Movies and the Impact of ImagesCHAPTER 7

Movies and the Impact of Images

Movies bring people together

They evoke and symbolize universal themes of human experience

They can help us understand and respond to major historical events

The encourage us to reexamine contemporary ideas as the world evolves, particularly in relation to race, class, spirituality, gender, and sexuality

Early Technology and the Evolution of Movies

The Development of Film Leonardo da Vinci theorized about creating a device that would reproduce reality

In the 17th century, the Magic Lantern projected images painted on glass plates using an oil lamp as a light source

The thaumatrope—invented in 1824—was a two-sided card with different images on each side that appeared to combine the images when twirled

The zoetrope—introduced in 1834—was a cylinder that rapidly twirled, which made the images inside appear to move

Muybridge and Goodwin Make Pictures Move

The development stage of movies began when inventors started manipulating photographs to make them appear to move while simultaneously projecting them onto a screen

Eadweard Muybridge was the first to do both

One of his first projects was to determine if a racehorse actually lifts all four feet from the ground at a full gallop

Muybridge and Goodwin Make Pictures Move

In 1884, George Eastman (Founder of Eastman Kodak) developed the first film roll—a huge improvement over the heavy metal and glass plates used to make individual photos

Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince invented the first motion picture camera using roll film

In 1889 Hannibal Goodwin improved Eastman’s roll film by using thin strips of transparent, pliable material called celluloid, which could hold a coating of chemicals sensitive to light

Goodwin’s breakthrough enabled a strip of film to move through a camera and be photographed in rapid succession, producing a series of pictures

Celluloid was transparent and was ideal for projection

The courts awarded Goodwin the patent for the invention, but Eastman’s company became the major manufacturer of film stock for motion pictures after buying Goodwin’s patents

Edison and the Lumieres Create Motion Pictures

As with the development of sound recording, Thomas Edison takes center stage in most accounts of the invention of motion pictures

Edison originally wanted to merge sound and pictures, but there was no breakthrough, so he lost interest

His assistant William Kennedy Dickson, combined Edison’s lightbulb, Goodwin’s celluloid, and Le Prince’s camera to create an early movie camera, the kinetograph, and its viewing system, the kinetoscope

Edison and the Lumieres Create Motion Pictures

In France, brothers Louis and August Lumiere developed the cinematograph, a combined camera, film developer, and projection system

The projection system was particularly important, as it allowed more than one person at a time to see the moving images on a large screen

Edison then patented several inventions, including a new large-screen system called the vitascope, which enabled longer strips of film to be projected, which hinted at movies’ potential as a mass medium

Edison’s first public showing featured waves rolling onto a beach; some members of the audience were so taken with the realism that they stepped back to avoid getting their feet wet

The Introduction of Narrative Narrative films: Movies that tell stories

Audiences quickly tired of static films of waves breaking or vaudeville acts recorded on immobile cameras

To become a mass medium, the early silent films had to offer what books achieved: the suspension of disbelief. They had to create narrative worlds that engaged an audience’s imagination

Georges Melies may have been the first director to realize that a movie was not simply a means of recording reality, but that it could be artificially planned and controlled like a play

Edwin S. Porter mastered the technique of editing diverse shots together to tell a coherent story

Porter shot narrative scenes out of order and reassembled them to make a story

The Arrival of Nickelodeons Nickelodeons: A form of movie theater whose name combines the admission price with the Greek word for “theater”

They were usually small storefronts, featured a piano inside to include music, and sometimes had live sound effects

Because films were silent (no language), nickelodeons flourished during the great European immigration at the turn of the 20th century

These theaters filled a need for many newly arrived people struggling to learn English and seeking an inexpensive escape from the hard life of the city

In 1910, the craze peaked, and entrepreneurs began to seek more affluent spectators, attracting them with larger and more lavish theaters

The Rise of the Hollywood Studio System

The Rise of the Hollywood Studio System

Thomas Edison formed the Motion Picture Patents Company, known as the Trust

Some independent producers refused to bow to the Trust’s terms

Most film production took place in New York and New Jersey, but these independent producers started to branch out and ended up in southern California (Hollywood)

Ironically, the people starting Hollywood in order to break free from the Trust developed other tactics for controlling the industry

Adolph Zukor (eventually Paramount Pictures) and William Fox (later Twentieth Century Fox) aimed at dominating the movie business at all three levels—production, exhibition, and distribution

Production In the early days of film, producers and distributors had not yet recognized that fans would not only seek particular stories, but also particular actors

Zukor hired a number of popular actors and formed the Famous Players Company in 1912

