Notes for History of Media

Unit 4
History of Photography, From Black and White to Colour, Digital Technology and Photography
Origin of Cinema, From Silent Era to Talkies, History of Commercial and Art Cinema
History of Studio and Production
Companies Evolution of Indian
Cinema History of Photography
As a means of visual communication, photography has a distinct identity. One of the most
important characteristics is immediacy. The image that is recorded is formed by a lens in a
camera. Upon exposure to light, the sensitive photographic material undergoes changes, a
reversed image called the negative is formed, which when processed gives rise to the actual image.
The essential elements of the image are established immediately at the time of exposure. This
characteristic is unique to photography. The automatic recording of an image by photography
gives it a sense of authenticity.
In the early part of its history, photography was considered a mechanical art. However,
photography is not a merely an automatic process involving the use of a camera. A skilled
photographer can introduce creativity into the process. The image can be modified by different
lenses and filters. The type of material used to record the image, and the contrast between
light and shadow can be changed. The photographer has a wide choice in terms of the material
used, tones, contrast, and image colours.
The First Cameras: The basic concept of photography has been around since ancient times (China
and Greece). It was an Iraqi scientist, Alhazen, who developed the camera obscura in the 11th-
century. It did not actually record images but simply projected them onto another surface. The
images were upside down and could be traced to create accurate drawings of real objects. The
first camera obscura used a pinhole in a tent to project an image from outside the tent into the
darkened area. Late in the 16th century, the Italian scientist and writer Giambattista della Porta
demonstrated and described in detail the use of a camera obscura with a lens. It was in the 17th-
century that the camera obscura became small and portable. While artists used it to create
images, the results depended on the artist’s drawing skills. Scientists continued to search for
alternative methods to reproduce images.
Use of Chemicals: In 1727, the German professor of anatomy Johann Heinrich Schulze proved
that the darkening of silver salts was caused by light. He demonstrated it by using sunlight but
made no attempt to preserve the images permanently. His discovery, in combination with the
camera obscura, provided the basic technology necessary for photography. It was not until the
early 19th century, however, that photography actually came into being. Thomas Wedgwood
conducted experiments to create images on paper coated with silver nitrate and Sir Humphry Davy
published a paper on these experiments in 1802 - the first description of an attempt to produce
photographs. In 1833, the French photographer Hercules Florence worked with paper sensitized
with silver salts to produce prints of drawings; he called this process “photography.” However,
his contributions were lost to history until 1973, when they were rediscovered.
Heliography: In 1816, Nicéphore Niépce used paper coated with silver chloride to capture
images formed inside a small camera as negatives where the darkest part was the one exposed to
the maximum amount of light and vice versa. He was interested in lithography, a process in which
drawings are copied onto lithographic plates. Niépce used light to do the copying and called the
process heliography (“sun
drawing”). In 1826/27, using a camera obscura fitted with a lithographic plate, Niépce produced the
first successful photograph from nature, a view of his courtyard from an upper window of his
house. The exposure time for this method was about eight hours, during which the sun moved
from east to west so that it appears to shine on both sides of the building in the image. Niépce’s
discoveries showed the path to others.
Daguerreotype and the First Permanent Images: Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, a painter, became
a partner of Niépce in 1829. He was interested in shortening the exposure time necessary to
obtain images. By 1835 Daguerre had discovered that images formed on a plate of iodized
silver could be “developed” (made visible) by exposing it to mercury vapour (that settled on the
exposed parts of the image). Exposure times could be reduced from eight hours to 30 minutes. By
1837 he was able to fix the image permanently using a solution of table salt to dissolve
unexposed silver iodide. Also that year, Niépce’s son Isidore signed an agreement confirming
Daguerre as the inventor of a new process, “the daguerreotype.” Photography, as we know it today,
began. Photographers experimented with different chemicals and techniques. The following three
were instrumental in the development of modern photography:
● Daguerreotype: The daguerreotype was the forerunner of modern film. A copper plate
was coated with silver and exposed to iodine vapor before it was exposed to light. To
create the image on the plate, the earlier daguerreotypes had to be exposed to light for
up to 15 minutes. It was replaced in the late 1850s by emulsion plates.
● Emulsion Plates: Emulsion plates, or wet plates, were less expensive than daguerreotypes
and took only two or three seconds of exposure time. This made them much more suited
to portrait photography. They used an emulsion process called the Collodion process, rather
than a simple coating. Two common types of emulsion plates were the ambrotype (glass
plate) and the tintype (tin plate). Photographers had to carry chemicals with them and
travelled in wagons that doubled as darkrooms.
