Panoramic View of Electric Tower from a Balloon (1901) User Reviews

Novel camera-work, laughable title

[Felonious-Punk · 6/10 · 11 June 2010]

Produced by Thomas Edison. Photographed by Edwin S. Porter. This movie is incorrectly named. There is no balloon. There is no lifting whatsoever of the camera. Instead, the movie presents one of the earliest instances, if not the earliest instance, of a movie camera being tilted upwards.

The camera scales the entire height of a tower, and then tilts back down to the ground level, where passersby continue to stroll. Cute. The picture is not overly grainy. The lighting is sufficiently bright.

If you liked this, you will also like "Panorama of Calcutta" (1899) (which isn't really Calcutta but another Indian city), for it's gliding down a river on a boat. You may also like "Palace of Electricity" (1900); "Panoramic View of the Morecambe Sea Front" (1901); and "North Sea Fisheries, North Shields" (1901).

Lying to the Public

[Michael_Elliott · 17 August 2015]

Panoramic View of Electric Tower from a Balloon (1901)

This Edison film was shot by Edwin S. Porter and was sold as the camera being placed inside a hot air balloon to give you a shot of the Electric Tower. The advertisement is certainly a life as it's obvious the camera isn't in a balloon and more than likely someone just lifted it up off the ground to get a complete shot of the tower. You can feel cheated that there's not really a balloon being used but it's still a unique film because it really wasn't too often that anyone attempted to lift the camera to get a better shot. On that level alone this film is pretty important because you've got to think that this was one of the first times this "trick" was ever done.