The Content Factor of movies

As I mentioned before, some content factors are likely to wither in the evolving technology ecosystem. And some are refusing to die, despite huge changes in the way that they are produced, distributed and consumed.

Movies are a case in point. Just look at the technological developments since the introduction of sound in The Jazz Singer in 1927. (And, yes, I know that it wasn't the first film to use synchronous sound and that it employed sound in only a handful of places. But it is widely regarded as a landmark in the development of filmmaking for the first use of sound, so I'm not going to get pedantic about it.)

Here are some of the more notable advances:

1927 - introduction of synchronous sound in The Jazz Singer
1933 - first drive-in movie theatre
1935 - Becky Sharp, the first feature shot entirely in three-strip Technicolor
1941 - US broadcast TV standardised with the adoption of NTSC
1953 - Cinemascope (widescreen)
1958 - 70mm
1970 - IMAX
1975 - Betamax introduced, followed by VHS in 1976
1978 - Discovision (Laser disc)
1996 - DVD format introduced in Japan by Toshiba
2001 - BitTorrent released
2005 - 5th generation iPod supports video

And at about this point (late 2002) Universal release 8 Mile.

The significant thing here is that despite these seismic changes to the way in which people can and do enjoy movies, the "shape" of movies themselves  - the content factor - has changed very little over the same period. The Jazz Singer and 8 Mile are, despite some superficial differences, very similar stories. And by superficial, I'm not suggesting that those obvious differences are not significant or profoundly important. Simply that on a structural level the narratives of both films share a great deal. Namely, that both movies concern themselves with young ambitious men, driven to succeed performing a music that is not part of the culture they grew up in.

Hence The 8 Mile Jazz Singer.

Comments

[faris]

interesting mate - so 'content factor' is the shape of content as delineated by the transmission vector?

that has been de-coupled no doubt. transmedia was one of the ways. multimedia i guess another.

i wonder if there are 'natural' content factor - do films make sense in that length and shape without the medium?