Throughout this class I have seen many differences in all the movies over time. In this post I will be discussing how technology had changed film over time. Technology is one thing that has been constantly changing. films I will be watching are Iron monkey, Star Wars: Rogue one, Star Wars: New Hope and Avatar. All of the movies I have picked use technology to better their films.
The earliest film technologies are sort of taken for granted now a days, we would not usually go see a film that doesn’t have any color or audio. Movie makers originally had started doing silent films, even then they created technologies to better their film. An example of this is Tungsten bulbs which would be brighter and create a better quality result. The first ideas and inventions to better movies are very interesting, such as when Warner brother, Vitaphone, Western Electrics, and Bell labs created the movie Don Juan. Don Juan was the first movie that had sound integrated into it. That sound technology was never very good, they used a separate recording over the film. It would end up being very unsynchronized and volume was always a problem. The technology has been constantly progressing since the beginning of movie making, it is absolutely crazy to see some of the things that are being invented to progress the quality or dimensions of a movie. One of the earliest films that I could find was “Vie et Passion du Christ”. I have not watched the movie but it is a French silent film. Some of the scenes had been hand colored. One of the earliest uses of animation was in 1914, Gertie the Dinosaur was a short film. Another crucial animation worth mentioning is the historic Micky Mouse. In 1928 the movie “Lights of New York” was released, directed by Bryan Foy, this was the first all talking full length film. This film was a huge success and ended up being so profitable that at the end of 1929 Hollywood would only create films that used sounds. The first film to come out with color and a soundtrack was “The Viking” which was released in 1928. The film was produced by the Technicolor organization that used their new dye transfer process and used “Movie tone sound on film” system. Technology has constantly been improving and will probably never stop, the things that new technologies have done to improve our movie watching experience is astonishing.

Avatar definitely left a big impact on movies after it was released, they have incredible special effects and CGI work. A lot of work went on behind the cameras, 60% of the film was shot in computer generation. It is unbelievable to read about the effort that went into making the live actors go into a CG world so precisely. James Cameron hired a visual effects company, ‘framestore”, all the way in London to do most of the CGI work. The budget for Avatar was a whopping 300 million, with this money they were able to create new technologies and buy expensive new equipment, such as the stereoscopic 3D camera. Most of the budget was spent creating developments to make the film set and CG world correlate. Even though the movie was very expensive to create it was well worth it because the movie ended up being very profitable. Avatar has explored the use of CGI and advanced filming methods that make the computer simulations and the actors look much more synchronized in a shot. “But modern 3D films have developed new techniques to drag them out of their B-movie past, and Avatar takes things a step further by using both computer generated imagery and advanced stereoscopic filming methods to create the illusion of reality.” Says Mr. Johnson. One Example of a very cool new technology is the one James Cameron used and created to make the movie Avatar, it is called the fusion camera system. Previous to this there had not been any previous cameras that were made for filming in 3 dimension. The movie Avatar uses so much new innovative technologies to create a top notch live action set in a computer generated world. The Na’vi are the blue aliens that live in the jungle on the planet Pandora, To be more specific about some of the new technology Avatar used I talk about there stereoscopic 3D camera. This is what made the Na’vi look so incredible and realistic when they interacted with the actors that were not computer generated. CGI also creates settings that are not possible like the bio- luminescent forest that was in the film Avatar could not have been done without the use of computer technology.

Before the 1990’s visual effects would usually just be stop motion but then movies such as “Star Wars” or “Tron” were released and they used computer generated images. Jurassic park is a great movie that is vastly improved with CGI, without the CG dinosaurs it would have resembled a movie more like jaws. Jaws was good and made the shark look real for the time, but people who watch it now can tell that the shark looks and acts very robotic. When Jurassic Park came out in 1993 with the CGI technology integrated with live action it started a trend. About 14 minutes of the movie involved dinosaur visual effects and 4 of computer generated images. CGI is becoming a much more conventional way to may movie, there are so many great movies that use this technology to better their movie. Jurassic park dinosaurs have aged very well, usually when you see an older movie that used a lot of special effects it looks poorly done. In Jurassic park they used just 63 special effects, to compare the newer movie “Jurassic World” uses over 2000. In my opinion the dinosaurs in the original look better than they do in Jurassic World. The most recent Jurassic world uses much more CGI work than previously, this has made the dinosaurs look more life like than they ever had. The technology in Paleontology has been growing as well, Jurassic park uses new information from the paleontologists to make there dinosaurs look and act more real.

Star wars was set the standard very high for other movies along the lines of technology and special effects. When star wars had began there digital journey they started inserting images into the original shots, however the problem they had with that was the images looked weightless. Jar Jar Binks was actually sort of made fun of for this yet when Gollum was released in the Lord of The Rings he was very praised and they were using the same technology. Some of the visual landscape was also created on the computer, but when the actors were added in they contrasted the background too much. In a newer Star Wars “The Force Awakens” It is also criticized for being too unrealistic. The force awakens had 357 scenes shot completely in CGI. However Star wars has been a big mover in paving the way for films using CGI and new technologies. The stop motion animation was not good enough for George Lucas so him and ILM engineers created “Go motion” this was a technique that made the animations luck much more natural moving, unlike before where the animations were Jerky. Stop motion was taken out by computer generated images however go motion introduced new technologies to the modern effects Era. George Lucas had almost used go motion in his Jurassic Park film. However in the newest Star Wars movie “Rogue one” they did a great job adding computer generation to the film. They did something revolutionary with CG as well, star wars decided that they wanted to bring back Grand Moff Tarkin. The character died for him back in 1994. Using live action and visual effects they were able to recreate Grand Moff Tarkin in the new movie without the original actor.

The Iron monkey is another film that I have recently watched that uses technology and special effects. The majority of this movie does not rely on special effects, it relies on more on the plot than most of the new movies that have all the special technologies and effects. This movie mainly uses special effects for the awesome fight scenes. One example of them using special effects is they have very thin cables that the Actor playing the Iron Monkey are suspended on that makes him look like he can jump across the room in a fight scene.  Technology in film has continued to grow globally, this film used great special effects for its time and made one of the best martial arts movies to date.

A lot of the more successful movies such as Star Wars the Rogue One or Avatar are so successful, I think, is because of there amazing special effects and CGI. CGI technology is becoming much more cost effective, one example would be instead of having to create rain in a scene you can just add it in on the computer. However, to create or have the newest software’s and technologies it can be incredibly expensive. Avatar’s budget was a very large 300 million, and also 60 percent of the movie is CGI.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/8421468.stm

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/aug/20/3d-film-avatar-james-cameron-technology   -James Cameron’s new Camera

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=iron+monkey+fight+scene&view=detail&mid=D4ABC52266ACD7231810D4ABC52266ACD7231810&FORM=VIRE -Iron Monkey fight scene

https://www.livescience.com/62904-jurassic-world-fallen-kingdom-science.html -Dinosaur special

effectshttp://collaboratex.com/2018/06/technology-vs-plot/ -previous blog post

https://scienceprog.com/technologies-used-in-avatar-movie/ -technology used in Avatar