History of film making

Introduction
Film making which is also known as cinema, Cinematography, the illusion of movement by the
recording and subsequent rapid projection of many still photographic pictures on a screen.
Originally a product of 19th-century scientific endeavor, cinema has become a medium of mass
entertainment and communication, and today it is a multi-billion-pound industry.

The invention of cinema

Like many inventions, the origin of motion pictures on film is murky. Several people probably
invented what we think of today as movies around the same time. In any event, there are multiple
important people in the early days of cinema whose complementary contributions helped create
what we have and know today.

These significant figures in film history include George Eastman, of Eastman Kodak fame, one of
the creators of the film, the Lumière brothers in 1895 who developed a practical movie camera,
Thomas Edison who projected film and built an early studio, Edward Muybridge who in 1877 used
a series of still cameras to take photos fractions of a second apart and Louis Le Prince who
created Roundhay Garden Scene, a two-second movie from 1888 that survives to this day.

Before all of that, William George Horner invented the Zoetrope, a spinning wheel that showed
moving images when viewed through a slit. The Zoetrope is remarkable because it is technically
everything that a traditional movie is and functions in the same way, but Zoetropes face limits in
the length of a moving image they show. It took film and projectors to make a novelty into a
practical industry.

What is important is that by the dawn of the 20th century, people were suddenly making
exceptional movies and thrilling audiences around the world. Two movies include Thomas Edison’s
“The Great Train Robbery” and Georges Méliès “A Trip to the Moon.” Both movies came in under
20 minutes and delighted audiences who saw the world come alive before them in a way that must
have seemed like magic.
What the Early films where like
At first, films were very short, sometimes only a few minutes or less. They were shown at
fairgrounds, 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 newsworthy
events.

The films were accompanied by lectures, music and a lot of audience participation. Although they
did not have synchronized dialogue, they were not ‘silent’ as they are sometimes described.

The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. There were earlier cinematographic
screenings by others, however, the commercial, public screening of ten Lumière brothers' short
films in Paris on 28 December 1895, can be regarded as the breakthrough of projected
cinematographic motion pictures. The earliest films were in black and white, under a minute long,
without recorded sound, and consisted of a single shot from a steady camera. The first decade
saw film move from a novelty, to an established mass entertainment industry, with film production
companies and studios established throughout the world. Conventions toward a general cinematic
language developed, with film editing, camera movements and other cinematic techniques
contributing specific roles in the narrative of films.

Popular new media, including television (mainstream since the 1950s), home video (1980s), and
the internet (1990s), influenced the distribution and consumption of films. Film production usually

2
responded with content to fit the new media, and technical innovations (including widescreen
(1950s), 3D, and 4D film) and more spectacular films to keep theatrical screenings attractive.
Systems that were cheaper and more easily handled (including 8mm film, video, and smartphone
cameras) allowed for an increasing number of people to create films of varying qualities, for any
purpose including home movies and video art. The technical quality was usually lower than
professional movies, but improved with digital video and affordable, high-quality digital cameras.
Improving over time, digital production methods became more popular during the 1990s, resulting
in increasingly realistic visual effects and popular feature-length computer animations.

Various film genres have emerged during the history of film, and enjoyed variable degrees of
success.

The rise of the film industry

By 1914, several national film industries were established. At this time, Europe, Russia and
Scandinavia were the dominant industries; America was much less important. 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
dedicated cinemas built. The First World War greatly affected the film industry in Europe, and the
American industry grew in relative importance.

The first 30 years of cinema were characterized by the growth and consolidation of an industrial
base, the establishment of the narrative form, and refinement of technology .

Adding color to films

Color was first added to black-and-white movies through hand coloring, tinting, toning and
stenciling.

By 1906, the principles of color separation were used to produce so-called ‘natural color’ moving
images with the British Kinemacolor process, first presented to the public in 1909.

Kinemacolor was primarily used for documentary (or ‘actuality’) films, such as the epic With Our
King and Queen Through India (also known as The Delhi Durbar) of 1912, which ran for over 2
hours in total.

The early Technicolor processes from 1915 onwards were cumbersome and expensive, and colour
was not used more widely until the introduction of its three‑colour process in 1932. It was used for

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films such as Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz (both 1939) in Hollywood and A Matter of
Life and Death (1946) in the

Adding sound
The first attempts to add synchronized sound to projected pictures used
phonographic cylinders or discs.

The first feature-length movie incorporating synchronized dialogue, The Jazz Singer
(USA, 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, developed
originally for newsreels such as Movietone.

Cinema golden age

By the early 1930s, nearly all feature-length movies were presented with synchronized sound and,
by the mid-1930s, some were in full color too. The advent of sound secured the dominant role of
the American industry and gave rise to the so-called ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’.

During the 1930s and 1940s, cinema was the principal form of popular entertainment, with people
often attending cinemas twice a week. Ornate ’super’ cinemas or ‘picture palaces’, offering extra
facilities such as cafés and ballrooms, came to towns and cities; many of them could hold over
3,000 people in a single auditorium.

In Britain, the highest attendances occurred in 1946, with over 31 million visits to the cinema each
week.

Summary
The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. There were earlier cinematographic
screenings by others, however, the commercial, public screening of ten Lumière brothers’ short
films in Paris on 28 December 1895, can be regarded as the breakthrough of projected
cinematographic motion pictures. The earliest films were in black and white, under a minute long,
without recorded sound, and consisted of a single shot from a steady camera. The first decade
saw film move from a novelty, to an established mass entertainment industry, with film production

4
companies and studios established throughout the world. Conventions toward a general cinematic
language developed, with film editing, camera movements and other cinematic techniques
contributing specific roles in the narrative of films.

Popular new media, including television (mainstream since the 1950s), home video (1980s), and
the internet (1990s), influenced the distribution and consumption of films. Film production usually
responded with content to fit the new media, and technical innovations (including widescreen
(1950s), 3D, and 4D film) and more spectacular films to keep theatrical screenings attractive.
Systems that were cheaper and more easily handled (including 8mm film, video, and smartphone
cameras) allowed for an increasing number of people to create films of varying qualities, for any
purpose including home movies and video art. The technical quality was usually lower than
professional movies, but improved with digital video and affordable, high-quality digital cameras.
Improving over time, digital production methods became more popular during the 1990s, resulting
in increasingly realistic visual effects and popular feature-length computer animations.

Various film genres have emerged during the history of film, and enjoyed variable degrees of
success.