When we go to the movies in this day and age, we are often dazzled by grand picture quality, astounding sound and computer generated special effects that keep us on the tips of our seats until the very end. Some of us even get to catch a flick in groundbreaking 3-D, which adds a tremendous amount of realism to our film experience. But one thing is set in the ground, and that is movies, at the very beginning of their prominence, had none of these factors. They were black and white, grainy, and most importantly, they had no sound which made it difficult at times to interpret what was going on upon the silver screen. Films started out as an experiment to capture certain movements and objects, and over the course of the late 1800s and early 1900s, film makers and inventors crafted new cameras and tested many different filming techniques, which believe it or not, are still being used today in modern cinema. One of these inventors was none other than Thomas Edison, who contributed two devices to the filmmaking world, the Kinetograph and the Kinetoscope, which helped to make filmmaking and capturing more fluent and vibrant.
The oldest surviving film is a two second clip entitled Roundhay Garden Scene, which dates back all the way to 1888. There is nothing really special about this little film, especially by today’s standards, but it is surely fascinating in its own shell. It’s just a bunch of people walking around in circles, but I would go as far to say that it’s one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. It’s short, but has a lot to say, and it’s so interesting knowing that this film is still in existence. There were films made in the 1910s and 1920s that are no longer on the Earth, but this film, a simple, quick little flick that you could watch thousands and thousands of times again, still remains preserved. It’s so short and so corny, but it packs a punch. If you need a film to watch on a Saturday night, I would highly suggest Roundhay Garden Scene, for you could probably watch it hundreds of times within a single hour.
But anyway, the main reason why I am going on and on about this one special clip is because it proved that films could be made, and if the tenacious filmmakers and experimenters worked hard and kept looking on towards the future with strong heads, they could make some pieces of history, pieces of what would eventually become a phenomenon. The Silent Film Era followed, and many revolutionary motion pictures came along to blow the public out of their shoes. As stated earlier, films of the olden days had no synchronous sound, for no methods of matching sound with film were devised by that point. Live musicians and performers would come in while the film was playing to provide the music and sound effects, and at times, the filmmakers would photograph captions to describe what was going on during some of the scenes. However, the special effects that we all know and love in films were not entirely obsolete in the days of film infancy. Filmmakers found ways to provide transitions and speed up certain scenes to add a bit of tension, and they even made eloquent props and set ups to take us to fantasy lands and areas of imagination and glory. One of the earliest films to utilize high quality special effects was Georges Melies’ A Trip To The Moon from 1902, in which there was an incredible close up of an actor whose face was made to look like the moon, adding a bit of fantasy nobody had ever seen in that time period. You may say that it just looks like they covered the guy’s face in cottage cheese, but I think it looks astonishing, especially for 1902.
Other films would come along throughout the decades to build upon the arising film industry. D.W. Griffith hit the ceiling with his 1915 film The Birth of Nation, and although the film sparked uproar for many Americans, it made a lot of money and proved to be a success all over the country. Some films even went on to earn the very first Academy Awards, like the 1927 film Wings, which depicted aircraft pilots during WWI. But the actor who best symbolizes the silent film era, for me at least is Charlie Chaplin, the comedic genius who brought a trademark fun, ingenuity and spunkiness to the cinemas for the first time. His iconic black hat, moustache, and cane have gone on to make him a world renowned figure, for he has made some of the most proclaimed motion pictures of all time, like The Kid, Modern Times, City Lights, and The Great Dictator. Another famous entity of the silent era was Buster Keaton, a comedic genius who also pulled off some of the craziest stunts and gags the film industry has ever known.
So as you can see, films were at the top of their game even in their early years, but filmmakers still struggled to find a way to incorporate sound into films to make the film more whole. Eventually, the “Vitaphone” system was created, and out came the very first feature film to have synchronized dialogue, The Jazz Singer from 1927. In the film, actor Al Jolson’s character, Jakie Rabinowitz takes part in a sing-a-long with his mother, played by Eugenie Besserer, and the first scene with dialogue straight from the actors’ mouths is born, although the rest of the film was silent like many other films of the time. But the success of The Jazz Singer and its one talking scene spawned the Talkie Era of films, and many other movies came along throughout the coming years, following the same formula and method of adding sound to film, eventually resulting in the demise of the silent film era. Of course films still remained in black and white, but gone was the need to have captions explaining every scene of the film, and gone was the need to have musicians and performers come in and provide the film’s music and sound effects. They could add that all in with the newly founded sound technology, which would prove useful for many years following.
The first colored film is said to be A Visit To The Seaside from 1918 which was made with a technology called Kinemacolor, however, a coloring technology known as Technicolor would emerge into greatness in the coming decades. Many films would be made in Technicolor, and many black and white films would be rereleased using the Technicolor technology. Among the famous flicks released in Technicolor are Gone With The Wind, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Ben-Hur, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and the timeless classic, The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz is often regarded as the first colored film (probably because of its popularity), but the process was used several times by filmmakers beforehand. However, The Wizard of Oz was certainly one of the first films ever to use the Technicolor technology, and the film’s color is meant to have a symbolic notion to characterize each land Dorothy explores throughout the film.
And the evolution of films doesn’t end there. Even after Dorothy’s house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East and Ben-Hur’s chariot swept through the Jerusalem arena, films continued to shape shift and mold into what we define them as today. Filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick revolutionized special effects with his 1967 sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Steven Spielberg brought us what is often referred to as the first summer blockbuster, Jaws from 1975. But it was the independent filmmaker known as George Lucas that redefined films in general with his little film known as Star Wars, released in 1977, a monumental film that set down the shoes for many other blockbusters to walk in. Star Wars was also the first film ever to feature special effects from Industrial Light and Magic, Lucas’ special effects company that is still in progress today, making the visuals we love to see in series like The Terminator and Transformers. ILM also spawned the animation company known as Pixar, which made the first fully computer animated film, Toy Story, in 1995.
George Lucas and Tomlinson Holman also contributed the THX technology (named after Lucas’ first film, THX 1138) for better sound and picture quality on the movie screen. The first film ever to carry out the THX wonder was Return of the Jedi from 1983, and the technology was also used to restore and refurbish many acclaimed Disney films throughout the mid-1990s. The technology is also used for gaming consoles, car radios, home videos, even computer speakers, and the THX “Deep Note” can be heard briefly before some football games. THX technology would lead to many discoveries in digital picture quality. So, you could say that THX helped create High Definition and Widescreen movie formats we see in current motion pictures.
So as we have explored, movies started out as simple recordings, then they evolved into something bigger than anything we could ever interpret in our skulls. Now, we have the color, we have the effective sound to blow our ears off, and we have the special effects to bring someone’s visions to reality, someone’s dreams in front of the faces of millions. It’s a blast to look and see how films have progressed over the century, and even if some of them are as old as Egyptian pyramids, they still capture an essence and efficiency that can’t be matched, an essence and efficiency that many blockbusters and Hollywood charms would mimic throughout the progression of the film industry. And films are a part of us, a part of our culture and way of life, and aside from giving us unforgettable imagery and some of the most well-known movie quotes to spring from somebody’s lips, movies can teach us a thing or two, a thing or two about life and how to solve some of the most engaging problems we never thought we’d encounter in our travels. That’s why we admire films so much, for they display creativity and what really can soar within the brain of a filmmaker. To quote Steven Spielberg:
“Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about.”
