1920s Film Industry Essay

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The 1920s was a time of the great success and thrive of the film industry. It was the beginning of the studio era, as the main eight studios emerged (The Big Five: Warner Brother Pictures, Metro Golden Meyer, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, RKO; The Little Three: United Artists, Universal, Columbia Picture). Especially in 1920s the market started to grow rapidly. First of all it was because of technology progress, (such as the ability to create longer movies; starting from 1910s there were experiments for sound creation), growing interest from the audience and growing popularity of actors. Also one of the main reasons was commercial side, as lots of people saw a great opportunity to raise money from the film making.
The film industry started to develop as a vertically integrated system. It means that the whole production of the movie was occurred within one studio, which owned production facilities, created the films, had actors and producers signed to contracts, owned distribution channels and owned cinemas. The Big Five belonged to this type of system. On the contrary to vertically integrated system was The Little Three. Universal and Columbia Pictures had their own studios and distribution networks. Different and unique from the rest was United Artists, as it was only a distribution company. It originality was also because of its founders, who were four stars of that time – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. The studio was founded in 1919 with 20% stake for each founder, including the lawyer W.G. McAdoo. The managing director was Hiram Abrams. The reason for the creation of their own studio was the result of a dictatorial handling with the artists and producers. The big studios, owned by commercia...

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...the changes that were made could give a guarantee for the long-time prosperity. Schenck made a huge work, which could not be made by the founders, but these improvements were largely associated with the industry as a whole. Managerial changes of the firm tightened the inside control and helped to pursue new goals. However, technology was moving forward as well as the taste and the demand of the public. In such circumstances the right management of the company was no longer enough. The company had to adapt to the rapidly changing industry and be able to compete with other big players.
This was proved by the history of the studio. After a successful 1950s and 1960s, which was the result of the Paramount Case and numerous successful pictures, the company began to experience crisis and in 1980 was bought and merged with MGM, as J.M. Schenck first proposed 60 years ago.

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