Cinematography facts for kids

A camera crew from the First Motion Picture Unit

Cinematography is the art and science of making motion pictures. It comes from two Greek words: kinema, meaning "movements," and graphein, meaning "to record." A cinematographer is like the main artist who works with the director to create the visual look of a movie. They decide how the film will be shot and developed.

The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) says that cinematography is a creative process. It's about making an original piece of art, not just recording something that happens. Cinematography uses photography, but it also includes many other skills. These skills help create a complete and amazing visual story.

History of Movie Making
The Cinematographer's Role
New Definitions for Cinematography
Images for kids
See also

History of Movie Making

Early Inventions

Muybridge showed how a horse gallops using many pictures.

In the 1830s, people started inventing ways to show moving images. They used spinning drums and disks. Some of these early inventions were the stroboscope, the phenakistoscope, and the zoetrope.

In 1845, Francis Ronalds created the first camera that could record things continuously. It was used in observatories around the world for many years.

Later, in 1867, William Lincoln patented a device called the "wheel of life" or "zoopraxiscope." It showed animated pictures through a small slit.

A big step happened on June 19, 1878. Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse running very fast. He used 24 cameras set up along a track. Each camera took a picture when the horse's hooves triggered a wire. This allowed him to capture the horse's movement in tiny steps. Muybridge later used these photos to create short, early "movies" for his lectures.

In 1882, French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey invented a special "chronophotographic gun." This gun could take 12 pictures in one second. It recorded all the frames of the same moving object.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, film became important for science, not just entertainment. Scientists like Jean Painleve pushed for film to be used in research. Film was much better at showing how tiny things like microorganisms moved and behaved. Before movies, scientists had to draw what they saw. Film helped doctors and scientists understand their work much better.

Film Cameras and Projectors

The experimental film Roundhay Garden Scene is the oldest surviving motion picture. Louis Le Prince filmed it on October 14, 1888, in England. This movie was shot on paper film.

In 1889, British inventor William Friese-Greene patented an experimental film camera. Then, W. K. L. Dickson, working for Thomas Alva Edison, created the first successful movie camera. It was called the Kinetograph and was patented in 1891. This camera took many quick photos on a 35mm wide film strip. The first public showing of these films was in 1893. People watched them using a Kinetoscope, a big box where only one person could look through a peephole.

In 1894, Charles Francis Jenkins created the Phantoscope projector, which allowed many people to watch a movie together. In December 1895, Louis and Auguste Lumière in Paris made the Cinématographe. This amazing machine could take pictures, print them, and project them. The Lumière brothers were the first to show projected, moving pictures to a paying audience of more than one person.

By 1896, movie theaters were opening in many cities around the world. Here are some quick improvements in movie technology:

1896: Edison showed his improved Vitascope projector in the U.S.
1905: Cooper Hewitt invented mercury lamps, making it possible to film indoors without sunlight.
1906: The first animated cartoon was made.
1911: Movie credits started appearing at the beginning of films.
1915: The Bell and Howell 2709 camera allowed directors to get close-up shots without moving the camera.
Late 1920s: Most movies started having sound.
1950s: Wide screen formats were first tried.
1970s: Most movies were in color.
Later: IMAX and other large film formats became popular. Movies were shown widely, leading to "blockbusters."

Film cinematography was the main way movies were made until the 2010s. That's when digital cinematography took over. However, some directors still use film today because they love its look.

Black and White Movies

From the 1880s, most movies were monochrome. This means they were shot in a single tone or color, usually black and white. Tinted film was more expensive, so most movies were made in black and white. Even when early color experiments happened, black and white films were common until the 1950s. By the 1960s, color film became the most popular choice. Over the next few decades, color movies became very common, and black and white films became rare.

Color Movies

After movies were invented, people worked hard to create natural color photography. When talking pictures arrived, the demand for color grew even more. But getting natural color in movies was a slow process compared to other inventions.

Early "color" movies weren't truly color. They were shot in black and white and then hand-colored or machine-colored later. An early example is the hand-tinted Annabelle Serpentine Dance from 1895. Machine tinting became popular later. This continued until natural color cinematography appeared in the 1910s. Today, many old black and white movies are digitally colorized. This includes old war footage, sports events, and political films.

In 1902, Edward Raymond Turner made the first films using a natural color process. This was different from just adding color later. In 1908, kinemacolor was introduced. That same year, the short film A Visit to the Seaside was the first natural color movie shown to the public.

Later, in 1917, the first version of Technicolor was introduced. Kodachrome came out in 1935. Then, Eastmancolor was introduced in 1950. It became the main color film used for the rest of the century.

In the 2010s, color films were mostly replaced by digital color cinematography.

Digital Cinematography

In digital cinematography, movies are shot and stored on digital media. This can be things like flash storage or a hard drive.

Digital cameras use special sensors called metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) image sensors. The first useful sensor was the charge-coupled device (CCD). By the late 1970s and early 1980s, CCD sensors became common. This slowly led the entertainment industry to switch to digital images and video. After CCDs, the CMOS active-pixel sensor (CMOS sensor) was developed in the 1990s.

In the late 1980s, Sony tried to promote "electronic cinematography" using their analog video cameras. This didn't become very popular. However, it led to one of the first movies shot digitally, Julia and Julia (1987). In 1998, new digital cameras with CCD technology came out. These cameras could record in high-definition. This is when "digital cinematography" really started to become popular.

The Last Broadcast, released in 1998, is thought to be the first full-length movie shot and edited entirely with digital equipment that regular people could buy. In May 1999, George Lucas used high-definition digital cameras for some scenes in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. This was a big challenge to traditional film. By late 2013, Paramount became the first major studio to send movies to theaters only in digital format. They stopped using 35mm film completely. Since then, more and more movies are made and shown digitally.

As digital technology got better, movie studios started using digital cinematography more and more. Since the 2010s, digital cinematography has become the main way movies are made, taking over from film.

The Cinematographer's Role

When movies first started, the cinematographer was often also the director. They were the person actually holding the camera. As movies became more complex, the roles of director and camera operator separated. With new artificial lights and more sensitive film stock, plus better lenses, the technical side of cinematography needed a specialist.

Cinematography was super important during the silent movie era. These movies had no spoken words, only background music. So, the story had to be told through lighting, acting, and the sets.

In 1919, in Hollywood, the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) was formed. This group was created to recognize how much cinematographers added to the art and science of making movies.

New Definitions for Cinematography

The word "cinematography" used to mean working with traditional movie film. But now, it often means the same thing as videography and digital video. This is because digital cinematography is so popular.

Modern digital image processing also lets people change pictures a lot after they are taken. This means that some choices that used to be only for the cinematographer are now shared with other artists.