Here is the PowerPoint outline for Chapter 14.  Remember to complete the application exercise at the end.

Early Days of Movies

•      As photography gets better, people such as Muybridge envision sequencing photographs

•      Edison and his assistant William Dickson put together a movie camera and kinetoscope to record and playback a series of still frames in order to create moving pictures

•      Lumiere Brothers in France go further and project the moving pictures to a large audience in 1894

Film Industry

•      Film makers learn to tell longer and more complex stories by putting together different shots

•      Melies and film magic

•      Porter and first American film plot line

•      Nickelodeons are the first theaters dedicated to showing movies all the time in the early 1900s

The Trust

•      Edison forms a patent pool nicknamed the Trust

•      The Trust is vertically integrated with exclusive contracts in production/distribution and exhibition

•      Independents (many of whom were immigrants) break the Trust’s rules and distribute films successfully

•      The Trust collapses after losing antitrust case in 1917

•      The independents go on to
create Hollywood studios in
Southern California

–  They are also vertically integrated

Hollywood

•      Movie business is very profitable

–   Movie stars are placed under long term contracts

–   Studios turn out a regular schedule of high (A) and low (B) budget movies to distribute to both the theaters they own and to other theaters

–   Studios self-regulate the films by creating an association to enforce rules about profanity and other controversies in the films

•      1927: Warner Brothers make a film—The Jazz Singer—that also has recorded sound

•      Talkies are instantly popular

•      1948: U.S. Department of Justice sues majors over antitrust violations

–  Majors sell off theaters in order to
settle suit

Television Technology

•      After the success of radio, inventors try to send images through the airwaves in
the 1920s

•      1930s: successful television is introduced
in Germany

•      1939: RCA introduces television to the American people

•      1948: Television starts to become a mass medium in the U.S.

Early U.S. Television

•      There is no union between TV and movies at first

–  Early TV is broadcast live, often out of
New York

•   Features anthology dramas and comedy shows

–  Movie studios start to film TV episodes

•   Filmed TV such as I Love Lucy can
be syndicated

Movies in 1950s

•      Compete with TV by using

–  Color

–  Wide screen

–  Adult content (courts give broader limits by including film under first amendment)

Cable Television

•      Starts off in 1940s as community antenna television

•      FCC is protective of broadcast TV
at first

–  1970s: FCC opens things up for cable

•      Free skies allow satellites to be used

–  Ted Turner and HBO both take advantage

Fragmented Era Today

•      Movies marketed across media boundaries

–   Theaters

–   Video cassettes (1975)

–   Cable and broadcast

•      TV targets audience segments

•      TV and films have merged into
media conglomerates

•      Telecommunication Act of 1996 tries to encourage further cross-media competition

APPLICATION EXERCISE:  Ch. 14--Academy Awards