After the first week’s study(Design for Animation, narrative structure and film language ),I exactly learned a lot,especially the history of film, animation and VFX,there’s some understanding of mine after those videos and a timeline I laid out after class.
When I really put my efforts into understanding the development, decline and growth of movies, I realized how magnificent things had happened in the past 100 years, although I had already had a general understanding of the development of movies before taking this class. Especially in the early days of film development, our pioneers went through numerous attempts from scratch, from failure to success (such as the Lumiere brothers and the Two French and English Georges, and later Edison who invented the projector) to have today’s booming film industry.Among them, Max Linda impressed me most，He almost sacrificed his life for the movie！
Who would have thought that the world’s first movie star would be a dog? And, of course, there were great movie actors, whether they were ordinary people caught on camera unconsciously, or the first movie comedians (those who danced in cages with animals). People in animal costumes or George Melies) or even the train that first appeared on screen.The development of the film is inseparable from the efforts and creativity of these actors.
I love this line in this video”Inventors were separately and simultaneously racing towards the invention of cinema.”As the younger generation of the film industry, we should keep the same idea to make new development of the film industry
- THE TIMELINE OF THE HISTORY OF FILM
- 1895, Moving pictures projected onto a big screen.
- 1895-12-28: the Lumiere Brothers demonstrated their invention of motion pictures for the very first time. The first time they were shown on a cinema screen was in one thousand in Paris.
- 1887: Eadweard Muybridge settled the bed by setting up a system of twelve separate stills.cameras space twenty one inches apart. Each can move around on trip wire that was triggered by the horse’s hoofs.
- 1891: the American inventor, Thomas Edison had perfected the kinetoscope.
- 1892: project the first animated film on its praxinoe scope In UK: 1895,two pioneers Robert W Paul and Bert Acres had invented the first thirty five millimeter camera in 1895.
- 1893, Thomas Edison constructed the world’s first film production studio, the Black Maria.
- 1895, Robert W. Paul and Bert Akers had invented the first British 35 millimeter camera
- 1896-2-21, Robert W. Paul demonstrated his projector the theatre graph. Also Lumiere system was displayed in London.
- 1897: George mainly built the world’s first film studio here in Montreal.
- 1900, George Smith showed close up for the first time in film.
- 1901, James Williamson The Big Swallow using extreme close-up. He developed multi shot films and cutaways.
- 1902, La gallina misteriosa (Pathé Frères, 1902) A chicken-and-egg comedy about what came first.
- 1903, George Smith used close-ups to highlight the personalities of the characters and fades out to show the transition from dream to reality.
- 1909: George Melies was outdated. The action was so far away from the camera.It was very difficult to get personality across an audience’s love personality.
- 1905:He’d been a stage actor before making his first film appearance.
- 1911, Max Linder, the most popular comedian in the world. His comic creation of the coat was remembered by other comedians.
- 1913: At a time of high infant mortality, babies were often used as comic prompts.
- 1914: the First World War. Fred Evans and Max Linda provided entertainment for army recruits. He was shot through the lungs just above the heart .
- 1917, the First World War caused Max Linder depression because he narrowly escaped death.
- 1918, Hollywood took over as the leader of world cinema the end of the First World War. The language of cinema was already fully formed.
- 1923, Pathé was able to take over Star Films and the Montreuil studio. George Méliès burned 500 negatives of all his films.Chaplin completes ‘A Woman of Paris.’
- 1925, The theory of Conflict Montage is applied and Max Linder committed suicide.
- 1929: Fred Evans made his last film.
In fact, I do not know much about the development of special effects, but in my childhood, Toy Story and Jurassic Park also accompanied me to grow up. This time, I also systematically understood the development of special effects in the whole film, which enabled me to increase a lot of knowledge.
Avatars, the highest grossing movie of all time, back to the brim with spectacular effects and true life. CG, characters.It is also the most powerful special effects film in the world at that time. I have to say that the special effects of this film are still outdated, even in the current film market, I believe it will also achieve good box office.
Back in the day,Directors often use stop-motion animation for special effects production, such as King Kong, 1933. But this is very time-consuming and labor-intensive, and photographers often need to shoot frame by frame.It’s very artistic, even if it looks rough.
