Film Industry

RABBIT TV PLUS - More TV, Move Movies and More Channels 
TIME LIFE - The Heart of Classic Rock Collection!

Related
Golden Globe Awards
1MBD Golden Globe Awards
Goteborg Music Festival
MTV Movie Awards
List of Film Awards 
Most Popular - Film Reviews
MetaCritic - Movies Critic Reviewed 
New York Times - Movies
BBC - Film Reviews
NPR - Movie Reviews
IMDB Picks

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama

Brie Larson - Brie Larson is an actress whose breakout performance was as the lead in Short Term 12(2013). Prior to that, Larson appeared in numerous films including Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (2010), 21 Jump Street (2012), and Don Jon (2013). She also featured in The Spectacular Now (2013) and Trainwreck (2015), and starred in Room (2015), which earned her her first Golden Globe nomination. She also starred on television in Raising Dad(2001-2002) and United States of Tara (2009-2011) and guest starred on The League(2012) and Community (2013-2014).

Saoirse Ronan - Saoirse Ronan: After bursting onto the scene with her Golden Globes nominated performance in Atonement (2007) at the age of fourteen, Saoirse Ronan embarked on a career spanning over a dozen films and counting. Some of those films include The Lovely Bones(2009), Hanna (2011), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and Brooklyn (2015).

Cate Blanchett - Cate Blanchett is an Australian actress who first gained recognition for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth I (1998), winning a Golden Globe Award for her performance. Her other film credits include The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003), The Aviator(2004), Babel (2006), Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and The Hobbit trilogy (2012, 2013, 2014). She also won Golden Globe Awards for her performances in I'm Not There (2007) and Blue Jasmine (2013). 

Rooney Mara - Rooney Mara is an actress who gained prominence after her back-to-back appearances in the David Fincher films The Social Network (2011) and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo(2012), the latter of which earned her her first Golden Globe nomination. Her other film credits include Friends (With Benefits) (2009), A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Her(2013), and Pan (2015).

Alicia Vikander - Alicia Vikander is a Swedish actress who first gained attention for her roles in Anna Karenina (2012) and The Fifth Estate (2013). Her performances in Ex Machina (2015) and The Danish Girl (2015) earned her her first two Golden Globes nominations in the same year. She also appeared in Seventh Son (2014), The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015), and Burnt (2015).

The Greatest Films

Most Influential Films

Top Films of All-Time

The Oscars - Awards History by Year

Film industry is the art and business of making films also known as movies, motion pictures, or cinema. A moving film is a series of images recorded on film or tape that appear to move when played through a film projector or a videotape player. Film is one of the most popular forms of art and entertainment throughout the world. It is also a major source of information.

Films can introduce people to new ideas and help them to explore social issues. Students learn from edu­cational films. Industries use film and video to train em­ployees and to advertise their products. Governments use film to inform and influence their own citizens and people in other countries. Every week, millions of peo­ple go to the cinema. Many millions more watch films that are broadcast on television or are played back on a videotape player.

But films are much more than just entertainment and a source of information. They are also a major art form, as are, for example, paintings and theatrical plays. Artists express themselves by using paint and playwrights by using words. Filmmakers express their ideas through a motion-picture camera. By using the camera in different ways, the filmmaker can express different points of view. A filmmaker may film scenes for a picture in a desert, on a mountain, and in a large city. Filmmakers can also film scenes from different angles. Later, through a process called editing, they can select the angle that most effec­tively expresses a dramatic point. Through editing, film­makers can also show events happening at the same time in different places.

Films have become a gigantic industry. A typical fea­ture-length film costs several million U.S. dollars to make and requires the skills of hundreds of workers. Highly technical devices, including cameras, sound- recording equipment, and projectors, are needed to make and show films. In fact, films could not exist with­out many of the scientific and technical discoveries made since the late 1800's. For this reason, films have been called the art form of the 20th century.

We can enjoy many forms of art and entertainment by ourselves. We can enjoy reading a story or looking at a painting alone. But we usually enjoy a film most when we watch it as part of an audience. An exciting scene in­creases in suspense when we feel the tension sweeping through a large group of viewers. A film usually makes less of an impact if we see it in a nearly empty cinema or alone at home.

Films have a brief history, compared to such art forms as music and painting. Films date back only to the late 1800's. By the early 1900's, filmmakers had already devel­oped distinctive artistic theories and techniques. How­ever, films received little scholarly attention until the 1960's. Since then, thousands of books have been pub­lished about every aspect of filmmaking and film history.

Universities and colleges offer degrees in various as­pects of the film industry, and many more offer film courses.

In education, films are used especially as teaching aids. Teachers use such films in classes on geography, history, mathematics, and the physical and social sciences. Films use slow motion, animation, and other spe­cial techniques to demonstrate processes that otherwise could not be seen or studied thoroughly. For example, a film can speed up the formation of crystals so the audi­ence can study this process.

Television stations use films to inform as well as to entertain their viewers. TV channels frequently present documentaries. A documentary is a nonfiction film that tries to present factual information in a dramatic and en­tertaining way. Documentaries deal with a variety of subjects, such as environmental pollution and the his­tory of different cultures. Made-for-TV movies may deal with sensitive social issues within the framework of an entertainment film.

Millions of people enjoy making their own films with small cine or video cameras. Most of these cameras also record sound as they are filming. Home movies began to develop as a hobby during the 1920's, following the invention of low-cost film that could be used in small cameras. The popularity of home movies has increased over the years with the improvement in cameras and projectors, the introduction of colour and sound film, and the development of home video cassette recorders, or VCRs, that play back on TV sets.

This article deals mainly with feature-length films made for showing in cinemas and on videocassettes and television. For information on home movies, see Pho­tography (Making home movies).

Making a feature film calls for a special blend of art and business skills. A Hollywood production may take less than six months or more than two years to create. It can cost less than 250,000 U.S. dollars or more than 50 million U.S. dollars. On a large-budget film, several hun­dred people will be employed.

Although the film cast and crew may include hun­dreds of members, the people who perform two key functions remain at the centre of the filmmaking proc­ess: the producers and the director. The producers are the chief business and legal managers of the film. Usu­ally, one or more executive producers from the film company supervise the work of the producer of a spe­cific film. By choosing the director and other key mem­bers of the creative team, and by supervising the budget, the producers exert great influence over the creative part of the film production.

The director is responsible for guiding the creative efforts of the screenwriters, cast, and crew. By influenc­ing the film's shooting schedule and the equipment and personnel needs of the film, the director plays a major role in shaping the budget.

Each film presents a different set of problems for the producers and director. Some films call for extensive travel to distant locations. Others call for complicated special effects. Some need elaborate sets or an intimate and subtle acting style. Regardless of the particular chal­lenges, each film will pass through five stages to reach its audience. These stages occasionally overlap, but they occur in the following order (1) development, (2) pre-production, (3) production, (4) post-production, and (5) distribution. This section describes the first four stages. The fifth stage—distribution—is discussed in the section The film industry.

Before the late 1940's, almost all films were produced by major studios. Today, most films are made by inde­pendent film producers. The following section de­scribes chiefly how a motion picture is made by an inde­pendent producer. However, the key personnel and many of the steps also apply to films made by the major studios. For information on the "studio era," see the His­tory section.

Development

Developing the story. All feature films begin with an idea for a story. The idea can come from a newspa­per article, from someone's imagination, or from an ex­isting book or play. The idea may be as complicated as a 30-page outline or as simple as a single sentence. No one person is responsible for finding an interesting source for a film story. Movie ideas come from screen­writers, producers, directors, actors and actresses, agents, and friends of the filmmaker.

After a good idea has been identified, the producer or director must find a screenwriter with the ability and sensitivity to turn that idea into a story that will work as a film. Once commissioned, the screenwriter works closely with the project's originator to develop the char­acters and to construct the story based on the original idea. The screenwriter's job is to create the document that will serve as the blueprint for producing the film. This document is the screenplay.

When looking for a property (story) to film, producers also review scripts prepared by screenwriters working on "spec." "Spec" means that the screenwriter has not been contracted—or even informally asked—to write a script based on someone else's idea. Instead, the writer is speculating that his or her own idea will be sold to a producer or studio.

