A movie is a piece of video entertainment that includes a plot, characters and dialogue. It also has a visual component that can be either realistic or abstract, which is created by filming in various locations and using different camera angles. The movie’s soundtrack is a very important element as well, because it sets the mood and can make the audience feel like they are experiencing the action on-screen. Lastly, a movie can be analyzed in terms of its content, setting and cinematography. A movie’s content is its story and how it works together as a whole, while the setting refers to the background and details in the film that help create its atmosphere.
The earliest films simply showed static shots of events, such as workers leaving a factory gate or the view from the front of a trolley car traveling down a city street. Later, filmmakers began stringing several scenes together to tell a story. This allowed them to control the pace of a film, as well as highlight certain aspects of the setting. For example, by arranging several shots in a row, they could create the illusion that a character was running away from a locomotive. The earliest films did not include sound, but by the turn of the 20th century, the sound was added to enhance the audience’s experience. Then came the age of special effects, which added a new dimension to the storytelling and made the movies more realistic and interesting.
As a result of these technical advances, it became possible for a filmmaker to take on a more social or political commentary, such as the controversial Vietnam War drama Platoon, which highlighted the horrors of war and the impact it can have on the human psyche. The film was critically acclaimed and won many awards. Similarly, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing drew on the tensions between African-Americans in a Brooklyn neighborhood and Italian-Americans running a pizzeria to craft a tense, thought-provoking film that hasn’t aged one bit.
Movies are always a product of their culture and historical period in which they were created. This type of analysis considers a movie’s relationship to its context, whether it is historical, social or theoretical. A film’s ability to convey its message is often determined by the strength of its actors, and no actor was more powerful than Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in their portrayals of investigative journalists Woodward and Bernstein in All The President’s Men. This harrowing drama has never been surpassed for its gut-wrenching suspense and unforgettable performances. It was a movie that changed the world.