ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA – FILM

INDUSTRY

INTRODUCTION –
Film, also called cinema, movie or motion picture, is a medium used to
simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions,
feelings, beauty or atmosphere by the means of recorded or
programmed moving images along with other sensory
stimulations. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often
used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form
that is the result of it. It is borrowed from French cinéma, shortening
of cinématographe (term coined by the Lumière brothers in the
1890s), from Ancient Greek κίνημα (kínēma, “movement”) + Ancient
Greek -γράφειν (-gráphein, “write(record)”).
Cinematography is the illusion of movement by the recording and
subsequent rapid projection of many still photographic pictures on a
screen. A product of 19th century scientific endeavor, it has, over the
past century, become an industry employing many thousands of
people and a medium of mass entertainment and communication.
Technological advances in film have occurred rapidly over the past 100
years. Starting in the Victorian era, many camera devices, projectors
and film sizes have been developed and mastered, creating the film
industry we know today.
The moving images of a film are created by various methods, viz,
- by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera
- By photographing drawings or miniature models using
traditional animation techniques
- by means of CGI and computer animation
- or by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and
other visual effects.
Conventions towards a general cinematic language developed over the
years with the use of several shots (mostly through editing), continuity
between shots, camera movements (panning, tracking, tilt), camera
angle, field size (long shot to extreme close-up) and other cinematic
techniques all contributing specific roles in the narrative of films.
Special effects became a feature in movies since very beginning, i.e, in
1890s, popularized by Georges Méliès' fantasy films. Many effects
which were impossible or impractical to perform in theater plays could
be created in films and thus added more magic to the experience of
movies and helped it gaining popularity over theater plays.
Technological improvements over a time
- added length (reaching 60 minutes for a feature film in 1906)
- enabled synchronized sound recording (mainstream since the end
of the 1920s)
- incorporated color (mainstream since the 1930s)
- created immersion with 3D and surround sound (mainstream in
theaters since the first decade of the 21st century).
Synchronized sound recording was a game changer which ended the
necessity of interruptions with title cards, revolutionized the narrative
possibilities for filmmakers, and became an integral part of
moviemaking.
Different film genres emerged and enjoyed variable degrees of success
over time, with huge differences between for instance horror
films (mainstream since the 1890s), newsreels (prevalent in U.S.
cinemas between the 1910s and the late 1960s), musicals (mainstream
since the late 1920s), etc.
EARLY YEARS OF CINEMA -
No one person invented cinema. In 1891, the Edison Company in the
USA successfully demonstrated a prototype of the Kinetoscope, which
enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures. The first to
present projected moving pictures to a paying audience (i.e. cinema)
were the Lumière brothers with their public screening of ten short films
on 28 December 1895 in Paris.
At first, films were very short, sometimes only a few minutes or less.
They were shown at fairgrounds and music halls or anywhere a screen
could be set up and a room darkened. Subjects included local scenes
and activities, views of foreign lands, short comedies and events
considered newsworthy.
The shift in consciousness away from films as animated photographs to
films as stories, or narratives, began to take place about the turn of the
century and is most evident in the work of the French
filmmaker Georges Méliès. Méliès was a professional magician who
had become interested in the illusionist possibilities of
the cinématographe; when the Lumières refused to sell him one, he
bought an animatograph projector in 1896 and reversed its mechanical
principles to design his own camera. The following year he established
the Star Film company and constructed a small glass-enclosed studio
on the grounds of his house at Montreuil, where he produced,
directed, photographed, and acted in more than 500 films between
1896 and 1913.
Initially Méliès used stop-motion photography (the camera and action
are stopped while something is added to or removed from the scene;
then filming and action are continued) to make one-shot “trick” films
in which objects disappeared and reappeared or transformed
themselves into other objects entirely. These films were widely
imitated by producers in England and the United States. Soon, Méliès
began to experiment with brief multi-scene films, such as L’Affaire
Dreyfus (The Dreyfus Affair, 1899), which followed the logic of linear
temporality to establish causal sequences and tell simple stories. By
1902 he had produced the influential 30-scene narrative Le Voyage
dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon). Adapted from a novel by Jules Verne,
it was nearly one reel in length (about 825 feet [251 metres], or 14
minutes). It was the first film to achieve international distribution
(mainly through piracy) and was an enormous popular success. It
helped to make Star Film one of the world’s largest producers (an
American branch was opened in 1903) and to establish the fiction film
as the cinema’s mainstream product. In both respects Méliès
dethroned the Lumières’ cinema of actuality.
The origination of many sophisticated narrative techniques is closely
associated with the work of Edwin S. Porter, a freelance projectionist
and engineer who joined the Edison Company in 1900 as production
head of its new skylight studio.
The major problem for early filmmakers was the establishment of
temporal continuity from one shot to the next and Porter’s The Great
Train Robbery (1903) is widely acknowledged to be the first narrative
film to have achieved such continuity of action. Comprising of 14
separate shots of non-continuous, non-overlapping action, the film
contains an early example of parallel editing, two credible back, or rear,
projections (the projection from the rear of previously filmed action or
scenery onto a translucent screen to provide the background for new
action filmed in front of the screen), two camera pans, and several
shots composed diagonally and staged in depth—a major departure
from the frontally composed, theatrical staging of Méliès.
THE RISE OF THE FILM INDUSTRY –
By 1914, several national film industries were established. Europe,
Russia and Scandinavia were as important as America. Films became
longer, and storytelling, or narrative, became the dominant form.
As more people paid to see movies, the industry which grew around
them was prepared to invest more money in their production,
distribution and exhibition, so large studios were established and
special cinemas were built. The First World War greatly limited the film
industry in Europe, and the American industry grew in relative
importance.
The first 30 years of cinema were characterised by the growth and
consolidation of an industrial base, the establishment of the narrative
form, and refinement of technology.

