Movies

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Richard E. CaplanThe 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 Night- 1934– 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 Revenuesfor 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 Film Noir Mystery

Westerns Science Fiction Horror Musicals

Film Genres Then & Now

Screwball Comedy Film Noir Mystery

Westerns Science Fiction Horror 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