In what ways has film noir influenced photography?

Film noir is more than just a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a style of filmmaking with its roots in the German Expressionism movement, characterised by such elements as cynical heroes, stark lighting effects and a world of dark, slick city streets, crime and corruption. To understand how the noir aesthetics of the ‘classic period’ came about, I will look at a combination of 1920s and 30s influences that helped establish the visual elements of what represents a film noir. Cinema and photography are two close-knit relatives that help us tell stories through the use of camera and mindful composition, but in particular the visual elements that film noir established are in many wares more prescient in the twenty-first century than they were at their inception. I want to explore how the visual style helped define how photographers use dramatic lighting and unique camera angles to tell a story or create a brilliant photograph. Film noir is the cinema of the paranoia, of stillness and silence, of a pure black screen with tiny pinpricks of white trying to break through. Ultimately, I want to understand how film noir has managed to have a long-lasting impact that goes beyond the scope of filmmaking.

While the mythology that film noir was the product of 1940s and 50s crime films infused with a higher quotient of sex and violence than their 1930s counterparts, there is generally agreement as to the influences that shaped film noir and provided its parameters. For example, most studies acknowledge the same sources of noir: German expressionism, pre-code Hollywood, French poetic realism and the pulp fictions of hard-boiled fictions writers. In my opinion, despite “film noir” itself being an amorphous, foggy term, there is no denying the huge impact the German expressionist cinema from the Weimar period had when Hollywood decided to paint it black. This visual style was imported by the influx of fleeing German emigres who escaped Hitler’s Germany during the 30s. Nonetheless, German expressionism as an artistic movement began around 1910, with artists typically presenting the world from a subjected view, focussing their craft on graphic art, most taking up printmaking. After World War 1, Expressionists sought to assert their feelings of ‘dissatisfaction with the existing order’ - stemming from post-war disillusionment, using the visual arts to bring the human subconscious to view without use of literal symbols, but through distorted and irregular shapes that spark an emotional reaction. The people of Germany began to feel resentment towards its leaders for bringing untold misery upon them, so trepidation and malaise set in on the German public with regards to their future. Expressionist films would use atmospheric lighting, asymmetrical camera angles and stark, high contrast lighting to highlight objects and characters. The quintessential example of German expressionist cinema is The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Robert Wiene’s horror masterpiece released in 1920. The narratively complex expressionist films created an overall stimmung (mood) and a distinct visual style by using high-contrast, chiaroscuro lighting where shafts of intense light contrast starkly with deep, black shadows and where space is fractured into an assortment of unstable lines and surfaces, often fragmented or twisted into odd angles. Instead of high and mighty buildings and lifestyles, it showed dark and gritty urban underworld with angled archways, staircases and windows all connected in strange ways to create different atmospheres. In a nutshell, Dr Caligari is a perfect example of expressionism at work in cinema and set the tone for many of the features of the expressionist cinema movement. However, these German artists were beginning to be overshadowed by the Nazi Party in the late 20s, so as some were forced to relocate so the creative advance of the Weimar was completely cut off. The type of cinematography that the German expressionists brought from overseas was beginning to find a new home in Hollywood films, thus the foundations for Film noir was beginning to take shape. Among the relocated filmmakers who left a significant mark was Fritz Lang. Utilising the techniques taught by German expressionists, he became hugely popular in Germany with films including “Metropolis” (1927) and “M” 1931.

