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6 Film

Learning Objectives The movies are our dream factories; they are bigger than life. With books, they are the only mass medium not dependent on advertising for their financial support. That means they must

Academy Award nominee Selma. Amid the blockbusters, Hollywood can still produce mature, serious movies. © Paramount Pictures/Photofest

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satisfy you, because you buy the tickets. This means that the relationship between medium and audience is different from those that exist with other media. After studying this chapter you should be able to

Outline the history and development of the film industry and film i tself as a medium. Describe the cultural value of film and the implications of the bloc kbuster mentality for film as an important artistic and cultural me dium. Summarize the three components of the film industry—production , distribution, and exhibition. Explain how the organizational and economic nature of the contem porary film industry shapes the content of films. Describe the promise and peril of convergence and the new digital technologies to film as we know it. Understand how production is becoming more expensive and, sim ultaneously, less expensive. Apply film-watching media literacy skills, especially in interpreting merchandise tie-ins and product placements.

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PARIS IS COLD AND DAMP ON THIS DECEMBER NIGHT, THREE DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS IN 1895. But you bundle up and make your way to the Grand Café in the heart of the city. You’ve read in the morning paper that brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière will be displaying their new invention that somehow makes pictures move. Your curiosity is piqued.

Tables and chairs are set up in the basement room of the café, and a white bedsheet is draped above its stage. The Lumières appear to polite applause. They announce the program: La Sortie des usines Lumière (Quitting Time at the Lumière Factory); Le Repas de bébé, featuring a Lumière child eating; L’Arroseur arrosé, about a practical-joking boy and his victim, the gardener; and finally L’Arrivée d’un train en gare, the arrival of a train at a station.

The lights go out. Somewhere behind you, someone starts the machine. There is some brief flickering on the suspended sheet and then . . . you are completely awestruck. There before you —bigger than life-size—photographs are really moving. You see places you know to be miles away. You spy on the secret world of a prankster boy, remembering your own childhood. But the last film is the most impressive. As the giant locomotive chugs toward the audience, you and most of the others are convinced you are about to be crushed. There is panic. People are ducking under their chairs, screaming. Death is imminent!

The first paying audience in the history of motion pictures has just had a lesson in movie watching.

The Lumière brothers were excellent mechanics, and their father owned a factory that made photographic plates. Their first films were little more than what we would now consider black- and-white home movies. As you can tell from their titles, they were simple stories. There was no editing; the camera was simply turned on, then turned off. There were no fades, wipes, or flashbacks. No computer graphics, no dialogue, and no music. And yet much of the audience was terrified by the oncoming cinematic locomotive. They were illiterate in the language of film.

We begin our study of the movies with the history of film, from its entrepreneurial beginnings, through the introduction of its narrative and visual language, to its establishment as a large, studio-run industry. We detail Hollywood’s relationship with its early audiences and changes in the structure and content of films resulting from the introduction of television. We then look at contemporary movie production, distribution, and exhibition systems and how convergence is altering all three; the influence of the major studios; and the economic pressures on them in an increasingly multimedia environment. We examine the special place movies hold for us and how ever-younger audiences and the films that target them may affect our culture. Recognizing the use of product placement in movies is the basis for improving our media literacy skill.

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The Lumières’ L’Arrivée d’un train en gare. As simple as early films were, their viewers did not have sufficient film literacy to properly interpret, understand, and enjoy them. This scene supposedly sent people screaming and hiding to avoid being crushed by the oncoming train. © Association frères Lumière/Roger-Viollet/The Image Works

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A Short History of the Movies

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We are no longer illiterate in the grammar of film, nor are movies as simple as the early Lumière offerings. Consider the sophistication necessary for filmmakers to produce a computer-generated movie such as Guardians of the Galaxy and the skill required for audiences to read Edge of Tomorrow’s shifts in time and space, unconventional camera angles, and other twists and turns. How we arrived at this contemporary medium-audience relationship is a wonderful story.

Early newspapers were developed by businesspeople and patriots for a small, politically involved elite that could read, but the early movie industry was built largely by entrepreneurs who wanted to make money entertaining everyone. Unlike television, whose birth and growth were predetermined and guided by the already well-established radio industry, there were no precedents, no rules, and no expectations for movies.

Return to the opening vignette. The audience for the first Lumière movies did not “speak film.” Think of it as being stranded in a foreign country with no knowledge of the language and cultural conventions. You would have to make your way, with each new experience helping you better understand the next. First you’d learn some simple words and basic customs. Eventually, you’d be able to better understand the language and people. In other words, you’d become increasingly literate in that culture. Beginning with that Paris premiere, people had to become film literate. They had to develop an understanding of cinematic alterations in time and place. They had to learn how images and sound combined to create meaning. But unlike visiting another culture, there was no existing cinematic culture. Movie creators and their audiences had to develop and understand the culture together.

The Early Entrepreneurs In 1873 former California governor Leland Stanford needed help winning a bet he had made with a friend. Convinced that a horse in full gallop had all four feet off the ground, he had to prove it. He turned to well-known photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who worked on the problem for four years before finding a solution. In 1877 Muybridge arranged a series of still cameras along a stretch of racetrack. As the horse sprinted by, each camera took its picture. The resulting photographs won Stanford his bet, but more important, they sparked an idea in their

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photographer. Muybridge was intrigued by the appearance of motion created when photos are viewed sequentially. He began taking pictures of numerous kinds of human and animal action. To display his work, Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope, a machine for projecting slides onto a distant surface.

When people watched the rapidly projected, sequential slides, they saw the pictures as if they were in motion. This perception is the result of a physiological phenomenon known as persiste nce of vision, in which the images our eyes gather are retained in the brain for about 1/24 of a second. Therefore, if photographic frames are moved at 24 frames a second, people perceive them as actually in motion.

Muybridge eventually met the prolific inventor Thomas Edison in 1888. Edison quickly saw the scientific and economic potential of the zoopraxiscope and set his top scientist, William Dickson, to the task of developing a better projector. But Dickson correctly saw the need to develop a better system of filming. He understood that shooting numerous still photos, then putting them in sequential order, then redrawing the images onto slides was inherently limiting. Dickson combined Hannibal Goodwin’s newly invented celluloid roll film with George Eastman’s easy-to-use Kodak camera to make a motion picture camera that took 40 photographs a second. He used his kinetograph to film all types of theatrical performances, some by unknowns and others by famous entertainers such as Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill Cody. Of course, none of this would have been possible had it not been for photography itself.

Muybridge’s horse pictures. When these plates were placed sequentially and rotated, they produced the appearance of motion. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-45683]

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Typical of daguerreotypes, this plate captures a portrait. The method’s long exposure time made all but the most stationary subjects impossible to photograph.

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY The process of photography was first developed by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1816. Although there had been much experimentation in the realm of image making at the time, Niépce was the first person to make practical use of a camera and film. He photographed natural objects and produced color prints. Unfortunately, his images would last only a short time.

Niépce’s success, however, attracted the attention of countryman Louis Daguerre, who joined with him to perfect the process. Niépce died before the 1839 introduction of the daguerreotyp e, a process of recording images on polished metal plates, usually copper, covered with a thin layer of silver iodide emulsion. When light reflected from an object passed through a lens and struck the emulsion, the emulsion would etch the image on the plate. The plate was then washed with a cleaning solvent, leaving a positive or replica image.

In the same year as Daguerre’s first public display of the daguerreotype, British inventor William Henry Fox Talbot introduced a paper film process. This process was more important to the development of photography than the metal film system, but the daguerreotype received widespread attention and acclaim and made the public enthusiastic about photography.

The calotype (Talbot’s system) used translucent paper, what we now call the negative, from which several prints could be made. In addition, his film was much more sensitive than Daguerre’s metal plate, allowing for exposure times of only a few seconds as opposed to the daguerreotype’s 30 minutes. Until calotype, virtually all daguerreotype images were still lifes and portraits, a necessity with long exposure times.

The final steps in the development of the photographic process necessary for true motion pictures were taken, as we’ve just seen, by Goodwin in 1887 and Eastman in 1889 and were adapted to motion pictures by Edison scientist Dickson.

THOMAS EDISON Edison built the first motion picture studio near his laboratory in New Jersey. He called it Black Maria, the common name at that time for a police paddy wagon. It had an open roof and revolved to follow the sun so the performers being filmed would always be illuminated.

