To assess how your motion media consumption is affected by technology.? Background: ? Steven Spielberg, the American filmmaker, once said (Travis, 2021) tha

Chapter 8Movies

Are 3-D Effects Creating Two-Dimensional Films?

In 2009, many moviegoers were amazed by the three-dimensional (3-D) film  Avatar.  Avatar grossed over $1.8 billion in theaters worldwide, $1.35 billion from 3-D sales alone.Brandon Gray, “‘Avatar’ is New King of the World,” Box Office Mojo, January 26, 2010,  http://boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2657 . Following in that vein, dozens of other movie studios released 3-D films, resulting in lesser box office successes such as  Alice in Wonderland,  Clash of the Titans, and  Shrek Forever After. Many film reviewers and audiences seemed adamant—3-D movies were the wave of the future.

However, could this eye-popping technology actually ruin our moviegoing experience? Brian Moylan, a critic for  Gawker.com , argues that it already has. The problem with 3-D, he says, is that “It is so mind-numbingly amazing that narrative storytelling hasn’t caught up with the technology. The corporate screenwriting borgs are so busy trying to come up with plot devices to highlight all the newfangled whoosiwhatsits—objects being hurled at the audience, flying sequences, falling leaves, glowing Venus Flytraps—that no one is really bothering to tell a tale.”Brian Moylan, “3D is Going to Ruin Movies for a Long Time to Come,”  Gawker,  http://gawker.com/#!5484085/3d-is-going-to-ruin-movies-for-a-long-time-to-come .

James Cameron, director of  Avatar, agrees. “[Studios] think, ‘what was [ sic] the takeaway lessons from  Avatar? Oh you should make more money with 3-D.’ They ignore the fact that we natively authored the film in 3-D, and [they] decide that what we accomplished in several years of production could be done in an eight week (post-production 3-D) conversion [such as] with  Clash of the Titans.”Edward Baig, “‘Avatar’ Director James Cameron: 3D Promising, but Caution Needed,”  USA Today, March 11, 2010,  http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2010/03/james-cameron/1 . Cameron makes the following point: While recent films such as  Avatar (2009) and  Beowulf (2007) were created exclusively for 3-D, many other filmmakers have converted their movies to 3-D after filming was already complete.  Clash of the Titans is widely criticized because its 3-D effects were quickly added in postproduction. Edward Baig, “‘Avatar’ Director James Cameron: 3D Promising, but Caution Needed,”  USA Today, March 11, 2010,  http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2010/03/james-cameron/1 .

What effect does this have on audiences? Aside from the complaints of headaches and nausea (and the fact that some who wear glasses regularly can find it uncomfortable or even impossible to wear 3-D glasses on top of their own), many say that the new technology simply makes movies looks worse. The film critic Roger Ebert has continuously denounced the technology, noting that movies such as  The Last Airbender look like they’re “filmed with a dirty sheet over the lens.”Roger Ebert, review of  The Last Airbender, directed by M. Night Shyamalan,  Chicago Sun Times, June 30, 2010,  http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100630/REVIEWS/100639999 . 3-D technology can cause a movie to look fuzzier, darker, and generally less cinematically attractive. However, movie studios are finding 3-D films attractive for another reason.

Because seeing a movie in 3-D is considered a “premium” experience, consumers are expected to pay higher prices. And with the increasing popularity of IMAX 3D films, many moviegoers were amazed by the 3-D film  Avatar 3-D, tickets may surpass $20 per person.Andrew Stewart and Pamela McClintock, “Big Ticket Price Increase for 3D Pics,”  Variety, March 24, 2010,  http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118016878.html?categoryid=13&cs=1 . This gives 3-D films an advantage over 2-D ones as audiences are willing to pay more to do so.

