Transcript Movies - Prof Bob

Movies and the Impact of Images
Chapter 7
“Star Wars effectively brought to an end
the golden era of early-1970s personal
filmmaking and focused the industry on
big-budget special-effects
blockbusters.”
—Roger Ebert
Movies as Modern Mythmakers
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Tell communal stories
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Evoke and symbolize our most enduring values and secret
desires
Make the world seem clearer, more manageable, and more
understandable
Industry reacts quickly to social events and cultural
shifts.
Movies distract us from our daily struggles.
Encourage us to rethink contemporary ideas
Early Film Technology
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1889 celluloid
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Bought by Eastman
Edison patented kinetoscope and vitascope.
Méliès and narrative film
Nickelodeons
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Silent films, “shorts”
“Democracy’s theater”
Numbers of nickelodeons rise rapidly.
The Power of the Studio System
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Edison’s “Trust”
– Cartel of major U.S. and French producers
– Exclusive deal with Eastman
Defeated by Zukor and Fox
– Went on to create their own oligopoly
The studio system (1920s)
– Created stars
 Mary Pickford key figure
– Helped create directors as “auteurs”
Zukor’s block booking
– Exhibitors forced to rent new or marginal films with popular
films
Zukor and Fox worked to control distribution and exhibition.
Hollywood Storytelling
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Talkies
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1927 Warner Brothers’ film The Jazz Singer
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Fox studio’s newsreels
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Movietone captured first film footage with sound.
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Starring Al Jolson
Takeoff and return of Charles Lindbergh
Blockbusters
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Underwrite the 80 to 90 percent of films that fail at the
box office
Hollywood Genres
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Action/Adventure
Comedy
Drama
Fantasy/Science Fiction
Film Noir
Gangster
Horror
Musicals
Mystery/Suspense
Romance
Westerns
(See listings on pages 248 and 249)
1960s and 1970s:
The Rise of Star Directors
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Dennis Hopper, Easy Rider
George Lucas, American Graffiti
Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather
Brian De Palma, Carrie
Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver
Steven Spielberg, Jaws
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But where are the women directors?
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“…busloads of young women emerging from film school. So why are
96 percent of films directed by men?”
—Michelle Goldberg
Documentary Film
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Nanook of the North, 1922
Cinema verité
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Portable cameras
Rough, grainy look
Robert Drew: key innovator
Frederick Wiseman: since the 1960s
Michael Moore
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Controversial
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Distributor refused to bring Fahrenheit 9/11 to screens.
The Transformation of the Hollywood
System
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The Hollywood Ten
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Investigations of alleged subversive and communist
ties
Led by the House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC)
Blacklisted
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Hollywood Ten boycotted by major studios
Paramount decision
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Major studios forced to end vertical integration
Television Changes Hollywood
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Demographic changes after WWII
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Average marriage age drops to 19.
Families start earlier.
Baby boom and staying home with kids
By the mid-1950s TV replaces radio and
movies for family entertainment.
Movies develop technologies
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CinemaScope, Technicolor
By 2006…
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More than 50% of domestic revenue for Hollywood studios came
from video/DVD rentals.
90% of homes had VCRs.
More than 76% had DVD players.
– DVD introduced 1997
Sales began to outpace rentals.
Viacom-owned Blockbuster
– 5,900+ stores in U.S.
– 2,600+ outside U.S.
DVDs replaced videocassettes.
HD DVD to be the next big format?
The rise of NetFlix and other mail rental services
Hollywood and Home Entertainment
“People have so many other things to do with
their time that they view the prospect of going
to the movies very differently than 10 years
ago.”
--OTX, a leading movie research firm, 2006
The Movie Business
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In 2005, 1.4 billion movie tickets were sold.
2006 gross revenues = $8.99 billion
Still…more people watch movies at home
each month than visit theaters all year.
1970s: Multiplexes and megaplexes
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The movies moved to the suburbs.
The Blockbuster Mentality
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Everybody wants to produce the next
Star Wars.
The Major Players
Warner Brothers
 Paramount
 Twentieth Century Fox
 Universal
 Columbia Pictures
 Disney
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Only Disney not owned by large conglomerate
Media Giant
The American Way
Do our films contribute to a global village in
which people share a universal culture?
Or do our films stifle local culture and
diversity?