Film

1
Film Home Video

• Chapter 7

2
Early Film
Muybridges Flying Horses
3
Early Film

• Edison invents motion picture camera and
  projector
• Nickelodeons
• Single viewer in public spaces
• Lumiere Brothers (France) invent cinema

4
Silent Film Era

• Great Train Robbery
• Birth of a Nation
• Silent films rely on visuals and some music
• Epic drama
• Action adventure
• Studios move to Hollywood

5
Silent Film Genres
6
Early Movie Industry

• Star System
• Studios tie stars to long-term contracts
• Marketing and publicity for stars
• Early films controversial
• Sex, partial nudity shocks audiences
• Hayes Office, the Code attempt to make film
  more positive

7
Talkies

• Jazz Singer
• Music and dialogue synched with actor
• Featured Al Jolson in blackface
• New talent
• Broadway and Vaudeville
• New artistic possibilities
• Drama, verbal comedy and musicals

8
Studio System

• Vertical integration
• Studios own or manage entire moviemaking process
• B movies popular
• Paramount, Loews/MGM, Warner Bros., Fox MGM
• Big studios dominate growing industry

9
Movies Peak

• Late 1940s peak of movie exposure and financial
  success
• Soldiers return, economy swells
• New competition TV
• Suburbanization, domesticity shift audiences from
  film theatres to television

10
Movies Adapt

• New sound and visual technologies devised to lure
  viewers
• Strategies include
• Historical epics, special effects, movie stars
• Widescreen improved sound
• More controversial material allowed
• Strategies still viable today

11
Audiences Decline, Art Emerges

• 1960-70s rise of independent filmmaking
• Altman, Allen, Coppola, Scorcese
• Films more sophisticated, controversial
• Audiences
• Younger, urban, socially aware, interested in
  challenge

12
New Film Venues

• HBO and cable
• VCR
• Rapid diffusion in 1980s
• Part of blockbuster strategy
• Audience segmentation
• Smaller, specialized, enthusiastic

13
Film Technology

• 24fps
• Panavision large format
• 16mm to 35mm to 70mm
• Special effects
• Rear screen front screen projection
• Stop action and blue screen effects

14
Digital Film Technology

• Computer animation
• Digital post-production
• Non-linear editing
• Digital video

15
Modern Film Industry
16
Independents

• Increasingly popular
• About 50 percent of current releases
• Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh lead the way in the
  1980s
• Miramax now Disney
• Sundance, film festivals cable offer new
  windows for distribution

17
Film Distribution
18
Emerging Film Genres
19
Film Ratings

• Self-regulation
• Buyer beware
• Problems with self-censorship
• Producers seek most theatre screens
• Filmmakers also want to maintain integrity of
  film
• Category creep
• More sex and violence in younger ratings

20
Film Ratings