While discussing the magic of movie-making, progressive film director Joel Schumacher once said, “The people who came before us gave the world new ways to dream, and I think it is our job to continue that and try to give people new ways to dream.” Since its invention in the late 19th century, film has enabled storytellers to create amazing pieces of art through a unique and visual medium. For more than a hundred years, filmmakers shot motion pictures exclusively on celluloid film stock. This lengthy photochemical process remained the gold standard in the cinema world well into the new millennium. However, in more recent years, a technological leap into the digital realm arose to challenge old film. For many years, critics of digital film predicted the fall of this new technology, claiming to be highly inferior to film in quality. Then in 2002, digital film pioneer and director George Lucas released Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the first full-length film to be shot completely with high-definition digital cameras. Despite failing in the eyes of most critics and fans alike, Attack of the Clones pushed the boundaries of digital technology in cinema while simultaneously leading to the possible demise of film.
The method of capturing, developing, editing, and showcasing motion pictures was an extensive and time consuming task. Film cameras were cumbersome and loud devices, which allowed light into the lens that would then capture the image on the celluloid film inside. On set, camera operators and technicians would load the magazine with the film stock, giving the crew approximately ten minutes to film before the reel was full. Once completed, the operators had to reload the magazine, a process that could take an addition...
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... like Christopher Nolan still prefer to film on film, more and more directors are discovering the advantages of digital filming. The world of cinema is an ever-evolving entity, trying to satisfy the need of modern audiences. Martin Scorsese said, “One shouldn’t even think, ‘We’ve stopped and now we’ve reached digital. This is it.’ No, no. Think about where the entertainment impulse — where the need is going to go.” There are some filmmakers who still hold onto photochemical film as the everlasting gold standard as cinema, but the numbers of movies filmed on celluloid is dwindling. Whether film will be around in the future is still to be seen. In the end, however, it is about how artists tell stories and as director David Lynch remarked, “People love great stories. They like to get into a world and have an experience. And how they get there—it doesn’t really matter.”
The intermix of a great literary work into a modern production is not a new concept, but the use of digital enhancement to carry a theme was unheard of prior to the making of this film. Both Director of Photography Roger Deakens, and Business Development Director Sarah Priestnall from Kodak, helped to explain that the digital process used is the modification of the film at the pixel level, in which the film is digitized frame by frame and each frame is color matched to allow for manipulation. The mastering process was done in the film developing...
...ngs. Nothing has been left to out, down to the smallest detail. The one thing that has not changed over the years, no shortcut to producing a film. Modern day artists continue to push the envelope of a medium but it still requires hours of tedious work before realizing the final product.
Within every history class, English class, and even some science classes, the art of storytelling is a primary foundation for human communication and understanding. Whether it be through myths – Greek, Roman, Egyptian, you pick – or wives tales or even Grandpa telling his old war stories, stories have power. Now, through technological advancements in the last 150+ years (thank you Thomas Edison for your obsession), we have film as a mode to tell stories. Fictional or not, films tell a story; they have the power to give you not only entertainment but enlightenment too. Through continuing advancements, filmmakers have the ability to challenge and manipulate the power of the story through creative resistance; by exploring other elements of storytelling via film, filmmakers can create dramatically different films from similar ideas by using a multitude of techniques. Films are even used to create social commentary.
Filmmaking, the art of the motion picture, is a comparatively new art form that combines a moving image in conjunction with sound, primarily to tell a story. Due to the medium of capturing the image is evolving, so is the art in its entirety. Modern technology is allowing a more cheaper, streamlined form of production, thus rendering older methods unnecessary. Celluloid filmmaking is the old method of capturing film on a negative film strip and developing it later in its most natural state, whereas digital film is capturing synthetic and manipulatable pixels on a computer-like device. Digital filmmaking should be a primary film medium but not completely eradicate the dying celluloid film culture.