A writer working on spec sends an original script to an agent who will market it. The agent shows the script to producers and studio executives who may be inter­ested in purchasing and producing it. If they are inter­ested, they can purchase the script outright or—for a re­duced fee—they can option it. By taking an option on a script, producers acquire the exclusive rights to the script for a limited time. During that time, they explore the possibility of producing the script If they decide to produce it, they then buy the script. If they want more time to decide, they car. renew the option. If the option is not renewed, the screenwriter keeps the option fee and has the right to sell the script to another producer.

Acquiring financing. After obtaining a property, most independent producers must secure financial backing for the project. As a first step, they usually try to interest a successful director or a recognized actor or actress in the film. Associating a proven director or star with the project helps assure investors that the film will have box-office appeal. Choosing the director and lead­ing performer is one of the most important preliminary steps in the production of a film—not only because it helps in obtaining financing, but also because each star- director-producer team will interpret a script differently.

In another major step before approaching potential investors, the producers prepare an estimated budget and a shooting schedule. They consider the expected size of the film's audience, the amount of money realisti­cally required to create the film, the time needed to make the film, and the amount of money they can expect to raise from investors.

After the producers are satisfied with the estimated budget and shooting schedule, they put together the film's "package." The package consists of the budget, script, shooting schedule, and key creative people who will make the film. Based on the package, the producers seek funds from banks, studios, or private investors. The money will be raised if the creative team's experience and "name recognition" value are strong and the budget seems low enough for the film to make a profit. In some cases, the package will be so strong that the producers will also be able to sell the project to a distributor at this stage. Once the funds are secured, the actual planning of the production can begin.

Preproduction

During the preproduction stage, the producers, the director, and other key crew members create a detailed plan of action for turning the script into a film. This in­volves planning for all the creative decisions, personnel choices, equipment, and material necessary to make the film. The goal is to anticipate and solve all problems likely to be encountered in producing the film.

The preproduction period can take as little as two weeks to six months or more. By the end of this period, the crew is a well-organized group with a common goal. They understand the deadlines they face to complete the film, and they have all the major materials ready so they can execute their plan smoothly.

The preproduction period is the beginning of intense collaboration among the members of the production team. At the centre of these collaborations are the pro­ducers and the director. They develop and carry to the members of the crew their overall vision of the film. Through a series of meetings and discussions with the cast and crew, they decide upon the specific interpreta­tions of the look and sound of the script

Reviewing the script. All phases of preproduction start with a careful reading and analysis of the script The director examines the script to understand the story and to develop a vision of the most effective way to translate the script into film and sound images. Sugges­tions from members of the creative team often lead to further revisions of the script. The director also devel­ops ideas on casting, costuming, set design, photogra­phy, and editing.

Assembling the production team. Working closely with the producers, the director hires a crew. The direc­tor will try to choose people who, because of their expe­rience and understanding of filmmaking, will develop and enhance the director's idea of the film.

The production manager is one of the key positions in the team. The production manager develops the ac­tual budget and shooting schedule. Working under the producers, the production manager will supervise the production and authorize all expenditure.

The director of photography, or cinematographer, is responsible to the director for achieving the best possi­ble visual look for the film. The director of photography supervises the camera crew, and designs and executes the lighting pattern of the film.

The art director’s responsible for designing and cre­ating the sets. He or she makes blueprints and some­times models of the sets. Once the designs are ap­proved, the art director oversees their construction.

The costume designers and their crew are responsi­ble for designing and making the costumes. They may also purchase costumes for the production. In preparing their work, the costume designers must consider the work of the director of photography and the art director. The colours and patterns used on walls and in the light­ing will affect the work of the costume designers. They can create a feeling of harmony by designing costumes that blend with the background. If the costumes clash with the sets, the audience can be subtly informed that the characters are out of place with their surroundings.

Through a series of meetings, the director and the heads of the various production departments discuss the script and how to translate it into props, costumes, hairstyles, colour, lighting, compositions, and camera movements. This close collaboration and exchange of ideas will lead to the planning of the film's design.

During the preproduction period, a crucial decision faces the producers, director, director of photography, and art director. They must decide whether to film each scene on a sound stage—an artificial set constructed in a building—or on location—a real place that resembles the one depicted in the story. This decision affects both the look and the budget of the film. Most films combine both location and sound stage filming. The advantages and disadvantages of each technique are discussed under Production.

Developing the shooting schedule is the job of the production manager. Knowing how the director wants the film to look gives the production manager a feeling for how long and how difficult the filming will be. A number of variables help determine how many days the crew will need to shoot the film. These variables include travel to distant locations, construction of elaborate sets or lighting setups, and planning long and complex cam­era movements. By knowing how many days will be needed, the production manager can plan a schedule for shooting the film.

To save time and money, the production manager plans a schedule in which most of the scenes will be shot in a different order from that in which they appear in the script. For example, if scenes one, five, and nine all take place in the same living room, it will save time and expense to shoot them in one session. This way, the crew only has to set up the lights once and the produc­tion manager only has to organize the materials needed oh that set once. If the scenes were shot in the order in which they appear in the script, the crew would have to set up the same equipment three separate times.

Preparing the final budget. With the shooting schedule prepared, the production manager can begin laying out the actual cost of the film. The production manager must stay within the guidelines of the esti­mated budget and the amount of money raised from the investors. He or she can specify what equipment to use and how much it will cost and can decide how much time will be needed to edit the film. A shorter time will be required if the director plans the film carefully in the preproduction stage. More time will be needed if the di­rector improvises on the set Improvising means that, as the film is being shot the director works to discover the best way to play a dramatic moment or find the most ap­propriate camera position.

The production manager makes a final budget after reviewing the script for its costume, location, and acting needs, and after identifying the necessary equipment and size of the crew. The final budget includes above the line costs and below the line costs. The above the line costs are the salaries for key actors and actresses, the fees for the producers and director, and the pur­chase of the script and other creative fees. Below the line costs include crew salaries, equipment rentals, in­surance costs, film and sound stock purchases, and rent for editing rooms. The producers and the director then review the budget and shooting schedule. They may re­quest adjustments to figures they fee! are unrealistic.

During the preproduction period, the producers and production manager refine the budget. They plan how the budget will be spent day by day until the film is completed and ready for distribution. The production manager and the assistant director work with the heads of the various departments so they can plan their work to meet the needs of the schedule and the budget.

Assembling the cast. As the budget and shooting schedule are being completed, the director works with the producers and casting director to complete the cast. The casting director's job is to screen the applicants. He or she sometimes considers hundreds of actors and ac­tresses for each major role in a film. Through a series of auditions and interviews, the selection is narrowed down to a few candidates for each role. At an audition, a performer may be asked to read from the script or to act - a scene previously prepared. The director and pro­ducers select the final cast from the pool of performers identified by the casting director. Actors and actresses are chosen for their talent and their ability to blend with other performers to create a team performance. The ac­tors and actresses are also selected for how appropriate they are for the role, based on their appearance, tem­perament, and the director's interpretation of the role.

Holding rehearsals. If time permits and the per­formers are available, rehearsals take place before shooting. During rehearsals, the director and the cast explore the characters and script together. They read through the script and discuss the story and the role each character plays in it. They then act out the scenes and rework them to fit their talents and interpretations. They may use improvisation to explore each character and the possible ways to play a scene.

Not all directors hold preproduction rehearsals.

Some only discuss the story and characters with per­formers at this time. They prefer to wait until the actors and actresses are actually on the set to rehearse each scene. Performers with small parts usually meet the di­rector for the first time the day their scene is shot.

Production

During the preproduction period, the filmmakers imagine the film they want to make. They gather the people and materials needed to realize their idea. Dur­ing the production period, the film-as-imagined is brought to life and recorded on film and audiotape. The creative work of the preproduction period is continued and extended. However, instead of working with words or drawings or budgets on paper, the filmmakers work with actors and actresses and the materials of real life.

Filming on a sound stage. A sound stage is a han­garlike building in which sets can be built. Shooting on a sound stage enables the production team to design and build the sets to exact specifications. It allows them to place the camera exactly where they desire, and to create precise scale and details in their sets. Achieving the desired lighting is easier because each stage has a grid of pipes suspended from the ceiling. This grid al­lows the director of photography to hang each lighting unit with precision. The stage is enclosed, which elimi­nates noise and distractions from the outside world. Working on a stage saves time when setting up, and avoids moving the film's company from place to place because everything is shot right on the sets.

The disadvantage of filming on the sound stage is the extra cost. Constructing sets is much like building a house. A designer must make architectural plans of the set. Carpenters must build it and the set must be painted and furnished.

