The Ever Changing Media – Movies

It’s interesting to look back at the history of movies.  First there was vaudeville which began in the early 1880′s and continued until the 1930′s.  Did you know that George Burns and Gracie Allen got their start in vaudeville?  Oh yes.  And if you are under 18 you have no clue who those people are or what I’m even talking about.  That’s ok…

Then there were the silent films.  A lot of actors who were doing vaudeville ended up making the switch to silent films.  A silent film is a movie that has no sound recorded but instead is… silent.  In order to give the movie character they required someone to play a piano or organ in the movie theater during the movie and play it according to what was happening on the screen whether it was a fight or a love scene.  If you ever get a chance to see one I would suggest you look into it because it’s very interesting.  You can either rent a silent movie or watch it online.  Interesting fact, my grandmother played the piano in a silent movie theater and my friend Chip, his mom played the organ in a silent movie theater as well.

The first dinosaur movie, The Lost World was a silent film.  The first vampire movie, A Fool There Was was a silent film.  My favorite silent comedy actors who began in silent films were Laurel and Hardy who by the way did their own version of The Wizard of Oz in 1925.

When they started, all movies were in black and white mainly because it was a lot cheaper to film in black and white and that’s why they did that.  I think it wasn’t until the mid 60′s that they started doing them in color.  Eventually color became the standard and now if you make a black and white film you are probably trying to make a statement.

Not all movies were in widescreen as they are today.  Most of the silent films and then the black and white movies with sound were in the original 4:3 format, the square box.  But did you know that in the late 20′s they did have widescreen?  It was mostly used in short films and news reels though.  There were a couple movies that were in widescreen but it cost too much and due to the depression they had to cut out all the expensive ways to make movies.  It wasn’t until 1953 that movies started coming out in widescreen.  Although if you buy an old 1950′s movie they are not widescreen for some odd reason.

On May 10th 1975 the Betamax was introduced to us.  I was just a child so I don’t know if buying Reel movies was the norm before Betamax or if movies were even available for the public to buy but as far as I know Betamax was the first way people could buy movies and watch them at home.  I do know that there were some short films available for the public to buy in reels, my cousin had some short movies on reels and we’d watch them and then the light bulb would melt the film lol.

In the late 70′s we got the VHS.  The tapes were longer and you could see both sides of the reels on the outside not just one.  To be frank, I don’t really understand why there was a war between betamax and VHS.  I mean I don’t understand how one was better than the other.  But that doesn’t matter now because both of them suck to todays standards.  I don’t know how much they cost back in the 70′s though but I do know that they were about $20 in the mid to late 80′s.

In 1971 this little gem was invented but we never saw it until the early 1990′s.  The Laser disc.  You can see in this image the size of the Compact Disc on the right compared to the Laser Disc on the left.  It was about the size of a record but it was basically a giant DVD.  Unfortunately though it flopped.  I worked at a video store during this dark time and the movies were about $60 – $100 each and when you went to watch them it only played half the movie on 1 side then you had to put another disc in the player to watch the second half of the movie, even if it was only a 90 minute movie.  All the people who bought this must’ve been kicking themselves in the ass because you know how expensive things are when they first come out.  They don’t stay popular unless it becomes the norm then prices go down.  Talk about throwing money in the toilet.

In 1995 they invented the DVD.  I guess they went back to the drawing board but came up with something better, smaller that would be cheaper to make and would be the same size as the music version and it just made sense to them so they did it and it stuck around.  Well, for a while at least.

Very recently or maybe in the end of the 1990′s they were discovering they could have something bigger, something that was better than the DVD.  They came up with the Blu-Ray.  At first there was a war between Blu-Ray and HD DVD to find out which one of those 2 formats would win the war.  Apparently it was Blu-Ray who won.  Now that they are putting Blu-Ray into video game systems like the PlayStation 3 and people are buying the Blu-Ray media more.  Blu-ray movies aren’t even that expensive and the quality is way better than a DVD ever was.  The image is just so clear and you can see every pore in every persons face in them.  The Blu-Ray disc has anywhere from 25-50GB per disc so you know that the movie must be good quality if it has to use up that much space.

When Sony came out with their hand held video game system the PlayStation Portable (PSP) they came up with this media called UMD which stands for Universal Media Disc.  Well, it’s not that universal if you can only use it on the PSP.  Movies have been compressed down to 480×272 in size for the PSP and the disc can hold 1.8GB.  Now Sony’s PlayStation Store allows you to buy tv shows and movies directly as a download right to your PSP or PS3.  And if you have a PS3 you can watch Netflix movies directly without even needing a DVD or Blu-Ray disc.

There are also so many other ways of watching movies on your TV with like the computer, Wii, PS3, TiVo… too many ways to mention.  You can use these mediums to watch movies from such services like Netflix and even from Hulu, Boxee, YouTube.  Also, so many to list.

So we start off with Vaudville, move our way in silence before going to black and white with sound then eventually things start widening out.  The public now has the option to buy movies to watch at home and now we’re too lazy to go out and buy them so we are able to just download them in the privacy of our own homes and either strain our eyes watching them on a tiny PSP or using a PS3 or a computer to watch them on tv.

No matter how the movie is made they are still awesome as ever and you have to give major props to all the actors over the last 130 years for having so much of an imagination that they can pretend to be whoever they need to be to entertain us all and make millions doing it.

**Note**
I just thought that I would add that I don’t have ALL the facts, this is just my commentary.  If you have a correction or something to add please feel free to leave a comment.

Tags: comedy actors, dinosaur, george burns, george burns and gracie allen, gracie allen, grandmother, laurel and hardy, lost world, love scene, silent comedy, silent film, silent films, silent movie theater, vaudeville, wizard of oz

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