Motion Picture History

The movie theater has a significant influence on the cultural formation of a society. The United States has always been at the forefront of film history, despite not being the first country to develop the art of motion filming. It was through film that the US consolidated the American way of Life in the world. After World War II the United States stepped up their cultural influence, begun in the 1930s and 1940s, using mainly movies. The American cinema began to spread many traces of their own culture such as habits, customs, behaviors, brands and standards of beauty, which was soon absorbed by the countries that bought his films.

Movies were becoming one of the biggest businesses during the 1920s and most people would spend their leisure time going to the theatre to watch the silent films. They were becoming huge in the popular culture and Hollywood was the place to be. Roughly by 1922, 40 million people a year in attendance over the entire country for the movie theatres and in 1930 over 100 million people would attend the movies every year. By 1927, the movie industry became the fourth largest industry in the country. “The Great Train Robbery” which was released in 1903 was the beginning of the film industry and would eventually change everything. “Jazz Singer” was the first movie that had synchronized sounds throughout the entire film. The popular genres during this decade were western,

Hollywood underwent this transformation extremely well and by supporting the war effort they showed to be extremely successful. This proved to be true by its production of better quality movies. As well informing and providing propaganda to American soldier and civilians. Hollywood profited largely financially. World War 2 proved to be in fact a great time for Hollywood. This was evident in the fact that the Big Eight combined profits rose from 20 million in 1940 to 35 million in 1941.There profits then rose even more in 1942 and grew even more in the next three years after.

Let’s start with the talkies. The terms talkie and talking picture became superfluous, excessive if you will, throughout the 1930’s. As the depression progressed more and more people favored movies with sound. This meant movie companies had to declare whether their movies were silent or sound (wonderfulcinema.com).

That change did a lot of changes in the world’s movie the change was that the movies had sounds. This change happened in the 1927 in october. Movies of the 1920s: 1.

“The innovation and diffusion phases of transformation took place between 1926 and 1930. Seemingly overnight the silent film era ended; by 1930 Hollywood switched completely to talkies. In 1925 silent filmmaking was the standard; a mere five years later Hollywood produced only films with sound….Within nine months, formerly perplexing technical problems were resolved, marketing and distribution strategies were reworked, soundproof studios were constructed, and 15,000 theaters were wired for sound.” (Gomery and Pafort-Overduin)

The first film that showed early signs of a rise in the quality of technology was the Western “The Great Train Robbery.” When this film first came out the audience were so amazed at the fact that they could watch something on a TV or at the cinema. Although this film was very good for the 1900s it still lacked some key features that make films much easier to understand such as dialogue, sound and camera shots. The one feature of a film that developed the quickest over the period of time was sound. Sound was introduced in October 1927 in the film “The Jazz singer”, which had three song numbers and a few lines of spoken dialogue. Apart from these few songs and words, the rest of the movie was silent, but the audience still thought that it was amazing that words had been spoken in the film, they used to call it “the movie that talked”.

Others begin the era at 1929, when the silent age had definitively ended. Most Hollywood pictures from the late 1920s to 1960 adhered closely to a genre Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated cartoon, biopic (biographical picture)—and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For instance, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always worked onMGM films, Alfred Newman worked at Twentieth Century Fox for twenty years, Cecil B. DeMille's films were almost all made at Paramount Pictures, director Henry King's films were mostly made for Twentieth-Century Fox. Similarly, actors were mostly contract players. Film historians and critics note that it would take about a decade for films to adapt to sound and return to

The modern film industry was born around the beginning of the twentieth century. On April 23rd 1896 Thomas Edition showed the first publicly-projected motion picture at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. From there the film industry had an explosive growth rate. In fact,

The Movie industry in U.S began in the early 20th century when Thomas Edison’s opened the first film studio “Black Maria” in the West Orange New Jersey. Thomas patented the film processing rights thereby sparking patent wars across U.S filmmakers. The patent war led to a massive shift of filmmakers from New York to California in fear of Edison Company agents who would seize cameras of the rival firms.

The Japanese film industry began in 1899 with the start of silent films, One Movie that was filmed before the war is Oatsurae Jirokichi goshi. It was filmed in 1931 by a Japanese director by the name of Daisuke Itō. This film was completely silent and was

The release of Gordon Hollingshead and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer in 1927 marked the new age of synchronised sound in cinema. The feature film was a huge success at the box office and it ushered in the era David Bordwell describes as ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema’; Bordwell and two other film theorists (Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson) conducted a formalist analysis of 100 randomly selected Hollywood films from the years 1917 to 1960 in order to fully define this movement. Their results yielded that most Hollywood made films during that era were centred on, or followed, specific blueprints that formed the finished product. Through this analysis of Hollywood films the theorists were able to establish stylised conventions and modes of

During the mid to late years of the 19th century, a new form of entertainment emerged. Film entered the stage of innovation. New marketing and technological innovations developed for film to become the art it is today. In the 1830s, Joseph Plateau designed the Phenakistoscope. This device had a picture in the middle of a wheel made with mirrors and small openings. When spun, the Phenakistoscope made the picture appear to move. The name changed to Zoetrope in the 1860s and producers advertised the product as an accessory every home needed (Dixon & Foster, 2008). Later inventions that preceded the first motion picture camera include: Henry Du Mont’s Omiscope, Henry R. Heyl’s Phasmatrope, Eadweard Muybridge’s Zoöpraxiscope, Etienne-Jules Marey’s fusil photographique and Eastman Kodak’s chronophotographs (Parkinson, 1997). With a design by Thomas Edison, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson built the first modern movie camera, the Kinetograph, in 1890 (Dixon & Foster, 2008). In 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumiére patented the Cinématographe, a machine that combined the engineering of a camera and a projector (Bergan, 2006). Businessmen capitalized on the growing need for a place to witness these brand new films, thus they charged people to see them in their living rooms (Potter, 2014). These creations made movie-making a reality.

No matter who a person thinks invented the motion picture camera, whether it was Louis Lumiere or Thomas Edison, I'm sure they had no idea what it would become at the turn of the century. Motion pictures, has become an entertainment medium like no other. From Fred Ott's Sneeze to Psycho to Being John Malkovich, the evolution from moving pictures to a pure art form has been quite amazing. Different steps in filming techniques define eras in one of the most amazing ideas that was ever composed. Silent to Sound. Short to long. Black and white to color. Analog to Digital. All were important marks in the History of Motion Pictures. "It's different than other arts. It had to be invented"

Film Industry has been expansively affected by the changes in technology. The mechanical and digital innovations give cause to the influence of equipment, distribution and the way in which films are made and consumed. New trends shape directors and filmmakers to expand creatively towards telling stories in motions. The film industry has developed to one of the most important tools of communication, it's cause so powerful affecting the way individuals and societies think, act and behave. Among the new Era approaching film, and seeing celluloid film fade is that of the Digital Era and a camera that saw celluloid films passing hastened.