Animation in Hollywood - Walt Disney & Warner Bros
In 1923, a studio called Laugh-O-Grams went bankrupt and its owner, Walt Disney, opened a new studio in Los Angeles. Disney's first project was the Alice Comedies series, which featured a live action girl interacting with numerous cartoon characters. Disney's first notable breakthrough was 1928's Steamboat Willie, the third of the Mickey Mouse series. It was the first cartoon that included a fully post-produced soundtrack, featuring voice and sound effects printed on the film itself ("sound-on-film"). The short film showed an anthropomorphic mouse named Mickey neglecting his work on a steamboat to instead make music using the animals aboard the boat.
In 1930, Warner Brothers Cartoons were founded. While Disney's studio was known for its releases being strictly controlled by Walt Disney himself, Warner brothers allowed its animators more freedom, which allowed for their animators to develop more recognizable personal styles.
The first animation to use the full, three-color Technicolor method was Flowers and Trees, made in 1932 by Disney Studios, which won an Academy Award for the work. Color animation soon became the industry standard, and in 1934, Warner Brothers released Honeymoon Hotel of the Merry Melodies series, their first color films. Meanwhile, Disney had realized that the success of animated films depended upon telling emotionally gripping stories; he developed an innovation called a "story department" where storyboard artists separate from the animators would focus on story development alone, which proved its worth when the Disney studio released in 1933 the first-ever animated short to feature well-developed characters, Three Little Pigs. In 1935, Tex Avery released his first film with Warner Brothers. Avery's style was notably fast paced, violent, and satirical, with a slapstick sensibility—while Disney's was more sugar-coated and marketed towards children.
Snow transparent and the Seven Dwarfs
Many consider Walt Disney's 1937 Snow transparent and the Seven Dwarfs the first animated feature film, though at least seven films were released earlier. However, Disney's film was the first one completely made using hand-drawn animation. The previous seven films, of which only four survive, were made using cutout, silhouette or stop motion, except for one—also made by Disney seven months prior to Snow transparent's release—Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons. This was an anthology film to promote the upcoming release of Snow transparent. However, many do not consider this a genuine feature film because it is a anthology film. In addition, at approximately 41 minutes, the film does not seem to fulfill today's expectations for a feature film. However, the official BFI, AMPAS and AFI definitions of a feature film require that it be over 40 minutes long, which, in theory, should make it the first animated feature film using traditional animation.
But as Snow transparent was also the first one to become successful and well-known within the English-speaking world, people tend to disregard the seven films. Following Snow transparent's release, Disney began to focus much of its productive force on feature length films. Though Disney did continue to produce shorts throughout the century, Warner Brothers continued to focus on shorts.
25 must see Hollywood films
Unable to procure the rights to Flash Gordon, George Lucas serves up his own homage to the Saturday-morning adventure serials he loved as a kid; somehow managing to create possibly the most revered and successful film series ever in the process.
2. THE GODFATHER (1972), THE GODFATHER PART II (1974)
Coppola's epic, operatic, bullet-ridden saga of a Mafia family at war with itself and its rivals. Murder, betrayal, ambition: it's all here, and utterly compelling, with Brando at his scene-stealing best.
3. THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994)
Mugged at the Oscars by Forrest Gump, this irresistible prison drama promotes the unquenchable human spirit with an intelligence that the gooey Gump readily sacrificed.
4. PULP FICTION (1994)
Tarantino, the boy wonder pushed his storytelling powers to their limits to make this film every bit as BIG as the widescreen 70s hits that inspired him. An instant classic.
5. SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
Wilder and Diamond's script crackles with ideas and gags, and the performances are uniformly assured, with Curtis's triple characterization in particular a revelation. Monroe was reputedly at her worst on set, fluffing take after take, but whatever was necessary to achieve this brilliantly sustained gem was worth it.
6. GLADIATOR (2000)
Ridley Scott revives the Roman epic with computer generated imagery and a mighty performance from Russell Crowe. Not to mention the last stand of the late Oliver Reed.
7. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)
Capra's Christmas perennial is a lot darker than its status as prime festive schedule-filler would suggest. That's not to say it will have you hiding behind the sofa but, for a film that deals with missed opportunities and one man's dark night of the soul, it is all the more impressive it has garnered a feel-good reputation.
