Early Film & the Hollywood Studio SystemWeek 9

FM2 – BRITISH & AMERICAN FILMSECTION A – PRODUCERS &

AUDIENCES

This section will…

Encourage you to see films as products of a global industry dominated by Hollywood

Outline stages that make up film production, or the actual making of the film

Outline the stages in the commercial process that come after the film has been made - distribution, marketing and exhibition

1888 - 1930

History of Early Film

Who invented motion pictures?

Moving image…the theory

The movie camera, film camera or cine-camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film.

In contrast to a still camera, which captures a single snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images; each image constitutes a "frame"

The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the frame rate (number of frames per second)

While viewing, a person's eyes and brain merge the separate pictures together to create the illusion of motion

Now many films are created digitally and also over half of all cinemas use digital projection and not film.

“Father of Cinematography”

Louis Le Prince was an inventor who shot the first moving pictures on paper film using a single lens camera

A Frenchman who also worked in the United Kingdom and the United States, Le Prince conducted his ground-breaking work in 1888 in Leeds, England

In October 1888, Le Prince filmed moving picture sequence Roundhay Garden Scene

Louis le Prince

This short film was recorded at 12 frames per second and runs for 2.11 seconds. It is the oldest surviving film in existence

This was several years before the work of competing inventors such as Auguste and Louis Lumière and Thomas Edison

He was never able to perform in a public demonstration in the US because he vanished in1890

Le Prince's disappearance allowed Thomas Edison to take the credit for the invention of motion pictures by taking on the patent for his single lens camera

Thomas Edison - master inventor In 1894 he invented the Kinetoscope

is an early motion picture exhibition device. It was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device.

In 1894, a public Kinetoscope parlour was opened in New York City - the first commercial motion picture house.

The venue had ten machines, set up in parallel rows of five, each showing a different movie. For 25 cents an individual could view the moving images of a boxing match, dancing, a cat falling off a fence.

Lumière Brothers - early filmmakers 1895 - Lumiere Brothers (French) invent the

Cinématographe, this was a significant development in the history of film

This was a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures

One of their early short ‘films’ L'Arrivée d'un Train à la Ciotat, 1895

Innovators

George Melies was a French illusionist and filmmaker creates the first special effects film called ‘The Conjuring of a Woman at the House of Robert Houdini’ or the ‘Vanishing Woman’

Further developments

1897 - George Melies opens the first studio. Pathe Brothers begin to discuss making

animated films. Edison wins legal battle and has sole control

of US film industry. Lumiere Bros. and Melies films are banned from being imported into the US.

Trip to the Moon, 1902

One of the first narrative films and most famous of all Miele’s productions

Melies was also the first to use techniques such as the fade-in, the fade-out, and the dissolve to create the first real narrative films.

Watching film

1905 - By this year there were over 1,000 nickelodeons in America (They were called penny gaffs in UK).

The name meant that it cost only a nickel (5 cents) to see a film. This was incredibly cheap and made film accessible to a working class audience.

By 1908 there were 6,000.

Early film production

Up until 1907, three major companies dominated.

Edison, Biograph and Vitagraph They operated under the ‘cameraman’

system This meant that this one person was

responsible for planning, writing, filming and editing.

Central producer stytem

1915-1930 - ‘Central producer’ system in place. This was a fully hierarchical system with a strict division of labour.

This began the era that became known as The Studio System or Production Line Film- making.