Edward Muybridge: Emperor Of Time

"Emperor of Time" aka Edward Muybridge

Edward Muybridge (Eadward Muybridge) known as the father of film and the emperor of time was not only these things but also a man that was human. Drew Christie shares Muybridge's story through the narration of Hugh Ross.

Hugh Ross begins the film with a story on an ancient Chinese belief where the emperor of China was in control of time. This story-telling leads us into Ross' idea that Edward Muybridge was the actual emperor of time. He states that Muybridge was, "the first man who stared at time himself".

Skipping into Ross' narration as Muybridge's abandoned son, he shares his tale of his father and begins with how he had never met his mother and after she died he was placed in an orphanage in San Francisco.

While we hear this tale our idea of who Muybridge was gets shattered with the fact that he was just a man who stumbled upon the invention of the motion picture.

After Muybridge's son was released from the orphanage he was trained to make saddles and other horse materials including stirrups. He became a horse whisperer. While he began training in horsemanship and everything horses he shares the idea that horses began to become obsolete because of the invention of trains and railroads.

What took months of travel by horse only took a week to travel by train. Trains were an "annihilation of time and space". This quote reminds me of the idea that time and scheduling began to have more of an importance to humans after trains were invented for potential passengers to catch their trains on time. This is why time became important.

Shifting the storytelling back to Edward, we are told that Edward was hired by a train baron to photograph the baron's horses. The train baron wanted to settle a bet in which it was undecided whether a horse picks up all four legs when