The History of Film

Timelines of Early Film:

• 1878 Eadweard Muybridge successfully captured motion images of a horse galloping
• 1888 Inventor George Eastman introduces the Kodak Camera
• 1889 Thomas Edison and W.K. Dickson develop the Kinetoscope, a device in which film is moved past a light
• 1895 Lumiere brothers demonstrated their first moving pictures
• 1891 Thomas Edison perfected kinetoscope
• 1892 Emile Reynaud projected first animated film on his praxinoscope
• 1897 George Melia built first film studio
• 1901 Andre Deed (first film star)
• 1902 A Trip to the Moon, based on Verne and Wells — 21-minute epic

• 1903 Audiences are scared out of their seats by the oncoming train in Lumiere brothers’ short film ‘ L’arrivee du train’
• 1908 Max Linder became famous
• 1911 Credits begin to appear at the beginning of motion pictures
• 1914 World War 1, Max Linder got terribly hurt
• 1917 and after Charlie Chaplin became more and more famous
• 1922 First commercially 3D film is released called ‘The Power of Love’
• 1927 Warner Bros.’s ‘The Jazz Singer’, presents the movie’s first spoken words
• 1928 Disney’s ‘Steamboat Willie’ was the first Mickey Mouse film released and the first cartoon with synchronized sound
• 1933 The first drive-in movie theatre opens in New Jersey, USA
• 1976 The first VHS recorder was released to the public in Japan by JVC
• 2006 The Walt Disney Co. pays $7.4 billion for Pixar Animation Studios
• 2009 James Cameron’s 3D film Avatar became the highest-grossing film of all time
• 2012 Director Peter Jackson films ‘The Hobbit’ at 48 frames per second (fps)

My understanding of the history of film:

Movies have been the darlings of people from birth to the present day. I’m not surprised that movies are so popular today because, from the large number of Stone Age frescoes left in the Altami cave in the mountains of northern Spain, we see a phenomenon: four legs on the front and back of a running wild boar to create a feeling of restless boar movement. We also see this phenomenon in the design pattern of the Chinese Majia kiln-painted ceramic dance basin: the basin is painted with three sets of hand-in-hand dance humans, and repeated lines are drawn on the arm to represent the dancer’s continuous movements. When the bay is filled with water, under the shaking of the water, cleverly make the dance characters dance.

Although these creations are too simple, they reflect the human understanding and continuous exploration of the relationship between the recorded world and life; I realized that recording moving objects is an instinctive desire. It is also the human beings in the use of symbols, words to record real-life feelings and stimulate the phenomenon and creative passion. It is in this intense desire for psychological needs the human invention of the film.

From the ancient mural phenomenon to today’s film and television art. Humans have been pursuing “desire and satisfaction.” This desire germinates from external stimulation and inner feelings and drives people to enjoy expressing what they see and understand the world. In this particular world, people can completely relax and endlessly project their own emotions of life, inner feelings, and judgments of good and evil, beauty and ugliness onto a human-created performance carrier and communicator to obtain spiritual satisfaction and balance. “The pursuit of joy in the dream world” has become the psychological basis for the public to accept the art of film, so the film has rightly become the darling of art creators, but also one of the reasons for its vigorous development.

So, actually, the history of film is a microcosm of human exploration history. From patterns to words, words to pictures, pictures to videos, we might as well boldly predict that VR will be the new darling of humankind.

The History of CGI Character

Timeline for VFX:

