Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to
be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating — or indoctrinating — citizens.
The visual elements of cinema gives motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions
by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue.
Traditional films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer
has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision,
whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to
a psychological effect called beta movement.
The origin of the name "film" comes from the fact that photographic film (also called film stock) had historically been the primary
medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion picture, including picture,
picture show, photo-play, flick. A common name for film in the United States is movie, while the Europeans prefer cinema. Additional
terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the cinema and the movies.
"Film" is more often used when considering artistic, theoretical, or technical aspects, as studies in a university class. "Movies" more often
refers to entertainment or commercial aspects, as where to go for fun on a date. For example, a book titled "How to Read a Film" would be about
the aesthetics or theory of film, while "Lets Go to the Movies" would be about the history of entertaining movies. "Motion pictures”
or "Moving pictures" are films and movies. A "DVD", "videotape", "video" or "vid" is a digital reproduction of an analogue film,
or a product with all of the elements of an analogue film but made in an electromagnetic storage medium. "Film" refers to the media
onto which a visual art is shot, and to this end no digital originating work can be referred to as a "film" and the action of shooting
is not "filming." "Silent films" need not be silent, but are films and movies without an audible dialogue, though they may have a musical
soundtrack. "Talkies" refers to early movies or films having audible dialogue or analogue sound, not just a musical accompaniment. "Cinema"
either broadly encompasses both films and movies, or is roughly synonymous with “Film”, both capitalized when referring to a category of art.
The "silver screen" refers to classic black and white films before color, not to contemporary films without color.
Film Theory
Film theory seeks to develop concise and systematic concepts that apply to the study of film as art. It was started by Ricciotto Canudo's
The Birth of the Sixth Art. Formalist film theory, led by Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs, and Siegfried Kracauer, emphasized how film differed
from reality, and thus could be considered a valid fine art. André Bazin reacted against this theory by arguing that film's artistic essence
lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality not in its differences from reality, and this gave rise to realist theory. More recent
analysis spurred by Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis and Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotics among other things has given rise to psychoanalytical
film theory, structuralist film theory, feminist film theory and others. On the other hand, critics from the analytical philosophy tradition,
influenced by Wittgenstein, try to clarify misconceptions used in theoretical studies and produce analysis of a film's vocabulary and its
link to a form of life.
Film Industry
The making and showing of motion pictures became a source of profit almost as soon as the process was invented. Upon seeing how
successful their new invention, and its product, was in their native France, the Lumičres quickly set about touring the Continent
to exhibit the first films privately to royalty and publicly to the masses. In each country, they would normally add new,
local scenes to their catalogue and, quickly enough, found local entrepreneurs in the various countries of Europe to buy their
equipment and photograph, export, import and screen additional product commercially. The Oberammergau Passion Play of 1898
was the first commercial motion picture ever produced. Other pictures soon followed, and motion pictures became a separate
industry that overshadowed the vaudeville world. Dedicated theaters and companies formed specifically to produce and distribute
films, while motion picture actors became major celebrities and commanded huge fees for their performances. Already by 1917,
Charlie Chaplin had a contract that called for an annual salary of one million dollars.
From 1931 to 1956, film was also the only image storage and playback system for television programming until the introduction
of videotape recorders.
In the United States today, much of the film industry is centered around Hollywood. Other regional centers exist in many parts of the world,
such as Mumbai-centered Bollywood, the Indian film industry's Hindi cinema which produces the largest number of films in the world.
Whether the ten thousand-plus feature length films a year produced by the Valley pornographic film industry should qualify for this
title is the source of some debate.[citation needed] Though the expense involved in making movies has led cinema production to concentrate
under the auspices of movie studios, recent advances in affordable film making equipment have allowed independent film productions to flourish.
Profit is a key force in the industry, due to the costly and risky nature of filmmaking; many films have large cost overruns,
a notorious example being Kevin Costner's Waterworld. Yet many filmmakers strive to create works of lasting social significance.
The Academy Awards (also known as "the Oscars") are the most prominent film awards in the United States, providing recognition each
year to films, ostensibly based on their artistic merits.
There is also a large industry for educational and instructional films made in lieu of or in addition to lectures and texts.
When it is initially produced, a feature film is often shown to audiences in a movie theater or cinema. The identity of the first theater
designed specifically for cinema is a matter of debate; candidates include Tally's Electric Theatre, established 1902 in Los Angeles,
and Pittsburgh's Nickelodeon, established 1905. Thousands of such theaters were built or converted from existing facilities within
a few years. In the United States, these theaters came to be known as nickelodeons, because admission typically cost a nickel (five cents).
Typically, one film is the featured presentation (or feature film). Before the 1970s, there were "double features"; typically,
a high quality "A picture" rented by an independent theater for a lump sum, and a "B picture" of lower quality rented for a
percentage of the gross receipts. Today, the bulk of the material shown before the feature film consists of previews for upcoming
movies and paid advertisements (also known as trailers or "The Twenty").
Historically, all mass marketed feature films were made to be shown in movie theaters. The development of television has allowed
films to be broadcast to larger audiences, usually after the film is no longer being shown in theaters. Recording technology has
also enabled consumers to rent or buy copies of films on VHS or DVD (and the older formats of laserdisc, VCD and SelectaVision —
see also videodisc), and Internet downloads may be available and have started to become revenue sources for the film companies.
Some films are now made specifically for these other venues, being released as made-for-TV movies or direct-to-video movies.
The production values on these films are often considered to be of inferior quality compared to theatrical releases in similar genres,
and indeed, some films that are rejected by their own studios upon completion are distributed through these markets.
The movie theater pays an average of about 50-55% of its ticket sales to the movie studio, as film rental fees. The actual
percentage starts with a number higher than that, and decreases as the duration of a film's showing continues, as an incentive
to theaters to keep movies in the theater longer. However, today's barrage of highly marketed movies ensures that most movies
are shown in first-run theaters for less than 8 weeks. There are a few movies every year that defy this rule, often limited-release
movies that start in only a few theaters and actually grow their theater count through good word-of-mouth and reviews. According to
a 2000 study by ABN AMRO, about 26% of Hollywood movie studios' worldwide income came from box office ticket sales; 46% came from VHS
and DVD sales to consumers; and 28% came from television (broadcast, cable, and pay-per-view).
References
- Acker, Ally (1991). Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, 1896 to the Present. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0826404995.
- Basten, Fred E. (1980). Glorious Technicolor: The Movies' Magic Rainbow. Cranbury, NJ: AS Barnes & Company. ISBN 0498023176.
- Basten, Fred E. (writer); Peter Jones (director and writer); Angela Lansbury (narrator). (1998). Glorious Technicolor. [Documentary]. Turner Classic Movies. http://imdb.com/title/tt0274530/.
- Casetti, Francesco (1999). Theories of Cinema, 1945-1995. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0292712073.
- Cook, Pam (2007). The Cinema Book, Third Edition. London: British Film Institute. ISBN 9781844571932.
- http://cinematreasures.org/theater/8855/
- Timothy McNulty (2005-06-19). "You saw it here first: Pittsburgh's Nickelodeon introduced the moving picture theater to the masses in 1905". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05170/522854.stm. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
- "Pre-Nickelodeon/Nickelodeon". University of Maryland Libraries. 2005-07-05. http://www.lib.umd.edu/RARE/Exhibits/Headley/styles1.html. Retrieved on 2007-01-25
- PBS Frontline: The Monster that Ate Hollywood: Anatomy of a Monster: Now Playing ... And Playing ... And Playing ... pbs.org. Retrieved June 23, 2007
- Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia
