The development of motion picture complexity has been driven by a continuing technological evolution, ignited and manipulated by human initiative and inventiveness, which has afforded filmmakers the opportunity to practice a more complex craft to tell more complex stories. In concert with societal attitudes and proximity, this evolution has driven the development of distinct styles, movements, and methods that would have been impossible without increasingly advanced apparatus. However, while this technological progression has been linear, it has not necessarily coincided with a similar evolution of quality; the skill of a filmmaker should not be judged by the technological complexity of the production, but by the ability of the filmmaker to wield the technology of the time and of his or her choosing to effectively and clearly convey a narrative, evoke an emotion, or make an impression. Although the linear technological evolution of filmmaking has empowered filmmakers by offering a more diverse catalogue of tools and techniques, it is the filmmaker’s ability to effectively and discerningly utilize this technology within a temporal and societal context that truly drives cinematic quality, of which there has been no clear linear progression.
As film history has progressed, so too has the sophistication of filmmaking technology, from cameras, to sound recording, to editing. Technological advancements in these areas expand the creative potential of the filmmaker. However, just because technology is more advanced does not mean that it is necessarily superior in each given application. Rather, advanced technology is advantageous in that it broadens the toolset available to the filmmaker from which he or she can discern which equipment and techniques are best suited to a given production. French film theorist Louis Delluc would call these filmmaking techniques and methods cinematic formal elements, or those elements unique to film as an art form, such as editing and camera movement (Jaramillo). As the evolution of film has progressed, the catalogue of cinematic formal elements has grown, enabling filmmakers to, at their discretion, make more complex films. Even restricted to the confines of what Tom Gunning calls “cinema of attractions,” the dominant paradigm before 1908 (73), this is evident.
Gunning worries that adopting an evolutionary view of cinema will categorize pre-WWI film and cinema of attractions, as he puts it, “as [a] primitive […] early stage in which later potentials are sketched out but imperfectly realized” (71). However, Gunning’s definition of cinema of attractions frees it from this imperfect characterization:
By its reference to the curiosity-arousing devices of the fairground, the term denoted early cinema’s fascination with novelty and its foregrounding of the new act of display. Viewed from this perspective, early cinema did not simply seek to neutrally record previously existing acts or events. Rather, even the seemingly stylistically neutral film consisting of a single shot without camera tricks involved a cinematic gesture of presenting for view, of displaying. (73)
On this view, the early films of cinema’s pioneers would not have been improved by the advanced technology of later generations, for their displays did not call for it. Further they cannot be seen as solely preparatory, for, like later narrative films, they presented a subject for view in a uniquely cinematic way. The early films of Edison and Dickson were simple, short glimpses of “well-known sports figures, excerpts from noted vaudeville acts, or performances by dancers or acrobats” (Thompson & Bordwell 7). While it is true that primitive technology did limit these small-scale productions, which, according to Thompson and Bordwell, “lasted only twenty seconds or so – the longest run of film that the Kinetoscope could hold” (7), advanced technology would not necessarily have improved them, for their simplistic nature did not call for it. Regardless, filmmaking technology evolved with the Lumiere Brothers’ Cinématographe which freed filmmakers from the confines of the studio and allowed for on location shooting (Thompson & Bordwell 8-9). This, however, did not lead to better films, but only augmented the possibilities for future films such as Workers Leaving the Factory (Lumiere 1895) and Arrival of a Train (Lumiere1896), the production of which would have been impossible within a studio. With this advancement, the global toolset of filmmakers grew; from Edison and Dickson, filmmakers got the option to shoot in a light controlled studio and from the Lumiere brothers the ability to shoot on location. Neither of these options is universally better, but only particularly more suited to a given production and would, in themselves, evolve over time.
Single shot display films eventually gave way to films such as George Melies’ Trip to the Moon (1902), composed of several single shot scenes, and later films like Cecil B. DeMille