Technology and the Movie Industry

Introduction

The advent of technology has altered the traditional realms of viewing and doing things. The advancement has had a tremendous effect to different industries with some benefiting greatly while others have recorded dismal performance. So unselective are the effects of technology such that the effects have been recorded in the media, the banking industry, religious organization and even the entertainment industry. One of the areas that directly concern me and have been greatly affected by the technological development is the rise of entertainment industry. As a hobby, I like watching movies with friends as I find this relaxing.

Traditionally, watching movies was previously an issue restricted to the theaters especially when the movies were still new due to cost issues related by new releases. The movie producers had to charge high cots to defray the costs of acting the movies and thus the high prices were justifiable. However, technology has lowered the cost of acting one movie and thus it has made the movies more affordable to people. Besides this lowered costs, technology has enabled the type of movies that are acted to be wide range as there are movies that are acted by technologically manufactured elements. Technology has therefore altered the movies industry in a number of ways. The areas that this paper shall address concerning the movie industry and how technology has affected it is:

• The actual acting of movies: Issues related to synchronous and asynchronous acting of movies especially on visual recording and voice recording.
• Marketing and advertising; how the movie industry has been aided to market its product in advanced technology
• Creation of virtual world and reduced costs of movie production; this shall address how technology has allowed actors to create virtual worlds that have transformed the appealing nature of the movies.
• The color effect: how the technology has made it easy for actors to have movies that can easily match the effects of mood and events that are being displayed.

Overview

As noted by Rand Corporation, (2008), the movie industry has shown tremendous growth in the production process with the rise of technology. One of the major breakthroughs that the technology has enabled the movie industry to have is on the sound effect as well as the use of asynchronous voices. In the past, actors were forced to act while at the same time incorporating their voice inputs. This resulted to poor sound qualities as some scenes must take place in scenes that cannot incorporate quality sound.  The advent of technology however has managed to separate the concept of time and voice. Today voices are acted at the studios to guarantee sound quality and later incorporated to the movies. Prior to the technological era, movie directors could not have endorsed an asynchronous voice as there was no technology to ensure that the voice matched the actions.

Marketing movies has been revolutionized by the advent of technology too. In the past movies were marketed via the main stream media through few seconds or minutes of actual screening of the movie. People would get to know about the existence and capture the movie on the theatres. This form of advertisement further added to the cost of the movies which made it hard for producers to release movies at rates that were considered to be affordable as the cost of production and advertising were high. Technology however has altered the advertising sector of the movie industry. Today, the movie summaries may be posted online on sites that share videos such as you tube or slide share or even to the social networking sites such as face book or twitter. Once the movies are in these sites, funs start posting their comments and ratings and start searching for ways that they can get the movies for views. This results to a creation of a large pool; of people who later institute the shopping process also done online. Within a short period of time, the movie is widely purchased online and thus the revenues are gained while costs are kept low.

Online advertising also induces buying unlike the traditional advertising that was detached to the product. When a person purchases a movie in a virtual market, the sites in an effort to gain more sales advises the client to purchase more movies by showing the client other related movies. The psychological effect of such a system is that the client ends up purchasing more of the movies as opposed to use of traditional media.

Movie producers today can also bring a lot of virtual effects with ease to bring camera effects to match the needs of the movie scenes. Today, a crowd of fifty people can be made to look like that of a million people through simple technology (Kuhn, 2008). Worlds can be created with a person acting on a snow surface being made to look as though he is working on a desert through simple camera tricks. Such effects have welcomed creativity further propelling the movie industry while at the same time lowering costs. Different genres of movies are also easy to act with the advent of technology. Movies that depict existence of aliens can easily be acted through simple technology unlike in the past when this only happened rarely due to the technological and cost constraints of the time.

Color effects have also improved. Although the color technology is relatively old, the advent of the latest technology has made the movie industry to undergo tremendous development. Today, an actor can get any color they want, they can easily create the impression of darkens and light with ease than in the past and can have a million ways to ensure that they manage to develop their movies to the best quality of color as well as the color theme. One can easily create effects such as bleeding through computer technology among other many new developments (Teich, 2009). All this developments have been of great relevance during to the movie industry as they have revolutionized the industry. The end result of such revolutions has been an attainment of a new age of the movie industry where movies are being in volumes and lower costs making the costs of purchasing the end product low. This has enabled people to embrace the culture of buying the movies and watch them at the comfort of their homes leading to a change in the culture of movie theatre to home movies (Alan and Smith, 2008).

Literature Review

Various scholars have devoted their energy to study the trends that have been recorded in the technological sector. In 2009, Standage examined the way the technology of the future shall be. In this examination, Standage, (2009), focuses on what has already been achieved in the technology sector. This work examines the trends that have been realized in the technological sector without limiting the research to the movie and the entertainment industry. However, the work issues relevant insights towards what the future outlook for the movie industry may be in future. Similar work was has been done by Teich, (2009), who examines what the technology holds for the future. In this analysis, Teich, (2009), notes that technology holds also of prospects for the future. This is an indication that the major transformations that have already been experienced by various industries are far from settling, which is an indication that the movie industry is set to transform further.

The entertainment industry has witnessed many changes over the years especially with the rise of technology. According to Haupert, (2006), the raise of technology has enabled a wider way of acting movies. He asserts that today, actors can carry all the acting on a single terrain and at the same place and only have the technological effects to bring the many needed terrains, the color effects and other important elements to effectively match the theme. Similar views are held by Wasko, (2007), who posits that the rise of technology in the movie industry have brought about diversity in the movie industry. This diversity according to Wasko, (2007), has been enabled by the ability of technology to allow quality editing of various aspects of the movie and ensure that the end result of the movie is appealing to the target client. Such diversities have been captured by Kuhn (2008), who shows that the new technology is bringing newer revolutions to the entertainment world. The future outlook also, according to Rand Corporation, (2008), the computer technology shall make it ensure for movie production in future as technology advances. In this work Rand Corporation, (2008), notes that the cultural practices such as the attachment that people have with the movies shall change and take ma new shape. This is an indication that this technological advancement shall greatly affect various stakeholders.

Straubhaar, LaRose and Davenport, (2008), posits that the age of the technology has had a devastating blow to the theatre culture by bringing the movies that took people to the movies to their living rooms. This bringing of movies into the living room has enabled the masses to easily capture the latest movies without necessarily going to the theatres. The movies they are capturing in their living rooms also are known to be of advanced technology courtesy to the era of information technology (Alan and Smith, 2008). The DVD revolution has further altered the traditional movie entertainment scenes by introducing cheaper options that are matched with good quality. The digital visual display technology also has enabled many movies to be carried on a single disk allowing users to benefit tremendously from what they get from these movies. As noted by Barlow (2005), the DVD technology may usher in more complicated and better ways of communicating the movie industry. After these views in 2005, the recent past has seen the domination of the entertainment scene by the iPods that had been introduced in the market in 2001 by apple inc. today, various portable gadgets can be used for movie purposes hence further giving an indication that the future of the movie industry with the developing technology is promising to the lovers of the industry.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is evident that the rising use of technology has transformed an area that affects my life directly. The notion of the movie theatre is slowly dying and possible rise of small capacity theatres with the ability to accommodate one to eight people may replace the big theatres. Movie advertising has also changed to embrace the benefit that comes with the transformed movie industry. It is also evident that the way that these changes are here to stay and future technologies shall also alter the movie industry even further. Predictability of how advancement of technology will alter the quality of life of persons has not been put forth. What is certain however is the fact that once the changes come, people shall benefit further with the advancement of technology.