● Dry Plates: In the 1870s, photography took another huge leap forward. Richard Maddox
made dry gelatine plates that were as good as wet plates in speed and quality. These dry
plates could be made and stored as needed. This allowed photographers much more
freedom in taking photographs. Cameras became smaller and hand-held. As exposure
times decreased, the first camera with a mechanical shutter was developed.
Cameras for Everyone: Photography was only for professionals and the very rich until George
Eastman started a company called Kodak in the 1880s. Eastman created a flexible roll film that
did not require the constant changing of solid plates. This allowed him to develop a self-contained
box camera that held 100 film exposures. The camera had a small single lens with no focusing
adjustment. The consumer would take pictures and send the camera back to the factory for
the film to be developed and prints made, much like modern disposable cameras. This was the
first camera inexpensive enough for the average person to afford. The film was still large in
comparison to today's 35mm film. It took until the late 1940s for 35mm film to become cheap
enough for most people to afford.
Popularization of Photography due to War: Around 1930, Henri-Cartier Bresson and other
photographers began to use small 35mm cameras to capture images of life as it occurred
rather than staged portraits. When World War II started in 1939, many photojournalists adopted
this style. The posed portraits of World War I soldiers gave way to graphic images of war and
its aftermath. Images such as Joel Rosenthal's photograph, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
brought the reality of war to the American people. This style of capturing decisive moments
shaped the face of photography forever.
Instant Images: At the same time that 35mm cameras were becoming popular, Polaroid introduced
the Model 95. Model 95 used a secret chemical process to develop film inside the camera in less
than a minute. This new camera was expensive but the novelty of instant images caught the
public's attention. By the mid-1960s, Polaroid had many models on the market and the price had
dropped so that even more people could afford it. In 2008, Polaroid stopped making their
famous instant film.
Advanced Image Control: The Japanese brought easy control of images to photography. In the
1950s, Asahi (which later became Pentax) introduced the Asahiflex and Nikon introduced the
Nikon F. These were SLR-type cameras (SLR being single-lens reflex) and the Nikon F allowed for
interchangeable lenses and other accessories. For the next 30 years, SLR-style cameras
remained the camera of choice and many improvements were introduced to both the cameras
and the film itself.
Smart Cameras: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, compact cameras that were capable of making
image control decisions on their own were introduced. These "point and shoot" cameras
calculated shutter speed, aperture, and focus, leaving photographers free to concentrate on
composition and became immensely popular with casual photographers.
The Digital Age of Photography: In the 1980s and 1990s, numerous manufacturers worked on
cameras that stored images electronically. The first of these were point-and-shoot cameras that
used digital media instead of film. By 1991, Kodak had produced the first digital camera that was
advanced enough to be used successfully by professionals. Other manufacturers quickly
followed, offering advanced digital SLR (DSLR) cameras. Even the most basic point-and-shoot
camera now takes high quality images, and smartphones can pull off a high-quality printed
photographs.
Evolution of Photography: From Black and White to Colour
Colour photography can produce images in colour unlike black-and-white photography that
records brightness, darkness and different shades of grey. In colour photography, light-sensitive
sensors or chemicals record colours. This is done by breaking down the spectrum of light into three
components - red, green and blue. This is how human beings’ eyes detect colour. The
information is then used to reproduce the original colours through various proportions of red,
green and blue light (hence, called RGB model). Another model is the CMYK model that is
subtractive in nature. CMYK refers to the four inks used in colour printing: cyan, magenta,
yellow, and key (i.e. black). It refers to a combination of dyes or pigments that can remove the
red, green and blue segments of the spectrum present in white light, ‘subtracting’ the
brightness of the image, and giving rise to a near-black image. The same combination of dyes
or pigments can give rise to a coloured image.
When photography was invented, it was a black-and-white medium, and it remained that way for
almost one hundred years. In the early period, people tended to focus on making photography
suitable for portraiture (recording portraits of people). For that, they tried making photographic
technology more stable, portable, and affordable, not more colourful. But people wanted colour
photos (portraits before photography were paintings in full colour). Once the technical problems were
overcome, photographers began experimenting with colour. They employed artists to tint
daguerreotypes by hand. This produced what one would call ‘coloured photographs’, not
‘colour photographs’.
