their jobs by simply being moving images, but it did not take long for them to inject some bits of storyline into them; the Snowball Fight was definitely one that was staged to give a bit of story once the novelty of just being moving images wore off.

@Poisson4147 10 месяцев назад

The Lumières also recognized that seeing ANY kind of motion on a screen would be sufficiently novel that people would pay to see it. That's why many of their earliest films were humorous, like the "Arroseur Arrosè" series from 1895-96. Judging from their mansion in Lyon, the brothers were more than successful 😄

@franc9111 6 месяцев назад

@@Poisson4147 In fact there were two houses originally, each brother had his own, but unfortunately one of them was demolished. The entrance to the factory is still there, but that's all that is left of it. I believe their holiday home on the French Riviera is still standing. It's well worth going to Lyon to visit the Institut Lumière.

@Tjoens 3 года назад

Beautiful essay once again, I enjoyed it very much!

@PBryanMcMillin Год назад

While I'm not normally a fan of B&W films that are colorized, this is an exception. Rather than being a distraction, it adds to the original. I do wonder if the man on the bike might have been some random man who decided to ride through the scene? That snowball shot to the neck could easily, and most likely miss its target and the story been ruined. To me, it seems too perfect to have been planned.

@mariusjenkins7294 Год назад

I love your commentary and thought process, this was ... This video feels like it is from a much bigger youtube channel, and I was really surprised you only have 10k subscribers when I went to click your channel to see what your other videos were... I'm pretty sure if you made videos a little more often and kept this same quality, you could easily make a career out of youtube... I will definitely be subscribing...

@jonhelmer8591 Год назад

It's 6 months later and I thought the same thing, although now it's 20k.

@6r3nt0nt 2 года назад

This channel is a diamond in the rough. Bravo! +1 Subscriber

@charcolew Месяц назад

As usual, both informative and entertaining. Chapeau, messieurs!

@movedmindpoRUSZonyUMYS 3 года назад

I had so much fun watching this video. Thanks!

@Jahreas 2 года назад

Filmed 126 years ago, it looks as though it's just happened.

@michaeljones9975 Год назад

Great video man, WOW!

@tomguyone 3 года назад

So interesting and entertaining, and the commentary is very instructive as well. I do have a 'thing' about people using the term 'video' when it is film...of course this is a video of a film, so I guess it's OK.

@JTA1961 3 года назад

Man you're playing pretty deep in outfeild. However I appreciate your position as I'm not even in the game & only watching from the stands. Thank you.

@deltavee2 9 часов назад

Subscribed. I enjoy your observations and interpretations. Your Warner Bros video caught my eye. I have long had the same perception of the backgrounds, almost stark but colourful and relative to the story at all times. The unfortunate genius painter sealed the deal. Looking forward to more of your work. Cheers from Canada, E. Ontario

@Ice_Karma 3 года назад

Mind blown, in several ways! And why don't you have more subs?!?!

@TheGaze 3 года назад

Working on it! 😅

@noeraldinkabam Год назад

1:10 The way he got on that bike on that snowlayer makes him immortal!

@noooly Год назад

Thank you for this great, impactful video.

@sgringo Год назад

Superb analysis! Subscribed.

@irwinseltzer9374 3 года назад

Thank you for the great analysis.

@morenofranco9235 Год назад

Excellent restoration job.

@YochevedDesigns 5 месяцев назад

Your commentary is absolutely poetic.

@zenclover8468 3 года назад

I wondered about this when i saw it a few weeks ago. Appreciate the information, although its worth noting that some of what you said was speculation. Thank you nonetheless.

@finnmcginn9931 Год назад

Brilliant commentary, cheers

@anthonycamilleri9960 Год назад

Great post! This is what the internet should be about

@teleology60 11 месяцев назад

Could the two people in the background be the Lumiere brothers? The colorized version is artistic in its use of very nostalgic, French colors to represent the buildings, and the dark contrast of the tree trunks against those buildings. Lovely!

@warehousejo007 Год назад

wow. 2023. just watched the video. amazing. ah understand all the manipulation applied to the original recording of an event many years ago. did ah say amazing already? a fantastic result...and ur narration covered it so well ah can't see how anyone cld not experience a delightful and embracing expansion of appreciation for an already wonderful piece. 🙂

@jocec3283 Год назад

I hve seen a fully restaured version of one of Charlie Chaplin's movie, a few years back. Same with Metropolis. The level of details were simply amazing...

@TheLadsBandLive Год назад

I love the moment when the top hat man seems to instinctively and gracefully evade an incoming snowball. 0:04

@NorthHollywood 3 года назад

Imagine if the Lumière Brothers got to see this version of their work.

@williampage9357 Год назад

FANTASTIC ! CAN'T WAIT FOR THE NEXT BREAKTHROUGH IN CINEMA .

@christopheberthier3954 3 года назад

The end is perfect, it blew my mind.

@aodhganmerrimac Год назад

As an older person who grew up watching black & white films & television shows & even silent movies when they were broadcast I find the original very relatable, but while the modern restoration is fascinating for it's clarity, it does have an artificiality for me. It is wonderful, but for me it puts me at a clinical distance to the footage.

@boriswilsoncreations 2 года назад

I loved the video aspect ratio :]

@steveweinstein3222 3 года назад

Wonderful essay. Thank you.

@wakintgn 3 года назад

keep up the work!

@dabble778 3 года назад

Great research 😎

@kurtflint64 Год назад

The AI makes the ground seem really icy and I think that's what makes the look the most realistic. It's an important part of the story that couldn't be caught by the limited original technology.

