My final thoughts on American film history American film is a competition between filmmakers trying to become better than one another and using the box office as a way to represent their growth/strength. This is a thought that I have always had when learning about the history of filmmaking, and the direction that American film…
1980s – 1990s: A New New Hollywood
A New Corporate Hollywood Home-Box-Office Market: This market began to emerge when paid tv, network television, and videocassettes began their reign by the end of the 20th century. Many conglomerates like Warner bros and Disney now controlled popular media more so than studios did in the 1930s. Then in fall of 1980 the Screen Actors…
1970s: Hollywood Renaissance
Reinventing Hollywood MPAA Rating System: The current president of the MPAA at the time, Jack Valenti, released a new motion picture rating in 1968. This new rating system was known as the voluntary movie rating system, and it had four different categories: G for general audiences, M for mature audiences with parental discretion advised, R…
Late 1950s and 1960s–A New Hollywood
Moving toward a New Hollywood CinemaScope and Vista Vision, Cinerama,3-D: Studios wanted to make the screen appear bigger alongside better resolution in order to distinguish films from television. The CinemaScope and Vista Vision were widescreen technologies created to change the aspect ratio in movie theaters. The aspect ratio for flat or non-scope films changed from…
Late 1940s to Mid-1950s Hollywood in Postwar America
Cinema adjusting to Postwar America and Reinventing Hollywood The Paramount Case: The paramount case is officially known as the United States v. Paramount Pictures, and before this case Paramount had a massive monopoly on cinema in America. Before this case was settled and won by the U.S. government, Paramount financed their films as collateral for…
Early 1940s Hollywood
1939 – 1941: Last Best Years Early Eight Studios: At the start of the 1940’s there were 8 main studios that controlled almost all of the films being produced, thus the nickname Big Eight Studios. According to Lewis the studios that were a part of this large conglomerate were “Columbia, MGM, Paramount, RKO, 20th Century-Fox,…
Technical Innovations and Industrial Transformation (Late 1920s to 1930s)
Technical Innovations Vitaphone: The vitaphone is one of the first instances of using magnetism to record music. This use of a magnetic style of recording was only able to be created after decades of research and from the laboratories of Western Electric. This company developed the first dependable sound-film system. This system is of course…
Pre/Early-Cinema & The Silent Era
Pre/Early Cinema Pre-Cinema George Eastman: George Eastman was an inventor who sold the very first camera to the common person in 1888. Due to his efforts many around America were able to engage in the art of photography. His camera was so popular His slogan was “You push the button, we do the rest.” The…