Cinematography and sound

Cinematography And Sound.

Cinematography Before!

Before the invention of Digital technology film was recorded on big reels of 8mm, 16mm or 35mm film. After filming, it would then be edited on a machine called a moviola, which the editor would have to cut and paste the film, frame by frame. A Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view film while editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serruier in 1924. The Moviola allowed editors to study individual shotsin their cutting rooms, as a result to determine more precisely where the best cut-point might be. The vertically-oriented Moviolas were the standard for film editing in the United States until 1970s when horizontal flatbed editor systems became more common. Yet, a few high-profile film makers continue to prefer the Moviola editor Michael Kahn famous for his work Steven Spielberg.

A Moviola A Flatbed Editor

Special effects had to been done by the props department, and were done very unrealistic and did not represent realism. In 1857, Oscar Gustave Fletcher Reilander, created the first "trick photograph" , by combining different regions of 32 photographs into a single image.

Producing a film is far more time consuming and expensive, as the editing equipment cost more before digital technology. The moviola cost $600 in 1920 (equivalent to $20,000 today), very few was sold. It is time consuming as the film editor had to spend alot of time cutting and pasting the frames together, also the film editor would have to be paid for the time they spent, making it very costly.

Digital Cinematography:
Digital cinematography is the process of capturing motion pictures as digital images rather than on film. Digital filming/capture may be done on tape, hard disks, flash memory or other media which can record digital data. As digital technology has now improved, digital cinematography is now increasingly common. Many mainstream Hollywood movies now are shot partly or fully digitally. Such as the first Major Hollywood film to be recorded entirely digitally was Star Wars Episode II in 2002.

Digital Cinematography acceptance was done when Slumdog millionaire became the first movie shot mainly in digital to be awarded the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.




HD and 3D
Is an upgraded version of digital video which has a higher resolution (more dots per inch). HDDV is not as clear as 35mm or 70mm film. However, eventhough it is much easier to edit, it is not as clear as a 35mm or 75mm film.
There has been a resurgence in 3D in the last 10 years. where there has been new digital techniques being used.
'Avatar' a film that has been done by computer. This is an example of a computer generated film.

Beggining in the late 1980's Sony began marketing the concept of electronic cinematography making use of its analog HDTV cameras. In 1988, the introduction of HDCAM recorders and

1920 × 1080 pixel digital video cameras based on CCD technology, which is now re-branded as digital cinematogrpahy, had finally began to gain grip in the market. In May 2002 Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones became the first high-profile, high-budget movie released that was shot on 24 frame-per-second high-definition digital video, using a Sony HDW-F900 camera.

Digital Vs.Film Cinematography:

Portability: Digital cameras are not massive and difficult to transport than a film camera.

Sound recording: Film cameras need sound to be recorded seperatley, which is why the clapper-boards are used to get the sound to match the visuals. Where as digital cameras can record the sound, having less equipment needed to film.

Budget: 16mm or 35mm film cameras are very expensive, as well as buying the camera and having stock (tape) to film, will cost at least $50,000. The opposite, digital tap is very cheap and can be easily shot for under $10,000 using digital methods.

Technological convergernce has revolutionised Cinematography and sound for the institutions as digital camera's are able to film the viuslas aswell as sound, and they dont have to worry about whether the sound and visuals match. New media technology has had an impact on the audience through cinematography and sound, as it allows the audience to see a sense of realism in the film, due to better new technology, films are able to have special effects that have computer gernerized images, which makes it have verisimilitude, as the audience dont see that the images have been created, where as when there was only old-media technology special effects were created via the props department and it looked unrealistic.

Digital technology, (storing and transferring data), a few examples of this in cinematography and sound is, digital cameras/video, sound technology, editing softwares used after filming (IMOVIE,Final-cut) to do this you need a PC or MAC., networked information.

-Editing. (Jamie Chandler)

-Special Effects and graphics. (Demi Caldeira)