Facts about movies - motion pictures
In this article you will find a question not only about the
motion pictures of the 1920s but also about the history facts of the film industry as a whole
Going to the movies is one of the most popular forms of
entertainment. We go to be thrilled by gun-battles and saloon brawls
in westerns, delighted by the singing and dancing in colorful
musicals, amused by animated cartoons, and informed by documentaries
and newsreels. These are among the most important kinds of motion
pictures.
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Motion pictures of the 1920s etc
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The first public showings of motion
pictures were given in France in 1895 by the Lumiere brothers. This
movie of a train arriving at a station made people jump up to get out of
the way
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Movies were silent until 1927 and
actors used exaggerated gestures and expressions to convey meaning. This
scene is from Way Down East starring Mary Pickford
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The producer controls the making of commercial motion pictures.
He supervises the whole project and helps to select the cast of
actors and actresses to play in it. The director controls the actual
filming of the scenes and is usually held to be responsible for the
artistic quality of the final motion picture. The screen writer
prepares the script from which the actors learn their lines. There
are also many designers, craftsmen and technicians, including the
film editors, or cutters, who have a vital role in shaping the final
version of the movie.
The greater part of most movies is taken, or shot, in a motion
picture studio. Realistic sets, or backgrounds, are built to
resemble rooms, buildings and streets. Most of the sets are merely
supported shells. Often scenes are taken on location outside the
studio to heighten the realism. At the end of the filming, the
exposed film strip in the cameras is processed. The director and
film editors then choose the scenes to include in the motion picture
and decide the order in which the shots will appear. The cine camera
works on the same principle as the still camera, but takes a series
of still shots in quick succession. The film strip used is exactly
the same as that used in still cameras. And it is developed, or
processed in much the same way.
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Motion pictures
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Epic movies have been popular since World War I
at 1920s, and ancient Rome has probably been the subject of more epic movies than anything else
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Scene from the historical motion picture Anne of a Thousand Days
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The camera takes 24 separate shots, or frames, every second. A
claw mechanism holds the film strip still while each frame is shot
and then moves the next frame into position. A half disc shields the
film while it is being moved to prevent blurring of the image.
The sound for the movie is picked up by microphones suspended on
long poles, or booms, above the actors but out of sight of the
cameras. The microphone changes sound into a varying electric
current. This current is converted into a varying pattern of light,
which is recorded as a sound track on the edge of the film strip.
When the movie is completed, it can be shown through a projector.
In the projector, a bright light from an electric-arc lamp shines
through the film strip and throws a magnified image onto a white
screen. It projects 24 frames every second - the same rate at
which the camera took them. It has a device for blocking off the
light while the film is actually moving from frame to frame.
This means, of course, that the screen is dark between frames. But
we do not notice this because our eyes continue to see the previous
frame. This is called persistence of vision. It enables us to see
the separate frames as a continuous moving picture.
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Motion pictures
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A movie projector contains two sources
of light, one to produce the picture and one to produce the sound.
Light from the lamp passes through the sound track to the photocell,
where a varying electric signal is produced as the film moves. The
signal is amplified and fed to the loud-speakers.
Left - old movie camera (1928)
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Light-sensitive cells in the projector convert the sound track
back into sound, which is relayed to loud-speakers behind the
screen. Early films, however, were silent. The first ones were made
in 1895. But before then various people had invented devices which
relied on the persistence of vision to give the illusion of
movement. They included the phenakistoscope (1832), the zoetrope
(1860), and the kinetograph (1868). In 1894, the American inventor
Thomas Edison showed short films in a cabinet called a kinetoscope.
In 1895, movies were first projected successfully, and the motion
picture industry had begun. Movies were first shown in fairgrounds
and as items in vaudeville shows. However, theaters were soon built
especially to show movies. Movies were sometimes called 'flicks'
because of the flickering of the screen. This happened because they
were projected at only 16 frames a second.
Facts about motion pictures of the 1920s - until 1927, movies were
silent. Pianists in the motion picture theaters provided background
music to suit the action on the screen. However, most of the
techniques of movie making were established in the days of silent
motion pictures. One of the greatest of the early pioneers was David
Wark Griffith (1880-1948). He was the first director to develop the
'close-up', the 'fade-out' and the 'flash-back' for dramatic effect.
Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) was the first full-length motion
picture.
In 1927, Al Jolson starred in The Jazz Singer, the first
successful sound movie. From then on, the motion picture industry
developed rapidly. In the 1950s, the wide-screen processes of
Cinerama, Cinemascope and Todd-ÀÎ were introduced. The popularity of
television caused a drop in attendance at movies in the 1950s and
1960s. However, movies of quality still attract audiences all over
the world.
