Moving Image Technology: From Zoetrope to Digital (review)

When, within a few years of each other, filmmakers as diverse as George Lucas, Eric Rohmer, and Abbas Kiarostami began to make their equally diverse pictures using digital formats, it became clear that even if film's obsolescence is not yet complete, this development is a major turning point in cinema's history. This makes for a particularly appropriate moment to revisit the technological history of motion pictures in an effort to shed light on the past transitions based on today's experiences and to better understand current processes based on the lessons of history. Moving Image Technology: From Zoetrope to Digital—a new technological history of film, television, and digital media by scholar and archivist Leo Enticknap—illustrates some particular challenges in making sense of this aspect of cinema history. Taking on the task of explaining "what happened, when and why, and the wider impact of each development on other related technologies and their uses" (p. 3), the book demonstrates how technological transformations in cinema are never purely technological; they always shape and are shaped by transformations in their economic, institutional, and aesthetic context. As the book points out time and again, the case of moving images necessitates a unique approach to the consideration of the role of technology, as new inventions in this field tend to cause new problems just as much as they offer solutions to previous ones.

Moving Image Technology consists of eight chapters, conveniently divided into topics, with each chapter arranged in chronological order. The first four chapters focus on film technology, covering issues such as the structure and chemical characteristics of films; various types of film stocks, formats, and gauges; printing and copying techniques; technologies of film cameras; coloring methods; color cinematography; and film sound systems. One chapter deals with the history of television and video, a topic that has particularly lacked an accessible and concise history for some time, examining key inventions, from Marconi's transmission of sound to the electronic television, while also touching on issues of competing broadcasting standards and videotape formats. Another chapter deals with new moving image technologies, from digital sound recording and processing devices, to the Internet, digital television, DVD, and theatrical exhibition devices. Alongside the sections that deal with the principal media forms, the book includes chapters on two related technological issues. One deals with challenges, practices, and approaches to moving image archiving and preservation. The other sheds light on technologies of cinema exhibition, from the nineteenth-century peephole devices to the multiplex, elaborating on aspects that tend to escape histories that often primarily focus on the apparatus of film production.

In the form of a running historical narrative, Moving Image Technology discusses inventions and uses of cinematic technologies within the ever-changing industrial contexts of production, distribution, exhibition, movie-going, television consumption, archiving, and even safety and piracy. Therefore, the volume should not be approached as a handbook with detailed descriptions and means of identification for particular formats. The inclusion of a chronology of key dates and a glossary of technological terms, however, provides useful starting points for the reader who is interested in looking up specific subjects. Unlike many other authors writing on technology, Enticknap writes relatively free of professional or technological jargon, addressing readers without an engineering background. As a coherent and conclusive survey of cinematic technologies, this book would be useful for readers who seek an introduction to the topic, for professionals seeking wider knowledge about related topics outside of their specialty, for film technology survey classes, and particularly for students in film archiving programs.

It is not hard to find lacunas and gaps in information in Enticknap's book, though generally it is equally easy to justify them. This is the case, for instance, in the description of a number of early nonstandard film formats and coloring methods. Also, although the volume's subtitle reads From Zoetrope to Digital, the actual historical survey starts with the earliest commercial uses of film, and the discussion of precinematic optical motion toys receives little more than a...