• 1899 Cinderella, stop-action turns pumpkin into stagecoach and rags into a gown
• 1902 A Trip to the Moon, based on Verne and Wells — 21-minute epic
• 1912 Bell & Howell facilitated split-screens and double exposures with fixed registration pin and accurate frame counter
• 1916 Frank Williams invents traveling matte system, later refined as blue-screen
• 1933 King Kong — stop-motion, miniatures, rear-projection, and optical compositing using live actors, puppets, and miniatures. 55 weeks for stop-motion
• 1963 Jason and the Argonauts (famous stop motion sequence: skeleton battle)
• 1982 Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (first all-digital CG sequence in feature film)
• 1985 Young Sherlock Holmes (ILM) (First photo-real computer-generated character)
• 1991 Terminator 2: Judgement Day (ILM) (impressive liquid metal robot VFX) all effects are digitally composited
• 1993 Jurassic Park (ILM) (Creatures with skeleton, textured skin and detailed muscles) (real people test)
• 1995 Casper (ILM) (First computer animated title character)
• 1995 Toy Story (Pixar) (First feature-length film made entirely by computer animation) first entirely CG feature. 1000 GB of data with 800,000 machine hours of rendering
• 2001 Final Fantasy (First hyper-real fully CGI film)
• 2001-2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers three-time Academy Award Visual Effects (defeating Spiderman, Attack of the Clones, Pirates of the Caribbean), Andy Serkis – performance capture for Gollum, Massive for battle scenes, other simulation
• 2003 The Matrix Reloaded (Universal Capture) universal capture for image-based facial animation, BRDF for rendering realistic clothes
• 2004 Spider-Man 2– Academy Award VFX, $54 million dfx budget, Light-Stage for IBL recreation of faces along with performance capture
• 2005 King Kong (Better facial expression and capture) defeated Chronicles of Narnia for Academy Award VFX, 2510/3200 final shots (most ever FX shots)
• 2007 Beowulf (Advanced motion capture)
• 2009 Avatar – large portion of over $300 million budget for DFX, performance capture including eyes, native stereo 3D, hybrid CGI/ VFX
• 2014 CGI is becoming important in animation. Simpson and many other animations were placed

My understanding of the history of VFX:

First of all, we agree that visual effects (VFX) are made to interpret the camera better and tell more detailed stories by creating a fictional image. This is the ultimate goal of film work; to achieve this goal, all the means required is a process; in the film industry, the process is meaningless.

After watching the history of the development of VFX, you will know that the original VFX are not created by computers. What we said, digital painting is an extension of traditional painting. In the early 20th century, artists painted the background to add to the glass version and then placed it in front of the camera to live into the film. Rendering and CG synthesis, which we take for granted, are also recent products, with VFX being blue-screen models, footage shooting, and synthesis in previous years.

The film, or art, has never been about technological development. Technological innovation leads to new manifestations, but advanced technology does not mean that good works of art can be created. Why do we think some old movies from decades ago are still attractive? Their lighting, scenery, photography, sound quality, and now a modern second-and third-rate film are no match because they will not be trapped in technological excellence and will focus on the film’s most essential needs— telling stories and video editing.

Nowadays, the lighting team can precisely control the various characteristics of the light, perfectly match the natural light of the scene in the camera; Dolby surrounds sound, 8k or even 16k image resolution, and even 120fps of ultra-high frame rate, the filmmakers lost themselves in the vast technological revolution, gradually snubbed the film’s most essential soul.

Technology itself is no problem; better picture quality can give you a more intimate experience, better sound quality can instantly put you in the right environment. But then what? What kind of world that we want to create using these advantages? VFX, although as a super-high-tech demand area, is the same logic.

VFX technology is just a means to achieve our goals, and simply study technology may trap us in a mindset –technology can make better visual effects; however, both are not equivalent. We have to learn how to ignore technology and grasp the core ideas of visual effects production.

In general, those aims and essences remain the same in the ever-changing technological change. There is a philosophical concept called ‘means to an end,’ which means that the sole purpose of an action is to achieve a goal.

