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A feature film or feature-length film (often abbreviated to feature), also called a theatrical film, is a film ( motion picture, "movie" or simply “picture”) with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment theatrical program. The term ''feature film'' originally referred to the main, full-length film in a cinema program that included a short film and often a newsreel. Matinee programs, especially in the United States and Canada, in general, also included cartoons, at least one weekly serial and, typically, a second feature-length film on weekends. The first narrative feature film was the 70-minute '' The Story of the Kelly Gang'' (1906). Other early feature films include '' Les Misérables'' (1909), '' L'Inferno'', '' Defence of Sevastopol,
The Adventures of Pinocchio ''The Adventures of Pinocchio'' ( ; , i.e. "The Adventures of Pinocchio. Story of a Puppet"), commonly shortened to ''Pinocchio'', is an 1883 Children's literature, children's fantasy novel by Italian author Carlo Collodi. It is about the mischi ...
'' (1911), '' Oliver Twist'' (American version), '' Oliver Twist'' (British version), ''
Richard III Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch the House of York. His defeat and death at the Battle of Boswor ...
'', '' From the Manger to the Cross'', '' Cleopatra'' (1912), '' Quo Vadis?'' (1913), '' Cabiria'' (1914) and '' The Birth of a Nation'' (1915).


Description

The notion of how long a feature film should be has varied according to time and place. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the
American Film Institute The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the History of cinema in the United States, motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private fu ...
and the British Film Institute, a feature film runs for more than 40 minutes, while SAG-AFTRA says that a feature's running time is 60 minutes or longer. The Centre National de la Cinématographie in France defines it as a 35 mm film longer than , which is exactly 58 minutes and 29 seconds for sound films.


History

The term ''feature film'' came into use to refer to the main film presented in a cinema and the one which was promoted or advertised. The term was used to distinguish the longer film from the short films (referred to as shorts) typically presented before the main film, such as newsreels, serials,
animated cartoon Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...
s, live-action comedies and documentaries. There was no sudden increase in the running times of films to the present-day definitions of feature-length; the "featured" film on a film program in the early 1910s gradually expanded from two to three to four reels. Early features had been produced in the United States and France, but were released in individual (short film) scenes. This left exhibitors the option of playing them alone, to view an incomplete combination of some films, or to run them all together as a short film series. Early features were mostly documentary-style films of noteworthy events. Some of the earliest feature-length productions were films of boxing matches, such as '' The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight'' (1897), ''Reproduction of the Corbett-Jeffries Fight'' and ''The Jeffries-Sharkey Fight'' (1899). Some consider the 100-minute ''The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight'' to be the first documentary feature film, but it is more accurately characterized as a sports program as it included the full unedited boxing match. In 1900, the documentary film '' Army Life'' was produced by Robert Paul. It was a programme of 33 short films, with a total running time of around 75 minutes, following the training of British soldiers. '' Inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth'' (1901) ran for 35 minutes, "six times longer than any previous Australian film", and has been called "possibly the first feature-length documentary made in Australia". American company S. Lubin released a Passion Play titled ''Lubin's Passion Play'' in January 1903 in 31 parts, totaling about 60 minutes. The French company Pathé Frères released a different Passion Play in May 1903, '' The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ'', in 32 parts, totaling 44 minutes. Defined by length, the first dramatic feature film was the Australian 70-minute film '' The Story of the Kelly Gang'' (1906). Similarly, the first European feature was the 90-minute film '' L'Enfant prodigue'' (France, 1907), although that was an unmodified record of a stage play; Europe's first feature adapted directly for the screen, '' Les Misérables'', came from France in 1909. The first Russian feature was '' Defence of Sevastopol'' in 1911. Early Italian features included '' L'Inferno'' (1911), '' Quo Vadis?'', '' The Last Days of Pompeii'' (1913) and '' Cabiria'' (1914). The first UK features were the documentary '' With Our King and Queen Through India'' (1912), filmed in Kinemacolor and '' Oliver Twist'' (also 1912). The first American features were '' Oliver Twist'', '' From the Manger to the Cross'', '' Cleopatra'' and ''
Richard III Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch the House of York. His defeat and death at the Battle of Boswor ...
'' (all 1912). Actor Frederick Warde starred in some of these adaptations. The first Asian feature was
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
's ''The Life Story of Tasuke Shiobara'' (1912),Patrick Robertson, ''Film Facts'', New York: Billboard Books, 2001, pp. 10–14. . the first Indian feature was '' Raja Harishchandra'' (1913),
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
's first feature film was Zhang Shichuan's ''Nan Fu Nan Qi'' (1913), the first
South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...
n feature was
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
's ''O Crime dos Banhados'' (1913), and the first
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
n feature was
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
's '' De Voortrekkers'' (1916). By 1915, over 600 feature films were produced annually in the United States.American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures nline database It is often incorrectly cited that '' The Birth of a Nation'' (1915) was the first American feature film. The most prolific year of U.S. feature production was 1921, with 682 releases; the lowest number of releases was in 1963, with 213. Between 1922 and 1970, the U.S. and Japan alternated as leaders in the quantity of feature film production. Since 1971, the country with the highest feature output has been India, which produces a thousand films in more than twelve Indian languages each year.


Technological developments

In 1927, Warner Bros. released the first feature-length film with sound, '' The Jazz Singer'', whose audio track was recorded with a proprietary technology called
Vitaphone Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National Pictures, First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone is the last major analog sound-on-disc sys ...
. The film's success persuaded other studios to go to the considerable expense of adding microphones to their sets, and scramble to start producing their own " talkies". One of the next major advancements made in movie production was color film. Even before color was a possibility in movies, early film makers were interested in how color could enhance their stories. Early techniques included hand tinting: painting each frame by hand. Cheaper and more widely used was toning: dying the film in a single color, used in many films in the 1920s. The film processing lab Technicolor developed the Three-Tone coloring technique that became the standard for color film. It was a complex, time consuming, and expensive process that many movie studios were not eager to try. One of the early adopters of the three-strip process was Disney. Some of the most notable films Technicolor processed with three-strip were '' The Wizard of Oz'' and '' Gone with the Wind''. Digital Video (or DV) has quickly changed how most films are made. First used to create special effects and animated movies, digital cameras became more common on film sets in the late 1990s. In 2002, George Lucas' '' Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones'' became the first major studio film shot primarily on digital video. The ability to instantly play back footage and quickly transfer footage to computers for editing helped to speed up post-production time. Digital film making was given a big boost in 2005 when the Digital Cinema Initiative created a guide for manufacturers to create a universal standard, to make the technologies more compatible with each other and more user friendly. Shooting movies on digital also led to new technologies for distributing films. '' Titan A.E.'', released in 2000, was the first feature film to be released for viewing over the internet. Digital distribution changed the ways people received and watched media. It also gave viewers access to huge amounts of online content on demand.


See also

* Narrative film * Short film * Featurette *
List of early color feature films A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...
* List of motion picture terminology


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feature Film Audiovisual introductions in 1897 Film production Film and video terminology Australian inventions az:Bədii film hu:Játékfilm sv:Spelfilm