@MagusMarquillin 3 года назад

Have you seen Peter Jackson's "They Shall Not Grow Old" - it's a feature length documentary bringing real World War 1 footage to life in this fashion, and it's truly awe inducing! They "(re)create reality" even more by adding what should be the sounds that seem to have been present, and hiring professional lip readers to determine what people were (probably) saying, as evidenced in 16fps. I think his team even pioneered this technology, but I don't know how similar Dmitriy's method is.

@franc9111 6 месяцев назад

Somebody who knew how to lipread interpreted some of what was said and they even detected the regional accent used.

@MagusMarquillin 6 месяцев назад

@@franc9111 Very impressive what specific skill sets can allow for.

@ChrisLeeProducer 2 года назад

This was SO GOOD!

@-0rbital- 3 года назад

Great stuff!

@JohnDlugosz Год назад

"That's the arch of the story" Should that be "arc" rather than "arch"? looking into it... yes, it should be "arc".

@MrWlbblw Год назад

The chicks all started out pretty rough, but they steadied up & started throwing some bombs by the end. Nailed a couple people dead on.

@stormfalconstudios Год назад

Adding frames is how you show a 24p movie on a 30p system. This AI frame grabbing is no different than a synchronous projector. Same concept, just a modern technique. My dad used a synchronous projector in the 70s to show movies on a local cable channel by a sort of reverse kinescope method.

@Poisson4147 8 месяцев назад

👍👍 That’s fascinating! Frame interpolation is no different than the way engineers used to interpolate values of stuff like logarithms etc. in the days before calculators. The interpolated values weren’t fake, they were really good approximations based on “nearby” numbers. Frame interpolation does the same thing with pixels.

@i.k.8868 Год назад

That's just the way our mind works. It fills in the gaps.

@tnthakomwa Год назад

enjoyable piece

@PlasmaticZero 3 года назад

this guy needs more views and subscribers

@valerym1400 9 месяцев назад

It would be great to recreate this scene in the same place. Anyone?

@wadyamean4464 3 года назад

This is a masterpiece

@adamfrost1881 Год назад

Omg this video is done very well

@ccbowers 3 года назад

"The rendition that isn't rooted in reality feels closest to reality." Our brains are constantly filling in gaps, and providing details that aren't there to provide coherence and continuity to our perceptions all the time. There is no direct access to reality, so the dichotomy of fake or real in this context isn't so clear cut. Adding frames, and smoothing movements can be more accurate representations of what really happened, even if they were actually contructed.

@TheGaze 3 года назад

Hi Chris! Thanks for that great reply. I kind of agree, but still: these artificial add-ons aren't really rooted in reality, right? It's kind of a philosophical question, what is real and what is fake, but an interesting one I think. :-)

@stevenf5902 2 года назад

Sounds like you’re a Brentanian Sense Data Theorist

@amac203 Год назад

@@TheGaze They are rooted in reality. A frame inserted between two existing frames uses values from those two frames, to calculate a "middle ground" estimate. It's not just artificial. It's interpolated based on the values found in the actual frames.

@__hjg__2123 2 года назад

I think the word "fake" is being mis-applied here.

@markovmily6950 3 года назад

Wonderful

@MrDiaz111 3 года назад

Also, part of the joy of the people maybe that snowfall and accumulation is uncommon in Lyon, France.

@xxskippernate409xx6 5 месяцев назад

The first snowball fight recorded in historu was ancient rome. So we've probbaly done this forever.

@gmikoner Год назад

They turned that poor man into a candle holder

@user-ng2re6wp5o Год назад

Une belle bataill de balle de neige!

@-0rbital- 3 года назад

You can see the snowball comes in back and from the right, back and from the right...back and from the right.

@vertyisprobablydead 2 года назад

I understand that reference.

@realinohio 3 года назад

Some things may have been added but for the film to look real. As long as we see both versions we understand.

@arthurdent8022 Год назад

I'd like to believe that the two background figures are the Lumieres.

@jabberwockydraco4913 2 года назад

"People in the 19th century were so much more classy" PEOPLE IN THE 19TH CENTURY:

@ralphe5842 Год назад

The added frames works like a lot of compression programs used camcorders I really don’t think of it as true deep fakes and most color films of the past used black and white film stock shot through filters as color is really artificial anyway objects don’t have color just absorb all the spectrum of white light but what you see.

@jscordoba3 6 месяцев назад

While the restoration's ai frames are obviously not real, this restoration is acceptable as a document of life back then. The AI is tastefully used, and i would bet if you went back in time with a cell phone camera to this moment the result wouldn't be drastically different. The color would be more accurate, the colorization looks like an instagram filter somewhat.

@3DComputing 3 года назад

Like.... Wow

@gertwallen 2 года назад

The fact that the biker did not continue his journey but returned to where he was coming from is a strong indicator that this was a fabricated scene

@simaodocaminhao Год назад

Totally. Him going back where he came from doesnt make sense at all. Also, just watch how 3-4 people were already "prepared" to hit him all at the same time (some were even turned away) just as he was passing through. Also the fall off the bike looks staged, the cyclist clearly knew what was coming.

@robertodell9193 Год назад

He's going for reinforcements!

@user-eb5cb6ud1p 9 месяцев назад

It was staged and scripted by the Lumières so they could show it in theaters. They're considered to be the fathers of the movie industry.

@Poisson4147 8 месяцев назад

No need to guess - this clip is well-documented as a scripted film made by the Lumière brothers, who are considered by many to be the fathers of the movie industry. The building in the background is their studio and factory.