Filming on location. The advantage of shooting on location is that the set, for example, a city street, a mountain, or a harbour, already exists. Additions can be made to the location to create the appropriate look. If, for instance, the scene needs a driveway but there is none at the site, a false driveway can be added.

The main disadvantage of shooting on location comes from the fact that locations were not designed for film­making. The filmmakers may not have the room to spread out their equipment and freely move the camera.

They must bring in generators to supply enough elec­tricity for their lights. The location is more difficult to protect from outside intrusions, such as passers-by, noise from traffic and aeroplanes, and changes in lighting throughout the day. The cast and crew must be transported to the locations, which may be in distant parts of the world. The personnel must be fed and housed. However, the success of many films comes from the authentic look and feel of the location, which outweigh the disadvantages.

Some filmmakers shoot outdoor scenes on a back an open air area on studio property. A back lot set is recreation of an exterior, such as a city street. Filming on a back lot saves time and money that would be consumed shooting on location. However, the results may be less authentic-looking than location shooting.

Preparing to shoot. The location or the set on tht¹ sound stage must be carefully prepared before the era can interpret the action. The shooting day usually starts very early. Trucks begin arriving with lights, props, and camera and sound equipment at 6 or 7 a.m.  The set decorator arranges the props. Hairdressers a makeup artists arrive just before the performers. The actors and actresses often spend at least an hour having their hair and makeup prepared for each day's shoot. The craft services crew puts out refreshments for the crew as they set up. The director and assistants review the schedule for that day's work. The director of photography directs electricians called gaffers in setting up lights.

The set must be lit brightly enough for an image to be made on film. Lighting a scene is one of the most time consuming and important aspects of film production. Lighting creates a mood or a tone for each scene. The lighting director or director of photography uses contrast as a major tool. Contrast is the relative brighter of a character or object against surrounding shadow and darkened areas. A happier, more upbeat mood can be created by lowering the contrast and making the scene brighter. A scene filled with shadows and set off by a few small areas of bright light is usually more som­bre. In a thriller, a threatening tone can be developed in a darker scene emphasizing heavily contrasting light. An audience sits in expectation, waiting for something or someone to jump out of the shadows.

As the lighting is being adjusted, the performers and director come to the set. They review their work from the rehearsal period, focusing on their characters' ac­tions and reactions in the upcoming scene. For unlike live theatre, where the performer acts in a continuous time sequence, film requires a performer to work in fragments of scenes. Each shot in a film seldom covers more than a minute or two of the film's story, and, as ex­plained earlier, the scenes themselves are shot out of order. Consequently, film performers must develop their characters without the help of continuity, and the actors and actresses must have a strong sense of the film's time sequence. Acting in fragments does have some advantages, however, over stage acting. In the movies, the performer can concentrate on the very short sequences of dialogue or movement that go into a given shot.

Shooting the film. After the lighting preparation is completed, the director and performers go onto the set and rehearse in front of the camera operator and a tech­nician called the sound mixer. The director works with actors and actresses to polish their performances. In ad­dition, the camera operator checks to be sure that the photography will be satisfactory, and the sound mixer makes certain that a good clear audio recording can be made. Then the shot is recorded on film and audiotape. Usually, there are several takes (versions) of each shot.

The director may call for a retake to improve upon a performance or to ask for a different interpretation of the scene. The performer may want to try a new ap­proach, or the camera operator may want to improve the framing of the shot or the camera movement.

Much of the shot's impact depends on the choice of camera lens and position, and on the blocking of actors and actresses. A long, or telephoto, lens makes a scene of flat. A wide-angle lens deepens space. Camera po­sition influences how an audience understands a scene. For example, if a camera is placed so that it looks at a character through a fence or a set of bars, the audience will probably feel that the character is closed in, almost imprisoned.

Blocking refers to how the performers move during a scene. If a character moves toward the camera and grows large in the frame, he or she will take attention away from the other performers in the frame. If charac­ters walk away from the camera, the audience will feel that the figures are isolated or vulnerable or less impor­tant, depending upon the preceding action and scenes.

A device called a clapperboard is used to keep track of the takes and shots—information that will be needed during the post-production stage. A clapperboard con­sists of a slate attached to two hinged boards. The slate is marked with the number of each scene and take. The clapperboard is photographed before each take, thus visually identifying the scene number and the take num­ber. A member of the camera crew also says aloud the scene and take numbers, and then immediately claps the two boards together to make a sharp sound. The spoken information and clapping noise are recorded on the sound track, creating an audio record just as the slate preserves a visual record of the filming.

After each take, the director consults with the per­formers, the director of photography, and the camera operator. They decide on any adjustments that could im­prove the shot. Traditionally, they had to rely on their in­stincts to judge how the take would look on the film. Since the 1970's, however, many directors have used a video assist to help judge the takes as they are being shot. The video assist is a video recording system at­tached to the motion-picture camera. It records an image on videotape at the same time the camera is film­ing. The videotape can be examined immediately after shooting, an advantage over the camera film, which must first be processed in a laboratory. The video assist thus provides the filmmakers with a faster way to judge the work in each shot, allowing them to determine what improvements need to be made in the next take.

On a low-budget film, only three or four takes may be made from each camera setup. On a big-budget film, as many as 50 takes might be made. After the director is satisfied with a take, it is printed— that is, sent to the lab­oratory for processing. A copy called a work print is then made for the editing phase.

After all the takes of a shot have been made, the crew, supervised by the director of photography, sets up the lights and camera angle for the next shot. The perform­ers go to their dressing rooms, or to their caravans if they are on location, to wait for the crew to complete its work. Meanwhile, the director talks to the designers about the next day's set. The director may also meet with the producers and production manager to discuss the schedule, budget, or other production-related matters. At the end of the day, if the work is on location and completed, the crew packs up the equipment and moves the company to the next location.

Postproduction

The production stage provides the raw materials from which the film will be constructed. This raw material consists of fragments of film and audiotape. The frag­ments record the characters, places, and events that make up the film's story and interpretation. Post­production is the stage during which the raw material is edited into a film. Editing refers to the total process of putting a film together in a final form. In many ways, ed­iting resembles the writing stage of filmmaking. But in­stead of constructing the story out of words, the editor and director select the best shots and dialogue. They use them to lay out the film's structure and to determine its moment-to-moment shape.

Throughout the process, the editors pay close atten­tion to the rhythm and tempo of the film. They carefully choose where each shot begins and how it flows into the next shot. If necessary, the film can be reinterpreted during editing to take advantage of its strengths and to diminish its weaknesses.

Preliminary steps. The editing process begins after a sequence of important steps to prepare the camera original and the sound track for editing. The camera original is the film exposed during the production stage. First, the work print must be made by the film laborato­ries after the camera original has been processed. The work print is used during the editing to preserve the camera original from damage. The sound track must be copied onto a tape the same width as the film. Matching the size of the film and tape allows the editor to put the sound track and picture on the same machine while ed­iting.

Next, the sound must be brought into synchronous relationship with the picture. This means the sound must be placed so it exactly matches the action in the picture. For example, when an actor speaks on the film, the audience should hear his voice at the same time. On the film, an assistant editor marks the clapperboard frame where the boards close and then marks the corre­sponding clapperboard sound on the sound track. Lin­ing up this sound and the appropriate picture frame creates the synchronous relationship. The assistant edi­tor has to find and establish this synchronous relation­ship for every shot in the film. After the film and sound have been "synced up," the assistant editor makes a de­tailed written record of each shot. This written log en­ables the editors to keep track of the thousands of feet of exposed film.

The rushes. Next, the director and editor screen this raw, unedited footage, called rushes, or dailies. They discuss which shots to use and sketch out how the shots should be arranged. These screenings usually take place at the end of each day's shooting during production—an example of how the different stages of making a movie overlap. The editor, director, producers, and other crew members see the footage from scenes filmed the previ­ous day. In this way, they can check on the quality of their work. If necessary, they can adjust their approach. They can reshoot a single shot or an entire scene before leaving a location. They can also create new scenes to fill in gaps in the story they did not realize existed. Most important, they can begin the actual editing process.

The rough and fine cuts. Based on the discussions with the director and producers, the editor begins to as­semble the selected footage and put it in order. This preliminary version of the film is called the rough cut. It follows the order of the screenplay, using the shots se­lected by the director.

After the rough cut is completed, the editor screens it with the director. Based upon their response, different takes of shots may be used, and the order of scenes may be changed. Scenes that fail to add to the storytelling might be dropped. The editor makes these adjustments, which clarify and strengthen the story and refine it closer to its final shape. This version is called the fine cut.

