Film studio
A film studio (also known as movie studio or simply studio) is a major
There are also independently owned studio facilities, who have never produced a motion picture of their own because they are not entertainment companies or motion picture companies; they are companies who sell only studio space.
Beginnings
In the early 1900s, companies started moving to Los Angeles, California. Although electric lights were by then widely available, none were yet powerful enough to adequately expose film; the best source of illumination for motion picture production was natural sunlight. Some movies were shot on the roofs of buildings in Downtown Los Angeles. Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company, based in New York City, controlled almost all the patents relevant to movie production at the time. Early movie producers relocated to Southern California to escape patent enforcement, thanks to more lenient local courts and physical distance from company detectives and mob allies. (Edison's patents expired in 1913.)
The first movie studio in the
The "majors"
The Big 5
By the mid-1920s, the evolution of a handful of American production companies into wealthy motion picture industry conglomerates that owned their own studios,
The Little 3
Although they owned few or no theaters to guarantee sales of their films, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists also fell under these rubrics, making a total of eight generally recognized major studios. United Artists, although its controlling partners owned not one but two production studios during the Golden Age, had an often-tenuous hold on the title of "major" and operated mainly as a backer and distributor of independently produced films.
The minors
Smaller studios operated simultaneously with the majors. These included operations such as Republic Pictures, active from 1935, which produced films that occasionally matched the scale and ambition of the larger studio, and Monogram Pictures, which specialized in series and genre releases. Together with smaller outfits such as PRC TKO and Grand National, the minor studios filled the demand for B movies and are sometimes collectively referred to as Poverty Row.
The independents
The Big Five's ownership of movie theaters was eventually opposed by eight independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Walt Disney, Hal Roach, and Walter Wanger. In 1948, the federal government won a case against Paramount in the Supreme Court, which ruled that the vertically integrated structure of the movie industry constituted an illegal monopoly. This decision, reached after twelve years of litigation, hastened the end of the studio system and Hollywood's "Golden Age".
Typical components
By the 1950s, the physical components of a typical movie studio had become standardized. Since then, a movie studio has usually been housed on a "studio lot."[3] Physically, a studio lot is a secure compound enclosed by a tall perimeter wall. This is necessary to protect filmmaking operations from unwanted interference from paparazzi and crazed fans of leading movie stars.[4] Movement in and out of the studio lot is normally limited to specific gates (often capped with grand decorative arches), where visitors must stop at a boom barrier and explain the purpose of their visit to a security guard.
The sound stage is the central component of a studio lot.[5] Most studios have several; small studios may have as few as one, and large studios have as many as 20 to 30.[5] Movie studios also provide office space for studio executives and production companies, and makeup rooms and rehearsal rooms for talent.[5] If space allows, a studio may have an outside backlot. Finally, there is a studio "commissary", which is the traditional term in the movie industry for what other industries call a company cafeteria.[5]
In addition to these basic components, the largest film studios are full-service enterprises offering the entire range of production and post-production services necessary to create a motion picture, including costumes, props, cameras, sound recording, crafts, sets, lighting,
Nitrate film, manufactured until 1951, was highly flammable, and sets and backlots were and still are very flammable, which is why film studios built in the early-to-mid 20th century have water towers to facilitate firefighting. Water towers "somewhat inexplicably" evolved into "a most potent symbol ... of movie studios in general."[7]
Film to television
Halfway through the 1950s, with
Today
With the growing diversification of studios into such fields as
International markets account for a growing proportion of Hollywood movie revenue, with approximately 70% of total movie revenue coming from international ticket sales; and the Chinese domestic box-office revenue is projected to outpace those of US in 2020.
As the studios increased in size they began to rely on production companies like
In fall 2019, movie mogul Tyler Perry opened Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta. The studio lot is claimed to be larger than any movie-studio lot in Hollywood.[10]
Independent film and the studios
In the 1980s and 1990s, as the cost of professional 16mm film equipment decreased, along with the emergence of non-film innovations such as
See also
References
- ^ How one city avoided the 1918 flu pandemic's deadly second wave
- ^ "How the Spanish flu contributed to the rise of Hollywood". November 19, 2020.
- ISBN 9780240802947. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ISBN 9780691116839. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
- ^ ISBN 9780691116839. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
- ISBN 9780691116839. Retrieved 4 April 2020.
- ISBN 978-1-58979-962-2. Retrieved April 6, 2020.
- ^ Phibs, Melissa (13 February 2015). "The Increasingly Important Foreign Box Office". How Stuff Works. Retrieved 26 September 2019.
- ^ Brook, Tom. "How the global box office is changing Hollywood". BBC Culture.
- ^ Johnson, CJk; Johnson, Tee (November 4, 2019). "Tyler Perry Studios Opens In Atlanta".
External links
- Who built the first film studio in the United States?
- Columbia Pictures Production Crew Contract 1945 Archived 2015-06-26 at the Wayback Machine
- A Film Studio for the Age of Virtual Reality Archived 2020-04-08 at the Wayback Machine. "A Montreal-based film studio is making movies that you’ll watch with a virtual-reality headset, pointing the way to a whole new form of entertainment." Rachel Metz, MIT Technology Review