Film screening

A film screening is the displaying of a film, as part of its production and release cycle, before it is widely released to movie theaters.Screenings typically occur outside normal theatrical showing hours. The different types of screenings are presented here in rough chronological order of their use:
-Test screenings
-Critic screenings occur for national and major market critics well in advance of print and television production-cycle deadlines, and are usually by-invitation-only. When a studio anticipates negative critical reviews, this step is frequently skipped; the studio instead relies on advertising, in-theater previews, word-of-mouth, and established knowledge of the target audience for the success of the film.
-Private screenings are provided for investors, marketing and distribution representatives, and VIP media figures.
-Preview screenings are for the public, sometimes at boutique theaters (which may not be scheduled as a release theater). These may serve as final test screenings used to adjust marketing strategy (radio & TV junkets) or the film itself. Complimentary tickets (sometimes limited in number) are frequently provided to local media for contests or giveaways. No confidentiality requirement is imposed on the audience.
-A sneak preview is a film screening in advance of the broad release of a movie. The screening resembles that of a regular film, complete with the same admission charge. The apparent purpose of sneak previews is to gain additional buzz for the movie in question.

Thrive 07.... one of the videos created by me !!

IMAX...

IMAX (short for Image Maximum) is a film format created by Canada's IMAX Corporation that has the capacity to display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film display systems. A standard IMAX screen is 22 m wide and 16.1 m high (72.6 ft x 52.8 ft), but can be larger. Currently, IMAX is the most widely-used system for large-format, special-venue film presentations. As of March 2007, there were 280 IMAX theatres in 38 countries (60% of these are located in the United States and Canada). Half of these are commercial theatres and half are in educational venues. A variation of IMAX, IMAX Dome (originally called OMNIMAX), is designed for projection on tilted dome screens. Films can also be projected in 3D with IMAX 3D. The biggest "IMAX Dome" is in the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Video editing software

Video editing software is application software which handles the editing of video sequences on a computer. It usually includes the ability to import and export video, cut and paste sections of a video clip, and add special effects and transitions; and it sometimes includes the ability to encode the video for creation of a DVD, Web video, mobile phone video, or video podcast. Video editing software generally also allows for some limited editing of the audio clips which accompany the video, or at least the ability to sync the audio with the video.
Media100, Lightworks, Sony Vegas, Avid, Adobe Premiere, Ulead VideoStudio and Apple's Final Cut Pro are pioneers in video editing software and have a great influence on how films and TV programs are edited. Some of these systems use custom hardware for video processing.
Several other software programs can be classified in this category, including Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, GEAR Software's GEAR Video, Pinnacle Systems' MediaSuite, muvee Technologies' muveeNow and autoProducer.
With the availability of commodity video processing specialist video editing cards, and computers designed specifically for non-linear video editing, many software packages are now available to work with them.

Production...

Filmmaking takes place all over the world using different technologies, styles of acting and genre, and is produced in a variety of economic contexts that range from state-sponsored documentary in China to profit-oriented movie making within the American studio system.
A typical Hollywood-style filmmaking Production cycle is comprised of five main stages:


-Development
-Pre-production
-Production
-Post-production
-Distribution


This production cycle typically 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.

Video resolution...

The size of a video image is measured in pixels for digital video, or horizontal scan lines and vertical lines of resolution for analog video. In the digital domain (e.g. DVD) standard-definition television (SDTV) is specified as 720/704/640×480i60 for NTSC and 768/720×576i50 for PAL or SECAM resolution. However in the analog domain, the number of visible scanlines remains constant (486 NTSC/576 PAL) while the horizontal measurement varies with the quality of the signal: approximately 320 pixels per scanline for VCR quality, 400 pixels for TV broadcasts, and 720 pixels for DVD sources. Aspect ratio is preserved because of non-square "pixels".New high-definition televisions (HDTV) are capable of resolutions up to 1920×1080p60, i.e. 1920 pixels per scan line by 1080 scan lines, progressive, at 60 frames per second.
Video resolution for 3D-video is measured in voxels (volume picture element, representing a value in three dimensional space). For example 512×512×512 voxels resolution, now used for simple 3D-video, can be displayed even on some PDAs.

