Mediathemes magazine: “Technologies and contemporary uses of moving images”

Short techno-sociological history of cinema.

1 September 2022. Published by Benoît Labourdette.

15 min

Moving images seem so natural and omnipresent that we are sometimes not very aware that they are in fact intrinsically linked to very concrete technologies, which have a strong impact on their content, more than we want to believe. For example, from the beginning, when the Cinématographe was invented in France by Louis and Auguste Lumière in 1895, there was another technology, using the same film, the Kinetoscope by Thomas Edison in the United States. The Cinématographe was a device that was both a camera and a projector, for large-scale projection. The first ﬁlms were thus shown in large size. The subjects were “tableaux vivants” in wide shots: factory exits, landscapes, a train entering a station, etc. The Kinetoscope, on the other hand, was an individual viewing machine, with an eyepiece, in which one could see, as through a keyhole, the ﬁlms in a loop. The subjects were quite different: boxing fights, strip-teases...

Moving image technologies have always induced subjects and aesthetics according to their particular broadcasting devices. Another example: the duration of ﬁlms. It seems obvious to us today that a “Film”, ofﬁciel, the “standard ﬁlm” in terms of cultural legitimacy is a “feature film”, at least an hour and a half long, which is viewed at first sight in a cinema. All other forms would be below it in hierarchical terms. This is, moreover, the basis of the French legal system for regulating the audiovisual economic sector. But what is obvious to us is not necessarily obvious to other audiences. For example, in the last few years, television series have taken on a more noble status. They are no longer second-rate cultural objects; serious intellectuals consider them to be as important as cinema films. These series are usually seen first on the Internet, in a way that is still considered “illegal” by today’s legal apparatus, are never shown in the cinema, and do not last 90 minutes. And if we look back, during the first twenty years of the history of cinema, from 1895 to 1915, the feature film form did not exist, the ﬁlms did not last more than twenty minutes, were projected mixed with music-hall acts, and there were a lot of series. Theaters were not bathed in religious silence as they are today. The feature film did not appear until 1915. For the past four years, “ﬁlms” by important filmmakers (Martin Scorcese, Woody Allen...) are produced for example by Amazon, which is an online bookstore, are visible on the internet and sometimes not even in theaters.

In this article, I propose the prism of audiovisual technologies, starting with their history. This sheds a new light on the works, and invites to another form of understanding and appropriation, very concrete. Then we will take stock of the broadcasting media we use today. And finally, we will address the “uses”, the practices with these tools, and in particular the participative uses, because citizens are no longer simply viewers of images, but also makers of images (with cell phones in particular), which singularly changes the paradigm of our professions and carries a real political meaning, in the broadest sense of the term. The goal is to understand and specify the tools, in order to be able to elaborate new relevant, motivating and concrete proposals for the public!

History of audiovisual technologies

Audiovisual media have had, globally, three major stages: pel-licule, video, and digital. The ﬁlms and audiovisual objects with which we are working today can fall into these three “families”, even if they are accessed today through digital, as the earlier works have been “converted”. But not all, moreover, which raises questions of access to certain old works that have not been digitized.

Silver cinema (film)

Understanding how the original film works, the so-called “silver” film, is the best basis for understanding how its successors work. Silver film has been used from the origin of cinema in 1895 until 2012. How was it invented? Why does it exist? How does it work?

The Cinematograph is a technical invention, based on pre-existing technolo-gies and a physiological discovery: if our eyes are exposed to a series of ﬁxed images that follow one another, from 16 images per second our brain gives us the illusion of naturalistic movement. It is important to understand that when we watch a ﬁlm, there is no movement on the screen. On the screen, there is only a succession of ﬁxes. Motion is an illusion of our perception. Physiologically, the ﬁlm therefore exists only in our mind. That’s why there is such a relationship between dreaming and experiencing the cinema. Moreover, the invention of the cinema is more or less contemporary with the invention of psychoanalysis, which is not a coincidence in philosophical terms.Technologies and contemporary uses of moving images

