From moving pictures to streaming — the history of film and TV production

As an apprentice in film and TV production you work with cameras lights sound and editing. But the task is older than most of the tools you touch: capturing reality in moving images and sound and putting it together so it tells something. To understand why the trade works as it does it helps to know the way it has taken.

§The first moving pictures

Film was born in the late 1800s when it was discovered that a rapid series of still images is perceived as movement by the eye. The first films were short, silent and black and white and were recorded on celluloid — a physical film strip that had to be developed in a darkroom. Already here arose the basic techniques you still use: choosing a section, placing the camera and deciding what is in and out of the frame.

§Sound, colour and narrative technique

In the course of the 1900s, sound came to film, and later colour. With sound, one had to reconsider recording: microphones, silence on set and interplay between image and sound. At the same time, editing developed into a language. People learned that the order of images creates meaning, and that an edit can move time and place in an instant. That storytelling technique is still the core of the trade, regardless of which camera you use.

§The TV studio and the live broadcast

With television came a new way of producing. In the TV studio you work with multiple cameras at the same time and an image mixer chooses live which camera is broadcast. It gave direct transmission — news sports and shows broadcast as they happen. Here arose roles and working practices you meet today: camera operator image technician sound technician and a director tying it all together under time pressure.

§Videotape and electronic recording

Videotape made it possible to record image and sound electronically instead of on developed film. It became cheaper and faster to produce, and you could see the recording right away instead of waiting for the lab. Editing was done by copying clips from tape to tape in sequence. The profession moved from chemistry and developing toward electronics and signals — a big step toward the present.

§The digital recording and non-linear editing

The decisive shift came when image and sound became digital files. Now you could record on cards and disks and edit on a computer in a timeline where clips could be freely moved cut and layered — called non-linear editing. Colour effects and sound could be processed without loss and without touching the original. This is the working method you learn today and it gives a freedom that was previously impossible.

§Streaming and content for all screens

With the internet and broadband film and TV moved from fixed transmission times to streaming where viewers choose what and when. At the same time cameras in phones and sharing on social media became everyone's domain. It means that content today must work on everything from the large screen to the small one in your hand and a production is often designed in multiple formats from the start. The trade's storytelling technique remains — but the number of ways the content is used has grown enormously.

§Timeline — the major shift in film and TV production

§What the story teaches someone who works with film and television

Film and TV production has changed technique several times over a good hundred years, and it will continue. But the basic ideas — choose your image, lighting and sound with care, and let the editing tell — have held all the way. If you understand where they come from, you can learn new equipment faster because you know what it should solve.

“The camera changes every decade, but a good cut and a well-placed image tells just as powerfully today as it did when film was silent.”

— Professional view on the roots of film.