It’s hard to imagine that movies from King Kong to Avatar and Final Fantasy, all made entirely of cgi, haven’t lasted more than 100 years,can only be described as shock, I hope in the future, computer technology can develop more rapidly, there are more technical talents like Steve Jobs, make animation have more methods to describe the world.
- 1933, KING KONG, the visual effect is as engaging as human actors.
- 1958, The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, the motion of the monster is controlled frame by frame.
- 1963, Jason And The Argonauts, the skeleton battle animation took 4 months.
- 1985, Young Sherlock Holmes, computer generated character from photo.
- 1989,THE ABYSS,part of those were spent using an early version of Photoshop, the first use of the program in the feature film.
- 1991, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, water effect was improved.
- 1993, Jurassic Park, the animator nearly bring the dinosaur in real life by using armature devices.
- 1995, Casper, the first computer animated title character was created.
- 1995, Toy story, the first entirely computer-animated feature film.
- 1996, Dragonheart, the special effects took 15 months to produce.
- 1999, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, over 2000 visual effects, including sixty digital characters were create in that film.
- 2001, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the first Hyper Real, fully computer generated feature film based on original designs.
- 2002, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Weta Digital was awarded the Oscar for best visual effects for three consecutive years for this film.
- 2002, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, improved new character
- 2003, The Matrix Reloaded, used a process called Universal Capture recording the real actor’s performance. And played back from different angles and under different lighting conditions.
- 2005, King Kong, the remake version, having the largest number of visual effect shots in a single film.
- 2006, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Davy Jones was generated by computer so real that people thought they were watching a real person.
- 2007, Beowulf, advanced motion capture technique to transform life action into digital animation.
- 2008, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The actor’s face was captured to create an aging face.
- 2009, Avatar, using face capture and motion capture.
Animation as my major, I have also learned a lot about the development of animation. From the initial lantern and comic strip to the later development of camera, animation has become more and more vivid and interesting. For example, the world’s first character animation “Dinosaur Gertie” (1914), animation has become more and more vivid. Later, the emergence of Disney, Mickey Mouse and Steamship, I think it should be the guide for countless animation predecessors to start their animation career. Although it still has many shortcomings, such as violent elements, as the world’s first animated film with sound, it is good enough.
After the Great Depression in the United States, Snow White, the perfect two-dimensional animation work in my mind, came out. The perfect line drawing, lens design and scene separation enabled Disney to establish a leading position in the future.
FPS is more like playing tricks on your eyes. If cameras record the world in frames, animation creates the world in frames. Without a doubt, Pixar, Steve Jobs and his associates are the people who created the world in this way. They are also my idols. Toy Story changed the entire animation industry and the work of animators, but in the end, traditional animation and the new animation industry found their own convergence point. I hope I can become such an excellent animator in the future and make efforts for the development of animation.
- 1609, The Magic Lantern, moving images was projected onto a screen, but it’s assisted by human hands.
- 1825, Thaumatrope, the first actual animation, this is a disc toy with pictures on both sides. When the rope is twirled, the pictures will merge into one because of the theory of “persistence of vision”.
- 1879, Zoopraxiscope, the first contraption to show a clip of animation, this is a cylinder, and as successive images are placed and rotated, images can be seen moving through the slits.
- 1900-1910, Animation began to exist on the big screen, started with simple faces.
- 1914, Gertie the Dinosaur, the first characteristic animation by Winsor McCay.
- 1928, Steamboat Willie, showed Mickey Mouse to the world. Music and violence appeared in it.
- 1929, Because of the great Depression, People keep going to the theater to watch cartoons as entertainment. Because of this demand, more cartoons were made.
- 1937, Snow White, the first feature film to be created by Disney. Using lots of new techniques.
- 1969, Animator began trying to create real looking monsters such as skeleton soldiers and dinosaurs.
- 1970, Cresta discovered children’s love of animation and created an animated commercial to promote its drink. The main character is a polar bear wearing sunglasses.
- 1986, Pixar Animation Studios was founded. CGI (Computer-generated imagery) began to play an important role in producing animation.
- 1995, Toy Story, the first entirely computer-animated feature film was released by Pixar. The film caused a sensation all over the world.
- 2009, Avatar was on the screen. Fantastic CGI made the movie a great success.
- 2014, CGI became a dominant species of animation.