Monday, 1 November 2010

history of cinema

The earliest exploitation of  moving pictures was the outgrowth of optical devices such as magic lanterns, presenting still images in a snappy sequence. By using pictures that had similar features ( only larger for enhancement) the presenter could converse the effect of motion to the viewer. This fundamental principle still lays apparent in  the cinematic genre of animation films today.
With the intense development of photography, and particularly of celluloid film, it became possible to directly capture motion in the real world. Primary techniques often needed individuals to look into a special device to see the pictures, but translucent film made it feasible to use a projection system to display images for an entire audience. These "moving picture shows" came to be known colloquially as movies.
The cinema was initially  a visual art, and many silent films were created such as Charlie Chaplin. Presenters soon found it useful to provide a commentator who could narrate the action and fill in dialogue between characters. Within a few years, films began to include subtitles that could display dialogue when the actors on screen "spoke." This rendered the function of a commentator largely unnecessary.
Rather than leave the audience in silence, theater owners often replaced the commentator by hiring musicians to accompany the presentation. The most common approach was to hire a pianist or organist if the theater had an instrument available. The music to be played was supposed to fit the mood of the film at any given moment. Later technological improvements allowed filmmakers to create soundtracks implementing synchronization with the action on the screen. Sound films were initially known as "talking pictures" .From the beginning, however, they included music as well as speech, and specialist composers of film scores soon emerged. 
The final major step was the introduction to colour. While the use of different sounds such as asynchronous and synchronous revolutionized the medium -colour was a more gradual process. Today however the use of colour is  used subjectively - only in rare cases is black and white used e.g. artistic purposes.

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