Overview

Movies, or films as they are more formally known, are pieces of visual art telling stories through moving pictures. As well as being an art form, they form a large part of the entertainment industry. Movie are made up of large numbers of individual photographs, each shown so quickly that they are not identified by the human eye and appear instead as a moving image. Films may be recorded using video cameras or digital video cameras.

History

Movies originated from optic tools which allowed a sequence of images to be projected so quickly that it would appear they were moving. Celluloid photographic film allowed this idea to be extended with the Kinetoscope which allowed a single person to view a moving image and the first projection device called the Cinématographe, which was created by the French Lumière brothers in 1895.

Shops were turned into "movie houses" in the early 20th century and the first movie theatre opened in Pittsburgh in 1905 and was called the nickelodeon. Movies developed into a very profitable business industry around the world.

The first movies were short and basic, with very little activity or camera movement. They were also silent, which background organ or piano music, subtitles and dramatic actions making up for the lack of sounds. The introduction of soundtracks and special effects helped develop the movies, but the greatest development was the introduction of color films.