1. FM2 – BRITISH & AMERICAN FILM
SECTION A – PRODUCERS &
AUDIENCES
Week 9
Early Film & the Hollywood Studio System

2. 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


3. History of Early Film
1888 - 1930

4. Who invented motion pictures?

5. 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

6. “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 Ro und ha y
G a rd e n Sc e ne

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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’

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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 Filmmaking.