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Film



Main article: Fan film

A fan film is a film or video inspired by a film, television program, comic book or a similar source, created by fans rather than by the source's copyright holders or creators. Fan filmmakers have traditionally been amateurs, but some of the more notable films have actually been produced by professional filmmakers as film school class projects or as demonstration reels. Fan films vary tremendously in length, from short faux-teaser trailers for non-existent motion pictures to rarer full-length motion pictures.

Animation

Main article: Animation

Animation is the technique in which each frame of a film is produced individually, whether generated as a computer graphic, or by photographing a drawn image, or by repeatedly making small changes to a model unit (see claymation and stop motion), and then photographing the result with a special animation camera. When the frames are strung together and the resulting film is viewed at a speed of 16 or more frames per second, there is an illusion of continuous movement (due to the persistence of vision). Generating such a film is very labour intensive and tedious, though the development of computer animation has greatly sped up the process.

File formats like GIF, QuickTime, Shockwave and Flash allow animation to be viewed on a computer or over the Internet.

Because animation is very time-consuming and often very expensive to produce, the majority of animation for TV and movies comes from professional animation studios. However, the field of independent animation has existed at least since the 1950s, with animation being produced by independent studios (and sometimes by a single person). Several independent animation producers have gone on to enter the professional animation industry.

Limited animation is a way of increasing production and decreasing costs of animation by using "short cuts" in the animation process. This method was pioneered by UPA and popularized by Hanna-Barbera, and adapted by other studios as cartoons moved from movie theaters to television.[3]

Although most animation studios are now using digital technologies in their productions, there is a specific style of animation that depends on film. Cameraless animation, made famous by moviemakers like Norman McLaren, Len Lye and Stan Brakhage, is painted and drawn directly onto pieces of film, and then run through a projector.

Venues

When it is initially produced, a feature film is often shown to audiences in a movie theater or cinema. The first theater designed exclusively for cinema opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1905.[4] Thousands of such theaters were built or converted from existing facilities within a few years.[5] In the United States, these theaters came to be known as nickelodeons, because admission typically cost a nickel (five cents).

Typically, one film is the featured presentation (or feature film). Before the 1970s, there were "double features"; typically, a high quality "A picture" rented by an independent theater for a lump sum, and a "B picture" of lower quality rented for a percentage of the gross receipts. Today, the bulk of the material shown before the feature film consists of previews for upcoming movies and paid advertisements (also known as trailers or "The Twenty").

Historically, all mass marketed feature films were made to be shown in movie theaters. The development of television has allowed films to be broadcast to larger audiences, usually after the film is no longer being shown in theaters. Recording technology has also enabled consumers to rent or buy copies of films on VHS or DVD (and the older formats of laserdisc, VCD and SelectaVision — see also videodisc), and Internet downloads may be available and have started to become revenue sources for the film companies. Some films are now made specifically for these other venues, being released as made-for-TV movies or direct-to-video movies. The production values on these films are often considered to be of inferior quality compared to theatrical releases in similar genres, and indeed, some films that are rejected by their own studios upon completion are distributed through these markets.

The movie theater pays an average of about 50-55% of its ticket sales to the movie studio, as film rental fees.[6] The actual percentage starts with a number higher than that, and decreases as the duration of a film's showing continues, as an incentive to theaters to keep movies in the theater longer. However, today's barrage of highly marketed movies ensures that most movies are shown in first-run theaters for less than 8 weeks. There are a few movies every year that defy this rule, often limited-release movies that start in only a few theaters and actually grow their theater count through good word-of-mouth and reviews. According to a 2000 study by ABN AMRO, about 26% of Hollywood movie studios' worldwide income came from box office ticket sales; 46% came from VHS and DVD sales to consumers; and 28% came from television (broadcast, cable, and pay-per-view).[6]

Future state

While motion picture films have been around for more than a century, film is still a relative newcomer in the pantheon of fine arts. In the 1950s, when television became widely available, industry analysts predicted the demise of local movie theaters. Despite competition from television's increasing technological sophistication over the 1960s and 1970s, such as the development of color television and large screens, motion picture cinemas continued. In the 1980s, when the widespread availability of inexpensive videocassette recorders enabled people to select films for home viewing, industry analysts again wrongly predicted the death of the local cinemas.

