Transcript Document
Movies: Magic From The Dream Factory
Outline
History
Industry Today
Controversies
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Early Movie Technology
By the early 1860s there were peep shows,
▪ Boxes containing rolls of still pictures hooked up to a crank,
Thomas Edison
Kinetograph - a camera to take motion pictures,
Kinetoscope - The device to show them
Vitascope - His first theater projector
▪ Soon small theaters/nickelodeons were showing up everywhere.
The Move West
Aspiring filmmakers moved west
▪ To escape Edison’s New York lawyers
▪ Take advantage of great weather and varied
scenery.
In 1915, in Hollywood, D. W. Griffith made
The Birth of a Nation (huge success)
▪ In which he perfected the close up, flashback, fadeout, and montage.
▪ Racist depiction and glorification of Ku Klux Klan,
▪ An omen of the kind of power films would have to promote
antisocial messages.
The Star System
1920s theater owners began demanding popular actors,
▪ Studios started placing them under contract and promoting them
heavily.
▪ What star actors would you go to see just because its them?
▪ Why?
Studios developed
▪ Block booking Forced theaters to show movies with unknown actors
in order to get movies with established stars.
▪ Blind booking required theaters to take movies without previewing
them.
▪ Enabled studios to make money from low cost films known as B-movies.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
The Golden Age
In 1930s the efficient studio system, global
influence of film art, sound and color
▪ Mark beginning of Golden Age of motion pictures.
First full-length sound feature was The Jazz
Singer featuring Al Jolson.
▪ It established both technology and popularity of
sound.
▪ Some audiences stood and applauded when they heard the
dialogue.
▪ What are some movies that stood out to you based
on creative elements
▪ Cinematography, soundtrack, setting , storyline, etc
1930s & 1940s movie going became part of American culture.
Films such as Little Caesar (1930) reflected the influence of
organized crime during prohibition.
Horror films like Dracula (1931) with Bela Lugosi,
Screwball comedies like the Marx brothers’ Duck Soup (1933)
became popular diversions from hard times.
Color was perfected in films such as Gone With The Wind and The
Wizard of Oz, both produced in 1939.
Special effects came into their own in movies such as King Kong
(1933) and The Invisible Man (1933).
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Stars &
Studios
Marlene Dietrich
The Marx Bros
Mae West
Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour & Bob Hope
Popeye
Superman
Betty Boop
Greta Garbo
Clark Gable
Spencer Tracy
Tarzan the Ape Man (1932)
Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)
Laurel & Hardy
Our Gang
Sonja Henie
Shirley Temple
Betty Grable
Tyrone Power
Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
Humphrey
Bogart
Bette Davis
Mickey Mouse
Donald Duck
Snow White (1937)
Abbott & Costello
Woody Woodpecker
Chilly Willy
Claudette Colbert Clark Gable
Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934)
Batman & Robin
The Three Stooges
Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie
Chaplin & DW Griffith
The Bowery Boys
African-American Films
An African-American movie industry emerged to serve blacks
who were not allowed in “white” theaters.
▪ Centered in Harlem, these films featured all-black casts and were shown
in theaters in black neighborhoods throughout the country.
Reacting To TV
By the early 1960s more than 90 percent of American homes had
television sets.
What technologies if any have reduced your movie-going?
Industry redefined itself
▪ Created drive-ins for car obsessed suburbanites, improving sound systems
▪ Introducing wide screens with futuristic names such as Cinemascope.
Reacting To TV
Studios began producing spectaculars, which were high budget
films with lavish sets and costumes.
Other movies were produced with gimmicks,
▪ 3-D effects that required special glasses
▪ Smell-o-Vision - used fans and scent liquids to waft odors into the theater.
▪ What recent 3-D movies can you think of?
▪ What experiences do theaters offer that makes you want to go?
7/18/2015
7/18/2015
Canisters of
aroma….
7/18/2015
Adapting To New Media
By the early 80s the movie industry was convinced
Home videotaping with (VCRs), would ruin them.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
▪ Fought legal battles to stop the sale of home VCRs.
In 1983 Supreme court ruled in Sony Betamax case
▪ Video recording for private use not an infringement of copyright.
Adapting To New Media
VCRs were used by most families to record programs,
▪ Also to play rented or purchased tapes
▪ Created huge profits for movie studios.
