Which phase of movie making was earliest to adopt the use of digital techniques?

Lightweight/portable equipment вЂ“ 1950s-1960s

The fantasy film The Thief of Bagdad (1940) is thought to be the first to use a blue-screen effect with its rather entertaining вЂgenieвЂ™. It allowed for actors to be вЂanywhere in the worldвЂ™ and also create optical illusions, all the while saving on production costs. You canвЂ™t help but respect the technique. Lastly, the layers are composited together in a final recording by laying them over each other one frame at a time. It is a time-consuming technique in which a scene is filmed against the coloured (green) screen, then re-filmed with a filter on the lens that removes all the coloured (green) areas of the film. These screensвЂ™ colours have changed throughout the decades, but the process and effect have remained the same. There were examples of older colour films as early as 1917, but most have been lost.Д®arly digital compositing started in the 1940s with the вЂtraveling matteвЂ™ вЂ“ a process that was used to superimpose backdrops with actors performing against a blank, coloured wall. Not only because it gave the medium the ability to mimic life more realistically than ever before, but it also led to more narrative possibilities, with the prime example being The Wizard of Oz (1939) which famously depicted DorothyвЂ™s Kansas in black and white, but then brought Oz to magical life in Technicolour.ДЇilm was never the same againвЂ¦ until The Artist of course.

Regardless, colour changed film for the better. ThereвЂ™s nothing wrong with a good black and white film, after all last yearвЂ™s Oscar winner for best film вЂ“ The Artist вЂ“ proved that black and white films can still provoke an emotive experience for todayвЂ™s audiences. Screenwriting and acting slowly took on a whole new meaning, and new genres were formed, as dialogue became a key component of films marking the beginning of вЂthe talkiesвЂ™. Recording sound effects (including dialogue) and adding musical scores all started with the major motion picture The Jazz Singer (1927) which is regarded as the first film to have synchronised dialogue вЂ“ and singing for that matter. But it was Warner BrothersвЂ™ вЂњ VitaphoneвЂќ that took the system to feature films. The process of synching sound had been achieved in 1914 with The Photo-Drama of Creation, in which slides and phonograph records were synched up. Even early projectionists are credited to have done live sound effects for films too (surely one of the most fun jobs in the last century).Д«ut it all meant there were narrative limitations. This era was famous for over the top (slapstick) acting, the use of intertitles (titles between shots), and live-music accompanimentВ to films in theatres. The stuff of legend.Д«efore sound could be captured simultaneously to picture, there was the golden age of silent films. The LumiГЁre brothers held some of the earliest screenings of projected images in 1895, where their film, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, notoriously showed a train entering a station (literally moving towards the screen).ДЄllegedly the audience ran away from the screen because they thought it was real. SomeoneвЂ™s bound to argue the Chinese invented it earlier.Дespite many technical displays of вЂmoving imagesвЂ™ around the time, I would argue that it was the LumiГЁre brothers who took the medium to the masses and influenced early pioneers such as George MГ©liГЁs, who arguably was the first person to add narrative to moving images. Trying to date which movie camera was invented first is like trying to determine what the first movie of all time was: futile.ДЇor as many people who say Louis Le PrinceвЂ™s camera in 1888 was first, an equal number will say it was William Friese-GreeneвЂ™s in 1889. The movie camera вЂ“ a camera that could capture a sequence of photographs onto filmstrip in quick succession вЂ“ was a late invention of the 1800s, and without it weВ wouldnвЂ™tВ have the visual medium that we all love to enjoy while in dark rooms chomping on popcorn and answering our cellphones. With the medium being just around 120 years old, we take a look at the biggest tech innovations that, through time, changed film for the better.

Which phase of movie making was earliest to adopt the use of digital techniques?