Trainspotting is a 1996 British comedy drama film directed by Danny Boyle based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh (who played hapless drug dealer Mikey Forrester). The movie follows a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980s economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life. The film stars Ewan McGregor as Renton, Ewen Bremner as Spud, Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy, Kevin McKidd as Tommy, Robert Carlyle as Begbie, and Kelly Macdonald as Diane.

The Academy Award-nominated screenplay, by John Hodge, was adapted from Welsh's novel. Beyond drug addiction, other concurrent themes in the film are exploration of the urban poverty and squalor in "culturally rich" Edinburgh.^[1]

The film has been ranked 10th spot by the British Film Institute (BFI) in its list of Top 100 British films of all time. In 2004 the film was voted the best Scottish film of all time in a general public poll.^[2]

Plot[link]

The film begins with Mark Renton's (Ewan McGregor) narration as he and his friend Spud (Ewen Bremner) run down Princes Street pursued by security guards. Renton states that unlike people who "choose life" (children, financial stability and material possessions) he has chosen to live as a heroin addict. Renton's close circle of football enthusiast friends are introduced: amoral con artist Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), clean-cut athlete Tommy (Kevin McKidd), simpleminded, good-natured Spud (Ewen Bremner), and violent sociopath Begbie (Robert Carlyle). Sick Boy, Spud and Renton are all heroin addicts and spend their time shooting up at the flat of their drug dealer "Mother Superior" Swanney (Peter Mullan).

One day, Renton decides to quit heroin. Realizing he needs one last high he buys opium rectal suppositories from Mikey Forrester (Irvine Welsh). After this final hit (and a violent spell of diarrhea) he locks himself into a cheap hotel room to endure withdrawal. He later goes with his friends to a club, finding that his sex drive has returned and eventually leaves with a young woman named Diane (Kelly MacDonald). After sex Diane refuses to let him sleep in her room and he spends the night on a sofa in the hallway of the flat. In the morning he realizes that Diane is a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl and that her "flatmates" are actually her parents. Horrified, Renton tries to shake the incident but is forced to remain in touch after Diane blackmails him.

Tommy had been dumped by his girlfriend Lizzy after a chain of events initiated by Renton. Renton had stolen one of Tommy and Lizzy's personal sex tapes, hiding it in the case of a football video. Lizzy angrily believed that Tommy had returned their tape to the video store. Sick Boy, Spud and Renton decide to start using heroin again and a brokenhearted Tommy begins using as well, despite Renton's reluctance to get him started. One day the group's heroin-induced stupor at Swanney's flat is violently interrupted when Allison, their friend and fellow addict, discovers that her infant daughter Dawn has died from neglect. All are horrified and grief-stricken especially Sick Boy who is implied to be Dawn's father.

Renton and Spud are later caught stealing from a book shop and are pursued by security guards and arrested, as seen in the opening scene of the film. Due to prior convictions Spud goes to prison but Renton avoids punishment by entering a Drug Interventions Programme, where he is given methadone. Despite support from his family Renton is constantly depressed and bored with life and escapes to Swanney's flat where he nearly dies of an overdose (because of the leftover traces of methadone with an injection of heroin). Renton's parents take him home and lock him in his old bedroom so he can beat the addiction cold turkey. As Renton lies in his bed and goes through severe withdrawal symptoms, he hallucinates that he is seeing Diane having elicit intercourse with him, his friends giving him advice and Allison's dead baby crawling on the ceiling. The heroin withdrawal is inter-cut with a bizarre, imagined TV game show in which host Dale Winton asks Renton's parents questions about HIV. Renton is finally roused from his nightmares and hallucination by his parents who tell him he needs to get tested. Despite years of sharing syringes with other addicts Renton tests negative.

Clean of heroin, Renton is nevertheless bored and depressed, feeling that his life has no purpose. He visits Tommy in his now dark filthy flat. Tommy is now a full-on heroin addict and is now HIV Positive, on Diane's advice Renton moves to London and starts a job as a property letting agent. He begins to enjoy his new life of sobriety and saves up money on the side while corresponding with Diane. His happiness is again short-lived however. Begbie commits an armed robbery and arrives at Renton's London flat seeking a hiding place from the police. Sick Boy, who now sees himself as a well-connected pimp and drug pusher also shows up at Renton's doorstep. Renton's "mates" make his life miserable, stealing from him and wrecking his flat. Seeking to be rid of them, he puts them up in a property he is responsible for, which they use as a base to commit theft. They soon learn of Tommy's death from toxoplasmosis and travel back to Edinburgh for his funeral.

Back home, they meet Spud, who has been released from prison. Sick Boy suggests a profitable but dangerous heroin transaction. Sick Boy needs Renton's help to supply half of the initial £4,000. After the purchase, Renton injects a dose of heroin to test the purity. The four then sell the heroin to a dealer for £16,000. They go to a pub and celebrate, discussing possible plans for the money. As Begbie and Sick Boy leave to order another round of drinks, Renton suggests to Spud that they both steal the money, Spud is too frightened of Begbie to consider it. Renton, however believes that neither Sick Boy or Begbie deserve the cash. Early in the morning as the others sleep, Renton quietly takes the money, Spud sees him leave but does not tell the others. When Begbie awakens he destroys the hotel room in a violent rage which attracts the police, presumably leading to his arrest.

Renton travels to London and vows to live the stable, traditional life he described at the beginning of the film. In the final scene, Spud finds £2,000 left for him by Renton in his locker.^[3][4]

Cast[link]

• Ewan McGregor as Mark "Rent Boy" Renton
• Ewen Bremner as Daniel "Spud" Murphy
• Jonny Lee Miller as Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson
• Robert Carlyle as Francis "Franco" Begbie
• Kevin McKidd as Tommy MacKenzie
• Kelly Macdonald as Diane Coulston
• Peter Mullan as Swanney "Mother Superior"
• Eileen Nicholas as Mrs. Renton
• Susan Vidler as Allison
• Pauline Lynch as Lizzy
• Shirley Henderson as Gail
• Irvine Welsh as Mikey Forrester
• Gary Crombie as The Drug Tester
• Brianna Maja Harrington as The Baby

Production[link]