By the time (DVDs) were introduced in 1996,
▪ Industry saw replacement for tapes and didn’t resist as much.
When DVDs became recordable and people started
downloading movies,
▪ The industry realized it had a problem.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Adapting To New Media
Internet downloading made it easy to pirate
films & to distribute them illegally via filesharing programs.
In 2003 the movie industry declared war
against file sharers.
To prevent widespread copying, the movie
companies devised methods for encrypting
DVDs
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Adapting To New Media
In the early 1990s, studios began to use computers for
digital editing and special effects.
Disney’s Toy Story (1995) was the first movie to be
produced entirely on computers.
Today, digital editing is used in all Hollywood movies,
▪ Many would be impossible to make without this technology e.g.
The X-Men and Superman Returns.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Adapting To New Media
Digital distribution of movies has been tested.
▪ Digital projection
▪ Makes movies easy to use & advantageous for theatre owners in
other ways.
▪ Will enable theatres to regularly show live events,
▪ Concerts or sporting events,
▪ Making them “entertainment complexes” rather than just movie
houses.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Adapting To New Media
Industry feels digital projection would help theatre
business remain viable.
▪ Cheaper Distribution, Increasing Profits, Keeping Cost Down
▪ Would you go to the movies more if they were cheaper?
Industry has been able to transmit and project movies
digitally for over a decade.
Payment for equipment is holding back conversion.
▪ Theaters want studios to pay and vice versa
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Global Dimensions
Today, the American film industry collects more than 80
percent of the world’s film revenues
▪ Produces only around 15 percent of the world’s films.
Brazil, China, Japan and India have thriving film industries.
▪ At 800 films a year, India produces more movies than any other
country, including the U.S.
Production
Preproduction is the planning phase,
▪ includes script development, casting, budgeting, scheduling, set and costume
design, location scouting, set construction, and special effects design.
Production is the actual shooting phase,
▪ Which the activity becomes very hectic and expensive, as cast and crew swell
into the hundreds.
Postproduction
▪ Film and sound editing, soundtrack scoring, special effects integration, and
technical improvements such as color correction.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
The Independents: Creative Freedom
Independent films
▪ Films not made by one of the major studios,
▪ Usually made with lower budgets, rely less on stars & special effects
▪ Have more creative freedom than studio films.
The People In The Credits
Executive producer
▪ Financing & putting the package together - story, script, stars, and director.
Line producers
▪ Day-to-day workers -successful if films completed on time & in budget.
Directors provide creative vision.
▪ Usually involved in preproduction, production and postproduction phases
The writer turns an idea into a script.
▪ Scripts today are often written by a committee.
▪ One writer spices up the humor, another polishes the romance, and another
creates strong female characters.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
The editor
▪ Creates the rhythm and pace of a film by choosing the shots and placing
them in sequence.
The cinematographer
▪ Is the director of photography, and is in charge of the cameras and works
with the director to set up shots.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Home Media
DVD versions of movies have become extremely popular.
▪ Easy to use and contain a lot of additional material.
One of the most successful DVD rental companies
▪ NetFlix, Blockbuster online
▪ Mail-order service allows selection of movie titles online
▪ Then delivered by regular mail.
▪ Does anyone have a netflix account in here?
▪ Who uses video on demand function?
Exhibition
Art theaters show experimental, avant garde and
foreign films.
The vast majority of movies are shown in multiplexes
which are theaters with multiple screening rooms.
Mega-theaters - Multiplexes with 16 or more screens
▪ Accommodations such as high-fidelity sound systems,
stadium-style seats, and cup holders.
The Audience
In 1930s and 1940s entire families went to the same movie.
Now there are multiple audiences
▪ young, old, male, and female.
Studios target young white males with action-adventure and
female nudity
▪ Research shows young men usually select the film for a date
Summer provides the largest audience for theaters.
▪ The holiday season between Thanksgiving and January provides the
next largest audience.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Effects Of Movie Viewing
Many critics worry about docu-dramas,
▪ Fictional movies that dramatize real-life events, distort reality and
mislead audiences about historic facts.
Also concern that movies can influence violence
Can you think of films blamed for influencing crimes?
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Hollywood
in the
Age
of
Conglomerates
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Video