The Cinematograph is therefore high-speed photography. In order for it to work, technically speaking, photos must first be exposed to light in a fraction of a second. Photography was invented in 1827 by Nicéphore Niepce, in Chalon-sur-Saône. To make the first photographs, sensitive surfaces had to be exposed to light for several hours. By the end of the 19^th century, the sensitivity of film and brighter lenses made it possible to produce a photographic image in a fraction of a second. However, the other difﬁculty was “managing” this large number of images. They were placed one above the other on a “ﬁlm”, equipped with per-forations so that it could be driven mechanically. Four perforations per image. The ﬁlm was 35 millimeters wide (from 1895 to 2012, when it disappeared into commercial operation). The ﬁlm was therefore wound on a reel (for example, 350 meters would record 13 minutes, at 24 frames per second, so the cameras could only ﬁlm shots of up to 13 minutes). The reel spun continuously, aﬁn order to unwind the images at a steady pace, but, on the other hand, in front of the camera lens (just as in front of the projector lens in a movie theater), the film must be perfectly ﬁxe, aﬁn order for the image to be sharp. If the film had been moving during the time it is exposed to light, it would have recorded only vertical lines on the image. Therefore, a technology was needed that could, from a continuous rotation (achieved either by a motor or a hand-turned crank), produce intermittent movement. The film must be ﬁxed in front of the lens at the moment “opens” (with a shutter) for the light to print the image on it, then the shutter closes, and, in the dark, the film is advanced to the next image, then the film stops again, and there the shutter lets the light through again, closes, and so on. Simple to say, but very complicated to do. Another technical object, which predates the Cinematograph, was confronted with the same type of prerogative: the sewing machine, which, from a rotating movement exerted by the pedal, must make a needle go in and out intermittently. The “Maltese Cross”, used in sewing machines, which is a kind of special gear, allows this conversion between continuous and intermittent motion. The Cinématographe is thus a hybrid between a camera and a sewing machine!

The 35mm wide film was the professional standard. But, almost from the beginning, there were amateur formats, for the family ﬁlm in terms of production, and for lighter releases (association theaters, school structures, personal projectors...). The film was cut in two by the medium. This is why there was the 16mm (16 millimeters wide), and the 8mm (8 millimeters wide). Hundreds of other formats have existed, but these three are the main ones.

Beginning with the advent of television in the 1950s, silver film ﬁlms needed to be transferred to video media (the characteristics of which we will see in the next section). The elements we handle today (DVDs, ﬁchiers...) are digitizations of these old transfers from film to video. In our daily practices, these three “ages” of the moving image thus coexist. The “image formats” (ratio height-width) are not necessarily the same between the supports. Let’s explore them, so as not to risk distorting, cropping, in short betraying, the original works.

Image formats

The cinema, silent from 1895 to 1927, had an image format of proportions 1,33. That is to say that, proportionally, if the image is 1 high, it will be 1.33 wide.

Television, from its origin in the 1950s until the early 2000s, also had an aspect ratio of 1.33, which is called 4:3 (3 high by 4 wide, which is equivalent to 1 high by 1.33 wide). Thus, the aspect ratio of silent ﬁlms transferred to television was fully respected.

Cinema became talking (sound) in 1927. For reasons of optical sound track on the side of the picture, the picture changed to 1.37 (1 high by 1.37 wide). A very large majority of heritage ﬁlms were shot in this aspect ratio. When these images were transferred to television (1.33 format), there were two solutions: either ﬁnes of black bars were put at the top and bottom of the image, allowing the entire image to be seen, or, and this is what happened most often, the image was simply cropped in width, aﬁnding it to completely fill the 1.33 format television image. In short, most heritage ﬁlms are actually cropped, missing a bit of image on the sides.

Then, the cinema for theaters “big show” offered a very wide format, the Cinemascope (2.35 wide by 1 high). This was a format used for certain ﬁlms from the 1950s onwards, the images being shot and projected with 70mm wide film (to have better quality, given the very large projection size). And it’s a format that has been democratized since the 1990’s, shot and projected on standard 35mm film, whose quality had improved. However, to transfer the full image of these ﬁlms to the television screen, which is only 1.33 wide, requires very thick black bars, and the image becomes tiny, like a small horizontal ﬁne strip in the middle of a large black space. This was not at all satisfactory, and many of these ﬁlms had, for television, their edges cut off enormously. There were still black bars at the top and bottom anyway, but a good third of the image was gone. That’s why, in some Cinemascope Westerns, when there was a dialogue between two characters, one on the left and one on the right, on the television screen, well... you couldn’t see anyone during that dialogue, just the desert between them! So there were attempts to compensate for this, consisting of cropping the ﬁlms shot by shot, turning this dialogue scene into a field against field between the two actors. The filmmaker’s mise en scène was thus terribly betrayed.

