Ever wondered how film has kept its popularity for years? During the 1890’s filmmaking has become longer and contained more shots. The very first film studio was built in the year of 1897, where the first rotating camera that took “panning shots” were built. This camera gave special effects, including action movements. In addition, in the 1900’s “continuity of action” shots were the first shots introduced by D.W. Griffith. Because of this invention most films were being called, “chase films”. “The Nickelodeon” was the first successful theatre in 1905 in Pittsburgh. Then, a Australian production became the first feature length multi-reel film in the year of 1906. Furthermore, by the year of 1910, actors started to get screen credit for their
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
‘12 years a Slave, award winning film director Steve McQueen associates making a film to, "writing a novel – you're telling a story. " This message is powerful and defines the true purpose of filmmaking that is, ‘to tell a story.’(Victorino) Hollywood has capitalized on the aspect of visual storytelling first introduced in 1985 by the Lumiere brothers with their first movie ever made for projection -- Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory. They (Hollywood), then designed a Studio System called Classic Hollywood Cinema to Finance, Organize, Produce, Market, Distribute, and Exhibit movies for financial gain while entertaining movie goers. This term was coined by David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson to define Hollywood’s film making during the period of 1913 to 1960. From the D.W. Griffith successful 1913 first movie ever shot in Hollywood, ‘In Old California’, to the James Cameron’s 2009 movie Avatar grossing over 760 million in the box office, this process continues to be effective and lives on today.
In the mid 1960’s to and early 70’s a new generation of film making came about. A generation of young film-makers who pushed the boundaries of sex, drugs, nudity, and violence. They changed the way of how Hollywood films are produced and marketed. There was many revisions of Hollywood’s old films. They re-worked and re-imagined some of Hollywood’s classic genres – such as the crime film, the war film and the western – and by so doing, presented a more critical view of America past and present. () These films mostly represented the issues of the youth, this was known as the generation gap. Location shooting also became almost the exclusive norm.
The origin of film started in the late 1800’s with the invention of kinetoscopes. With the perfection of a moving picture camera in 1892, and the ensuing invention of the peephole kinetoscope in 1893, the stage was set for the modern film industry. The kinetoscope was built to handle only one customer at a time. When putting a penny or nickel in the coin slot, someone could watch a brief, black and white motion picture film. These kinetoscope parlors opened in New York, Chicago and several other countries by the end of the 1800’s. Even thought the kinetoscope pretty much disappeared by the 1900’s, it created the innovation of new advancements in film. With the combination of new audiences as well as a growing class of small entrepreneurs, the film industry resulted in an explosion of nickelodeons after 1905. These nickelodeons were five-cent films that garnered several admissions daily. “In 1911 the Patents Company reported 11,500 theaters across America devoted solely to showing motion pictures, with hundreds more showing them occasionally; daily attendance that year probably reached five million. By 1914 the figures reached about 18,000 theaters, with more than seven mil- lion daily admissions totaling about $300 million” (Czitrom). Although these motion picture shows were very popular, they had several issues as well. Poor sanitation, dangerous
The 1920s was a time of the great success and thrive of the film industry. It was the beginning of the studio era, as the main eight studios emerged (The Big Five: Warner Brother Pictures, Metro Golden Meyer, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, RKO; The Little Three: United Artists, Universal, Columbia Picture). Especially in 1920s the market started to grow rapidly. First of all it was because of technology progress, (such as the ability to create longer movies; starting from 1910s there were experiments for sound creation), growing interest from the audience and growing popularity of actors. Also one of the main reasons was commercial side, as lots of people saw a great opportunity to raise money from the film making.
According to historians like Neil Burch, the primitive period of the film industry, at the turn of the 20th century was making films that appealed to their audiences due to the simple story. A non-fiction narrative, single shots a burgeoning sense
The ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ era came about from around the 1960’s when cinema and film making began to change. Big film studios were going out of their comfort zone to produce different, creative and artistic movies. At the time, it was all the public wanted to see. People were astonished at the way these films were put together, the narration, the editing, the shots, and everything in between. No more were the films in similar arrangement and structure. The ‘New Hollywood era’ took the classic Hollywood period and turned it around so that rules were broken and people left stunned.
With the horrible environment the film industry caused, the lackluster that surrounded it near the end of the war, in turn helped create the industry we know now. We live and learn from our mistakes most of the time, and from the 1920’s o the 1950’s the industry has leaned some powerful lessons. Technology has changes into something most couldn’t even fathom and the opportunities for all the talent that is out in the world, is even more welcome than ever
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
D. W. Griffith is widely recognized as a pioneer and father of early filmmaking, though in reality he was just a creature of circumstance. In 1907, Griffith departed his theatrical career as failed playwright and somewhat accomplished stage actor to work for the Biograph Company with his first role as the Father in Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest. Griffith entered the American film industry at crucial moment that would shape and define his career. During this time Edison Company was waging a war to monopolize the American film industry through lawsuits against other American companies using versions of Edison’s patented Kinescope without paying royalties. These lawsuits ravaged and prevented the industries growth as film’s popularity was increasing in the United States. In 1907, to meet the growing popularity of nickelodeons (early movie theaters that would charge a nickel for admission and show case 3-4 short films), 1,200 films were released in the United States, of those only ...
Today movies and television consist of a huge part of the entertainment system in American culture, something we usually take for granted, as it has become a normalcy in our everyday lives. If we were to go back just over 100 years ago to the early 1900s, the American film industry was just getting started. The great American Inventor Thomas Edison was a big contributor to the start of cinema. Edison’s development of the kinetoscope in 1885, a device that allowed people to see short sequences of moving images, was revolutionary. Kinetoscope (peep-show) parlors opened all across America, and people were willing to pay about twenty-five cents, to see these new and fascinating moving pictures. Means for another new way to view moving pictures, the projector, followed soon after, to the dismay of Edison. Edison wanted to keep kinetoscope parlors going because of the enormous amount of profit he was making off them; but the projector was introduced in 1895, by the Lumière brothers, and now viewers were able to see life like images, six to nine feet tall, right before their eyes. This new way of viewing movies prompted the introduction of the first movie theaters, called nickelodeons. Going to nickelodeons became an extremely popular leisure activity among Americans. People were fascinated with the idea of the moving picture, even if it was just an actuality, such as people exiting a factory or getting on a train, as seen in Exiting the Factory or Arrival of a Train at LaCiotat, short, silent films made in 1895 by the Lumière brothers on only one reel of film. Moving away from the actuality film, which showed non-fiction events that had been captured on camera, people wanted more, and the idea of the narrative film was born. As opposed ...
Sklar, Robert. " History of Motion Pictures, " Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2000 October 24, 2000 <http://encarta.msn.com>.
The end of the 1900s marked a time of movies as a cultural phenomenon. Going to the movies became a weekly ritual for the public. In order for people to
Society in most places was beginning to change in the late 1800s. The cinema was invented in 1895 a few years after Art Nouveau began. There was technological progress the industrial era was co...
Many people, almost all of America, choose to watch movies, whether it is in theatres or on a TV at home. Children used to flock to the old theatres where they would watch black and white silent movies. For example, popular movies such as the original Wizard of Oz (1939) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) were in black and white and movies like Pandora’s Box (1929) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925) were silent films. These types of films mark the transition into a new era. Nowadays one cannot turn on the television without being bombarded with the new release of movies or shows. Aside from the obvious transition of color and sound, the entertainment industry has improved and changed greatly since the 19th and 20th century due to technology, content and convenience.