Undeniably, i love my cable-tv, I love You tube and I love the cinema. Now, I was not totally oblivious to the fact that these are all new technologies; both my parents love to remind me how things were different “back in the day...”
However, instead of actually listening to long speeches about drive in theatre and sound-less movies, I usually rolled my eyes.
At the start of week four I was prepared for an hour of complete and utter boredom the second “The history of Film” was mentioned, but it seems I may have been too harsh on my poor Mother and Father - Film and Television actually have a rather interesting history. These two industries have been engaged in a constant battle for market domination since their beginnings, we can thanks this very battle for the many developments in entertainment technologies we take advantage of today.
I could write for ages about the developments in TV vs Cinema, but let me quickly outline the most important points. The most important part is not the detailed history, but rather how this detailed history has shaped the art and craft of film making.
Cinema came first – in 1895. Short films were shown often and were so popular some clever person decide to make a feature length film in 1906. It was humble beginnings and slowly this black and white, soundless cinema plodded along at a rather slow pace for a good 20 years, without TV to compete against.
1929 was the year of the first true-to-life movie. Audiences saw real colour and sound for the first time. In ’33 drive in theatre drove on into the scene, and animated film made an appearance in ’37.
Until now, cinema owned to visual entertainment market. That was until 1939. We welcome in the television.
The film industry, already a lucrative business must have been shaking in their boots. Throughout the 40’s and into the 50’s the two industries battled it out for the market and the money, which lead to a major developing in film – and it’s first major counter-attack to win the market– 3d film.
Now when I say 3D, you may think about the cool effects jumping out at you in Avatar 3D, not quite what they had in 1952 unfortunately. Remember those blue and red glasses? The ones that gave me a killer head ache as a child, and could never sit through the whole movie unless I felt like having a migraine that day? Yes, those ones. They were the cutting edge of technology and helped Cinema bring back the dwindling audience that were now investing in TV.
Then there was a brilliant idea for Television – playing movies on TV. Why go to the cinema when you can watch the same thing from the comfort of your couch? King Kong was the first televised movie in 1956.
A not-so-sucessful attempt by cinema to bring the market back, away from TV, was the feelies and smell-o-vision. It, quite frankly, creped me out to learn about this - I never actually thought these existed, outside of Aldous Huxley cult fiction novel “Brave New World”, and would have been much happier in my ignorance. Thankfully Huxley’s other descriptions of the modern world have not come into reality, so I feel safe, for now, as we moved onto the other developments that have lead to the fantastic improvements in modern society, like sponge-bob square pants on demand.
Come 1963, and VTR (video taper recorders) were now available for consumers to buy -$30, 000 a set? No thank you, that’s more than all my worldly possessions combined – including my car! Fortunately for the less extravagant the multiplex cinema was introduced in the same year. You could probably live in one of those things for the price of one video player attached to your TV set, so it’s not surprising that this was a popular option. But in ’97 TV and Video developed a consumer friendly, black and white, VTR player that didn’t cost the earth (you gotta feel bad for anyone who purchased the previous version). And then the VCR was released in ’69.
The 70’s and 80’s were good decades for video and TV, with the creation of HBO cable tv in ’72 and the introduction on VLD (video laserdisc). Laser disc players were available to the home market in the early 80’s, but were fairly short lived, replaced with DVD format in the late 90’s. HBO continued to grown in profitability and popularity and were marketing major completion for normal TV networks. This is where, one of my personal favourites, MTV, was introduced.
Film & Video arcade games came around in 82 when our good friends at Disney released a feature film with arcade video game to match. Blockbuster video stores opened in 85, the same year film started to be released to VCR video only – skipping the cinema market entirely. This is where all the most awful films, unworthy of cinema were destined. You see it still around today, low budget, poor quality films go straight to blockbuster.
Computer generated animation was a big development in 1988 that brought popularity back to the big screens and paved the way for ‘believable’ special effects. 1991, was most importantly the year of my first birthday, but also notable developments for society was the first ‘true to life’ computer generated character in ‘Terminator 2’.
The first development I actually remember experiencing was the film ‘Toy Story’ in 1995. The first totally computer generated feature length animation and god, was it cool. A good year for cinema it would seem.
And of course I remember the fist DVD’s - at the time (1997) everyone was amazed by this fantastic technology. It did take a while to catch on, but it wasn’t too long, 2003 to be exact, before DVD was king and VHS was obsolete, those brick-like cassettes are a bit of a joke nowadays really. DVD was great for TV and home entertainment; we got cinema quality movies in our own home!
1998 was a big year forDVD video and TV. We saw the beginning of High Definition TV, as well as the first online DVD movie rental service, Video on Demand and online video streaming. Digital projectors were coming into use for cinema without the need for that physical, old school ‘film’.
The Blair Witch project was a big deal for cinema in 1999, another win in the battle against TV. It was low budget and made hundreds of millions of dollars, and the ‘home-video’ filming added to the reality, scaring the shit out of me at the age of 9, I didn’t sleep for weeks.
Personal digital video recorders (PVR or HDR) like Tivo came out in the same year however, with just about evened the score. Now consumers could record the TV, fast forward, pause, VOD etc etc.
In 2002 the consumer could now legally watch movies on demand online thanks to Movie link, but it’s hard to compete against the abundance of free-illegal movies online today. 2004 was the year the first CGI-green screen feature films were shot. Without any physical sets required, real actors could be put against any computer generated background, this advance in technology film makers were given greater freedom in for making believable sets, especially in science fiction.
‘A History of Violence’, 2005, was the last major film to be released on VHS due to the popularity of DVD and the recent introduction of the Blu-ray discs. Now VHS had really seen its last days. Youtube grew in popularity too, 2006 saw 100 million videos viewed every single day - Which only increased when broadband was released in ’07. Today, practically any major movie a consumer wants to watch can be purchased online, but with a plethora of websites prepared to host movies free and illegally it looks as if blockbuster is losing its popularity and many people are choosing to watch it free, without needing to go down to the DVD rental stores.
But what does that mean for the future of film? Consumers have found ways to easily consume the products without paying a cent. The web offers little is any benefits to the film industry. Instead we are being bombarded with crap, low budget movies. Sometimes, amongst the millions of thorns we find a rose – a fantastic online, low budget film that can shot a talented film maker into the public eye. At this stage the internet is a horrid tool, crippling the film industry.
However it only early days for internet film - The next stage? It seems like it will be another win for television. The convergence of internet Film and pay tv seems to be heading towards a home cinema system where we can simply down load (and pay for) our films from your pay-tv systems. This will hopefully make high-quality, movies readily available from your TV. If we have this available in our homes, we will in all likely hood watch these films more often. When TV and cinema converge into one the two markets will hopefully co-exist in harmony.
Phew – a lot of developments for the space of just over 100 years? I hope your still awake after that, and like me, looking forward to the not so distant future for our beautiful flat screen TV’s
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