Film Trivia | 100 did you know facts & trivia about Films [Part 1]

Film is a popular visual art form. For many people is the main entertainment and it rivals, in the preference lists, theater and music.

So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about Film!

Film is also called movie or motion picture
It is also the Seventh Art
Film is a visual art-form used to simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty or atmosphere
It uses the means of recorded or programmed moving images, along with sound
The word “cinema” is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry
The word “cinema”, also, refers to the art form that is the result of it
The term is short for cinematography
The moving images of a film are created with four unique techniques
The first one is by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera
The second one is by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques
The third is by means of CGI and computer animation
And, finally, by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and other visual effects
Films were recorded onto celluloid film
They were recorde through a photochemical process
Then, film was shown through a movie projector onto a large screen
Contemporary films are often fully digital through the entire process of production, distribution, and exhibition
Films recorded in a photochemical form traditionally included an analogous optical soundtrack
This is a graphic recording of the spoken words, music and other sounds that accompany the images which runs along a portion of the film exclusively reserved for it
This soundtrack is not projected
Films are considered as cultural artifacts created by specific cultures
They reflect those cultures and affect them in some capacity
Film is considered to be an important art form
It is, also, a source of popular entertainment
Film is a powerful medium for educating or indoctrinating citizens
The visual basis of film gives it a universal power of communication
Some films have become popular worldwide attractions through the use of dubbing or subtitles
Dubbing and subtitles is used as means to translate the dialog into other languages
The individual images that make up a film are called frames
In the projection of traditional celluloid films, a rotating shutter causes intervals of darkness as each frame is moved into position to be projected
The viewer, though, does not notice the interruptions because of an effect known as persistence of vision
In this effect, the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after its source disappears
The perception of motion is partly due to a psychological effect called the phi phenomenon
The name “film” originates from the fact that photographic film has historically been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures
Many other terms exist for an individual motion-picture
These terms include picture, picture show, moving picture, photoplay, and flick
The most common term in the United States is movie
In Europe, the most used term is film
Common terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the movies, and cinema
Cinema is commonly used, as an overarching term, in scholarly texts and critical essays
In the early years of the medium the word sheet was sometimes used instead of screen
By the end of the 1880s, the introduction of lengths of celluloid photographic film and the invention of motion picture cameras, which could photograph an indefinitely long rapid sequence of images using only one lens, allowed several minutes of action to be captured and stored on a single compact reel of film
Some early films were made to be viewed by one person at a time
A person could watch this film through a “peep show” device such as the Kinetoscope and the mutoscope
Others were intended for a projector
This projector was techanically similar to the camera and sometimes actually the same machine
It was used to shine an intense light through the processed and printed film and into a projection lens
With that technique these “moving pictures” could be shown tremendously enlarged on a screen for viewing by an entire audience
The first kinetoscope film shown in public exhibition was Blacksmith Scene
The film was produced by Edison Manufacturing Company in 1893
The following year the company would begin Edison Studios
It, later, became an early leader in the film industry with notable early shorts including The Kiss
The Edison Studios would go on to produce close to 1.200 films
The first public screenings of films at which admission was charged were made in 1895 by the American Woodville Latham and his sons
In this screening, they used films produced by their Eidoloscope company, and by the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière
In that screening ten of the French brothers own productions were shown
Private screenings had preceded these by several months
Latham’s screening slightly predating the Lumière brothers’ one
The earliest films were simply one static shot that showed an event or action with no editing or other cinematic techniques
Close to the turn of the 20th century, films started stringing several scenes together to tell a story
The scenes were later broken up into multiple shots photographed from different distances and angles
Other techniques such as camera movement were developed as effective ways to tell a story with film
Until the advent of sound to film in the late 1920s, motion pictures were a purely visual art
These innovative silent films had gained a hold on the public imagination
Rather than leave audiences with only the noise of the projector as an accompaniment, theater owners hired a pianist or organist or a full orchestra to play music that fit the mood of the film at any given moment
A full orchestra was used at large urban theaters
By the early 1920s, most films came with a prepared list of sheet music to be used for this purpose
This was the start of composing complete film scores for major productions
The rise of European cinema was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I
The film industry in the United States flourished with the rise of Hollywood
This rise was typified most prominently by the innovative work of D. W. Griffith in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916)
In the 1920s, European filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, along with the contributions of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and others, quickly caught up with American film-making
They continued to further advance the medium
These “pioneers” were in many ways inspired by the meteoric wartime progress of film through Griffith
In the 1920s, the development of electronic sound recording technologies made it practical to incorporate a soundtrack of speech, music and sound effects
These sound effects could be synchronized with the action on the screen
The resulting sound films were initially distinguished from the usual silent “moving pictures” or “movies” by calling them “talking pictures” or “talkies”
The revolution they wrought was earth-shattering
By 1930, silent film was practically extinct in the US
The silent film was already being referred to as “the old medium”
Another major technological development was the introduction of “natural color”
This term meant color that was photographically recorded from nature rather than added to black-and-white prints by hand-coloring, stencil-coloring or other arbitrary procedures
The earliest processes typically yielded colors which were far from “natural” in appearance
Color replaced black-and-white film much more gradually than “talkies” replaced “silent film”
The pivotal innovation was the introduction of the three-strip version of the Technicolor process
This was first used for animated cartoons in 1932
Then, it was used for live-action short films and isolated sequences in a few feature films
The first feature lenght film to use this technique was Becky Sharp, in 1935
The expense of the process was daunting, but favorable public response in the form of increased box office receipts usually justified the added cost
The number of films made in color slowly increased year after year
In the early 1950s, the proliferation of black-and-white television started seriously depressing North American theater attendance
In an attempt to lure audiences back into theaters, bigger screens were installed, widescreen processes, polarized 3D projection, and stereophonic sound were introduced
More films were made in color, which soon became the rule rather than the exception
Thought, some important mainstream Hollywood films were still being made in black-and-white as late as the mid-1960s
After the final flurry of black-and-white films had been released in mid-decade, all Hollywood studio productions were filmed in color
Some exceptions were made only at the insistence of well-known filmmakers such as Peter Bogdanovich and Martin Scorsese
The decades following the decline of the studio system in the 1960s saw changes in the production and style of film
Various New Wave movements and the rise of film-school-educated independent filmmakers contributed to the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of the 20th century
Digital technology has been the driving force for change throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s
Digital 3D projection largely replaced earlier problem-prone 3D film systems
It has become popular in the early 2010s