The completed films were not projected. Instead, they were run through a kinetoscope, a sort of peep show device. Often they were accompanied by music provided by another Edison invention, the phonograph. Patented in 1891 and commercially available three years later,

© George Eastman House/Getty Images

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the kinetoscope quickly became a popular feature in penny arcades, vaudeville halls, and big-city Kinetoscope parlors. This marked the beginning of commercial motion picture exhibition.

THE LUMIÈRE BROTHERS The Lumière brothers made the next advance. Their initial screenings demonstrated that people would sit in a darkened room to watch motion pictures projected on a screen. The brothers from Lyon envisioned great wealth in their ability to increase the number of people who could simultaneously watch a movie. In 1895 they patented their cinématographe, a device that both photographed and projected action. Within weeks of their Christmastime showing, long lines of enthusiastic moviegoers were waiting for their makeshift theater to open. Edison recognized the advantage of the cinématographe over his kinetoscope, so he acquired the patent for an advanced projector developed by U.S. inventor Thomas Armat. On April 23, 1896, the Edison Vitascope premiered in New York City, and the American movie business was born.

The Coming of Narrative The Edison and Lumère movies were typically only a few minutes long and showed little more than filmed reproductions of reality—celebrities, weight lifters, jugglers, and babies eating. They were shot in fixed frame (the camera did not move), and there was no editing. For the earliest audiences, this was enough. But soon the novelty wore thin. People wanted more for their money. French filmmaker Georges Méliès began making narrative motion pictures, that is, movies that told a story. At the end of the 1890s he was shooting and exhibiting one-scene, one-shot movies, but soon he began making stories based on sequential shots in different places. He simply took one shot, stopped the camera, moved it, took another shot, and so on. Méliès is often called the “first artist of the cinema” because he brought narrative to the medium in the form of imaginative tales such as A Trip to the Moon (1902).

Méliès had been a magician and caricaturist before he became a filmmaker, and his inventive movies showed his dramatic flair. They were extravagant stage plays in which people disappeared and reappeared and other wonders occurred. A Trip to the Moon came to America in 1903, and U.S. moviemakers were

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quick not only to borrow the idea of using film to tell stories but also to improve on it.

Scene from A Trip to the Moon. Narrative came to the movies through the inventive imagination of Georges Méliès. © Star Film/Edison Manufacturing Company/Photofest

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Edwin S. Porter, an Edison Company camera operator, saw that film could be an even better storyteller with more artistic use of camera placement and editing. His 12-minute The Great Train Robbery (1903) was the first movie to use editing, intercutting of scenes, and a mobile camera to tell a relatively sophisticated tale. It was also the first Western. This new narrative form using montage—tying together two separate but related shots in such a way that they took on a new, unified meaning—was an instant hit with audiences. Almost immediately hundreds of nickelodeons, some having as many as 100 seats, were opened in converted stores, banks, and halls across the United States. The price of admission was one nickel, hence the name. By 1905 cities such as New York were opening a new nickelodeon every day. From 1907 to 1908, the first year in which there were more narrative than documentary films, the number of nickelodeons in the United States increased tenfold. With so many exhibition halls in so many towns serving such an extremely enthusiastic public, many movies were needed. To create more films, hundreds of new factory studios, or production companies, were started.

Because so many movies needed to be made and rushed to the nickelodeons, people working

Scene from The Great Train Robbery. Porter’s masterpiece introduced audiences to editing, intercutting of scenes, moving cameras, and the Western. © Roger-Viollet/The Image Works

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in the industry had to learn and perform virtually all aspects of production. There was precious little time for, or profitability in, the kind of specialization that marks contemporary filmmaking. Writer, actor, and camera operator D. W. Griffith perfected his craft in this environment. He was quickly recognized as a brilliant director. He introduced innovations such as scheduled rehearsals before final shooting and production based on close adherence to a shooting script. He lavished attention on otherwise ignored aspects of a film’s look—costume and lighting—and used close-ups and other dramatic camera angles to transmit emotion.

All his skill came together in 1915 with the release of The Birth of a Nation. Whereas Porter had used montage to tell a story, Griffith used it to create passion, move emotions, and heighten suspense. The most influential silent film ever made, this three-hour epic was six weeks in rehearsal and nine weeks in shooting, cost $125,000 to produce (making it the most expensive movie made to that date), was distributed to theaters complete with an orchestral music score, had a cast of thousands of humans and animals, and had an admission price well above the usual 5 cents—$3. It was the most popular and profitable movie made and remained so until 1939, when it was surpassed by Gone with the Wind. With other Griffith masterpieces, Intolerance (1916) and Broken Blossoms (1919), The Birth of a Nation set new standards for the American film.

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They took movies out of the nickelodeons and made them big business. At the same time, however, The Birth of a Nation represented the basest aspects of U.S. culture because it included an ugly, racist portrayal of African Americans and a sympathetic treatment of the Ku Klux Klan. The film inspired protests in front of theaters across the country and criticism in some newspapers and magazines, and African Americans fought back with their own films (see the essay, “African American Response to D. W. Griffith: The Linc oln and Micheaux Film Companies”). Nevertheless, The Birth of a Nation found acceptance by the vast majority of people.

The Ku Klux Klan was the collective hero in D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. This cinematic masterpiece and groundbreaking film employed production techniques never before used; however, its racist theme mars its legacy. Courtesy of Everett Collection

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The Big Studios In 1908 Thomas Edison, foreseeing the huge amounts of money that could be made from movies, founded the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), often simply called the Trust. This group of 10 companies under Edison’s control, holding the patents to virtually all existing filmmaking and exhibition equipment, ran the production and distribution of film in the United States with an iron fist. Anyone who wanted to make or exhibit a movie needed Trust permission, which typically was not forthcoming. In addition, the MPPC had rules about the look of the movies it would permit: They must be one reel, approximately 12 minutes long, and must adopt a “stage perspective”; that is, the actors must fill the frame as if they were in a stage play.

Many independent film companies sprang up in defiance of the Trust, including Griffith’s in 1913. To avoid MPPC scrutiny and reprisal, these companies moved to California. This westward migration had other benefits. Better weather meant longer shooting seasons. Free of MPPC standards, people like Griffith who wanted to explore the potential of films longer than 12 minutes and with imaginative use of the camera were free to do so.

The new studio system, with its more elaborate films and big-name stars, was born, and it controlled the movie industry from California. Thomas H. Ince (maker of the William S. Hart Westerns), Griffith, and comedy genius Mack Sennett formed the Triangle Company. Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players in Famous Plays—formed when Zukor was denied MPPC permission to distribute one of his films—joined with several other independents and a distribution company to become Paramount. Other independents joined to create the Fox Film Company (soon called 20th Century Fox) and Universal. Although films were still silent, by the mid-1920s there were more than 20,000 movie theaters in the United States, and more than 350,000 people were making their living in film production. More than 1,240,000 feet of film was shot each year in Hollywood, and annual domestic U.S. box office receipts exceeded $750 million.

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USING MEDIA TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE African American Response to D. W. Griffith: The Lincoln and Micheaux Film Companies

The African American community did not sit passively in the wake of D. W. Griffith’s 1915 cinematic but hateful wonder, The Birth of a Nation. The NAACP fought the film in court and on the picket line, largely unsuccessfully. But other African Americans decided to use film to combat Birth. The first was Emmett J. Scott, a quiet, scholarly man. He sought money from the country’s Black middle class to produce a short film showing the achievements of African Americans. His intention was to attach his film, Lincoln’s Dream, as a prologue to screenings of the Griffith film. Together with screenwriter Elaine Sterne, Scott eventually expanded the project into a feature-length movie. He approached Universal Studios with his film but was rejected.

With independent backing from both Black and White investors, the film was released in 1918. Produced by an inexperienced cast and crew working on a production beset by bad weather and technical difficulties, the reti-tled The Birth of a Race filled 12 reels of film and ran more than three hours. Its publicity hailed it as “The Greatest and Most Daring of Photoplays . . . The Story of Sin . . . A Master Picture Conceived in the Spirit of Truth and Dedicated to All the Races of the World” (Bogle, 1989, p. 103). It was an artistic and commercial failure. Scott, however, had inspired others.

Even before The Birth of a Race was completed, the Lincoln Motion Picture Company was incorporated, in Nebraska in 1916 and in California in 1917, by brothers Noble P. and George Johnson. Their tack differed from Scott’s. They understood that their “Black” films would never be allowed on “White” screens, so they produced movies designed to tell Black-oriented stories to Black audiences. They might not be able to convince White America of Griffith’s error, but they could reassure African Americans that their views could find expression. Lincoln’s first movie was The Realization of a Negro’s Ambition, and it told the story of Black American achievements. The Johnson brothers turned U.S. racism to their advantage. Legal segregation in the South and de facto segregation in the North had led to an explosion of Black theaters. These movie houses needed content. Lincoln helped provide it by producing 10 three-reelers between 1916 and 1920.

