10 Movies You Didn’t Know Were Responsible For Game-Changing Innovations
4. First Use Of Blue Screen - The Thief Of Bagdad
The Thief of Bagdad would later inspire the character traits and style of later interpretations of 1001 Arabian Nights, but its place in movie history is due to its technological innovation which can be seen at its best in one particular scene at beach with a thief and a (possibly high) genie.
Remakes are not a new phenomenon in films, Ben-Hur for example started life as a 1907 short before becoming one of the most recognised sword and sandals films in 1959 and then being remade as 2016's snoozefest Ben-Hur. The constant remakes early on were due to advances in the film making process a great example of this would be to watch the original 1924 Thief of Bagdad, followed by the 1940 remake.
Films had previously found costly and time consuming methods of superimposing images on each other, but this 1940 film is the first to use the far easier Chroma Key process, an innovation that would eventually evolve from the original blue screen, to yellow screen, to the green screen we all know and love that brings the Transformers to our theatres... so not an all around great innovation.