The Rise of Technology and Film throughout the Twentieth Century

by Mary Durham
(English major)

As time and people are continually changing, so is knowledge and information; and in the film industry there are inevitable technological advances necessary to keep the attraction of the public. It is through graphic effects, sounds and visual recordings that all individuals see how we have evolved to present day digital technology; and it is because of the efforts and ideas of the first and latest great innovators of the twentieth century that we have advanced in film and computers.

Technology is a central issue surrounding film making from the times of Charlie Chaplin's silent films to today's modern and computer-animated films such as George Lucas's Star Wars. In addition there have been a system of changes in computer, phone and video enhancement which has propelled vast amounts of information knowledge to the public at a rapid rate.

Film was not always as it is today due to the digital sounds and graphic picture enhancements of George Lucas's THX digital sound in the late 1970s to enhance the audience's perceptions. Sound was first discovered in 1928 and the first films before that were silent. There is a social need to heighten an audience's film going experience and it allows each person to color their own views of what they see and presents either directly or indirectly society's moral values.

Time is a major factor in innovation because it provides visions, which point to the future but do not disregard the attempts of innovation in the past. Such inventions are Industrial Light and Magic's development of special effects like motion-control camera's which alter the audience's perceptions and create a more realistic setting to enhance the imagination.

Entertainment has traveled from burlesque and vaudeville to high tech filmmaking, and this is the physical existence of our century. The Era of Silent Film in the early 1900s had such geniuses as Charlie Chaplin who paved the road to the time of the "talkies" and to development of sound. If not for him and some other "greats" along the way, where would our film culture be today? Much of the history of our nation seems to be held as digital recordings through visuals. In this respect it is interwoven with the current era of computer information because we want to preserve and record the history of the present as well as at the turn of the millennium. It is through visualization that Chaplin helped to remind us of the era he lived in and the possible archives that represented the future due to his creative and wild imagination. As scribes at the end of the thirteenth century were the first to record history in their time, the evolving film technology also preserves history in time Who knows what will contribute to the recordings of information after the millennium? Only time will tell.

Film has been around for almost tendecades, but only in the past 30 years has film making come to its greatest accomplishments and come into being the greatest profit making business in the world. In 1907 the first film studio was built in Hollywood and twenty years later the first "talkie" was released. Later that year all studios were converted to sound and due to that advancement all the film companies began merging with electronics companies. In 1948 came the era of Television and no longer were people leaving their homes to go to the theatre as much because programming was brought to their own fingertips. So out with the old and in with the new '70s computer geeks who were hacking up the science and technology arena and cutting through Hollywood's old traditional media performances. The 1970s filmmakers had a desire to cultivate works and knowledge to invent something different that would put the public in a state of nostalgia. This new approach of graphics and sound effects to the silver screen, which related the studio to the audience invoked a rediscovery of the Cinema and sought futuristic visions and virtual reality to strike the taste of the public now in the Hollywood Renaissance. With this new golden age in movie making, monsters and space seemed real even if the audience knew it was all science fiction (i.e., Star Wars,etc...). In the late '70s the first VCR's were brought home for personal viewing. So now we can ask ourselves a question, what launched us into the future that we are presently in? Perhaps it was "the Information Superhighway" of the 1980s that led to the economic road change from the Industrial revolution to the "Era of Information Technology". The '90s have brought about a fast paced output of information and turned computer science, programming, web design and show business into the newest high-tech fields necessary to survive in modern society. The desire to be computer literate and intellectual is now the standard to stimulate the minds of the new "greats" who are coming out of the universities into technologically structured corporations and other related fields.

George Lucas's films make us look back to the past as well and want to reach for the innocence and wonder of that which has eluded us in the ever-changing presence of time and standards. His movies as well as others sequels help us to realize a genre of film that is permanent and of allegorical interpretations of dreams and ideologies that refer to the traditional belief systems and morals. Even though the world is thriving and changing our values about what is real to us still remains traditonally structured.

Since the birth of the elements of "synergy" and computer-generated "morphing" we have migrated to a time of digitalization of cellular phones, computers, DVD's and instituted our society into the environment of Cyberspace. Will there be virtual reality SEGA playstations in the future for our kids to play with as we played with the ATARI game stations our "baby boomer" parents bought for us?

All of these progressions through time in information such as intricate animations and technological advancements should be the "eye- opener" which awakens visions to the future and widens our perspectives. This new Era of Information Technology is our link to preserving the past, keeping track of the present and looking forward to the future.