8. BLADE RUNNER (1982)
Dystopian thriller Blade Runner remains the most influential sci-fi masterpiece of modern cinema, notably for its immaculate visualisations of retro-futuristic urban decay.
9. SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993)
A heart-rending and redemptive Holocaust story, this Oscar-grabbing epic added to Spielberg's directorial credibility, showing he could handle controversial, sophisticated stories with real sensitivity.
10. GOODFELLAS (1990)
"As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster," Henry Hill opens his true story of 30 years in the mob in Scorsese's epic.
11. PSYCHO (1960)
The music, the setting, the shower scene, the mother in the cellar... everything about this iconic film has passed into cinema history. A genuine virtuoso classic and the grandaddy of all slashers.
12. JAWS (1975)
It left a generation of schoolkids afraid to go into a swimming pool, let alone back into the water. Wunderkind Spielberg's story is all the scarier for hardly ever showing the Great transparent that is most of the characters' nemesis.
13. APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)
Martin Sheen journeys through Vietnam and Cambodia to terminate flipped-out renegade US colonel Marlon Brando. But his mission becomes a screaming trip into madness, stunningly realised by Coppola's hallucinogenic direction and a cast dragged from Hollywood's Narcotics Anonymous.
14. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)
Jack Nicholson excels in this multi-Oscar winning, anti-authoritarian tale, the last of the great counter-culture Hollywood movies.
15. THE MATRIX (1999)
The Wachowski brothers' ground breaking, morphing and shattering sci-fi spectacular. Featuring Keanu Reeves and kung fu like you've never seen it before.
16. CASABLANCA (1942)
With nearly every line of its script engraved on the collective subconscious, and its central performances of Bogart and Bergman defining iconic cool, Casablanca is an exultant classic. "Here's looking at you, kid".
17. THE USUAL SUSPECTS (1995)
One of the outstanding thrillers of the 90s boasts a screenplay that is both bewildering and utterly, brilliantly logical. A film that immediately makes you question what you have just seen and whether it can really have been as good as you think.
18. CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000)
A highpoint of martial arts cinema from Ang Lee no less, which blends the latest fight effects into a 19th century China epic of love and valour. Swashbuckling on the grandest of scales, with Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh.
19. CITIZEN KANE (1941)
The world's most acclaimed film, too often on the top ten lists with critics flexing their reflexes rather than their minds. Even so, it is mesmerising and the young Welles threw down a challenge to Hollywood from which neither fully recovered. A masterpiece.
20. RAGING BULL (1980)
A genuine moment of cinematic genius. The physical and emotional punches come so thick and fast, you have to check yourself for bruises.
21. ET: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)
Before the likes of Independence Day and Evolution, there was a time when movie aliens were cute and nice and only wanted to be our friends. Essential Spielberg.
22. TAXI DRIVER (1976)
Stone-cold classic. Robert De Niro is electrifying as the Vietnam-scarred taxi driver with a frightening take on the justice system.
23. LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)
History is rewritten and sacred cows are merrily sacrificed as the Python team unleash their alternative take on certain well-known events from 2,000 years ago.
24. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)
Gloriously exuberant and abidingly popular musical from the 1950s heyday. Stanley Donen's film sets the Gene Kelly/Debbie Reynolds romance against the fascinating backdrop of the coming of sound in movies.
25. LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997)
Brilliant adaptation of James Ellroy's detective novel about three cops facing corrupt businessmen, sleazy journalists and assorted trash in 50s LA.
