Dawn of film
This 1832 spinning disc used drawings and a mirror to create the illusion of motion.
What is the phenakistoscope?
Silent films told stories mainly through actors’ facial expressions, body movement, and these written cards between scenes.
What are intertitles?
Studios signed actors to long-term contracts and tightly managed their public image, turning star identity into a carefully marketed brand.
What is the star system?
This shift in creative control defined New Hollywood, as directors gained greater authority over a film’s style and meaning.
What is a director-driven system?
This technology creates environments, creatures, destruction, and visual enhancements through computer software.
What is CGI, or computer-generated imagery?
The Lumière brothers helped popularize this major shift in 1895: films shown to a crowd instead of one person at a time.
What is a projected film exhibition for audiences?
In the earliest years of silent film, short single-shot scenes were often called these.
What are actualities?
This code strictly limited what could be shown, especially banning sympathetic portrayals of crime and requiring moral order.
What is the Hays Code (Motion Picture Production Code)?
Unlike Golden Age films that restored moral order, New Hollywood films frequently embraced this ethical uncertainty in their storytelling.
What is moral ambiguity?
This performance technology goes beyond motion capture by recording an actor’s body movement, voice, and facial expressions together.
What is performance capture?
This filmmaker popularized stop tricks, multiple exposures, dissolves, and elaborate sets in the early 1900s.
Who is Georges Méliès?
The silent era helped introduce major genres such as horror, science fiction, westerns, and this comedic style built on physical humor.
What is slapstick comedy?
The Big Five controlled production, distribution, and exhibition by owning theater chains—an “almost unbreakable grip” on Hollywood for decades.
What is vertical integration?
This performance approach, associated with actors like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, emphasized psychological realism and emotional authenticity during the New Hollywood era.
What is Method acting?
These virtual production stages use massive linked LED panels to display real-time digital environments behind actors.
What are LED volumes?
This film material emerged in the late 1880s and helped solve the problem of storing thousands of images.
What is flexible celluloid roll film?
By the 1910s, these longer multi-reel films helped make motion pictures respectable with broader audiences.
What are features?
Film historians call this the greatest year in Hollywood history, featuring classics like Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Stagecoach.
What is 1939?
This film demonstrated the benefits of merchandising and franchising.
What is Star Wars?
The Digital Age has also seen a resurgence of this style, emphasizing real stunts, physical builds, and in-camera effects over full CGI.
What are practical effects?
By around 1905–1910, actors became more central because films became longer and more this.
What is narrative-driven?
During the silent era, actors became this on a global scale.
What are international celebrities?
This 1948 Supreme Court antitrust ruling forced studios to sell their theater chains, breaking the vertical integration that powered the studio system’s dominance.
What is United States v. Paramount Pictures (the Paramount Decision)?
George Lucas revolutionized film business strategy by retaining these rights for Star Wars.
What are merchandising or licensing rights?
In modern film monetization, this revenue source became subscription-based and helped shorten theatrical windows.
What is streaming?