This cut is then screened and analysed with the pro­ducers. To get a fresh opinion, friends and fellow film­makers not involved with the production are also in­vited. Adjustments are again made to improve the story and the filmmaking. The director continues to supervise cuts until he or she is satisfied, given the limitations of the budget and the post-production schedule. The pro­ducers or the studio can then take over and polish, re­vise, or completely restructure the film as they see fit

Adding music and sound effects. During the edit­ing, the composer and sound editor join the other film­makers. Some composers want to be involved from the initial planning of the film to absorb its mood and to un­derstand its development. Most composers, however, are brought in during or after the rough cut has been completed.

The composer and sound editor will screen the film with the director, identifying appropriate moments for sound effects and music. They discuss the kind of music the film calls for and the instruments that will be used in recording the music. Sometimes the discussions result in a scene being reedited. The director may decide that a passage of dialogue can be effectively replaced by music.

As the composer prepares and records the music, the sound editor adds sound effects, background noises, and additional dialogue. These sounds contribute to the character and impact of the film and strengthen the de­sired illusion. After the picture has been locked and the sound editing completed, the filmmakers take the final or frozen cut to its final production phases.

Mixing the sound. The various sounds and music are blended together onto one track during a mixing session in a dubbing theatre. Several technicians—usu­ally a dialogue mixer, a sound effects mixer, and a music mixer—sit behind a large console with many volume and sound effects controls. In front of them is a screen on which the film is projected. The director watches the film with them as the mixers follow carefully prepared charts known as cue sheets. These sheets indicate when each sound occurs in the film's sound tracks. The mixers work together under the leadership of the dialogue mixer. They adjust the relative volume and sound quality of each sound to emphasize the most important sounds.

The answer print. Once the sound has been mixed, the camera original is then edited, shot for shot, to ex­actly match the final cut of the work print. Next, the labo­ratories print a new copy on a single, continuous piece of film. They then copy the mixed sound track along the edge of this new print, creating an answer print. This version includes the film's titles and credits, as well as optical effects - such as dissolving from one shot to another—that were decided upon during the editing. The film also contains the final mixed sounds in the sound track. Small adjustments can be made at this point. By reprinting, individual shots can be made darker or lighter or their colour can be adjusted.

When the filmmakers believe their work is complete, they preview the picture for an outside audience. Based on the audience's response, whole scenes may be re- edited and reprinted. After the filmmakers are satisfied with the film's appearance, the postproduction stage is complete. The product is now ready for distribution to its audience.

As we watch a film, we are actually watching many thousands of individual still pictures called frames. Each new frame shows an image slightly different from the image in the preceding frame. When a single image is flashed upon a screen, the human eye continues to see it for one-tenth of a second after the screen has gone black. Because of this phenomenon, called persistence of vision, what we see is a continuous flow of action when in fact we are viewing a series of images flashed in rapid succession.

The camera. In principle, a film camera is like a still camera except that it takes many pictures each second.

In addition, the camera mechanism is precision- engineered to run almost noiselessly to avoid interfer­ing with sound recording.

The camera lens focuses an image, consisting of light rays, upon a single frame of unexposed film. The image boundaries are precisely defined by a rectangular open­ing called the aperture. After the frame has been ex­posed, a revolving shutter closes, temporarily shielding the aperture from further light. A metal tooth called a daw automatically engages the sprocket holes on the side of the film. The claw quickly moves the exposed frame down, pulling a fresh frame into position. While a register pin holds the unexposed frame in exact posi­tion, the shutter revolves and a burst of light exposes the new frame.

The film's stop-start movement is called intermittent motion. This cycle takes place 24 times a second for sound film. For slow-motion filming, the camera mecha­nism is run faster, For faster motion, the mechanism is run slower than 24 frames a second when filming. The images are then projected at the normal 24 frames a second.

Unexposed film is loaded into the supply chamber of a lightproof magazine, which can be rapidly mounted and removed from the camera body. After the film has

been exposed, it passes into the magazine's take-up chamber. It is then unloaded in the dark and sent to a film laboratory for processing.

The film is made of light-sensitive chemicals called emulsion coated on a flexible plastic strip called a base. Any camera can use either black-and-white or colour film. Film length is expressed in feet or metres, but the standard widths are given in millimetres.

The oldest film in current use is 35 millimetres wide. This size was originally introduced in the late 1800's, and soon became the standard width for making motion pic­tures. Almost all film shot for cinema exhibition is 35 mil­limetres wide. Film shot for television and for classroom use is 16 millimetres wide. Home movie film is 8 milli­metres wide. The wider the film, the larger the area of the frame and the greater the image's resolution (detail).

Films projected in cinemas show the largest image and thus use the largest film size. Occasionally, a filmmaker will shoot a film using 70-millimetre film, which is ex­tremely costly but produces exceptionally sharp images on the screen.

The sound track is a narrow band recorded on the side of the film image. For information on how the sound is mixed and recorded on magnetic tape before being transferred to the film, see the section How films are made. The sound track appears on the film as a pho­tographic recording that can be optically played back through a projector.

The sound is transferred from the magnetic tape to the photographic film by means of a galvanometer, an instrument that reacts to varying electric currents. At the heart of the galvanometer is a coil of wire that turns when an electric current passes through it. The direc­tion and distance that the coil turns varies according to the direction and strength of the electric current In this case, the current is produced by the magnetic sound re­cording. A wedge-shaped beam of light is projected onto a mirror attached to the coil on the galvanometer. As the coil quivers in response to the sound recording, the mirror vibrates accordingly, which in turn makes the reflection of the wedge-shaped beam tremble. This trembling beam is reflected through a slit-shaped aper­ture and onto the film. This action produces a continu­ously changing area of exposed film called a variable- area sound recording.

The projector reproduces the film sound track and throws the visual images onto a screen. Like a camera, the projector has sprockets that pull the film through its mechanism. It also uses the intermittent-motion princi­ple to hold each frame stationary during projection. Some of the earliest cameras could even be adapted to serve as projectors.

In the modern projector, a rotating shutter prevents light from reaching the film until each frame is station­ary. Then the shutter allows the bright light source to shine through the film and project the image through the focusing lens onto the screen. To minimize a flicker­ing image, the shutter produces two short flashes of light for each projected frame instead of one long one.

In a single second of film projected at 24 frames a sec­ond, there are 48 flashed images. Some projectors use a pulsing light source, which eliminates the need for a shutter.

The projector mechanism must allow for different principles of sound and film reproduction. At the point where the image is being projected onto the screen, the film is moving in the intermittent, start-and-stop fashion just described. However, sound can only be read (repro­duced) from film in continuous motion. To resolve this problem, the sound head— the device that reads the sound track—scans the film after it is past the lens and is again moving in a continuous motion. To permit the image and its matching sound to be reproduced at the same time, the sound must be recorded ahead of its

corresponding image on the film. In 35-millimetre film, for example, the sound track is advanced 21 frames ahead of its corresponding image.

To reproduce the sound, an exciter lamp sends a nar­row beam of light through the photographic sound track. The variations of the light emerging on the other side are converted into electrical impulses by a photo­electric cell. These tiny electrical impulses are then greatly amplified and fed into the cinema loudspeaker system, which converts the impulses back into sound. If a film has a stereo or quadraphonic sound track, multi­ple sound tracks are recorded on magnetic strips coated on the release print The strips are read by a pro­jector equipped with magnetic replay heads.

The screen. The typical cinema screen is made of white plastic stretched on a metal or wooden frame. The screen is coated with millions of tiny glass beads. The beads make a highly reflective surface that looks equally bright no matter where the viewer sits in the cinema. Screens differ in size, depending upon the size of the cinema in which they are used. In most countries, the trend has been toward smaller screens to fit the smaller multiple-screen cinemas that have emerged during the late 1900's.

The sound system's loudspeakers are placed behind the screen, which has thousands of small holes that allow the sound to pass through. There are 3 to 6 holes per square centimetre. The holes are too tiny to be seen by the audience, so the sound seems to come from the picture itself.

Films are big business. In the United States, for exam­ple, there are 25,000 cinema screens. In the United King­dom there are about 1,250, In China, there are more than 20,000 million cinema attendances each year, represent­ing an average of 20 visits per person per year. The in­ternational cinema is dominated by the United States, but there are flourishing film industries in many other countries, such as Australia, France, India, japan, and the United Kingdom.