Another notable film company soon began operation, hoping to challenge, at least in Black theaters, Griffith’s portrayals. Oscar Micheaux founded the Micheaux Film and Book Company in 1918 in Chicago and soon produced The Homesteader, an eight-reel film based on the autobiographical novel he’d written three years earlier. It was the story of a successful Black homestead rancher in South Dakota. But Micheaux was not content to boost Black self-esteem. He was determined to make “racial photoplays depicting racial

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life” (as quoted in Sampson, 1977, p. 42). In 1920 he released Within Our Gates, a drama about the southern lynching of a Black man. Censored and denied a screening in dozens of cities both North and South, Micheaux was undeterred. In 1921 he released the eight- reeler The Gunsaulus Mystery, based on a well-known murder case in which a Black man was convicted.

These early film pioneers used their medium to make a difference. They challenged the interpretation of history being circulated by the most popular movie in the world, and they provided encouragement and entertainment to the African American community.

The industry prospered not just because of its artistry, drive, and innovation but because it used these to meet the needs of a growing audience. At the beginning of the 20th century, generous immigration rules, combined with political and social unrest abroad, encouraged a flood of European immigrants who congregated in U.S. cities where the jobs were and where people like themselves who spoke their language lived. American farmers, largely illiterate, also swarmed to the cities as years of drought and farm failure left them without home or hope. Jobs in the big mills and factories, although unpleasant, were plentiful. These new city dwellers had money and the need for leisure activities. Movies were a nickel, required no ability to read or to understand English, and offered glamorous stars and wonderful stories from faraway places.

Foreign political unrest proved to be a boon to the infant U.S. movie business in another way as well. In 1914 and 1915, when the California studios were remaking the industry in their own grand image, war raged in

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Europe. European moviemaking, most significantly the influential French, German, and Russian cinema, came to a halt. European demand for movies, however, did not. American movies, produced in huge numbers for the hungry home audience, were ideal for overseas distribution. Because so few in the domestic audience could read English, few printed titles were used in the then-silent movies. Therefore, little had to be changed to satisfy foreign moviegoers. Film was indeed a universal language, but more important, the American film industry had firmly established itself as the world leader, all within 20 years of the Lumière brothers’ first screening.

Change Comes to Hollywood As was the case with newspapers and magazines, the advent of television significantly altered the movie-audience relationship. But the nature of that relationship had already been shaped and reshaped in the three decades between the coming of sound to film and the coming of television.

THE TALKIES The first sound film was one of three films produced by Warner Brothers. It may have been Don Juan (1926), starring John Barrymore, distributed with synchronized music and sound effects. Or perhaps Warner’s more famous The Jazz Singer (1927), starring Al Jolson, which had several sound and speaking scenes (354 words in all) but was largely silent. Or it may have been the 1928 all-sound Lights of New York. Historians disagree because they cannot decide what constitutes a sound film.

There is no confusion, however, about the impact of sound on the movies and their audiences. First, sound made possible new genres—musicals, for example. Second, as actors and actresses now had to really act, performance aesthetics improved. Third, sound made film production a much more complicated and expensive proposition. As a result, many smaller filmmakers

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closed shop, solidifying the hold of the big studios over the industry. In 1933, 60% of all U.S. films came from Hollywood’s eight largest studios. By 1940, they were producing 76% of all U.S. movies and collecting 86% of the total box office. As for the audience, in 1926, the year of Don Juan’s release, 50 million people went to the movies each week. In 1929, at the onset of the Great Depression, the number had risen to 80 million. By 1930, when sound was firmly entrenched, the number of weekly moviegoers had risen to 90 million (Mast & Kawin, 1996).

Al Jolson, in blackface, and May McAvoy starred in the 1927 The Jazz Singer, one of three claimants to the title of first sound movie. © Moviestore collection Ltd/Alamy

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SCANDAL The popularity of talkies, and of movies in general, inevitably raised questions about their impact on the culture. In 1896, well before sound, The Kiss had generated a great moral outcry. Its stars, John C. Rice and May Irwin, were also the leads in the popular Broadway play The Widow Jones, which closed with a climactic kiss. The Edison Company asked Rice and Irwin to re-create the kiss for the big screen. Newspapers and politicians were bombarded with complaints from the offended. Kissing in the theater was one thing; in movies it was quite another! The then-newborn industry responded to this and other calls for censorship with various forms of self-regulation and internal codes. But in the early 1920s more Hollywood scandals forced a more direct response.

In 1920 “America’s Sweetheart” Mary Pickford obtained a questionable Nevada divorce from her husband and immediately married the movies’ other darling, Douglas Fairbanks, himself newly divorced. In 1920 and 1921 comedian Fatty Arbuckle was involved in police problems on two coasts. The first was apparently hushed up after a $100,000 gift was made to a Massachusetts district attorney, but the second involved a murder at a San Francisco hotel party thrown by the actor. Although he was acquitted in his third trial (the first two ended in hung juries), the stain on Arbuckle and the industry remained. Then, in 1922, actor Wallace Reid died from an addiction to morphine (the studio partly supplied the drug to keep him working through his pain after he was injured in a train wreck), and director William Desmond Taylor was murdered in what the newspapers referred to as “a mysterious fashion” in which drugs and sex were thought to have played a part. The cry for government intervention was raised. State legislatures introduced more than 100 separate pieces of legislation to censor or otherwise control movies and their content.

Hollywood responded in 1922 by creating the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and appointing Will H. Hays—chair of the Republican Party, a Presbyterian church elder, and a former postmaster general—president. The Hays Office, as it became known, undertook a vast effort to improve the image of the movies. Stressing the importance of movies to national life and as an educational medium, Hays promised better movies and founded a committee on public relations that included many civic and religious leaders. Eventually, in 1934, the Motion Picture Production Code (MPPC) was released. The MPPC forbade the use of profanity, limited bedroom scenes to married couples, required that skimpy outfits be replaced by more complete costumes, delineated the length of screen kisses, ruled out scenes that ridiculed public officials or religious leaders, and outlawed a series of words from “God” to “nuts,” all enforced by a $25,000 fine.

NEW GENRES, NEW PROBLEMS By 1932 weekly movie attendance had dropped to 60 million. The Great Depression was having its effect. Yet the industry was able to weather the crisis for two reasons. The first was its creativity. New genres held people’s interest. Feature documentaries such as The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) spoke to audience needs to understand a world in seeming disorder. Musicals such as 42nd Street (1933) and screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby (1938) provided easy escapism. Gangster movies such as Little Caesar (1930) reflected the grimy reality of Depression city streets and daily newspaper headlines. Horror films such as Frankenstein (1931) articulated audience feelings of alienation and powerlessness in a seemingly uncontrollable time. Socially conscious comedies such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) reminded moviegoers that good could still prevail, and the double feature with a B-movie—typically a less expensive movie—was a welcome relief to penny-

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pinching working people. The second reason the movie business survived the Depression was because of its size and

power, both residing in a system of operation called vertical integration. Using this system, studios produced their own films, distributed them through their own outlets, and exhibited them in their own theaters. In effect, the big studios controlled a movie from shooting to

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screening, guaranteeing distribution and an audience regardless of quality. When the 1930s ended, weekly attendance was again over 80 million, and

Hollywood was churning out 500 pictures a year. Moviegoing had become a central family and community activity for most people. Yet the end of that decade also brought bad news. In 1938 the Justice Department challenged vertical integration, suing the big five studios—Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, RKO, and 20th Century Fox— for restraint of trade; that is, they accused the studios of illegal monopolistic practices. The case would take 10 years to decide, but the movie industry, basking in the middle of its golden age, was under attack. Its fate was sealed in 1939 when the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) made the first public broadcast of television from atop the Empire State Building. The impact of these two events was profound, and the medium would have to develop a new relationship with its audience to survive.

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TELEVISION When World War II began, the government took control of all patents for the newly developing technology of television as well as of the materials necessary for its production. The diffusion of the medium to the public was therefore halted, but its technological improvement was not. In addition, the radio networks and advertising agencies, recognizing that the war would eventually end and that their futures were in television, were preparing for that day. When the war did end, the movie industry found itself competing not with a fledgling medium but with a technologically and economically sophisticated one. The number of homes with television sets grew from 10,000 in 1946 to more than 10 million in 1950 and 54 million in 1960. Meanwhile, by 1955 movie attendance was down to 46 million people a week, fully 25% below even the worst attendance figures for the Depression years.