RGB Process: The three-color method was first suggested in 1855 by Scottish physicist James
Clerk Maxwell, with the first colour photograph produced by Thomas Sutton in 1861. Maxwell
proposed that humans interpret colour as combinations of red, green and blue. This idea gave rise
to the ‘three colour process’ or ‘RGB’ which is the foundation of colour photography. The
photograph produced by Thomas
Sutton was made by stacking three black and white images produced using red, green, and blue
filters. Colour photography became common since the 1970s.
Tripacks: Needing to take the same photograph three different times with three different filters
(based on James Clerk Maxwell’s three colour process idea) was difficult — the camera could be
accidentally moved, or the scene itself could change. Louis Ducos du Hauron suggested that one
could place three different colour-recording emulsions on top of the other so that the entire
process could be carried out at once inside the camera. The three-emulsion layer ‘sandwich’ was
an important step for the industry. They were sold as tripacks to the customers. In the 1930s, the
American company Agfa-Ansco produced Colorol, a tripack roll-film for cameras where the
emulsions were placed on thin film. After exposure, the roll would be sent to Agfa-Ansco for
processing. The images were not sharp but they were genuine colour snapshots.
Kodachrome: In 1935, Kodak introduced their first ‘tripack’ film labelled as Kodachrome. It was
based on the work of two musicians - Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, Jr., who had
been experimenting with the colour process. They were hired by Kodak Research Laboratories. The
process used three layers of emulsion on a single base to capture the red, green, and blue
wavelengths. Kodak used the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest”. Customers could
mail their finished rolls to get the colour prints. Beginning in the 1960s, Kodak’s Kodachrome,
along with other film brands, began to establish a presence in the market. By the 1970s, prices
decreased enough to make colour photography accessible for the masses. By the 1980s, black and
white film was no longer the preferred medium. The last roll of Kodachrome was produced in
2010. By then most photographers had switched to digital technology using sensors instead of
films.
Digital Technology and Photography
Digital photography is very different from traditional photography. Instead of film, digital cameras use
a charged-coupled device or ‘CCD’ to convert light to an electronic file such as a JPEG or MPEG. The
CCD has a photosensitive layer which senses light of different intensities and transfers the data
to the camera’s processor. The charge-coupled device was invented in 1969 at AT&T Bell Labs by
Willard Boyle and George E. Smith. An important difference between digital and traditional
photography is that digital images can be manipulated easily. Digital photography made it easier
to work in colour by eliminating the need for colour films. Not having to purchase colour film or
pay for processing lowered the cost of photography. The result is that photography is now more
accessible and more widely used than ever before.
In 1981, Sony unveiled the first camera to use a charge-coupled device for imaging, eliminating the
need for film - the Sony Mavica. Mavica would save images on a disk that could be played on a
television. The first consumer digital cameras were marketed in the 1990s. In 1990, Adobe
release Photoshop 1.0 making digital editing available and marking an important milestone in
digital photography. In 1991, Kodak unveiled the DCS 100, the first commercially available digital
single lens reflex camera. It had a 1.3-megapixel image sensor. Minolta released the first ever
portable digital single-lens reflex camera, the Minolta RD-175 with a 1.75-megapixel sensor.
A DSLR or digital single-lens reflex camera is a digital camera that combines the single-lens
reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor. In the single reflex design, light travels through
the lens to a mirror that alternates to send the image to either the viewfinder or the image
sensor. Other cameras use a separate lens for the viewfinder. Hence, the term ‘single lens’ for
the design. By using only one lens, the viewfinder of a DSLR provides a direct view of the
object rather than data captured by the
camera's image sensor and displayed by the digital screen. DSLRs replaced film-based SLRs
during the 2000s, and became the most common type of interchangeable lens camera in use as
of 2017.
In 1995, Nikon developed the Nikon E series with Fujifilm, a series of autofocus professional grade
DSLR cameras. It then came out with the Nikon D1 in 1999. The D1 was the first professional
digital SLR that challenged Kodak's domination of the professional photography business. In 2003,
Canon released the EOS 300D SLR camera, also known as the Digital Rebel, aimed at the
consumer market. Its commercial success encouraged others to produce competing DSLRs,
lowering costs and allowing more amateur photographers to purchase DSLRs. The market is
dominated by Japanese companies such as Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, and Sony.
However, the popularity of DSLRs among amateurs is being challenged by smartphones.
