CINEMA: An Introduction to the Cinema

Cinema, also popularly known as the third art, arose as an improved version of ancient theatrical it is at present the most entertaining spectacle which all viewers love. If only movies can perfectly define it, then cinema would no longer be called cinema. It represents the endless aspirations, the victories, the disappointments and the ultimate failures of millions of viewers who sit down for more than 2 hours at the cinema to forget their everyday life and think about the life of others (real or fictional). However, one thing is certain – irrespective of any kind of entertainment, cinema is a highly technical and sophisticated medium and it requires immense care and expertise for making a quality film. To understand cinema, it is important to analyse the different concepts and to connect them with the working of the cinema.

The first step is to analyse the technology utilised in making a film. For example, in the previous two decades, digital video recorders and televisions have made large changes in the way films are made. In the 2021 edition of this book, the author Dr. Nels Anderson, has presented his unique definition of the term cinema which he claims can now be described as the “first forerunner” of the digital revolution. In this book, Anderson refers to this forerunner as the optical cinema and says it emerged in silent films when movie theatres adopted an array of complicated techniques including, light diffusion, sound diffusion and focus tracking. This was opposed to the conventional viewing of films through progressive or super-long lenses due to the difficulty associated with focusing images from multiple directions.

The second step in the analysis is to understand the difference between the two types of cinema as they are commonly perceived. For example, in the case of the public cinema, the moving image (the moving picture) actually occupies two mediums which are the stage and the screen. The former is a stationary object, whereas the latter is a moving image that is displayed on the screen. In the case of the Hollywood film industry, this has led to the argument that real-time cinema is different from the traditional theater system since the audience experiences the moving images directly on the screen and therefore receives a “moving image experience”.