The History Of Film Technology

The History Of Film Technology

Camera Technology

The first camera was a pinhole camera; the pinhole camera was I camera without a lens and had one aperture (a pin hole). Leading on to the Camera Obscura. The reason the images were upside down is because our eyes (retina) flip the image so that it’s the right way up. Single lens reflex cameras were invented in the early 1860s however they were most popular in the 1920s and 1930s.

 

http://images.teamsugar.com/files/upl1/1/15111/21_2008/polaroid.jpg

 A few years later came the Polaroid cameras. A Polaroid camera is a camera manufactured by the Polaroid Company that takes pictures and prints them develops straight away (a minute or so), the problem with Polaroid camera is that the ink was placed on the surface so it would smug.

Who created the recording film used?

Kodak

 

http://media.web.britannica.com/eb-media/38/79838-004-46DCBD8F.jpg

George Eastman developed Kodak film roll, he invented his first Kodak box camera in the 1880s, which was very inexpensive and simple.

Who created the first movie cameras?

Lumiere Brothers, Thomas Edison

The Lumiere Brothers invented the first movie camera in the early 1890s. The Lumiere brothers were contemplating on how to combine recording film and a projector onto one device. By 1894 they had successfully made a movie camera calling it the Cinematographe.

Standardisation of ratio

 Standardisation: Compatibility

An agreement between different companies to produce something, having an agreed size, an agreed format so every machine could play film (compatibility).

Before standardisation in the late 1800s motion pictures were shown using a fragile paper roll film however it was difficult to view without a machine.

William Kennedy Dickson

William Kennedy Dickson was an employee at Thomas Edison Company where he worked in a lab.

He invented 35mm film, which showed the images at ratio of 0.95 inches by 0.735 inches that was the first ever ratio for film (4:3). This ratio became the permanent standard ratio starting from 1909 in the USA ordered by Motion Picture Patents Company.

Until the late 1920’s the ratio was 4:3 then they changed the ratio to 1.37 because they had to add sound, calling it the Academy ratio. After that, different companies started to develop film and projections at different ratios for example CinemaScope standardisation of ratio was 2.35 and Cinerama was 2.59.

 

Kinetoscope – Thomas Edison

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Kinetoscope.jpg

http://www.hometheatergear.com/v/vspfiles/assets/images/kinetoscope-b.jpg

 A Kinetoscope is a motion picture system used to play film, which were viewed through a sight opening. Thomas Edison created the Kinetoscope, which was an early invention of a projector, during the 1880’s and the 35mm film invented by William Kennedy Dickson was used.

The 4:3 ratio continued to be the ratio on televisions however, in the late 1980’s Kerns H. Powers proposed a 16:9 ratio, which everybody liked or deal with because it stuck and that’s where the current ratio for widescreen televisions comes from.

Sound

Sound could not be done until the first talkie in 1927. Until that period in time background music and sound effects would be played by musicians live in the cinema. Acting and expressions were important as well, showing emotion conveying different moods.

The reason why they developed sound was to heighten and intensity the audience’s viewing experience. After inventing sound, sound cameras and had problems because they were too noisy and bi

What is a Talkie?

A Talkie is a movie with audio as clear-cut from a silent film

What is the first talkie?

The first talkie was a Musical called the Jazz Singer in 1927. A film filled with dialogue that turned silent film extinct. The start of a new era. Vitaphone was the first viable sound system used for many feature films. There was another sound system called Phonofilm however, because of the poor quality it wasn’t successful.

Some big star actors could not connect or convert their skill over to the talkie era, because the director may not have liked the actor’s voice. So, many jobs were lost and those actors were not longer big stars.

In this present day 2014, you have dialogue in a majority of films (short or long) as well television series such as Family guy and Downton Abbey. Also there are many different sound systems made by different companies such as Sony, meaning that sound has evolved more and more over a few decades.

Widescreen development

 Widescreen was developed to show the audience more in a scene that you didn’t see before (extra screen space); it is also a more natural view and more appealing to the viewer’s eyes. Changing the ratio from 4:3 to 16:9. As widescreen televisions became common it was harder to find the old TVs as well as shows that were produced for 4:3 are difficult to convert onto widescreen televisions.

 There were different types of ways to show film on widescreen projectors here are two examples:

http://www.cineused.com/SCOPE_COMP_21.jpg

35mm Anamorphic – Used for Panavision and CinemaScope and they normally projected with an aspect ratio of 2:40:1 and the negatives would be 2:66:1. Also, films would shot compressed making the actors look long so that when they would put it into the projector it would appear normal.

http://www.fulltable.com/vts/c/31.jpg

Multiple lens/Multiple projectors – Called the Cinerama system using three projectors and three lenses at different angles showing that one film synchronised on a curved screen. Played on the Cinerama screen is the famous movie ‘The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm’.

Colour

Colour is an important asset to film production today in the 21st Century however; it was not like that at the start of the 20th century. It would be black and white film; entertaining, but plain they didn’t have any choice. The black and film did not show diversity and makeup would cost a fortune, because actors and actresses had to be painted white or black to show facial features etc.

 

http://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/cdc/images/colour-film.jpg

 

Before Technicolor, There were different types of colouring techniques for example Hand colouring, which was the earliest way of colouring. Each frame had to be coloured in on small cells of film, which was time consuming and hard, but lucky most film would be short.

Another one would be film tinting and that technique involves using dye for the whole frame of a scene or shot depending on the atmosphere or action. This colouring technique is used in movies such as the famous ‘The Great Train Robbery’.

 Colour shows originality, especially when it came to commercially advertised products, which was one of the reasons why colour was developed. That’s when the Technicolor was created in 1915; the Technicolor Company tried a method called a two strip additive process where movies were played in green and red.

 Later on they had tried a three strip additive process, where the light passing through the lens is separated by a beam splitter into two beam one with a green filter (stopping the red and blue light from entering) for green piece of film and the other through a magenta filter (stopping the green light) because the blue and red film.

 

Additive processing is where you mix colours on screen instead of dyeing the filmstrip. Three strip additive was more expensive because need a special machine.

 

http://www.d.umn.edu/~mharvey/colorwheel.jpg

Becky Sharp was the first full length Technicolor film in 1935.

The coloured film took years of development, and ‘til this day it is still being developed.

Digital

Recording and taking picture have developed over a few decades. For example the invention of mobile phones, it’s advanced technology changed the way we watch film as well as make films of own. Using a high quantity of megapixels for the mobile’s camera lens to high quality camera (analogue electronic cameras) made by companies such as Canon, Panasonic, and Nikon etc.

Whereas in the olden days you would have to buy the camera and the video camera separately, which would have been more expensive.

There are also webcams however, not as high quality. Now a majority of computers have cameras installed (come with) on to them, which means that you can record and take pictures as well as communicate with someone who is not close to you and is far, perhaps in a different country. The many sites such as Skype back up this statement.

Also, with the old cameras you would have to rotate the handle to record a scene, now you put a button on the camera and it records by itself at a set frame per second. So a lot has been developed because it makes the people (viewers) life easier as well as the director of a high budget film.