A vaguely defined genre, film noir is one of the more involved and intelligent Hollywood styles. Part detective story, part gangster, part urban melodrama, it is identified by its dark and pessimistic undercurrents. The Isolation from society of the typical noir hero was underscored by the use of stark, high contrast lighting - arguably one of the most prominent stylistic elements. Film noir is similar to ‘chiaroscuro’, a category of art that is illustrated by its usage of high contrast to portray characters in a light that wasn’t typical of Hollywood at the time. In cinematography, the term refers to the extremes of low and high contrast lighting that would often illuminate half the subjects face, giving them a three-dimensional shape and volume. Lighting within film noir was all about creating dramatic shadows to help craft a mysterious environment. In addition, Noir films mostly revolve around a central, male anti-hero - hard boiled tough guys with tragic flaws, cynical detectives, aimless grifters, callous gangsters or victims of circumstance. The heroes of noir generally share certain qualities, such as moral ambiguity, a fatalistic outlook and an existential acceptance of random, arbitrary occurrences as being the determining factors in life. The ethics that these characters espouse are often borne more of a personal code than true concern for their fellow man. Contrastingly, femme fatales or ‘spider women’ are often desirable, aggressive women with suspicious or uncertain loyalties. Well aware of their sexual attractiveness, they cunningly and ruthlessly manipulate their male counterparts to gain power or wealth. Nevertheless, the women of film noir evoke sympathy, as they are frequently victims of emotional or physical abuse, with such victimisation providing impetus for their vengeance. Silhouettes are heavily used in film noir as they create tension when you can’t see who the people are or what their facial expressions read. They add to the feeling of mystery, danger and anxiety underlying the genre. The intense lighting could create a feeling of strong disconnections from the views or enact a sense of impending dread. Moreover, venetian blinds were also used, due to low costs, becoming a visual icon of the genre despite not being in every film. Huge shadows were cast over the characters, creating dramatic lines and hiding portions of their face to help craft a mysterious environment, like being behind a jail cell. The coming together of these various influences led to film noir, usually dated from the appearance of Russian émigré Boris Ingster’s Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), in which Lorre played the mysterious outsider. An RKO second feature marketed as a horror film, Stranger had a highly expressionist dream sequence with clear echoes of Caligari. Stranger be- gan noir’s early “experimental” period (1940–43).

The release of Double Indemnity, Laura, and Murder, My Sweet in 1944 inaugurated the second phase of noir’s development, a major burst of energy and sustained production that stretched through to 1952. One of the my case studies is to look at Double Indemnity. An incredibly dark film with characters emerging from darkness, shadows obscuring the faces of the characters and a strong prevalence of Venetian blinds casting striped shadows over everything in shot. Supported by Miklos Rozsas throbbing film score and John Seitzs expressionistic black-and-white camera work, Wilder had no valid idea he was filming in a technique called noir; he found out about this many years later, to his great astonishment. I have chosen to include Double indemnity because it is one of the archetypal of film noir and the characters, scenario and stylistic elements all perfect represent this group of Hollywood films from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Additionally, another case study is The Third Man, one of the most successful and influential films noir, is a great example of a picture influenced by German expressionism and American noirs, with its intelligent use of lenses that distort figures and space, as well as emphasised shadows and darker tones of the sets and locations. The Third Man is considered one of the greatest films of all time, celebrated for its acting, musical score and atmospheric cinematography. It has become an archetype of film noir – a movie that would go on to influence a myriad of other movies. Post-war Vienna, grubby, grand and corrupt, provided Green with an ideal setting for a melodrama of double-dealing and opportunistic political loyalties. Filmed by Australian cinematographer Robert Krasker, under the direction of Sir Carol Reed, The Third Man relishes in its angular, high contrast almost surrealistic look. Its shots are full of sharply composed lines, shadows and off-angle compositions. Layer upon layers of shadows are placed within the frame and architecture tilts in very direction. Reed and Krasker turned Vienna into a mysterious and incomprehensible environment with no seemingly stable centre. Robert Krasker’s bravura cinematography used extensive backlighting, ex- treme wide angles, frequent tilted compositions, and night-for-night shooting to create a nightmare city where nothing is what it seems. The high contrast style of the third man, with bright highlights and deep shadows make the outlines of buildings and enviroments become much more angular and clear. The increased focus on the two dimensional composition of lines also enhances the compositional power of the Dutch angles. Their effect is not so much to tilt the subjects, but to create a play of lines, of perspective, as if we’re watching a painting. Moreover, one brilliant photographer to look at is Weegee. Born Usher Fellig in 1899 in the town of Lemburg, Weegee covered more than 5000 murders as a freelance photographer in New York from 1935 to 1945. His peak creative years as a photojournalist coincided with the pinnacle of the creative years of Murder. For ten years straight, the New York based tabloid new photographer slept days and like Brassai, took pictures at night of violent crime and murder. Weegees work is heavily connected to darkness, as his images are spectrally streaked by street lights, lit brightly only where the human focus was - some calling him a tabloid John Alton. His images are indelible - featuring gangsters covering their faces with handkerchiefs when being arrested; gunmen, face down on the sidewalk, faces bloodied and battered. His photos were dramatic, even cinematic - lit like film noir stills. Although Weegee identified completely with american vernacular, there is a disturbing intersection between the expressionistic chiaroscuro of his images and the Central European-derived aesthetic that he shares with the emigres of cinema who shaped the aesthetic of film noir.