The recent 3-D boom has often been compared to the rise of color film in the early 1950s. However, some maintain that it’s just a fad. Will 3-D technology affect the future of filmmaking? With a host of new 3-D technologies for the home theater being released in 2010, many are banking on the fact that it will. Director James Cameron, however, is unsure of the technology’s continuing popularity, arguing that “If people put bad 3-D in the marketplace they’re going to hold back or even threaten the emerging of 3-D.”Edward Baig, “‘Avatar’ Director James Cameron: 3D Promising, but Caution Needed,”  USA Today, March 11, 2010,  http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2010/03/james-cameron/1 . What is important, he maintains, is the creative aspect of moviemaking—no technology can replace good filmmaking. In the end, audiences will determine the medium’s popularity. Throughout the history of film, Technicolor dyes, enhanced sound systems, and computer-generated graphics have boasted huge box-office revenues; however, it’s ultimately the viewers who determine what a good movie is and who set the standard for future films.

8.1 The History of Movies

Learning Objectives

1. Identify key points in the development of the motion picture industry.

2. Identify key developments of the motion picture industry and technology.

3. Identify influential films in movie history.

The movie industry as we know it today originated in the early 19th century through a series of technological developments: the creation of photography, the discovery of the illusion of motion by combining individual still images, and the study of human and animal locomotion. The history presented here begins at the culmination of these technological developments, where the idea of the motion picture as an entertainment industry first emerged. Since then, the industry has seen extraordinary transformations, some driven by the artistic visions of individual participants, some by commercial necessity, and still others by accident. The history of the cinema is complex, and for every important innovator and movement listed here, others have been left out. Nonetheless, after reading this section you will understand the broad arc of the development of a medium that has captured the imaginations of audiences worldwide for over a century.

The Beginnings: Motion Picture Technology of the Late 19th Century

While the experience of watching movies on smartphones may seem like a drastic departure from the communal nature of film viewing as we think of it today, in some ways the small-format, single-viewer display is a return to film’s early roots. In 1891, the inventor Thomas Edison, together with William Dickson, a young laboratory assistant, came out with what they called the kinetoscope, a device that would become the predecessor to the motion picture projector. The kinetoscope was a cabinet with a window through which individual viewers could experience the illusion of a moving image. Europe 1789–1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire, vol. 1, s.v. “Cinema,” by Alan Williams, Gale Virtual Reference Library.“The Kinetoscope,” British Movie Classics,  http://www.britishmovieclassics.com/thekinetoscope.php . A perforated celluloid film strip with a sequence of images on it was rapidly spooled between a lightbulb and a lens, creating the illusion of motion. Britannica Online, s.v. “Kinetoscope,”  http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/318211/Kinetoscope/318211main/Article . The images viewers could see in the kinetoscope captured events and performances that had been staged at Edison’s film studio in East Orange, New Jersey, especially for the Edison kinetograph (the camera that produced kinetoscope film sequences): circus performances, dancing women, cockfights, boxing matches, and even a tooth extraction by a dentist.David Robinson,  From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 43 –44.

Figure 8.2

The Edison kinetoscope.

As the kinetoscope gained popularity, the Edison Company began installing machines in hotel lobbies, amusement parks, and penny arcades, and soon kinetoscope parlors—where customers could pay around 25 cents for admission to a bank of machines—had opened around the country. However, when friends and collaborators suggested that Edison find a way to project his kinetoscope images for audience viewing, he apparently refused, claiming that such an invention would be a less profitable venture. Britannica Online. s.v. “History of the Motion Picture.”  http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/394161/history-of-the-motion picture ; Robinson,  From Peep Show to Palace, 45, 53.

Because Edison hadn’t secured an international patent for his invention, variations of the kinetoscope were soon being copied and distributed throughout Europe. This new form of entertainment was an instant success, and a number of mechanics and inventors, seeing an opportunity, began toying with methods of projecting the moving images onto a larger screen. However, it was the invention of two brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière—photographic goods manufacturers in Lyon, France—that saw the most commercial success. In 1895, the brothers patented the Cinématographe (from which we get the term  cinema), a lightweight film projector that also functioned as a camera and printer. Unlike the Edison kinetograph, the Cinématographe was lightweight enough for easy outdoor filming, and over the years the brothers used the camera to take well over 1,000 short films, most of which depicted scenes from everyday life. In December 1895, in the basement lounge of the Grand Café, Rue des Capucines in Paris, the Lumières held the world’s first ever commercial film screening, a sequence of about 10 short scenes, including the brother’s first film,  Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, a segment lasting less than a minute and depicting workers leaving the family’s photographic instrument factory at the end of the day, as shown in the still frame here in  Figure 8.3 . Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire, s.v. “Cinema.”