Mary Pickford was “America’s Sweetheart,” she portrayed spunky and innocent heroines

She had no theater background, and was better suited to the more subtle new medium

People waited in line to see her movies and producers were forced to pay her higher salaries

Production Pickford was the key figure in elevating the financial status and professional role of film actors

In 1910 she made about $100 a week, by 1914 she earned $1,000 a week, and by 1917 she received a weekly salary of $15,000

In 1919 she broke from Zukor to form her own company, United Artists, bringing with her Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith

Production By the 1920s, the studio system firmly controlled creative talent in the industry

Actors, directors, or other crew who weren’t under studio contract probably weren’t working at all

Producers were appointed to handle hiring, logistics, and finances so that directors and creative people could supervise more than one picture at a time

The system was so efficient that each major studio was producing a feature film every week

Pooling talent, rather than patents, was a more ingenious approach for movie studios aiming to dominate film production

Distribution Block booking: To gain access to popular films with big stars like Mary Pickford, exhibitors had to agree to rent new or marginal films with no stars

Zukor would pressure theaters into taking 100 films they didn’t want in order to get the 3 films they did want

This type of contract enabled new studios to test-market new stars without taking much financial risk

This practice was eventually outlawed

Another distribution strategy focused on marketing American films in Europe

WWI completely destroyed Europe’s film industry, and American studios stepped in and provided films to European countries

This marked a turning point where the U.S. became dominant in the film production industry

Even today, the U.S. (Hollywood) maintains its role as the foremost leader in production

Exhibition If theaters wanted to ensure that they had films to show their patrons, they had to purchase a license from the Trust and pay whatever price it asked

Eventually, the flow of films from independents in Hollywood and foreign films enabled theater owners to resist the Trust’s scheme

Zukor and Paramount started buying up theaters, solidifying its ability to show the movies it produced

The studios realized that they could control 85-95 percent of income if they only operated first-run theaters, where movies premiered

They built movie palaces, which were large, full-time, single-screen theaters that provided a more hospitable movie-going experience

These theaters were built near urban mass transit stations, an idea that lingers today…..

Exhibition By the late 1920s, the major studios had clearly established vertical integration in the industry

The business of movies was now complex and expensive, and many small competitive firms were now dominated by a few powerful studios

The Big Five owned theaters—Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and RKO

The Little Three did not own theaters—Columbia, Universal, and United Artists

The Studio System’s Golden Age

The Studio System’s Golden Age Many consider Hollywood’s Golden Age as beginning in 1915 with innovations in feature-length narrative film in the silent era

The Golden Age peaked with the introduction of sound and the development of the classic Hollywood style

It ended with the transformation of the Hollywood studio system after WWII

Hollywood Narrative and the Silent Era

D.W. Griffith was the single most important director in Hollywood’s early days

He refined many narrative techniques and used them in a single movie, The Birth of a Nation

“Despite the cringe-inducing racism of this pioneering and controversial film, The Birth of a Nation was the first feature-length film (more than an hour long) produced in America”

Although it was about the KKK and caused many protests and riots, the movie triggered Hollywood’s fascination with narrative films—it was the first blockbuster

Feature films became the standard through out the 1920s and introduced many of the film genres we continue to see produced today

The Introduction of Sound The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first film which had sound—although only 354 words and some musical numbers. It starred Al Jolson, who performed in black face

The breakthrough in sound was in 1928 with The Singing Fool, which made $5 million and proved that sound was here to stay in movies

Around this time, sound was also being used with newsreels, and the first film footage captured with sound was the takeoff and return of Charles Lindbergh

The Development of Hollywood Style

Hollywood dictated not only the business but also the style of most moviemaking worldwide

Three things contribute to the Hollywood Style:

1. The Narrative

2. The Genre

3. The Author (Director)

Hollywood Narratives There are two basic components to a narrative: the story (what happens to whom) and the discourse (how the story is told)

Movies feature recognizable character types (protagonist, antagonist, romantic interest, sidekick); a clear beginning, middle, and end; and a plot propelled by the main character experiencing and resolving a conflict by the end of the movie

Within Hollywood’s classic narratives, filmgoers find an amazing array of intriguing cultural variations

The combination of convention and invention (CGI, 3D) provides a powerful economic package that satisfies most audiences’ appetites for the combination of the familiar and the distinctive

Hollywood Genres Genre: A category in which conventions regarding similar characters, scenes, structures, and themes recur in combination (p.244)

By making films that fall into popular genres, the movie industry provides familiar models that can be imitated

It is much easier for a studio to promote a film that already fits into a pre-existing category with which viewers are familiar

