FILM ERAS
Early cinema can be traced back to the 1890’s when innovative photographers like Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge were interested in photographing fast events to study them; Thomas Edison wanted to create a personal motion picture device to complement his sound producing gadget and the Lumiere brothers were capturing and projecting everyday activities as they happened.
George Melies was able to realize that you could tell stories with these devices and started using the medium as a form of entertainment.
SILENT & TALKIES
By 1910’s thousands of nickelodeons were showing films and to meet the demand producers found in Hollywood a good weather location for all-year shooting. Advances in editing plus the influence of German, Soviet and French films brought the industry to maturity.
After the introduction of a soundtrack in 1926 with the Warner Brothers Vitaphone there was a gradual transition from silent films to talkies thru 1930 that included technological developments and adjustments to audience expectations before it was complete.
The transition to sound was carried on the backs of two genres, the gangster film and the musical. Music played the crucial role in establishing sound as an added value for audiences.
GOLDEN AGE
By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. Under the all-controlling studio system of the era, five movie studios known as the “Big Five” dominated and came upon The Golden Age of Hollywood which was a period of great growth, experimentation and change in the industry that brought international prestige to Hollywood and its movie stars helping secure its position as one of the world's most powerful cultural/commercial centers of influence.
As World War II dominated news headlines, people needed to be entertained more than ever with this iconic success continuing into the 1940’s and 1950’s as the studios were trying to reduce their budgets and being more selective of the movies being produced.
However, the Hollywood’s Golden Age began to decline due to the introduction of television, Hollywood blacklisting, and the ability of actors to become ‘free agents.’
NEW HOLLYWOOD
By the 1960’s after the demise of the studio system and the rise of television, the commercial success of films was diminished and a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in the United States.
The New Hollywood era was American cinema reborn lead by a group of film students with a passion for filmmaking and the desire to challenge the stagnant status quo. In an attempt to capture a new audience which found a connection to the "art films" of Europe, the studios allowed them to make their films with relatively little studio control .
This, together with the breakdown of the Production Code and the new ratings system in the late 60’s set the scene for anti-establishment political themes, the use of rock music, and sexual freedom deemed "counter-cultural" by the studios during the 60’s and 70’s.
Also, because of breakthroughs in film technology New Hollywood filmmakers rapidly developed the taste for location shooting, resulting in more naturalistic approach to filmmaking.
BLOCKBUSTER ERA
After the success of Jaws and Star Wars in the late 70’s, many Hollywood producers started creating similar "event" films during the 1980’s with wide commercial appeal, and film companies began green-lighting increasingly large-budget films, and relying extensively on massive advertising blitzes leading up to their theatrical release.
The term "Block buster" describe films whose premieres attracted lines around the blocks surrounding Broadway movie houses. As production costs rose, studios were less willing to take risks, and therefore based blockbusters on the "lowest common denominators" of the mass market. Disreputable serials, science-fiction and adventure stories suddenly went from micro-budget B-Movie to more or less epic spectacular productions.
During the 1980’s and 1990’s Home video and cable television offered the studios additional revenue streams for their films after they'd left theaters which combined with the rise of the multiplex theater brought back profitability to Hollywood.
Family-friendly films coexisted with ultra-violent action movies, R-rated comedy, high-profile horror movies and animation while product placement and international roll-outs became common place.
In The '80s and The '90s home video started to provide a channel for independent film-makers who still had to make a career in the margins hoping to break through by carving out some niche or the other, or somehow reinventing themselves into a mainstream film-maker .
DIGITAL REVOLUTION
In the 2000’s Hollywood found itself at a new digital crossroads, charted by two basic movements: the emergence of a new market (Internet, IPTV, digital reproduction devices, mobile telephones) and new type of consumers.
The industry progressively moved from a reluctant attitude to a prudent embrace of new technologies. hybrid models, multiplatform products, Hollywood alliances with e-tailers.
Digital filmmaking allowed a cost effective approach of making films blurring the line between indie and major.
The digital takeover driven both by economics and artistic vision transformed post-production, effects, cameras, animation industry, and exhibition distribution resulting in a permanent departure from making movies in the traditional way, with each advancement in digital technology taking the industry farther afield of historical norms. In the process there has been a loss of a unifying arbiter of culture common ground.
The emotional connection to what audiences recognize as real is changing and so it the fiber of movie making.
