Film and television have become a major medium for information distribution across the world. According to Berger (2008), “Images generally are visual, often are mediated—carried by the mass media—and are connected to information, values, beliefs, attitudes, and ideas people have” (Seeing Is Believing, p. 61). Although film and television are in themselves separate mediums, they correlate with each other and have many similarities
History of Film
The first device to record and watch film, called a kinetoscope, was created by William Dickson, an employee of Thomas Edison. The first time Dickson made his kinetoscope public was in March of 1891. These films were in fact bland and of poor quality and used processes that did not last long in the film industry. In 1906, George Smith created a process that added color to film. This process is called kinemacolor. There were many problems with the kinemacolor, which was discarded in 1932 when Technicolor was invented (http://www.cinemateca.org/film/film_history.htm).
Throughout the years, film production has become an art. In the 40s, 50s, and 60s there was no way to digitally enhance film or create the special effects that we see in film today. Producers used simple techniques, such as scale, multiple exposure, time-lapse photography, and hand painted color schemes. In 1968, the induced illusion of 3-D filming was introduced through the use of front projection and static transparency (http://www.cinemateca.org/film/
film_history.htm).
Since the 1960’s, huge bounds have been made in the film industry. New techniques have been formed to create awesome aesthetic films that surpass the films of yesterday. The use of computer animation, graphics, and special effects has become...
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...be tied together in some form throughout the years in order to keep producing great media.
References
Chandler, D. (2004). The grammar of television and film. Retrieved on July 3, 2010, from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/gramtv.html
Cinemateca.org (2001). Film history. Retrieved July 3, 2010, from http://www.cinemateca.org/film/film_history.htm
O’Malley, M. (2004, April). Regulating television. Retrieved on July 2, 2010, from http://chnm.gmu.edu/exploring/20thcentury/regulatingtelevision/index.php
Berger, A. (2008). Seeing is believing: An introduction to visual communication. Boston: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Scribd. (2007, April 19). The history of special effects and digital technology in film. Retrieved July 3, 2010, from http://www.scribd.com/doc/34079/The-History-of-Special-Effects-and-Digital-Technology-in-Films-
There first invention produced was the Technicolor System 1 Additive Color, which I’m sorry to say flopped massively due to the unfortunate screening of The Gulf Between in 1917 which only a few frames remain of this film today. This was the first public premier of the technology and was disastrous. The film was captured through two separate filters red and green and the light through those two filters was captured on a single reel of film, when processed this negative had red and green information captured on a black and white reel, when this was processed the reel was placed into a projector and then threw red and green filters. To project the image an adjustable prism that had to manually lined up by the projectionist as two separate images formed on the projection screen this did not work as planned as the projectionist failed to line up the images correctly.
the visual medium. In a way that is unique to the cinema, the special effects disrupt the
The spectacular qualities within the contemporary films that use VFX became progressively important to Hollywood. The popularity of the ever growing special effects has been increased by a growing demand for products in different multimedia forms such as computer games, theme-park rides and many other secondary outlets that frequently generated more profits then the films they were based on.
Many other innovations of technique came from this film, such a technique known as the “wipe” where on image is wiped off the screen by another, as well as other innovations which resulted from Greg Toland’s experimental camera angles.
14 Feb. 2011. http://4thefirsttime.blogspot.com/2009/01/ 1922-first-3d-movie.html> http://www.goo Pracht, Adam. The 'Path'. How 3-D Movies Work With Digital Technology. suite101.com.
The use of digital film first began to make it’s way into Hollywood in special effects scenes. For example, in Forest Gump, released in 1994 by Paramount Pictures, a few scenes are enhanced with this technology. In a scene which actor Gary Senise loses his legs, producer Robert Zemeckis did his best to manipulate the film to show the actor with no legs. Using digital film technology, visual effects supervisor, Ken Ralston explains how they mastered this technique. Ralston explains,
Any act of conscious communication always true, in varying degrees, two fundamental objectives. One is to inform, instruct and describe, and the other is to entertain or occupy. The products of the mass communication industry made that mandate the particularity that are targeted to a wide receiver, whose acceptance is intended to conquer. The intent of the act is expressed with the term broadcast (spread through mass media), which once meant to sow broadcast the farmland. The cinema, especially the US, is the great communication industry of the twentieth century. Although in recent decades seems to have given primacy to television, the information, education and entertainment on Western culture influence is undeniable.
