Just a Link

http://www.filmsite.org/

A history of Video Production (Wk 4)

That was the topic of this weeks lecture. It was a majorly shortened version of the entire history of film and screen, but managed to cover all of the key points. I’m not so sure how to summarize this so here goes.

· 1895 – The word cinema was coined from cinematographer

· 1897 – The first cinema was made for the sole purpose of showing films

· 1903 – The first narrative film ever, The Great Train Robbery

· 1906 – The first feature length film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, made in Australia

· 1909 – Movie palaces began opening throughout America housing from 1000-3000 people.

· 1913 – The studio system was born; pre-planning and budgeting were made to help with production.

· 1914 – The first movie star, Charlie Chaplin

· 1921 – Believed to be the first film with sound, D.W. Griffiths “Dream Street”

· 1923 – “The Ten Commandments” was the first film to feature parts in Technicolor.

· 1927 – The birth of Talkies (movies with sound), Warner Brothers “The Jazz Singer”

· 1929 – The first film to use both Technicolor and Sound was “On With The Show”, first shown in NYC on May 28, 1929

· 1933 – The first Drive-In theatre, actually called “The Automobile Movie Theatre”

· 1937 – Snow White, the first feature length animated colour film.

· 1939 – What a year, T.V. Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and much more

· 1941 – Film Noir (noir is black in French) was a new style of film which focused on showing the darker side of life.

· 1952 – 3D was introduced to help bring audiences back to the cinema and to compete with the growing market of T.V.

· 1952 – The first video tape recorder was created.

· 1960 –Psycho, the best horror film ever was directed by the great Alfred Hitchcock

· 1963 – The first Multiplex cinema

· 1967 – Sony made the first consumer Black and White video camera

· 1978 – The video Laser Disk

· 1983 – Tron. The first film to heavily use 3D animation.

· 1986 – Pixar’s Luxo, Jr. was the first film to be fully computer generated.

· 1988 – Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a breakthrough in using animation and live-action film together.

· 1994 – Pulp Fiction used a whole range of techniques to deliver one of the best films ever.

· 1995 – Toy Story. The first fully computer gernerated feature length film ever which had a run time of 81 minutes

· 1997 – The first DVD’s (Digital Versatile Disks) began being sold in America

· 1998 – The first HDTV sets started being sold in America

· 2006 – YouTube has over 100 million videos being watched per day :O

So that’s it basically LOL.

Week 7 - Free Internet

Last weeks lecture was mainly composed of what i already wrote about several weeks ago. That was the post on your rights on the internet. It covered Copyright and Creative Commons.

Although I had already spoken about this we went into more detail about Open Source, which is free software that anyone can use modify and repackage for use by others. Open Source ( originally "Free Software") is a movement that believes that software should free for everyone like it was back in the birth of computers. These people work endlessly to make software just as good if not better than the companies that charge huge amounts of money to deliver the same stuff. They are free versions of all the software that people regard as being one of a kind out there. Microsoft Office - Open Office, Adobe Photoshop - gimp, MSN Messenger - aMSN and much more. Some of these programs actually work better than their counterparts because the makes quickly address issues that occur and release a patch rather then waiting several months before doing anything. Not only free software but there is even Operating Systems. The much loved Linux is a completely free download alternative to Mac OSX and Windows and offers many of the same options in a completely free environment.

All these things generally make Open Source the future in computing technology, now all we need is free for all Internet :)

Week 3 - Language of the screen -

This weeks lecture was on the language of the cinematic screen (the movies). It started by talking about the different kinds of shots you would get in a typical film.

VLS/WS: Very LS/Wide

Shot

LS: Long Shot

MLS: Medium LS

MS: Mid Shot

MCU: Medium CU

CU: Close Up

BCU: Big CU

ECU: Extreme CU

The lecture then continued to show how different shots can create different meaning within the film and that some shots have become recognized as being a characteristic of a certain mood, for example a close up on a clock shows the time, a close up of someone shows who. From that the subject of headroom and talking room came up generally leading into the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is that there is a set of standard accepted ways of framing a shot so that the viewers get the most pleasure from watching. Also in a film every shot needs to create a moving feeling, without this the film often feels dead or empty.

Thanks for viewing :)