The Avengers

The ideas and technology took decades to create and evolve; but the individual films that were created took generally only a day or two to film. Many of the early movies were only a few seconds or a few minutes long. So the footage was created 'all at once' and than used for whatever its intended purpose was.

The first 'motion picture' was Horse in Motion created in 1878 by using multiple cameras and assembling the pictures into a motion strip. The entire film is 16 frames long and when looped shows a horse in motion (repeatedly). It was filmed in seconds and the frames were than assembled together by hand.

A few home movies survive from this time period, one of the oldest known being Roundhay Garden Scene (1888). This type of early filming was done in a day with no planned scripts, simply filming whatever local activity was taking place.

All of the earliest film footage is similar; shot in a day and not very long.

In the 1890's and early 1900's as film makers began using movies to create storylines and show longer movies for entertainment it became standard practice to spend an average of 1 or 2 weeks to create a movie and film various scenes that would be edited together. These weekly or biweekly storyline movies were known as serials and averaged 30 minutes to an hour long each. Each movie would have a very low production number and only be shown in a couple of theaters at a time. When a new serial arrived the old one would be shipped to the next theater in the country willing to show it.

It wasn't until the 1920's that the idea of big budget movies with long production times began to evolve. Ben-Hur (1925) is considered the first Big Budget film and took 2 years to complete. It was based on a successful stage play (which had run on stage for 25 years, ending in 1922 )