Image Quality & Storage: The quality of a digital image is measured in terms of Pixels (or
Megapixels,
i.e. millions of pixels). Resolution in pixels is not the only measure of image quality. A larger
sensor produces a better image than a smaller one. This is one of the advantages of digital
SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras, which have larger sensors than so-called point and shoot
cameras of the same resolution. Digital cameras use memory cards to store image data. Most
cards are SD (Secure Digital) format; some are CompactFlash (CF). Memory cards can hold
hundreds of high quality photos. Images can be transferred to other media. It would be a few years
until removable, nonvolatile storage became the norm, but the stage had been set. In 1988, the first
JPEG and MPEG standards were set, creating a universal format which allowed images (JPEG)
and video (MPEG) to be stored in a compressed format. SanDisk and Kodak released the first
CompactFlash Memory Card in 1994. The development of the CompactFlash memory card was
an important event in the digital photography.
Origin of Cinema
Cinematography creates the illusion of movement by the recording and subsequent rapid
projection of many still photographic pictures on a screen. A product of 19th century scientific
endeavour, it has, over the past century, become an industry employing many thousands of people
and a medium of mass entertainment and communication. No one person invented cinema.
However, in 1891 the Edison Company in the USA successfully demonstrated a prototype of the
Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures. The first to present
projected moving pictures to a paying audience (i.e. cinema) were the Lumière brothers in
December 1895 in Paris.
The illusion is based on the optical phenomena known as persistence of vision and the phi
phenomenon. The first of these causes the brain to retain images cast upon the retina of the
eye for a fraction of a second beyond their disappearance from the field of sight, while the latter
creates apparent movement between images when they succeed one another rapidly. Together
these phenomena permit the succession of still frames on a motion-picture film strip to represent
continuous movement when projected at the proper speed (traditionally 16 frames per second for
silent films and 24 frames per second for sound films).
At first, films were very short, sometimes only a few minutes or less. They were shown at
fairgrounds and music halls or anywhere a screen could be set up and a room darkened. Subjects
included local scenes and activities, views of foreign lands, short comedies and events considered
newsworthy. The films were accompanied by lecturers, music and a lot of audience participation—
although they did not have synchronised dialogue they were not ‘silent’ as they are sometimes
described.
By 1914, several national film industries were established in Europe, Russia and America. Films
became longer, and storytelling, or narrative, became the dominant form. As more people paid to
see movies, the industry which grew around them was prepared to invest more money in their
production,
distribution and exhibition, so large studios were established and special cinemas built. The First
World War greatly limited the film industry in Europe, and the American industry grew in relative
importance. The first 30 years of cinema were characterised by the growth and consolidation of
an industrial base, the establishment of the narrative form, and refinement of technology.
Colour was first added to black-and-white movies through tinting, toning and stencilling. By
1906, the principles of colour separation were used to produce so-called ‘natural colour’ moving
images with the British Kinemacolor process, first presented to the public in 1909. The early
Technicolor processes from 1915 onwards were cumbersome and expensive, and colour was
not used more widely until the introduction of its three-colour process in 1932.
The first attempts to add synchronised sound to projected pictures used phonographic cylinders
or discs. The first feature-length movie incorporating synchronised dialogue, The Jazz Singer (USA,
1927), used the Warner Brothers’ Vitaphone system which employed a separate record disc with
each reel of film for the sound. This system proved unreliable and was soon replaced by an optical,
variable density soundtrack recorded photographically along the edge of the film.
By the early 1930s, nearly all feature-length movies were presented with synchronised sound and,
by the mid-1930s, some were in full colour too. The advent of sound secured the dominant
role of the American industry and gave rise to the so-called ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’. During
the 1930s and 1940s, cinema was the principal form of popular entertainment, with people often
attending cinemas twice weekly. In Britain the highest attendances occurred in 1946, with over
31 million visits to the cinema each week.
Thomas Edison had used perforated 35mm film in the Kinetoscope, and in 1909 this was adopted
as the industry standard. The picture had a height-to-width relationship, known as the aspect
ratio, of 3:4 or 1:1.33. With the advent of optical sound the aspect ratio was adjusted.
Although there were many experiments with other formats there were no major changes in
screen ratios until the 1950s.
The introduction of television in America prompted a number of technical experiments designed
to maintain public interest in cinema. In 1952, the Cinerama process, using three projectors and a
wide, deeply curved screen together with multi-track surround sound, was premiered. It gave
audiences a sense of greater involvement and proved extremely popular. However, it was
technically cumbersome, and widescreen cinema did not begin to be extensively used until the
introduction of CinemaScope in 1953 and Todd-AO in 1955, both of which used single
projectors. CinemaScope had optically squeezed images on 35mm film which were expanded
laterally by the projector lens to fit the width of the screen; Todd-AO used film 70mm wide. By the
end of the 1950s, the shape of the cinema screen had effectively changed, with aspect ratios of
either 1:2.35 or 1:1.66 becoming standard.