Explain how film, radio, and television helped change America from a community based culture to shared, homogeneous culture.
Technology has had a huge impact on the world, especially the film industry. It has had a long past and as the technology advances, it becomes more and more realistic. It all began with the first machine patented in the United States that showed animated pictures or movies. It was called the “wheel of life” or “zoopraxiscope” and was patented in 1867 by William Lincoln. Moving drawings or photographs were watched through a slit in the zoopraxiscope. However, modern motion picture making began with the invention of the motion picture camera. Frenchman Louis Lumiere is usually credited with the creation of the first motion picture camera in 1895, but several others were invented around the same time. What Lumiere invented was a portable motion picture camera, film processing unit and a projector called the Cinematography, all three functions in one invention. This made motion pictures very popular and it is also known as beginning the motion picture era. In 1895, Lumiere and his brother were the first to present projected, moving, photographic pictures to a paying audience of more than one person. However, they were also not the first to project film. In 1891, the Edison Company successfully demonstrated the Kinetoscope which allowed one person at a time to view moving pictures. Also in 1896, he showed the improved Vitascope projector and it was the first commercially successful projector in the United States.
Computer generated imagery has evolved and spread throughout cinematography and the film world like wildfire. Although computer generated imagery offers countless creative opportunities, the art form of special effects makeup should be practiced and preserved, as just that- an art form. Most people have begun to describe special effects makeup as anachronistic. Considering how long special effects makeup has been around, people are convinced that its existence is coming to an end.
As times are changing, knowledge and information are also changing. With that, the development of motion picture complexity has changed the film industry by a continuing technological evolution. It is evident that films have changed significantly over the last 100 years. The intricacy of filmmaking technology has rapidly progressed, allowing creative potential for filmmakers. Films are often due to technological advances, or even to reintroduce a classic story.
Cinematography is a relatively new job, with photography invented in the nineteenth century and major film studios popping up in the early 1900s. A French man by the name of Louis Daguerre is credited with the first uses of photography, beginning in the 1830s. Daguerre’s method took anywhere from five to forty minutes to develop a permanent image. In the 1840s, Josef M. Petzval, a Hungarian, was able to cut down on this time, as well as produce a clearer image. George Eastman was able to develop a “lightweight, inexpensive” (Digital History) camera, Kodak, and paper film wound on rollers (Digital History).
“The history of computer generated imagery began from work of military industrial teams, trying to use computer graphics for the purpose of simulation and technical instructions.”(Wells, 2006) The invention of colour photography and animation had the biggest impact on cinema until the arrival of computer generated imagery. It wasn’t one person who developed computer generated imagery. It was a combination of developments in the late 1950's and 1960's by pioneers John Whitney Sr., William Fetter, Ivan Sutherland, Ken Knowlton and Charles (Chuck) Csuri which made computer generated imagery an essential tool for film makers today. With new technological advances, computer generated imagery improved greatly. The aim of film makers is and always was to create moving images which appear as realistic as possible to convince the viewer that what they see is “reality”.
The Role of Computer Generated Imagery in the Film Industry Computer Generated Imagery is the special effects used in motion pictures to create a visual depiction of an illusion that can not be easily created in real life. Directors of major motion pictures have been using these technologies since the early days of the personal computer. Early on, when and special effects were in their beginning stages, it was difficult to make efficient and effective effects that are well accepted by the movie critics and the general public. An evolution of special effects and the introduction of computerized animation brought the standards for movie effects to a higher level. The development of new methods of Computer Generated Imagery for less money and more effective than in the past has allowed even fairly low budget movies to incorporate such technology.
American Museum of the Moving Image (n.d.). How Film Projectors Work. Retrieved December 2, 2013, from http://www.movingimage.us/sprockets/filmproj.swf