Believing that audiences would get bored watching scenes that they could just as easily observe on a casual walk around the city, Louis Lumière claimed that the cinema was “an invention without a future,”Louis Menand, “Gross Points,”  New Yorker, February 7, 2005,  http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/07/050207crat_atlarge . but a demand for motion pictures grew at such a rapid rate that soon representatives of the Lumière company were traveling throughout Europe and the world, showing half-hour screenings of the company’s films. While cinema initially competed with other popular forms of entertainment—circuses, vaudeville acts, theater troupes, magic shows, and many others—eventually it would supplant these various entertainments as the main commercial attraction.Louis Menand, “Gross Points,”  New Yorker, February 7, 2005,  http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/07/050207crat_atlarge . Within a year of the Lumières’ first commercial screening, competing film companies were offering moving-picture acts in music halls and vaudeville theaters across Great Britain. In the United States, the Edison Company, having purchased the rights to an improved projecter that they called the Vitascope, held their first film screening in April 1896 at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in Herald Square, New York City.

Figure 8.3

Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory: One of the first films viewed by an audience.

Film’s profound impact on its earliest viewers is difficult to imagine today, inundated as many are by video images. However, the sheer volume of reports about the early audience’s disbelief, delight, and even fear at what they were seeing suggests that viewing a film was an overwhelming experience for many. Spectators gasped at the realistic details in films such as Robert Paul’s  Rough Sea at Dover, and at times people panicked and tried to flee the theater during films in which trains or moving carriages sped toward the audience.David Robinson,  From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 63. Even the public’s perception of film as a medium was considerably different from the contemporary understanding; the moving image was an improvement upon the photograph—a medium with which viewers were already familiar—and this is perhaps why the earliest films documented events in brief segments but didn’t tell stories. During this “novelty period” of cinema, audiences were more interested by the phenomenon of the film projector itself, so vaudeville halls advertised the kind of the projector they were using (for example, “The Vitascope—Edison’s Latest Marvel”)Andrei Ionut Balcanasu, Sergey V. Smagin, and Stephanie K. Thrift, “Edison and the Lumiere Brothers,”  Cartoons and Cinema of the 20th Century,  http://library.thinkquest.org/C0118600/index.phtml?menu=en%3B1%3Bci1001.html ., rather than the names of the films. Britannica Online. s.v. “History of the Motion Picture.”  http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/394161/history-of-the-motion picture

By the close of the 19th century, as public excitement over the moving picture’s novelty gradually wore off, filmmakers were also beginning to experiment with film’s possibilities as a medium in itself (not simply, as it had been regarded up until then, as a tool for documentation, analogous to the camera or the phonograph). Technical innovations allowed filmmakers like Parisian cinema owner Georges Méliès to experiment with special effects that produced seemingly magical transformations on screen: flowers turned into women, people disappeared with puffs of smoke, a man appeared where a woman had just been standing, and other similar tricks.David Robinson,  From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 74–75;  Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire, s.v. “Cinema.”

