In film, the director and/or the cameraman can use various cinematic devices to communicate and convey meaning.

Frame

The first important aspect is the distance between the camera and the person(s)/ object(s) that is (are) going to be filmed. There are three broad categories: the long shot, the medium shot and the close-up. The long shot  gives a wide view of the visual field and a human subject usually takes up less than half the height of the frame.. A close-up offers a very narrow view of the field so that e.g. a human face may fill the whole screen. The medium shot presents a view somewhere between the long shot and the close-up; a person may take up the full height of the screen or may fill it with half of his body. 

Camera Angles

Another important element of visual composition is the angle of the camera. When the camera is placed at a low angle the size and importance of the subject are emphasized. Low angle shots may be appropriate for instance if a child is the protagonist of a film and the director attempts to show us the scene from the child‘s perspective. The opposite effect is generally achieved by placing the camera above eye-level , creating a high angle shot, where the viewpoint makes the subject smaller and thus reduces its importance. When the camera adopts the perspective of a character the terms point-of-view (POV) shot or subjective camera are used.

Also to be considered when capturing a cinematic shot or moving image is the focal points- what is in the foreground and background, which objects are blurred and which are in focus to draw the viewers attention to.

Tracking

The camera is seldom fixed all the time but can move in various directions. Horizontal movement of a stationary camera is called panning and corresponds to the turning of our head from one side to the other. A panning shot may be effective e.g. to present a sweeping panoramic view of a wide landscape e.g. in a Western. The equivalent of moving our head up and down vertically is referred to as tilting. The zoom lens gives the camera the apparent power to vary its distance from any subject. It creates the effect of smooth and fluid movement toward or away from the subject without actually requiring any movement of the camera. The camera itself may be moved with the help of a dolly  or a crane. Such a mobile camera may be used e.g. to follow a person from behind (forward tracking shot,  or following e.g. a driving car parallel to it (parallel tracking shot). Sometimes a deliberately jerky picture  is achieved by using a hand-held camera.

Editing/Transitions

The smallest structural unit of film is the shot . With the help of cuts several shots form a scene. A group of consecutive and interrelated shots forms a sequence. The creative process of assembling various shots to a meaningful film is called editing, the person is referred to as the editor. When two shots overlap we talk of dissolve. When a picture fades into black (or another colour) to mark the transition  between two shots we have a fade-out; when an image evenly appears out of a black field a fade-in is employed. A sequence of (mostly rather brief) shots that are edited in a particularly artistic and effective way is called montage.

Motion picture technologies before film

From ancient times to 1894

The technology of film emerged mostly from developments and achievements in the fields of projection, lenses, photography and optics. Early techniques that involve moving pictures and/or projection include:

• Shadowgraphy (probably in practice since prehistoric times)
• Camera obscura (a natural phenomenon that has possibly been used as an artistic aid since prehistoric times)
• Shadow puppetry (possibly originated around 200 BCE in Central Asia, India, Indonesia or China)
• Magic lantern (developed in the 1650s, preceded by some incidental and/or inferior projectors)
• stroboscopic “persistence of vision” animation devices (phénakisticope since 1833, zoetrope since 1866, flip book since 1868)

The flip book, zoetrope and phenakistiscope are very tactile devices that allow study and play by manipulating the motion by hand, while the projected image in cinema is intangible. Such devices as the zoetrope were not replaced by cinema: they were still used after the breakthrough of film.

Camera Obscura or Pinhole Camera- Alhazen (11th Century)

Projection of images can occur naturally when rays of light pass through a small hole and produce an inverted image on a surface in a dark area behind the hole. This phenomenon is known as camera obscura or pinhole image. Its oldest known recorded description is found in Chinese Mohist writings dated to circa 400 BCE.

First one to create this phenominon was Alhazen (also known as Ibn al-Haytham) in 11th century. He was a scientist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, he wrote the Book of Optics and, among other things, he invented camera obscura and pinhole camera.

However, people have probably witnessed and made use of occurrences of the phenomenon since prehistoric times. It has been suggested that distortions in the shapes of animals in many paleolithic cave paintings were possibly based on distortions seen in pinhole images formed through tiny holes in tents or in screens of animal hide. Some ancient sightings of gods and spirits, especially in temple worship, are thought to possibly have been conjured up by means of camera obscura or proto magic lantern projections. In Arab and European science the camera obscura was used in darkened rooms since circa 1000 CE to study light and especially sun eclipses.

Very occasionally the camera obscura was thought of as an instrument for live projections of performances to entertain an audience inside a darkened room. Purportedly Arnaldus de Villa Nova did so at the end of the 13th century. The use of a lens in the opening of a wall or closed window shutter of a darkened room to project clearer images has been dated back to 1550. A camera obscura without a lens but with a very small hole is sometimes referred to as a pinhole camera, although this more often refers to simple (homemade) lensless cameras where photographic film or photographic paper is used.

Raree show – Leon Battista Alberti (15th Century)

A raree show, peep show or peep box is an exhibition of pictures or objects (or a combination of both), viewed through a small hole or magnifying glass. In 17th and 18th century Europe, it was a popular form of entertainment provided by wandering showmen.

Peep shows, also known as peep box or raree show (“rarity show”) can be traced back to the early modern period (15th century in Europe) and are known in various cultures. Around 1437 Italian humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher and cryptographer Leon Battista Alberti is thought to have created the earliest impressive peep show boxes with painted pictures to be viewed through a small hole. He had two kinds: night scenes with the moon and stars, and day scenes. It is thought these pictures may have been transparent and lit from behind, possibly changing from day to night by changing the lighting. It has also been suggested that it may have been a predecessor of the magic lantern that could project images.

Zoetrope- William George Horner (1886)

A zoetrope is one of several pre-film animation devices that produce the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion. It was basically a cylindrical variation of the phénakisticope, suggested almost immediately after the stroboscopic discs were introduced in 1833. The definitive version, with easily replaceable picture strips, was introduced as a toy by Milton Bradley in 1866 and became very successful.

As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the cuts at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion. From the late 19th century, devices working on similar principles have been developed, named analogously as linear zoetropes and 3D zoetropes, with traditional zoetropes referred to as “cylindrical zoetropes” if distinction is needed.

Kinetograph – Thomas Alva Edison (1889)

The first camera to take motion pictures on a moving strip of film.

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, and it quickly became the most popular home-entertainment device of the century. Seeking to provide a visual accompaniment to the phonograph, Edison commissioned Dickson, a young laboratory assistant, to invent a motion-picture camera in 1888. Building upon the work of Muybridge and Marey, Dickson combined the two final essentials of motion-picture recording and viewing technology. These were a device, adapted from the escapement mechanism of a clock, to ensure the intermittent but regular motion of the film strip through the camera and a regularly perforated celluloid film strip to ensure precise synchronization between the film strip and the shutter. Dickson’s camera, the Kinetograph, initially imprinted up to 50 feet (15 meters) of celluloid film at the rate of about 40 frames per second.