Film

Film is a creative artform involving the recording and display of visuals in motion over time, generally by photographic means. The word "film" is also commonly used as a shorthand for photographic film, a particular method of image recording which uses a photosensitive coating atop a flexible substrate.

Film as a medium is also popularly known as cinema or movies. Due to its technological requirements, it is a relatively young artform, originating in the late 19th century. From its beginnings as a public curiosity for showing several seconds of black and white silent footage of "actualities", film gradually evolved technically, creatively, and financially over the succeeding decades. Longer narrative films and experimentation with new techniques fed into increasingly imaginative works, a larger viewing public, and an influx in workers eager to be employed on both sides of the camera. All of these factors made films a lucrative market, and thus drove increased investment and the birth of the studio system. Subsequently, the demand for new audience experiences - both for creative and marketing reasons - led to the use of sound, color, widescreen, 3-D, and even smells or sensations with the film; these were each met with varying degrees of success. More recent developments include integration with video formats, such as HD for origination, and DVD for distribution.

Gauge

Until the 2000's, all motion pictures were shot on plastic celluloid film. Until the 1950's, film contained nitrate, which would catch fire if the projection lamp was too hot. It was eventually replaced with a plastic-based formula that would not ignite. Until the late 1960's, all motion pictures were filmed on 35mm film. It is still used today, except that 16mm has been in use for filmmaking since the 1960's onward. Video did not dominate the scene until the late 1990's.

35mm

This was and has been the standard format to film motion pictures into the 2000's. In early cinema, various formats had been used, including light sensitive paper, to create moving images until the 1900's with the invention of flexible film by Eastman Kodak of the Kodak company.

16mm & Super 16

Introduced in the 1920's, it was originally used for home movies. By the 1950's, however, with the advent of television it was used to film stories that were not live broadcast, and by the 1960's onward, it was used by independent filmmakers and television studios. By the 1980's it began to be used by the movie industry as a way of cutting costs brought on by 35mm. It is half of the width of 35mm film. It had an aspect ratio of 1.33.

Super 16 was created and developed by Rune Ericson and Jean-Pierre Beauviala, the latter being the founder of first Eclaire then its rejuvination Aaton, the French manufacturer of motion picture cameras. It was designed to fit the theatrical aspect ratio (1.66 Europe; 1.88 North America) when projected. Super 16mm extends the frame of the image into the area originally used for optical soundtracks.

8mm & Super 8

Super 8 was introduced in the 1960's as a home movie format. However, it too has been used for feature film like 16mm. But unlike 16mm, it has remained as a small form of movie making prior to the advent of the VCR in 1979.

History

Motion pictures are considered to be a modern art medium, with technological advances that dominated the 20th century and beyond.

Silent Era

From the late 1800's to the late 1920's, film was chiefly a silent medium. Much of the acting had a wide use of pantamime, often exaggerated facial expressions and body language that stereotypes silent cinema. Yet it was the era where the use of the image was used to tell the story, causing significant advances in the technology, as well as stories and financing. There were the early stars, specifically from the United States, such as Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. Styles differed from continent to continent, with film being treated more seriously as an art form, while in America it was used as a form of entertainment and profit-making. There has also been other countries outside the Western Hemisphere that had developed its native cinema from the early silent period onward, such as Russia, India, Brazil and Japan.