100 years of Indian entertainment technology from Lumiere brothers to virtual reality

On December 28th, 1895, the Lumiere brothers Louis and Auguste opened a theatre, situated in salle au Grand-Cafe at 14-Boulevard des Capucines. This was the world's first commercial enterprise to screen their films which they called "cinematographe". They charged one franc for admission. Within a few weeks Lumiere films were playing to "standing room only". Very soon their "cinematographe" percolated to all the corners of the world. It reached Indian shores within a year. In India the first person to venture into commercialisation of this aspect of entertainment was "Dada Saheb Phalke", known as the father of Indian cinema. The progression from his first film "Raja Harishchandra" to the countless number of films India churns out today has indeed made this country stand out on the broadcast map of the world. Commencing with the one inch C format in 1980, production of software in India has graduated to an amalgamation of D1, Digital Betacam, Betacam, U-Matic and various nonlinear formats. From "black boxes" to open architectural workstations, from cuts and dissolves to multi-layered compositing and state-of-the-art SFX, the language of film and television has now evolved new standards. This paper maps the technical developments encompassing the field of production and post-production.