Not only did Méliès, a former magician, invent the “trick film,” which producers in England and the United States began to imitate, but he was also the one to tranform cinema into the narrative medium it is today. Whereas before, filmmakers had only ever created single-shot films that lasted a minute or less, Méliès began joining these short films together to create stories. His 30-scene  Trip to the Moon (1902), a film based on a Jules Verne novel, may have been the most widely seen production in cinema’s first decade.David Robinson,  From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 441. However, Méliès never developed his technique beyond treating the narrative film as a staged theatrical performance; his camera, representing the vantage point of an audience facing a stage, never moved during the filming of a scene. In 1912, Méliès released his last commercially successful production,  The Conquest of the Pole, and from then on, he lost audiences to filmmakers who were experimenting with more sophisticated techniques. Encyclopedia of Communication and Information (New York: MacMillan Reference USA, 2002), s.v. “Méliès, Georges,” by Ted C. Jones, Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Figure 8.4

Georges Méliès’ Trip to the Moon was one of the first films to incorporate fantasy elements and to use “trick” filming techniques, both of which heavily influenced future filmmakers.

The Nickelodeon Craze (1904–1908)

One of these innovative filmmakers was Edwin S. Porter, a projectionist and engineer for the Edison Company. Porter’s 12-minute film,  The Great Train Robbery (1903), broke with the stagelike compositions of Méliès-style films through its use of editing, camera pans, rear projections, and diagonally composed shots that produced a continuity of action. Not only did  The Great Train Robbery establish the realistic narrative as a standard in cinema, it was also the first major box-office hit. Its success paved the way for the growth of the film industry, as investors, recognizing the motion picture’s great moneymaking potential, began opening the first permanent film theaters around the country.

Known as nickelodeons because of their 5 cent admission charge, these early motion picture theaters, often housed in converted storefronts, were especially popular among the working class of the time, who couldn’t afford live theater. Between 1904 and 1908, around 9,000 nickelodeons appeared in the United States. It was the nickelodeon’s popularity that established film as a mass entertainment medium. Dictionary of American History, 3rd ed., s.v. “Nickelodeon,” by Ryan F. Holznagel, Gale Virtual Reference Library.

The “Biz”: The Motion Picture Industry Emerges

As the demand for motion pictures grew, production companies were created to meet it. At the peak of nickelodeon popularity in 1910, Britannica Online, s.v. “nickelodeon.” there were 20 or so major motion picture companies in the United States. However, heated disputes often broke out among these companies over patent rights and industry control, leading even the most powerful among them to fear fragmentation that would loosen their hold on the market.Raymond Fielding,  A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television (Berkeley: California Univ. Press, 1967) 21. Because of these concerns, the 10 leading companies—including Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, and others—formed the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) in 1908. The MPPC was a trade group that pooled the most significant motion picture patents and established an exclusive contract between these companies and the Eastman Kodak Company as a supplier of film stock. Also known as  the Trust, the MPPC’s goal was to standardize the industry and shut out competition through monopolistic control. Under the Trust’s licensing system, only certain licensed companies could participate in the exchange, distribution, and production of film at different levels of the industry—a shut-out tactic that eventually backfired, leading the excluded, independent distributors to organize in opposition to the Trust.Raymond Fielding,  A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television (Berkeley: California Univ. Press, 1967) 21; David Robinson,  From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 101–102.

The Rise of the Feature

In these early years, theaters were still running single-reel films, which came at a standard length of 1,000 feet, allowing for about 16 minutes of playing time. However, companies began to import multiple-reel films from European producers around 1907, and the format gained popular acceptance in the United States in 1912 with Louis Mercanton’s highly successful  Queen Elizabeth, a three-and-a-half reel “feature,” starring the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. As exibitors began to show more features—as the multiple-reel film came to be called—they discovered a number of advantages over the single-reel short. For one thing, audiences saw these longer films as special events and were willing to pay more for admission, and because of the popularity of the feature narratives, features generally experienced longer runs in theaters than their single-reel predecessors.“Pre World-War I US Cinema,”  Motion Pictures: The Silent Feature: 1910-27,  http://www.uv.es/EBRIT/macro/macro_5004_39_4.html#0009 . Additionally, the feature film gained popularity among the middle classes, who saw its length as analogous to the more “respectable” entertainment of live theater.“Pre World-War I US Cinema,”  Motion Pictures: The Silent Feature: 1910-27,  http://www.uv.es/EBRIT/macro/macro_5004_39_4.html#0009 . Following the example of the French  film d’art, U.S. feature producers often took their material from sources that would appeal to a wealthier and better educated audience, such as histories, literature, and stage productions.David Robinson,  From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 135, 144.