Furthermore, what we I have been building up to is the influence this has all had on photography. One of the biggest influences film noir has had on photography is lighting. In order to photograph a character three different kind of light called by cinematographers the “key light”, “fill light” and “backlight” are required. The key light is the primary source of illumination, directed on the character usually from high and to one side of the camera. The key is generally a hard direct light that produces sharply defined shadows. The fill is soft, diffused or indirect light that ‘fills’ in the shadows created by the key, whilst the backlight is a direct light shining on the actor from behind to add interesting highlights and differentiating his form from the background. The ratio of key to fill light is great, creating areas of high contrast and rich, black shadows. The high key illumination of glamour Hollywood was a deep juxtaposition from the low-key noir style that opposes, light and dark, hiding faces, rooms and urban landscapes in shadow to carry connotations of mystery and the unknown.

In conclusion, this brings us back to our initial question – in what ways has film noir influenced photography? The influence comes with the development of film noir photography, because every time we see the distinct black shadows and sparse lighting, we immediately draw connections with film noir. Whether its fashion shoots, music videos, album covers, tv shows, contemporary movies or even photography collections of today, if it has those distinctive visual elements then we understand how and why they came about. Without the creation of film noir photography today would be a lot different, because film noir itself taught photographers how to use lighting effectively, cast shadows and create dark silhouettes. Photography would have taken a tremendously different path, by this I mean the glamour style of Hollywood would have persevered and photography would have more balanced compositions, lower contrast fill light reducing the shadows and an abundance of eye-level camera angles with focus on the foreground. Classical methods of shooting day-for-night would have continued (i.e., scenes set at night are filmed in daylight, with filters and narrow aperture settings used to simulate darkness), had it not been for the noir style favouring night-for-night shooting. Film noir also influenced the symbolism of photography, as the many mirror shots in film noir can indicate both narcissism and a duplicitous nature, and the dark silhouettes usually indicate mystery and the unknown. Photographers keep this in mind when taking pictures, thus the influence of film noir and the emphatic noir visual style has branched out into many things. Noir also helped photographers to understand that lighting and shadowing also has an effect on tone and mood. Venetian blinds crisscross the faces of the subject, making visible a state of entrapment. Light sources in film noir became part of the narrative content of shots, and so as film noir grew in the 40s and 50s photographers used these techniques and ideas in their own works. For me, whenever I think of shooting something low key with dramatic lighting, I always keep in mind chiaroscuro and the different ways to use sources of light effectively. While the movement just started out as a defiance of the traditional style of filmmaking, its distinctive visual and thematic motifs sparked photographers the incentive to explore and develop their photographs even further.

Ever since The Maltese Falcon, audiences have been enraptured with film noir. The highly stylized crime movies combine a dark aesthetic with even darker themes, resulting in some of the most menacing films of all time. That tradition, which grew out of the 1940s "classic period" of cinema, has maintained a relatively steady popularity over the years thanks to some creative tinkering by modern filmmakers, resulting in the movement known as neo-noir. There are so many elements that go into the neo-noir genre that it difficult to classify any given film. High contrast lighting, long tracking shots, night-time settings, unreliable narrators, cynical protagonists, femme fatales, and complex plots all go into it, but at its core, neo-noir is an amorphous genre that is classified just as much by feeling as it is by aesthetic. They don't need to feature a detective wearing a fedora and trench-coat walking along a rain-slicked street to qualify, they just need a certain amount of anxiety and alienation.

Film. What is Film? Well, the term ‘film’ was first used to describe a specific technology- a thin, flexible material coated in light sensitive emulsion that retains an image after its exposed to light.

It’s also the end product of that photochemical process. As an object of both academic and popular interest, the history of film has proven to be a fascinatingly rich and complex field of inquiry. As a result, film history can look different depending on what you focus on, but for now, we will look into the history of film as a medium and how it came about to be such a groundbreaking form of entertainment. To do this, we will look at how the means of creating a ‘film’ has changed since its early predecessors, and what the film industry is like today. But first, we have to consider the birth of film. It was born out of an array of new technology revolving around machinery, photography, optical illusion and a human love of being entertained and inspired. One of the marvels of cinema is that no one country can claim its paternity and it is a world wide endeavour contributed to by many different people from around the globe.

