The Hollywood Studio System

By Brooke Diamond

Start of Hollywood

The cinema of the United States, often generally referred to as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. It’s history is sometimes separated into into four main periods The Silent Film Era, Classical Hollywood Cinema, New Hollywood, and The Contemporary Period. While the French Lumiere Brothers are generally credited with the birth of modern, it is American cinema that soon became the most dominant force in an emerging industry. Since the 1920’s, the American film industry has grossed more money every year than that of any other country.

The Silent Movie Era

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made practical in the late 1920s with the perfection of the audion amplifier tube.

The first projected primary proto-movie was made by Eawaerd Muybridge sometimes between 1877 and 1880. The oldest surviving film (of the genera called pictorial realism) was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a two-second film of people walking in ‘Oakwood streets’ garden, entitled’ Roundhay Garden Scene’. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the ‘silent era’ (1894-1929) before silent films were replaced by ‘taking pictures’ in the late 1920s. Many film scholars and buffs argue that the aesthetic quality of cinema decreased for several years until directors, actors and production staff adapted to the new ‘talkies’.

Example of a silent film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0IU8uQniX8

Classical Hollywood

CinemaClassical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designate both visual and sound style for making motion pictures and mode of production used in the American film industry between 1927 and 1963. This period is often referred to as the ‘golden age of Hollywood’. An identifiable cinematic form emerged during this period called classical Hollywood style.

Classical style is fundamentally built on the principle of continuity editing or ‘invisible’ style. That is, the camera and the sound recording should never call attention to themselves (as they might in films from earlier periods, other countries or in a modernist or postmodernist work).

Example of Classical

Hollywood cinema

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI_lUHOCcbchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urQVzgEO_w8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n3-UtakD3Ihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dxh3lwdOFw

New HollywoodNew Holly wood or post- classical Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the ‘American New Wave’ refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s (Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate) to the early 1980s (Heaven’s Gate, One from the Heart) when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and marketing, and the way major studios approached filmmaking. In New Hollywood films, the film director took on a key authorial role.

The films they made were part of the studio system, and although these individuals were not ‘independent filmmakers’, they introduced subject matter and styles that set them apart from the studio traditions that an earlier generation had established in the the 1920s-1950s. New Hollywood has also been defined as a broader filmmaking movement influenced by this period, which has been called the ‘Hollywood renaissance’.

Example of New Hollywood film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X2DtiE7VLwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_jE7-6Uv7Ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYAETtIIClk

The Contemporary

PeriodIn the 1970s and 1980s, multinational corporations bought and merged many movie studios, ending the period of artistic experimentation in Hollywood. The industry has returned to financial success and global dominance through the development of blockbuster franchises, large-scale marketing campaigns, and content aimed at children. It also has placed increasing emphasis on spectacular special effects in order to draw audiences into movie theaters. The emergence of affordable digital video cameras and the growth of the film festival circuit have expanded the possibilities for independent filmmakers around the world to produce, distribute, and exhibit films.

Example of the contemporary

period

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkX8J-FKndEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O48Cr5vm6Yghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFm4411ViOk

The End