Analog video formats...

Video formats are commonly known in the domain of commercial broadcast and consumer devices; most notably to date, these are the analog video formats of NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. However, video formats also describe the digital equivalents of the commercial formats, the aging custom military uses of analog video (such as RS-170 and RS-343), the increasingly important video formats used with computers, and even such offbeat formats such as color field sequential.


Analog video formats

-NTSC
-PAL
-SECAM

container format...

A container format is a computer file format that can contain various types of data, compressed by means of standardized audio/video codecs.

The most popular multi-media containers are:

IFF (first platform independent container format)
AVI (the standard Microsoft Windows container, also based on RIFF)
ASF (standard container for Microsoft WMA and WMV)
DVR-MS ("Microsoft Digital Video Recording", proprietary video container format developed by Microsoft based on ASF)

MOV (standard QuickTime video container from Apple Inc.)
MPEG-2 transport stream (TS) (a.k.a. MPEG-TS) (standard container for digital broadcasting; typically contains multiple video and audio streams, and an electronic program guide) and program stream (PS)
MP4 (standard audio and video container for the MPEG-4 multimedia portfolio)
Ogg (standard audio container for Xiph.org codecs)
OGM ("Ogg Media", standard video container for Xiph.org codecs)
RealMedia (standard container for RealVideo and RealAudio)
Matroska / MKV (not standard for any codec or system, but it is an open standard and open source container format).
3gp (used by many mobile phones)

Evolution of Film Cameras...

Miniature Univex 8mm Movie Camera, 1939

16 MM Keystone Surveillance Movie Camera

1940's Rervere Miniature Movie Camera

Abraham Zapruder 8MM JFK Assassination Camera, 1963

Bolex Laillard 16MM Movie Camera with Zoom Lens, 1970s

Zenit Covert Video Camera 1970's

As technology moved forward, portable video cameras became something that every television news organization wanted. In 1983, Sony came out with the first truly portable video camera. In 1984, Sony came out with what they called the HandyCam camcorder. This was a new 8 mm video format. One tape could record for two hours.As video surveillance developed, a High 8 video format developed which became the standard for shooting covert video footage. Pictured to the right is an older High Eight video camera made by Sony. It featured a 10X zoom, could take extended optical zoom lenses on the front of it and featured what was called "steady shot."

Sony was one of the first again to get into the digital camcorder market in a big way. Pictured on the left is my old Sony Digital HandyCam. Notice that Sony keep the slogan Handycam from this first small VHS camcorder they released. This early digital camcorder featured a 120 Zoom, and had what Sony called "Night Shot".As digital camcorder technology moved forward, they became better, smaller, cheaper and with more features. Digital camcorders have now morphed themselves into multi-functional cameras in which they can perform in many different ways.

Evolution of films....

From 1896-1906

The two second experimental film, Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed by Louis Le Prince on October 1888 in Leeds, Yorkshire, is generally recognized as the earliest surviving motion picture. William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, chief engineer with the Edison Laboratories, is credited with the invention of a practicable form of a celluloid strip containing a sequence of images, the basis of a method of photographing and projecting moving images. In 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair, Thomas Edison introduced to the public two pioneering inventions based on this innovation; the Kinetograph, the first practical moving picture camera, and the Kinetoscope.

In France, Auguste and Louis Lumière invented the cinematograph, a portable, three-in-one device: camera, printer, and projector. In late 1895 in Paris, father Antoine Lumière began exhibitions of projected films before the paying public. They quickly became Europe's main producers with their actualités like Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory and comic vignettes like The Sprinkler Sprinkled (both 1895). Still older, May, 1895, was Lauste in the U.S.A. with an Eidoloscope which he devised for the Latham family. The first public screening of film ever is due to Jean Aimé "Acme" Le Roy, a French photographer. he most successful motion picture company in the United States, with the largest production until 1900, was the American Mutoscope company.There were numerous other smaller producers in the United States, and some of them established a long-term presence in the new century. American Vitagraph, one of these minor producers, built studios in Brooklyn, and expanded its operations in 1905.In France, the Lumière company sent cameramen all round the world from 1896 onwards to shoot films, which were exhibited locally by the cameramen, and then sent back to the company factory in Lyons to make prints for sale to whoever wanted them. There were nearly a thousand of these films made up to 1901, nearly all of them actualities.From 1900 Charles Pathé began film production under the Pathé-Frères brand, with Ferdinand Zecca hired to actually make the films. By 1905, Pathé was the largest film company in the world, a position it retained until World War I.

