Films are one of the most popular media in the modern world, watched by hundreds of millions of people all around the world. Films began in the late 19th century as a technological novelty, transferring to a new means of presentation and distribution an older tradition of "entertainment, offering stories, spectacles, music, drama, humour and technical tricks for popular consumption." (McQuail, 1983) And, as with any popular media, people began to talk and write about it, and film theory arose from these writings.
Why the need for film theory? Because in watching a film, the spectator is not merely a passive receptacle being filled with the film 's meaning, but is engaged in a series of interpretations which depend on a whole set of
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The work of the camera or the film stock are no longer as essential in determining the end product, or the way films eventually look Digital technologies such as computer enhancement, imaging and editing have shifted the production balance increasingly towards the postproduction phase, thus further reducing the need for photographic accuracy. Not only can mistakes made during shooting be corrected, and recording effects be maximized, live action images and sounds can be generated independently of the outside world.
The advent of the digital age has affected not only the production and postproduction of the films, but also the cinema and post-cinema aspects as well. Cinemas now have features like THX or Dolby surround sound, enhancing the cinematic experience, and the IMAX 3D projection system, which has two camera lenses to project two different images simultaneously, simulating a 3d effect, which results in an extremely immersive and engaging experience for the viewer.
In post-cinema, new digital formats like the laser disc, video compact disc and the digital video disc, known as the LD, VCD and DVD allowed for higher quality home releases of films. That, coupled with increasingly advanced technology in the fields of televisions, home sound
The efficacious nature of films owes its prominent properties to the array of editing techniques. In the aforementioned films , editing techniques stabilizes the movie and
Movies have the ability to transport people to different times and places and distract them from ordinary everyday reality. They allow for a range of emotions to be experienced. At their core, movies examine the human condition. There are plenty of deeper truths woven into screenplays and plenty of lessons to be learned, even when an individual is solely seeking entertainment.
“The biggest mistake we have made is to consider that films are primarily a form of entertainment. The film is the greatest medium since the invention of movable type for exchanging ideas and information, and it is no more at its best in light entertainment than literature is at its best in the light novel.” - Orson Welles
They utilized the emergence of innovations such as cinemascope, 3-D, stereophonic sound and many others to produce these films.
In “A Century of Cinema”, Susan Sontag explains how cinema was cherished by those who enjoyed what cinema offered. Cinema was unlike anything else, it was entertainment that had the audience feeling apart of the film. However, as the years went by, the special feeling regarding cinema went away as those who admired cinema wanted to help expand the experience.
The major film theorists of the early 20th Century primarily focused on demonstrating film, a widely popular and novelty entertainment, as an art. These early theorists fell into two respective categories: the formative and the realists. The former focused on the formic elements like
Films and movies hold much than we can guess, they reveal a lot of vices and rots that are happening in society. Others give a history of a particular society, its beliefs, culture and their standard of living in the society. Films are used to disclose the social responsibilities in a given season and customs, moral values, societal worries and other cultural practices.
Early cinema is often referred to as a progression to narrative cinema, Tom Gunning would argue that it was not a progression but had its own purpose and coined the term The Cinema of Attractions in his essay ‘Now you see it, Now you don’t’. This is the concept that a large quantity of the first film makers produced films that were more about the spectacle, most of the films leading up to 1900 reflected the fascination with technology and how things happened rather than why. Gunning noted that there were three assumptions of film; the general ideas that people had about the timeline of film and where it would end up. There is the cinematic assumption, the idea that film was ‘restricted to the technological reproduction of theatre’ (Gunning T.1993) early cinema was primitive and only a practice for what was to come. The narrative assumption is that film is ‘only important as it is a predecessor to a more engaging and effective form of film,’ (Gunning T. 1993) this suggests that narrative cinema is the natural form of film. The final assumption is the idea that ‘cinema only truly appeared when it discovered its mission of telling stories.’ (Metz C. 1974) These assumptions all encompass the idea that narrative is the end form of film. In this essay I am going to discuss Tom Gunning’s theory of The Cinema of Attractions and the differences between them and narratively driven films.
Post-production is overlapping with production.The digital non-linear system replaced linear taped-based process reducing the cost of editing. The parallel process not only saves editing time but also develops the
Edwin Hernandez Professor Bulington Introduction to Film 5 October 2015 Safe Observational Essay The invention of movies has greatly progressed over the many years since its creation. What was once pictures rapidly revolving around to appear as though the image was moving is now a series of high–tech editing and complex techniques. A common theme, however, has not changed as the years have gone by.
Film acts as a medium for art, and for information. We are entertained, as well as
While Arnheim’s views on the future of film and the idea of a complete film can be somewhat insightful, I disagree with his conclusion that the introduction of sound and color diminishes the creative quality and originality of movies. He states his belief that eventually film will develop to the point where we “we have nothing to look forward to” (Arnheim , 184).
It can be seen from the survey’s figures that the ways to watch a movie and the movie technology have changed most in the past twenty years. Over the past days, only cinema was supplied for people who wanted to watch a movie. But now, more and more people watch movies at home through Family Cinema and computer because they make people comfortably. People can sit on the sofa even or lie in bed to watch a movie, and they are able to have some food and drink at the same time. However, in my opinion, movies’ changes which affect entertainment of people most is movie technology, particularly is computer digital special effects’ appearance. Digital special effect is not only a supplement for film editing, it have already penetrated into every aspect of movies, such as screenplay, scene, stage-ties and postproduction. The directors’ imagination is also at liberty to gallop on through the digital special effect. It makes people to be personally on the scene and shock each audience’s ghost.
The technical evolution of film industry is one notable feature of modern civilization. The innovation of combining motion pictures with recorded sound. Black-and-white film gradually replaced by the colour motion picture film and the visual effect involve the integration of live-action footage and computer generated imagery to create a scenes which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly or impossible to be recorded and the popularization of three-dimensional cinema. The developments of technique contribute the film industry to get closer to people’s perception, however, in the real life. The observation of objects would change if we look from different distance and angle. And this experience of perception cannot be done in film.
The film industry has continuously changed since its inception due to rapid technology advancements. Camera technology has been a key factor that has influenced the growth of filmmaking. The first motion picture in the world was produced in the early 1880s, and the first public screening occurred ten years later. It didn’t take long for the quality of films to improve as new filmmaking equipment emerged. Ever since the first movie was produced, the film industry has been continuously changing in response to emerging filmmaking technology. Introduction of digital photography and digital data storage along with the development of internet significantly influenced the film industry (Barsam, 2015). These technologies contributed