Movies
MediaLink
Richard E. Caplan
The University of Akron
Persistence of Vision
• Peter Mark Roget
– 1779-1869
– Author of the Roget’s Thesaurus
• When we blink, we do not notice that our eyes
are closed
– We retain the illusion of continued sight
• Basis for how moving pictures and television
produce moving images
Photography
• Camera Obscura
– Leonardo de Vinci
• pinhole camera
• Daguerreotype
– Louis Jacques Mande
Daguerre
• George Eastman
– dry plate formula
– the KODAK
• a one use camera
• made photographs on roles
of sensitized paper
– developed transparent
fixable celluloid roll film
Before the Movies
• Magic Lantern
– pictures painted on glass sides
projected on a screen
– as early as 1646
• Phenakiaticope
– Joseph-Antoine Plateau
– drawings on a spinning disk
– 1832
• Zootrope
– William George Horner
– drawings inside a revolving drum
– looking into the spinning drum
through a slit gave the illusion of
movement
– 1833
Marey and Muybridge
• Eadweard Muybridge's Animal
Locomotion Studies
– ex California governor Leland
Stanford
• $25,000 bet
• do all four hooves of a horse
level the ground
simultaneously
– 12 cameras along a race track
• cameras trigged by the horse
breaking the string attached to
the camera shutter
• took individual still pictures
– Stanford won the bet
– 1878
• Jules Marey built a
photographic gun camera
– 12 individual still photographs
– combined flexible film camera
that took sequential
photographs
– 1882
Edison
• Influenced by the work of Marey and Muybridge
• Assigns assistant to work on the problem
– William Kennedy Laurie Dickson
– first attempt was to record photographs on a cylinder of a
phonograph
• not successful
– Used Eastman’s film
• about 35 millimeters in width
• No film earlier than 1890 exists
– “Fred Ott’s Sneeze”
• photographed in 1891
• 1984 copyright
The Machine
• Kinetoscope
– Peepshow viewer
– film was in a continuous loop
– run over rollers
• Kinetograph
– camera
– patented 1891
• Black Maria
– first film studio
– tarpaper shed
– the roof opened to sky to provide
enough light for photography
– the building turned on tracks to face the
sun
Nickelodeon
• Edison's interest was selling
Kinetoscope machines
– did not pursue projection as this would
reduce the number of machines sold
– phonograph was already a popular
arcade attraction
• Attraction added to the penny arcade
– A nickel extra to view the Kinetoscopes
in the rear of the penny arcade
• hence the name Nickelodeon
• First Kinetoscope parlor
– April 14, 1894
– New York
• By 1900 there were 600 Nickelodeons in
New York
Lumière Brothers
• August Lumière and Louis Lumière
– French Photographers
•
Invented the Cinematographe
– camera and projector
– portable hand cranked
• First motion picture show
– Grand Café in Paris December 28, 1895
• “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory” and other short films
– date the movie industry uses as its birth
• Lumières took their camera on location
– Edison’s first movies were staged in front of this camera
Projector in the USA
• Woodville Latham
– a loop of film was added
just before and after the film
gate
• reduced the tension on the
film due to the starting and
stopping of the film as it
passed through
– called the Latham loop
• Vitascope
– Edison and Thomas Armat
– Also used film loops
– first public showing
• Koster and Bial’s theater in
New York
• April, 1896
Georges Méliès
• French magician and showman
• Made items on screen disappear
– stop cranking the camera remove an item and start
cranking the camera
• A Trip to the Moon
– based on the Jules Verne novel
• Series of scenes edited together rather then one
scene
• Used elaborate costumes and sets
Edwin S. Porter
• Started as a projectionist
– Billed himself as Thomas Edison Jr.
• Went to work for Edison as a camera operator
• The Great Train Robbery
– Strong narrative
– 12 different scenes in different locations
– editing approached a cross cutting structure
D.W. Griffith
• “Birth of a Nation”
– 1915
– racist view of the reconstruction era
• Ku Klux Klan as a hero
• used by the Klan as a recruiting tool
• Major step forward in film technique
– used cross cutting
• Presented the movie as a major performance
– accompanied by a full orchestra
• The movie reflected the racist views held by
much of America at the time
Major Silent Studios
• First National
• Famous Players-Laskey
• Metro
• Loew’s
• Fox
• Paramount
Coming of Sound
• Vitaphone
– Bell Labs -1925
– The Jazz Singer
• 1927
– Sound on disk a 78 RPM
record
• disks played from the center to
the outer edge
– two interlocked machines
• projector and phonograph
• Optical system
– Lee De Forest
•
Phonofilm
– other systems
– sound recorded optically on
the film with the picture
Block Booking
• Sign up a theater to take a package of films
– Initiated by Adoloph Zukor- Paramount
– only a few of the films had stars that would pull an
audience
• United States vs. Paramount Pictures
– limited blocks to five films
– stopped blind booking
• renting films without letting exhibitor see them
Independent Studio
• United Artists
– Mary Pickford
• Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
– Charlie Chaplin
• The Gold Rush
– Douglas Fairbanks
• The Three Musketeers
– D. W. Griffith
• Birth of a Nation
Call for Self-Regulation
• Hollywood scandals
– Fatty Arbuckle case
•
•
•
•
death of model Virginia Rappe
after attending a party given by Arbuckle
Arbuckle charged with manslaughter
he was aquatinted after three trials
– murder of director Desmond Taylor
• Sexual innuendo in movies
– Male and Female
• Directed by C. B. DeMille
• Gloria Swanson taking a bath in a lavish sunken bathtub
• Catholic Legion of Decency called for a boycott of movies
