Unit 8: Timeline

In the begging... (1830)
In the old days film was not as we know it today, it started out as a novelty for audiences to be entertained by at events and it did not manifest itself in the same way that we see it today. Originally film started out as just moving pictures. These moving pictures created an illusion of movement, which worked by spinning the pictures in devises known as stroboscope and zoetropes. These inventions where created in the 1830's by William Horner a British man and would entertain audiences via the illusion that the moving still pictures were actually moving images the audiences would look through the holes in the devices to see the moving pictures. This was way before the time of the first film camera.

This is a 1830 styled Zoetrope.

Next in 1867 game the first US patented device that could display animated pictures. The 'zoopraxiscope' Is considered the first movie projector, it would project moving pictures onto a wall for audiences to view, this was an improvement from the zoetrope as more people could view motion pictures at once. The device worked by placing spinning glass disk which contained a sequence of images on it, into the device. It used the same principles as the zoetrope to give the illusions of motion.

Zoopraxiscope from 1867.

If we skip ahead to 1895 Two French brothers, Louis and August Lumiere patent a never before seen movie camera and projector device that is a two in one, capable of projecting an image that can be seen by many people. In Paris, they present the first commercial exhibition of projected motion pictures. Lumiere and his brother were the first to present projected, moving, photographic, pictures to a paying audience of more that one person. At this point film was evolving from pictures to motion picture shot on film reel from the very first cameras. Audiences were stunned when they saw motion picture for the first time.

As technology was very limited films were not as they are like today, they were silent and not very complex usually being quiet short. The camera was very static as they were relatively knew inventions meaning people had not mastered shots containing camera movements the cameras were also very big and heavy so were not moved around much. As well as this editing was different, as everything was shot on film during editing the editors would literally cut parts of the film out and stick it back together. They had to be very careful as to not damage the film whilst they were doing this,

During the early 1900's hand crank cameras were replaced with the first motorised cameras they became smaller as well. 

In 1925 Western Electric and Warner Bros. agree to develop a system for movies with sound. This is when film started to incorporate sound within themselves leading to the first pieces of dialogue in movies. These movies with audio became known as 'talkies'. Two years later in 1930 Paramount becomes the first studio to announce that it will only produce ,talkies'. This leads to the death of silent cinema.

1937 Walt Disney’s first full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is released. This creates the birth of a whole new film genre known as animation Walt Disney follow this up by pumping out hundreds of successful animations over the next 10 years such as Dumbo. Disney would later create Dinsey Pixar a whole studio dedicated in producing animated films, Pixar today are the most successful creator of animated giving Dinsey a monopoly over the market. In 1995 Pixar would go on to create the first animated film (Toy Story) that was not a hand drawn cartoon but a computer generated image this meant that animations could be made much quicker, these days all animations are computer made no one makes cartoon drawn animations as it takes far to long to draw out every single frame. This technology lead to competition from other animators such as Dreamworks.

In 1990 DvD's became the new standard for the distribution of film, VHS tapes became no more as they were obsolete compared to the DvD's which could store more data and were more compact.

During 1994 Major American film companies began to create their own independent production companies to produce smaller films. In 1994 Disney purchased Miramax after seeing the success of reservoir dogs. The year after the purchase Pulp fiction was released.

In 2002 Imax cinemas were introduced, these cinemas had huge curved screens creating a better view experience, following this in 2009 films began to be shown in 3D at first this was huge and the 3D film Avatar became the highest grossing movie of all time but eventually 3D became a novelty that most viewers did not want to pay extra for.