Film is a relatively new form of entertainment, however, it is one of the most accessible.
Since its conception it has had people watching in droves. In 1891 Thomas Edison had his Kinetograph, the device used to capture films in that time, patented and therefore had a complete legal ownership of the film industry. Edison sued many of his competitors even going as far as to send people to smash cameras and beat up people who weren’t with his production company. This resulted in the move to California where the guerrilla film industry could make movies outside of the law. From 1891 until 1917 any film not released under Thomas Edison’s production company was illegal. Hollywood was founded on illegal filmmaking.
When I learned this, even I had to think for a moment, is illegal streaming and torrenting of movies simply the new wave of cinema? Is this just a natural progression that won’t result in the fall of cinema but instead in the rise of a new wave of the art form?
No, is the answer. You see the key difference is, the birth of Hollywood was moving the art form forward, creating new content and contributing to the industry in a large and meaningful way. Torrenting, however, does not. It merely steals what others have already created like a parasite unwilling to admit that if it destroys its host then the parasite dies too.
I digress.
From 1917 we can see the rise of Hollywood as we know it. The industrial boom. Films were more popular than ever thanks to innovations in filmmaking such as the integration of sound and technicolour in 1927 and 1939 respectively.
During the boom of Hollywood there were so many movies being made and so many people going to the cinema to watch them, that big studios could produce films that had riskier scripts that were not necessarily blockbuster material, for example ‘Citizen Kane’ and ‘Casablanca’, both of which are regarded as masterpieces made by auteurs and masters of their craft.
Today, however, the six main film studios (Warner Bros. Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Walt Disney Studios) focus on only a few films and market them very heavy to try to get the most revenue from each film.
The marketing plays the biggest role in whether people see the film. Finding adverts for a movie on buses, billboards and ad breaks is only possible when the film studio dedicates a huge amount of money to marketing the film.
This has resulted in big studios not producing risky films and instead making broad, forgettable and, vitally, safe popcorn films imitating something that made them money in the past and hoping that they can hit the same chord again.
The production of the future classics is left up to the independent filmmakers. The auteurs with the scripts too off-the-wall to be picked up by any studio not willing to risk millions of dollars.
These will be the films we remember.
SteffHMovies 