Golden Age - part 3
Throughout the early 1930s, risque films and salacious advertising, became widespread in the short period known as Pre-Code Hollywood. MGM dominated the industry and had the top stars in Hollywood, and was also credited for creating the Hollywood star system altogether. MGM stars included at various times "King of Hollywood" Clark Gable, Joan Fontaine, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Gary Cooper, Mary Pickford, Carmen Miranda, Henry Fonda, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, James Stewart, Doris Day,Frank Sinatra, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Vivien Leigh, Grace Kelly, Gene Kelly, Gloria Stuart, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, John Wayne, Mickey Rooney, Barbara Stanwyck, John Barrymore,Audrey Hepburn and Buster Keaton . Another great achievement of American cinema during this era came through Walt Disney's animation. In 1937, Disney created the most successful film of its time,Snow transparent and the Seven Dwarfs .Many film historians have remarked upon the many great works of cinema that emerged from this period of highly regimented film-making. One reason this was possible is that, with so many films being made, not every one had to be a big hit. A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively unknown actors: Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles and often regarded as the greatest film of all time, fits that description. In other cases, strong-willed directors like Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and Frank Capra battled the studios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again,Young Mr. Lincoln, Wuthering Heights, Only Angels Have Wings, Ninotchka, Babes in Arms, Gunga Din, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and The Roaring Twenties. Among the other films from the golden age period that are now considered to be classics: Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood, It's a Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night, King Kong, Citizen Kane, Swing Time, Some Like It Hot, A Night at the Opera, All About Eve, Mildred Pierce, The Maltese Falcon, The Searchers, Breakfast At Tiffany's, North by Northwest, Dinner at Eight, Rebel Without a Cause, Rear Window, Double Indemnity,Mutiny on the Bounty, City Lights, Red River, Suspicion, The Manchurian Candidate, Bringing Up Baby, Singin' in the Rain, To Have and Have Not, Roman Holiday, Giant, Jezebel, A Streetcar Named Desire, and On the Waterfront.
Golden Age - -part 2
RKO formed in response to the monopoly Western Electric's ERPI had over sound in films as well, and began to use sound in films through their own method known as Photophone . Paramount, who already acquired Balaban and Katz in 1926, would answer to the success of Warner Bros. and RKO, and buy a number of theaters in the late 1920s as well, before making their final purchase in 1929, through acquiring all the individual theaters belonging to the Cooperative Box Office, located in Detroit, and dominate the Detroit theaters.
However, filmmaking was still a business and motion picture companies made money by operating under the studio system. The major studios kept thousands of people on salary—actors, producers, directors, writers, stunt men, craftspersons and technicians. And they owned hundreds of theaters in cities and towns across America, theaters that showed their films and that were always in need of fresh material. In 1930, MPDDA President Will Hays also founded the Hays (Production) Code, which followed censorship guidelines and went into effect after government threats of censorship expanded by 1930. However the code was never enforced until 1934, after the new Catholic Church organization The Legion of Decency—appalled by Mae West's very successful sexual appearances in She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel —threatened a boycott of motion pictures if it did not go into effect , and those that didn't obtain a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration had to pay a $25,000 fine and could not profit in the theaters, as the MPDDA owned every theater in the country through the Big Five studios .
Golden Age - part 1
During the golden age of Hollywood, which lasted from the end of the silent era in American cinema in the late 1920s to the early 1960s, films were prolifically issued by the Hollywood studios. The start of the golden age was arguably when The Jazz Singer was released in 1927 and increased box-office profits for films as sound was introduced to feature films. Most Hollywood pictures adhered closely to a genre—Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated cartoon, biopic (biographical picture)—and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For instance, Cedric Gibbons andHerbert Stothart always worked on MGM films, Alfred Newman worked at Twentieth Century Fox for twenty years, Cecil B. DeMille's films were almost all made at Paramount, director Henry King's films were mostly made for Twentieth-Century Fox, etc.
After The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, Warner Brothers gained huge success and was able to acquire its own string of movie theatres, after purchasing Stanley Theatres and First National Productions in 1928; MGM had also owned a string of theatres since forming in 1924, known as Loews Theatres, and the Fox film Corporation owned the Fox Theatre strings as well. Also, RKO, another company that owned theatres, had formed in 1928 from a merger between Keith-Orpheum Theaters and the Radio Corporation of America.
Holllywood Cinema as described by wikipedia
Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designate both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between 1927 and 1963. This period is often referred to as the "golden age of Hollywood". An identifiable cinematic form emerged during this period called classical Hollywood style.
Classical style is fundamentally built on the principle of continuity editing or "invisible" style. That is, the camera and the sound recording should never call attention to themselves (as they might in films from earlier periods, other countries or in a modernist or postmodernist work).
courtesy - wikipedia
Hollywood - a district in central region of Los Angeles
Hollywood was a small community in 1870 and was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It officially merged with the city of Los Angeles in 1910, and soon thereafter a prominent film industry began to emerge, eventually becoming the most dominant and recognized in the world.
courtesy - wikipedia
