Cinema in the course of its development has gone from mute black and white short films with a duration of less than a minute to multimillion-dollar photorealistic blockbusters, almost completely rendered on a computer.
There are many facts in the history of cinema that may seem strange or incredible, but nonetheless they are true.
10. The life of the scenery for the film
Have you ever thought about where the scenery goes after shooting a movie? Facades, landscape, decor, all kinds of constructions, gadgets and other props are never thrown away: studios always leave it “in reserve”, hoping to use it in other projects. This, by the way, they are doing very well.
For example, the scenery of Hill Valley, shown in the Back to the Future trilogy, was later involved in 104 more films, but hardly anyone could recognize them from a different angle and with a different layout.
Props from the filming of "Alien" Stephen Spielberg exploited another 37 times, and things from the "Gold Rush" Charlie Chaplin "went on hand" the most: they were used in at least two hundred other films.
9. The most sought-after historical figures
Who do you think about who shot the most pictures? Oh god? Caesar? The answer is Napoleon Bonaparte. He became the protagonist of about 200 films, while Jesus Christ was in the lead roles only in ~ 150.
Strange as it may seem, the “grandfather” Lenin is on the third line, which in the USSR and not only managed to remove almost a hundred biopic.
Following the leader of the proletariat is Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, it turns out, is less popular than Cleopatra.
As for the literary characters, here Cinderella holds the palm, although Hamlet is on her heels, followed by Carmen, Romeo and Juliet, Don Quixote and the company of musketeers with d’Artagnan at the head.
8. The most massive funeral in the cinema
In the 1982 biopic “Gandhi” with Ben Kingsley in the title role (the film received 8 Oscars), there is a two-minute funeral scene in which all the people in the frame are real.
In those years, computer graphics essentially did not exist, therefore, to show the crowd of people in the frame, the creators had to type extras of 300,000 people (!), With only 90,000 working on a contract and receiving money, and the rest just starred out of love for art .
Now, when a small group of people can be beautifully propagated and create an army on the screen, such a move seems unbelievable.
7. Duration of the film
The first films that were shot by the Lumiere brothers were much shorter than modern short films.
Thus, “The Exit of Workers from the Lumiere Factory” had a duration of only 50 seconds and was completely devoid of any plot.
The brothers just installed a camera near the entrance to the factory and captured the moment when employees leave after the shift home.
No acting, script, dialogue (then, in principle, there was no sound movie) and even more special effects, but even this was a real revelation for those years.
In the future, the duration increased, but still, on average, the film of the beginning of the XX century lasted an average of 10-15 minutes.
Gradually, the timing increased, but the director David Griffith did not want to wait, and in 1915 he shot the "Birth of a Nation" lasting 3 hours, which was a record.
6. The origin of sound cinema
Despite the fact that the first public screening of a sound film took place in Paris in 1900, the world really began to learn about such technology only in the early 1920s.
Germany was the most active in this niche, where they were able to combine sound with the image without out of sync, but it did not cause any enthusiasm.
The audience took the novelty rather coldly: people are already used to the fact that cinema is to watch, not listen.
The director Alan Crosland, who shot the musical “Jazz Singer” in 1927, was able to break this barrier. Previous attempts to make friends with sound and video were experimental, and it was a full-length film in which all replicas were voiced synchronously. The release date for the film, October 6, was considered the official birthday of sound cinema.
5. The foundation of Hollywood
Harvey Henderson Wilcox is the man who created Hollywood without wanting it. He owned a ranch near Los Angeles and a large plot of land, part of which he decided to sell, and if someone wanted to build a church, he gave the land for free.
So residential neighborhoods began to appear, and later an advertising sign Hollywoodland appeared, which was supposed to attract new residents, but in the end became a symbol of a completely different.
4. Different versions of the film for different countries
Censorship is the scourge of modern cinema, as many critics and ordinary viewers believe. Sometimes separate shots fall under the knife, and sometimes you have to shoot whole scenes, especially if it concerns rental in other countries.
Given that Hollywood blockbusters with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars can’t pay off without a global market, studios have to make such sacrifices.
For example, “Mission Impossible: Phantom Protocol” and “Transformers: Age of Annihilation” in China and India look very different, and for the Chinese version of the third “Iron Man” they shot almost a separate storyline that viewers in other countries did not see.
3. Who shoots the most?
It is generally accepted that Hollywood is the king of world cinema, which is essentially true, but in terms of productivity, the American film industry is far from the first place.
Bollywood, that is, Indian cinema, produces many more films, including a huge number of trashy remakes of Western paintings.
More than 1,000 tapes are filmed there annually, which raises the logical question: “And who watches them in such numbers?”
2. Color cinema
Color cinema, in contrast to audio, was enthusiastically received by the audience, but it conquered the market very slowly.
The first full-length color work was the cult drama Gone With the Wind, which went down in history forever.
Fully black-and-white film disappeared only in the 70s. By the way, actress Olivia de Havilland, who played one of the roles, is still alive: she is now 102 years old.
1. Physical dimensions of the film
Now it’s hard to imagine such a thing, but the directors and editors used to have to handle just an incredible amount of film .. manually.
The film of the Gone With the Wind mentioned above had a length of 152 kilometers (!!!), if you count all the footage.