Computers and The Movie Industry
Nathaniel Ephriam III

ITT Technical Institute

Abstract
Changes in the movie industry because of computers are far reaching. The amounts of movies made in today’s market that have some kind of computer imaging in it have more than doubled. Nearly all of your Big Budget films use computer technology to add realism to their projects. It is nowadays included into the budget. No longer is special effects alone enough to sell the film. However with the combination of both computers and special effects, even hard to please directors are becoming tame. Even Animation is seeing unbelievable results using computer technology. No current Animation is considered a serious project unless they use some form of computerization. In the last decade more and more films are made in this new way. The use of computer technology has also been responsible for many awards currently being received by movie companies. Awards such as Oscars, Academy Awards and Golden Globes, you name it computers are responsible for it.

Computers and the Movie Industry

Hollywood has released some of the most memorable films the world has ever seen. Films like The Wizard of Oz, The Towering Inferno, and Titanic are more than just great cinema. They show the connection of computers and the movie industry. All of the films mentioned earlier and hundreds more were all made with some level of computer aid. The term “special effects” meant very little to the public when it was first introduced as part of a film’s make-up. In today’s movie industry trying to make a successful film without special effects is almost impossible. Computers today are currently replacing, and redefining many of the oldest jobs in Hollywood. Jobs like editing: post production, sound editing, and sound effects have been greatly affected. But more importantly, they are creating new jobs in the industry. Such as 3D imagining and Digital photography, even the way Animation is presently created.

The wizards of Hollywood have always wowed us with unbelievable images on the silver screen. Early movie goers could always wait for the big finish at the end of the film and would leave feeling totally satisfied. Then something came along and seemingly changed everything overnight. That thing was computers, and with their emergence changed the face of Hollywood forever. Blockbuster movies like Twister, Jurassic Park and Independence Day all had a healthy dose of computer magic to make scenes more realistic. “Such technology (also used to create the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park and the spaceships of TV-shows like Babylon 5) combined with computer effects such as “motion blurring” often produces more realistic-looking images than either studio models or even actual film footage.” (Cerveny, 1996) Computers just made thing better, now you could make any type of movie you wanted. Be it Science Fiction, fast paced Drama or gory Medieval. The unmistaken realism of what computers brought to film could not be denied. Now audiences wouldn’t have to wait for big finishes they could get tremendous jolts all thru the film. Slowly the public was getting more aware; they didn’t need critics to tell them what was a good movie or a bad one. This alone would propel the use of computers in film to grow at an alarming rate. This extreme change also started to show up in Animation. Not only did the computer speed up the whole process, it made it better. So much so that there’s always at least one Animation film nominated for an Oscar. “Sometimes Pixar creates short films to exercise new technology; sometimes the films exercise new talents. Pixar uses its own RenderMan for rendering, outputting the scenes in numerous layers, which were composited in Apple’s Shake.” (Robertson, 2006) (Robertson, 2006) Both in front and behind the camera, computers are taking over the movie industry. Many of the jobs that use to be Hollywood staples have either shrinked in size or have been eliminated altogether because of computers. Some jobs in editing (assistants to the editor, and sound editing) have been cut down or cut out. Other jobs titles have been renamed, such as Picture assistants who are now called technical organizers. However the use of computers has also added new jobs to the industry. Computerization and Digitalization have put many technical people to work. People of the industry have learned to adapt or returned back to school to acquire all the new skill sets necessary in today’s market. Movie goers are the real winners here in that their overall knowledge of real life events keeps directors honest in their approach to making believable films. Unlike earlier days, special effects alone in today’s film are seldom enough to make a film marketable. In a technical age the movie industry is doing far more than just keeping up, in many ways their leading the charge.
There is no question that computers are a major part of the movie industry. At this point we know where it all got started. We also have enough movies to see clearly that the roll of computers have changed the movie industry, and that roll is expanding. Just how much more of roll computers will play in the future is still undetermined.

References
Bibliography
Cerveny, R. (1996, Dec). From corn flakes to computers......making weather in the movies. pp. 35-40.
Robertson, B. D. (2006, Feb). Short and Sweet. pp. 10-18.