Specialist large-screen systems using 70mm film have also been developed. The most successful
of these has been IMAX, which in 2008 had 311 screens around the world. For many years IMAX
cinemas have showed films specially made in its unique 2D or 3D formats, but they are
increasingly showing versions of popular feature films which have been digitally re-mastered in
the IMAX format, often with additional scenes or 3D effects.
Stereo sound, which had been experimented with in the 1940s, also became part of the new
widescreen experience. While cinemas had some success in fighting the competition of television,
they never regained the position and influence they once held, and over the next thirty years
audiences dwindled. Although America still appears to be the most influential film industry, the
reality is more complex. Many films are produced internationally—either made in various countries
or financed by multinational companies that have interests across range of media. Today, most
people see films on television
(whether terrestrial or satellite or on video of some kind) and we are also moving towards a web-
based means of delivery.
In the past 20 years, film production has been profoundly altered by the impact of rapidly
improving digital technology. Though productions may still be shot on film (and even this is
becoming less commonplace) most subsequent processes, such as editing and special effects, are
undertaken on computers before the final images are transferred back to film. The need for this
final transfer is diminishing as more cinemas invest in digital projection which is capable of
producing screen images that rival the sharpness, detail and brightness of traditional film
projection. In the past few years there has been a revival of interest in 3D features, both animated
and live action, sparked by the availability of digital technology.
From Silent Era to Talkies
Georges Méliès: There was shift in films away from animated photographs to story-telling, or
narrative, and it is most evident in the work of the French filmmaker Georges Méliès. Méliès
produced, directed, photographed, and acted in more than 500 films between 1896 and 1913.
He used stop-motion photography (the camera and action are stopped while something is
added to or removed from the scene; then filming and action are continued) to make one-shot
“trick” films in which objects disappeared and reappeared or transformed themselves into
other objects entirely. These were imitated by producers in England and the United States.
Soon, Méliès began to experiment with brief multiscene films, such as L’Affaire Dreyfus (The
Dreyfus Affair, 1899), where he followed linear temporality to establish causal sequences and
tell simple stories. By 1902 he had produced the influential 30-scene narrative Le Voyage
dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon). Adapted from a novel by Jules Verne, it was an enormous
success and helped establish the fiction film as the cinema’s mainstream product.
Edwin S. Porter: Méliès lost his audience in the late 1910s to filmmakers with more
sophisticated narrative techniques. The origin of many such techniques is closely associated with
the work of Edwin S. Porter, a projectionist and engineer associated with the Edison Company
in 1900. He served as director-cameraman for Edison, starting with simple one-shot films, trick
films, and short multiscene narratives. Porter filmed the ‘Pan-American Exposition by Night’ (1901),
and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ (1902). It was Porter’s experience as a projectionist that led him to
the practice of continuity editing. Porter was influenced by Méliès, especially by Le Voyage
dans la lune. The film gave him the idea of telling a story in continuity form, which resulted in ‘The
Life of an American Fireman’ (1903). This film combined real footage with staged scenes to
create a nine-shot narrative of a dramatic rescue from a burning building. Porter’s ‘The Great
Train Robbery’ (1903) is acknowledged to be the first narrative film with continuity of action. The
film had editing and different types of shots, a major departure from the style used by Méliès. It
was a box-office success, establishing the realistic narrative as commercial cinema’s dominant
form. The film’s popularity led to the establishment of the first permanent film theatres across
the USA.
D.W. Griffith: Narrative film owes a great deal to the individual artists, chief among them being
D.W. Griffith. He was called “the father of film technique,” “the man who invented Hollywood,”
“the Shakespeare of the screen”. Griffith’s work transformed the film industry. An American director,
writer, and producer, he is best remembered for ‘The Birth of a Nation’ (1915). It made use of
advanced camera and narrative techniques but also created controversy through negative
depiction of African Americans and support for racism. Griffith established Hollywood’s classical
narrative style. His first experiments were in editing. He used different types of shots to heighten
the emotional intensity of a scene. Soon, he began taking shots from multiple camera setups—
long shots, full shots, medium shots,
close shots, close-ups—and combining them into single dramatic scenes. Other experiments
involved camera movement and placement. These included panoramic panning shots to engage
the audience and the tracking or traveling shot.