Producer Andrew Macdonald read Irvine Welsh's book on a plane in December 1993 and felt that it could be made into a film.^[5] He turned it on to director Danny Boyle and writer John Hodge in February 1994.^[6][7] Boyle was excited by its potential to be the "most energetic film you've ever seen – about something that ultimately ends up in purgatory or worse".^[6] Hodge read it and made it his goal to "produce a screenplay which would seem to have a beginning, a middle and an end, would last 90 minutes and would convey at least some of the spirit and the content of the book".^[7] Boyle convinced Welsh to let them option the rights to his book by writing him a letter stating that Hodge and Macdonald were "the two most important Scotsmen since Kenny Dalglish and Alex Ferguson".^[5] Welsh remembered that originally the people wanting to option his book "wanted to make a po-faced piece of social realism like Christiane F or The Basketball Diaries".^[5] He was impressed that Boyle, Hodge and Macdonald wanted everyone to see the film and "not just the arthouse audience".^[5] In October 1994, Hodge, Boyle and Macdonald spent a lot of time discussing which chapters of the book would and would not translate into film. Hodge finished the first draft by December.^[5] Macdonald secured financing from Channel 4, a British television station known for funding independent films.^[6]

Casting[link]

Pre-production began in April 1995 with Ewan McGregor cast in advance after impressing Boyle and Macdonald with his work on their previous film, Shallow Grave.^[5] According to Boyle, for the role of Renton, they wanted somebody who had the quality "Michael Caine's got in Alfie and Malcolm McDowell's got in A Clockwork Orange" – a repulsive character with charm "that makes you feel deeply ambiguous about what he's doing".^[6] McGregor shaved his head and lost 26 pounds for the film.^[6] Ewen Bremner had played Renton in the stage adaptation of Trainspotting and agreed to play the role of Spud. He said, "I felt that these characters were part of my heritage".^[5] Boyle had heard about Jonny Lee Miller playing an American in the film Hackers and was impressed when he auditioned by doing a Sean Connery accent.^[8] For the role of Begbie, Boyle thought about casting Christopher Eccleston because he resembled how the director imagined the character in the book, but decided to go a different route and asked Robert Carlyle instead. Carlyle said, "I've met loads of Begbies in my time. Wander round Glasgow on Saturday night and you've a good chance of running into Begbie".^[8] For the role of Diane, Boyle wanted an actress with no previous experience "so no-one would twig that a 19-year-old was playing the part" of a 14-year-old.^[8] The filmmakers sent flyers to nightclubs and boutiques and even approached people on the street, eventually hiring Kelly Macdonald.^[8]

Pre-production[link]

McGregor read books about crack and heroin to prepare for the role. He also went to Glasgow and met people from the Calton Athletic Recovery Group, an organisation of recovering heroin addicts. He was taught how to cook up heroin with a spoon using glucose powder.^[9] McGregor considered injecting heroin to better understand the character, but eventually decided against it.^[8] Many of the book's stories and characters were dropped in order to create a cohesive movie script of adequate length. Danny Boyle had his actors prepare by making them watch older movies about rebellious youths like The Hustler, The Exorcist and A Clockwork Orange. The latter film is directly homaged in the scene set in the Volcano nightclub, which is very similar to that set in the Milk Bar in Kubrick's film. Indeed, the track playing in the Volcano club is by Heaven 17, who took their name from A Clockwork Orange.

Principal photography[link]

Trainspotting was shot in the summer of 1995 over seven weeks on a budget of $2.5 million with the cast and crew working out of an abandoned cigarette factory in Glasgow. Due to a lack of budget and time constraints, most scenes were done in one take which contributed to the grungy look of the film. For example, when Renton sinks into the floor after overdosing on heroin, the crew built a platform above a trap door and lowered the actor down.^[6] The scene where Renton (McGregor) dives in a toilet is a reference to Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow. Although it looks thoroughly offputting, the faeces in the Worst Toilet in Scotland scene was actually made from chocolate. For the look of the film, Boyle was influenced by the colors of Francis Bacon's paintings, which represented "a sort of in-between land – part reality, part fantasy".^[8]

Marketing and theatrical release[link]

Macdonald worked with Miramax Films to sell the film as a British Pulp Fiction, flooding the market with postcards, posters, books, soundtrack albums, and a revamped music video for "Lust for Life" by Iggy Pop directed by Boyle.^[6]

Upon its initial release in the United States, the first 20 minutes of Trainspotting were re-edited with alternative dialogue to allow the American audience to comprehend the strong Scottish accents and slang. In addition, to ensure that the film received an R rating, Boyle trimmed two scenes: a graphic display of a syringe filled with heroin being inserted into a vein and Kelly Macdonald straddling McGregor during an orgasm.^[6] The original dialogue was later restored on the Criterion Collection laserdisc in 1997 and then on the re-release of the "Director's Cut (The Collector's Edition)" DVD in 2004.

Filming locations[link]

Despite being set in Edinburgh, almost all of the film was filmed in Glasgow, apart from the opening scenes of the film which were filmed in Edinburgh, and the final scenes which were filmed in London.^[10]

Notable locations in the film include:

• The opening scene showing Renton and Spud being chased by store detectives was filmed on Princes Street, Edinburgh.^[10] A scene showing the actual theft did not make the final cut and was filmed in the music department of the since-closed John Menzies, also on Princes Street, the store still exists but is now owned by the retail giant Next.
• The scene where the chase ends is on Calton Road,^[11] Edinburgh, near the rear entrance of Waverley Station.
• The park where Sick Boy and Renton discuss James Bond, Sean Connery, and The Name of the Rose is Rouken Glen Park in Newton Mearns, near Thornliebank. The park was also the site of the grave in Boyle's previous film, Shallow Grave.^[10]
• Corrour railway station is the setting for the "great outdoors" scene in the film.^[10]
• The flat that Renton shows the young couple around when he gets the job as an estate agent and ultimately stashes Begbie and Sick Boy in is 78A Talgarth Road in West Kensington, London, opposite West Kensington tube station.
• The scenes where they do their drug deal takes place in Bayswater. The scene where they parody the cover of The Beatles album Abbey Road takes place as they walk out of Smallbrook Mews across Craven Road to the Royal Eagle, 26–30 Craven Road, Bayswater.^[10]
• The school attended by Diane is Jordanhill in Glasgow's West End.^[10]
• The pub in which Begbie throws a pint glass off a balcony is Crosslands, located on Queen Margaret Drive, Glasgow. The pub has an oil painting depicting the scene hung in the upstairs area.

