It's one of the movies that James White shot in 1900 when he took Edison's cameras to the City of Lights to see if he could find anything worthy of the American movie audience. Well, he did, and this is one of them. It's a trip in the Seine, passing various edifices which were very well known at the time (assuming, as always, that you were the type of American who knew about things in Paris).
Although this is not what we would call a panorama or pan shot today, it's what the term meant at the time. Any moving shot was a panorama, usually achieved by putting a camera on a moving object like a train, a balloon, an ox cart or, as here, a boat, and traveling with it. One sees such interesting things, like buildings, and more buildings, and junkyards, and more buildings and bridges and whatever that rectangular thing is at the end. What is that thing?
Although this is not what we would call a panorama or pan shot today, it's what the term meant at the time. Any moving shot was a panorama, usually achieved by putting a camera on a moving object like a train, a balloon, an ox cart or, as here, a boat, and traveling with it. One sees such interesting things, like buildings, and more buildings, and junkyards, and more buildings and bridges and whatever that rectangular thing is at the end. What is that thing?
