The Early Days

In the earliest days of the movie industry, the first film projector was called the Zoopraxiscope. It was invented in 1875 by a photographer called Eadweard Muybridge. Almost a decade later, the legendary inventor Thomas Edison, filed to patent an object that projects images. He described it as “an object that does for the eye what the phonograph does to the ears”. In 1895, the first film significant film was broadcast, reportedly by Lumière Brothers in Paris, France. Almost a decade later, Edison donated the instrument he had patented to an Institute of Arts. Continue reading →

Today’s movie studios are spending astronomical sums of money on blockbuster franchise movies about superheroes and sagas set in far-away galaxies. But some of the most profitable movies in history have been made by independent studios and low-budget filmmakers.

The highest grossing movies of all time are often the most expensive to make. Titanic was a film that dominated the box office and the Oscars, but James Cameron was nearly suckered by the demands of the budget and risked bankruptcy if the film had failed. Films like these are very successful and take a lot at the box office but when measured against their production costs, they are not as profitable as the three indie films listed here, which performed way better than expected. Continue reading →

A little over 10 years ago, camera phones began to work their way into the pockets of the public, with many boasting features like a VGA image sensor that could take photos in resolutions of up to 640×480 pixels. Video recording was only possible from the top-of-the-range models, and even then, the quality was poor, with videos lacking seriously in clarity and not much bigger than a mid-2000’s mobile phone screen.

Fast forward a decade, and thanks to their powerful processing power, modern smartphones are useful for many tasks beyond making and receiving calls. These handheld devices allow us to work from anywhere, manage our finances, listen to huge libraries of music, navigate and entertain ourselves with mobile games like poker. Just like everything else in the devices, the cameras have also advanced dramatically, with the latest models able to record in high-resolution 4K.

Productivity and entertainment are not the only capabilities of modern smartphones. Thanks to their ever-increasing computing power, and the inclusion of multiple high-resolution cameras, you can now use mobile phones for shooting professional grade movies. Such ability came into the mainstream by Apple when they ran an ad campaign called “Shot on iPhone” that showcased the video recording capabilities of its smartphone range by crowdsourcing high-quality videos from users on social media.

That wasn’t the only case of a mobile phone used for professional-grade videography, as several movies have also shot on smartphones. Continue reading →

Las Vegas is a very popular setting for movies. Although you could probably name quite a few movies set there, if you had to guess how many titles on IMDb were shot there, your guess would probably be way too low. It’s a stunning 8,817! But how come Las Vegas is such a popular place? And what’s the history of this city that is known for it’s casinos, bright lights and an atmosphere where almost anything seems to go. Time to have a look! Continue reading →

Xenomorphs have been scaring us shirtless since the late 1970s, becoming one of the most iconic franchises – and an inspiration for countless science fiction/horror crossovers – in the 1980s and the 1990s. Ridley Scott tried his hand in big-screen horror for the first time with Alien after winning over the hearts of the Cannes jury with his big screen debut “Duellists” in 1977. And he created something of lasting value, a franchise that would’ve been a waste not to continue – even if the later iterations of the story were far behind what the fans would’ve expected from it (Alien3 was considered a failure by many while Alien Resurrection was called outright “bad” by an equally large group of people). When Scott took back the reins for the Alien series, people expected it to be reborn, to scare us shirtless once again. Instead, it has taken a different path: first, it explored our origins and next, it explored the Xenomorphs’ origins on the screen. And, since people expected far more blood, gore, dismemberment and screams, the films mostly failed to win over their hearts. Continue reading →