ADDING COLOUR –
Colour was first added to black-and-white movies through tinting,
toning and stencilling. By 1906, the principles of colour separation were
used to produce so-called ‘natural colour’ moving images with the
British Kinemacolor process, first presented to the public in 1909.
The early Technicolor processes from 1915 onwards were
cumbersome and expensive, and colour was not used more widely until
the introduction of its three-colour process in 1932.

ADDING SOUND –
The first attempts to add synchronised sound to projected pictures
used phonographic cylinders or discs.
The first feature-length movie incorporating synchronised
dialogue, The Jazz Singer (USA, 1927), used the Warner Brothers’
Vitaphone system, which employed a separate record disc with each
reel of film for the sound.
This system proved unreliable and was soon replaced by an optical,
variable density soundtrack recorded photographically along the edge
of the film.

CINEMA’S GOLDEN AGE –

At the start of the First World War, French and Italian cinema had been
the most globally popular. The war came as a devastating interruption
to European film industries. The American industry, or "Hollywood" as
it was becoming known after its new geographical center in California,
gained the position it has held, more or less, ever since: film factory for
the world and exporting its product to most countries on earth.
By the 1920s, the United States reached what is still its era of greatest-
ever output, producing an average of 800 feature films annually. The
comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the swashbuckling
adventures of Douglas Fairbanks and the romances of Clara Bow, to
cite just a few examples, made these performers' faces well known on
every continent.
By the early 1930s, nearly all feature-length (running time of minimum
40 minutes) movies were presented with synchronised sound and, by
the mid-1930s, some were in full colour too. The advent of sound
secured the dominant role of the American industry and gave rise to
the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’.
During the 1930s and 1940s, cinema was the principal form of popular
entertainment, with people often attending cinemas twice weekly. In
Britain the highest attendances occurred in 1946, with over 31 million
visits to the cinema each week.

INDIAN CINEMA -
The most flourishing cinema industries found today is in India, with
over 1600 movies produced annually in different languages. But the
pioneers of the industry were actually foreigners. In 1896, the Lumiere
brothers demonstrated the art of cinema when they screened
Cinematography consisting of six short films to an enthusiastic
audience in Bombay. The success of these films led to the screening of
films by James B. Stewart and Ted Hughes.
But the fathers of Indian cinema were Dada Saheb Phalke who in 1913
made the first feature length silent film (Raja Harishchandra) and
Ardeshir Irani who in 1931 made India's first talking film (Alam Ara).
Dadasaheb Phalke made 95 feature-length films and 27 short films in
his career, spanning 19 years, until 1937, including his most noted
works: Mohini Bhasmasur (1913), Satyavan Savitri (1914), Lanka Dahan
(1917), Shri Krishna Janma (1918) and Kaliya Mardan (1919). The
Dadasaheb Phalke Award for lifetime contribution to cinema was
instituted in his honour by the Government of India in 1969. The award
is regarded as the highest official recognition for film personalities in
the country.
With the demise of the silent era and the advent of the talkies, the main
source for inspiration for films came from mythological texts. Films
were produced in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. But by the 1930’s,
word had spread around the world about the vibrant film industry in
India and foreigners with stars in their eyes landed upon Bombay
shores. Mary Evans (an Australian girl, who changed her name to
Nadia), Florence Esekiel (a teenager from Baghdad, who was given the
screen name of Nadira), Bob Christo (an Australian), Helen (a Franco-
Burmese refuge) are to name a few actors. Franz Austen, a German
from Munich who could not utter one word of Hindi, came to Bombay
and directed 57 blockbuster films. He drew his inspiration from
episodes of the Mahabharata and Ramayana.
In 1947, when India gained its independence, mythological and
historical stories were being replaced by social reformist films focusing
on the lives of the lower classes, the dowry system and prostitution.
This brought a new wave of filmmakers to the forefront such as Bimal
Roy and Satyajit Ray among others. In the 1960’s, inspired by social and
cinematic changes in the US and Europe, India’s new wave was
founded, offering a greater sense of realism to the public and getting
recognition abroad. However, the industry at large churned out more
‘masala’ films with a mesh of genres including action, comedy,
melodrama punctuated with songs and dances and relying on the
songs and the stars to sell their films.
Today there is a growing movement to make Indian cinema more real
and frequently Indian movies and technicians compete for the Oscars.
There are now more large investments from corporate houses and a
more structured industry funding independent cinema and making it a
viable and profitable business. There has never been a more favorable
time for Indian cinema than today. With a vibrant creative community,
new technology and investment interest, we are on the verge of seeing
Indian cinema transcend its national borders to project India’s socio-
political and economic influence around the world.

