The film industry has been constantly evolving throughout its relatively short history. The constant output of new inventions related to cinematography has provided the opportunity to recreate ideas formerly restricted to print resulting in a stretching of realism boundaries in film. The industry has passed through several eras, simply characterized by the technological limitations provided by the time period. These advances in film technology are successful in increasing to blur the line between the audience’s own world to the world temporarily portrayed by the filmmakers.
The mise-en-scene (environment) of movies has drastically increased in complexity since the silent movie era. The lack of dialogue and simplistic movie sets allow for a much cooler medium than today’s films, relying on the viewer to participate by imagining, for example, an obviously synthetic landscape as natural.
The ability to record sound and movement on one device made possible the possibility of films with sound tracks that mixed location sounds with dialogue and background music - the talkie. This new feat in moviemaking forever revolutionized the way films were made and viewed by their audiences. The modern feat of combining sight and sound on screen eliminates the viewer’s need for participation and completes the visual package automatically.
In the post-war era, film’s landscapes began to become more and more complex with increasing investments by filmmakers. The rise of the blockbuster film helped viewer’s dive into the intended world of the moviemaker with the access to more elaborate set designs created by higher investments. This was as close to reality as film producers could manage with the technological limitations of the time. The next phase came with the birth of computer generated graphics.
Computer-based special effects were pioneered in movies by George Lucas and the makers of Star Wars in 1977, revolutionizing film in an almost superior fashion to that of the talkies. Computer graphics hold no limits, allowing any story based in print to be transposed into film. Movies could now be created entirely in a studio and look like they were filmed in the middle of a forest. This was the final stepping stone in creating no division between the viewer’s reality and the fantasy world portrayed on the silver screen. Over time, feats of engineering saw the emergence of jaw-dropping cinematic props, most notably the animatronics used in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. The nonstop improvement of computer graphics has led to previously
unimaginable movies being produced and viewed by audience members worldwide. Films such as Toy Story, Avatar, and The Matrix are just a few of the many movies that have advanced the movie industry forward in facilitating viewers to dive into the storyteller’s world, and forget reality for a mere two hours.
Toy Story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPhse4WlgEA
The Matrix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM5yepZ21pI
Pure interest link. The Rum Diaries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXI-X_346Nc