      Over time, the original film technology has switched to analog and digital substitutes, first things like VHS or Beta, and eventually digital video, like when we record something on our phone. But at the very beginning of its history, before all these innovations existed, film started out as a collection of still images viewed one after another in rapid succession, which creates the illusion of motion. Thanks to the introduction of Photography in the early-to-mid-19^th century, a time of great scientific and artistic innovation, this illusion of motion progressed into a series of images, and people could use these images to pause time and take a closer look at movement. Thus we begin in the 1870s, where innovations with multiple cameras and improved shutter speeds made it possible to create accurate studies of movement. This was revolutionary for the sciences, influenced modern art, and the sequencing of stills provided the basis for cinematography. Shutter speeds of one-thousandth of a second were being introduced, and gelatin dry-plate negatives, with their increased light sensitivity, allowed for faster exposures.

In 1872, Leland Stanford, the former governor of California and racehorse-breeder, commissioned a photographer and inventor named Eadweard Muybridge to prove that at some point in its galloping a running horse lifts all four hooves off the ground at once

As a consequence, chronophotography- the capturing of several images in quick succession that could be layered in one frame or presented sequentially – was developed and used to explore the mechanics of motion. Physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey employed photography to examine muscular movement and skeletal movement. He isolated his subjects against black backgrounds and photographed them using a specially developed photographic gun which contained a swiftly rotating film cassette that could shoot 12 frames per second. At a similar time, British American photographer Eadweard Muybridge was employed by Leland Stanford of California, a zealous racehorse breeder, to prove that at some point in its galloping a running horse lifts all four hooves off the ground at once. Conventions of 19^th century illustration suggested otherwise, and the movement itself occurred too rapidly for perception by the naked eye, so Muybridge experimented with multiple cameras to take successive photographs of horses in motion. In 1877, he set up a battery of 12 cameras along a Sacramento racecourse with wires stretched across the track to operate their shutters. As a horse strode down the track, its hooves tripped each shutter individually to expose a successive photograph of the gallop, confirming Stanford’s belief. When Muybridge later mounted these images on a rotating disk and projected them on a screen through a magic lantern, they produced a ‘’moving picture’’ of the horse at full gallop as it had actually occurred in life. This is the point at which I consider ‘film’ was created.

However, from this point, we have to acknowledge the differentiation between ‘film’ and ‘cinema’. The ‘filmic’ is that aspect of the art that concerns its relationship with the world around it; the ‘cinematic’ deals with the esthetics and internal structure of the art. In English, we have a third word for ‘film’ and ‘cinema’ – ‘movies’- which provides a convenient label for the third facet of the activity; its function as an economic commodity. These three aspects are closely interrelated, of course: one person’s ‘movie’ is another’s ‘film’. But in general terms we use these three names for the art in a way that closely parallels this differentiation: movies, like popcorn, are to be consumed, cinema is a high art, redolent of esthetics( concerned with the beauty of the art ), and ‘film’ is the most general term we use with the fewest connotations. However, for these purposes, we are looking at film as a visual art and mode of expression, considering how the means of recording moving images along with other sensory stimulations has changed since Edweard Muybridge’s revolutionary discovery.

However, we are still a long way off from movies, Muybridge experiment launched a wave of motion studies, as photographers and inventors all over the world began using these new technologies, one of which was a Frenchman named eminent jules Marley.

Let’s jump to 1891, the inventor Thomas Edison, together with William Dickson, his young laboratory assistant, came out with what they called a kinetoscope, The image viewers could see in the kinetoscope captured events and performances that had been staged at Edison’s film studio in East Orange, New Jersey, especially for the Edison Kinetograph, the camera that produced kinetoscope film sequences, such as circus performances, dancing women, cockfights, boxing matches, and even a tooth extraction by a dentist.

However, we are still a long way off from movies, but Muybridge’s experiment launched a wave of motion studies. As photographers and inventors all over the world began using these new technologies, one of which was a Frenchman named Etienne Jules Marley, whose training in physiology led him to capture motion studies of birds in flight and human athletes in action. But instead of trip wires like Muybridge, Marey invented what he called a chronophotographic gun, and switched from sheets of photographic paper to rolls, allowing him to take bursts of photographs – 12 per second. Even with all these increasingly fancy techniques, its important to note that these were still just a series of photographs. Motion studies were sometimes projected, using devices like Muybridges zoopraxiscope, but nobody was trying to make movies yet.