Beginning in the 1960s-70s, there was a new format, widely used for teleﬁlms and low-budget ﬁlms, the 1.66 (1 high by 1.66 wide). The black bars on the 4:3 TV screen are not too big, and it still gives a “cinema effect” because of this wider than standard TV image.

The 1980s saw the very strong development of the 1.85 format (1 high on Technologies and contemporary uses of moving images1.85 wide) called “Panoramic”, used since then for most standard commercial ex-operations ﬁlms. There, when carried over in 4/3 TV format, the black bars are also quite large, so these ﬁlms also had their edges cut off (but less than in Cinemascope, since the image is less wide). Filmmakers have taken this into account (their ﬁlms, in France in particular, being globally produced or co-produced by television since the 1990s), by not putting very important elements in the edges of the image, because it is known that they will be cut on television.

Since the 2000s and the arrival of flat TV screens, our TV sets have changed format, they have become 16/9 (that is, 1 high by 1.78 wide). The standard viewing format was 4/3, it became 16/9.

In 16/9, which I will call 1.78 to be able to compare it more easily with other formats, the old 1.33 images do not fill the whole width, they have black bars on the left and on the right. Some people find it unbearable not to “fill” the whole screen, so it can happen (often...) that 4:3 images are stretched, distorted (we say “anamorphosed”) to fill the 16:9 screen... This is obviously not desirable!

To summarize, when integrating a format into another format, the most respectful way to do it is to use these bars, so that the image, even if it does not fill the screen, is integrated. The black bars at the top and bottom are called “Letterbox”. The black bars on the left and right are called “Pillarbox”.

In today’s reality with 16:9 screens:

images in 1.66 format have black bars on the left and right,
1.85 images (very common) have ﬁnes of black bars at the top and bottom,
and 2.35 images (also very common) have black bars at the top and bottom. They are, enﬁn, respected in their width.

Beginning with DVD (1997), which is the majority medium that is still used today, the image formats of ﬁlms are rather much better respected than before. With the ﬁlms on the Internet, however, we see a lot of distorted, reca-drated images, etc.

Analog video

What we call video is television and everything that comes with it (cameras, VCRs, camcorders, VHS tapes, DVDs, etc). Video has had two ages: analog and digital. But digital also concerns cinema. We will see these nuances in the next part. Let’s first look at the original video, “analog”.

Cinema was a great medium, but it lacked something that radio did (even though it didn’t have the image): the ability to be live. Besides, the term “Télé-vision” literally means “to see at a distance”. The project of television, which cinema cannot accomplish, is live action. In cinema, it takes time to develop the photographic film, the technology does not allow live broadcasting. In 1906, when Georges Méliès made a ﬁlm to broadcast live the coronation of the Queen of England in Paris, he had made sets, taken actors, shot the ﬁlm beforehand, and then broadcast it at the same time as the event in London. The audience was thrilled to watch the coronation from Paris, but it wasn’t real live!

But, technically speaking, how to transfer live images from a distance? How to achieve this feat? A solution was found. You probably know that all the images we produce first exist in a “darkroom” (used since the Renaissance by painters). Take a shoebox, drill a tiny hole in one side, hollow out the opposite side and stick a sheet of tracing paper in it. Place an object in front of this box, lit by the sun. The sun’s light rays are reﬂected in all directions by the object. They propagate in a straight line. Some enter through the small hole, and this will therefore form, on the tracing paper in front, an inverted image of the object placed in front of the darkroom. This is very simple to do. What is complicated is to record this image. In the case of photography, and silver film, instead of tracing paper, a flat surface was coated with a solution of silver salt and potato starch, which darkened under light. Hence the nega-tive images. The even greater difﬁculty (which Nicéphore Niepce had found in 1827), was to “reveal” (make appear) and “ﬁxer” this image, aﬁn order that it could then be viewed without damaging it. Fine for photography and film, but for television, how do you do it?