From 1906-1914

By 1907 there were about 4,000 small “nickelodeon” cinemas in the United States. The films were shown with the accompaniment of music provided by a pianist, though there could be more musicians. There were also a very few larger cinemas in some of the biggest cities. Initially, the majority of films in the programmes were Pathé films, but this changed fairly quickly as the American companies cranked up production. The programme was made up of just a few films, and the show lasted around 30 minutes. The programme was changed twice or more a week, but went up to five changes of programme a week after a couple of years. With the change to “nickelodeon” exhibition there was also a change, led by Pathé in 1907, from selling films outright to renting them through film exchanges. The litigation over patents between all the major American film-making companies had continued, and at the end of 1908 they decided to pool their patents and form a trust to use them to control the American film business.

From 1914-1919

The years of the First World War were a complex transitional period for the film industry. It was the period when the exhibition of films changed from short programmes of one-reel films to longer shows consisting of a feature film of four reels or longer, though still supported by short films. The exhibition venues also changed from small nickelodeon cinemas to larger cinemas charging higher prices. These higher prices were partly justified by the new film stars who were now being created. In the United States, nearly all the original film companies which formed the Motion Picture Patents Company went out of business in this period because of their resistance to the changeover to long feature films.

The Universal Film Manufacturing Company had been formed in 1912 as an umbrella company for many of the independent producing companies, and continued to grow during the war. Other independent companies were grouped under the Mutual banner in 1912, and there were also important new entrants, particularly the Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company, and Famous Players, which were both formed in 1913 to take advantage of the fact that films could reproduce the real substance of a stage play (plus embellishments), and so the best plays and actors from the legitimate stage could be enticed into films. In fact, the film industry adopted the term “photoplay” for motion pictures at this time. In 1914 the Lasky company and Famous Players were amalgamated into Famous Players-Lasky, with distribution of their films handled by the new Paramount Pictures Corporation.The biggest success of these years was D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916).

Cinema in India

Cinema was introduced to India on July 7, 1896. It began with the Lumiere Brothers' Cinematography, unveiling six silent short films at the Watson Hotel in Bombay, namely Entry of Cinematographe, The Sea Bath, Arrival of a Train, A Demolition, Ladies & Soldiers on Wheels and Leaving the Factory. The Times of India carried details of the "Living Photographic Pictures in Life-Size Reproductions by Mssrs. Lumiere Brotheres". In the same year, the Madras Photographic Store advertised "animated photographs". Daily screenings of films commenced in Bombay in 1897 by Clifton and Co.'s Meadows Street Photography Studio.
In 1898, Hiralal Sen started filming scenes of theatre productions at the Classic Theatre in Calcutta, inspired by Professor Stevenson's, film presentation alongside the stage production of The Flower Of Persia; his debut was a contribution to this presentation. He continued making similar films to complement theatrical productions, which were shown as added attractions during intermission, in private screenings for high society households or taken to distant venues where the stage performers could not reach.

The first feature film made in India was a narrative named Pundalik, by N.G. Chitre and R.G. Torney. The first full-length Indian feature film was Raja Harishchandra (3700 feet as compared to 1500 for Pundalik), made in 1913 and released commercially in May that year, by Dadasaheb Phalke. Phalke had attended a screening of The Life of Christ at P.B. Mehta's American-Indian Cinema and was inspired to make films himself. He was convinced of the possibility of establishing an indigenous film industry by focusing on Indian themes.