Cinematography

A Brief Historical Overview
Cinematography is one of the man's efforts to portray to others, through the use of techniques that combine motion pictures and text, the world and the messages it transfers as these are understood by the artist. With the term cinematography, one today describes the discipline of making lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema use. Based on two Greek words, cinematography etymologically means "writing in the movement" and was introduced as a new technique to record images of people and objects as they moved and project them on to a type of screen. Combined with sculpture, painting, dance, architecture, music, and literature, cinematography is today considered to be the seventh art.
It is very difficult for a researcher to find and pinpoint the one individual that could be named the "father" of cinematography, accepting that the word symbolizes a technique used for motion pictures' creation. But, it is apparent that man has experimented, very early in human history, with different methods that would allow him to record the movement of images. Very closely related to still photography, which has been a catalyst to the development of cinematography since the mid 19th Century, the technique that would allow images to be recorded while in motion has been extensively studied. One of the first attempts to analyze the element of movement with the help of photographic machinery was made by the British photographer Edward Muybridge in 1878. After successfully developing a new method of producing consecutive photographic images, he recorded the movement of a running horse. Through the motion pictures he produced, he managed to prove that there are instances when a horse is running that none of its feet touch the ground. Around the same period, the French physicist Etienne Mare managed to capture, also by using photographic machinery that could record 12 images per second, the movements of a flying bird.
Based on the developments of the early 1880s in exposing images on light sensitive elements, attributed to pioneers like Thomas Edison and the Lumiere brothers among others, the new art form of motion pictures introduced a new type of aesthetics that captured the attention of people wanting to explore its applications and create art. One of the first cinematographers that decided to examine this dimension of moving images was the French Maries-George-Jean Méliès who became one of the first cinema directors. With his film, Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune) in 1901, he created a fantastic story of a trip to the moon using motion pictures. He was also the one that introduced the coloring technique in films by painting each one of the frames by hand.
During the infancy stage of motion pictures, the cinematographer had multiple roles, acting as the director and the person holding and moving the camera. As the years pasted, this new art form was further developed by the new technological tools introduced. New art-related professions emerged and due to cinema's ability to capture the attention of vast audiences worldwide, by appealing to more than one the five senses, cinematography emerged to what is known today as a multi-billion dollar industry and one of the favorite art forms in the world.
Got a Great Idea for a Movie? You Could Make Millions
You've seen one or two bad movies in your time, right? And you've told your date, "I could do better than that." Your instincts are probably right.
You already know Hollywood seems locked into making the same tired, old plots, over and over. But you have an idea for a better movie rolling around inside your brain.
Well, here's opportunity knocking.
A former Hollywood executive is willing to make your screenplay into a movie if you're the winner of a winner-take-all competition. John Hart, former vice-president for BrightStar Productions, has founded an independent studio in Oregon, a state that is now known as "Hollywood North," and he's ready to make the winning idea into a movie.
The competition is called MakeMyScreenplay and it's the only one of its kind. The winner gets his or her script made into a feature-length movie, and here's the best part: the winner also gets fifty-percent (50%) of all revenue generated from theatrical, televison, and DVD sales.
What kind of money are we talking about here?
Well, "Blair Witch Project," a low-budget independent movie, made outside of Hollywood, grossed $140,530,114 dollars in the U.S., according to the Internet Movie Database. Another recent independent hit also made outside of Hollywood, "Napoleon
Dynamite," grossed $44,540,956 in the U.S.
Can you write something like that? Or better? If you can, MakeMyScreenplay will make the movie, and you'll get half the money.
Writing a screenplay isn't that difficult. The format is a breeze to follow. What you really need is a good idea and some screenwriting software, and the will to finish it. Make it a group project. Get your whole family involved.
The rules are pretty simple and you can see them all at [makemyscreenplay.com] You aren't eligible if you've already won before, or you have a produced theatrical or television movie.
The winning script will be shot in Oregon in High-Definition format, with Sony's new high-definition camera, the HVR-Z1U, and we'll edit it, add music and sound effects, and send you a DVD when it's done. Then we'll show it off to the world. Neither of make any money unless we get it sold somewhere, right?