Silent Era (1910-1927): Until 1927, motion pictures were produced without sound. This era is
referred to as the Silent Era of film. To enhance the viewers' experience, silent films were
accompanied by orchestra music, sound effects and even commentary. Intertitles were also
used to provide dialogue and narration for the film. The first attempts to add synchronised
sound to projected pictures used phonographic cylinders or discs. The first feature-length movie
incorporating synchronised dialogue, The Jazz Singer (USA, 1927), used the Warner Brothers’
Vitaphone system which employed a separate record disc with each reel of film for the sound. This
system proved unreliable and was soon replaced by an optical, variable density soundtrack
recorded photographically along the edge of the film. By the early 1930s, nearly all feature-length
movies were presented with synchronised sound and, by the mid-1930s, some were in full
colour.
History of Art Cinema
Art-house films are films that are not made for mass appeal. They are usually low-budget films
focusing on artistic work and appealing to a niche audience. These films very often have
unconventional stories. They are typically produced by independent film companies or
filmmakers, which is one reason for their low-cost budgets. An art-house film differs greatly from
mainstream commercial cinema. The first aspect could be length, which rarely exceeds an hour (and
could be as little as a few minutes). They are often experimental. Film critics and scholars typically
define an art film as possessing "formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream
Hollywood films," which can include, among other elements, a sense of social realism, an
emphasis on the authorial expressiveness of the director, and a focus on the thoughts, dreams, or
motivations of characters, as opposed to the unfolding of a clear, goal-driven story.
Art movies are normally shown in specialty theatres and film festivals, whereas mainstream
Hollywood movies are shown in traditional movie theatres. Art-house movies, because of their
inexpensive process of production, do not employ expensive and flamboyant special effects.
Hollywood blockbusters on the other hand do the exact opposite. Art-house movies rarely use
celebrities and do not require expensive advertising campaigns. Commercial movies on the other
hand use celebrity actors. The main purpose of a mainstream blockbuster movie is to appeal to a
very large audience. The promotion methods of art-house films and Hollywood blockbuster
movies differ greatly. Promotion for art-house films is normally done by film critics, bloggers
and reviewers. They can also be promoted by the audience through word-of-mouth. Mainstream
Hollywood movies on the other hand rely on very sophisticated and costly forms of promotions to
get the whole world to know about their movies.
Some of the important figures in the early phase of art cinema were USA’S D. W. Griffith
(Intolerance, 1916) and USSR’s Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin, 1925), whose works
influenced European cinema for decades. Then there were the art films by Spanish avant-garde
creators such as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí and the French playwright Jean Cocteau. By the
1920s, people were talking about serious art cinema aimed at an intellectual audience. Cinéma
Pur was a 1920s and 1930s French avant-garde film movement including the likes of Man Ray,
René and Marcel Duchamp. They used to avoid traditional narrative techniques. The period
between 1944 and 1952 (known as the Golden Age of Italian Cinema) saw the rise of Italian
Neorealism, a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the
working class, filmed on location, and using non-professional actors. Italian neorealism films dealt
with the difficult economic conditions of post-World War II Italy. In the late 1950s, French
filmmakers began to produce films that were influenced by Italian Neorealism and
classical Hollywood cinema, a style that critics called the French New Wave. Many experimented
with editing, visual style and narrative. They included the likes of François Truffaut, Jean-Luc
Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette.
History of Studio and Production Companies
Film studios are large motion picture companies that have their own private studio facilities
used for making films. The world’s first movie studio was Thomas Edison's ‘Black Maria’ in New
Jersey (USA), built for making film strips for the Kinetoscope. Edison made actors perform
inside the studio and distributed the movies at theatres, arcades, and fairgrounds. In the early
1900s, companies started moving to Los Angeles, California. Movie producers followed to
escape Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company, which controlled almost all the patents
connected to movie production at the time. The region also had excellent weather and was easily
accessible. This led to Los Angeles becoming the capital of the American film industry. D. W.
Griffith was the first to make a motion picture in Hollywood. His 17-minute short film In Old
California (1910). The first studio in Hollywood, the Nestor Company, was established in 1911.
Four major film companies – Paramount, Warner Bros., RKO, and Columbia – also established
studios in Hollywood, as did several smaller companies and rental studios. In the 1920s,
Hollywood was the fifth-largest industry in the nation.