In the 1990s and 2000s the development of digital DVD players, home theater amplification systems with surround sound and subwoofers, and large LCD or plasma screens enabled people to select and view films at home with greatly improved audio and visual reproduction. These new technologies provided audio and visual that in the past only local cinemas had been able to provide: a large, clear widescreen presentation of a film with a full-range, high-quality multi-speaker sound system. Once again industry analysts predicted the demise of the local cinema. Local cinemas will be changing in the 2000s and moving towards digital screens, a new approach which will allow for easier and quicker distribution of films (via satellite or hard disks), a development which may give local theaters a reprieve from their predicted demise.

The cinema now faces a new challenge from home video by the likes of a new DVD format Blu-ray, which can provide full HD 1080p video playback at near cinema quality. Video formats are gradually catching up with the resolutions and quality that film offers, 1080p in Blu-ray offers a pixel resolution of 1920×1080 a leap from the DVD offering of 720×480 and the paltry 330×480 offered by the first home video standard VHS. The maximum resolutions that film currently offers are 2485×2970 or 1420×3390, UHD, a future digital video format, will offer a massive resolution of 7680×4320, surpassing all current film resolutions. The only viable competitor to these new innovations is IMAX which can play film content at an extreme 10000×7000 resolution.

Despite the rise of all new technologies, the development of the home video market and a surge of online piracy, 2007 was a record year in film that showed the highest ever box-office grosses. Many expected film to suffer as a result of the effects listed above but it has flourished, strengthening film studio expectations for the future.

See also

Film Portal

Notes

  1. ^ Bollywood Hots Up cnn.com. Retrieved June 23, 2007
  2. ^ a b Sharing Pix is Risky Business variety.com. Retrieved June 23, 2007.
  3. ^ Savage, Mark (2006-12-19). Hanna Barbera's golden age of animation. BBC News. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
  4. ^ Timothy McNulty (2005-06-19). You saw it here first: Pittsburgh's Nickelodeon introduced the moving picture theater to the masses in 1905. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
  5. ^ Pre-Nickelodeon/Nickelodeon. University of Maryland Libraries (2005-07-05). Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
  6. ^ a b PBS Frontline: The Monster that Ate Hollywood: Anatomy of a Monster: Now Playing ... And Playing ... And Playing ... pbs.org. Retrieved June 23, 2007

References

  • Acker, Ally (1991). Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, 1896 to the Present. New York: Continuum. ISBN 0826404995. 
  • Basten, Fred E. (1980). Glorious Technicolor: The Movies' Magic Rainbow. Cranbury, NJ: AS Barnes & Company. ISBN 0498023176. 
  • Basten, Fred E. (writer); Peter Jones (director and writer); Angela Lansbury (narrator). (1998). Glorious Technicolor [Documentary]. Turner Classic Movies.
  • Casetti, Francesco (1999). Theories of Cinema, 1945-1995. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0292712073. 
  • Faber, Liz, & Walters, Helen (2003). Animation Unlimited: Innovative Short Films Since 1940. London: Laurence King, in association with Harper Design International. ISBN 1856693465. 
  • Hagener, Malte, & Töteberg, Michael (2002). Film: An International Bibliography. Stuttgart: Metzler. ISBN 3476015238. 
  • Hill, John, & Gibson, Pamela Church (1998). The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198711247. 
  • King, Geoff (2002). New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231127596. 
  • Ledoux, Trish, & Ranney, Doug, & Patten, Fred (1997). Complete Anime Guide: Japanese Animation Film Directory and Resource Guide. Issaquah, WA: Tiger Mountain Press. ISBN 0964954257. 
  • Merritt, Greg (2000). Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 1560252324. 
  • Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (1999). The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198742428. 
  • Rocchio, Vincent F. (2000). Reel Racism: Confronting Hollywood's Construction of Afro-American Culture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN 0813367107. 
  • Schrader, Paul (Spring 1972). "Notes on Film Noir". Film Comment Vol. 8 (Issue 1): pp. 8–13. ISSN 0015-119X. 
  • Schultz, John (writer and director); James Earl Jones (narrator). (1995). The Making of 'Jurassic Park' [Documentary]. Amblin Entertainment.
  • Thackway, Melissa (2003). Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Film. Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0852555768. 
  • Vogel, Amos (1974). Film as a Subversive Art. New York: Random House. ISBN 0394490789. 

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