GOLDEN AGE OF INDIAN CINEMA –

Following the end of World War II in the 1940s, the following decade,
the 1950s, marked a 'golden age' for non-English world
cinema, especially for Asian cinema. Many of the most critically
acclaimed Asian films of all time were produced during this decade,
including,
- Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953)
- Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959) and Jalsaghar (1958)
- Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu (1954) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
- Raj Kapoor's Awaara (1951)
- Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds (1955)
- Guru Dutt's Pyaasa (1957)
- Akira Kurosawa films Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952), Seven
Samurai (1954) and Throne of Blood (1957).

During Indian cinema's 'Golden Age' of the 1950s, it was producing 200
films annually and also gained greater recognition through
international film festivals. One of the most famous was The Apu
Trilogy (comprising Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and The
World of Apu (1959)) from critically acclaimed Bengali
film director Satyajit Ray, whose films had a profound influence on
world cinema. According to Michael Sragow of The Atlantic Monthly,
the "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art houses
since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu
trilogy". Subrata Mitra's cinematographic technique of bounce
lighting also originates from The Apu Trilogy.
Epic film Mother India (1957) was the first Indian film to be nominated
for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Multiple films
from this era are included among the greatest films of all time in
various critics' and directors' polls. Notable Indian filmmakers from this
period include Guru Dutt, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Raj Kapoor, Bimal
Roy, K. Asif and Mehboob Khan.
During this period, South Indian cinema saw the production works
based on the epics Ramayana & Mahabharata, such as Mayabazar
(listed by IBN Live's 2013 Poll as the greatest Indian film of all time).
Sivaji Ganesan became India's first actor to receive an international
award when he won the "Best Actor" award at the Afro-Asian film
festival in 1960 and was awarded the title of Chevalier in the Legion of
Honour by the French Government in 1995. Tamil cinema is influenced
by Dravidian politics, with prominent film personalities C N Annadurai,
M G Ramachandran, M Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa becoming Chief
Ministers of Tamil Nadu.
Kamal Haasan was introduced as child actor in 1960 Tamil language
movie Kalathur Kannamma. Haasan's performance in the movie earned
him the President's Gold Medal at the age of 6.
While the musical film genre had declined in Hollywood by this time,
musical films were quickly gaining popularity in the cinema of India,
where the term "Bollywood" was coined for the growing Hindi film
industry in Bombay (now Mumbai) that ended up dominating South
Asian cinema, overtaking the more critically acclaimed Bengali film
industry in popularity. Hindi filmmakers combined the Hollywood
musical formula with the conventions of ancient Indian theatre to
create a new film genre called "Masala", which dominated Indian
cinema throughout the late 20th century. These "Masala" films
portrayed action, comedy, drama, romance and melodrama all at
once, with "filmi" song and dance routines thrown in. This trend began
with films directed by Manmohan Desai and starring Amitabh
Bachchan, who remains one of the most popular film stars in South
Asia. The most popular Indian film of all time was Sholay (1975), a
"Masala" film inspired by a real-life dacoit as well as Kurosawa's Seven
Samurai and the Spaghetti Westerns.