The Hays Office
• Motion Picture Producers and Distributors
Association (MPPDA)
– called the Hays office
– Will Hays
• Chairman of the Republican National Committee
• Presbyterian Church elder
– deflect criticism of conservative groups
• Production code
– audience sympathies should not be with crime,
wrongdoing, evil or sin
Studio Era
• Five major studios
– MGM/Loew’s Theaters
– 20th Century Fox
– Warner Brothers
– Paramount
– RKO
• Vertical integration
– theaters, distribution, and movie production
American Movies Matured
• It Happened One Night1934
– screwball comedy
• The Wizard of Oz - 1939
– musical
• Gone with the Wind - 1939
• Citizen Kane - 1941
– Orson Welles
– voted the greatest film of all
time
McCarthyism
• Senator Joseph McCarthy
– Republican, Wisconsin
• House un-American Activities Committee
– search for communists in American society
• investigated the State Department, the film and television industry,
the Army
• Blacklisting of writes and performers
– the Hollywood ten
• Many historians believe the investigation was politically
motivated
– smear campaign
1946 Peak Year for Movies
• By 1948 movies were in competition with
television
• Separating production and distribution
– Loews theaters and MGM studios finally split in 1959
– Studios losing their dominance over the industry
Hollywood’s Response to Television
• Big budget spectacles Ben Hur 1959
• Youth market
• Wide screen
– 3-D, Cinerama, CinamaScope
• Stop fighting Television
– ends Hollywood's boycott of television
• NBC “Saturday Night at the Movies”
– produce shows for television
• Cheyenne
Sex and Violence
•
First amendment protection
extended to movies
– Burstyn vs. Wilson
•
Otto Preminger challenges code
authority
–
•
The Moon is Blue (1953) and Man
with the Golden Arm (1956)
MPAA - Motion Pictures
Association of America Movie
Ratings
– Designed by Jack Valenti to
prevent censorship
• G - All ages
• PG - Parental guidance suggested
• PG 13 - Parents strongly cautioned
to give guidance to children under
13
• R - Restricted; those under 17 must
be accompanied by parent or
guardian
• NC-17 - No one under 17 admitted
Movie Business
• Six major studios
– Columbia, Paramount, 20th
Century-Fox,
MCA/Universal, Time
Warner and Disney
• each produce twenty
movies a year
• Most movies produced
are by independent
producers
– distributed by studios
• Most fragmented industry
in mass media
Making Money
• Drop in ticket sales
– 1946 was the biggest year
for movie attendance
– attendance dropped with
the growth of television
• Ancillary rights
–
–
–
–
–
–
video
network television
pay TV
song rights
soundtrack album
book
Share of Movie Revenues
for 2000
Independents
• Independently produced films cost much less to produce
• Independent producers and directors push the bounds of
Hollywood
– increased sex and violence
• Taxi Driver
– Martin Scorsese
– more political topics
• M*A*S*H
– Robert Altman
– offbeat films
• Bananas
– Woody Allen
• Women directors
Film Genres
• Narratives drawn from novels, paintings, theater, opera,
folklore, etc
– Characteristic plots, images, settings, music, effects, editing, etc
• science fiction genre
– rocket ships, monsters, planets, robots, scientists, computers,
• Genres
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Screwball comedies - Bringing up Baby
film noir - Maltese Falcon
mystery - North by Northwest
westerns - Fort Apache
war - Guadalcanal Diary
science fiction - Alien
horror - Scream
musicals - Gigi
Film Genres Then & Now
Screwball Comedy
Westerns
Science Fiction
Film Noir
Horror
Mystery
Musicals
Film Genres Then & Now
Screwball Comedy
Westerns
Science Fiction
Film Noir
Horror
Mystery
Musicals
Computer Revolution
• Computer animation
– Forest Gump
– Toy Story
• Nonlinear editing
– AVID
– desktop video
• IMAX
• Virtual reality
Hollywood Adapts to Video
• Motion Picture Association of America
– initially tried to stop video
• More of a gold mine then a threat
• Rental chains taking most of the business
– Blockbuster and Hollywood Video
• B-movies now go straight to video
Home Video
• Video rental dominated by the chains
– Blockbuster, Hollywood Video
• In 1998 Americans spent a total of $16.9 billion
on home videos
• 3/5 of Americans rent videos
• $170 per year on renting and buying
videocassettes
• Pay per view
– movies on cable
Consolidation
• Twentieth Century-Fox
– bought by Rupert Murdock’s News Corp.
– Fox News, Fox Network, British Sky Broadcasting
• Warner Brothers
– Time-Warner
• merger with AOL 2000
– WB TV, Time-Warner Cable
• Universal
– sold to Matsushita of Japan 1990
– re sold to Seagram of Canada 1997
• Columbia Pictures
– purchased by Sony
Audience
• Film distribution
– series of release windows
• theaters, video, cable, television
• Target audiences
– Die Hard
• young men
– You’ve Got Mail
• couples
• date movies
Film Release Windows
Integration
• Horizontal Integration
– own all aspects of an industry
• Vertical Integration
– own production and distribution
• AOL Time-Warner
–
–
–
–
cable systems
film and television production
Internet
Software
» Netscape
– television network
» WB network
– magazine publishing
– cable networks
» CNN
» TNT
» TCM
Film Piracy
• International copyright
– Berne Copyright
Convention
• Urge China to stop
producing copies of
movies and software
Film Preservation
• Early films used unstable nitrate stock
– transfer films to safety stock
• Film colorization
– brings a new audience to old movies
• Turner colorization to the MGM film library
– not all old movies were classics
– decision not to colorize “Citizen Kane”
• Panning and scanning
– wide screen conversion to television
• HDTV will prevent the need