Significant Developments Within The Film Making Industry

There have been numerous developments within the film industry and especially the thriller genre. When thinking about modern day films, they have certainly come along way since the black and white silent films that existed when film industry began.

Films nowadays are not as simple to make as they once were and they require many more specialist individuals who work together to produce a final outcome. The film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking: i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and other film personnel. Films are much more expensive to make these days, but this means better results. The more technology evolves, the higher production costs are. This is largely due to the use of special effects and CGI (computer generated images) because the filming equipment itself has been made more affordable. This affordable equipment is probably due to the large scale the film industry now operates on. The more expensive films tend to then generate more revenue, which is necessary if the film production company wants to make a profit.

The ability to aquire investment from outside the film industry has meant that independant film production has evolved. An independant film is a film that is produced mostly outside of a major film studio. In order to be considered independent, less than half of a film's financing should come from a major studio. These types of film did not exist in the earlier years of film making.

The bigger the budget for a film, the more technical it can be made. The first movie cameras were fastened directly to the head of their tripod or other support. Nowadays, a huge variety of highly complex cameras are used on a number of different support mediums. Since the 1990s, computer generated imagery (CGI) has come to the forefront of special effects technologies. CGI gives film-makers greater control, and allows many effects to be accomplished more safely and convincingly. CGI is used in many of the thriller films that we have studied such as 'X-Men' and 'The Matrix' The CGI is used to create characters or locations that could not exist in real life, so would be impossible to film with a camera.

All these develoments mean that thriller films can be made much more exciting, and when necessary the scenes can be made to look unrealisic and more fictional, which adds to the thrill element of the film.