10 Awesome Innovations That Changed Cinema Forever

5. CGI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNLtPLFECNw Computer-generated imagery first abounded in laboratories as an experiment to turn computer code into images, and was promptly adopted by movie studios in the 1970s, albeit in primitive form. The Yul Brenner-starring 1973 classic weird western Westworld used basic CGI to render the viewpoint of the robotic cowboy protagonist, even though by today's standards it looks like all they did was place a pretty rudimentary filter over the images. However, this paved the way for everything that was to follow, specifically the plentiful visual effects of 1982's sci-fi Tron. Things really began to take off once James Cameron got his oar in on 1989's The Abyss and 1991's Terminator 2, both of which utilised highly complex, fluid visual effects that incredibly still look superb today, which is more than can be said for a lot of modern visual effects. Jurassic Park, Toy Story, and countless other classics helped to legitimise the use of CGI in mainstream cinema, and now it's difficult to come across a major motion picture that doesn't use it in some capacity.