Technology Timeline

First Film
Roundhay Garden Scene 1888 , the 1st  film created.
Arrival Of Sound

As anticipated, the arrival of sound created great upheaval in the history of the motion picture industry, (as exemplified in the film Singin' in the Rain (1954). Film studios were confronted with many problems related to the coming of sound, including restricted markets for English-language talkies.Artistically, acting suffered as studios attempted to record live dialogue, because stationary or hidden microphones (in either their costumes or other stage props) impeded the movement of actors. Some of the earliest talkies were primitive, self-conscious, crudely-made productions with an immobile microphone - designed to capitalize on the novelty of sound.

Silent film studios became obsolescent, and new investments had to be made for expensive new equipment, technological innovations, and sound-proofed stages. Cameras were mounted on moveable, squeak-proofed dollies, and microphones were hung from booms that could be held above the action (outside of the camera's view). Lubitsch's first sound film The Love Parade (1929) (with Jeanette MacDonald's debut appearance), exhibited the director's creative adaptation to the requirements of sound film, and was one of the first backstage musicals with musical numbers that were integral to the plot. Smoothly directed, Lubitsch avoided making it stage-bound and over-acted like many of the early talkies. And Rouben Mamoulian's first film Applause (1929) did creative and revolutionary things with recorded sound, such as overlapping soundtracks, and using sounds as cues or signals.

Arrival Of Colour

The Use of Color:

Another technological advance, in addition to sound, was the use of color. In the earliest years of the industry, hand-tinting/painting had been tried, but it was largely impractical, laborious, and unrealistic looking. Another process called Kinemacolor used a movie camera and projector that both exposed and projected black and white film through alternating red and green filters. In 1915, the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Comstock, and Burton Westcott to develop a more advanced system to colorize motion pictures. The company's first color process was a two color (red and green) additive system that used two color negatives pasted or printed together. The first two-color Technicolor production was The Gulf Between (1917), and the first commercial, two-color Technicolor feature film made was the six-reel The Toll of the Sea (1922), also noted as the first to use a subtractive two-color process. The first feature-length blockbuster color picture using this same innovative process was The Black Pirate (1926) with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

By 1932, what began as a two-color system in the mid- and late 1910s and 1920s evolved into a much richer and vibrant three-color process by Technicolor. Disney's first Technicolor cartoon, Flowers and Trees, won Disney his first Oscar for Best Short Film-Cartoon of 1931-32. The first three-strip, regular exposure Technicolor film was RKO's and Rouben Mamoulian's Becky Sharp (1935) - the first feature-length, three-strip Technicolor production.

Arrival Of TV

In 1927, Philo Farnsworth made the world's first working television system with electronic scanning of both the pickup and display devices, which he first demonstrated to the press on 1 September 1928.

The first practical use of television was in Germany. Regular television broadcasts began in Germany in 1929 and in 1936 the Olympic Games in Berlin were broadcast to television stations in Berlin and Leipzig where the public could view the games live.

Wide Screen Panorama

A widescreen image is a film, computer, or television image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film. Widescreen was first widely used in the late 1920s in some short films and newsreels, including Abel Gance's film Napoleon (1927) which had a final widescreen sequence in what Gance called Polyvision. Paramount Pictures released Old Ironsides (1927) in a widescreen process called Magnascope, and MGM released Trail of '98 (1928) in a widescreen process called Fanthom Screen. 3D Video A 3-D (three-dimensional) film or S3D (stereoscopic 3D) film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception. . 3-D films are not limited to feature film theatrical releases; television broadcasts and direct-to-video films have also incorporated similar methods, primarily for marketing purposes. 3-D films have existed in some form since the 1950s, but had been largely relegated to a niche in the motion picture industry because of the costly hardware and processes required to produce and display a 3-D film, and the lack of a standardized format for all segments of the entertainment business. Nonetheless, 3-D films were prominently featured in the 1950s in American cinema, and later experienced a worldwide resurgence in the 1980s and '90s driven by IMAX high-end theaters and Disney themed-venues. 3-D films became more and more successful throughout 2000–10, culminating in the unprecedented success of 3-D presentations of Avatar in December 2009 and January 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQSrqbOD4NQ (avatar 3d sample video) Video Technology 1910-2010   Search Results The 1st machine used in the US that showed animated pictures or movies was a device called "wheel of life" or "zoopraxiscope". Patented in 1867 by William Lincoln , moving drawings or photographs watched through a slit in the zoopraxiscope. However , this was a far cry from motion pictures as we know them today.  Digital cinema refers to the use of digital technology to distribute and project motion pictures. A movie can be distributed via hard drives, optical disks (such as DVDs) or satellite and projected using a digital projector instead of a conventional film projector. Digital cinema is distinct from high-definition television and, in particular, is not dependent on using television or HDTV standards, aspect ratios, or frame rates. Digital projectors capable of 2K resolution began deploying in 2005, and since 2006, the pace has accelerated (2K refers to images with 2,048 pixels of horizontal resolution).