Film’s in 20th century

In the 1920s, new technology permitted filmmakers to attach to each film a soundtrack of speech, music and sound effects synchronized with the action on the screen. These sound films were initially illustrious by calling them "talking pictures", or talkies.

The next main step in the development of cinema was the introduction of color. While the addition of sound speedily eclipsed silent film and theater musicians, color was adopted more gradually. The public was comparatively indifferent to color photography as opposed to black-and-white,[citation needed] but as color processes improved and became as affordable as black-and-white film, more and more movies were filmed in color after the end of World War II, as the industry in America came to view color as necessary to attracting audiences in its competition with television, which remained a black-and-white medium until the mid-1960s. By the end of the 1960s, color had become the norm for film makers.

Since the reject of the studio system in the 1960s, the succeeding decades saw changes in the production and style of film. New Hollywood, French New Wave and the increase of film school educated independent filmmakers were all part of the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of the 20th century. Digital technology has been the energetic force in change throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century.