NEW BOLLYWOOD AND SOUT INDIAN CINEMA (1990S–

PRESENT) -
In the late 1980s, Hindi cinema experienced a period of stagnation,
with a decline in box office turnout, due to increasing violence, decline
in musical melodic quality, and rise in video piracy, leading to middle-
class family audiences abandoning theaters. The turning point came
with Yash Chopra's musical romance Chandni (1989), starring Sridevi.
It was instrumental in ending the era of violent action films in Indian
Cinema and rejuvenating the romantic musical genre. Commercial
Hindi cinema grew in the late 80s and 1990s, with the release of Mr.
India (1987), Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Chaalbaaz (1989),
Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Lamhe (1991), Saajan (1991), Khuda Gawah
(1992), Khalnayak (1993), Darr (1993), Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994),
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), Pyar Kiya
Toh Darna Kya (1998) and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998). Cult classic
Bandit Queen (1994, Shekhar Kapur) received international recognition
and controversy.
In the late 1990s, Parallel Cinema began a resurgence in Hindi cinema,
largely due to the critical and commercial success of crime films such
as Satya (1998) and Vaastav (1999). These films launched a genre
known as Mumbai noir, urban films reflecting social problems there.
Since the 1990s, the three biggest Bollywood movie stars have been
the "Three Khans": Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, and Salman Khan.
Combined, they starred in the top ten highest-grossing Bollywood
films.
The 2010s also saw the rise of a new generation of popular actors like
Ranbir Kapoor, Ranveer Singh, Varun Dhawan, Sidharth Malhotra,
Sushant Singh Rajput, Arjun Kapoor, Aditya Roy Kapur and Tiger Shroff,
as well as actresses like Vidya Balan, Katrina Kaif, Kangana Ranaut,
Deepika Padukone, Sonam Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Sonakshi Sinha,
Jacqueline Fernandez, Shraddha Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, with Balan and
Ranaut gaining wide recognition for successful female-centric films
such as The Dirty Picture (2011), Kahaani (2012) and Queen (2014), and
Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015).
Malayalam cinema experienced its own Golden Age in the 1980s and
early 1990s. Acclaimed Malayalam filmmakers industry, included
Adoor Gopalakrishnan, G. Aravindan, T. V. Chandran and Shaji N. Karun.
Gopalakrishnan is often considered to be Ray's spiritual heir. He
directed some of his most acclaimed films during this period, including
Elippathayam (1981) which won the Sutherland Trophy at the London
Film Festival. Karun's debut film Piravi (1989) won the Camera d'Or at
the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, while his second film Swaham (1994)
was in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 1994 event. Commercial
Malayalam cinema began gaining popularity with the action films of
Jayan, a popular stunt actor who died while filming a helicopter stunt.
Telugu cinema has a history of producing internationally noted fantasy
and mythological films. Notable names are Savitri, Nartanasala,
Mayabazar, and the Baahubali series having won the many
international awards. Sankarabharanam (1980) dealt with the revival
of Indian classical music, won the Prize of the Public at the 1981
Besancon Film Festival of France. Swati Mutyam was selected by India
as its entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards
in 1986. The film won several international awards.
Tamil language films also received several national and international
recognitions. Tamil films were submitted by India for the Academy
Award for Best Foreign Language on eight occasions. Nayakan (1987,
Kamal Haasan) was included in Time magazine's "All-TIME" 100 best
movies list. In 1991, Marupakkam directed by K.S. Sethu Madhavan,
became the first Tamil film to win the National Film Award for Best
Feature Film, the feat was repeated by Kanchivaram in 2007.
By 1996, the Indian film industry had an estimated domestic cinema
viewership of 600 million viewers, establishing India as one of the
largest film markets, with the largest regional industries being Hindi
and Telugu films. In 2001, in terms of ticket sales, Indian cinema sold
an estimated 3.6 billion tickets annually across the globe, compared to
Hollywood's 2.6 billion tickets sold.
COMPETING WITH TELEVISION –

