HUMA 2740

Lecture 4

- Camera movement and music incorporated (silent film used to

differentiate synchronized sound)
- Process of movie exhibition was never silent, there was music (live
music so even in Nickelodeons there might have been piano players
playing along the film)
- As movies become more elaborate
- Up until 1997 (check this) movie was single largest employer of
musicians
- Documentary filmmakers began to realize that editing can be used to
tell more complicated stories of the real world so they too used
editing
- By 1906, starting 1904 – a new institution develops, Institution of
Newsreel (made up of segments – found out about real world events
from around the world)
o Seeing a fictional film and a newsreel from 1904 to 1950s
(when television replaces)
San Francisco: Aftermath of Earthquake (1906)

- Showing devastations around the city

- Tells a story even though not a fiction film
- Only 10 years after Lumiere Brother films
The Black Hand (1906) by American Mutuscope & Biograph

- Shows organized crime (mafia)

- Shot in Manhattan in 1906 – part of it is set on set but most of it shot
outdoors
 - Writing the Letter, The Letter Received, The Threat Carried Out, The
Gang’s Headquarters, Levying the Blackmail*(Check), Rescue of
Maria
- How the Movies Became Big Business
- Movie industry went from being wide open to being dominated by a
limited number of companies
MPPC (1908-1915)

- Movie companies began to move and relocated in Southern

California in Hollywood
o Weather’s better – more opportunity to film outside
o Labour cost could be reduced
 By 1907 attempts to unionize in New York increased so
big companies moved to LA where it was more friendly for
companies in terms of union laws
The Movies Come Back I – Revisionist Genre

- American movie industry rebounded in 1970s

- In late 60s, ppl began returning to movie theatres to see films that
they couldn’t see on TV, to see movies that spoke to the issues that
concerned them
- Demographic trend in 50s and 60s was young ppl who kept going to
the movies
- More of them by late 60s as a result of the baby boom
- In the 1970s, the movie-going audience also included older adults as
their child-raising years were coming to an end and they were
rediscovering movie-going experience
- Civil Rights Movement, which began in 50s, was still going strong in
the 60s
o Created the conditions for the emergence of an Afr-Ame
cinema and for a transformation of how they were represented
in all movies
o Inspired a whole series of other social movements including the
Women’s Movement, the Native Rights Movement, the Gay and
Lesbian Liberation Movement, and the Green Movement
- Youth culture emerged in the mid-to-late 60s that helped to inspire a
very large, national peace movement in response to the emerging
debacle in Vietnam
- Hollywood began to turn its attention to this audience and to change
the way it told stories to remain relevant
- Most imp change in way Hollywood told stories was in the
transformation of the genre system
- Film genres were central to the way Hollywood organized the
production and marketing of movies
- Audiences found comfort in the predictability of movie genres since
knew what to expect when they brought their tickets at the box office
- Reassurance further cemented in the way in which film genre films
upheld the social conventions of society, where everyone knew their
proper place
- In times of social turmoil, these rules and conventions tended to
break down
- Just as young ppl were questioning various institutions and calling
into question the honesty of various political, business, and military
leaders, filmmakers attempted to speak to these concerns and this
social upheaval led to crisis within the genre system