Out With The Old, Now With The New

 

Movies and technology used to create them have evolved over time, from first watching in a movie theater to now being able to view them from a mobile device or at home. There were several pioneers in the movie industry, creating groundbreaking technology such as The Lumière brothers, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Charles Chaplin, and many more. As a society, movies have become more popular than before. They have special effects that keep the audience interested and entertained, along with offering the same effects in a theater and at home. Movies can be viewed on any device and instead of getting a physical copy, customers can now get a digital copy that is all stored on their television. Pixels have greatly improved, offering 4K and 5K, along with there being more genres and subgenres of movies being created every day. Society is able to use movies as self-expression, art, and more, it has also created a variety of job opportunities. Expanding from not only movies but to news production, video game creation, television shows, and much more. 

The evolution timeline for movies started in 1832, the phenakistoscope was one of the first devices used to show movies. It was a twirling disk mounted with phased drawings of things in motion (A Brief History of the Tech Behind Film - Actiview, 2018). Movies were invented before photography. After the phenakistoscope, the zoetrope was invented, a device of images in a rotating drum. In 1877, the phonograph and the “first moving picture” was invented by setting up multiple cameras to take successive photographs of the horses as they lifted all four hooves off the ground at the same time while galloping (A Brief History of the Tech Behind Film - Actiview, 2018). The phonograph was used to record and reproduce sound, important for the music and movie industry. Next was the invention of the camera called the kinetograph in 1888, invested by Thomas Edison and his lab assistant, Dickson (A Brief History of the Tech Behind Film - Actiview, 2018). It was running by batteries and weighed over 1,000 pounds. The Lumière brothers invented the cinématographe and Thomas Edison invented the Vitascope in 1895. The cinématographe recreated the illusion of movement, it projected images in dark rooms and showed still transparent pictures (7 Advances in Technology That Have Revolutionized the Film Industry, 2018). The Vitascope was a lightweight, portable, and hand-cranked device that functioned as a camera, projector, and printer (A Brief History of the Tech Behind Film - Actiview, 2018).  In 1902, with portable filming and projection allowed Georges Méliès to produce popular films like Le Voyage Dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), it was the first film to achieve international distribution, and shortly after The Great Train Robbery by Porter was the first big box office success (A Brief History of the Tech Behind Film - Actiview, 2018). This persuaded investors to make the first permanent movie theater called Nickelodeons. In 1916, Technicolor allowed filmmakers to record in color, it also introduced the photographic chemical process that managed color in movie frames (7 Advances in Technology That Have Revolutionized the Film Industry, 2018).  In 1927, the Vitaphone allowed recording soundtracks and spoken text on disks to be reproduced at the same time as the film (7 Advances in Technology That Have Revolutionized the Film Industry, 2018). Animation also was developed by no other than Walt Disney with the release of Steamboat Wilie, making Mickey Mouse a huge star. The multiplane camera was also invented and Walt Disney used the video camera to produce Snow White, the first feature film that allowed scenes to be more realistic by achieving depth in animation for the first time in history (7 Advances in Technology That Have Revolutionized the Film Industry, 2018). This was sponsored by Warner Brothers and First National studios, but it was replaced by Movietone. Movietone was a system that allowed to record of audio directly onto the film, an achievement that proved to be a success until 1939 (7 Advances in Technology That Have Revolutionized the Film Industry, 2018). Shortly after the cinemascope was developed by Fox and it took large images by compressing a normal size into a standard frame, also known as the television (7 Advances in Technology That Have Revolutionized the Film Industry, 2018). Later Disney became popular with its movies using computer graphics, their first work was the famous film, Beauty and the Beast, followed by Pixar who started to create animated films with their first three being Toy Story, Monsters Inc, and Cars (7 Advances in Technology That Have Revolutionized the Film Industry, 2018). The two companies ended up combining after Disney bought Pixar and the computer animation production system was invented. It was a 2D digital software that allowed digitally colored hand-drawn animations to be in movies (7 Advances in Technology That Have Revolutionized the Film Industry, 2018). In 1930, 3D was invented and it was used for image digitization and computer-generated graphics to make the popular movies The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, 300, and Avatar (7 Advances in Technology That Have Revolutionized the Film Industry, 2018). In 2018, smartphones allowed anyone to become a filmmaker and create their own movies and short films. All technology leads to higher-end movies that can be viewed at home or in upgraded movie theaters that now offer a variety of new features such as IMAX, 3D, surround sound, and more.

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References

7 Advances in Technology that have Revolutionized the Film Industry. (2018, June 29). OpenMind. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/technology/innovation/7-advances-in-technology-that-have-revolutionized-the-film-industry/

A Brief History of the Tech Behind Film - Actiview. (2018, May 10). Medium. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://medium.com/@TeamActiview/a-brief-history-of-the-tech-behind-film-c18579ff958