Movies:

Magic from the

Dream Factory
Chapter 6
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOVIES
 Movies is based on the persistence of vision,
an aspect of human vision in which the brain
retains images for a fraction of a second after
they leave a field of sight.
 In 1860s, the early type of moving pictures was the peep
shows. It consisted of rolls of still pictures contained in a box
and hooked up to a crank, this was popular attractions at the
amusement parlor. When the viewer peered through a set of
eyeholes in the box and turned the crank, the picture appeared to
move, providing both entertainment.
 Edison’s designed the kinetograph, a camera to take
motion pictures, and kinetoscope, the device to
show them in 1889, using the flexible celluloid camera film that
George Eastman had invented the same year.
 Edison’s kinetoscope was design along the same principles as the
earlier peep shows.
• Peep show 1860s
 Edison opened a kinetoscope parlor in New York City in
1894. Edwin Porter made the Great Train Robbery in
1903. Porter’s movie was the first to use editing – cutting
together various shots – to tell a story, it was also the first
western, and the first movie to contain a chase scene. The
movie was about 12 minutes long.
 Edison was the first who came up with the idea of projection
movies to the public, and because of those small theaters
were develop and they were called nickelodeons. They
were called nickelodeons because the admission was a
nickel (small) and Odeon was the Greek word for (theater).
Kinetoscope parlor
THE TRUST
 Edison realizes the potential in movie industry and gather the
patent holders and film producers of the United States and
France, and created an organization called the Motion
Picture Patent Company came to be known as the
Trust. Film producers who were not willing to pay the Trust’s
patent use fees were simply not allowed to make movies. IF
they attempted to use a camera, or film, the Trust would get a
court order to raid the studio and destroy the equipment. The
owner would then be prosecuted for patent infringement. To
escape the Trust, filmmakers left the industry’s center in New
York City and to Hollywood California. Hollywood continued
to be the center of the film industry, and by 1920s the
studious were thriving.
The Edison Trust
THE STAR SYSTEM

 The star system was created in the 1920s, when audiences

began to demand to see popular actors.
 To help guaranteed a box office success, studio executives created
stars by placing actors and actresses under contact and promoting
them heavily. One technique the studio used to develop new talent
and to increase profits and keep factories busy was block
booking. Under this system, the owners of the independent
theaters- those theaters not own by the studios, were required to
show movies with unknown stars in order to get the movies with the
establish stars. This practice was combined with blind
booking, in which the studios forced theater owners to take
their movies without previewing them first. These practices enabled
studios to make money from what they called B movies, which were
low cost films whose actors were “stars in training”.
THE GOLDEN AGE
 The development of sound in 1930s marked the beginning of
the golden age of motion pictures.
 By 1927, enough theater were equipped by then that 20th Century Fox
Studios began to add sound to the newsreel, which showed news events
and items of special interest.
 Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, as the film industry thrived and
moviegoing become part of the American culture, the movies in turn began
to reflect that culture. During the 1930s, for example, gangster films such
as Little Caesar(1930) became popular, reflecting the influence of
organized crime during the prohibition era.. Other popular movies, such as I
am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), dealt with economic conditions
of the depression era.
 Throughout the 1930s and 1940s competitions of the
established studios complained to the government that it
was impossible for new studios to get started. In the
abuse of vertical integration, studios like Paramount
and Metro Goldwyn-Mayer(MGM), which own the
theaters, refused to show competitors’ film.
Following a 10-year lawsuit, the U.S government forced
the studios to sell their movie theaters in 1948. The
practices of blind booking and block booking were
also banned.
REACTING TO TV

 Color became standard, to gain advantage over

television’s black-and-white picture.
 Hollywood began to produce spectaculars, which were high-
budget films with lavish sets and costumes that often had “a
cast of thousands”.
 Other movies were produced with special gimmicks, such as
3-D effects that required special glasses that were given out
at the door, and Smell-o-Vision, which used fans and scent
liquids to waft odors into the theater.
 The theme of the movies changed as well, as they tried to
deal with topics that couldn’t be handled by television,
including sex, violence, and disturbing social issues.
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
 In the early 1990s studios began to use computer for digital editing and
special effects. Disney’s Toy Story (1995) was the first movie
to be produced entirely on computers.
 In 1999, Star wars: The Phantom Menace was digitally
distributed to a few theaters.
 Digital projection offers big economics advantage for the studios. Films
copies cost around $1200 each, plus the cost of shipping them to each of
the world’s 150000 screens. Studios stand to save more than $1 billion
each year if they no longer have to copy and ship films prints and can
instead transmit them as electronic files through the high-speed data links.
 The disadvantage of the digital technology is it makes it easy to pirate films
and distributes them illegally over the Internet.
 The movie companies try to avoid this kind of losses by devising a method
for encrypting DVDs and digital TV broadcasts so they can’t be copied.
They also brought law suit against file-sharing services like Morpheus and
Kazaa.
GLOBAL DIMENSIONS
 The American film industry collects more
than 80 percent of the world’s film
revenues, although it produces only around
15 percent of the world’s film. Brazil, China
and India are among many countries that
have thriving film industries. India produces
more movies than any other country,
around 800 a year.
Understanding Today’s Movie
Industry
1) PRODUCTION
 Preproduction, 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, a point at which the activity becomes
hectic and expensive as the cast and crew swell into hundreds and producers have
to consider everything from the caterers to the day care for the star’s poodle.
 Postproduction includes the film and sound editing, sound track scoring, special
effects integration, and technical improvements to the films such as color correction.