As it turns out, the feature film was one factor that brought about the eventual downfall of the MPPC. The inflexible structuring of the Trust’s exhibition and distribution system made the organization resistant to change. When movie studio, and Trust member, Vitagraph began to release features like  A Tale of Two Cities (1911) and  Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1910), the Trust forced it to exhibit the films serially in single-reel showings to keep with industry standards. The MPPC also underestimated the appeal of the star system, a trend that began when producers chose famous stage actors like Mary Pickford and James O’Neill to play the leading roles in their productions and to grace their advertising posters.David Robinson,  From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 140. Because of the MPPC’s inflexibility, independent companies were the only ones able to capitalize on two important trends that were to become film’s future: single-reel features and star power. Today, few people would recognize names like Vitagraph or Biograph, but the independents that outlasted them—Universal, Goldwyn (which would later merge with Metro and Mayer), Fox (later 20th Century Fox), and Paramount (the later version of the Lasky Corporation)—have become household names.

Hollywood

As moviegoing increased in popularity among the middle class, and as the feature films began keeping audiences in their seats for longer periods of time, exhibitors found a need to create more comfortable and richly decorated theater spaces to attract their audiences. These “dream palaces,” so called because of their often lavish embellishments of marble, brass, guilding, and cut glass, not only came to replace the nickelodeon theater, but also created the demand that would lead to the Hollywood studio system. Some producers realized that the growing demand for new work could only be met if the films were produced on a regular, year-round system. However, this was impractical with the current system that often relied on outdoor filming and was predominately based in Chicago and New York—two cities whose weather conditions prevented outdoor filming for a significant portion of the year. Different companies attempted filming in warmer locations such as Florida, Texas, and Cuba, but the place where producers eventually found the most success was a small, industrial suburb of Los Angeles called Hollywood.

Hollywood proved to be an ideal location for a number of reasons. Not only was the climate temperate and sunny year-round, but land was plentiful and cheap, and the location allowed close access to a number of diverse topographies: mountains, lakes, desert, coasts, and forests. By 1915, more than 60 percent of U.S. film production was centered in Hollywood. Britannica Online. s.v. “History of the Motion Picture.”  http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/394161/history-of-the-motion picture

The Art of Silent Film

While the development of narrative film was largely driven by commercial factors, it is also important to acknowledge the role of individual artists who turned it into a medium of personal expression. The motion picture of the silent era was generally simplistic in nature; acted in overly animated movements to engage the eye; and accompanied by live music, played by musicians in the theater, and written titles to create a mood and to narrate a story. Within the confines of this medium, one filmmaker in particular emerged to transform the silent film into an art and to unlock its potential as a medium of serious expression and persuasion. D. W. Griffith, who entered the film industry as an actor in 1907, quickly moved to a directing role in which he worked closely with his camera crew to experiment with shots, angles, and editing techniques that could heighten the emotional intensity of his scenes. He found that by practicing parallel editing, in which a film alternates between two or more scenes of action, he could create an illusion of simultaneity. He could then heighten the tension of the film’s drama by alternating between cuts more and more rapidly until the scenes of action converged. Griffith used this technique to great effect in his controversial film  The Birth of a Nation, which will be discussed in greater detail later on in this chapter. Other techniques that Griffith employed to new effect included panning shots, through which he was able to establish a sense of scene and to engage his audience more fully in the experience of the film, and tracking shots, or shots that traveled with the movement of a scene,“Griffith,”  Motion Pictures,  http://www.uv.es/EBRIT/macro/macro_5004_39_6.html#0011 . which allowed the audience—through the eye of the camera—to participate in the film’s action.

MPAA: Combating Censorship

As film became an increasingly lucrative U.S. industry, pro