The film industry is divided into three branches—pro­duction, distribution, and exhibition. From about 1915 to the late 1940's, large film studios controlled all three branches of the U.S. film industry. The studios not only made the films, they also distributed them to the cine­mas, most of which they owned.

In 1948, the Supreme Court of the United States or­dered the studios to give up their role as exhibitors. By 1953, most of the U.S. studios had sold their cinemas.

Also during the late 1940's, U.S. studios began to cur­tail their role in the production of films, partly because of economic competition from television. The studios discovered that, in most cases, they could earn more money by financing and distributing films made by inde­pendent producers.

This section deals with the distribution and exhibition branches of the film industry. For information about pro­duction see the section How films are made. This sec­tion also describes attempts by government and private organizations to censor films and the industry's own at­tempts at self-regulation. The section ends with a discus­sion of film festivals and awards.

Distribution. Distributors are responsible for adver­tising the film and delivering it to its audience in cine­mas and in homes through television and video­cassettes. Major studios serve as the distributor for most films. The remainder are handled by independent distribution companies.

Some producers are able to secure distribution be­fore the film is even made. At this early stage, distribu­tors might be interested in the film because of its star or because the film will be a sequel to a popular film. If the producers have not obtained distribution before film­ing, they usually wait until the final print of the film is made before presenting it to distributors.

The distributor charges the film's producer a fee of 30 to 50 per cent of all the money the film takes in. A new producer may have to pay a larger fee to attract a dis­tributor than does an established producer with a rec­ord of profitable films. Distributors also charge for mak­ing the copies of the film sent to the cinemas. In addition, they charge for advertising and publicizing the film. The costs of copying the film, advertising, and pub­licity come out of the first money the film takes in. The producer receives money only after these costs and the distribution fees have been deducted. The distributor can thus make a profit on a picture, while the film's pro­ducer may earn nothing.

After the producer and distributor arrange a distribu­tion deal, the distributor carefully identifies the film's au­dience. The distributor generally arranges for sneak pre­views to judge the film's effectiveness and to identify its main audience. At a sneak preview, the distributor as­sembles an audience that may be chosen for such char­acteristics as age, income level, or occupation. During the screening, the distributor's staff usually watches the audience, observing their reactions and level of enjoy­ment. Afterward, the audience may be asked to fill out information cards on their reaction to the film. They may also discuss their reaction with the distributor's staff. After reviewing the preview responses, the distributor designs the advertising campaign and decides how to release the film to cinemas most effectively. Sometimes the audience responses prompt the distributor to ask the producer to reedit or even reshoot parts of the film.

Films with a broad appeal will receive widespread distribution, perhaps opening in hundreds of cinemas on the same day. Films with more specialized audience appeal generally open in a few carefully selected cine­mas in various cities. Widespread distribution is in­tended to reach quickly the broadest possible audience. The narrower or platform approach tries to build and sustain interest in the film over a period of time with good critical reviews and word-of-mouth recommenda­tions from pleased viewers.

Most advertising campaigns are designed to make their heaviest impact for the first two or three weeks of a film's release. If the campaign attracts the right audience and these viewers enjoy the film, they will tell their friends and thus sell the film to a new audience.

A second campaign is sometimes designed to appeal to a different portion of the public. For example, the film may be an action film with a star not usually associated with action films. The first campaign might reach out to that part of the public interested in action films. The sec­ond campaign would be designed to attract that part of the public interested in seeing the star. The advertising campaign and the film's cinema release also prepare the  way for the film's release on videocassette, which has become a major market for distributors. Some films are released directly on videocassette, bypassing cinema re­lease entirely.

If the film can earn three times its budget in ticket sales during its first year of domestic release, the pro­ducers and their investors will begin to make a profit. The film will then be considered a commercial success. Other sources of revenue include foreign distribution, and sales to television.

Exhibition. Financial arrangements for exhibiting a film can be extremely complicated and may differ from film to film. In the simplest arrangement, the distributor charges an exhibitor a flat fee. More commonly, how­ever, the exhibitor pays the distributor a percentage of the weekly box-office profits (box office receipts minus cinema operating expenses), often with a certain mini­mum payment guaranteed. For example, a distributor may require a 90 per cent return on profit from an ex­hibitor during the first week's ticket sales if the film is ex­pected to be a hit. The percentage would then decline in succeeding weeks of the film's run at the cinema. Typ­ically, however, the exhibitor keeps about half of the re­ceipts from ticket sales. The flat fee or percentage the exhibitor pays the distributor is called the film's rental.

Cinema owners place bids with distributors for the films they want to exhibit. The limited number of films produced has forced exhibitors to bid higher and higher against one another for the right to rent espe­cially desirable films. To recover the ever-increasing I cost of rentals, exhibitors have raised ticket prices. The  higher prices have helped make the public more selective in its film going. Cinema audiences have generally i declined since the mid-ISS0’s, partly because of higher prices and partly because of competition from televi­sion.

Censorship and self-regulation. During the first half of the 1900's, local authorities in some countries had censorship boards that reviewed all films before they could be shown in their areas. Some civic and religious groups also had boards that advised members whether they believed a film to be offensive.

Censorship remained an important factor in the domi­nant U.S. film industry until the 1950's. Beginning in 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court made a series of decisions that by 1965 had undercut the legality of local censorship boards. Some private censorship groups still exist, but they have less influence than earlier groups had.

The film industry's efforts to regulate itself date back to 1922, when the U.S. movie studios established the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (from 1945, the Motion Picture Association of America). Until 1968 this organization reviewed film scripts before filming began, to delete or amend material that the or­ganization felt might be considered to be offensive by its audiences.

In many countries, the censorship of films is normally ¹ governed by similar rules to those restricting the publi­cation of obscene literature. As a rule, cinemas showing

films to the public must be licensed. Local government authorities decide on the suitability of films, relying on the judgement of advisory boards. These boards may re­quire cuts in a film or even refuse to allow it to be screened commercially. An example is the British Board of Film Classification, which previews all films intended for public showing in the United Kingdom. It classifies films into one of five categories. They are U, or univer­sal, meaning suitable for all age groups; PC, meaning parental guidance, in which some scenes may be unsuit­able for young children; 15 and 18, for people of not less than 15 and 18 years of age, respectively; and Re­stricted 18, for restricted showing only at cinemas to which no person under 18 is admitted, such as a li­censed cinema club.

Festivals and awards. The first major film festival was held in Venice, Italy, in 1932. Today, hundreds of festivals are held annually throughout the world. The largest and probably best-known festival is held in Cannes, France. Other important festivals take place in Venice, Berlin, London, Moscow, New York City, and San Sebastian, Spain.

The best-known film awards are made each spring by the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. These awards, called the Academy Awards, or Oscars, are presented for outstanding achievements in filmmak­ing during the preceding year. Other annual film awards include those presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Since earliest times, people have been interested in portraying things in motion. During the late 1800's, de­velopments in science helped stimulate a series of in­ventions that led to projected moving pictures on cellu­loid film. These inventions laid the foundation for a new industry and a new art form.

The first successful photographs of motion were made in 1877 and 1878 by Eadweard Muybridge, a Brit­ish photographer working in California, U.SA Muy­bridge took a series of photographs of a running horse. For his project, Muybridge set up a row of cameras (first 12, then 24) with strings attached to their shutters. When the horse ran by, it broke each string in succession, trip­ping the shutters.

The invention of moving pictures. Muybridge's feat influenced inventors in several countries to work to­ward developing devices to record and re-present mov­ing images. These inventors included Thomas Armat, Thomas Alva Edison, C. Francis Jenkins, and Woodville Latham in the United States; William Friese-Greene and Robert W. Paul in Great Britain; and the brothers Louis Jean and Auguste Lumiere and Etienne-Jules Marey in France. Through their efforts, several different types of cine cameras and projectors appeared in the mid-1890's.

Edison's company displayed the first commercial moving-picture machine at the World's Columbian Ex­position in 1893. Edison called his machine the kineto-scope. It was a cabinet showing unenlarged 35- millimetre black-and-white films running for about 90 seconds. The viewer watched through a peephole as the film moved on spools. Commercial kinetoscopes opened in a number of U.S. cities. However, they were soon replaced by projection machines that threw greatly enlarged pictures on a screen. These new ma­chines allowed many people to view a single film at the same time.

