The origins of the detective genre.

The detective genre truly began in 1841 when Edgar Allan Poe made a short story on a brutal murder and the police are baffled as to how it happened so a detective appears on the scene and helps to solve the mystery. The genre hit a high when with the creation of the "yellow blacks" which were cheaply produced throw away publications which contained detective stories within them. 

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, forensic science expanded to include technologies like body temperature to determine time of death and the systematic use of fingerprinting for identification which greatly changed the genre making the stories different because the detectives could now catch their victims just from a finger print.

In modern CSI, technology has rapidly advanced because forensics in modern times have built on their technologies making it easier to determine what happened. Because these days they can gather clues from the blood, the fingerprints the way in which the glass shattered if the person was thrown through the window because they can work out how much force was used and the angle in which they were thrown at so technology now-a-days has greatly changed the genre because when people make films/books within the genre they have to keep up with the modern technologies because they change how easy it is to catch the murderer.

Doing this has helped me to see what I need to include in my film for example I need to make sure that I use up to date technologies if I am to set it in the present time else it would be out of date and also this means I can include different ways of catching the murderer and include different ways of how the detective finds out where they went or what happened to the victim for example.

History of short films

• The very first films were presented to the public in 1894 through Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, a peepshow-like device for individual viewing. 
• The best-known film from this time is perhaps the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895), which supposedly had audiences fleeing in terror as a celluloid locomotive hurtled towards them.
• But in the early 1900s, improvements in recording and editing technology allowed film-makers to produce longer, multi-shot films.
• Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902)  A well known short film maker of his time and is often celebrated as the first western
• From about 1910 onwards, studio competition and audience demand induced film-makers to make even longer, multi-reel films and the first features were born.
• Features were regarded as more respectable than shorts. Their length and narrative complexity allowed them to be compared more favourably with theatre and opera than with the base pleasures of the fairground.
• Short films were used as propaganda to get people to join the army and to support people already fighting in the army.
• In 1960's they stopped showing short films in commerical cinemas.
• Since 1981 and the birth of MTV, music videos have also represented an alternative outlet for short film-makers.
• In the 21st century short film makers now produce films on websites such as Youtube and sometimes short films are shown just before a children's movie, so short films haven't died out because people view them everyday.

Information on short films taken from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-life/7593291/The-long-history-of-short-films.html