30 of the 50 locations used were in the then derelict Wills' Cigarette Factory on Alexandra Parade, Glasgow.

Soundtracks[link]

The Trainspotting soundtracks were two best-selling albums of music centred around the film. The first is a collection of songs featured in the film, while the second includes those left out from the first soundtrack and extra songs that inspired the filmmakers during production.

Reaction[link]

Trainspotting was screened at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival but was shown out of competition,^[12] according to the filmmakers, due to its subject.^[13] However, it went on to become the festival's one unqualified critical and popular hit.^[14] The film made £12 million in the domestic market and $72 million internationally.^[15] By the time it opened in North America, on 19 July 1996, the film had made more than $18 million in Britain. It initially opened in eight theaters and on its first weekend grossed $33,000 per screen.^[6] The film finally made $16.4 million in North America.^[16] Trainspotting was the highest-grossing British film of 1996, and at the time it was the fourth highest grossing British film in history.^[17]

Critical reception[link]

In Britain, Trainspotting garnered almost universal praise from critics. In his review for The Guardian, Derek Malcolm gave the film credit for actually tapping into the youth subculture of the time and felt that it was "acted out with a freedom of expression that's often astonishing.".^[18] Empire magazine gave the film five out of five stars and described the film as "something Britain can be proud of and Hollywood must be afraid of. If we Brits can make movies this good about subjects this horrific, what chance does Tinseltown have?"^[19]

American film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and praised its portrayal of addicts' experiences with each other.^[20] In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, "in McGregor ... the film has an actor whose magnetism monopolizes our attention no matter what".^[21] Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Like Scorsese and Tarantino, Boyle uses pop songs as rhapsodic mood enhancers, though in his own ravey-hypnotic style. Whether he's staging a fumbly sex montage to Sleeper's version of Atomic or having Renton go cold turkey to the ominous slow build of Underworld's Dark and Long ... Trainspotting keeps us wired to the pulse of its characters' passions".^[22] In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "Trainspotting doesn't have much narrative holding it together. Nor does it really have the dramatic range to cope with such wild extremes. Most of it sticks to the same moderate pitch, with entertainment value enhanced by Mr. Boyle's savvy use of wide angles, bright colors, attractively clean compositions and a dynamic pop score".^[23]

Rolling Stone's Peter Travers wrote, "the film's flash can't disguise the emptiness of these blasted lives. Trainspotting is 90 minutes of raw power that Boyle and a bang-on cast inject right into the vein".^[24] In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, "Without a doubt, this is the most provocative, enjoyable pop-cultural experience since Pulp Fiction".^[25] Jonathan Rosenbaum, in his review for the Chicago Reader, wrote, "Like Twister and Independence Day, this movie is a theme-park ride — though it's a much better one, basically a series of youthful thrills, spills, chills, and swerves rather than a story intended to say very much".^[26] Trainspotting has a 89% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 83 metascore on Metacritic.

Its release sparked some controversy in some countries, including Britain, Australia and the United States, as to whether it promoted drug use or not. U.S. Senator Bob Dole accused it of moral depravity and glorifying drug use during the 1996 U.S. presidential campaign, although he later admitted that he had not actually seen the film.^[27] Despite the controversy, it was widely praised and received a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay in that year's Academy Awards. Time magazine ranked Trainspotting as the third best film of 1996.^[28]

Legacy[link]

The film had an immediate impact on popular culture. In 1999, Trainspotting was ranked in the 10th spot by the British Film Institute (BFI) in its list of Top 100 British films of all time,^[29] while in 2004 the magazine Total Film named it the fourth greatest British film of all time. The Observer polled several filmmakers and film critics who voted it the best British film in the last 25 years.^[30] In 2004, the film was voted the best Scottish film of all time by the public in a poll for The List magazine.^[31] Trainspotting has since developed a cult following.^[32] It has also been recognised as an important piece of culture and film during the 1990s British cultural tour de force known as Cool Britannia. It was featured in the documentary Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop as well.

The film title is a reference to a scene in the original book (not included in the film) where Begbie and Renton meet "an auld drunkard" who turns out to be Begbie's estranged father, in the disused Leith Central railway station, which they are visiting to use as a toilet. He asks them if they are "trainspottin'."^[33]

Irvine Welsh has also stated in a Q&A that the title is a reference to people thinking trainspotting makes no sense. And he says he feels the same about heroin addicts, to non-addicts the act seems pointless. However if you take heroin, it makes absolute sense.

Some character names are alluded to in the anime Eureka Seven.

Awards[link]

Trainspotting was nominated for three British Academy Film Awards in 1995, including John Hodge for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film and Best British Film. Hodge won in his category.^[34] Hodge also won Best Screenplay from the Evening Standard British Film Awards. The film won the Golden Space Needle (the award for Best Film) at the 1996 Seattle International Film Festival. Ewan McGregor was named Best Actor from the London Film Critics Circle, BAFTA Scotland Awards, and Empire magazine.^[34] Hodge was also nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay but failed to win.

Sequel[link]

Boyle has stated his wish to make a sequel to Trainspotting which would take place nine years after the original film, based on Irvine Welsh's sequel, Porno. He was reportedly waiting until the original actors themselves aged visibly enough to portray the same characters, ravaged by time; Boyle joked that the natural vanity of actors would make it a long wait. Ewan McGregor has stated in interviews that he would not like to make a sequel, due to his preference for being remembered for the critically acclaimed first film, and not an inferior sequel.^[35]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Smith, Murray (2002). Trainspotting. BFI Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85170-870-6. 
• Welsh, Irvine (1997). Trainspotting. Minerva. ISBN 978-0-7493-8520-0. 