The Lumiere brothers held a public screening of pro­jected moving pictures on Dec. 28, 1895, in a cafe in Paris. Edison, adapting a projector developed by Armat, presented the first public exhibition of projected mov­ing pictures in the United States on April 23,1896, in a New York City music hall.

Early moving pictures. Film screenings soon be­came a popular entertainment. In large cities, films were shown in music halls, and in amusement arcades. Trav­elling projectionists brought the films to smaller cities and country towns. The most popular subjects included re-creations of current news events, and dramatized folk tales. The first buildings designed as cinemas, for the screening of films, opened in the late 1890's.

Films were made without recorded synchronized sound. However, exhibitors sometimes accompanied the images with music or lectures, or even used off ­screen live actors to provide dialogue. Later, printed ti­tles were inserted within the films. The titles gave dia­logue, descriptions of action, or commentary. Titles per­mitted the international circulation of films, because translated titles could easily replace the originals.

Edison's company dominated the early years of Amer­ican filmmaking through its control of patents on film- making equipment. Edwin S. Porter, who worked for Ed­ison as a director and cameraman, became a leader in shifting film production from current events toward storytelling. Porter's 1903 film, The Great Train Robbery, portrayed a train robbery and the pursuit and capture of the robbers. The 11-minute Western became a sensa­tional hit

The nickelodeon. Porter's film and the storytelling films that followed opened the way for a major break­through in the exhibition of films—the nickelodeon movie theatre. From about 1905, thousands of nickel­odeons opened, mostly in commercial areas and in the poorer areas of towns. A shop could be converted into a nickelodeon simply by adding a screen and folding chairs. Nickelodeons were cheaper than the music hall and other forms of live entertainment, and attracted a large audience to films. They laid the foundation for the growing profitability and expansion of the film industry.

The birth of Hollywood. In the early years of filmmaking, in the United States, movies were made in sev­eral major U.S. cities. But as the industry developed, filmmakers began working more and more in southern California. They were drawn by a climate suitable for

year-round outdoor shooting and by the availability of varied scenery.

By the time World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, a number of companies had established studios in and around the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. After the war ended in 1918, American movies became dominant worldwide and the name "Hollywood" came to stand for the values and style of American films.

D. W. Griffith was the most influential film director during the early years of Hollywood. Griffith pioneered many of the stylistic features and filmmaking techniques that became established as the Hollywood standard. His work brought wider appreciation to films as art and helped films attract a more educated and wealthier audi­ence.

Griffith directed hundreds of short films between 1908 and 1913, and a number of feature-length films in later years. Throughout his career, which ended about 1930, he advanced a variety of stylistic improvements. Many filmmakers before and after Griffith regarded films as filmed theatre. They placed the camera a set dis­tance from the performers, photographing the scene from a single viewpoint as a spectator would see it in a theatre. Griffith liberated camera movement. He continu­ally shifted the camera to different distances from the action. He established the close-up shot of a face, a part of a body, or an object as a basic part of film style. Using the close-up, Griffith also led his players toward an act­ing style of greater realism and psychological depth than was common at that time.

Griffith also revolutionized film editing. Instead of filming an entire scene in one shot, or a few shots, he broke up scenes into many shots, filming from different angles and distances. He extended this idea of film edit­ing to include action at different locations so that the story moved swiftly from place to place. This technique is called cross-cutting. Griffith emphasized a quicker tempo of shots, of movement from place to place, and movement within a scene. As a result, his films estab­lished a breadth, freedom, and swift pace that character­ized the treatment of time and space in many later pic­tures.

Griffith's most famous, and controversial, work was the epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). The film portrayed the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the following pe­riod of Reconstruction through the eyes of two families, one Northern and the other Southern. The film was praised as the first great American work of cinema art, but also criticized as racist for its portrayal of blacks and its sympathetic treatment of the Ku Klux Klan.

Films become big business. At about the time The Birth of a Nation was released, American film compa­nies were developing a "star system" similar to those of other performing arts, such as theatre and opera. Publi­cizing performers became the most effective means of promoting films and attracting large audiences. The first highly paid and most popular film stars included dra­matic performers Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Mary Pick- ford, cowboy actor William S. Hart, and comedian Char­lie Chaplin.

Before World War I, films made in Europe were strong competition for American movies. Mystery seri­als from France and historical epics from Italy were es­pecially popular. But during the war, European govern­ments diverted raw material from their film industries for military needs. American movie companies seized the opportunity to become the world's strongest film in­dustry. Their successes enabled producers to spend money on lavish costumes and expensive sets. The stu­dios created a sense of glamour around American film stars that appealed to audiences throughout the world.

Within the United States, competition among movie companies led the most powerful studios toward verti­cal integration. This term describes the system in which a studio owned production facilities, distribution chan­nels, and cinemas. Vertical integration gave the studios control of all three major elements of filmmaking: pro­duction, distribution, and exhibition.

Several movie companies came to dominate the industry—Columbia, Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Para­mount, RKO, United Artists, Universal, and Warner Brothers. They adopted a system in which producers su­pervised a film's development from script to post­production. Producers, who were usually businessmen rather than film artists, kept a close watch on budgets and schedules. As far as possible, all the people work­ing on the film—the director, writers, designers, crew, and cast—were drawn from the studio payroll.

f Vertical integration enabled the companies to use their studio stages efficiently and maintain a high vol­ume of production. But the system placed an even greater emphasis on film stars and familiar, repeatable genre films. A genre film is a specific type, such as a Western or a crime melodrama.

Filmmaking in Europe. While American movies re­mained popular and profitable, more demanding view­ers in the 1920's began to look to Europe for new devel­opments in film art. Moviemakers in European countries often competed against American domination of their own cinemas by developing distinctive film styles. This goal was perhaps achieved most successfully in Ger­many. There, many film directors, writers, and designers were also active in other arts, including painting and live theatre.

In subject matter, German filmmakers stressed fan­tasy and legend, and also an intense psychological real­ism not often attempted in American films. The Germans often treated themes in a style drawn from a movement in the arts called expressionism (see Expressionism). Ex­pressionist films used nonrealistic sets and unusual camera angles to represent a character's inner feelings. The most influential expressionist film was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), directed by Robert Wiene.

One artistic approach in German cinema stressed lighting and camera movement. German filmmakers cre­ated a threatening visual mood to accompany their tales of the supernatural by making scenes darker than nor­mal and by emphasizing contrasting light and shadow. A famous example is the horror film Nosferatu (1922), di­rected by Friedrich Murnau. The same director also made The Last Laugh (1924), which told its story entirely through the visual images of the camera, eliminating de­scriptive and dialogue titles.

Filmmaking made advances in Russia, too, particularly after the Bolshevik (Communist) revolution of 1917. In 1922, the Soviet Union was formed under Russia's lead­ership, and it existed until 1991. In the Soviet Union, films gained attention as an important medium for edu­cation and propaganda. Soviet filmmakers emphasized film editing, refining the montage, a technique in which many separate shots are used to create a single point.

Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein developed theories of how the arrangement of shots could create associa­tions in the mind of the audience and stimulate emo­tions and ideas (see Eisenstein, Sergei Mikhailovich). Eisenstein put his ideas into practice in such important films as The Battleship Potemkin (1925), which raised the Soviet silent cinema to equality with German films in ar­tistic prestige and influence.

The silent film classics from Germany and the Soviet Union, as well as France, Great Britain, Scandinavia, and elsewhere, were not experienced as silent by audiences. In most large cinemas, the films were accompanied by music, often prepared specifically for the film and played by a large orchestra.

In Australia, a film of the Melbourne Cup horse race was made as early as 1896. Large audiences watched the Tait brothers' The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), which ran for 1 hour 20 minutes, much longer than any other storytelling film made up to that time.

In India, the first domestic film, Raja Karischandra, was released in Bombay in 1912. Its writer and director was Dhundiraj Phacke.

The movies talk. During the 1920s, engineers in the United States and Germany were working to develop a technology that could add synchronous recorded sound to films. By the mid-1920's, a few systems were ready for demonstration.

The first sound film to create a sensation was The Jazz Singer (1927). Although silent for much of its length, in a few scenes the popular American entertainer Al Jolson sang and spoke in synchronous sound. The film used a system in which the sound from a mechanically re­corded disc was mechanically synchronized with the film strip. This system was soon replaced by one that used electronic signals to record the sound directly on the film strip. The sound-on-film system was widely used by 1929.

