Cinematography

Cinematography is an art form of filmmaking. Although the exposing of

images on light-sensitive elements dates back to the early 19th century.
Motion pictures demanded a new form of photography and new aesthetic
techniques.
The first to design a fully successful apparatus was W. K. L. Dickson,
working under the direction of Thomas Alva Edison. His fully developed
camera, called the Kinetograph, was patented in 1891 and took a series of
instantaneous photographs on standard Eastman Kodak photographic
emulsion coated on to a transparent celluloid strip 35 mm wide. The results
of this work were first shown in public in 1893, using the viewing apparatus
also designed by Dickson, and called the Kinetoscope. This was contained
within a large box, and only permitted the images to be viewed by one
person at a time looking into it through a peephole
Louis and Auguste Lumière perfected the Cinématographe, an apparatus
that took, printed, and projected film. They gave their first show of projected
pictures to an audience in Paris in December 1895.

Lumiere Brothers
The Lumière brothers were born in Besançon, France, in 1862 and 1864,
and moved to Lyon in 1870, where both attended La Martiniere, the largest
technical school in Lyon. Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911),
ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him: Louis as a
physicist and Auguste as a manager. Louis had made some improvements
to the still-photograph process, the most notable being the dry-plate process,
which was a major step towards moving images.
It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create
moving pictures. They patented a number of significant processes leading
up to their film camera, most notably film perforations as a means of
advancing the film through the camera and projector. The cinématographe
itself was patented on 13 February 1895 and the first footage ever to be
recorded using it was recorded on March 19, 1895. This first film shows
workers leaving the Lumière factory.
Evolution
Silent Films
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with
no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is
transmitted through muted gestures, mime (US: pantomime) and title cards.
The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old
as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized
dialogue was only made practical in the late 1920s with the perfection of the
Audion amplifier tube and the introduction of the Vitaphone system. The first
projected primary proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge some
time between 1877 and 1880. The first narrative film was created by Louis
Le Prince in 1888. It was a two-second film of people walking in "Oakwood
streets" garden, entitled Roundhay Garden Scene.[1] The art of motion
pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" (1894–1929) before silent
films were replaced by "talking pictures" in the late 1920s.

Sound Films
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound
technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known
public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but
decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially
practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early
sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also
inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial
screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in
1923.
At first, the sound films incorporating synchronized dialogue—known as
"talking pictures", or "talkies"—were exclusively shorts; the earliest feature-
length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first
feature film originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in
October 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, the leading brand of
Sound-on-film.
Color Films
Color motion picture film refers both to unexposed color photographic film in
a format suitable for use in a motion picture camera, and to finished motion
picture film, ready for use in a projector, which bears images in color.
The first motion pictures were photographed on a simple silver halide
photographic emulsion that produced a "black-and-white" image—that is, an
image in shades of gray, ranging from black to white, which corresponded to
the luminous intensity of each point on the photographed subject. Light,
shade, form and movement were captured, but not color.
With color motion picture film, not only is the luminance of a subject
recorded, but the color of the subject, too. This is accomplished by analyzing
the spectrum of colors into several regions (normally three, commonly
referred to by their dominant colors, red, green and blue) and recording
these regions individually. Current color films do this by means of three
layers of differently color-sensitive photographic emulsion coated onto a
single strip of film base.
Animated films
Animated Films are ones in which individual drawings, paintings, or
illustrations are photographed frame by frame (stop-frame cinematography).
Usually, each frame differs slightly from the one preceding it, giving the
illusion of movement when frames are projected in rapid succession at 24
frames per second. The earliest cinema animation was composed of frame-
by-frame, hand-drawn images. When combined with movement, the
illustrator's two-dimensional static art came alive and created pure and
imaginative cinematic images - animals and other inanimate objects could
become evil villains or heroes.

Animations are not a strictly-defined genre category, but rather a film

technique, although they often contain genre-like elements. Animation, fairy
tales, and stop-motion films often appeal to children, but it would marginalize
animations to view them only as "children's entertainment." Animated films
are often directed to, or appeal most to children, but easily can be enjoyed
by all. See section on children's-family films.
Development and Distribution

Development — The first stage in which the ideas for the film are created,
rights to books/plays are bought etc., and the screenplay is written.
Financing for the project has to be sought and greenlit.
Pre-production—Preparations are made for the shoot, in which cast and
film crew are hired, locations are selected, and sets are built. Creatively, the
Production—The raw elements for the film are recorded during the film
shoot.
Post-Production—The images, sound, and visual effects of the recorded
film are edited.
Distribution—The finished film is distributed and screened in cinemas
and/or released on DVD.