Well, imagine that behind the tracing paper I take a small tube, very ﬁn, through which I look at the screen, and that I make it deﬁler at constant speed, from left to right, up, then a little lower, and so on. The tube thus travels, line after line, across the entire image from top to bottom. If I look into this tube, I will see a flickering, depending on the illumination of the image areas. If I place behind the tube, instead of my gaze, a ﬂuorescent screen (which keeps the light a bit), the image, broken down line by line, will be recomposed on the screen behind it. The more lines there are, so the more ﬁnes they are, the sharper, “deﬁned” the image will be. This happens at high speed, because the up-and-down movement must be done in a fraction of a second (25 frames per second in video), aﬁn order to be able to reconstruct a sequence of ﬁxed images that will produce in the viewer’s mind the illusion of movement.

A screen just behind is of no use, of course... Let’s imagine now that I place inside the tube a photocell. It is an electronic component which reacts to the quantity of light: if it is illuminated, it produces an electric current; a strong current if it is very illuminated, a weak current if it is little illuminated. We therefore have, at the output of the tube, an electric ﬁl, in which there is an electric current that varies according to the light captured by the tube. The variation of electric current is “analog” to the light variation. This electric ﬁl can be very long, electricity travels in it at the speed of 300,000 kilometers per second (an electric signal can go around the earth seven times in one second, so its transmission seems instantaneous to us), and we know how to transport an electric signal by the waves (radio). So on the other side, which can be very far from the transmitter, we get a variable electric current. We have a ﬂuorescent screen, in front of which a tube travels up and down, line after line, at the same speed as the transmitter, and in this tube we place a simple ﬁlament electric bulb, which receives the variable electric current. You know that when you send a weak current into a standard light bulb (not the current neon or LED bulbs, an “old” bulb), it lights up very little, and if you send a strong current, it lights up more. We will therefore, at a distance, be able to reconstruct the image on the ﬂuorescent screen.

Here, in a very simpliﬁed way, but correct in principle, is how television works. It is no longer photographic images one after the other on a ﬁlm, it is a variable electric current, transmitted live, or recorded magnetically on magnetic tapes (VHS tapes for example). That was the world of “analog” media. But today, everything is digital. What is digital? What is the difference? Why does it change everything?

The digital

In analogical, the support is the key element: it is him which carries the trace “ontological” of the real. That is, there has been a chemical reaction with the light, which has produced the image we see, or the “analog” conversion of a quantity of light into a quantity of electricity. But a 35mm wide ﬁlm does not fit into an 8mm pro-jector and vice versa. We have not observed in detail the techniques of analog sound, but likewise, a 33 rpm vinyl record does not fit into a cassette recorder. In short, the mechanical recording of a trace of reality by the analogical processes is intimately linked to the support.

The digital, it is quite other thing. It is about a computer code, the binary: 0 or 1, black or white, open or closed, on or off, light or dark... Whether it’s the microscopic microcuvettes on a DVD (cuvette = 1, no cuvette = 0), the black and white squares of QR Codes (white = 1, black = 0), the light in optical ﬁbres (light = 1, dark = 0), the electricity in wiﬁngs or network cables (current = 1, no current = 0), the information is the same: 0 or 1. True or False. empty or full. This is what we call “bits.” It is the elementary unit of digital information.

It is necessary to understand that in digital, there is nothing else than 0 and 1, in very great number, to which we apply simple logical operations, in very great quantity, to be able to reach levels more complex than black or white. There is no mystery in the digital world, computing is not in the clouds. A huge part of our creative and communicative activities are now converted into immense codes, which, at the elementary level, are nothing more than billions of 0s and 1s, organized to make sense. For example, when we have a telephone conversation, our voice, which is “analog”, is converted into a sequence of numbers, which is a simpliﬁed graphical representation of the analog curve of our voice, which themselves are converted into a large sequence of 0s and 1s. These 0’s and 1’s are transmitted to the phone of our interlocutor (for a classic 3G connection of today, it is 40 million 0’s and 1’s that are transmitted every second, there is plenty of time to make nice combinations to graphically represent our voice), and in his phone are again converted into analog, to vibrate the membrane of the speaker that will vibrate the air and make us hear the sound.

