Blog #6

·       Why were early silent films popular?

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. The shift to the mass medium stage for movies occurred with the introduction of narrative films: movies that tell stories. Georges Melies was a French magician and inventor who opened the first public movie theater in France in 1896. Melies was the first director to realize that a movie was not simply a means of recording reality. Melies understood that a movie could be artificially planned and controlled like a staged play. He began producing short fantasy and fairy tale films like Cinderella (1899) by increasingly using editing and existing camera tricks and techniques, such as slow motion and cartoon animation, that became key ingredients in future narrative filmmaking.

·       What contributions did nickelodeons make to film history?

Nickelodeons are a form of movie theater whose name combines the admission price with the Greek word for “theater.” It is the screening of news, documentary, comedy, fantasy, and dramatic shorts lasted about one hour. A piano player added live music, and theater operators used sound effects to simulate gunshots or loud crashes. This was because they showed silent films that transcend language barriers, nickelodeons flourished during the great European immigrations at the turn of the twentieth century. The 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. Nickelodeons required a minimal investment, a secondhand projector and a large white sheet. The number if nickelodeons grew from five thousand to ten thousand between 1907 and 1909. By 1910, the craze peaked, when the entrepreneurs began to seek more affluent spectators, attracting them with larger and more lavish movie theaters.

·       Why did Hollywood end up as the center of film production?

         Thomas Edison formed the Motion Picture Patents Company known as the Trust in 1908. The company pooled patents in an effort to control film’s major technology, acquired most major film distributorships, and signed an exclusive deal with George Eastman, who agreed to supply movie film only to Trust-approved companies. Some independent producers refused to bow to the Trust’s terms; there was too much demand for films, too much money to be made, and too many ways to avoid the Trust’s scrutiny. Hollywood became the film capital of the world because some producers began to relocate from the centers of film production in New York, New Jersey to Cuba and Florida. Southern California offered cheap labor, diverse scenery for outdoor shooting, and a mild climate suitable for year-round production. Independent producers in Hollywood could also easily slip over the border into Mexico to escape legal prosecution brought by the Trust for patent violations. Many emerging studios in Hollywood had their own ideas on how to control exhibition, after the collapse of the Trust.

·       What political and cultural forces changed the Hollywood system in the 1950s?

There are several political and cultural forces changed the Hollywood system in the 1950s. The film industry introduced a host of technological improvements to get Americans away from their TV sets. Wide-screen images, multiple synchronized projectors and stereophonic sound arrived in movie theaters. Technicolor was used in movies more often to draw people away from their black and white TVs. Panavision and 3-D were the main purpose that failed to address the problem, middle class flight to the suburbs, away from downtown theaters. Also there were communist witch-hunts in Hollywood. Aggressive witch-hunts for political radicals in the film industry by the House Un-American Activities Committee led to the famous Hollywood Ten hearing and subsequent trails. Home entertainment has made most people prefer the convenience of watching movies at home. About 30 percent of domestic revenue for Hollywood studios comes from DVD/Blu-ray rentals and sales as well as Internet downloads and streaming.

·       What are the various ways in which major movie studios make money from the film business?

There are six various major sources were studios make money on movies. The first way is the studios get a portion of the theater box office revenue, about 40% of the box office take. The box office receipts provide studios with approximately 20% of a movie’s domestic revenue. Studios have found out that they often reel in bigger box-office receipts for 3-D films and their higher ticket prices. An example is, admission to the 2-D version of a film costs $14 at a New York City multiplex, while the 3-D version costs $18 at the same theater.

         The second way is about four months after the theatrical release come the DVD sales and rentals and digital downloads and streaming. This has been declining since 2004 as DVD sales falter and this “window” accounts for about 30 percent of all domestic-film income for major studios. Redbox, discount rental kiosk companies, must wait twenty-eight days after DVDs go on sale before they can rent them, and Netflix has entered into a similar agreement with movie studios in exchange for more video streaming content-a concession to Hollywood’s preference for the greater profits in selling DVDs rather than renting them.

         The third way is the next “windows” of release for a film; pay-per-view, premium cable, then network and basic cable,, and the syndicated TV market. What the prices are that these cable and television outlets pay to the studios is negotiated on a film-by-film basis, although digital services like Netflix and premium channels also negotiate agreements with studios to gain access to a library of films.