Further reading[link]

• Trainspotting, by Fredric Dannen, John Hodge, Barry Long, Irvine Welsh. Published by Hyperion, 1997. ISBN 0-7868-8221-2.
• Trainspotting screenplay by John Hodge
• Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting: A Reader's Guide, by Robert A. Morace. Published by Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001. ISBN 0-8264-5237-X.
• Working-class Fiction: From Chartism to Trainspotting, by Ian Haywood. Published by Northcote House in association with the British Council, 1997. ISBN 0-7463-0780-2.
• Trainspotting: Director, Danny Boyle, by Martin Stollery. Published by Longman, 2001. ISBN 0-582-45258-9.
• Welsh Warner and Cinematic Adaptation Contemporary Scottish Fictions—Film, Television, and the Novel: Film, Television and the Novel, by Duncan J. Petrie. Published by Edinburgh University Press, 2004.ISBN 0-7486-1789-2. Page 101-102.
• Screening Trainspotting Irvine Welsh, by Aaron Kelly. Published by Manchester University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-7190-6651-4.Page 68.
• Trainspotting and My Name is Joe Hooked: Drug War Films in Britain, Canada, and the U.S., by Susan C. Boyd. Published by Routledge, 2008. ISBN 0-415-95706-0. Page 169

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Trainspotting

• Trainspotting at the Internet Movie Database
• Trainspotting at AllRovi
• Trainspotting at Box Office Mojo
• Trainspotting at Rotten Tomatoes
• Trainspotting at Metacritic
• Article on Trainspotting at MetaPhilm
• Review: Trainspotting at Counter Culture
• BBC Films review – Trainspotting Definitive Edition DVD (1996)

1.

Look up train spotting in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Trainspotting may refer to:

• Trainspotting (hobby), an amateur interest in railways/railroads
• Trainspotting (novel), a 1993 novel by Irvine Welsh
  • Trainspotting (film), a 1996 film based upon the novel
    • Trainspotting (soundtrack), the soundtrack for the film
• "Trainspotting", a song by Primal Scream from their 1997 album Vanishing Point
• Trainspotting, a British television programme shown on Discovery Turbo

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

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This 16 mm spring-wound Bolex "H16" Reflex camera is a popular entry level camera used in film schools.

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects. The process of filmmaking has developed into an art form and industry.

Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating – or indoctrinating – citizens. The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue into the language of the viewer.

Films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta movement.

The origin of the name "film" comes from the fact that photographic film (also called film stock) has historically been the primary medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion picture, including picture, picture show, moving picture, photo-play and flick. A common name for film in the United States is movie, while in Europe the term film is preferred. Additional terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the cinema and the movies.

History[link]

A clip from the Charlie Chaplin silent film The Bond (1918)

Preceding film in origin by thousands of years, early plays and dances had elements common to film: scripts, sets, costumes, production, direction, actors, audiences, storyboards, and scores. Much terminology later used in film theory and criticism apply, such as mise en scene (roughly, the entire visual picture at any one time). Owing to an absence of technology for doing so, moving visual and aural images were not recorded for replaying as in film.

In the 1860s, mechanisms for producing two-dimensional drawings in motion were demonstrated with devices such as the zoetrope, mutoscope and praxinoscope. These machines were outgrowths of simple optical devices (such as magic lanterns) and would display sequences of still pictures at sufficient speed for the images on the pictures to appear to be moving, a phenomenon called persistence of vision. Naturally the images needed to be carefully designed to achieve the desired effect, and the underlying principle became the basis for the development of film animation.

With the development of celluloid film for still photography, it became possible to directly capture objects in motion in real time. An 1878 experiment by English photographer Eadweard Muybridge in the United States using 24 cameras produced a series of stereoscopic images of a galloping horse, is arguably the first "motion picture", though it was not called by this name.^[1] This technology required a person to look into a viewing machine to see the pictures which were separate paper prints attached to a drum turned by a handcrank. The pictures were shown at a variable speed of about 5 to 10 pictures per second, depending on how rapidly the crank was turned. Commercial versions of these machines were coin operated.

A frame from Roundhay Garden Scene, the world's earliest film produced using a motion picture camera, by Louis Le Prince, 1888

By the 1880s the development of the motion picture camera allowed the individual component images to be captured and stored on a single reel, and led quickly to the development of a motion picture projector to shine light through the processed and printed film and magnify these "moving picture shows" onto a screen for an entire audience. These reels, so exhibited, came to be known as "motion pictures". Early motion pictures were static shots that showed an event or action with no editing or other cinematic techniques. The first public exhibition of projected motion pictures in America was shown at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City on the 23rd of April 1896.

Ignoring W. K. L. Dickson's early sound experiments (1894), commercial motion pictures were purely visual art through the late 19th century, but these innovative silent films had gained a hold on the public imagination. Around the turn of the 20th century, films began developing a narrative structure by stringing scenes together to tell a story. The scenes were later broken up into multiple shots of varying sizes and angles. Other techniques such as camera movement were realized as effective ways to portray a story on film. Rather than leave the audience with noise of early cinema projectors, theater owners would hire a pianist or organist or a full orchestra to play music that would cover noises of projector. Eventually, musicians would start to fit the mood of the film at any given moment. By the early 1920s, most films came with a prepared list of sheet music for this purpose, with complete film scores being composed for major productions.

A shot from Georges Méliès Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902), an early narrative film.

The rise of European cinema was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I when the film industry in United States flourished with the rise of Hollywood, typified most prominently by the great innovative work of D. W. Griffith in The Birth of a Nation (1914) and Intolerance (1916). However in the 1920s, European filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, F. W. Murnau, and Fritz Lang, in many ways inspired by the meteoric war-time progress of film through Griffith, along with the contributions of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and others, quickly caught up with American film-making and continued to further advance the medium. In the 1920s, new technology allowed filmmakers to attach to each film a soundtrack of speech, music and sound effects synchronized with the action on the screen. These sound films were initially distinguished by calling them "talking pictures", or talkies.

The next major step in the development of cinema was the introduction of so-called "natural color", which meant color that was photographically recorded from nature rather than being added to black-and-white prints by hand-coloring, stencil-coloring or other arbitrary procedures, although the earliest processes typically yielded colors which were far from "natural" in appearance. While the addition of sound quickly eclipsed silent film and theater musicians, color replaced black-and-white much more gradually. The pivotal innovation was the introduction of the three-strip version of the Technicolor process, which was first used for short subjects and for isolated sequences in a few feature films released in 1934, then for an entire feature film, Becky Sharp, in 1935. The expense of the process was daunting, but continued favorable public response and enhanced box-office receipts increasingly justified the added cost. The number of films made in color slowly increased year after year.

