In this essay we shall attempt to research and analyse technological changes in filmmaking from the age of silent cinema to now. We shall look at the differences in the way films have been produced and distributed from cinema to the age of Netflix. The central point of the analysis is whether technological changes has effect content and style of filmmaking.
Silent Film
A silent film is a film which consists of only the picture, that is, it has no sound. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the motion picture itself, but before the 1920s, most films were silent. The years before sound came to the movies are known as the “silent era” among film scholars and historians. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity before the silents were replaced by “talking pictures”, and a number of film buffs believe the quality of the cinema actually decreased for a few years, before the new medium of sound was adapted to the movies.Since the films could not take advantage of synchronized sound for dialogue, titles were edited in to clarify the on-screen situation to the cinema audience or add critical dialog.
Showings of silent films usually were not actually silent: they were commonly accompanied by live music. Early in the development of the motion picture industry, it was learned that music was an essential part of any movie, as it gave the audience emotional cues for the action taking place on the screen. Small town and neighborhood movie theaters usually had a pianist accompany the film; large city theaters would have entire orchestras.
The medium of silent film required a greater emphasis on body language and facial expression, so that the audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. Modern-day audiences who are not used to this form of acting may be uncomfortable watching films from the silent era, because the actors in these films may seem to be overacting to an outrageous degree. Because of this, silent comedies tend to be more popular in the modern era than drama, because overacting is a natural form of comedy.
Literally thousands of silent films were made in the years leading through the inroduction of sound, but a considerable number of those films (historians estimate between 80 and 90 percent) have been lost forever. Movies of the first half of the 20th century were filmed on an unstable, highly flamable nitrate film stock, which required careful preservation to keep from decomposing over time. Most of these films were not preserved; over the years, their prints simply crumbled into dust. Many of them were recycled, and a sizable number were destroyed in studio fires. As a result, silent film preservation has been a high priority among movie historians.
List of Silent Movies 1905-1917:
- La Presa di Roma, Filoteo Alberini, 1905
- Ben-Hur, Sidney Olcott, 1907
- From the Manger To the Cross, Sidney Olcott, 1912
- Cabiria, Giovanne Pastrone, 1914
- The Perils of Pauline, Louis J. Gasnier & Donald MacKenzie 1914
- The Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith, 1915
- Intolerance, D.W. Griffith, 1916
- Cleopatra, J. Gordon Edwards, 1917
- Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Marshall Neilan, 1917
History of Cinema
Cinematography is the illusion of movement by the recording and subsequent rapid projection of many still photographic pictures on a screen. A product of 19th century scientific endeavour, it has, over the past century, become an industry employing many thousands of people and a medium of mass entertainment and communication.
No one person invented cinema. However, in 1891 the Edison Company in the USA successfully demonstrated a prototype of the Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures. The first to present projected moving pictures to a paying audience (i.e. cinema) were the Lumiere brothers in December 1895 in Paris.
At first, films were very short, sometimes only a few minutes or less. They were shown at fairgrounds and music halls or anywhere a screen could be set up and a room darkened. Subjects included local scenes and activities, views of foreign lands, short comedies and events considered newsworthy.The films were accompanied by lecturers, music and a lot of audience participation, although they did not have synchronised dialogue, they were not ‘silent’ as they are sometimes described.
By 1914, several national film industries were established. Europe, Russia and Scandinavia were as important as America. Films became longer, and storytelling, or narrative, became the dominant form.As more people paid to see movies, the industry which grew around them was prepared to invest more money in their production, distribution and exhibition, so large studios were established and special cinemas built. The First World War greatly limited the film industry in Europe, and the American industry grew in relative importance. The first 30 years of cinema were characterised by the growth and consolidation of an industrial base, the establishment of the narrative form, and refinement of technology.
Colour was first added to black-and-white movies through tinting, toning and stencilling. By 1906, the principles of colour separation were used to produce so-called ‘natural colour’ moving images with the British Kinemacolor process, first presented to the public in 1909. The first attempts to add synchronised sound to projected pictures used phonographic cylinders or discs. The first feature-length movie incorporating synchronised dialogue, The Jazz Singer in USA made in 1927, used the Warner Brothers’ Vitaphone system, which employed a separate record disc with each reel of film for the sound. This system proved unreliable and was soon replaced by an optical, variable density soundtrack recorded photographically along the edge of the film.
By the early 1930s, nearly all feature-length movies were presented with synchronised sound and, by the mid-1930s, some were in full colour too. The advent of sound secured the dominant role of the American industry and gave rise to the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’. During the 1930s and 1940s, cinema was the principal form of popular entertainment, with people often attending cinemas twice weekly. In Britain the highest attendances occurred in 1946, with over 31 million visits to the cinema each week.
Thomas Edison had used perforated 35mm film in the Kinetoscope, and in 1909 this was adopted as the industry standard. The picture had a height-to-width relationship—known as the aspect ratio—of 3:4 or 1:1.33. With the advent of optical sound, the aspect ratio was adjusted to 1.37:1. Although there were many experiments with other formats, there were no major changes in screen ratios until the 1950s.
Media Production Extended Diploma 