Film studio

Afilm studio(also known asmovie studioor simplystudio) is a majorentertainment companythat makesfilms.Today, they are mostly financing and distribution entities. Additionally, they may also have their own privately ownedstudiofacility or facilities; however, most firms in the entertainment industry have never owned their own studios, but have rented space from other companies. The day-to-day filming operations are generally handled by theirproduction companysubsidiary.

There are alsoindependently ownedstudio 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

TheBabelsberg StudionearBerlinwas the first large-scale film studio in the world and the forerunner toHollywood.It still produces movies every year.

In 1893,Thomas Edisonbuilt the first movie studio in the United States when he constructed theBlack Maria,a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories inWest Orange,New Jersey,and asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for the camera. He distributed thesemoviesat vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgrounds. The firstfilm serial,What Happened to Mary,was released by the Edison company in 1912. The pioneeringThanhousermovie studio was founded inNew Rochelle, New Yorkin 1909 by American theatrical impresarioEdwin Thanhouser.The company produced and released 1,086 movies between 1910 and 1917, successfully distributing them around the world.

In the early 1900s, companies started moving toLos Angeles, California.Althoughelectric lightswere 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 inDowntown Los Angeles.Edison'sMotion Picture Patents Company,based in New York City, controlled almost all thepatentsrelevant to movie production at the time. Early movie producers relocated toSouthern Californiato 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 theHollywoodarea wasNestor Studios,opened in 1911 byAl ChristieforDavid Horsley.In the same year, another 15independentssettled in Hollywood. Other production companies eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in places such asCulver City,Burbank,and what would soon become known asStudio Cityin theSan Fernando Valley. The stronger early public health response to the1918 fluepidemic by Los Angeles^[1]compared to other American cities reduced the number of cases there and resulted in a faster recovery, contributing to the increasing dominance of Hollywood over New York City.^[2]

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,distribution divisions,andtheaters,and contracted with performers and other filmmaking personnel led to the sometimes confusing equation of studio with production company in industry slang. Five large companies:RKO Radio Pictures,20th Century Fox,Paramount Pictures,Warner Bros.,andMetro-Goldwyn-Mayercame to be known as the Big Five, the majors, or the Studios in trade publications such asVariety,and their management structures and practices collectively came to be known as thestudio system.

The Little 3

Although they owned few or no theaters to guarantee sales of their films,Universal Pictures,Columbia Pictures,andUnited Artistsalso 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 asRepublic Pictures,active from 1935, which produced films that occasionally matched the scale and ambition of the larger studio, andMonogram Pictures,which specialized in series and genre releases. Together with smaller outfits such asPRCTKO and Grand National, the minor studios filled the demand forB moviesand are sometimes collectively referred to asPoverty Row.

The independents

The Big Five's ownership of movie theaters was eventually opposed by eight independent producers, includingSamuel Goldwyn,David O. Selznick,Walt Disney,Hal Roach,andWalter Wanger.In 1948, the federal government won acase against Paramountin theSupreme Court,which ruled that thevertically integratedstructure of the movie industry constituted an illegalmonopoly.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 asecurecompound enclosed by a tall perimeter wall. This is necessary to protect filmmaking operations from unwanted interference frompaparazziand crazedfansof leadingmovie stars.^[4]Movement in and out of the studio lot is normally limited to specificgates(often capped with grand decorative arches), where visitors must stop at aboom barrierand explain the purpose of their visit to asecurity guard.

Thesound stageis 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 provideofficespace for studio executives and production companies, and makeup rooms and rehearsal rooms for talent.^[5]If space allows, a studio may have an outsidebacklot.Finally, there is a studio "commissary", which is the traditional term in the movie industry for what other industries call a companycafeteria.^[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,special effects,cutting, editing, mi xing, scoring,automated dialogue replacement(ADR), re-recording, andfoley.^[5]Independent suppliers of all these services and more (e.g.,photographic processinglabs) are often found in clusters in close proximity to film studios.^[6]

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 havewater towersto facilitatefirefighting.Water towers "somewhat inexplicably" evolved into "a most potent symbol... of movie studios in general."^[7]

Film to television

Halfway through the 1950s, withtelevisionproving to be a lucrative enterprise not destined to disappear any time soon—as many in the film industry had once hoped—movie studios were increasingly being used to produce programming for the burgeoning medium. Some midsize film companies, such asRepublic Pictures,eventually sold their studios toTV production concerns,which were eventually bought by larger studios, such as theAmerican Broadcasting Companywhich was purchased byDisneyin 1996.