In the early 1950s, as the proliferation of black-and-white television started seriously depressing theater attendance in the US, the use of color was seen as one way of winning back audiences. It soon became the rule rather than the exception. Some important mainstream Hollywood films were still being made in black-and-white as late as the mid-1960s, but they marked the end of an era. Color television receivers had been available in the US since the mid-1950s, but at first they were very expensive and few broadcasts were in color. During the 1960s, prices gradually came down, color broadcasts became common, and the sale of color television sets boomed. The strong preference of the general public for color was obvious. After the final flurry of black-and-white film releases in mid-decade, all major Hollywood studio film production was exclusively in color, with rare exceptions reluctantly made only at the insistence of "star" directors such as Peter Bogdanovich and Martin Scorsese.

Since the decline of the studio system in the 1960s, the succeeding decades saw changes in the production and style of film. Various New Wave movements (including the French New Wave, Indian New Wave, Japanese New Wave and New Hollywood) and the rise of film school educated independent filmmakers were all part of the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of the 20th century. Digital technology has been the driving force in change throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s. 3D technology increased in usage and has become more popular since the early 2010s.

Theory[link]

Film theory seeks to develop concise and systematic concepts that apply to the study of film as art. It was started by Ricciotto Canudo's The Birth of the Sixth Art. Formalist film theory, led by Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs, and Siegfried Kracauer, emphasized how film differed from reality, and thus could be considered a valid fine art. André Bazin reacted against this theory by arguing that film's artistic essence lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality not in its differences from reality, and this gave rise to realist theory. More recent analysis spurred by Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis and Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotics among other things has given rise to psychoanalytical film theory, structuralist film theory, feminist film theory and others. On the other hand, critics from the analytical philosophy tradition, influenced by Wittgenstein, try to clarify misconceptions used in theoretical studies and produce analysis of a film's vocabulary and its link to a form of life.

Language[link]

Film is considered to have its own language. James Monaco wrote a classic text on film theory titled "How to Read a Film". Director Ingmar Bergman famously said, "[Andrei] Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream." Examples of the language are a sequence of back and forth images of one actor's left profile speaking, followed by another actor's right profile speaking, then a repetition of this, which is a language understood by the audience to indicate a conversation. Another example is zooming in on the forehead of an actor with an expression of silent reflection, then changing to a scene of a younger actor who vaguely resembles the first actor, indicating the first actor is having a memory of their own past.

Montage[link]

Parallels to musical counterpoint have been developed into a theory of montage, extended from the complex superimposition of images in early silent film^{[citation needed]} to even more complex incorporation of musical counterpoint together with visual counterpoint through mise en scene and editing, as in a ballet or opera; e.g., as illustrated in the gang fight scene of director Francis Ford Coppola’s film, Rumble Fish.

Criticism[link]

Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films. In general, these works can be divided into two categories: academic criticism by film scholars and journalistic film criticism that appears regularly in newspapers and other media.

Film critics working for newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media mainly review new releases. Normally they only see any given film once and have only a day or two to formulate opinions. Despite this, critics have an important impact on films, especially those of certain genres. Mass marketed action, horror, and comedy films tend not to be greatly affected by a critic's overall judgment of a film. The plot summary and description of a film that makes up the majority of any film review can still have an important impact on whether people decide to see a film. For prestige films such as most dramas, the influence of reviews is extremely important. Poor reviews will often doom a film to obscurity and financial loss.

The impact of a reviewer on a given film's box office performance is a matter of debate. Some claim that movie marketing is now so intense and well financed that reviewers cannot make an impact against it. However, the cataclysmic failure of some heavily promoted movies which were harshly reviewed, as well as the unexpected success of critically praised independent movies indicates that extreme critical reactions can have considerable influence. Others note that positive film reviews have been shown to spark interest in little-known films. Conversely, there have been several films in which film companies have so little confidence that they refuse to give reviewers an advanced viewing to avoid widespread panning of the film. However, this usually backfires as reviewers are wise to the tactic and warn the public that the film may not be worth seeing and the films often do poorly as a result.

It is argued that journalist film critics should only be known as film reviewers, and true film critics are those who take a more academic approach to films. This line of work is more often known as film theory or film studies. These film critics attempt to come to understand how film and filming techniques work, and what effect they have on people. Rather than having their works published in newspapers or appear on television, their articles are published in scholarly journals, or sometimes in up-market magazines. They also tend to be affiliated with colleges or universities.

Industry[link]

Cate Blanchett at the Berlin International Film Festival. Around 20,000 professionals from over 130 countries attend the event in Berlin.

The making and showing of motion pictures became a source of profit almost as soon as the process was invented. Upon seeing how successful their new invention, and its product, was in their native France, the Lumières quickly set about touring the Continent to exhibit the first films privately to royalty and publicly to the masses. In each country, they would normally add new, local scenes to their catalogue and, quickly enough, found local entrepreneurs in the various countries of Europe to buy their equipment and photograph, export, import and screen additional product commercially. The Oberammergau Passion Play of 1898^{[citation needed]} was the first commercial motion picture ever produced. Other pictures soon followed, and motion pictures became a separate industry that overshadowed the vaudeville world. Dedicated theaters and companies formed specifically to produce and distribute films, while motion picture actors became major celebrities and commanded huge fees for their performances. By 1917 Charlie Chaplin had a contract that called for an annual salary of one million dollars.

From 1931 to 1956, film was also the only image storage and playback system for television programming until the introduction of videotape recorders.

In the United States today, much of the film industry is centered around Hollywood. Other regional centers exist in many parts of the world, such as Mumbai-centered Bollywood, the Indian film industry's Hindi cinema which produces the largest number of films in the world.^[2] Whether the ten thousand-plus feature length films a year produced by the Valley pornographic film industry should qualify for this title is the source of some debate.^{[citation needed]} Though the expense involved in making movies has led cinema production to concentrate under the auspices of movie studios, recent advances in affordable film making equipment have allowed independent film productions to flourish.

Profit is a key force in the industry, due to the costly and risky nature of filmmaking; many films have large cost overruns, a notorious example being Kevin Costner's Waterworld. Yet many filmmakers strive to create works of lasting social significance. The Academy Awards (also known as "the Oscars") are the most prominent film awards in the United States, providing recognition each year to films, ostensibly based on their artistic merits.

There is also a large industry for educational and instructional films made in lieu of or in addition to lectures and texts.

Associated fields[link]

Derivative academic Fields of study may both interact with and develop independently of filmmaking, as in film theory and analysis. Fields of academic study have been created that are derivative or dependent on the existence of film, such as film criticism, film history, divisions of film propaganda in authoritarian governments, or psychological on subliminal effects of a flashing soda can during a screening. These fields may further create derivative fields, such as a movie review section in a newspaper or a television guide. Sub-industries can spin off from film, such as popcorn makers, and toys. Sub- industries of pre-existing industries may deal specifically with film, such as product placement in advertising.

