The desire to recreate the imagery of life is one innate to humanity; some scholars believe it dates back to the earliest cave paintings made thousands of years ago by our first ancestors. Cinema is the culmination of that desire. As Jean-Luc Godard said, it is the "gesamtkunstwerk," or total artwork; the narrative of literature, the performance of theater, the sound of music.

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However, in the 100+ years it has existed, filmmaking has been a constantly evolving technology. Here are some goalposts for major points of advancement.

10 "The Great Train Robbery" Invented Modern Editing Techniques

Great Train Robbery

About a decade into the existence of filmmaking, Edwin S. Porter developed cinematic storytelling techniques which persist a century onward. His 1903 short, The Great Train Robbery, was the beginning of the narrative film—it's not a coincidence that Hollywood spent so many decades making Westerns in the vein of this one.

Aside from on-location shooting and camera pans, Porter understood that editing is the fundamental storytelling tool of film. Thus, he was one of the first to use the "cross-cutting" technique, or cutting back and forth between two scenes set in different locations to indicate that they are happening simultaneously.

9 Animation Was Born With "Fantasmagorie"

Fantasmagorie

Some might argue that animation is a step backward from filmmaking's goal of representing life. After all, it has more in common with painting than with photography, for the images of animation are inherently artificial.

That said, animation has undeniably become an influential part of filmmaking and produced many great works. That can all be traced to 1908 when Émile Cohl made "Fantasmagorie," considered by historians as the first animated feature.

8 "The Gulf Between" Introduced Technicolor To Cinema

The Gulf Between

 

Color was first brought to film in 1906 with Kinemacolor, developed by George Albert Smith. However, it was ultimately Technicolor that captured Hollywood and became the default process for creating the earliest color films. The first one was made in 1917, in an hour-long dramedy titled The Gulf Between.

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Directed by Wray Physioc, the film has been tragically lost to time. Still, as the first Technicolor film, its influence stands as incalculable; the first Technicolor masterpiece The Wizard Of Oz can draw its lineage to The Gulf Between.

7 "The Jazz Singer" Was The First Sound Picture

Jack performs on stage in The Jazz Singer

The introduction of sound to cinema was very controversial in its day, yet it unquestionably made films more immersive and complete. After all, sound is such a fundamental part of the human experience that it encapsulates one of our five senses. The first "talkie" was the 1927 Al Jolson vehicle The Jazz Singer. The movie only features sound during its musical numbers, but this still makes a crucial ancestor of modern film, where sound reigns supreme.

Be warned, the film is far from racially sensitive—it includes scenes of Jolson performing in blackface. This puts The Jazz Singer in the same boat as The Birth Of A Nation—so technically innovative it can't be forgotten by history, but morally unconscionable.

6 The Split Diopter Was Invented On Production Of "The Long Voyage Home"

Long Voyage Home

In 1941, cinematographer Greg Toland helped change filmmaking forever with Citizen Kane. A year earlier, however, he had a much more precise impact on filmmaking during the production of John Ford's The Long Voyage Home.

Specifically, he developed a split diopter lens—a unique lens that results in a shallow focus on half of the frame, and a deep focus on the other. This allows two subjects in different planes of vision to simultaneously be in focus and has been used in countless films since.

5 "The Thief Of Bagdad" Features The First Blue Screen

Thief Of Bagdad

Part of the draw of movies has always been fantasy and exoticism; cinema can give audiences a peek into worlds or adventures which are impractical to visit at best, impossible to experience at worst. In early films, creating these fantastical settings with bank-breaking location shoots was accomplished by matte paintings. Nowadays, this process has been digitized with blue/green screen technology.

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The first film to use such technology was the 1940 Technicolor fantasy The Thief Of Bagdad, co-directed by Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, and Ludwig Berger.

4 "Tron" Planted The Seeds For The CGI Revolution

Tron Scene

Look at recent film history, and the digitalization of the entire process of filmmaking seems like a rising tidal wave impossible to be beat back. One of the key moments that marked this transition was the 1982 Steven Lisberger film, Tron.

Out of its 96-minute runtime, 15 minutes worth of footage in Tron is computer-generated. CGI may be ubiquitous in 2020s' filmmaking, but the ground had to be broken somewhere. A film set inside a digital world is an appropriate place for it.

3 The First Film Shot Digitally Was "Rainbow"

Rainbow

The late Bob Hoskins will no doubt be remembered primarily as an actor, but his turn behind the camera might have been more significant for filmmaking as a whole. His 1996 debut, Rainbow, was not only shot on digital video but had all of its post-production work completed digitally as well.

Two years later, the 1998 film The Last Broadcast became the first film made with consumer-level digital technology. This reflects one of the benefits of digital filmmaking—it's easier to make films for those with less experience or fewer means. While Rainbow and The Last Broadcast have been mostly forgotten, they unearthed a whole new method for making movies.

2 "Toy Story" Revolutionized Animation

Woody hugging Buzz in Toy Story 1995

The digital revolution didn't stay within the confines of live-action film. In 1995, Pixar released the first 3D Animated film, Toy Story—acclaimed in its day and now remembered as a classic, Toy Story made Pixar the leading voice in animation.

The implementation of computer animation to emulate three dimensions brought animation closer to reality. In a tragic case of "win some, lose some," though, the dominance of computer animation brought about the downfall, if not extinction, of traditional hand-drawn animation in Hollywood.

1 "The Phantom Menace" Features The First Mo-Cap Character

Jar Jar Binks Final Image From Star Wars

Motion-capture melds the digital and practical sides of filmmaking more than any other technology; digital characters are not created wholesale, but by emulating a physical being. The first film to utilize this technique was Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace; George Lucas is a huge proponent of digital filmmaking and, not surprisingly, turned to computer animation to render parts of the Galaxy Far, Far Away.

While Episode I met muted responses and the mo-capped Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best) was panned, this wasn't the end for mo-cap. Soon after, Peter Jackson used the same technology to bring Gollum (Andy Serkis) to life in The Lord Of The Rings. Motion capture has since become common technology, even spreading into the field of video games, while Serkis himself reigns as Hollywood's foremost mo-cap actor.

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