The motion picture is both a form of mass entertainment and the newest of the fine arts. Motion pictures were unequaled in the 20th century for the speed of their technical and artistic development, the extent of their proliferation, and the degree of their influence and popularity.
A brief treatment of motion pictures follows. For full treatment, see MACROPAEDIA: Motion Pictures.
Motion-picture technology and production. By means of a shutter that opens and closes at high speed, a motion-picture camera photographs a series of still images, but because the time lapse between images is only about one-fiftieth of a second in most cameras, the difference between consecutive images is extremely small. The film is then developed, and positive "prints" are then made from its negative images. The illusion of motion is provided by a projector, in which the film is moved past a light source at the same speed at which the images were photographed. Persistence of vision causes the separate images, which are viewed on a blank white screen, to be perceived as a continuously moving scene. The sound for a motion picture is recorded on either magnetic tape or magnetic film and is ultimately printed together with the picture negative on a single positive film known as a composite print. The part that provides sound is known as the sound track; it runs the length of the film on one side, parallel to the photographed images. The basic tools needed to make motion pictures are thus the camera and its lenses, film, sound equipment, and a projector and screen.
Commercial motion pictures are usually filmed and projected at a rate of 24 frames per second. Most use film that is 35 mm (1.36 inches) wide, though occasionally professional filmmakers shoot in 16-mm film. The use of 8-mm film is restricted to amateurs. The length of a film is measured in feet; a feature-length film lasting 100 minutes is about 9,000 feet (3,000 m) long and is divided for ease of handling into several reels.
Motion pictures are created through the combination of four basic elements: story, direction, camera work, and editing. In commercial studios, each of these roles is carried out by different individuals and production crews under the overall supervision of a producer, who oversees the financing of the project. The adaptation of a story or other idea to film is called a screenplay and is done by one or more screenwriters. The script, or screenplay, is usually a blueprint for the entire film production: it details all spoken dialogue or narration, visual images that will be shown on the screen, and all other sounds to be heard by the audience. Structurally, the script is composed of numbered scenes and sequences. A scene is a continuous, unified action occurring at a single time and place. It is usually composed of a series of shots, each of which can be defined as what is photographed during a single running of the camera.
Traditionally, the director has almost total control of the actual making of a film. He translates the material in the script into a motion picture through his recruitment and supervision of camera operators, set and costume designers, actors, and film editors. The director controls the composition, lighting, and actors' performances in each shot and scene. During shooting, he works closely with his chief camera operator, who is skilled in the techniques of cinematography (q.v.) and is responsible for positioning the cameras. After shooting has been completed, the director works with the film editor to determine which shots and sequences will be used in the finished picture. The film editor fits the various shots and scenes recorded by the cameras into a final, complete performance. The sound track is also combined with the visual track during the editing process.
In the United States the popularity of the nickelodeons spurred film production in the major Eastern cities, though the basic product remained one- or two-reel comedies and melodramas. The Motion Picture Patents Company's attempts (1908-12) to control the American film industry roused independent production companies to seek higher standards and to develop the star system, and filmmakers seeking to foil the Patents Company began moving to the West Coast and to Hollywood, Calif., in particular.
At this time the director D.W. Griffith revolutionized motion pictures by creating longer, more ambitious films and by basic technical innnovations in editing, cinematography, and lighting. His The Birth of a Nation (1915) established the motion picture as an art form in the United States. World War I damaged European film industries and their domestic markets and enabled the American film studios to surpass them in commercial success and critical esteem. By the end of the war, Hollywood, with massive production and stars of worldwide appeal--including Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin--dominated the international market.
The silent film reached its peak in the United States between 1917 and 1927. Hollywood's films became more lavish, and the major studios came to rely on the drawing power of the most popular actors, or stars. Among the most important figures in American filmmaking during the 1920s were the directors Griffith, Mack Sennett, and Cecil B. deMille and such actors as Fairbanks, Chaplin, Lillian Gish, Buster Keaton, and William S. Hart. Filmmaking also regained momentum in many European countries after the war, and Germany's films in particular--made by such figures as F.W. Murnau, G.W. Pabst, Fritz Lang, and Ernst Lubitsch--were notable for their experimental expressionism and powerful social realism. Carl Dreyer of Denmark and Sergey Eisenstein of the Soviet Union were other important silent-film directors.
Between 1926 and 1930, the Warner Brothers studio in the United States introduced sound films, and the other industry giants promptly followed. During the first decade of sound film, filmmakers learned to use the camera and the sound track together to help build the action of a story. Sound enabled filmmakers to create more convincing characterizations, and new directors emerged to exploit the possibilities of the medium. Among them were Frank Capra, John Ford, and Howard Hawks in the United States, Alfred Hitchcock in Great Britain (and later in the United States), and Jean Renoir in France. Musical comedies and song-and-dance films became popular during the 1930s, along with films starring such verbal comedians as W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers.
The 1930s and early '40s saw the Hollywood studios at their zenith as World War II seriously curtailed film production in Europe. After the war's end, however, the Hollywood studios found themselves embattled on several fronts. They were gradually forced by antitrust legislation to dismantle their theatre chains and other controls over film distribution, and television began to reduce film audiences after 1950. The most significant postwar developments in filmmaking occurred in Europe rather than in the United States. In Italy, the Neorealist filmmakers Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, and Michelangelo Antonioni led a renewed trend toward realism, while the New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut played a similar role in France. British filmmakers continued to develop comic genres, but a trend toward realism emerged in the films of the so-called Angry Young Men. The new emphasis on film as a medium for personal artistic expression was evident in the works of directors in other countries as well, such as Ingmar Bergman in Sweden, Luis Buñuel in Spain and Mexico, Kurosawa Akira in Japan, and Satyajit Ray in India.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the big studios concentrated on producing works in such standard genres as westerns, musicals, crime dramas, and historical and biblical epics. But while major producers were making big pictures, there was a growing trend among independent and younger filmmakers toward more serious and more artistic pictures. Established directors like Hitchcock and John Huston were joined in the 1960s and '70s by such newcomers as Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg. The American film industry continued to dominate the world market in the second half of the 20th century. Hollywood's advantages included a vast domestic audience, an unrivaled mastery of the techniques and marketing of films, and a continuing ability to create films of mass popular appeal. American science-fiction and action-adventure films exploited the full range of film technology, including sophisticated special effects.
Motion-picture and television photography