Movies now vs then
By: Donovan Guh
Look back on the films that you have watched when you were young. How different are they compared to what you see today? Are they better or worse than what you’ve watched? How are they compared to films that have been produced before you were born? A look back on the evolution of filmmaking and the films that have been produced over the past few decades could provide some insight as to what and how films have evolved over the years.
Advancements in film technology. It’s no surprise that, in this day and age, films look far more flashy and fantastical than ever before. With the capabilities of CGI(computer-generated imagery), green screen/chroma keying and motion capture, it’s never been easier to make something non-existent and visualize it as something that has a very presence in the setting of a film. Of course, knowing the potential of technology fifty years ago, it’s not hard to imagine that the first uses of CGI in films did not look nearly as good as they do now, and there aren’t very many films that one can name from the ’70s or 80’s that broke box office records while applying CGI. There weren’t any films that used CGI as much of a selling point as the first Tron film, from 1982.
Tron (1982) was the first major motion picture to make use of CGI. At the time, the original idea that became Tron was that it was intended to be a combination of Animation and CGI but with the high cost of animation at the time it was decided that a combination of CGI and live-action would be cheaper. Several studios were approached but it was Disney that finally produced it. Almost from the beginning, it was a controversial film. It was a highly innovative and unique film, but it was a failure at the box office. Compared to the 2010 iteration, Tron: Legacy, the difference in CGI is night and day. The colours are far more vibrant, the CGI makes the viewer feel as if the characters in the film exist in this otherwise virtual space. Not to mention, by then, 3D films had also been released further adding to the ‘realistic’ viewing experience of the film.