Juan Monroy — Week 9, Motion Pictures

Invention of Cinema
- Motion Pictures
  - Muybrdige’s zoopraxiscope
  - Marey’s photo gun
  - Goodwin’s celluloid film
  - Eastman’s roll film
- Kinetograph
  - Thomas Edison
  - WKL Dickson
  - 1891
- Kinetoscope
  - 1894
  - peep show
  - parlors
  - 25¢ for five one-minute reels
- Cinematographe
  - Auguste and Louis Lumiere
  - camera and projector
  - public screening
  - Grand Cafe screenings, 1895
- Vitagraph
  - Edison acquired patents
  - projector
- Nickelodeons
  - theaters devoted to only motion pictures
  - nickel to dime admission cost
  - popular among working class immigrants
  - insatiable appetite for movies
  - intense competition
Motion Picture Patents Company
- Edison
- Latham Loop
- Patent Pool
- Standards
  - one-reel films
  - exclusive production agreements
  - anonymous actors
Independents
- exhibitors and distributors
  - Carl Laemmle
  - William Fox
  - Marcus Loew
  - Adolf Zukor
- feature films
  - Queen Elizabeth
- stars
  - Sarah Bernhardt
  - Florence Lawrence
  - Mary Pickford
Studio System
- vertical integration
- production
  - assembly line production
- distribution
  - block booking
- exhibition
  - price discrimination
  - first-run picture palaces
Coming of Sound
- challenges to film sound
  - amplification
  - synchronization
  - little interest among majors
- sound-on-film
  - Phonofilm
    - Lee DeForest
    - Theodore Case
  - solved synchronization
  - poor sound fidelity
  - Fox-Movietone
- sound-on-disc
  - Western Electric
    - public address system
    - condensor microphone
  - superior amplification and fidelity
  - inferior distribution, synchronization, editing
  - Warner Brothers’ Vitaphone
- reorganized studio system
  - Big Five
    - MGM
    - Paramount
    - Warner Brothers
    - 20th Century-Fox
    - Radio Keith Orpheum
  - Little Three
    - Universal
    - Columbia
    - United Artists
Television
- Radio Corporation of America
- World’s Fair 1939
- Post World War II growth
  - suburbanization
  - nuclear families
  - rapid adoption
- Competition
  - widescreen cinema
  - color
- Cooperation
  - movie rentals for television
  - television program production
Conglomeration
- MCA-Universal
- Warner Communications
- Film executives vs. Filmmakers
Hollywood Auteurs
- Foreign film
- Competition of Television as Mass Medium
- Rating System
- New Hollywood 1970s
  - Francis Ford Coppola
  - Martin Scorsese
- End of New Hollywood, 1979
  - Apocalypse Now
  - Heaven’s Gate
  - retrenchment of studios