That was until Thomas Edison and a scientist who worked for him named W.K.L Dickson invented the Kinetograph in 1888 - the first motion picture camera. The two inventors combined a device adapted from a clock, which allowed the regular motion of the film strip through the camera and a perforated, celluloid film strip for precise synchronisation. It was able to imprint up to 50ft of film at about 40 frames per second. Just like that, film production was born, and audiences were hungry for movies. But Edison had other ideas, one of which was to create a coin operated entertainment machine that produced images to go along with music or speech played from a phonograph. And so, in 1891, edison, Dickson and his lab assistants invented the Kinetoscope, an individual viewing device that ran continuous 47- foot film on spools between an incandescent lamp and a shutter. It was how the first movie Monkeyshines No.1 was viewed. Much inspired by Etienne- Jules Marley’s chronophotographic gun, but instead of using rolls of paper film for the Kinetograph, Dickson found long celluloid filmstrips that were coated in light sensitive emulsion did the trick. It worked because they figured out how to synchronise the shutter of a camera to a single frame of film, using the sprocket holes and an intermittent stop and go device, but it could only record images inside a studio as it was too big to carry around and needed electrical power to work. The kinetoscope, was also limited as it could only show movies to one person at a time and held 40-50ft rolls, so the movies could only be about 16 seconds long. Nonetheless, their inventions paved the way for the first filmmakers to experiment with motion picture technologies and while the experience of watching movies on smartphones may seem like a drastic departure from the communal nature of film viewing as we think of it today, in some ways the smaller format, single-viewer display is a return to film’s early roots.

As the kinetoscope gained popularity, the Edison Company began installing machines in hotel lobbies, amusement parks, and penny arcades, soon the kinetoscope parlours- where customers could pay around 25 cents or admission to a bank of machines- had opened around the country. However, when friends and collaborators suggested that Edison find a way to project his kinetoscope images for audience viewing, he refused, claiming that such and invention would be a less profitable venture. Because Edison hadn’t secured an international patent for his invention, variations of the kinetoscope were soon being copied and distribute tend throughout Europe. This new form of entertainment was an instant success, and a number of mechanics and inventors, seeing an opportunity, began toying with methods of projecting the moving images onto a larger screen. It was a Kinetoscope exhibition in Paris that inspired the Lumière brothers to invent the first commercially viable projector.

Born in the 1860s in eastern France, the family business was inventing new and improved photographic plates, so by the time they started experimenting with film technology, the lumiere brothers had lots of experience in business, engineering, manufacturing and photography. Auguste and Louis lumiere saw Edison’s kinetoscope and decided there was room for improvement, so they began toying with methods of projecting moving images onto a larger screen. Seeing as edison hadn’t secured an international patent for his invention, the brothers set out to invent something that didn’t rely on an electronic power source and could withsand the test of time. And so they did, and In 1895, the brothers patented the Cinématographe, meaning ‘writing with movement’, from which we got the term cinema, a lightweight film projector that also functioned as a camera and printer, running at the economical speed of 16 frames per second. But that’s not all, once the film had been developed, the Lumiere device could be reconfigured into a projection machine. This device could do it all, you could carry it around with you, capture footage, develop the film and then project it, any time, anywhere, any way you wanted. Compared to the kinetograph and kinetoscope, it was kind of like the technological leap from an old school flip phone to an iPhone. But doing edison one better they saw a lot of potential in having large, public film screenings. And so, in Paris on the 28^th December 1895, at the salon Indien in the basement of the Grand Café, Auguste and Louis Lumiere screened a series of ten short films that changed the world forever.

Now I should mention that this wasn’t technically the first public screening of a motion picture ,that honour. as far as we know ,goes to Woodville Latham- an American chemist and kinetoscope owner who projected a film of a boxing match in New York ,in May 1895. What set the lumiere brothers apart was that they played up to the intrigue of their device, gained publicity as well as their superior image quality and the sheer number of films they presented. So the credit for first successful public screening typically goes to august and Louis lumiere. Among the films that they screened that night was ‘the train arrives at la ciotat station’. And thanks to modern day technology we can now watch it upscaled and resounded, in a much higher frame rate with better quality. Now I hope that from what I have said already has given you a pretty good idea of the origin of film and what the medium, so to speak, was like 130 years ago. But, we aren’t quite finished just yet.