The Production Company

 Seven major studios – Paramount, Sony, Warner Bros, Disney, 20th Century Fox
Universal and Dreamworks take in 80 to 90 percents of the commercial film
revenues.
 Independent films are those that are not made by one of the major studios. They are
usually made with lower budgets but allow their makers more creative freedom than
major studios do.
The People in the Credits
 The Producer
 The Executive producer finds the financing for the film and puts the
package together, including the story, the script, the stars, and the
director.
 The Line Producers, are sometimes called the production managers do
much of the actual day-to-day work. The line producers in demand are
those who can complete films on time and within budget.
 The Director
Film is a directors’ medium. Directors provide the creative vision and
translate the written script into the finished product. They usually get
involved in the project early in the pre-production phase and oversea
everything in production and post-production.
During the production, directors set up shots and work closely with the
actors, using variety techniques to inspire their editors. At the end of
postproduction they deliver to the producer a director’s cut, which
represents the director’s creative vision and often disregards commercial
considerations.
 The Writer
The writer’s job is to turn idea into scripts. Scripts
today are often written by a committee. One writer
is brought in to spice up the humor, another for
the romance, another to create strong female
characters.
 The Star
Studios rely on the big names to guarantee box
office success. Now the studios no longer control
the star system. The artist’s manager, agents,
and the artist themselves run the system.
 The Editor
The editor’s work, essential to the creation of the film, is
invincible to most moviegoers. The editors chooses the shots
and places them in sequence. He or she creates the rhythm
of the film and the pace at which it moves.
Before the early 1991s, editors cut and glued films by hand
on a machine called the Moviola, which was basically two
reels on which film was spooled over a small light so that the
editor could view it as it was cut.
Most editing is now done on a computers on which allow the
editors to plan out the sequence of the film digitally and
minimizes the physical cutting and the pasting of the film
stock,
Moviola
 Other Members of the Production Team
 The cinematographer - the director of photography and in
charge of the cameras and works with the director to set up
shots.
 The art director - design the visual look of the film and oversees
the set design, wardrobe, makeup, lighting, and everything else
that contributes to that look.
 The continuity supervisor - sometimes called the script
supervisor, makes each day’s shots match up.
 Key grip - sees that the cameras are set up and moved.
 Gaffer - in charge of lighting
 Gaffer’s assistant( best boy) - help the gaffers with the lighting.
2) DISTRIBUTION
The distributors are involved in all aspects of marketing the films.
 Marketing Windows
A marketing is the opportunity to sell, or license a product to a different type
of customer. Marketing window for movies include domestic theatrical,
international, home media, and various types of television.
 Domestic Theatrical - is the industry’s term for the release of the movies to U.S
theaters. For marketing windows, distributors negotiate with the theater owners about
when the movies will be releases, the length of run, the amount of lobby advertising,
and the division of box office receipts. The box office split is typically 70/30 in the first
few weeks of the run, with 70% going to the distributors and 30% to the theater
owners.
 International - Film studios now make more from movie theaters in other
countries than they do from those in the U.S. Concerns about potential
international sales influence what kinds of movies are made. Action, special
effects, and big-budget star vehicles are very popular in the international market.
Culture and politics often become factors international sales.
 Home Media - Digital video disc (DVD) versions of movies have becomes
extremely popular. The typical movie earns more than half its revenue from
video sales and rentals. Pirating, the illegal copying and selling movies, is a
serious problem in home media.
 Television - Television sales of movies begin with pay-per-view and on-demand
cable and satellite services. Both service offer movies for one time fee. After
another three months to a year, the feature is sold to premium cable services
such as Home Box Office (HBO), which might have exclusive rights to show the
films for two or three months. Then the feature is sold to broadcast television,
usually to one of the networks. After the network run, the movie is sold to
individual stations on market-by-market basis, a practice known as syndication.
By the time the movie is syndicated, it is usually there to five years old.
 The Studio Library - After all the original marketing windows have been
exploited, the movie returns to the studio’s library and becomes a permanent
asset that can continue to generate profits virtually forever.
3) Publicity And Promotion
 The basic idea to make the movie an event, to create a buzz, to make
people talk about it. Most publicity campaigns include setting
screenings for reviewers, sending the stars out on the talk-show circuit,
throwing premiere parties, and starting an advertising blitz.
 Opening Big
 Trailers and websites
 Posters and pull quotes
 Tie-ins – consist of consumer products – toys, clothes, music, cereals,
video games, and etc. this will built around movie characters, especially
animated ones.
 Product placement – the inclusion of a product in a movie for the
marketing purposes.
4) EXIBITION
 The Theater
 Art theater show experimental, avant-garde, and foreign films
 Second run theater shows movies that have finished their initial run
elsewhere.
 Specialty theater shows novelties such as large screen IMAX films.
 Multiplexes – theaters with multiple screening rooms. Most multiplexes
are own by chain. The largest multiplexes are known as mega-
theaters.

 The Audience
Marketing research shows that young men usually select the film
for a date. Because of the teenage audience, ticket sales are
greatest during summer when the school’s out.
Controversies
EFFECTS OF MOVIE VIEWING
 Distortion of reality
 Violence
 Stereotyping

CENSORSHIP
 Movie ratings – the ratings were established by
the industry to avoid government censorship.