Evolution of Film & Video Technology

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In the early days, motion capture was first achieved in 1878 by Eadweard Muybridge when he attached tripwires to several cameras aligned together to capture a sequence of photographs of a galloping horse. This discovery of Muybridge inspired inventors to develop their own instruments to capture motion. One famous inventor was Thomas Alva Edison, who developed the Kinetoscope which spurred the evolution and rise of motion picture.

Cameras play a vital role in the evolution of video and film technology. From the time, the first photograph was taken, cameras have evolved in order to capture vivid pictures to capturing motion in real time. One special effect that virtually all movies had today is the slow motion sequence. This feature in film-making creates an effect where time appears to occur slower than the normal rate. This is usually done to create a more dramatic effect in a film scene. All this was made possible by the development of the high speed film cameras.

High-speed film camera capture frames at a faster rate such that when a film is played on a normal speed, time would appear to be moving slowly unfolding the spectacle of an event such as an explosion or a bullet hitting its target. Normal cameras can usually capture 24 frames per second and can playback at the same rate, while high-speed cameras can capture frames at a range of 10,000 frames per second to an unbelievable 400,000 frames per second or even higher depending on the type of instrument used. Amazing as they are, high-speed cameras still posed problems during filming; one critical requirement for high-speed filming is the presence of bright lights since films for high speed cameras need the tremendous amount of exposure, which most likely also caused damage to the object being filmed due to high heat exposure. Though this will eventually be overcome since most development on high-speed filming is now directed to digital video recording.

High-speed filming is not limited to just special effects in movies. It is now widely used in various industries for scientific research.  One famous application for high-speed filming and video playback is crash testing for car manufacturers. They use high speed cameras to film the impact of a crash and what happens to the car and its passenger. Through this, engineers will be able to evaluate the crash and develop safety features for the car to better protect their consumers. The military also has its uses for such cameras. The military Scientists would usually document bomb testing to record the destructive capability of their weapons or even to study how a bullet would curve when it hits the water.  On the lighter side of science, another group of people uses these cameras to document an event that would seem normal to the naked eyes but spectacular on film. Such examples would be to see how much of a light bulb would bend before reaching its breaking point when smashed by a hammer. It may all seem weird and useless, but it does have its own purpose, especially on glass manufacturing.

All in all, video technology has certainly come a long way; from the old days where movies used to be black and white with no audio on it, only the people acting on the scene and texts come out telling what the scene was all about. Those were the primitive days of film making, where everything was pretty much very simple. Nowadays, movies have everything they need, from the galactic battle of Star Wars to the revolutionary fight sequence of The Matrix. Certainly, Charlie Chaplin would’ve been amazed.