The American Film Industry Essay Example For Students

The American Film Industry Essay Why is the Film Industry one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world? Simple. People like entertainment. Movies are entertainment. Movies are like books, only theyre visual. People like seeing other people cast in roles, and playing out a story. Why not turn to plays instead, you ask? Movies give people the actors and the stories, along with background music, special effects, and overall satisfaction within a 2 hour period of time. Movies can also take you to a physical state that theatre can not. They take you to real physical locations instead of just a cardboard stages. Its the same reason people like television so much. The birth of cinema came in the late 1800s. One of the major reasons for the emergence of motion pictures in the 1890s was the late 1880s development of a camera that could capture movement, and a sprocket system that could move the film through the camera. William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, a young assistant in Thomas Edisons laboratories, designed an early version of a movie-picture camera called a Kinetograph that was first patented by Edison in 1893. Early in 1893, the worlds first film studio, the Black Maria, was built on the grounds of Edisons laboratories at West Orange, New Jersey and the first successful motion picture was made a re-creation of a sneeze. Most of the earliest moving images were non-fictional, unedited, crude documentary views of simple, ordinary slices of life street scenes, the activities of police or firemen, or shots of a passing train. Then, in 1894, along came another marvelous Edison Company invention in the mid 1890s the Kinetoscope. It was basicall y a bulky, coin-operated movie peep show viewer for a single customer, in which the images on a continuous film loop-belt were viewed in motion as they were rotated in front of a shutter and a light. On Saturday, April 14th, 1894, the Holland Brothers opened their original Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155 Broadway in New York City and for the first time, commercially exhibited movies as we know them today. Early spectators in Kinetoscope parlors were amazed by even the most strange moving images in very short films (between 30 and 60 seconds) an approaching train, a parade, women dancing, dogs terrorizing rats, and other such things. In 1895, Edison exhibited hand-colored movies, including Annabelle The Dancer, in Atlanta, Georgia at the Cotton States Exhibition. In one of Edisons 1896 films, entitled The Widow Jones, often called The Kiss, May Irwin and John Rice re-enacted a scene from a Broadway play it was a close-up of a cinematic kiss. In 1909 the first movie studio was started U niversal Studios. The ten year peiod of 1920-1930 was the period between the end of the Great War and the Stock Market Crash. Film theaters and studios were not initially affected in this decade by the crash. Films really blossomed in the 1920s, expanding upon the foundations of film from earlier years. Some of the best artists from European film-making circles were imported to Hollywood and adapted there. The basic pattern of the film industry, and its economic organization, was established in the 1920s the studio system was essentially born in the second decade of the century. With films, came a need for protection, and ratings. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) acted domestically as the voice and advocate of seven of the largest producers and distributors of filmed entertainment. MPAAs counterpart, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) served the same purpose on an international basis. Founded in 1922 as the trade association for the American film industry, the MPAA has broadened its authorization over the years to reflect the diversity of the expanding motion picture industry. Today, these associations represent not only the world of the theatrical film, but also major producers and distributors of entertainment programming for television, cable, and home video, and looking into the future, for delivery systems not yet imagined. Among its principle missions, the MPAA directs an anti-piracy program to protect, through copyright and other laws, U.S. films in 65 countries throughout the world. The MPAA also works to eliminate unfair and restri ctive trade regulations and practices and non-tariff trade barriers to allow free competition in the international marketplace. The firms that were to rule Hollywood filmmaking for the next half-century were the giants. Warner Bros. Pictures incorporated in 1923, and in 1924, MGM, Columbia Pictures, and MCA (Music Corporation of America) were all created or founded. Later, RKO Pictures went into business in 1928. After World War I and into the early 1920s, America was the leading producer of films in the world using Thomas Inces factory system of production although the system did limit the creativity of many directors. Films were bigger, costlier, more polished, and the major film emphasis was on swashbucklers, historical extravaganzas, and melodramas. MGM was to become the dominant studio of Hollywoods Golden Age during the 30s. The 1930s decade has been rightfully labeled as the most memorable era of all, with the term The Golden Age of Hollywood. It was called this because of the great prosperity of the movie industry. New films were being developed, new techniques, and people were soaking them in. The 30s was also the decade of the sound revolution, color revolution, the advance of the talkies, and the advancement of film genres (gangster films, musicals, newspaper films, historical biopics, westerns and horror to name a few). Most of the early talkies were successful at the box-office, but many of them were of poor quality dialogue-dominated play adaptations, with stilted acting and an unmoving camera or microphone. Nonetheless, a tremendous variety of films were produced with a wit, style, skill, and elegance that has never been equalled. Rouben Mamoulian, a successful Broadway director, refused to keep the cumbersome sound cameras pinned to the studio floor, and demonstrated a graceful, rhythmic, flui d, choreographed flowing style to his films with his directorial debut 1929 film Applause. Mastery of techniques for the sound era were also demonstrated with many films, by combining a mobile camera with inventive, rapid-fire dialogue and quick-editing. After 1932, the development of sound-mixing freed films from the limitations of recording on sets and locations. Scripts from writers were becoming more advanced with witty dialogue, realistic characters, and plots. The first film, though a short one, produced in three-color Technicolor was Walt Disneys animated story Flowers and Trees, which came out in 1932. Hollywoods first full-length feature film photographed entirely in three-strip Technicolor was Rouben Mamoulians