THE PARAMOUNT DECISION In 1948, 10 years after the case had begun, the Supreme Court issued its Paramount Decision, effectively destroying the studios’ hold over

Screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby helped Americans escape the misery of the Great Depression. © 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection

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moviemaking. Vertical integration was ruled illegal, as was block booking, the practice of requiring exhibitors to rent groups of movies, often inferior, to secure a better one. The studios were forced to sell off their exhibition businesses (the theaters). Before the Paramount Decision, the five major studios owned 75% of the first-run movie houses in the United States; after it, they owned none. Not only did they no longer have guaranteed exhibition, but other filmmakers now had access to the theaters, producing even greater competition for the dwindling number of movie patrons.

RED SCARE The U.S. response to its postwar position as world leader was fear. So concerned were some members of Congress that communism would steal the people’s rights that Congress decided to steal them first. The Hollywood chapter of the virulent anticommunism movement we now call McCarthyism (after the Republican senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, its most rabid and public champion) was led by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and its chair, J. Parnell Thomas (later imprisoned for padding his congressional payroll). First convened in 1947, HUAC’s goal was to rid Hollywood of communist influence. The fear was that communist, socialist, and leftist propaganda was being secretly inserted into entertainment films by “Reds,” “fellow travelers,” and “pinkos.” Many of the industry’s best and brightest talents were called to testify before the committee and were asked, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Those who came to be known as the Hollywood 10, including writers Ring Lardner Jr. and Dalton Trumbo and director Edward Dmytryk, refused to answer the question, accusing the committee, by its mere existence, of being in violation of the Bill of Rights. All were jailed. Rather than defend its First Amendment rights, the film industry abandoned those who were even mildly critical of the “Red Scare,” jettisoning much of its best talent at a time when it could least afford to do so. In the fight against television, movies became increasingly tame for fear of being too controversial.

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The industry was hurt not only by its cowardice but also by its shortsightedness. Hungry for content, the television industry asked Hollywood to sell it old features for broadcast. The studios responded by imposing on themselves the rule that no films could be sold to television and no working film star could appear on “the box.” When it could have helped to shape early television viewer tastes and expectations of the new medium, Hollywood was absent. It lifted its ban in 1958.

FIGHTING BACK The industry worked mightily to recapture audiences from television using both technical and content innovations. Some of these innovations remain today and serve the medium and its audiences well. These include more attention to special effects, greater dependence on and improvements in color, and CinemaScope (projecting on a large screen two and one-half times wider than it is tall). Among the forgettable technological innovations were primitive 3-D and smellovision (wafting odors throughout the theater).

Innovation in content included spectaculars with which the small screen could not compete. The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben Hur (1959), El Cid (1960), and Spartacus (1960) filled the screen with many thousands of extras and lavish settings. Now that television was catering to the mass audience, movies were free to present challenging fare for more sophisticated

Warren Beatty eats some lead in the climax of the 1967 hit movie Bonnie and Clyde. © Warner Brothers/Seven Arts/Photofest

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audiences. The “message movie” charted social trends, especially alienation of youth (Blackboard Jungle, 1955; Rebel Without a Cause, 1955) and prejudice (12 Angry Men, 1957; Imitation of Life, 1959; To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962). Changing values toward sex were examined (Midnight Cowboy, 1969; Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, 1969), as was the new youth culture’s rejection of middle-class values (The Graduate, 1967; Goodbye Columbus, 1969) and its revulsion/attraction to violence (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967). The movies as an industry had changed, which caused the films themselves to become a medium of social commentary and cultural impact.

Movies and Their Audiences We talk of Hollywood as the “dream factory,” the makers of “movie magic.” We want our lives and loves to be “just like in the movies.” The movies are “larger than life,” and movie stars are much more glamorous than television stars. The movies, in other words, hold a very special

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place in our culture. Movies, like books, are a culturally special medium, an important medium. In this sense the movie-audience relationship has more in common with that of books than with that of commercial television. Just as people buy books, they buy movie tickets. Because the audience is in fact the true consumer, rather than advertisers, power rests with the audience in film more than it does in television.

Despite changing moviegoer demographics, the major studios continue to create movies as if youngsters and young adults make up the largest portion of the movie audience. There is no question that as

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age increases, the likelihood of going to the movies decreases (Friedman, 2014) and that Americans aged 2 to 24 represent 34% of the population but buy 42% of the tickets (Motion Picture Association of America, 2013). But those data hide an ongoing and significant fall-off in movie attendance by young people—a 17% drop from 2013 to 2014 for the 12 to 17 age bracket and a 17% drop for 18- to 24-year-olds (Stewart, 2014). The reality is that 58% of all movie tickets sold are bought by people 25 and older, and there is a perfect 50-50 split in gender. So, despite the fact that many in the industry are indeed producing fare for this more mature audience, major studios’ attention and the vast bulk of their resources continue to be directed at the teen audience. As you’ll soon read, the reasons are potential income from licensing and product tie-ins (kids love toys, games, and fast food) and overseas ticket sales (audiences don’t have to speak English to enjoy superheroes and big explosions). This explains why so many of today’s movies and franchises are aimed at youngsters in the form of cartoons (the Despicable Me and the Toy Story films) and films based on other media such as comic books (the Avengers and Superman films), popular toys (the Transformers franchise), young adult novels (the Hunger Games and Divergent franchises), television shows (21 Jump Street and its sequel 22 Jump Street), and video games (Need for Speed and Resident Evil). Look at the top 20 worldwide box office hits of all time in Figure 1. With the exception of Titanic (1997), a special-effects showcase itself, all are fantastic adventure films that appeal to younger audiences. The question asked by serious observers of the relationship between film and culture is whether the medium is increasingly dominated by the wants, tastes, and needs of what amounts to an audience of children. What becomes of film as an important medium, one with something to say, one that challenges people?

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Figure 1 Top 20 All-Time Worldwide Box Office Hits (in millions). Source: Box Office Mojo, 2015. Photo Source: © Tony Cordoza/Alamy RF

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What becomes of film as an important medium, say Hollywood’s defenders, is completely dependent on us, the audience; we get the movies we deserve because we tell the studios what we want by how we spend our money. We spent more than $400 million on The Dark Knight Rises in 2012 and on Iron Man 3 in 2013. In 2014 we spent more than $200 million on Guardians of the Galaxy.

Industry defenders further argue that films aimed at young people aren’t necessarily movies with nothing to say. The Spectacular Now (2013) and The DUFF (2015) are “teen films” offering important insight into American society and youth culture, as well as into the topics they explicitly examine, namely, teenage alcoholism and digital aggression and friendship, respectively. In addition, despite Hollywood’s infatuation with younger moviegoers, it still produces scores of movies of merit for a wider audience—Argo (2012), The Impossible (2012), Lincoln (2012), 12 Years a Slave (2013), American Hustle (2013). All eight best-picture Academy Award nominees in 2015 were adult, important movies that had much to say about us as a people and as a culture: American Sniper, The Imitation Game, Selma, Birdman, Boyhood, The Theory of Everything, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Whiplash.

If Hollywood is fixated on kid and teen movies, why does it give us such treasures? True, Michael Eisner, as president of Paramount Pictures and then CEO of Disney, famously once wrote in an internal memo, “We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. Our only obligation is to make money” (as quoted in Friend, 2000, p. 214). Nevertheless, the movie industry continues to produce films that indeed make history, art, and a statement while they make money. It does so because we buy tickets to those movies.

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Scope and Nature of the Film Industry Hollywood’s record year of 1946 saw the sale of more than 4 billion tickets. Today, about 1.3 billion people a year will see a movie in a U.S. theater. Domestic box office in 2014 was $10.35 billion. Thirty-one movies in 2014 exceeded $100 million in U.S.–only box office. Fifty-one topped that amount worldwide. As impressive as these numbers may seem, like other media people, movie industry insiders remain nervous. Revenue from ticket sales fell 5% from 2013 to 2014 alone, marking the third year out of the previous five that there had been a decline at the box office (Willens, 2015). The question they ask about the future, one you can try to answer yourself after reading the essay, is “Will We Continue to Go to the Movies?”

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CULTURAL FORUM Will We Continue to Go to the Movies?