Hollywood “Authors” In commercial filmmaking, the director serves as the main author of a film

Successful directors develop a particular cinematic style or interest in specific topics that separates them from other directors

Film revenues were declining in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but two directors and their major hit films changed the industry by tapping into the nostalgia that movie audiences were hungry for

Hollywood “Authors” The success of Hopper and Lucas opened the door for other directors who started an era where directors had the kind of economic clout and celebrity standing that belonged to movie stars:

Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin, Steven Speilberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, and George Lucas

Women and ethnic minorities have struggled to become directors in Hollywood

Kathryn Bigelow and Sofia Coppola are two of the more successful female directors

African American directors like Lee Daniels and Tyler Perry have begun to have success in Hollywood

Outside the Hollywood System Since the rise of the studio system, Hollywood has focused on feature-length movies that command popular attention and earn the most money

However, the movie industry has a long tradition of films made outside the Hollywood studio system

Global Cinema In many countries, American films capture up to 90 percent of the market

Foreign films make up only about 2 percent of the movies seen in the U.S.

In the 1950s through 1970s, the rise of art house theaters saw the rebirth of interest in foreign-language films

Catering to academic audiences, art houses made a statement against Hollywood commercialism as they sought to show alternative movies

As the home video market grew in the 1970s, theaters stopped showing foreign films in exchange for American blockbusters that would make the most profit

Services like Netflix have given access to more foreign films, but these films are still losing ground

Today, the most production outside the U.S. occurs in India (Bollywood), which produces romances and adventure-musicals in a very specific style

The Documentary Tradition Early filmmakers produced newsreels and travelogues, which recorded daily life in various communities around the world

Documentary was established by Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) and Moana (1925). Documentary was described as “the creative treatment of actuality,” or a genre that interprets reality by recording real people and settings

Perhaps the major contribution of documentaries has been their willingness to tackle controversial or unpopular subject matter

The Rise of Independent Films Independent filmmakers often operate on a shoestring budget and show their movies in campus auditoriums and small film festivals

The rise of independent film festivals in the 1990s helped Hollywood rediscover low-cost independent films

Festivals are often a place to discover not only new movies, but new talent

By 2010, the independent film business as a feeder system for major studios was declining due to the poor economy and studios’ waning interest in smaller specialty films

Producers of independent films are increasingly looking to digital distribution

The Transformation of the Studio System

The Transformation of the Studio System

After years of thriving, the Hollywood movie industry began to falter after WWII

Critics and observers began talking about the death of Hollywood, claiming that the Golden Age was over

The movie industry adapted and thrived, just as it continues to do today

The Hollywood Ten In 1947 during the beginning of the Cold War, conservative members of Congress began investigating Hollywood for alleged subversive and communist ties

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) led aggressive witch-hunts, resulting in the Hollywood Ten hearings and trial

During the investigations, HUAC coerced prominent people from the film industry to declare their patriotism and give up the names of colleagues suspected of having communist tendencies

Eventually, HUAC subpoenaed ten unwilling witnesses (nine screenwriters and one director) who were questioned about their memberships in various organizations

They refused to discuss their memberships or identify communist sympathizers. Charged with contempt, they were sent to prison

Upon release from jail, they found themselves blacklisted by the major studios

The Paramount Decision After the HUAC investigations, the government also increased its scrutiny of the movie industry’s aggressive business practices

The Paramount Decision: Studios were forced to gradually divest themselves of their theaters, ending vertical integration

Although the government had hoped to increase competition, the Paramount case never really changed the oligopoly structure of the Hollywood film industry because it failed to challenge the industry’s control over distribution

Moving to the Suburbs In the late 1940s, the transformation from a wartime economy and a surge in consumer production had a significant impact on moviegoing

Americans started buying household goods and new cars with their discretionary income

They also started buying new houses in the suburbs, far from downtown movie theaters

Homeownership doubled between 1945 and 1950, and couples began marrying and having children much younger

The combination of social and economic changes meant there were significantly fewer people at the movies

This was compounded by TV—giving people even less reason to go to the theater

Hollywood Adapts to Home Entertainment

The introduction of cable TV and videocassette in the 1970s transformed movies

The movie industry initially tried to stop VCRs from being legal, but quickly jumped on the bandwagon and began selling home videos

DVDs arrived in 1997 and people began new collections of home movies

Blu-Ray arrived in 2008 to present HD home videos

Online distribution caused Blockbuster and other video rental services to go out of business, although low-end rentals (Redbox) are still an option

The future of the video business is online, as more and more people have high quality screens and sound systems in their homes