Terminology used[link]

Although the words "film" and "movie" are sometimes used interchangeably, "film" is more often used when considering artistic, theoretical, or technical aspects, as studies in a university class and "movies" more often refers to entertainment or commercial aspects, as where to go for fun on a date. For example, a book titled "How to Read a Film" would be about the aesthetics or theory of film, while "Lets Go to the Movies" would be about the history of entertaining movies. "Motion pictures" or "Moving pictures" are films and movies. A "DVD" is a digital format which may be used to reproduce an analog film, while "videotape" ("video") was for many decades a solely analog medium onto which moving images could be recorded and electronically (rather than optically) reproduced. Strictly speaking, "Film" refers to the media onto which a visual image is shot, and to this end it may seem improper for work in other "moving image" media to be referred to as a "film" and the action of shooting as "filming", though these terms are still in general use. "Silent films" need not be silent, but are films and movies without an audible dialogue, though they may have a musical soundtrack. "Talkies" refers to early movies or films having audible dialogue or analog sound, not just a musical accompaniment. "Cinema" either broadly encompasses both films and movies, or is roughly synonymous with "Film", both capitalized when referring to a category of art. The "silver screen" refers to classic black-and-white films before color, not to contemporary films without color.

The expression "Sight and Sound", as in the film journal of the same name, means "film". The following icons mean film: a "candle and bell", as in the films Tarkovsky, of a segment of film stock, or a two faced Janus image, and an image of a movie camera in profile.

"Widescreen" and "Cinemascope" refers to a larger width to height in the frame, compared to an earlier historic aspect ratios.^[3] A "feature length film", or "feature film", is of a conventional full length, usually 60 minutes or more, and can commercially stand by itself without other films in a ticketed screening.^[4] A "short" is a film that is not as long as a feature length film, usually screened with other shorts, or preceding a feature length film. An "independent" is a film made outside of the conventional film industry.

A "screening" or "projection" is the projection of a film or video on a screen at a public or private theater, usually but not always of a film, but of a video or DVD when of sufficient projection quality. A "double feature" is a screening of two independent, stand-alone, feature films. A "viewing" is a watching of a film. A "showing" is a screening or viewing on an electronic monitor. "Sales" refers to tickets sold at a theater, or more currently, rights sold for individual showings. A "release" is the distribution and often simultaneous screening of a film. A "preview" is a screening in advance of the main release.

"Hollywood" may be used either as a pejorative adjective, shorthand for asserting an overly commercial rather than artistic intent or outcome, as in "too Hollywood", or as a descriptive adjective to refer to a film originating with people who ordinarily work near Los Angeles.

Expressions for Genres of film are sometimes used interchangeably for "film" in a specific context, such as a "porn" for a film with explicit sexual content, or "cheese" for films that are light, entertaining and not highbrow.

Any film may also have a "sequel", which portrays events following those in the film. Bride of Frankenstein is an early example. When there are a number of films with the same characters, we have a "series", such as the James Bond series. A film which portrays events that occur earlier than those in another film, but is released after that film, is sometimes called a "prequel", an example being Butch and Sundance: The Early Days.

Credits is a list of the people involved in making the film. Before the 1970s, credits were usually at the beginning of a film. Since then, the credits roll at the end of most films.

A Post-credits scene is a scene shown after the end of the credits. Ferris Bueller's Day Off has a post-credit scene in which Ferris tells the audience that the movie is over and they should go home.

Preview[link]

A preview performance refers to a showing of a movie to a select audience, usually for the purposes of corporate promotions, before the public film premiere itself. Previews are sometimes used to judge audience reaction, which if unexpectedly negative, may result in recutting or even refilming certain sections (Audience response).

Trailer[link]

Trailers or previews are film advertisements for films that will be exhibited in the future at a cinema, on whose screen they are shown. The term "trailer" comes from their having originally been shown at the end of a film programme. That practice did not last long, because patrons tended to leave the theater after the films ended, but the name has stuck. Trailers are now shown before the film (or the A movie in a double feature program) begins.

Film, or other art form?[link]

Film may be combined with performance art and still be considered or referred to as a "film", for instance, when there is a live musical accompaniment to a silent film. Another example is audience participation films, as at a midnight movies screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where the audience dresses up in costume from the film and loudly does a karaoke-like reenactment along with the film. Performance art where film is incorporated as a component is usually not called film, but a film, which could stand-alone but is accompanied by a performance may still be referred to as a film.

The act of making a film can, in and of itself, be considered a work of art, on a different level from the film itself, as in the films of Werner Herzog.

Similarly, the playing of a film can be considered to fall within the realm of political protest art, as in the subtleties within the films of Tarkovsky. A "road movie" can refer to a film put together from footage from a long road trip or vacation.

Education and propaganda[link]

Film is used for education and propaganda. When the purpose is primarily educational, a film is called an "educational film". Examples are recordings of lectures and experiments, or more marginally, a film based on a classic novel.

Film may be propaganda, in whole or in part, such as the films made by Leni Riefenstahl in Nazi Germany, US war film trailers during World War II, or artistic films made under Stalin by Eisenstein. They may also be works of political protest, as in the films of Wajda, or more subtly, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky.

The same film may be considered educational by some, and propaganda by others, such as some of the films of Michael Moore.

Production[link]

At its core, the means to produce a film depend on the content the filmmaker wishes to show, and the apparatus for displaying it: the zoetrope merely requires a series of images on a strip of paper. Film production can therefore take as little as one person with a camera (or without it, such as Stan Brakhage's 1963 film Mothlight), or thousands of actors, extras and crewmembers for a live-action, feature-length epic.

The necessary steps for almost any film can be boiled down to conception, planning, execution, revision, and distribution. The more involved the production, the more significant each of the steps becomes. In a typical production cycle of a Hollywood-style film, these main stages are defined as:

1. Development
2. Pre-production
3. Production
4. Post-production
5. Distribution

This production cycle usually takes three years. The first year is taken up with development. The second year comprises preproduction and production. The third year, post-production and distribution.

The bigger the production, the more resources it takes, and the more important financing becomes; most feature films are not only artistic works, but for-profit business entities.