         The fourth way is that studios earn revenue from distributing films in foreign markets, in fact, at $22.4 billion in 2011, international box-office gross revenues are more than double the U.S. and Canadian box-office receipts, and they continue to climb annually, even as other countries produce more of their own films.

         The fifth way is that studios make money by distributing the work of independent producers and filmmakers who hire the studios to gain wider circulation. Independents pay the studios between 30 and 50 percent of the box-office and video rental money they make from movies.

         The sixth way is that revenue is earned from merchandise licensing and product placements in movies. Characters generally used generic products, or product labels weren’t highlighted in shots in the early days of television and film. An example can be that Bette Davis’s and Humphrey Bogart’s cigarette packs were rarely seen in their movies. A product placements are adding extra revenues while lending an element of authenticity to the staging but with soaring film productions.

·       How do a few large film studios manage to control more than 90 percent of the commercial industry?

There are six companies that the current Hollywood commercial film business is ruled: Warner Brothers, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Columbia Pictures and Disney. The six major studios account for more than 90% of the revenue generated by commercial films and they also control more than half the movie market in Europe and Asia. DreamWorks could not sustain the high costs of an independent studio, and in 2009 it struck a six-year distribution deal with Disney. To offset losses, in the 80s, which resulted from box-office failures, the movie industry began to diversify, expanding into other product lines and other mass media. This expansion included television programming, print media, sound recordings, and home videos/DVDs, as well as cable and computers, electronic hardware and software, retail stores, and theme parks such as Universal Studios. Management strategies today rely on both heavy advance promotion, to maintain the industry’s economic stability, and synergy, the promotion and sale of a product throughout the various subsidiaries of the media conglomerate. Companies promote not only the new movie itself but also its book form, soundtrack, calendars, T-shirts, Web site, and toy action figures, as well as “the-making-of” story on television, home video, and the Internet. This synergy has been a key characteristic in the film industry and an important element in the flood of the corporate mergers that have made today’s Big Six even bigger, in the 1950s. The biggest corporate mergers have involved the internationalization of the American film business. Investment in American popular culture by the International electronics industry is particularly significant. It represents a new, high-tech kind of vertical integration-an attempt to control both the production of electronic equipment that consumers buy for their homes and the production/distribution of the content that runs on that equipment.

·       How is the movie industry adapting to the Internet?

The most difficult and biggest challenge the movie industry faces is the Internet. Internet services connects more households, movie fans are increasingly getting movies from the Web. The movie industry has more quickly embraced the Internet for movie distribution. Apple’s iTunes store began selling digital downloads of a limited selection of movies in 2006, and 2008 iTunes began renting new movies from all the major studios for just $3.99. Netflix’s popularity of streaming service opened the door to other similar services. Hulu, News Corp. and Disney, was created as the studios’ attempt to divert attention from YouTube and get viewers to watch free, ad-supported streaming movies and television shows online or subscribe to Hulu Plus, Hulu’s premium service. Movies are increasingly available to stream or download on mobile phones and tablets. In 2012, marked a turning point: for the first time, movie fans accessed more movies through digital online media than physical copies, like DVD and Blu-ray. There are two long-term paths for Hollywood, one path is that studios and theaters will lean even more heavily toward making and showing big-budget blockbuster film franchises with a lot of special effects, since people will want to watch those on the big screen for the full-effect and they are easy to export for international audiences. The other path features inexpensive digital distribution for lower-budget documentaries and independent films.

·       What is the impact of inexpensive digital technology on filmmaking?

Digital video is a shift from celluloid film; it allows filmmakers to replace expensive and bulky 16-mm and 35-mm film cameras with less expensive, lightweight digital video cameras, which is substantially cheaper and more accessible than standard film equipment. Digital video also means seeing camera work instantly instead of waiting for film to be developed and being able to capture additional footage without concern for the high cost of film stock and processing. The greatest impact of digital technology is on independent filmmakers, low-cost digital videos opens up the creative process to countless new artists. Digital video camera equipment and computer-based desktop editors, movies can now be made for just a few thousand dollars, a fraction of what the cost would be on film. For example, Paranormal Activity was made for about $15,000 with digital equipment and went on to be a top box-office feature. Digital cameras are now the norm for independent filmmakers, and many directors at venues like the Sundance Film Festival have upgraded to high-definition digital cameras.