Star Quality - Smeck Goes Pop

The visual impact of postmodernity came to life in the 1980s with retro fashion and major shifts in pop culture from the multiplex screening 'high concept' films marketed at teenagers to the shopping mall culture. The 'pop' in culture was most evident in music through the evolution of MTV and other music programs. The music video became a phenomenon, where music was no longer judged on the song alone, but the images that came with it. As a decade, the 80s have been more ridiculed than the invention of bell-bottoms in the 70s, which has become a 'most-have' fashion item of women's contemporary fashion. The music clip has tendency of being linked to the 80s, but the integration of music and images was explored from the beginnings of sound. In 1926, Warners established a program of short films starring vaudeville stars, inparticular the multi-talented musician Roy Smeck (1900-1994). The format provided the stars with opportunity to display their talent through a routine or song to a broader audience in provincial places the stars could not financial access. The short film operated in a similar fashion to the pop video by promoting and selling talent.

Colour - The Early Processes

The use of colour was desired, but the process remained complex where colour was added onto the black and white images. One of the earliest procedures was hand colouring by large groups of employees painting the film frame by frame, which is a similar industrial process of early animation drawings. Another way was creating an emotional atmosphere to the film by dyeing sequences, which is evident in Robert Weine's German expressionist film Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920). In Nosferatu (1922) the colour is used to provide a internal explanation about the characters, which is exemplified by green reflecting Ellen's mental instability. However, the development of sound conflicted with the tinting process because it had a tendency of bleeding onto the audio track.
The additive colour process was introduced, which used red/green filters on a rotating colour wheel in sync with the film. It was projected onto the film removing the issue of bleeding, but the prcoess was highly unstable.
The subtractive process was more successful and predecessor of technicolor where coloured images were produced on the celluloid and projected onto the screen using white light.

Cinerama

As mentioned in a previous posting Cinerama is one of the key forms of widescreen introduced in the 1950s, which offered a participatory experience similar to competing recreation including golf and bowling. Cinerama developed a strong relationship with tourism through presenting travelogues, which provided the audience to view different places around the world and encourage travelling. However, the form was problematic in dealing with narrative because the technology could not deal with close-ups and the optical restrictions with focal length limited varying because only lens could be used.

There is an extensive and well written history of cinerama in wikipedia providing a chronological account of the technological developments involved with the forms.

Widescreen Films - A New Experience

The widescreen film became a special theatrical event in the 1950s through three key developments:

• Films being booked as blockbusters to a small number of first-run theatres as opposed to standard distribution.
• The theatres were refurbished creating a more spectacular experience
• The total experience between the widescreen and refurbishment created a form of participatory recreation where the audience were active contributor in the process.

These changes to cinema becoming a theatrical event were significantly important because there was a decline in box office after World War II and a greater emphasis placed on leisure time creating a broader range of competition.

André Bazin who is one of the most influential film critic and theorists distinguished an audience’s participation in theatre and cinema by noting theatre as a live experience requiring an active involvement by the audience whereas, cinema separated the performance space. John Belton in Hollywood in the Age of Television, claims that wide-screen cinema formed a “greater illusion of participation” (Belton, 1990:188). While Bazin argues a valid distinction between theatre and cinema, wide-screen does fit into either active vs. passive audience theory, but introduces a new form of participation by drawing the audience into the “space of the picture” (Belton, 1990:188).

In the 1950s there were four key developments in widescreen:

1. Cinerama
2. Cinemascope
3. Eratz Widescreen
4. Todd-AO
   

John Belton, "Glorious Technicolour, Breathtaking Cinemascope, and Stereophonic Sound" in Tino Balio (ed), Hollywood in the Age of Television (Boston: Unwin, 1990) pp 185-211

A Landmark Film - Intolerance

The role of technology is not only through the actual invention of sound, screen and equipment, but the way of using these elements. D.W Griffith's Intolerance (1916) is considered a pioneering film through the technical development of continuity editing, which is a standard conventional approach to filmmaking. This film is not only regarded for its editing, but also the integration of camera shots creating a far more interesting image construction. The film demonstrates the visual potential between the filmmaker's imagination and technology.

The film can be purchased at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Intolerance-Mae-Marsh/dp/B00007CVS8

In Australia, the film can be purchased online through EzyDVD for $19.83 plus shipping:
http://www.ezydvd.com.au/item.zml/2607

Webiste Review - American Widescreen Museum

The American Widescreen Museum provides a range of information on range of non-current technology used in cinema. Although, do not be mistaken...it is a very busy site heavily using bright red and yellow. If one is capable of adjusting their eyes to the brightness there is some wonderful information on widescreen, cinematography, colour and sound films.

The AWSM provide a series of poster and image galleries:

• Classic Posters Gallery - includes 20s & 30s precode posters, David O. Selznick classics and Gone With the Wind;
• Unusual Posters - There a six pages of posters categorised under witty titles by the studios who released the films including MGM and Columbia (megascope) and pioneers including Eastman Kodak;
• Hi Resolution Images - Is presented in two series based on technology development

Series 1 - Superscope, Cinerama, Cinecolor, Scanoscope, Todd-AO, Technicolor, DeLuxe Labs, Kinemacolor, etc.
Series 2 - Rectified Todd-AO, CinemaScope 55, 28mm Amateur, 35-32 Dual Rank, Iwerks QUATRO, VistaVision 8 Perf, MGM Camera 65, etc.

The image oriented site provides examples of different technological developments in cinema and briefly explains the problematic aspects of them without overburdening the reader with endless pages of details. After all, for an informal account wikipedia provides a great overview and there are many formal texts available in libraries and bookshops around the world. However, the site demonstrates the importance of understanding the history of images by looking at a sample of these images.

There is a clear understanding that cinema is highly dependent on technology, particularly Hollywood, which is evident in animation, science fiction, special effects...and well pretty much every technical element in filmmaking. However, the site highlights the cultural impact of technology at a relatively chaotic period of cinema.

Landmark Film - Don Juan (1926)

The film was first vitaphone production. While it is not regarded as a landmark film in the context of D.W. Griffith, the replacement of the orchestra with a sound recording was the beginnings of the recorded sound evolution and a strange achievement in the failure of the vitaphone system. However, the popularity of the Don Juan probably had very little to do with the shift of technology. Donald Crafton in The Talkies:American Cinema Transition to Sound 1926 - 1931 states the film grossed $790,000 in 36 week run at Warners (Crafton, 1999:102). While this film was successful, it was not long after that the vitaphone system was being removed some theatre owners.