Welcome George Melies! Born in Paris in 1861, he first achieved fame as a stage magician and was developing magic tricks and theatrical effects while Muybridge, edison and the lumiere brothers were tinkering with motion picture. Melies was invited to one of the lumiere brothers private cinematographe screenings, and he was awestruck. After an intense, transcontinental search he ended up buying an animatograph, which he reverse-engineered so it worked as its own camera too. And by 1896, he was making and screening his own films in his theatre. At first, his films were continuous shots of short skits, quick magic tricks or scenes from everyday life. But then came along a happy accident that moved cinema forward forever. The whole sequence is demonstrated in this brilliant scene in hugo, 2011 , where martin Scorsese hails George melies because he is truly one of the last great artists. In his autobiography, Melies describes a day he was capturing footage on a Paris street, when his camera jammed. Frustrated, he fiddled with the hand crank, fixed the problem and started shooting again. But when the whole sequence was projected later on, two completely different shots were joined in an instant, and the cut was born.

So, fast forward a few years and melies had invented the first double exposure, by running the film negative through the camera twice before developing it, inventing the split screen and using cuts to create powerful special effects that would be downright thrilling. But throughout all this experimentation, most people thought of films as a fad that would disappear after a few years. Even the Lumiere brothers got out of the movie business in 1905 because they didn’t see a future for film. But what changed the game was when Melies released his masterpiece in 1902, title ‘a trip to the moon’. This 14 minute film follows a group of scientists who travel to the moon and sleep under the stars. It was made up of 825 feet of film- three times the average length of edison or lumiere films at the time and incorporates many of Melies innovations- his trick photography, fantastical setting and his ambitious storytelling, all in service of a large scale, relatively complex narrative fiction film. It was a massive international success and it made so much money that Thomas edison- among others- made illegal copies and screened the film as his own.!!! It also had a profound impact on other filmmakers at the time and expanded what people thought was possible, narratively and aesthetically. Unfortunately, the commercial growth of the industry forced him out of business in 1913, and he died in poverty, after sellings his movies to a company that melted them down to make shoe heels, but thankfully, his legacy survived.

Now, among these filmmakers experimenting with narrative film was Edwin S.Porter. Because Melies was a stage magician his films were more interested in presentation rather than representation, as he wanted to wow an audience with illusion, extravagance and surprise. But this newness and performative spectacle eventually wears off, and people wanted something more. That’s where Porter comes in, as his most successful film : ‘the Great Train Robbery’, released in 1903, focused more on narrative design to engage the viewer rather than astonish them. It also uses a bunch of new techniques such as parrarel action or cross-cutting, where you cut back and forth between two or more events that are happening simultaneously., and the pan and the tilt, a widely used effect today used by directors like the coen brothers as it reveals narrative information in a camera move, instead of just showing us everything. He also used a medium close up shot of one of the bandits, much closer than any shot we’ve seen so far. The size, scale and direct gaze of this shot was startling at the time, and influential enough that martin Scorsese stole if for a key moment in goodfellas. No filmmaker did as much to shape the narrative film grammar in the first decade of motion pictures as Edwin s porter.

As films language and economic imprint became more stable, the film industry began root, with the whole system beginning to take a shape that’s more recognizable to use modern movie-goers. First there’s the studios- where the films are made by production companies – second, is the distributor who market the movie to an audience and finally is the exhibitor, who actually provides the film to an audience. Many of these companies were virtually integrated, but it would be eventually ruled by a monopoly. Anyway to cut a long story short, the person in the best position to bring some chaos of this burgeoning film industry did so, welcome back Thomas edison. Edison claimed that he held patents on several elements in almost all motion picture cameras and projectors, so he was entitled to a cut of every one sold, as well as every movie that was made, sold or screened. And so edison sued, no fewer than 20 times.

Now onto the last filmmaker, D W Griffith. Griffith was able to integrate an actors understanding of nuance and character with film grammar laid down by pioneers like porter. He made incredible innovations in how a film could be shot and cut, and grounded all his new techniques in the service of character and story. He is credited with innovating the close up- cutting to a shot of a character’s face at a moment of high drama. He used increasingly extensive flashbacks to add depth to characters and their stories and found ingenious ways to use cross-cutting to engage the audience on a deeper level and make us empathise with his characters. It’s remarkable how modern his films feel today. Sure, there in black and white and don’t star an Oscar worthy bucket of tears, but the way the shots are framed and arranged hasn’t changed all that much since Griffith. And Griffiths biggest achievement was the film the birth of a nation, paving the way for feature length films to become gold standard. Despite its stunningly effective use of cross cutting and screen direction, its also profoundly disturbing in its message and imagery. It marked the end of Silent Era shorts and allowed filmmakers to experiment with more complex films that told grand stories with unique characters and powerful emotions.

