Unit 7 Moving pictures

Unit 7 Moving pictures
1. Read and listen.
The History of Film: Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Who invented films?
A: It's difficult to say. Lots of people played a part in the development of the cinema. A man called Muybridge made the first moving picture in 1878. lt was a film of a horse running and it was only a few seconds long. By1895, other people had invented various machines for showing moving pictures, but many of these could only be watched by one person at a time. The development of machines that could project films onto a screen was important. Thomas Edison was one of the first to show very short films to audiences of 20 or more people. His films showed acrobats and dancers performing, or everyday events like a man sneezing!

Q: What were early films like?
A: At first, films were only a few minutes long. They were black and white and silent. They were usually documentaries about different places or news events, or comedies showing people falling over and making funny faces. Later they became longer stories, but there was still no sound. Instead, there might be a musician playing a piano in the hall while the film was shown.
Q: What were the most popular kinds of early films?
A: Musicals were probably the most popular kind of film throughout the 1930s and 1940s. A very famous actress and singer at that time was Shirley Temple - she was only a five-year-old girl but everyone loved watching her sing and dance.
Q: When did films get colour and sound?
A: The very first movie to be in colour and to have sound was shown in 1927. It was called The Jazz Singer From then on, more and more films were produced in colour, and almost all films had sound.
Q: When were cartoons invented?
A: Cartoons, or animated films, were first made in the 1890s.Cartoons are made from hundreds of drawings, photographed one by one. Each drawing is slightly different from the one before. When they are shown very quickly, it looks like the characters and objects in the drawings are moving. One of the earliest animated movies and the very first Disney feature-length film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Until that time,cartoons had been short, and only shown before the main movie. Now cartoons were watched by children and adults alike in cinemas.
Q: How are films different today?
A: Many films are now made using computers. Computer-generated imagery, or CGI, is pictures that are made on computers. They are used for special effects in films. For example, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park,and the scenes in Titanic when the ship is sinking, were done with CGI. Toy Story was the first feature-length film created completely with CGI, in 1995.