The data tell a troubling tale. 2014’s 1.23 billion movie attendees, while impressive, represents a 20-year low (Lang, 2015). The ups and downs of the movie business are in the news, but the issue that roils the cultural forum is, “Will people keep going to the movies?” As you might imagine, there is no shortage of answers.

1. The last several years have seen too many bad movies. Only big-budget sequels and higher-priced tickets for 3-D movies saved box office totals from even greater declines. These made up for flops like Land of the Lost, Mars Needs Moms, and The Three Musketeers. Many critics even saw Hollywood’s 2010 announcement that beginning with 2009’s crop of films, there would be 10 nominees for a “Best Picture” Academy Award instead of the usual five as a cynical attempt to double the number of “acclaimed best pictures,” not double the number of actual good movies.

2. Not unrelated, fewer good movies mean that not as many people are making it to the theater in the first place, denying them the opportunity to see trailers for and get excited about other films.

3. If there are good films, people go the movies; if not, they go less frequently and they tend to forget about the movies as an option when looking for entertainment. Ad Age critic T. L. Stanley (2005) calls this out of sight, out of mind (p. 20).

4. This problem is further complicated by people’s skepticism about just what they will see should they go to the movies. Stanley calls this what

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you see is not what you get. In other words, desperate studios overhyping every new movie as an event or something special or out of the ordinary eventually turns off inevitably disappointed fans.

5. But what faces fans when they do arrive at the movies? A very expensive outing. The average ticket price has increased at twice the rate of inflation over the last several years, to $8.17, up from $4.69 in 1998 (Lang, 2015). Add to this the cost of the overpriced Goobers, popcorn, and soda plus the cost of gas to get there plus the price of a trustworthy baby-sitter (if necessary), and “catching a flick” becomes quite costly.

6. And what happens when people get to their seats? Chatty neighbors—that is, an increasingly loud and rude environment, especially cell phone users, crying babies, and antsy children at age-inappropriate movies.

7. But surely once the house goes dark, all is well. Well, no. People who have just paid handsomely to be at the movies are then faced with full-length commercials before the trailers. Almost every theater in America screens these commercials. Advertisers spend about $700 billion a year to buy them, with recent annual increases of nearly 7% (Bart, 2014). Audiences notice this, and anecdotal evidence indicates they’re unhappy. Why, after just paying a hefty sum for a pair of tickets, would fans want to sit through 20 minutes of commercials? It’s the movies, after all, not TV.

8. Speaking of TV, this is, in fact, the industry’s greatest fear: new digital technologies, especially wired homes (with video-on-demand; high- definition, big-screen TVs; pay-per-view movies); increasingly sophisticated DVDs (that are not only packed with extra features but now released within weeks of the film’s big-screen premiere); dollar-DVD kiosks at supermarkets, McDonalds, and gas stations (more than 40,000); and easy-to-use and inexpensive Internet movie downloads.

9. People’s reliance on sophisticated in-home technologies poses an

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Enter your voice. Do you go to the movies as much as you once did? If not, why not? If you remain a regular moviegoer, why? What makes the “moviegoing experience” worth the effort? Many exhibitors are adding “perks,” such as video arcades, reclining seats, and wine and martini bars. Would moves such as these “improve” the experience for you?

Three Component Systems There are three component systems in the movie industry—production, distribution, and exhibition. Each is undergoing significant change in the contemporary digital, converged media environment.

PRODUCTION Production is

additional threat to the film industry because it presages a generational shift away from movies. It is precisely those young people who will be tomorrow’s seat-fillers who are abandoning the theater experience with the least regret. Even though young people now buy 42% of all movie tickets, when box office dips, moviegoing among these valuable fans drops even more than other groups because they have ready access to and greater facility with attractive and inexpensive options, specifically video games and the Internet.

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the making of movies. About 800 feature-length films are produced annually in the United States, a large increase over the early 1980s, when, for example, in 1985, 288 features were produced. As we’ll see later in this chapter, significant revenues from home video are one reason for the increase, as is growing conglomerate ownership that demands more product for more markets.

Technology, too, has affected production. Almost all American feature films are shot digitally. The industry was slow to make the change from film, citing the “coldness” of digital’s look and digital’s roots in technology rather than art. But the success of digitally shot movies big (all- time box office champ, 2009’s Avatar, George Lucas’s 2012 Red Tails) and small (1999’s Blair Witch Project, made for $35,000, earning $220 million worldwide; 2009’s Paranormal Activity, shot in seven days for $45,000, earning $170 million) has moved even more filmmakers to greater use of digital capture as a primary shooting format.

Another influence of technology can be seen in the 11 top-grossing movies of 2014. Guardians of the Galaxy, Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Lego Movie, Transformers: Age of Distinction, Maleficent, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Big Hero 6, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Godzilla are all marvels of digital effects. Digital filmmaking has made grand special effects not only possible but expected. Stunning special effects, of which Titanic (1997) and Avatar are fine examples, can make a good movie an excellent one. The downside of computer-generated special effects is that they can greatly increase production costs. Titanic cost more than $200 million to make; Avatar more than $300 million. The average cost of producing and marketing a Hollywood feature is $140 million, a figure inflated, in large part, by the demands of audience-expected digital spectacles. Many observers see this increase in production costs as a major reason Hollywood studios are less willing to take creative chances in a big-budget film.

But another technology, cloud computing, is helping moderate production costs. Cloud computing is the storage of system-operating software, including sophisticated and expensive digital and special-effects programs, on off-site, third-party servers that offer on-demand, for- lease access. Access to the cloud frees moviemakers, particularly smaller independent producers, from financial and technical limitations that might otherwise have stymied their productions.

DISTRIBUTION Distribution was once as simple as making prints of films and shipping them to theaters. Now it means supplying these movies to television networks, cable and satellite networks, makers of DVDs, and Internet streaming companies. In all, a distributor must be able to offer a single movie in as many as 250 different digital formats worldwide to accommodate the specific needs of the many digital retailers it must serve (Ault, 2009). The sheer scope of the distribution business ensures that large companies (most typically the big studios themselves) will dominate. In addition to making copies and guaranteeing their delivery, distributors now finance production and take responsibility for advertising and promotion and for setting and adjusting release dates. The advertising and promotion budget for a Hollywood feature usually equals 50% of the production costs. Sometimes, the ratio of promotion to production costs is even higher. Avatar may have cost $300 million to produce, but its studio, Fox, spent another

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$200 million in marketing and promotion, bringing the total to half a billion dollars, the most expensive movie ever made. Was it worth it? Avatar took only 39 days from the day of its release to become the highest-grossing movie of all time ($1.86 billion), accounting for 56 million tickets in the United States alone. Within another month, it had increased that take to $2.36 billion (Cieply, 2010). So spending $40 million to $50 million to tout a Hollywood movie (the industry average; Beltrone, 2014) is not uncommon, and the investment is seen as worthwhile, if not necessary. In fact, so important has promotion become to the financial success of a movie that studios such as Universal and MGM include their advertising and marketing people in the green light process, that is, the decision to make a picture in the first place. These promotion professionals can say yes or no to a film’s production, and they must also declare how much money and effort they will put behind the film if they do vote yes.

Critics assailed Titanic for its weak story line and two-dimensional characters—the real stars of the world’s first billion-dollar box office hit were the special effects. But grand special effects are no guarantee of success. FX-laden The Lone Ranger was an all-time box office stinker, costing $375 million to make and promote but earning only $89 million worldwide in 2013, while 2009’s Paranormal Activity, devoid of technical legerdemain and made in seven days for $45,000, earned $170 million in global box office that year. (left) © 20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection; (middle) © Moviestore collection Ltd/Alamy; (right) © Moviestore collection Ltd/Alamy

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Another important factor in a film’s promotion and eventual financial success is the distributor’s decision to release it to a certain number of screens. One strategy, called the platform rollout, is to open a movie on a few screens and hope that critical response, film festival success, and good word-of-mouth reviews from those who do see it will propel it to success. Naturally, the advantage of this approach for the distributor is that it can greatly reduce the cost of promotion. Warner Bros. opened American Sniper on four screens on Christmas Day, 2014. It went into wide release—3,555 screens—three weeks later on Martin Luther King Day weekend after strong word-of-mouth and several film festival awards. Its $110 million weekend box office is the all-time best for a January or February weekend (D’Alessandro, 2015). Films likely to suffer at the hands of critics or from poor word-of-mouth —for example, The Legend of Hercules (2013, 2,104 screens) and After Earth (2013, 3,401 screens)—typically open in thousands of theaters simultaneously. However, it is not uncommon for a potential hit to open on many screens, as Avatar did in 2009—on more than 18,300 worldwide—and as did Frozen, opening on 4,000 American screens in 2013.