The coming of sound marked a turning point in the history of the cinema. Some historians claim that sound was actually a setback for the artistic development of films. The emphasis on sound, and the expense of devel­oping it, limited other technological advances that film­makers had been experimenting with in the 1920s. For instance, a wide-screen process demonstrated by the French director Abel Gance in Napoleon (1927) was not generally introduced until the 1950's. What was affected the most, perhaps, was a kind of poetic cinema repre­sented by such silent films as The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), directed by Carl Dreyer of Denmark. Such films survived more as an experimental art form than as part of mainstream commercial cinema.

With the introduction of sound, films went through an awkward period of adjustment. Cameras had to be enclosed in soundproof boxes because the micro­phones picked up motor noise. More importantly, direc­tors had to learn how best to take advantage of sound. But this adjustment period was brief. By 1931, one of Germany's leading silent film directors, Fritz Lang, had made M, a sound film that remains a masterpiece of cin­ema. In 1928, Walt Disney issued Steamboat Willie, the first animated short film to use synchronized sound. For more information about animation in films, see Anima­tion; Walt Disney.

In Hollywood, sound introduced greater changes in personnel than in film style. Sound brought with it a flood of directors, dialogue writers, and, especially, psi formers from the stage. A number of silent screen stars notably Greta Garbo and the comedy team of Stan Lau­rel and Oliver Hardy, successfully made the transition sound. However, others did not, either because of un­suitable voices or problems with what the studios con­sidered excessive salaries.

Films in the 1930's. Two important new genres in American films came from Broadway in the 1930's, the musical and the gangster picture. Both came to symbol­ize Hollywood's portrayal of America to an international cinema audience during the Great Depression that fol­lowed the stock market crash of 1929. Gangster films like The Public Enemy (1931), directed by William Well­man, and Scarface (1932), directed by Howard Hawks, dramatized the violence and disorder that accompanied the illegal manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages during the prohibition era in the United States (1919- 1933). Such musicals as Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) por­trayed a spirit of cooperation and optimism intended to combat the economic depression. The film was one of many Hollywood musicals in the 1930's that featured spectacular dance sequences created by Busby Berke­ley.

The worldwide economic decline of the 1930's had a strong impact on the film industry. Interest in sound pic­tures had nearly doubled annual cinema attendance in the late 1920's. But this fell back in the early 1930’s and many film companies lost money.

By the mid-1930’s, Hollywood again began to prosper. American film companies developed what many consider one of the greatest periods of popular entertain­ment filmmaking. During the middle and late 1930’s, Hollywood produced major hits in nearly all the familiar genres. In particular, the horror film gained new promi­nence and the sound comedy emerged as a leading film style. The horror cycle actually began in 1931 with Dracula, directed by Tod Browning, and Frankenstein, directed by James Whale.

Among the comedy films of the 1930's, perhaps the most popular type was the American screwball comedy. These films often portrayed the zany antics of well- to-do characters. One such classic comedy was it Hap­pened One Night 11934), directed by Frank Capra and starring Clark Cable and Claudette Colbert. Another was Bringing Up (1938), directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

The arrival of sound gave new emphasis to the role of language in cinema. Many countries strengthened their film industries out of national pride in their language and culture. Some countries restricted the importation of American films, in order to encourage their domestic film industry. In most countries, the dialogue of foreign films was translated into the home language. In most English speaking countries, however, such films were almost always played in their original version, with Eng­lish subtitles projected on the bottom of the film.

The leading film-producing countries of Europe dur­ing the silent era, Germany and the Soviet Union, were displaced during the first decade of sound movies by Great Britain and France. Alfred Hitchcock led the emer­gence of British cinema. He directed a number of inter­nationally successful thrillers, including The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938). In France,

Jean Renoir made a series of films during the 1930's that shrewdly observed social attitudes of the time, notably Grand Illusion (1937) and Rules of the Game (1939).

The rise of dictatorships in Germany and the Soviet Union hampered filmmaking in those countries during the 1930>s. After Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany in 1933, a number of German filmmakers went into exile. Many settled in the United States. For example, Fritz Lang began an important career as an American film di­rector with Fury (1936). Renoir went to Hollywood after the German occupation of France early in World War II (1939-1945). Hitchcock had already left Great Britain for Hollywood in 1939, though not for political reasons.

While much of Europe's film industry collapsed, and British efforts went into patriotic, semi documentary films such as Noel Coward's In Which We Serve (1942), America's prewar period closed triumphantly with two celebrated films. One was Gone with the Wind (1959), an American Civil War drama directed by Victor Fleming and starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. The other was Citizen Kane (1941). A young American director and actor named Orson Welles produced, directed, and starred in this story of a powerful American newspaper publisher. In this film, Welles and his cinematographer, Gregg Toland, experimented with startling camera angles and dramatic lighting techniques.

Films and World War II. The role of films in educa­tion and propaganda was far more appreciated during World War II than during World War I. After the United States entered the conflict, in 1941, Hollywood directors contributed to the war effort through traditional enter­tainment movies and through documentary films about the war. Fiction films like Casablanca (1943) dramatized the war struggle using the traditional screen narrative devices of a love story and individual heroism. The film, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bo­gart and Ingrid Bergman, became one of the most popu­lar films in screen history.

Postwar realism. The impact of the war led many European directors to make films that focused on soci­ety and its problems. This impulse resulted in the emer­gence of the first important postwar European film movement, neorealism.

Neorealist directors were concerned primarily with portraying the daily life of ordinary people. They mainly filmed on location rather than on a studio set, and they used mostly nonprofessional actors and actresses.

These qualities gave neorealist films a gritty, almost doc­umentary look.

Italian director Roberto Rossellini made the first inter­nationally significant neorealist films. Rossellini's Open City (1945) and Paisan (1946) told of the struggle to liber­ate wartime Italy from its own Fascist government and the later German occupation of the country. Probably the most famous of the neorealist films was The Bicycle Thieves (1948), directed by Vittorio de Sica. It follows a workman and his young son as they search for a stolen bicycle. The Italian government regarded the treatment of social problems in these films as harmful to the coun­try's image internationally and passed a law in 1949 ham­pering their export. The law effectively ended the neo­realism movement in Italy.

Thanks to the international impact of neorealism, films and filmmakers previously little known outside their home countries began to gain international recog­nition. Some of this acclaim resulted from screenings at film festivals. Japanese director Akira Kurosawa brought attention to his country's distinguished film tradition

with Rashomon (1950). The Latin-American film industry gained recognition with Los Olvidados (1950), made in Mexico by Spanish director Luis Bunuel.

Films in postwar America. In the 1950’s, the big U.S. studios declined, and, owing to the increasing popular­ity of television, attendances at cinemas steadily de­clined. There was a brief upswing in 1953 and 1954 when the industry introduced wide-screen processes such as CinemaScope and Cinerama. These processes temporarily iured the curious away from their television sets. Still, Hollywood's production volume fell from about 550 films per year before World War II to about 250 a year during the 1950's. Independent production began to take over from the studio system, though stu­dios still functioned as distributors. International co­productions became common, bringing together stars from many countries.

The art film revival. The reduction in Hollywood film production created renewed interest in art films, much as in the 1920s. Serious filmgoers sought out works by such directors as Federico Fellini of Italy and Ingmar Bergman of Sweden.

Fellini became known for such highly personal comedy-dramas as La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1957). Bergman won fame for such brooding and sym­bolic dramas as The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawber­ries (both 1957).

The New Wave in France. One place where the Hol­lywood movie remained appreciated was France. There, young film critics praised John Ford, Howard Hawks, and certain other studio directors for bringing a unique visual style and personal viewpoint to standard genre films. Under the influence of critical writings from France, the artistic qualities of Hollywood films began to be appreciated in Europe and North America more than ever before.

The chief goal of the young French critics, however, was to revive what they saw as a stuffy French film in­dustry. Leaving writing for directing, they were to be­come leaders of the French New Wave. Their impact on the filmmaking of the 1960’s was as profound as that of Italian neorealism several years earlier. Such films as The 400 Blows (1959), directed by Francois Truffaut, and Breathless (1960), directed by Jean-Luc Godard, marked the emergence of a new generation of influential film di­rectors.