The advent of television and television shows may have come long after
film, but it enhanced film production almost instantly. Television
naturally derived from early film since each uses basically the same
medium: the motion picture camera and target the same purpose:
entertainment. Since film had already set a base in the industry and
mastered the new techniques and technology of cinematography,
television had the opportunity to learn from film’s mistakes and
advance itself quickly.
Since the advent of Television sets, there has been drop in the cinema
viewership. The concept of television became so popular and gained so
much success that film industry was made to reinvent itself to stay
relevant. This prompted a number of technical experiments designed
to maintain public interest in cinema.
In 1952, the Cinerama process, using three projectors and a wide,
deeply curved screen together with multi-track surround sound, was
premiered. It gave audiences a sense of greater involvement and
proved extremely popular. However, it was technically cumbersome,
and widescreen cinema did not begin to be extensively used until the
introduction of CinemaScope in 1953 and Todd-AO in 1955, both of
which used single projectors.
CinemaScope had optically squeezed images on 35mm film which were
expanded laterally by the projector lens to fit the width of the screen;
Todd-AO used film 70mm wide. By the end of the 1950s, the shape of
the cinema screen had effectively changed, with aspect ratios of either
1:2.35 or 1:1.66 becoming standard.
Specialist large-screen systems using 70mm film have also been
developed. The most successful of these has been IMAX, which today
has more than 1,000 screens worldwide. For many years IMAX cinemas
have showed films specially made in its unique 2D or 3D formats, but
they are increasingly showing versions of popular feature films which
have been digitally remastered in the IMAX format, often with
additional scenes or 3D effects.
Additional immersive experiences are provided with the new
technologies like Dolby Atmos atmospheric sound, 4DX etc.

CINEMA MAKES A COMEBACK –

While cinemas had some success in fighting the competition of
television, they never regained the position and influence they once
held, and over the next 30 years audiences dwindled. However, in the
recent times. The primary contributing factors are:
- out-of-town multiplex cinemas
- deluxe theaters and boutique indie cinemas with dine-in facilities
aiming to make movie-watching a shared social experience
- Immersive experience with 3D and / or surround sound effects,
which are impossible to recreate at home television sets.
- Special effects with motion seats and environmental effects, such
as wind, water, lightning, bubbles, and more.
The movies are also today made with lot of engineering which make
use of one or many of the special features which can be fully enjoyed
only in the theaters.
In Hollywood, superhero films have greatly increased in popularity and
financial success, with films based on Marvel and DC comics regularly
being released every year up to the present. As of 2019, the superhero
genre has been the most dominant genre as far as American box office
receipts are concerned. The 2019 superhero film Avengers: Endgame,
was the most successful movie of all-time at the box office. There are
so such visual and sound special effects, everyone love to watch these
movies in theaters.
The advent of digital technology made it viable to simultaneously
release the movie in hundreds, sometime over 1000 theaters. With
this, the producers are able to cash on the initial hype and recover the
investment in a short time.
Paradoxically, television industry is also helping the growth of film
industry. In India, almost 50% of the television channels thrive on
contents from films. They invest heavily in acquiring exclusive rights to
cinematographic films, which in doing so, financially support
production of films.

CONCLUSION –
In the past 20 years, film production has been profoundly altered by
the impact of rapidly improving digital technology. The popularity
of television seemed to form a threat to cinemas, which resulted in
attempts to make theatrical films more attractive with technological
innovations.
Improving over time, digital production methods became more and
more popular during the 1990s, resulting in increasingly realistic visual
effects and popular feature length computer animations.
Another stark contrast to the traditional modes of filmmaking in recent
years is focused on expenditure and execution of ideas to produce the
finished content. Historically, films in India were released by large
production companies, with an enormous budget and starring the
crème-de-la-crème of the acting pool. However, in the recent times,
the trend has shifted to releasing movies with a small budget (approx.
INR 20 crores), with fresh and hard-hitting content and without an
ensemble star cast. In fact, of the 13 movies that hit the INR 100 crore
mark in 2018, five were small-budget movies, in contrast to the single
small budget film which hit this mark in 2016.
Smaller budgets and a smaller cast allows filmmakers to take creative
liberties with the content and premise of the films, as well as introduce
fresh talent in the market. In addition to boosting the industry’s
growth, such an approach also takes in the dynamics of society and
consumer sophistication. These small budget movies need scripts to be
locked in forthwith, and the production in a shorter period. This implies
that the industry is able to produce more films per year, driving up the
industry’s profitability.
While the film industry has grown manifold, it is still riddled with the
plague of piracy, especially in this digital age. While the industry has
taken various technological measures to combat the menace, they
hardly had any success. The Government took into account the losses
faced by the film industry due to rampant increase in piracy which in
turn causes loss to the Government Exchequer and is working on
various legal measures.
The Indian film industry has undergone a major change from the
producer of masala entertainment to the mouthpiece of social
commentary it is today. From adopting new technologies and starting
conversations around various issues of vital societal importance, the
Indian film industry has reached new heights.
However, that is not to say that the industry is completely devoid of
challenges. From addressing instances of sexual harassment unveiled
through the Indian #MeToo movement, following the same #MeToo
movement in Hollywood, to building an effective anti-piracy law
enforcement mechanism, the industry must work with all stakeholders
including legal authorities to take the Indian film industry to greater
heights.