EXHIBITION There are currently 39,000 movie screens in the United States spread over 6,000 sites. The five largest American movie chains are Regal Cinemas (7,300 screens), AMC Entertainment (5,600), Cinemark USA (4,500), Carmike Cinemas (2,500), and Marcus Theaters (700). These five control more than half of all the country’s screens and sell nearly 80% of all tickets.

It is no surprise to any moviegoer that exhibitors make much of their money on concession sales of items that typically have an 80% profit margin, accounting for 40% of a theater’s profits. This is the reason that matinees and budget nights are attractive promotions for theaters. A low-priced ticket pays dividends in overpriced popcorn and Dots. It’s also the reason that 60% of moviegoers sneak contraband food into the theater (Friedman, 2014). Profits from concessions are also why many exhibitors present more than movies to keep seats filled and concessions flowing. Most theaters routinely schedule stand-up comedians, the NFL and NBA in 3-D, live opera performances, big-name musical concerts, and classic TV show marathons, sometimes enhanced by wine bars, restaurants and cafes, reserved seating, concierge desks, reclining leather seats, old-fashioned uniformed ushers, and touchpad gourmet-food ordering.

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American Sniper opened on four screens; After Earth on 3,401. Can you guess why? (left) © Moviestore collection Ltd/Alamy; (right) © Columbia Pictures/Photofest

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The Studios Studios are at the heart of the movie business, and it’s the studios that come to mind when we talk about Hollywood. There are major studios, corporate independents, and independent studios. The majors, who finance their films primarily through the profits of their own business, include Warner Brothers, Columbia, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal, MGM/UA, and Disney. The corporate independents (so named because they produce movies that have the look and feel of independent films) include Sony Pictures Classics, New Line Cinema (Warner), Fox Searchlight, and Focus Features (Universal). These companies are in fact specialty or niche divisions of the majors, designed to produce more sophisticated—but less costly—fare to (1) gain prestige for their parent studios and (2) earn significant cable, EST, and DVD income after their critically lauded and good word-of-mouth runs in the theaters. Focus Features, for example, is responsible for 2005 Best Picture Oscar-winner Brokeback Mountain and 2014 nominee The Theory of Everything; Fox Searchlight is home to 2013 Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave and 2014’s winner Birdman; New Line Cinema released the three Lord of the Rings and all the Rush Hour movies; Sony Pictures Classics brought to the screen Best-Picture nominees Whiplash (2014) and Midnight in Paris (2011).

Despite the majors’ and their specialty houses’ big names and notoriety, they produce only about one-fifth of each year’s feature films. The remainder come from independent studios, companies that raise money outside the studio system to produce their films. Lionsgate and Weinstein Company are two of the few remaining true independents in Hollywood, producing films like The Hunger Games, the Twilight Saga, and the Saw and Tyler Perry movies (Lionsgate) and Silver Linings Playbook, The King’s Speech, and the Halloween movies (Weinstein). But countless other independents continue to churn out films, often with the hope of winning a distribution deal with one of the Hollywood studios. For example, Paranormal Activity was distributed by Paramount, which paid $300,000 for the rights; 2005 Oscar- winner for Best Picture, Crash, from Stratus Films, was distributed by Lionsgate; and the 2004- 2005 $100 million box office hit Million Dollar Baby, from independent Lakeshore, was distributed by Warner Brothers.

Independent films tend to have smaller budgets. Often this leads to much more imaginative filmmaking and more risk taking than the big studios are willing to undertake. The 1969 independent film Easy Rider, which cost $370,000 to produce and made over $50 million in theater rentals, began the modern independent film boom. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) cost $5 million to make and earned over $300 million in global box office receipts. Some independent films with which you might be familiar are Magic Mike (2012), Before Midnight (2013), Oscar-winners for Best Screenplay Pulp Fiction (1994) and The Pianist (2002), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Boyhood (2014), Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012), and Best Picture Oscar-winner Hurt Locker (2009).

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Corporate indie Fox Searchlight’s 12 Years a Slave earned its parent company an Academy Award best-picture win and a $190 million global box office take. © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

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A greater number of independents are now reaching audiences because of several factors, including a dramatic drop in what it costs to shoot and edit a movie on digital equipment and a drop in the cost of promoting a movie because of social media and websites like YouTube. A third factor is filmmakers’ ability to distribute a movie using the Internet, either independently —as was the case with 2011’s Louis C.K.: Live at the Beacon Theater—or through established operations like Netflix and iTunes—as did the producers of Snowpiercer (2014). This low-cost- of-entry/reasonable-chance-of-success state of affairs has seen entry into the indie movie market from an increasingly wider array of sources. For example, The Canyons (2013), starring Lindsay Lohan, Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here (2014), and the Veronica Mars movie (2013) are all independent films financed through online crowdfunding on Kickstarter. In 2015 Netflix began producing features, financing four Adam Sandler movies and a sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And in that same year, Amazon announced plans to produce 12 films a year, screen them in theaters for a month or two, and then make them available to its Amazon

The smash success of Easy Rider (1969) ushered in the indie film boom. Courtesy Everett Collection

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Prime subscribers.

Trends and Convergence in Moviemaking Stagnant box office, increased production costs largely brought about by digital special effects wizardry, and the “corporatization” of the independent film are only a few of the trends reshaping the film industry. There are several others, however, including some that many critics see as contributors to Hollywood’s changing future.

Conglomeration and the Blockbuster Mentality Other than MGM, each of the majors is a part of a large conglomerate. Paramount is owned by Viacom, Warner Brothers is part of the huge Time Warner family of holdings, Disney is part of the giant conglomerate formed in the 1996 Disney/Capital Cities/ABC union, and Universal

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was bought by NBC’s parent company, General Electric, in 2004 and later by cable TV giant Comcast in 2013. Much of this conglomeration

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takes the form of international ownership. Columbia is owned by Japanese Sony and Fox by Australia’s News Corp. According to many critics, this combination of conglomeration and foreign ownership forces the industry into a blockbuster mentality— filmmaking characterized by reduced risk taking and more formulaic movies. Business concerns are said to dominate artistic considerations as accountants and financiers control more decisions once made by creative people. “Once you start to make crucial decisions by committee and each member of that committee is extremely anxious about his or her job,” explains actor Ben Kingsley, thinking becomes fear-based instead of “being actually creative” (“Stars Diss Hollywood,” 2012). There are several common outcomes of this blockbuster mentality.

CONCEPT MOVIES The marketing and publicity departments of big companies love concep t films—movies that can be described in one line. Godzilla is about a giant, rogue monster. Jurassic Park is about giant, rogue dinosaurs. Transformers is about good giant alien robots who fight bad giant alien robots.

International ownership and international distribution contribute to this phenomenon. High- concept films that depend little on characterization, plot development, and dialogue are easier to sell to foreign exhibitors than are more sophisticated films. Fantastic Four and 300 play well everywhere. Big-name stars also have international appeal. That’s why they can command huge salaries. The importance of foreign distribution cannot be overstated. Only two in 10 U.S. features make a profit on U.S. box office. Much of their eventual profit comes from overseas sales. For example, 2014’s The Expendables 3 disappointed at home ($39 million) but earned $169 million overseas. Likewise, The Legend of Hercules earned $73 million in U.S. box office and another $163 million abroad. And it’s not just domestic disappointments that do well overseas. Titanic doubled its 2009 $601 million U.S. box office, earning $1.2 billion elsewhere. Avatar did the same. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 tripled its domestic take, as did Transformers: Dark of the Moon; and Transformers: Age of Extinction quadrupled its $245 million domestic box office, taking in nearly $900 million in foreign ticket sales. Overseas box office accounts for 70% of a studio movie’s total ticket sales.

AUDIENCE RESEARCH Before a movie is released, sometimes even before it is made, its script, concept, plot, and characters are subjected to market testing. Often multiple endings are produced and tested with sample audiences by companies such as National Research Group and Marketcast. Despite being “voodoo science, a spin of the roulette wheel,” says Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, audience testing is “believed in like a religion at this point. It’s considered part of filmmaking” (quoted in Scribner, 2001, p. D3). This testing produced data indicating that Fight Club (1999) would be “the flop of the century”; it made more than $100 million at the box office and has become a cult favorite, earning even more on cable, DVD, VOD, and EST (Barnes, 2013). If the voodoo is so unreliable, ask film purists, what is to become of the filmmaker’s genius? What separates these market-tested films from any other commodity? New York Times film critic Brooks Barnes explains the dilemma facing blockbuster-driven Hollywood, “Forget zombies,” he wrote, “the data crunchers are invading

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Hollywood. . . . As the stakes of making movies become ever higher, Hollywood leans ever harder on research to minimize guesswork.” Research also serves as a “duck-and-cover technique—for when the inevitable argument of ‘I am not going to take the blame if this movie doesn’t work’ comes up” (Barnes 2013, p. A1). In other words, Hollywood can stand only so much creative freedom when a movie like a $200 million tentpole (an expensive blockbuster around which a studio plans its other releases) is in the works.