Today

With the growing diversification of studios into such fields asvideo games,television stations,broadcast syndication,television,theme parks,home videoandpublishing,they have become multi-national corporations.

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.^[8]The growth of film studios andfilmmakingoutside of Hollywood and the US has produced popular international film studio locations such asHollywood North(VancouverandTorontoinCanada),Bollywood(Mumbai,India), andNollywood(Lagos,Nigeria).^[9]

As the studios increased in size they began to rely on production companies likeJ. J. Abrams'Bad Robotto handle many of the creative and physical production details of their feature films. Instead, the studios transformed into financing and distribution entities for their films (generally made by their affiliated production companies). With the decreasing cost of CGI andvisual effects,many studios sold large chunks of their once-massive studio spaces orbacklotsto private real-estate developers.Century CityinLos Angeleswas once part of the20th Century Foxbacklot, which was among the largest and most famous of the studio lots. In most cases, portions of thebacklotswere retained and are available for rental by variousfilmandtelevisionproductions. Some studios offer tours of theirbacklots,whileUniversal Picturesallows visitors to its adjacentUniversal Studios Hollywoodtheme park to take a tram tour of thebacklotwhere films such asPsychoandBack to the Futurewere once shot.

In fall 2019, movie mogulTyler PerryopenedTyler Perry StudiosinAtlanta.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 asS-VHSandMini-DVcameras, many young filmmakers began to make films outside the studio system. Filmmakers and producers such asMike Judge,Adam Sandler,Jim Jarmusch,Robert Rodriguez,Steven Soderbergh,Quentin Tarantino,Kevin SmithandRichard Linklatermade films that pushed boundaries in ways the studios were then reluctant to do. In response to these films, many distributed by mini-studios likeMiramax,the majors created their own in-house mini-studios meant to focus on edgier, independent content.Focus Featureswas created byUniversal PicturesandFox Searchlightwas created by20th Century Foxfor this purpose.

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.
^Miller, Pat P. (1999).Script Supervising and Film Continuity(3rd ed.). Burlington, Massachusetts: Focal Press. p. 1.ISBN 9780240802947.Retrieved22 July2023.
^Scott, Allen J.(2005).On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry.Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 91.ISBN 9780691116839.Retrieved3 April2020.
^^a ^b ^c ^d ^eScott, Allen J.(2005).On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry.Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 80–83.ISBN 9780691116839.Retrieved3 April2020.
^Scott, Allen J.(2005).On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry.Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 89–93.ISBN 9780691116839.Retrieved4 April2020.
^Bingen, Steven; Marc Wanamaker (2014).Warner Bros.: Hollywood's Ultimate Backlot.London: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 102.ISBN 978-1-58979-962-2.RetrievedApril 6,2020.
^Phibs, Melissa (13 February 2015)."The Increasingly Important Foreign Box Office".How Stuff Works.Retrieved26 September2019.
^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 Archived2015-06-26 at theWayback Machine
A Film Studio for the Age of Virtual Reality Archived2020-04-08 at theWayback 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

[1] How one city avoided the 1918 flu pandemic's deadly second wave

[marketplace-2] "How the Spanish flu contributed to the rise of Hollywood".November 19, 2020.

[Miller_Page_1-3] Miller, Pat P. (1999).Script Supervising and Film Continuity(3rd ed.). Burlington, Massachusetts: Focal Press. p. 1.ISBN 9780240802947.Retrieved22 July2023.

[Scott_Page91-4] Scott, Allen J.(2005).On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry.Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 91.ISBN 9780691116839.Retrieved3 April2020.

[Scott_Page80-5] Scott, Allen J.(2005).On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry.Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 80–83.ISBN 9780691116839.Retrieved3 April2020.

[Scott_Page89-6] Scott, Allen J.(2005).On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry.Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 89–93.ISBN 9780691116839.Retrieved4 April2020.

[Bingen-7] Bingen, Steven; Marc Wanamaker (2014).Warner Bros.: Hollywood's Ultimate Backlot.London: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 102.ISBN 978-1-58979-962-2.RetrievedApril 6,2020.

[8] Phibs, Melissa (13 February 2015)."The Increasingly Important Foreign Box Office".How Stuff Works.Retrieved26 September2019.

[9] Brook, Tom."How the global box office is changing Hollywood".BBC Culture.

[10] Johnson, CJk; Johnson, Tee (November 4, 2019)."Tyler Perry Studios Opens In Atlanta".

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