Crew[link]

A film crew is a group of people hired by a film company, employed during the "production" or "photography" phase, for the purpose of producing a film or motion picture. Crew are distinguished from cast, the actors who appear in front of the camera or provide voices for characters in the film. The crew interacts with but is also distinct from the production staff, consisting of producers, managers, company representatives, their assistants, and those whose primary responsibility falls in pre-production or post-production phases, such as writers and editors. Communication between production and crew generally passes through the director and his/her staff of assistants. Medium-to-large crews are generally divided into departments with well defined hierarchies and standards for interaction and cooperation between the departments. Other than acting, the crew handles everything in the photography phase: props and costumes, shooting, sound, electrics (i.e., lights), sets, and production special effects. Caterers (known in the film industry as "craft services") are usually not considered part of the crew.

Technology[link]

Film stock consists of transparent celluloid, acetate, or polyester base coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive chemicals. Cellulose nitrate was the first type of film base used to record motion pictures, but due to its flammability was eventually replaced by safer materials. Stock widths and the film format for images on the reel have had a rich history, though most large commercial films are still shot on (and distributed to theaters) as 35 mm prints.

Originally moving picture film was shot and projected at various speeds using hand-cranked cameras and projectors; though 1000 frames per minute (16⅔ frame/s) is generally cited as a standard silent speed, research indicates most films were shot between 16 frame/s and 23 frame/s and projected from 18 frame/s on up (often reels included instructions on how fast each scene should be shown).^[5] When sound film was introduced in the late 1920s, a constant speed was required for the sound head. 24 frames per second was chosen because it was the slowest (and thus cheapest) speed which allowed for sufficient sound quality. Improvements since the late 19th century include the mechanization of cameras – allowing them to record at a consistent speed, quiet camera design – allowing sound recorded on-set to be usable without requiring large "blimps" to encase the camera, the invention of more sophisticated filmstocks and lenses, allowing directors to film in increasingly dim conditions, and the development of synchronized sound, allowing sound to be recorded at exactly the same speed as its corresponding action. The soundtrack can be recorded separately from shooting the film, but for live-action pictures many parts of the soundtrack are usually recorded simultaneously.

As a medium, film is not limited to motion pictures, since the technology developed as the basis for photography. It can be used to present a progressive sequence of still images in the form of a slideshow. Film has also been incorporated into multimedia presentations, and often has importance as primary historical documentation. However, historic films have problems in terms of preservation and storage, and the motion picture industry is exploring many alternatives. Most movies on cellulose nitrate base have been copied onto modern safety films. Some studios save color films through the use of separation masters: three B&W negatives each exposed through red, green, or blue filters (essentially a reverse of the Technicolor process). Digital methods have also been used to restore films, although their continued obsolescence cycle makes them (as of 2006) a poor choice for long-term preservation. Film preservation of decaying film stock is a matter of concern to both film historians and archivists, and to companies interested in preserving their existing products in order to make them available to future generations (and thereby increase revenue). Preservation is generally a higher concern for nitrate and single-strip color films, due to their high decay rates; black-and-white films on safety bases and color films preserved on Technicolor imbibition prints tend to keep up much better, assuming proper handling and storage.

Some films in recent decades have been recorded using analog video technology similar to that used in television production. Modern digital video cameras and digital projectors are gaining ground as well. These approaches are preferred by some moviemakers, especially because footage shot with digital cinema can be evaluated and edited with non-linear editing systems (NLE) without waiting for the film stock to be processed. Yet the migration is gradual, and as of 2005 most major motion pictures are still shot on film.

Independent[link]

Independent filmmaking often takes place outside of Hollywood, or other major studio systems. An independent film (or indie film) is a film initially produced without financing or distribution from a major movie studio. Creative, business, and technological reasons have all contributed to the growth of the indie film scene in the late 20th and early 21st century.

The Lumière Brothers

On the business side, the costs of big-budget studio films also leads to conservative choices in cast and crew. There is a trend in Hollywood towards co-financing (over two-thirds of the films put out by Warner Bros. in 2000 were joint ventures, up from 10% in 1987).^[6] A hopeful director is almost never given the opportunity to get a job on a big-budget studio film unless he or she has significant industry experience in film or television. Also, the studios rarely produce films with unknown actors, particularly in lead roles.

Before the advent of digital alternatives, the cost of professional film equipment and stock was also a hurdle to being able to produce, direct, or star in a traditional studio film.

But the advent of consumer camcorders in 1985, and more importantly, the arrival of high-resolution digital video in the early 1990s, have lowered the technology barrier to movie production significantly. Both production and post-production costs have been significantly lowered; today, the hardware and software for post-production can be installed in a commodity-based personal computer. Technologies such as DVDs, FireWire connections and non-linear editing system pro-level software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas and Apple's Final Cut Pro, and consumer level software such as Apple's Final Cut Express and iMovie, and Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker make movie-making relatively inexpensive.

Since the introduction of DV technology, the means of production have become more democratized. Filmmakers can conceivably shoot and edit a movie, create and edit the sound and music, and mix the final cut on a home computer. However, while the means of production may be democratized, financing, distribution, and marketing remain difficult to accomplish outside the traditional system. Most independent filmmakers rely on film festivals to get their films noticed and sold for distribution. The arrival of internet-based video outlets such as YouTube and Veoh has further changed the film making landscape in ways that are still to be determined.

Open content film[link]

An open content film is much like an independent film, but it is produced through open collaborations; its source material is available under a license which is permissive enough to allow other parties to create fan fiction or derivative works, than a traditional copyright. Like independent filmmaking, open source filmmaking takes place outside of Hollywood, or other major studio systems.

Fan film[link]

A fan film is a film or video inspired by a film, television program, comic book or a similar source, created by fans rather than by the source's copyright holders or creators. Fan filmmakers have traditionally been amateurs, but some of the more notable films have actually been produced by professional filmmakers as film school class projects or as demonstration reels. Fan films vary tremendously in length, from short faux-teaser trailers for non-existent motion pictures to rarer full-length motion pictures.

Distribution[link]

When it is initially produced, a feature film is often shown to audiences in a movie theater or cinema. The identity of the first theater designed specifically for cinema is a matter of debate; candidates include Tally's Electric Theatre, established 1902 in Los Angeles,^[7] and Pittsburgh's Nickelodeon, established 1905.^[8] Thousands of such theaters were built or converted from existing facilities within a few years.^[9] In the United States, these theaters came to be known as nickelodeons, because admission typically cost a nickel (five cents).