The years 1959 and 1960 proved to be a key moment in cinema development. Besides the works of Truffaut and Godard, a number of other films showed that a widespread artistic revival was underway. These films included Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959), a French film directed by Alain Resnais; Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960); and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

Films in postwar Britain. British cinema became more realistic in the 1950's, which also saw the making of some of the most popular British film comedies. In the late 1940’s British cinema had been noted for the work of directors such as David Lean and Sir Carol Reed. Lean directed one of the greatest British postwar films, the romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945), as well as acclaimed screen versions of Charles Dickens' novels, such as Oliver Twist. Reed became known for several moody dramas, notably Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949). Actor Lawrence Olivier directed and starred in films of Shakespeare's Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III.

Beginning in 1959, British filmmaking was revolution­ized by a series of films that realistically examined work­ing-class life. The film that started the trend was Room at the Top (1959), directed by Jack Clayton. Important films that followed included Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), directed by Karel Reisz, and The Loneli­ness of the Long Distance Gunner (1962), directed by Tony Richardson.

Although the British film industry became increas­ingly dependent on American finance, it continued to produce some notable films, many of which were inter­national co-productions. They include Lawrence of Ara­bia and A Passage to India (1962 and 1984); both directed by David Lean); Tom Jones (1963; directed by Tony Rich­ardson); A Kind of Loving and Darling (1962 and 1965; both directed by John Schlesinger); This Sporting Life, If, and Oh, Lucky Man (1963,1968, and 1973, all directed by Lindsay Anderson); Chariots of Fire (1981; directed by Hugh Hudson); Gandhi (1982; directed by Sir Richard At­tenborough); and The Mission (1986; directed by Roland Joffe).

Films in postwar Australia. Purely Australian film- making collapsed after World War II. The few films made in Australia between 1945 and 1970, such as The Overlanders (1947), On The Seach (1959), and Wake in Fright (1969) were made by overseas companies with foreign directors.

In 1970 the federal government established the Aus­tralian Film Commission to encourage and help develop local film production. The South Australian government set up the South Australian Film Corporation, a prece­dent that was later followed by most other Australian states. Under the South Australian Film Corporation, some of the most outstanding films of the following years were made. They included Sunday Too Far Away (1974), Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Storm Boy (1977), Breaker Morant (1979), and Gallipoli (1981). The Austral­ian directors Peter Weir and Bruce Beresford won worldwide reputations in this period, as did Gillian Arm­strong with her film My Brilliant Career (1981).

Postwar Asian films. Since the late 1940s, Asian countries have produced more films yearly than have European countries and the United States combined. Hong Kong, India, japan, South Korea, and Taiwan rank among the world's leading producers.

Few Asian films were shown in the West before the late 1940's. During the 1950's and 1960's, Asian films par­ticularly those produced in India and Japan—became popular in the West.

The film industry of India achieved international atten­tion through the work of director Satyajit Ray. He be­came particularly noted for a series of three motion pic­tures describing the growth of a boy to manhood in modern India. The series, known as the Apu Trilogy, consists of Pather Panchali (1955), The Unvanquished (1957), and The World of Apu (1959). Other Indian film­makers include Mrinal Sea, Shyam Benegal, Girish Karnad, and Buddhadeb Dasgupta. Indian cinema has won a worldwide reputation, while at the same time producing many popular films for an enthusiastic Indian market. The centre of the Indian film industry is Bombay.

International films in the 1960's and 1970's. The decade of the 196ffs saw an appearance of Cinema Novo in Brazil, a movement that resembled neorealism. It at­tempted to combine political subject matter with bold cinema techniques. Such directors as Nagisa Oshima in Japan and Bernardo Bertolucci in Italy became part of the international film scene. Stanley Kubrick, an Ameri­can director working in Britain, made a number of pop­ular and influential films. The best known was Dr. Strangelove or. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). The film is a black comedy that satirizes the serious subjects of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union and the threat of nu­clear destruction. Kubrick also directed 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a science-fiction work about future space travel and humanity's self-renewal.

During the 1960's, Eastern European films made their mark on the world scene for the first time. Polish direc­tor Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water (1962) was the first major international success from Eastern Europe. Czechoslovak cinema soon captured worldwide atten­tion with a series of comic films that criticized social and political conditions. The best known included Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Firemen's BalU1967), directed by Milos Forman; and Closely Watched Trains (1966), di­rected by Jiri Menzel.

Several Eastern European filmmakers, including Po­lanski and Forman, emigrated to Hollywood, where they could pursue their craft with greater artistic freedom than they could in their own countries. Forman won the 1975 Academy Award as best director for One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest

Changes in Hollywood. Hollywood, and the U.S. film industry, did not share in the world cinema renaissance of the post-1960's era until the coming of new ways of marketing films to the public For many years, films were released in the U.SA slowly, first in a few big cities, then fanning out across the country to smaller cities and towns. In the early 1970's, the movie companies discov­ered that they might gain greater financial returns by re­leasing a film in hundreds of cities at the same time, supported by national television advertising.

The new distribution method was used experimen­tally on director Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), a much-anticipated film based on a best-selling novel about organized crime. The results were impres­sive. The Godfather earned more than 86 million U.S. dollars at the box-office, making it the most commer­cially successful film yet produced—dethroning Gene

.

with the Wind, which had reigned as box-office cham­pion for over 30 years. In addition, Coppola was the first of Hollywood's younger directors to make a major im­pact. His success helped open the door for other young filmmakers.

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas became the most successful of the new generation of U.S. filmmakers who surfaced in the 1970's. They established a remarkable record for producing and directing popular films, such as Jaws (1975), directed by Spielberg. Lucas' science- fiction film Star Wars (1977) was the first of many highly popular new films to come from Hollywood's own ad­venture, military, and science-fiction genres instead of a best-selling book.

Spielberg and Lucas succeeded with old-fashioned genre films modernized with spectacular visual effects. Lucas produced two more films in the Star Wars series, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the )edi (1983). Spielberg and Lucas teamed up to make three films that re-created the daredevil adventures of action films of the 1930^’s and 194o’s—Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). As co­producer and director, Spielberg made the first film to exceed 200 million U.S. dollars in box-office receipts,

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial {1982). The film was a sentimen­tal fantasy about an alien lost on earth.

Recent developments. Adventure films and fanta­sies were not the only types of films that revived the en­thusiasm of cinema audiences. Hit films of the late 1980's included comedies such as A Fish Called Wanda, star­ring John Cleese; The Killing Fields, about the atrocities in Cambodia; The Accused, about rape; and My Left Foot, the story of a severely handicapped writer.

The hits of the 1980's revived and transformed the film industry, particularly in the United States. Budgets soared as filmmakers combined star attraction and spe­cial effects. The gap grew wider between Hollywood's emphasis on blockbuster hits and the more modest re­sources of filmmakers from other countries. In the 1980's, as in the 1920's and 1950's, artistic developments seemed to come from outside the U.S.

In the 1980s and 1990's, however, the artistic ad­vances centred less on style and more on subject mat­ter. From Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and elsewhere, came films whose visions of history, culture, and social relations were little known to audiences in other countries. Examples include The Official Story (1985) from Argentina, and Farewell My Concubine (1993) from China. Some countries, such as Guinea- Bissau and Madagascar, produced their first films in the late 1980's. The freedom movement in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe allowed filmmakers in those countries new opportunities for cinematic expression. Polish di­rector Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours trilogy was widely acclaimed. Films throughout the world became more accessible than ever before. This availability re­sulted from the widespread popularity of videocassette technology, film courses in schools and colleges, film festivals, and screenings in museums.

Australian cinema gained international popularity with such films as Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Muriel's Wedding (1994). The Indian film industry continued to be hugely successful, concentrating mainly on musicals in Hindi for the Asian market. More serious Indian films to achieve international recognition included Satyajit Ray's last film Agantuk (The Visitor, 1991), Mira Nair's Sa­laam Bombay! (1988), and Shekhar Kupur's controversial Bandit Queen (1993).

During the 1980's and 1990's, films continued to be pulled between the two poles that have influenced their development throughout the century: the small-budget art film and the big-budget, mass-audience film. In the United States, Woody Allen was one of a minority of di­rectors working outside the mainstream. He aimed his comedies at an adult, urban audience, and achieved considerable success with such films as Annie Hall (1977), Hannah and her Sisters (1986), and Husbands and Wives (1992). Spike Lee became a leading black voice in American cinema with Do the Right Thing (1989), Jungle Fever (1991), and Malcolm X (1992).

European cinema was popular with both critics and the public. Its most successful productions were often adaptations of literary works, such as Jean-Paul Rappeneau's version of Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) from France, and Kenneth Brannagh's interpretation of Wil­liam Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1993) from the United Kingdom.

New Movies / In Theaters