Comparative Essay- Screen History and Research
Introduction
Tim was a late teen living in Sydney in the 1970’s when he would regularly attend the cinemas or “flicks” as he referred to them. The cinema was held in high regard as an “exciting event and you would come out of the cinema feeling much better than when you went in, an escapism if you will”. As Tim recalls, many people went almost every week to catch “a flick” and there was always a “buzz” about the weekend when most would go to the movies, the same could be said about today’s movie audience.
Movies have always been a part of popular culture, having impact on the arts, technology, music and even politics. Going to the movies today is still seen as “escapism” but the film and movie industry has since seen a tremendous change and culture from what it was in the 1970s.
There have been numerous advancements such as sound, production, screen, audience, scores and scripts to name a few.
Technology
When you compare movies today to earlier films there are still similarities but there are a lot of differences as well, from silent movies to black and white movies to the introduction of color in movies. Take surround sound as an example, today we just assume that movies viewed at the cinema will automatically be in surround sound but it wasn’t until the 1950’s when “the installation of multitrack stereo sound systems, theatres not only looked by also sounded different then they had in the past” (Belton,1990 p.187) changed the way audiences heard movies.
Tim’s experience in sound also affected the way he watched movies “the surround sound was most evident when they played to various fanfares, weird sounds coming from various directions and it felt like the sound was shifting from speaker to speaker, it certainly gave another auditory dimensional experience, more movement and more dynamic”.
Another difference was movies cameras. Back in the pre era, cameras were very limiting and could only record for very short periods unlike today’s cameras that can
Tim was a late teen living in Sydney in the 1970’s when he would regularly attend the cinemas or “flicks” as he referred to them. The cinema was held in high regard as an “exciting event and you would come out of the cinema feeling much better than when you went in, an escapism if you will”. As Tim recalls, many people went almost every week to catch “a flick” and there was always a “buzz” about the weekend when most would go to the movies, the same could be said about today’s movie audience.
Movies have always been a part of popular culture, having impact on the arts, technology, music and even politics. Going to the movies today is still seen as “escapism” but the film and movie industry has since seen a tremendous change and culture from what it was in the 1970s.
There have been numerous advancements such as sound, production, screen, audience, scores and scripts to name a few.
Technology
When you compare movies today to earlier films there are still similarities but there are a lot of differences as well, from silent movies to black and white movies to the introduction of color in movies. Take surround sound as an example, today we just assume that movies viewed at the cinema will automatically be in surround sound but it wasn’t until the 1950’s when “the installation of multitrack stereo sound systems, theatres not only looked by also sounded different then they had in the past” (Belton,1990 p.187) changed the way audiences heard movies.
Tim’s experience in sound also affected the way he watched movies “the surround sound was most evident when they played to various fanfares, weird sounds coming from various directions and it felt like the sound was shifting from speaker to speaker, it certainly gave another auditory dimensional experience, more movement and more dynamic”.
Another difference was movies cameras. Back in the pre era, cameras were very limiting and could only record for very short periods unlike today’s cameras that can