The History of Cinema

house) is a venue, usually a building, for viewing films

or movies.  In the US, theater has long been the preferred spelling, while in the UK and elsewhere it is theatre.
However, many US theaters opt to use the British spelling in their own names, a practice supported by the National Association of Theatre Owners, while apart from North America most English-speaking countries generally use the term cinema. The latter terms, as well as their derivative adjectives "cinematic" and "kinematic", ultimately derive from Greek’ movement", "motion". In the countries where those terms are used, the word "theatre" is usually reserved for live performance venues.
Colloquial expressions, mostly applied to motion pictures and motion picture theaters collectively, include the silver screen (formerly sometimes sheet) and the big screen (contrasted with the smaller screen of a television set. Specific to North America is the movies, while specific to the UK are the pictures, the flicks, and for the facility itself the flea pit (or fleapit).
Screening room refers to a very small theater, often a private one, such as for the use of those involved in the production of motion pictures or in a large private residence.

of Hollywood
World War I and the exodus from Europe

by the Studio
Genre movies
World War II

decline
The challenge of TV

France to the world
Technological innovation
Small scale productions
Strong social / political

value to film.

& movies as part of the global entertainment / communications

media
Digital production

demonstrated from the 1860s. - zeotropes
praxinoscopes kineoscopes

to provide an illusion of movement if the images were

moved at sufficient speed past the viewer.

and film stock allowed the development of film.
Early motion pictures

were static shots showing an event or action with no editing or other cinematic techniques as this series showing a nude walking demonstrates.

century when they developed into a narrative with a series

of scenes linked together to tell a story.
Scenes were broken up into multiple shots of varying sizes and angles.
Camera movement was used to add to the story development.
Music was used to create mood using a pianist / organist using either sheet music or a score as they accompanied the screen action.

so in 1895. The film, by the Lumiere brothers was

called “Workers leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895)”
Their film “Train Entering the Gare de Ciotat (1895)” caused people to faint with fear as the train loomed from the screen into the theatre auditorium.
These films did not carry a story or narrative - they merely showed a moving image on the screen.

the Train Entering the Gare de Ciotat Station.
Playing petanque (1895)

George Melies
( 1861-1938) utilised film to create fantastic stories

that took his characters and audiences to the moon and beyond.

several factors.
George Huaco indentifies four factors:
Current events & achievements. (political

climate)
The creativity of the film-makers who influenced the team of crafts-people involed in the films.
The technical developments that could be exploited.
The capacity of a sufficient audience to appreciate the results.

two views of quality and purpose.
MOVIES = This is a

commercial differentiation = popular entertainment with a mass circulation of copies of the movie. The audience being largely passive.
. The product of an industry dominated by the producer (money) in which there is no individual film-maker but a team under the producer’s control. (The studio system.) The director is hired to create the movie from the script. The final version is, however, the responsibility of the Producer and Editor.
The director of a movie is known as: metteur en scene = an interpreter of a score / script.

of the camera to develop new techniques that would enhance

their ability to tell a story.
1913: Giovanni Pastrone (Cabiria) moved his camera laterally and slightly above the level of the forreground thus changing the perspective of the audience from that they’d previously had in the Luniere films.
1923: Carl Mayer directing Last Laugh for F.W.Murnau proposed a forward movement of the camera at dramatic moments as if to thrust the audience into the action.

was D.W. Griffith (1875-1948. USA) whose film “The Birth of

a Nation (1914) created an explosive examination of the development of the American nation from the Civil War.

The films until then were narrative and anecdotal this followed several threads of narrative - the friendly families in the North & South, political events in Washington, warfare with friends in opposite camps, exploitation of the South, white & black, carpet baggers from the North and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.

Griffith’s success was also

his undoing. His films - Intolerance -The Mother & The Law and The Fall of Babylon put him into debt. As a result Financiers ceased to regard the film-makers as the king-pins of production and decided to build up the film-star in their place - to put control in the hands of the producer, aided by his team of organisers and writers. (The Hollywood system).
This favoured the movie over the film and reduced the risk for the banks.
It also meant that the actor was out of place in the movie world as his / her versatility would make them unrecognisable and therefore valueless commercially.
But they also introduced the langage (french = way of speaking) of the film- long shot / mid shot/ close-up and their variations.These terms allowed the editor to construct a movie or film to produce identified reactions from the audience.

process with the introduction of the design tool - the

storyboard. This is a script visualised by drawings of every basic change of camera angles in the film.
Marnau was influenced by the swing to the right in Germany post W/W I where business took advantage of the high inflation rate to mass produce films at cheap rates.

like “visual punning” that (e.g) involved showing the passage of

time by tracking towards a candle flame then dissolving into a lighted gas jet or electric bulb from which they would track away to the next sequence of the story.
This technique was replaced by nouvelle vague that introduced jump cuts to show or allow the passage of time and space.
This was known as “kultur-film” in Germany.
World War I signaled the advance of the movie from the USA. This was because while Europe was fighting a four year long war, costing 10 million dead, the Americans only fought for six months at a cost of 115,000 dead. The 10 years of prosperity in the USA allowed the industry to gain dominance.

accommodate each other.
Sound technology was clumsy and difficult to link

to the speed of the film.
Sound made it difficult to film in the open air, to film without interfering with lighting, without interfering with the way the actors spoke and with the number of cameras able to be used.
Sound forced film to adapt and develop new narrative techniques.

development of the conventions of the gangster movie (the urban

western ) and comedies that saw ordinary folk standing up against corrupt big business.
World War II encouraged the development of the propaganda film and again helped the USA gain dominance of the movie making business.
The impact of the technology is seen in Citizen Kane (Oson Welles 1941)

patriotic and focused on concerns of those on the home-front

as they worried over those on the battle field as the stills from “Freedom Comes High” (1943) shows

effects allowing the
re-emergence of competition from Europe - particularly

Sweden,France and Britain.
The collapse of the Studio System also encouraged the Film Festival circuit giving a screen to films made outside of the USA conglomerates.

The New Wave allowed the nascent European Film industry a time to recover from the US domination that had emerged as a result of WWII.
However the resurgence of USA post 1980 meant that European film-makers moved into TV production - particularly in the UK.

the media with the Media Conglomerates able to exploit Film,

TV, Books, CD, record, DVD publication for mass profit.
2) Individual contracting systems for “talent” rather than salaried staff favored by the Studios. Actors, Directors, Technicians contracted for single movies.
3) The advent of the “Blockbuster” disaster genre as the Conglomerates look to mass saturation marketing and maximised profit.
4) Smaller Production houses move into specialised niche audience orientated films e.g Woody Allan
This has changed the face of the Film Industry - particularly in terms of production and distribution.

e.g. India, Asia & Australasia.
Examples of films: Bride & Prejudice:

Bollywood interpretation of classic English text Pride & Prejudice. A similar cross fertilsation happened with Vanity Fair.
Matrix utilised effects from Asian film: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
Utu, a NZ film, was effectively a Western transposed into a NZ setting.