Appearance of Film Exchanges and Nickelodeons: In the United States, film exchanges were
formed (the first came up in San Francisco in 1903) to function as brokers between producers
and exhibitors, buying prints from the former and leasing them to the latter for a price (rental
fees). The exchange system spread rapidly because it profited everyone: the middlemen, the
exhibitors and the producers (who saw a tremendous surge in demand nationwide). There was
rapid growth of permanent film theatres in the United States from a mere handful in 1904 to
10,000 by 1908. Named nickelodeons after the ‘Nickelodeon’ (Greek for “nickel theatre”), which
had opened in Pittsburgh in 1905, these theatres showed approximately an hour’s worth of films
for an admission price of 5 to 10 cents to working-class audiences. Later, even the middle class
became associated with film-watching. Their spread also forced the standardization of film length
at one reel, or 1,000 feet (305 metres), to facilitate high-efficiency production and the trading of
products.
Appearance of Feature Films: A feature film is a film with a running time long enough to fill a
show on its own. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film
Institute, and the British Film Institute, a feature film should be 40 minutes or longer. The
Centre National de la Cinématographie in France put it at 58 minutes and 29 seconds and the
Screen Actors Guild at least 80 minutes. The first proper feature length film was the 1906 Australian
production ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang’. It traced the life of an outlaw Ned Kelly and was an
hour long. It was first shown in Melbourne, Australia. The term referred to the main film
presented in a cinema which was promoted to the audience. They were multiple-reel films to
begin with and because of their more elaborate production values, relatively costlier. But exhibitors
learned that features could command higher admission prices and longer runs and were easier
to advertise.
Consolidation in the Hollywood Studio System: The coming of sound changed both the
aesthetics and economics of the filmmaking industry, leading to several mergers. In the 1920s,
Paramount, MGM and other studios acquired theatre chains. In response, Warner Brothers and
Fox sought to dominate smaller exhibitors by providing pre-recorded musical accompaniment to
films. The conversion to sound transformed Warner Brothers and Fox into major corporations. By
1929, Warner Brothers had become one of the largest studios in Hollywood. Fox acquired
controlling shares of Loew’s, Inc., (parent corporation of MGM), and Gaumont British
(England’s largest producer-distributor-exhibitor). Paramount controlled an international
distribution network and a vast theatre chain. In 1929,
Paramount acquired one-half of the newly formed Columbia Broadcasting System and
proposed a merger with Warner Brothers. This was prevented by the U.S. Department of
Justice which forbid Paramount’s merger with Warner Brothers and separated Fox from
Loew’s.
Costs of Production, Distribution and Exhibition: By 1930, 95 percent of all American production
was concentrated in the hands of only eight studios—five vertically integrated major companies,
which controlled production, distribution, and exhibition, and three horizontally integrated minor
ones that controlled production and distribution. Distribution was conducted at both a national and
international level since foreign rentals accounted for around half of all American feature revenues.
Exhibition was controlled through the major studios’ ownership of 2,600 first-run theatres,
which represented 16 percent of the national total but generated three-fourths of the revenue.
Film production throughout the 1930s and ’40s consumed only 5 percent of total corporate
assets, while distribution accounted for another 1 percent. The remaining 94 percent of the
studios’ investment went to the exhibition sector.
Different Studios and their Production Values: MGM, the largest and most powerful of the
major studios, was famous for its opulent productions designed to attract the middle class.
Paramount, with its highly trained crew produced sophisticated films. Warner Brothers was the
most cost-conscious of the major companies and targeted the working-class audiences. Twentieth
Century–Fox (formed in 1935 by the merger of Fox and Twentieth Century Pictures) acquired a
reputation for its tight budget and production control, but produced films noted for special effects.
RKO Radio was the smallest of the major companies and famous as the producer of King Kong
(1933) and Citizen Kane (1941). The minor studios were famous for horror films. At the very
bottom of the film industry were studios that produced cheap formulaic hour-long “B movies”. At
their peak, the B-film studios produced 40–50 movies per year and provided a training ground
for such future stars such as John Wayne. The films were made as quickly as possible, and
directors functioned as their own producers, with complete control over their projects’ tiny
budgets.
Censorship: An important aspect of the studio system was the Production Code implemented in
1934 in response to public protests against the graphic violence and sexual suggestiveness of
some films. Organizations such as The Legion of Decency demanded ‘moral’ motion pictures
and called for a nationwide boycott of movies considered indecent. The studios, responded
by laying down the Production Code Administration whose provisions would dictate the content
of American motion pictures, without exception, for the next 20 years. Though the Code made film-
making very difficult with its extensive rules and regulations, the studio heads were willing to
accept it because they believed it was necessary for the continued success of their business. It
also gave rise to an assembly-line system of production where every stage, from conception to
exhibition, was carefully controlled.
