How Movies Are Made Essay

Elise DeVuono

Mr. Ledvina

Challenge English

April 1, 2014

The Process of How Movies are Made:

Then and Now

For over a hundred years, people have watched movies, but not many know of the process that goes into making all of the movies we enjoy. Since the time of the silent films, the process has drastically changed, thanks to more advanced technology. For example, the first films didn’t have sound, were in black and white, and were shorter than they are today. Today, films have sound, are in color, and are much longer.

The first piece of technology that produced a sort of “moving picture” was Thomas Edison- and his assistant William Kennedy Laurie Dickson-‘s- Kinetoscope. One of the first prototypes for the Kinetoscope was shown to a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs on May 20, 1891. The machine was both a camera and a peep-hole viewer, and the film used was 18mm wide. (History of Edison Motion Pictures: Origins of Motion Pictures--the Kinetoscope) After their invention many more came until it eventually lead to the invention of the Vitascope.

The, Vitascope was invented by Charles Francis Jenkins, Thomas Armat, and with later help from Thomas Edison. Charles Francis Jenkins had already invented a version of Edison’s Kinetoscope, called the Phantoscope. Which they “built off of” to make their next film showing machine, which in September 1895, they showed to the public. The reaction to it must have been good, because shortly after that they broke off the partnership each claiming it was their own idea. After this Jenkins produced another film machine and showed it the public a week after the partnership was off. During this time Armat, was perfecting his version of their product. Upon perfecting his version,...

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...gs, blueprints, sculptures and models later, the people in development have designed an imaginary place and characters to voice the story. (Production Process)

Once all of that is done, they need to find actors and actresses to voice the characters. They usually cast them by giving them a script to read and videotaping them to see how they sound. In this kind of movie it doesn’t matter how good looking the actors is, it’s all about how well they can act; with only their voice. Once they decide who will play each character, they can develop the character on the computer, to sort of match the actor’s personality. (Production Process)

After the casting process they really start to animate the film itself, they use the computer to make a layout of the characters, by using production designs picked from the hundreds of drawings, they made before. (Production Process)