SEQUELS, REMAKES, AND FRANCHISES Nothing succeeds like success. How many Batmans have there been? Indiana Joneses? American Pies and Terminators? RoboCop kept the peace in 1987 and again in 2014. Annie was just as cute in 2014 as she was in 1982. Godzilla flattened cities in 1954 and 1998, as well as in 2014. Hollywood, too, is making increasing use of franchise films, movies that are produced with the full intention of producing several more sequels. Classic film franchises like James Bond (beginning in 1962) and Star Wars (beginning in 1977) continue to churn out sequels over several decades with new casts; and film series based on book series like Harry Potter (beginning in 2001) are begun before all of the books are even written. Six of the top-10-grossing movies in 2014 were sequels, and 12 more franchises were renewed in 2015, sequels to Divergent, Fast & Furious, The Avengers

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, Pitch Perfect, Mad Max, Jurassic Park, Magic Mike, The Terminator, Spectre, The Hunger Games, Star Wars, and Mission Impossible, giving credence to the old industry saying, “Nobody ever got fired for green-lighting a sequel.” Revisit Figure 1. With the exception of Avatar, Titanic, Frozen, and Alice in Wonderland, every other top 20 all-time box office champion is a sequel or part of a franchise. Marvel’s The Avengers itself stars a collection of characters from a number of other Marvel Comics movie franchises.

TELEVISION, COMIC BOOK, AND VIDEO-GAME REMAKES Nothing succeeds like success. That, and the fact that teens and preteens still make up the largest proportion of the movie audience, is the reason so many movies are adaptations of television shows, comic books, and video games. In recent years The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Brady Bunch, Bewitched, Get Smart, Veronica Mars, Sex and the City, The Simpsons, 21 Jump Street, Jackass, and Star Trek have moved from small to big screen. The Addams Family, Dennis the Menace, Richie Rich, Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman have traveled from the comics, through television, to the silver screen. Sin City, Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America, The Avengers, X-Men, Road to Perdition, 300, Men in Black, Fantastic Four, and The Hulk have moved directly from comic books and graphic novels to movies. Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and Mortal Kom-bat went from Xbox to box office. Movies from comics and video games are especially attractive to studios because of their built-in merchandise tie-in appeal.

MERCHANDISE TIE-INS Films are sometimes produced as much for their ability to generate interest for nonfilm products as for their intrinsic value as movies. Kids’ 2012 hit Lorax had more than 70 “product partners.” The first three Transformers movies earned $2.6 billion at the box office but raked in another $7 billion in merchandise tie-ins (Lang, 2014). Hollywood makes more than $200 billion a year from merchandise tie-ins to its movie and television shows, a quarter of that amount from character-related merchandise alone (Abrams & Schmidt, 2015). And as almost all of us know, it is nearly impossible to buy a meal at McDonald’s, Burger King, or Taco Bell without being offered a movie tie-in product. Studios

Poltergeist terrorized suburb dwellers in 1982 and again in 2015. (left) © AF archive/Alamy; (right) © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Photofest

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often believe it is riskier to make a $7 million film with no merchandising potential than a $250 million movie with greater merchandising appeal.

PRODUCT PLACEMENT Many movies are serving double duty as commercials. We’ll discuss this $2 billion-a-year phenomenon in detail later in the chapter as a media literacy issue.

Convergence Reshapes the Movie Business So intertwined are today’s movie and television industries that it is often meaningless to discuss them separately. As much as 70% of the production done by the studios is for television. But the growing relationship between theatrical films—those produced originally for theater exhibition—and television is the result of technological changes in the latter. The convergence of film with satellite, cable, video-on-demand, pay-per-view, DVD, and Internet streaming has provided immense distribution and exhibition opportunities for the movies. For example, in 1947 box office receipts accounted for 95% of the studios’ film revenues. Now they make up just 20%. Today’s distributors make three times as much from

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domestic home entertainment (DVD, network and cable television, EST, and streaming) as they do from rentals to movie theaters. DVD sales remain a lucrative business as well, accounting for more than half of the $18 billion U.S. home video market. But that proportion is likely to shrink for two reasons. First, in 2012, for the first time, Americans spent more money downloading and streaming movies than they did buying discs, a trend that has accelerated. Second, because there is nothing to physically manufacture and ship, the profit margin for digital distribution of their movies is much higher than can be realized with DVDs, so studios are increasingly prioritizing digital over disc (Graser, 2014). Where a solid box office performer—The Hangover (2009), for example—could once sell 10 million discs in its first six months of release, today’s movies are far more likely to be downloaded for a few dollars on VOD, bought on EST, or streamed from a subscription service rather than purchased as a disc for $15.

The convergence of film with digital technologies is beginning to reshape production, distribution, and exhibition. Two factors have combined to encourage the rollout of digital distribution and exhibition. The first is the convenience of digital movies. In 2014 Paramount announced that it would no longer release movies on film in the United States, with the other majors quickly following suit (Scott & Dargis, 2014). And you’ve already read that almost all American movie screens have been converted to digital exhibition. Digital exhibition’s savings in money and labor to both exhibitor and distributor are dramatic. Rather than making several thousand film prints to be physically transported to individual theaters in metal cans, the satellite distribution of digital movies costs under $100 per screen for the entire process (Stewart & Cohen, 2013). The second factor encouraging digital conversion is the growing number of successful movies shot with digital equipment.

The surprise 1999 hit The Blair Witch Project is considered the start of the growing microci nema movement, through which filmmakers using digital video cameras and desktop digital editing machines are finding audiences, both in theaters and online, for their low-budget (sometimes as little as $10,000) features. The success of Paranormal Activity has reinforced interest in microcinema, leading the major studios to create their own in-house microcinema divisions—for example, Paramount’s Insurge Pictures. Microcinema has also been boosted by the willingness of A-list talent to get involved with these “small” pictures; for example, Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation), Andy Samberg (Saturday Night Live), and Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings) teamed up on Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012). Website Kickstarter, which allows filmmakers to appeal directly to fans for financing of their movies, has been a boon as well, funding 2013 Oscar nominee Buzkashi Boys and a number of other independent features with big-name stars.

As digitization and convergence are changing exhibition and production, they are also changing distribution. Although slowed by fears of piracy, the online distribution of feature films is now routine. An American home with Internet and cable access has tens of thousands of full-length movies and television shows to choose from on any given day. Netflix, which originally was a company that delivered DVDs to people’s homes by mail, has discontinued that service in every country other than the United States. Now focusing on streaming movies, it operates in 45 countries, bringing its subscriber total to nearly 58 million with 39 million in the

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U.S. alone. In fact, Netflix-streamed content is the single largest component of American Internet traffic, accounting for more than a third of all the data traveling the Internet at night (Snider, 2014). And Netflix is not the only source for streamed movies; Internet giants Google Movies, Amazon Instant Video, and the Comcast cable operation are only three of the scores of sites offering fans everything from classic and niche films to the latest box office hits. And not to be outdone, studios like Disney, Sony, Universal, Warner Brothers, and Lionsgate stream their films via YouTube. Paramount has even experimented with direct-to-consumer streaming, offering big hits like its Transformers movies. There are industry analysts, however, who say direct-to-home digital distribution of movies is even more robust than described here because of two new technologies that free downloads from the computer screen. The first allows downloads directly to TV set-top boxes, avoiding the computer altogether (Netflix and LG Electronics offer one version; Amazon and TiVo another). The second, for example Apple TV, transmits computer-downloaded movies to any electronic device in the home. See the chapter on the Internet and social media for more about Internet distribution of film and video content.