The digital, thus, does not have intrinsically a support, one can record this information on any support. On the other hand, the supports and the networks have each one capacities, or flows, particular. The audio CD (1982) can contain 650 Mega bytes. A byte is a group of 8 bits. That’s 5 billion 0s and 1s on a CD. Very sufﬁsant to put 1h15 of good quality sound. The DVD (1997) can contain 8.5 Giga bytes, or 68 billion 0’s and 1’s. Since video takes up more space than audio, it was the DVD that made it possible to put moving images on 12cm wide optical discs. You could theoretically do it on CD, of course, but the image quality could not be the same as on DVD, simply because there is 13 times less space on a CD than on a DVD. The difference between the two is the size of the microcuvettes, and the ﬁnesse of the laser needed to read it. The evolution of technology has allowed the production of increasingly ﬁns lasers at low cost. Blu-ray (2006), on the other hand, can hold 50 Gigabytes, or 400 billion 0s and 1s, and can store ﬁlms in “high deﬁnition”, that is, images that are more deﬁnished than those on DVD.

Today, almost everything related to media is, and is transmitted, in digital: computers, the internet, phones and their applications, video projectors, movie theaters, car software... Digital is an integral part of our daily lives, and is even becoming a form of “matter” in our lives. Moreover, in a surprising way, whereas we thought we had made cold and logical machines very external to our “humanity”, we realize more and more (since the discovery of the DNA and the fact that all the living comes from a “code”, which is not binary, it is quaternary, but it is indeed a computer code) that these computers and digital machines that we make are in fact much more with our image than what we thought initially... This is why the steps of understanding the “digital world” conceal major stakes of citizenship.

The supports and the screens

Let us apply this history in concrete and practical terms, in relation to the audiovisual objects we handle:

Silver film ﬁlms: 35mm, 16mm, 8mm (as well as a very common variation, Super8). We do not handle them anymore. But, it can be extremely interesting to use these materials, especially 16mm. A projector and old ﬁlms can be found very easily, and one can paint, scratch, project... These materials can be used in a very playful and talking way in workshops. Their use is very simple, and “going back to the concrete” is always very productive in terms of imagination.
Analog video supports: VHS, Beta SP, Umatic, Video8, Hi8, Super VHS... These supports stopped being used at the beginning of the 2000’s, but are still present, and can exist in our daily uses. The problem is the maintenance of the devices which allow to read them, the disappearance of the spare parts. It is desirable to digitize the important things that are still preserved on these supports. Copying a VHS tape to a DVD with a DVD recorder is digitization. This DVD can then easily be converted into a video ﬁchier (especially with the free software hanbrake). So you can be an actor in the digitization process.
Digital media can contain audiovisuals, or many other things: photos, texts, sound... A hard disk, for example, can contain anything you want. But there are media speciﬁc to audiovisual, which are manipulated a lot, and which tend to disappear little by little. That is to say, in the long run, everything should be transferred to hard disks, to be able to use them in a more easy and perennial way. The media in question are mainly DVD and Blu-ray. But there were also digital video tapes: Digital Betacam, MiniDV, DVCAM, HDV... Again, even though these are media that contain digital, the machines to play them are becoming difﬁcult to find and maintain, so it’s desirable to transfer the important stuff to hard disk.
In digital, there are also “formats”, which are more like how information is stored on hard disk. For example, and to be very simplistic:
- the “MP4” format, which is the major format for recording video transmission today in everyday life and on the internet.
- Or the “AVI” format, or the “MOV” format...
- Or the “DCP” format, which corresponds to the technical standards necessary for theatrical distribution.
It’s important to understand that digital is a standard code for storing information, but the “formats” are innumerable. Just think of the ﬁchiers .DOC and the ﬁchiers .ODT, used to record our texts, and not necessarily compatible with each other...

We “consume” audiovisual content on a variety of screens: television, computer screen, cinema screen, video projector, tablets, phone... As we saw at the beginning of this article, screens have a strong impact on content. And we are no longer simply spectators, because we produce, on a daily basis, content that we broadcast.

Evolution of practices

We know that since 2005, which is the year of the appearance of YouTube and other community video sites as well as the camera in cell phones, the spectators that we all are “consume” several screens in parallel. 2005 is a pivotal year in the technologies, in the practices, and in the business models of the audiovisual sector. It was also the year of the deﬁnition of digital cinema standards, which made silver cinema disappear from theaters deﬁnitively (with exceptions) in 2012. The “digital switchover” moment in the audiovisual field occurred in 2005.

