Class 2 - 20240907 - Early Film Production in the US

Battle for Control

Edison

Edison believed he owned the patents and copyrights on all cameras, projectors and film stock. And he sued other film producers who did not pay him a licensing fee in an attempt to drive them out of the business.
In 1908, Edison joined forces with several former competitors, combining the 16 most important patents and copyrights in and effort to control the industry.
Motion Pictures Patent Company (the Trust)
The Trust favored single-reel films as they were cheaper to produce, and brought uniformity to the process.

The independents

Zukor - Paramount Pictures

But unconcerned with Trust regulations, the Europeans were making longer, multi-reels films.
Distributor Zukor brings French films d'art to the US.
This success prompts him to form a production company, Famous Players in Famous Plays, a forerunner of Paramount Pictures.

Laemmle

In 1912, Carl Laemmle becomes the first independent to defeat the Trust in court, gaining the right to use the "Latham Loop"
Also in 1912, the US Justice Department sued the MPPC, claiming it was an illegal trust "acting in unfair restraint of trade." The case lasted three years, but in 1915 the court Decided against Edison and his allies.

When Edison lost his appeals in 1918, he got out of the movie business entirely.

Hollywood

Move to Los Angeles

Early filmmaking took place in New York and New Jersey.
Nickelodeons were showing 400 films a year. To meet demand, production companies needed to work year-round and mostly outdoors with available sunlight as electric lights had yet to make their way into cinema.
But East Coast production was beholden to the weather.
In 1909, Selig Polyscope (part of Edison's Trust) became the first company to move west permanently.
Steadily, film companies move to Los Angeles.
By 1914, Los Angeles, was the center of the film industry employing 15,000 workers.

The Rise of the Movie Star

Early on, at MPPC's urging, actors went without screen credit for fear that popularity would drive up their fees.
But by the 1910s audiences began to recognize, and request, their favorite stars, often identifying them simply by their nicknames or the studios they worked for.

The First Movie Star - "The Biograph Girl" - Florence Lawrence

By 1912, Lawrence and her husband had their own production company, Victor Studios.
With creative control, she was earning $500/week making films for Carl Laemmle.
Sadly, she Struggled with health and career setbacks and by 1924 her time as a prominent actress was over.

The Second Movie Star - Mary Pickford

Actress - Producer - Screenwriter
Appears in 245 films from 1909-1933
Co-founder of the Academy in 1927
Wins two Oscars - 1929 and 1976
The most powerful woman of the silent cinema
The most famous woman in the world
The First Hollywood Fan Magazines 1911

The Modern Movie Studio

Thomas Ince

In 1912 Ince built a city of motion picture sets on several thousand acres of land in the Santa Monica Mountains.
In 1913 he stopped directing and focused on production. His mode of production, based on Henry Ford's assembly line, became the prototype for the organized studio system that would dominate the American film industry.
Production Model
Ince - Production Units - Director - Writer - Continuity Script - cinematographer, actors, props, wardrobe, makeup, electrical, etc.
In 1915 real estate mogul, Henry Culver, lured him to Culver City where he joined with two other directors to form Triangle Studios (where Sony currently resides).
In 1916 Ince sold his stakes in Triangle Studios and built a third studio where he made films until he died in 1924 at the age of 44.

Distributor Financed Production

The distributor provided a cash advance to a producer to cover the cost of making a film.
The distributor received the rights to distribute the movie and control its marketing.
The distributor kept 35% of the box office (less the exhibitor's cut) and gave the rest of the profits (less the cost of the production) to the producer.

Hollywood was growing

The independents, flush with cash from their conversion to features began to take over the film industry.

Paramount Pictures - 1914

Adolph Zukor
Jesse Lasky
W.W. Hodkinson (kicked out by Zukor later)

William Fox - Fox Film Corporation - 1914

The Warner Brothers - 1918

Carl Laemmle - Universal Studio - 1915

Block Booking

Independent theater owners are none too pleased with Zukor's new terms of business, 26 of the largest chains joined to formed the First National Exhibitors Circuit in 1917 to oppose.
In 1919, the exhibitors reorganized as First National Pictures with the goal of producing films to show in their own theaters. W.W. Hodkinson was one of them.
Zukor went after First National in its own backyard by diving into the exhibition business.
Not to be outdone, Fox, Goldwyn, and Universal started acquiring theaters.
The studios achieve Vertical Integration
Production - Distribution - Exhibition
By decade's end, Zukor opened the 33-story Paramount Building in Tims Square complete with a 3,700-seat movie theater.
The enormous capital outlays of this period drew Wall Street Banks into the film business where power remains to this day.

Grammar of Film

"we need to understand where are we, when we are, who is who, and why characters are doing what they are doing!"
Early filmmakers realized their job was to guide the audience's attention and assist them in understanding the action.

D.W. griffith - first master of the Cinematic Art

Contiguity Editing - The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1913)

Mae Marsh plays a girl who has come west with her sister to visit her uncle.
After putting her sister to bed, she leaves the bedroom and enters the living room.

Analytical Editing - Friends (1912)

Mary Pickford plays a woman who lives over a saloon in a mining town - her boyfriend wears the top hat.
From the wide shot of her descending the staircase, Griffith cuts in close.

Associative Editing - Corner in Wheat (1909)

Griffith cuts from a party held by a banker, who has made a fortune "corning" the wheat market and driving its price up...
...to a line of poor people who can no longer afford a loaf of bread.

Parallel Editing - The Lonely Villa (1909)

Griffith cuts between criminals breaking into a house,
a woman and her children trapped in the home,
and her husband racing home to save the day.
He also used accelerated montage which alternated shots of shorter and shorter duration.

Italian Superspectacles

Griffith envied the budgets lavished on these films
Despite scale and opulence, they featured simple technique
Certain he could do better, Griffith pushed for greater freedom
Griffith watched with envy as the first Hollywood Feature Length Film was directed by rival Cecil B. DeMille
Griffith set off for California to start production on the biblical epic, Judith of Bethulia.
Griffith leaves Biograph for Mutual Distribution.

Birth of a Nation - 1915

Griffith used all the techniques he developed in the years at Biograph
Composition in depth
Complex parallel editing
Period accurate mise-en-scene
Expressive analytical editing
Subtle acting performances
The film is directly linked to the rebirth of the Klu Klux Klan in 1915

Counter Birth: Independent "race Movies" from Black Filmmakers

The Lincoln Motion Picture Company, run by actor Noble Johnson, was the first production company owned and operated by African Americans.
Johnson said he was inspired to start making his own films after seeing Griffith's racist epic
His first film, the realization of a Negro's Ambition, appeared in 1916.

Intolerance - 1916

Intolerance was revolutionary as it followed four parallel stories, which take place in four different time periods in history...and intercut between them metaphorically.

United Artists

Desiring more creative control, Griffith banded with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to form United Artists in 1919.

Griffith died in 1948 at age 73.

Five years later, when the DGA began giving out their Lifetime Achievement Award,
they name it the D.W. Griffith Award.

But over time, the racist legacy of Griffith's work could no longer be ignored, and in 1999 the guild votes to change the name of the award to the DGA Career Achievement Award. The vote is unanimous.