In the textbook ‘American Film: A History’, Jon Lewis discusses the components which he believes are markers of “the end of cinema as we know it”. By Cinema, Jon Lewis is meaning the all-encompassing thing that is film-making and film-viewing, as well as the marketing, and business side of Hollywood itself. The changes that resulted from the conglomerate business model, the marketing system of the industry and the advance in technology are the major argument points discussed by Lewis, however I think that technology itself is truly the overarching cause of the changes that’ve been seen.
...ors long-dead could be digitally produced. If this is so, then the question is raised of who controls the use and profits from their work. It also raises many ethical issues. Overall, technology in the film industry has come a long way and it has brought many exciting and helpful inventions for film. However, with new technology also brings some issues and questions for the future of the film industry.
In an excerpt from Film As Art titled The Complete Film, Arnheim expresses his views on the future of film. He uses the term “complete film” to describe what he will become the perfected film format that is hardly artistic expression but a mere presentation of reality. The main argument presented in this art...
Technology is a central issue surrounding film making from the times of Charlie Chaplin's silent films to today's modern and computer-animated films such as George Lucas's Star Wars. In addition there have been a system of changes in computer, phone and video enhancement which has propelled vast amounts of information knowledge to the public at a rapid rate.
Motion Pictures have always had a strong influence in today’s culture, but maybe none as prevalent as Star Wars. Originating with Episode 4 A New Hope, the series boomed from 1977 to 2005 with yet another addition coming in 2015. The strongest of the series was the original trilogy episodes 4, 5, and 6, all generally released in the 1980s. As one of the strongest film francaises still today, it’s impact within the 1980s was only the tip of the iceberg. Children and adults alike still anticipate the new edition of this seemingly endless journey. If any singular film series still holds prevalence in its future decades it is Star Wars: Original Trilogy.
The release of Gordon Hollingshead and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer in 1927 marked the new age of synchronised sound in cinema. The feature film was a huge success at the box office and it ushered in the era David Bordwell describes as ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema’; Bordwell and two other film theorists (Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson) conducted a formalist analysis of 100 randomly selected Hollywood films from the years 1917 to 1960 in order to fully define this movement. Their results yielded that most Hollywood made films during that era were centred on, or followed, specific blueprints that formed the finished product. Through this analysis of Hollywood films the theorists were able to establish stylised conventions and modes of production under which a classic Hollywood film was fashioned (Foster, 2008), the film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) directed by Peter Jackson will be used as a case study to demonstrate these specific conventions.
A movie is a set of images that tells us a story. The reason for them being so popular is because they allow us to escape from our ordinary lives into a completely different setting. Filmmakers use a range of cinematic techniques to build tension and engage the audience. Using the opening scene of Star Wars, I am going to analyse how George Lucas has used camera angles and movement; costume; lighting and special effects; music and sound effects and shot length in order to do so.
...n able to reach otherwise. With unlimited possibilities and the creative minds in the world, the film industry is likely to consider seeing drastic changes. Like the world has in the past, peoples’ likes and dislikes will change with the ever-changing technological world. What we enjoy as a society in 2005 is likely to be considered as bland as we consider the black and white silent films, in the years to come.
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.
Analyzing film has been around since the making of movies in the early 1900s. Here in the United States film really blossomed in the 1920’s. Production of films started on the West Coast in Hollywood. The earliest films were organized into genres or types, with storylines, settings, costumes, and characters (Dirks, 2010). Films are made to entertain, and when viewers watch the film they find themselves drawn into the characters personality and the plot. Because of film’s popularity many people use films as an agent of communication, education, and learnin...
Offering the unique ability to visually and audibly convey a story, films remain a cornerstone in modern society. Combined with a viewer’s desire to escape the everyday parameters of life, and the excitement of enthralling themselves deep into another world, many people enjoy what films stand to offer. With the rising popularity of films across the world, the amount of film makers increases every day. Many technological innovations mark the advancement of film making, but the essential process remains the same. Pre-production accounts for everything taken place before any shooting occurs, followed by the actual production of the film, post-production will then consist of piecing the film together, and finally the film must reach an audience. Each step of this process contributes to the final product, and does so in a unique right. The process of film making will now start chronologically, stemming from the idea of the story, producing that story into a film, editing that footage together, and finally delivering that story to its viewers.