The History of Animation

Timeline for 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.
• 1908 “Humpty Dumpty Circus” marks the first use of stop-motion animation on film
• 1900-1910 Animation began to exist on the big screen, started with simple faces
• 1914 Earl Hurd invents the process of cell animation, which would revolutionize and dominate the industry for much of the 20th century
• 1914 “Gertie the Dinosaur” the first characteristic animation by Winsor McCay
• 1919 “Felix the Cat” makes his debut and becomes the first famous animated cartoon character
• 1920 “The Debut of Thomas Cat” The first colour cartoon released by John Randolph Bray
• 1928 “Steamboat Willie” showed Mickey Mouse to the world. Music and violence appear in it, and it is also the first Disney cartoon with synchronized sound
• 1929 Because of the great Depression, People keep going to the theatre to watch cartoons as entertainment. Because of this demand, more cartoons were made
• 1937 Disney released the feature-length animated film ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, which arguably defined the highest standard of animation in the world at the time.
• 1941 “Mr. Bug Goes to Town,” is released. The first full-length animated musical
• 1969 Animator began trying to create real looking monsters
• 1970 Created discovered children’s love of animation and created a bear with sunglasses to promote drinks
• 1973 Computer-generated images are used for the very first time in a brief shot within “Westworld”
• 1982 “Tron” marks the first time that computer-generated images are used extensively in a film
• 1986 Pixar’s first short, “Luxo Jr.,” is released. It is the first computer-animated short to receive an Academy Award nomination
• 1987 “The Simpsons,” an American adult animated sitcom created by Matt Groening airs. It is the longest-running American sitcom and animated program
• 1991 Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” becomes the first fully animated film to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture
• 1993 “Jurassic Park” becomes the first live-action film to feature photorealistic computer-animated creatures
• 1995 Pixar releases Toy Story, the first computer-generated animated film. This film had a huge impact on the world
• 1999 “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” marks the first film to use computer-generated imagery extensively and pervasively
• 2002 “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers ” features the first photorealistic motion captured character for a film with Andy Serkis portraying Gollum
• 2004 “The Polar Express” becomes the first fully-animated film to use motion capture technology to render all of its characters
• 2005 “Chicken Little” becomes the first computer-animated film to be released in 3D.
• 2009 “Avatar” is being released in North America in 2D, 3D and IMAX-3D
• 2012 “ParaNorman” is the first 3D stop-motion animated film created with characters that are computer generated using 3D printing technology
• 2014 CGI is becoming important in animation. Simpson and many other animations were placed

My understanding of animation:

Even many professional animators can hardly define animation in the most straightforward language, pulling animation out of dazzling video art. Today, I would like to talk about the definition of animation according to my understanding of animation.

From the initial hand-drawn to computer 3D digital animation, the picture of animation is becoming more and more beautiful, plus today’s movies also use many special effects. Therefore, it is difficult for the audience to distinguish between animation and film, and the differences between them seem distinct, but the boundaries are vague. Some people may say that animation is drawn, movies are made. However, here are two examples. “Ghost Mom” is a fixed animation of puppets shot on film; the whole movie does not have a “painting” out of the picture; people call it animation. While more than half of Avatar’s shots do not use film but computer graphics to draw the scenes, people call it a movie.

To answer this question, we may have to go back to the beginning of animation. Many pre-animation art appearances in the 19th century, such as Zoetrope in the 1960s, and the Praxinoscope in the 1970s, all enriching people’s lives in an era when there was no film and television media. By 1908, Frenchman Emile Cohl had made the animated “Fantasmagorie,” each frame hand-drawn on paper–a traditional process for animation that officially separated it from cinema and flourished into the most crucial entertainment industry our time. But at the same time as hand-drawn animation, stop-motion animated film can create a hand-drawn animation challenging to show the depth of field effect and material texture, and with this unique charm firm and vigorous development, paper-cut animation, puppet animation, clay animation constantly has masterpieces gushing out. So, we see that today, even without thinking about the role of computers, the fact that the video comes from shooting or painting doesn’t serve as a watershed for animation and film–and that is confusing for many people.

Fortunately, there is an “official” answer to our question. The International Animation Association (Asifa), founded in 1960 in Anasi, France, is the most essential professional animation association. At the Zagreb Animation Festival in 1980, a formal definition of animation was given, which has been written in the second paragraph of the Association’s constitution: Animation art refers to the creation of moving images in a variety of ways other than real-life recording.

In other words, the animation is “painting out of motion”; the key lies not in the “painting”. Still, in the “moving”, if this movement is to record the reality of the movement, then it is the film. If this movement did not exist in the real world, then it is animation.

Some confusing examples are now finally clear: stop-motion animation, though shot in real-time, are puppets, clay, or paper-cuts that complete each frame at a standstill and the movement we end up seeing is entirely artificial, and it’s, of course, animated. That’s why we don’t call Chinese shadow drama animation.

As computer graphics technology matures gradually in the 21st century, there are a lot of new technologies used in making animation. That definition still applies–neither 2D key frame animation nor 3D bone binding has ever existed in the real world, so both Rick and Morty and Crazy Animal City are real animations.

At the same time, starting with Gollum in the Lord of the Rings series, new motion-capture technology was brought to life by Vita Studios – a technique that assigns actors directly to models, equivalent to digital ease of process – because these animations exist in real life, so it’s film technology, not animation. So, since 2010, the Oscar for Best Animated Feature has stopped accepting motion-capture performances. “The Adventures of Tintin” is all made by motion capture, according to which the definition is a film, and was not be eligible for the Oscar for the best-animated film.

^{thanks for watching}