But a potentially bigger alteration to

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traditional movie distribution resides in the efforts of studios like IFC Entertainment, directors like Steven Soderbergh, and exhibitors such as billionaire Mark Cuban’s Landmark Theaters. All plan for the simultaneous release of movies to theaters, DVD, cable video-on-demand, and streaming. Disney has publicly committed to considering this model of distribution as well. These changes will eventually force significant alterations in the economics of Hollywood, argues Washington Post media writer Steven Pearlstein (2005). “The studios will be indifferent about how you choose to get a movie—their profit will be the same whether you see it in a theater, rent it, or order it up from Comcast.” He sees this as an improvement over the way Hollywood currently operates, forcing studios to become more competitive, efficient, and audience-driven. Studios will no longer be able to rely as heavily on blockbusters and big-name superstars as they do now. Successful studios will be those producing a wide “range of well-done movies for a variety of niche audiences reached through targeted marketing and distribution channels” (p. D1).

Smartphones, Tablets, and Social Networking Sites Major and independent studios are also promoting their movies via the social networking site Facebook. Fans not only can visit the Miramax, Paramount, Universal Studios, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and Focus Features official pages, they can also use Facebook’s many features to “like” and share quotations, clips, trailers, and other features of the movies they enjoy with their friends. This use of social networking taps into an audience that is comfortable with the Internet and is more likely to stream movies through their smartphones and tablets with apps like Netflix and Hulu—30% of smartphone and 40% of tablet owners already regularly do so (Salesforce, 2014). The industry, however, sees this migration of movies to mobile screens as a mixed blessing. Yes, studios and distributors have many more ways to get content to audiences, but as fans, especially young people already comfortable with relatively small, mobile screens, increasingly watch movies in places other than theaters, what happens to what we have called “the movies” for more than a century?

DEVELOPING MEDIA LITERACY SKILLS

Recognizing Product Placements Transformers (the toy) may be the stars of several movies by that name, but they share screen time with General Motors cars, apparently the only brand-name vehicles in Los Angeles or whatever other city needs saving. 2012’s The Vow stars Rachael McAdams, Channing Tatum, and nearly 39 “brand partners.” Before it sold a single ticket, 2013’s Man of Steel had already earned $160 million in promotional support, much of it coming from Superman’s co-stars: the National Guard, Gillette, Sears, Chrysler, Hardee’s, International House of Pancakes, and Nokia, among others. Its more than 100 “global promotional partners” made it the most commercially branded movie of all time (Morrison, 2013). In another 2013 summer movie, The

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Internship, co-stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play interns who compete for full-time jobs at the headquarters of Internet giant Google. They are judged on their “Googliness,” as the film explains, that “intangible stuff that made a search engine into an engine for doing good.” People at the company work long hours, movie-goers are told, because Google “makes people’s lives just a little bit better.” To the dismay of many critics, Google’s public relations department had full veto power over the script (Depillis, 2013).

The practice of placing brand-name products in movies is not new; Katharine Hepburn throws Gordon’s gin into the river in the 1951 The African Queen, and Spencer Tracy is splashed with Coca-Cola in the 1950 Father of the Bride. But in today’s movie industry, product placement has expanded into a business in its own right. About 100 product placement agencies are operating in Hollywood, and there’s even an industry association, the Entertainment Resources and Marketing Association (ERMA). The attraction of product placements for sponsors is obvious. For one flat fee paid up front, a product that appears in a movie is in actuality a

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commercial that lives forever—first on the big screen, then on television and cable, and then on purchased and rented discs and downloads. The commercial is also likely to have worldwide distribution.

Many people in and outside the movie industry see product placement as inherently deceptive. “Why not identify the ads for what they are?” they ask. From a media literacy standpoint, the issue is the degree to which artistic decisions are being placed second to obligations to sponsors. Scripts are altered and camera angles are chosen to accommodate paid-for placements. “The average viewer probably doesn’t know, for example, about the kind of wrangling that goes on behind the scenes to get those products into movies—that strong- arming can occur during shooting to ensure that you see a certain brand of soda at just the right time,” writes film critic Christy Lemire. “Artistic integrity? Whatever,” responds Rush Hour director Brett Ratner (both in Lemire, 2011, p. D3). Equally unconcerned is Transformers director Michael Bay, “There are products in everything in everyday life. Do people think there shouldn’t be brand names or something? Everything is branded. I hate [entertainment content]

Google had veto power over the script for The Internship, whose action takes place primarily at the headquarters of the Internet giant. © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Photofest

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when they take logos off of stuff. It’s not real life” (in Fagbire, 2007). Knowing how media content is funded and how that financial support shapes content is an

important aspect of understanding the mass communication process. Therefore, an awareness of the efforts of the movie industry to maximize income from its films is central to good film literacy.

Consider, for example, the following product placements. If you saw these two recent movies, did you recognize the placements?

Ride Along (2014)

adidas, Apple, Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta Hawks, Beretta, BMW, Cheez-It, Chevrolet, CNN, Coca-Cola, Dodge Charger, Ford, Galco, Glock, Gold Room, Harley- Davidson, Kawasaki, Keebler, Kettle Chips, Miller, Municipal Market, NBC, Nike, Powerade, Purell, Ram Trucks, Ray-Ban, Samsung, Skillz, Skullcandy, Smith & Wesson, Sprite, Toyota Prius, Xbox

One Direction: This Is Us (2013)

7-Eleven, adidas, Apple, Billboard, Boy London, Burger King, Bwin.com, Chevrolet, Club Car, Coca-Cola, Columbia Records, Detroit Lions, Hollister, Jordan, Jumbocruiser, Kappa, Madison Square Garden, Miami Heat, Nike, NME, O2 Arena, Polo Ralph Lauren, PUMA, Ray-Ban, Segway, The Guardian, Toyota, Toys “R” Us, Twitter, Us Magazine, Vans

Does it trouble you that content is altered, even if sometimes only minimally, to allow for these brand identifications? To what extent would script alterations have to occur to accommodate paid-for messages before

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you find them intrusive? Do you think it is fair or honest for a moviemaker who promises you film content in exchange for your money to turn you into what amounts to a television viewer by advertising sponsors’ products? At least in television, by law, all commercial messages must be identified as such, and the sponsors of those messages must be identified. Do you think such a rule ought to apply to movies?

Literate film consumers may answer these questions differently, especially as individuals hold film in varying degrees of esteem—but they should answer them. And what do you make of the latest Hollywood product placement trend, branding films, the sponsor-financing of movies to advance a manufacturer’s product line. Unilever (Dove soap) co-financed The Women, Chrysler underwrote Blue Valentine, and Gatorade co-financed Gracie. Hasbro, the world’s second-largest toymaker, was once content to co-finance a picture a year based on its popular board games such as Candy Land and Monopoly. Then, in 2014, it announced it would begin producing movies in its own studio, Allspark Pictures. My Little Pony and Jem and the Holograms are its first two releases. Burger King, too, has announced that it will produce its own movies. Variety’s Peter Bart (2007) laments, “Good movies are hard enough to make without worrying about the branding needs of consumer companies or the script notes of marketing gurus” (p. 58).

MEDIA LITERACY CHALLENGE Product Placement in Movies

Choose two films. Try for variation, for example, a big-budget blockbuster and a romantic comedy, your choice. List every example of product placement that you can find. In which instances do you believe the film’s content was altered, however minimally, to accommodate the placement? Product placement proponents argue that this is a small price to pay for the “reality” that using real brands brings to a film. Do you agree or disagree? Explain your answer in terms of your expectations of movies’ content and your ability to recognize when advertising and movie genre conventions are being mixed. Tackle this one individually, committing your findings to writing, or make it a challenge against one or more classmates.

Resources for Review and Discussion

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REVIEW POINTS: TYING CONTENT TO LEARNING OUTCOMES

Outline the history and development of the film industry and film itself as a medium.

□ Film’s beginnings reside in the efforts of entrepreneurs such as Eadweard Muybridge and inventors like Thomas Edison and William Dickson.

□ Photography, an essential precursor to movies, was developed by Hannibal Goodwin, George Eastman, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre, and William Henry Fox Talbot.

□ Edison and the Lumière brothers began commercial motion picture exhibition, little more than representations of everyday life. George Méliès added narrative; Edwin S. Porter added montage; and D. W. Griffith developed the full-length feature film.

□ Movies became big business at the turn of the 20th century, one dominated by big studios, but change soon came in the form of talkies, scandal, and control, and new genres to fend off the Depression.

Describe the cultural value of film and the implications of the blockbuster mentality for film as an important artistic and cultural medium.

□ Conglomeration and concentration affect the movie industry, leading to an overreliance on blockbuster films for its success.

□ Debate exists over whether film can survive as an important medium if it continues to give its youth-dominated audience what it wants.

□ The annual roster of adult, important movies suggests that film can give all audiences what they want.

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