Status of practices

There is no disappearance of the old practices, but a coexistence of the old and the new, as well as a redeﬁnition of the balances. If we look at things in a simpliﬁed way, we can say that:

People still go to theaters, but only to see entertainment ﬁlms (except in some theaters, which have a real cultural policy).
“Serious” ﬁlms, ﬁlms as cultural objects, are nowadays, when seen collectively, screened rather in museums, media libraries, theaters, art centers, on the occasion of festivals...
The series have become the most consumed form to be told stories.
Television has become a vehicle for fascist propaganda that is not known. Notably through reality TV shows that stage torture, violent selections, suicides, having more or less the same function as the circus games of ancient Rome, as well as through the staging of information as a spectacle. There are of course exceptions with certain channels, but they are rare.

Thus, the fact of organizing cultural events around the audiovisual, for the cultural and social institutions, became a very important stake of the construction of the socio-cultural space: the media space is so “polluted”, that to arrange tangible moments, human, of meetings around audio-visual objects that one wishes to transmit and to share is something exceptional, of essential and founding. The place of the media library, even if its conditions of projection are modest, is thus extremely precious.

Production by audiences

A very important element to take into account is also the fact that the publics are not only spectators of the images anymore. Each person, with his simple cell phone, “consumes”, but also manufactures images of his daily life, and transmits images that he has received. Social networks and community video sites in particular are full of images made and transmitted permanently by people, and give rise to the increasingly massive use of “contribution”. Why? Because these images that circulate are accompanied by advertisements, and make it possible to know more and more ﬁnes of people’s interests and relationships, aﬁn order to be able to introduce, in a less and less intrusive, more and more adapted way, commercial proposals, so much so that we no longer even realize that we are dealing with capitalist commerce. To be more precise, on YouTube, every minute that passes, 500 more hours of video are posted. When a video is viewed 1,000 times, it earns Google ten dollars through the sale of advertising space. Even if your family video is only viewed 10 times, since there are 100 family videos each viewed 10 times, that amount still earns Google ten dollars. The cost of storing videos is inexorably decreasing (due to Moore’s Law, which I invite you to discover on Wikipedia). Five billion videos are viewed every day on YouTube. Another example is Snapchat, which is an image transmission application (photo and video), very popular at the moment. Every day, ten billion images are exchanged via this network, which has the particularity that nothing is kept: the photo is seen for a few seconds and disappears, the video is seen once and disappears.

In 2007, the economic weight of the video game sector became more important in volume than the economic weight of the film and audiovisual sector. What is happening is that the amateur photo and video sharing sector will become more important in economic terms than the professional film and audiovisual sector. Thus, the audiences we are addressing are no longer mere spectators, they have become producers, broadcasters, unconscious economic agents of this new ﬂorishing audiovisual sector.

Of course, the only thing that counts for these ultra-capitalist industrialists who organize a very large part of our lives and human exchanges is quantity, not ethics or cultural value. That’s why I think the role of the public sector and cultural actions is absolutely central for the democratocracy not to fall apart on the “digital wall”. I invite you to be curious about new technologies, new uses, to establish spaces of dialogue with the public, to set up, with the tools of everyday life, other proposals, inventive, playful, diverted: writing workshops with cell phones, realization of collective ﬁlms with tablets or with drones, etc. You can discover on my website resources and shared experiences of cultural practices with new media, as well as a free guide to download, « Education à l’image 2.0 ».

Article published in the book “Cinema in the library” (Collection Médiathèmes 2017), edited by Dominique Rousselet, Julie Guillaumot, Marianne Palesse. Editions Association des Bibliothécaires de France/Images en bibliothèques.

Fourth cover

Since the 1970s, libraries have played an essential role in the dissemination of film and audiovisual works, whether in terms of access to works or cultural action. Their actions have never stopped evolving and they have been able to adapt to the changes in the landscape.

Today, they are important actors in image education and mediation with the public. They guarantee free and legal access for all audiences to films from all horizons (contemporary and repertory films, fiction, documentaries, animations, television series, experimental films, web creations, etc.).

However, new fundamental questions require librarians to collectively reflect on their practices. What is the place of libraries in the new digital access landscape? How can we help the public to sharpen their critical eye on images, in particular from the Web and the media? What new actions should be imagined to link the online offer to physical collections and collective animations?

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