Now from all this, I hope you have a better understanding of how different movies were 110 years ago, and what the first films ever created are. Films have progressed a lot since then, thanks to the introduction of sound in 1927 and the transition to colour In the late 30s. Cinema was the principal form of popular entertainment during the 30s and 40s and the advent of synchronised sound and colour secured the dominant role of the American industry, giving rise to the golden age of Hollywood. Things like the the aspect ratio have changed since then leading to the universal video format 16 by 19 for high definition, but surprisingly the 24 frames per second, which became standardised in the late 20s has been universally accepted in the industry and still remains to this day. Film has been used as propaganda- such as Sergei Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin- which is hailed as an important breakthrough in the art of editing and first to use a montage. The introduction of television also prompted a number of technical experiments, such as stereo sound and the cinerama process, but mainly made less people go to the cinema. Today, most people see films on television, whether terrestrial or satellite or on video of some kind, so we are also moving towards a web-based means of delivery.

So, what next? In the last 20 years film production has been profoundly altered by the impact of rapidly improving digital technology. Though productions may stilll be shot on film, most subsequent processes, such as editing and special effects are undertaken on computers before the final images are transferred back to film. But the need for this final transfer is diminishing as more cinemas invest in digital projection which is capable of producing screen images that rival sharpness, detail and brightness of traditional film projection. Right before our eyes, motion pictures are undergoing a revolution that may have a far more reaching, fundamental impact than the introduction of sound, color or television. Whether these changes are scarcely visible or overwhelmingly obvious, digital technology is transforming how we look at movies and what movies look like, from modestly budgeted movies with digital cameras to blockbusters laden with computer generated imagery. All you need to do is compare some movie remakes to their originals and you will understand what I mean. Take, for example, the original ‘King Kong’, made in 1933, to the recent remake in 2005. Notice how lifelike the cgi King Kong looks in comparison to the stop motion King Kong in the original film. Take a look at the Charlie and the chocolate factory remake, or the new casino royals, or oceans 11, or the war of the worlds, or the karate kid… the list goes on.

  While some changes in filmmaking technology and the craft of filmmaking might be obvious, there are other things that are not so apparent, such as the shorter shot time, where the average duration of a shot is consistently shorter now than it was a decade ago.For example this scene in 2018s bohemian rhapsody, which has so many cuts in such a short time it perefectly resembles how the world is moving so quickly that our attention spans are getting shorter, so movies have had to change so we do not flake out every few seconds. There is more motion and action nowadays to help keep the audiences attention and to match the dramatic Intensity of the scene. Modern, digital technology has allowed filmakers to maintain better control over a more dynamic range of light and so movies today are often shot with much less light than their predecessors, allowing for more naturalistic light. There are also other factors that have played a big part in how film has evolved, such as blu-ray disks and IMAX theatres. Audiences can now watch movies on smartphones, tablets and computers and even stream movies through platforms such as Netflix and amazon video. Of course, these are just changes in visual style that have that have been made possible by new technologies. But Perhaps the biggest changes are those brought about by changes in society, but that’s a subject for another time.

      So where does this leave us? Is this digital revolution a good thing? Is film dying? Personally, I think that we should look at it as a positive. Digital technology opens up a lot of doors for the coming generations as they discover the fresh aesthetic possibilities that come with new ways of recording images. Especially with easily accessible and widely available technology, such as smartphones, it is possible for anybody to create a movie regardless of having the support of a big production company or studio. All it takes is an idea. You can write, record, edit, compose and render your own movie all from your bedroom, thanks to the internet and programs like adobe. What haven’t changed over the last 100 years are the basic rules of filmmaking. Cinema is language, and making movies is just recording a series of images. Filmmaking was an expensive business, but the advent of digital technology has changed all that, as the physical means to make a film are now contained within the phone in your pocket. So, remember that cinema is just writing with movement, and as we see what the future holds, the essential language of cinema will forever remain the same. But above all, my intention is that through understanding about the origin of film and cinema, you will realise how the medium of film has changed since Edweard Muybridge first took those 12 photographs of the horse in motion, back in 1872.