Typically, one film is the featured presentation (or feature film). Before the 1970s, there were "double features"; typically, a high quality "A picture" rented by an independent theater for a lump sum, and a "B picture" of lower quality rented for a percentage of the gross receipts. Today, the bulk of the material shown before the feature film consists of previews for upcoming movies and paid advertisements (also known as trailers or "The Twenty").

Historically, all mass marketed feature films were made to be shown in movie theaters. The development of television has allowed films to be broadcast to larger audiences, usually after the film is no longer being shown in theaters.^{[citation needed]} In 1967, videocassettes of movies became available to consumers to watch in their own homes.^[10] Recording technology has since enabled consumers to rent or buy copies of films on VHS or DVD (and the older formats of laserdisc, VCD and SelectaVision – see also videodisc), and Internet downloads may be available and have started to become revenue sources for the film companies. Some films are now made specifically for these other venues, being released as a television movie or direct-to-video movies. The production values on these films are often considered to be of inferior quality compared to theatrical releases in similar genres, and indeed, some films that are rejected by their own movie studios upon completion are distributed through these markets.

The movie theater pays an average of about 50-55% of its ticket sales to the movie studio, as film rental fees.^[11] The actual percentage starts with a number higher than that, and decreases as the duration of a film's showing continues, as an incentive to theaters to keep movies in the theater longer. However, today's barrage of highly marketed movies ensures that most movies are shown in first-run theaters for less than 8 weeks. There are a few movies every year that defy this rule, often limited-release movies that start in only a few theaters and actually grow their theater count through good word-of-mouth and reviews. According to a 2000 study by ABN AMRO, about 26% of Hollywood movie studios' worldwide income came from box office ticket sales; 46% came from VHS and DVD sales to consumers; and 28% came from television (broadcast, cable, and pay-per-view).^[11]

This section requires expansion with: optical disc distribution.

Animation[link]

Animation is the technique in which each frame of a film is produced individually, whether generated as a computer graphic, or by photographing a drawn image, or by repeatedly making small changes to a model unit (see claymation and stop motion), and then photographing the result with a special animation camera. When the frames are strung together and the resulting film is viewed at a speed of 16 or more frames per second, there is an illusion of continuous movement (due to the persistence of vision). Generating such a film is very labor intensive and tedious, though the development of computer animation has greatly sped up the process.

Because animation is very time-consuming and often very expensive to produce, the majority of animation for TV and movies comes from professional animation studios. However, the field of independent animation has existed at least since the 1950s, with animation being produced by independent studios (and sometimes by a single person). Several independent animation producers have gone on to enter the professional animation industry.

Limited animation is a way of increasing production and decreasing costs of animation by using "short cuts" in the animation process. This method was pioneered by UPA and popularized by Hanna-Barbera, and adapted by other studios as cartoons moved from movie theaters to television.^[12]

Although most animation studios are now using digital technologies in their productions, there is a specific style of animation that depends on film. Cameraless animation, made famous by moviemakers like Norman McLaren, Len Lye and Stan Brakhage, is painted and drawn directly onto pieces of film, and then run through a projector.

Future state[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

While motion picture films have been around for more than a century, film is still a relative newcomer in the pantheon^{[clarification needed]} of fine arts. In the 1950s, when television became widely available, industry analysts^[who?] predicted the demise of local movie theaters.^{[citation needed]} Despite competition from television's increasing technological sophistication over the 1960s and 1970s^{[citation needed]} such as the development of color television and large screens, motion picture cinemas continued. In fact with the rise of television's predominance, film began to become more respected as an artistic medium by contrast due the low general opinion of the quality of average television content.^{[citation needed]} In the 1980s, when the widespread availability of inexpensive videocassette recorders enabled people to select films for home viewing, industry analysts again wrongly predicted the death of the local cinemas.^{[citation needed]}

In the 1990s and 2000s, the development of DVD players, home theater amplification systems with surround sound and subwoofers, and large LCD or plasma screens enabled people to select and view films at home with greatly improved audio and visual reproduction.^{[citation needed]} These new technologies provided audio and visual that in the past only local cinemas had been able to provide: a large, clear widescreen presentation of a film with a full-range, high-quality multi-speaker sound system. Once again industry analysts predicted the demise of the local cinema. Local cinemas will be changing in the 21st century and moving towards digital screens, a new approach which will allow for easier and quicker distribution of films (via satellite or hard disks), a development which may give local theaters a reprieve from their predicted demise.^{[citation needed]} The cinema now faces a new challenge from home video by the likes of a new high definition (HD) format, Blu-ray, which can provide full HD 1080p video playback at near cinema quality.^{[citation needed]} Video formats are gradually catching up with the resolutions and quality that film offers; 1080p in Blu-ray offers a pixel resolution of 1920×1080, a leap from the DVD offering of 720×480 and the 330×480 offered by the first home video standard, VHS.^{[citation needed]} Ultra HD, a future digital video format, will offer a resolution of 7680×4320. However, the nature and structure of film prevents an apples-to-apples comparison with regard to resolution.^[13] The resolving power of film, and its ability to capture an image which can later be scanned to a digital format, will ensure that film remains a viable medium for some time to come.^{[citation needed]} Currently the super-16 format is seeing use as a capture medium, with digital scanning and post-production providing good results.^[14][15] Despite advances in digital capture, film still offers unsurpassed ability to capture fine detail beyond what is possible with digital image sensors. A 35 mm film frame, with proper exposure and processing, still offers an equivalent resolution in the range of 500 mega pixels.^[13]

Despite the rise of all-new technologies, the development of the home video market and a surge of online copyright infringement, 2007 was a record year in film that showed the highest ever box-office grosses. Many^[who?] expected film to suffer as a result of the effects listed above but it has flourished, strengthening film studio expectations for the future.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

• Genre
• Fiction film basic genre
• Documentary basic genre
• Docufiction hybrid genre

• Lists

Film portal

• List of film awards
• List of film festivals
• List of film journals and magazines
• List of film topics
• List of video-related topics
• List of years in film
• Lists of films

Related topics

• Cinematic techniques
• Digital cinema
• Lost film
• Web film

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

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