The history of film ranges from the late 19th century to the present day 21st century. It has evolved from simple sequences of pictures containing one scene, to today’s films that include sound, many scenes, enhanced CGI and 3D effects.
One of the first true films to be created was of a horse running in fast motion. The idea for this motion picture came from a man called Eadweard Muybridge, an English photographer who experimented with multiple cameras to create moving images. On June 11th 1878 Muybridge was able to successfully photograph the horse called Sallie Gardener running using 24 stereoscopic cameras. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse's, and each of the camera shutters was controlled by a trip wire which was triggered by the horse's hooves. They were 21inches apart to cover the 20 feet taken by the horse stride, taking pictures at one thousandth of a second. The combination of the pictures shown one after the other created a motion picture and so laid the path of film evolution to create the films we see today.
A picture of Muybridge beside his stills of the horse running.
The second experiment of the creation of the motion picture was filmed by Louis Le Prince on October 14th 1888. Louis Le Prince was an inventor, a French man working and living in England. The film itself Roundhay Garden Scene is now considered the earliest surviving motion picture; it was recorded at 12 frames per second and ran for approximately two seconds.
A picture of Louis le Prince with a still of the film Roundhay Garden scene and stills of the frames used.
The first public screening of film ever is due to Jean Aimé "Acme" Le Roy, a French photographer. On February 5th 1894, he presented his "Marvellous Cinematograph" to a group of around twenty show business men in New York City.
Real film continuity was first made by Robert W. Paul in 1898 with his film Come Along, Do! This film contained two scenes rather than the average single scene of the time; in the first shot an old couple standing outside an art exhibition follow other people inside through the door the second shot showed what they do inside. Although this does not sound like a major breakthrough this made films longer and created the multishot/scene movies that developed into modern day cinema.
Before 1912 actors in American films were kept anonymous from their audiences, by this time however they we're beginnning to get screen credit, also around this time longer film reels were being used and in some cases multiple reels for one film. This all meant that films were increasing in length and that the actors and actresses were becoming publically known this paved the way for the celebritiy actors we all know today to be created.
Experimentation with sound film technology, both for recording and playback, was virtually constant throughout the silent era, but the twin problems of accurate synchronization and sufficient amplification had been difficult to overcome. In 1926 Warner Bros introduced the vitaphone system, this allowed them to successfully add sound to their films. The impact of adding sound to films was immense the change over from silent films was swift. By the end of 1929, almost all films in Hollywood had sound, this was the sound era, the era of the “talkies”
A picture of a vitaphone with the logo for the device above
The 1940s brought with them many propaganda movies to the big screen, and with them realistic war dramas like 49th Parallel (1941). Not all films at this time were war related, for example Walt Disney's animated features like Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942).
A poster for the film 49th Parallel (1941)
During the immediate post-war years the cinematic industry was threatened by television, and the increasing popularity of the medium meant that some movie theatres would bankrupt and close. Distressed with the closures of many of the movie theatres across America studios had to find new ways to attract its audience, these included attempts to widen their appeal with new screen formats like CinemaScope to present a wide screen for the movies presented. This led to the revival of past films to take advantage of the new big screen formats. Some of the most successful examples of revived films of the time include The Ten Commandments (1956), The Vikings (1958), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960) and El Cid (1961).
A poster for the film Sparticus (1960)
During the 1970s, film makers increasingly depicted explicit sexual content and showed gunfight and battle scenes that included graphic images of bloody deaths.'Post-classical cinema' is a term used to describe the changing methods of storytelling of the "New Hollywood" producers. The new methods of drama and characterization played upon audience expectations acquired during the classical/Golden Age period: story chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature unsettling "twist endings", main characters may behave in a morally ambiguous fashion, and the lines between the antagonist and protagonist may be blurred. The beginnings of post-classical storytelling may be seen in 1940s and 1950s film noir movies, in films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955),
A poster for the film Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
In world cinema, the 1970s saw a dramatic increase in the popularity of martial arts films largely due to its reinvention by Bruce Lee, who departed from the artistic style of traditional Chinese martial arts films and added a much greater sense of realism to them with his Jeet Kune Do style. This began with The Big Boss (1971), which was a major success across Asia.
A poster for the film The Big Boss (1971)
During the 1980s, audiences began increasingly watching movies on their home VCRs In the early part of that decade, the movie studios tried legal action to ban home ownership of VCRs as a violation of copyright, which proved unsuccessful. The martial arts genre was gain renovated by Jackie chan in the 1980s he had previously combined the comedy film and martial arts film genres successfully in the 1978 films Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master. His next step was to involve more dangerous stunts within his films, with these stunts he also included slapstick humour, these films were widely popular in the far east at this time.
A picture of a video cassette and a poster for the film the Eagle's Shadow (1978)
The 1990s saw a vast increase in the use of special effects such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and Titanic (1997) it also saw animated films aimed at family audiences also regain their popularity, with Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994). Also in 1995 the first feature length computer-animated feature, Toy Story, was produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Disney. This was a major turning point in animated films, computer animation would grow to become the dominant technique for feature length animation, this allowed competing film companies such as Dreamworks Animation and 20th Century Fox to compete with Disney with successful films of their own. During the late 1990s, another cinematic transition began, from physical film stock to digital cinema technology. Meanwhile DVDs had replaced VHS tapes across many homes in the world.
The logo for the DVD format with a poster for the film Toy Story (1995)
Finally in the 2000s, Home cinema systems had become very sophisticated. With studios releasing special edition DVDs with content only for viewing by home cinema audiences. The lord of the rings trilogy (2001 – 2002 – 2003) DVD is an example of this it contains many hours of bonus feature that aren't viewable anywhere else other than on the DVD.
During the decade of 2000 to 2010 there has been an increasing globalization of cinema, with foreign-language films gaining popularity in English-speaking markets. Examples of such films include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001), City of God (2002), The Passion of the Christ (2004) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
A poster for the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001)
