|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Technology, Technology
| Article
# : |
15489 |
|
|
Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
|
| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1989 |
2,670 Words |
| Author
: |
David D'Arcy
David D'Arcy broadcasts on cultural matters on National Public
Radio. |
Even in an era where machines govern the work place of art, where writers have become slaves to world processors, and computers plot the structure of stage lighting in the theater, film is the medium where technology dominates most. It fact, to say that film depends more on technology than any other medium is so easy to prove, it's a banality.
It is obviously difficult for anyone living now to remember that the original fascination with movies arose from the novel experience of seeing pictures move. A recent exhibition called Masterpieces of Moving Image technology at the America Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York, showed how, in 1888, Thomas Edison had set out to create "an instrument that does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear." That led to the building of the first kinetograph camera by one of Edison's engineers in 1891. The device used celluloid film and photographed circular images one-half inch in diameter on perforated, flexible strips of films that moved horizontally through a mechanized sprocket system.
A few years later, a film exhibition technology was already in place. Edison introduced the kinetoscope, an early "peep show viewer" capable of presenting half-minute film shows. Edison sold the machines on a territory basis to showmen who installed them in arcades and kinetoscope parlors in all the major cities of the United States and Europe.
From the 1890s, when movie projection was first accomplished, to the early 1930s, when studios finally became comfortable using sound, the movie business was essentially driven by developments in technology to the point where the narrative Hollywood commercial feature, using sound, became the cinematic form that is still with us today. Inventor/businessmen, particularly Thomas Edison, were convinced that profit in the film business came from controlling the technology used to make films. In 1908 Edison formed the Motion Picture Patents Company to do just that, aiming for exclusive control of the manufacture of motion pictures and equipment, access to raw film stock, film distribution, and the regulation and licensing of exhibitors.
As new technology developed and exhibitors sought to move away from Edison's control, the public also began to lose its fascination with mere images moving across a screen. Plots soon began drawing customers. Then the principal actors and actresses in those stories became the key element in bringing an audience to a movie. The films themselves, rather than the machines used to produce them, became the most valuable
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