The Economics of the Movie Business

The Economics of the Movie Business

Despite the development of network and cable TV, video-on-demand, DVDs, internet downloads, and streaming, the movie business has continued to thrive

Since 1963, Americans have purchased about 1 billion movie tickets each year

Global box-office revenues for Hollywood movies have grown, particularly in China, Russia, and Mexico

In order to flourish, the movie industry has had to continually revamp its production, distribution, and exhibition systems and consolidate its ownership

Production, Distribution, and Exhibition Today

In the 1970s, attendance by young moviegoers at new suburban multiplex theaters made megahits of several movies

During this period, Jaws and Star Wars became the first movies to gross more than $100 million at the U.S. box office in a single year

In trying to copy the success of these movies, the studios set in place economic strategies for future decades

Making Money on Movies Today With 80 to 90 percent of newly released movies failing to make money at the domestic box office, studios need a couple of major hits each year to offset losses on other films

The potential losses are great: A major studio film, on average, now costs about $66 million to produce and $37 million for domestic marketing, advertising, and print costs

With climbing film costs, creating revenue from a movie is a formidable task. Studios make money on movies from six major sources

Making Money on Movies Today1. The studios get a portion of the theater box-office revenue (about 40 percent). 3D movies

get higher ticket prices

2. The studios also get money from the home-video market, about 3-4 months after release. This includes video-on-demand, streaming, and DVD and Blu-Ray sales and rentals. Many times, rental and streaming services have to wait at least a month after the movie has gone on sale

3. Next, the studios make money on “windows” of release for a film: premium cable, then network and basic cable showings, and finally the syndicated TV market

Making Money on Movies Today4. Studios can earn revenue from distributing films in foreign markets. International box-office

gross revenues (about $25 billion) are more than double the U.S. and Canadian box-office receipts, and continue to climb annually

5. Studios make money by distributing the work of independent filmmakers and producers, who hire studios to gain wider circulation. Independents pay the studios between 30-50 percent of the money they make from movies

6. Finally, studios earn revenue from merchandise licensing and product placement in movies. Product placements add revenue, but also lend an element of authenticity to the staging

Theater Chains Consolidate Exhibition

Film exhibition is controlled by a handful of theater chains

The leading five companies operate more than 50 percent of U.S. screens—Regal Cinemas, AMC Entertainment, Cinemark USA, Carmike Cinemas, and Cineplex Entertainment

Now, megaplexes are designed to have lots of screens, luxury seating and stadium seating, digital sound and projection, and snacks and food

The Major Studio Players The current Hollywood commercial film business is ruled primarily by six companies—Warner Brothers, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Columbia Pictures, and Disney

These “Big Six” account for about 77 percent of the revenue generated by commercial films

Synergy: The promotion and sale of a product throughout the various subsidiaries of media conglomerates (all of the Big Six except Disney are owned by conglomerates). This includes clothes, toys, music, “making of” TV specials, or other merchandise

Disney has been particularly successful with youth-targeted movies, and the marketing of toys, TV specials, fast-food tie-ins, and theme-park attractions

Some of the largest media mergers have been in the film industry—for example, Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, gaining control of the Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises, plus Industrial Light and Magic

Convergence: Movies Adjust to the Digital Turn

The biggest challenge the movie industry faces today is the internet

However, the movie industry has also embraced the internet as a method of distribution

In 2012, movie fans accessed more movies through digital online media than physical copies—like DVD and Blu-Ray

The digital turn creates two long-term paths for Hollywood:

1. Studios and theaters will lean even more heavily toward making and showing big-budget blockbuster film franchises that people will want to watch on the big screen

2. Inexpensive digital distribution of lower-budget documentaries and independent films, which probably wouldn’t get wide release anyway but could find an audience who watch from home

Alternative Voices The digital revolution in movie production is the most recent opportunity to wrest some power away from the Hollywood studios

Digital video is a shift away from celluloid film: it allows filmmakers to replace expensive and bulky cameras with less expensive, lightweight digital cameras

Low-cost digital video opened up the creative process to countless new artists

Movies can be made for just a few thousand dollars (Paranormal Activity- $15,000)

Popular Movies and Democracy At the cultural level, movies function as consensus narratives, a term that describes cultural products that become popular and provide shared cultural experiences

These consensus narratives operate across different times and cultures

At the international level, countries continue to struggle with questions about the influence of American films on local customs and cultures

With the rise of international media conglomerates, it has become more difficult to awaken public debate over issues of movie industry diversity and America’s domination of the film business

As critical consumers, those of us who enjoy movies and recognize their cultural significance must raise these broader issues in public forums as well as in our personal conversations