Foreign Markets: With the creation of large markets in the United States, American film studios
began to enter the international motion-picture industry. They began to export sound films in
1928. Exhibitors in the United Kingdom converted the most rapidly, but those in France or
Germany were slow (due to patent disputes and language problems). Because dubbing was
impossible in the early years, films had to be shot in several languages (sometimes featuring a
different cast for each version) at the time of production for wide international distribution.
Paramount therefore built a huge studio in the Paris suburb of Joinville in 1930 to mass-produce
multilingual films. The other major American studios quickly followed suit. By 1931, the
technique of dubbing had been perfected and replaced multilingual production, and Joinville
was converted into a dubbing centre for Europe.
Evolution of Indian Cinema
One of the most flourishing cinema industries in the world is found in India. But the pioneers of
the industry were actually foreigners. In 1896, the Lumiere brothers demonstrated the art of
cinema when they screened six short films to an enthusiastic audience in Bombay. In the
1920’s Franz Austen, a German from Munich who could not speak Hindi, came to Bombay
and directed blockbuster films like The Light of Asia (1925), Shiraz (1928), Achhut Kanya (1936)
and Jeevan Naiya (1936). His films were on a grand scale and he drew inspiration from Indian
history and mythology.
The pioneers of Indian cinema were Dada Saheb Phalke who in 1913 made the first feature length
silent film - ‘Raja Harishchandra’ and Ardeshir Irani who in 1931 made India's first talking film –
‘Alam Ara’. ‘Raja Harishchandra’ marked a benchmark in the film industry in India. It was a
commercial success and paved the way for more such films. The first silent film in Tamil,
Keechaka Vadham was made by R. Nataraja Mudaliar in 1916. With the demise of the silent
era and the advent of the talkies, the main source for inspiration for films came from
mythological texts. Films were produced in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. Mythological films
flourished in South India.
After 1947, when India gained its independence, mythological and historical features were replaced
by films focusing on social issues (the lower classes, the dowry system, prostitution, peasant revolts).
This brought a new wave of filmmakers to the forefront such as Bimal Roy and Satyajit Ray. In the
1960’s, inspired by changes in the US and Europe, India’s new wave offered a greater sense of
realism to the public and got recognition abroad.
After the Second World War, serious Indian cinema was associated with the work of Satyajit
Ray, director of the Apu trilogy (Pather Panchali, 1955; Aparajito, 1956; Apur Sansar, 1959)
under the influence of both Jean Renoir and Italian Neorealism. Ray continued to dominate Indian
cinema through the 1960s and ’70s with Bengali art films such as Devi (1960), Charulata (1964),
Aranyer Din Ratri (1970), and Ashani Sanket (1973). Another Bengali film-maker is Ritwik Ghatak
who has alternative cinema like Ajantrik (1958). In 1961 the Indian government established the
Film Institute of India to train aspiring directors. It also formed the Film Finance Commission
(FFC) to help fund independent production (and, later, experimental films). The National Film
Archive was founded in 1964. These organizations encouraged the production of “parallel
cinema” centred in Bombay. A more traditional path was followed by Shyam Benegal, whose
films (Ankur, 1974; Nishant, 1975; Manthan, 1976) were realistic and explored social and political
issues.
During the 1970s the regional industries of the southwestern states—especially those of Kerala and
Karnataka—began to subsidize independent production, resulting in a “southern new wave” led by
such diverse figures as G. Aravindan (Kanchana Sita, 1977), Adoor Gopalakrishnan (Elipathayam,
1981), and Girish Karnad (Kaadu, 1973). Despite the international recognition of these films,
the Indian government’s efforts to raise the artistic level of the nation’s cinema were largely
unsuccessful. The Indian film industry was for much of the later 20th century, the world’s
largest producer of low-quality films for domestic consumption, releasing on average 700
features per year in 16 languages.
It continues to churn out ‘masala’ films with genres including action, comedy, and melodrama
punctuated with song and dance sequences, relying on stars to sell their films. There is also a
growing movement to make Indian cinema more realistic with young filmmakers like Anurag
Kashyap, Anand Gandhi, and Gyan Correa. There are investments coming from corporate
houses and funding for independent cinema, making it a viable business. Indian cinema can
develop further with greater creativity, new technology and more investment.