Becky Sharp in 1935. In the late 30s, two beloved films, The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, both in 1939, were expensively produced with Technicolor. Special-effects processes were advanced by the late 1930s, making it possible for many more films to be shot on sets rather than on-location. In 1937, the first feature-length animated film was premiered by Walt Disney Studios which was becoming quickly known for its sophisticated animation was a milestone for all cinema. It was the classic cartoon story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Downfall Of Lady Macbeth EssayIn 1988 technical breakthroughs were accomplished in Robert Zemeckis innovative Who Framed Roger Rabbit it seamlessly blended animated cartoon characters and live action in a hard-boiled, 1940s-style Hollywood murder mystery. The film was a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and the Walt Disney Studio. Earlier, in 1964, Disney had married animation and live-action in the 60s hit Mary Poppins. In 1989 Disney Studios returned to its old-fashioned film values with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids an inventive, special-effect-filled comedy about a father/scientist who accidentallyreduced four children to ant-size proportions. Disney also scored with one of its old-fashioned musical animations that appealed to both children and adults in 1989. Its 28th feature-length cartoon titled The Little Mermaid heralded a new generation of successful animations. In the 1990s for the most part, cinema attendance was up mostly at multi-screen cineplex complexes throughout the country. Although the average film budget was almost $53 million by 1998, many films cost over $100 million to produce. Higher costs for film star salaries and agency fees, expensive price tags for new high-tech and digital special-effects and CGI (computer generated images), costly market research and testing, and big-budget marketing all contributed to the inflated, excessive spending in the film industry. Character development and intelligent story-telling often suffered in the process. In the early 1990s, box-office revenues had dipped considerably (the averageticket price for a film was around $5 by the end of the decade), probably due in part to the American economic recession of 1991. By the beginning of the decade, the VCR was a popular appliance in most households, and rentals of videotapes were big business. By 1997, the first DVDs (digital video discs) had eme rged in stores, featuring sharper resolution pictures, better quality and durability than VHS tapes. In 1999, foretelling new methods of Internet-based marketing, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myricks low-budget, roughly-made, offbeat independent film The Blair Witch Project, a quasi-documentary about a horrifying camping trip experienced by three vanished student film-makers, reaped a greater audience (and box-office receipts) from Internet exposure. It became the most profitable film (percentage-wise) of all time, earning $140 million domestically, and having only budgeted only $30,000. But there still existed an imbalanced emphasis on the opening weekend, weekly box-office returns, critics ratings, and the belief that expensive, high-budget films meant quality. One of the emerging trends of the late 80s and 90s was that although about the same number of pictures were produced as in the Golden Age of Hollywood (about 450-500 in a year), many of the films that were produced (an estima ted 40%) went directly to video with no cinematic release at all. And the window of time between a films theatrical opening and availability for cable TV or home viewing shrunk drastically. It was significant that the first new Hollywood studio in many decades, Dream Works (SKG), was formed in 1994 as the brainchild of director-producer Steven Spielberg, ex-Disney executive producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, and film producer/music industry giant David Geffen. The studios first theatrical release was first-time feature director Mimi Leders The Peacemaker, in 1997. In the very next year, Disney Studios acquired the maverick studio for $65 million. The trend toward sequels from the previous decade continued, but Hollywood was also attempting to deal with serious themes, including homelessness, the Holocaust, AIDS, feminism, and racism, while making bottom-line profits. There were a number ofmainstream films that confronted the issues in a profound way. In 1993, director Jonathan Demmes Philadelphia, was the first big-studio attempt to deal with AIDS,winning for Tom Hanks the first of consecutive Best Actor Oscars. With seven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, Steven Spielbergs long and serious B/W Holocaust epic Schindlers List, made in 1993, was a significant milestone, but also a grim story about an opportunistic German businessman in Poland who ultimately saved over 1,000 Jews from death. Two special-effects-laden, predictably-scripted apocalpytic disaster films racked up huge profits. Both were about destructive meteors or asteroids hurtling toward Earth: Mimi Leders Deep Impact, and Michael Bays Armageddon, both in 1998. At the close of the decade, three other major films appeared: George Lucas computer-generated return to his epic saga with the first sci-fi space episode titled Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, in 1999; and writer-directors Andy and Larry Wachowskis ambitiousvirtual-reality flick The Matrix, also in 1999 with computer-enhanced digital effects that won four Academy Awards, all in sound, editing, and visual effects technical categories. The US has the most powerful, diverse, and technologically advanced economy in the world, with a per capita GDP of $31,500, the largest among major industrial nations. In the United States there are more than 1,500 (including nearly 1,000 stations affiliated with the five major networks-NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, and PBS; in addition, there are about 9,000 cable TV systems) television broadcasting systems, and more than 550 movie studios. That was the rate in 1997. Now, those figures have gone up by about 56%. Americans like entertainment. Thats what they spend their money on. Each year the movie industry earns more and more money. Its not just that movies are gaining larger audiences, and more movies are being produced, but its the fact that movie prices are rising. Ticket prices are at a peak, selling in some places for as much as $10.50 a pop. Not to mention when movies come out for sale, most VHS start at a record breaking $24.99, and most DVDs start st $39.99. Why are the movie bosses charging this much? Simply because they can. People would probably pay even more if they had to, and in my opinion theyll soon have to. American has adopted movies into their family, and they dont want to stop watching them. Bibliography: