Movie Production Companies
United States
See also: Cinema of the United States
Hollywood, California is the primary nexus of the U.S. film industry.
However, four of the major film studios are owned by East Coast companies.
Only The Walt Disney Company and owner of Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone
Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Films, and the Pixar Animation
Studios) is actually headquartered in Southern California. The same can be
said for Sony Pictures which is headquartered in Culver City, CA. Although
the corporate side of Sony Pictures is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.
Networking
Networking and establishing strong
relationships are a vital part of Hollywood. The town is scattered with
talented artists who do not possess the means to pitch their ideas or
acquire representation. Reading the trades, Hollywood jargon for reading
Daily Variety or The Hollywood Reporter, and joining a networking group or
tracking board are ways to stay on top of the job market as well as the
project market. This helps them take advantage of knowledge spillover.
India
See also: Cinema of India
The Indian film industry is multi-lingual and the largest in the world (1200
movies released in 2002).[citation needed] The industry is supported mainly
by a vast film-going Indian public (the largest in the world in terms of
annual ticket sales), and Indian films have been gaining increasing
popularity in the rest of the world — notably in countries with large
numbers of expatriate Indians. One third of the India's film industry is
mostly concentrated in Mumbai (Bombay), and is commonly referred to as "Bollywood"
as an amalgamation of Bombay and Hollywood. The remaining majority portion
is spread across south India (in Telugu,Kannada and Tamil speaking areas).
However, there are several smaller centers of Indian film industries in
regional languages (Apart from Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam) centered
in the states those languages are spoken. Indian films are made filled with
action, romance, comedy, dance and an increasing number of special effects.
China
See also: Cinema of Hong Kong
Hong Kong, China is a filmmaking hub for the Chinese-speaking world
(including the worldwide diaspora) and East Asia in general. For decades it
was the third largest motion picture industry in the world (after Indian and
Hollywood) and the second largest exporter.[citation needed] Despite an
industry crisis starting in the mid-'90s and Hong Kong's return to Chinese
sovereignty in July 1997, Hong Kong film has retained much of its
distinctive identity and continues to play a prominent part on the world
cinema stage.
Unlike many film industries, Hong Kong has enjoyed little to no direct
government support, through either subsidies or import quotas. It has always
been a thoroughly commercial cinema, concentrating on crowd-pleasing genres,
like comedy and action, and heavily reliant on formulas, sequels and
remakes. Typically of commercial cinemas, its heart is a highly developed
star system, which in this case also features substantial overlap with the
pop music industry.
Nigeria
See also: Cinema of Nigeria
Also known as "Nollywood".
Nigeria was ushered into modern film making by a film known as Living in
Bondage, which featured Kenneth Okonwo, Kanayo. O. Kanayo, Bob Manuel Udokwu,
Francis Agu, Ngozi Nwosu, Nnena Nwabueze, etc. This movie, which hit the
market in 1992, marked a turning point in the Nigerian Movie Industry and
heralded the trend in modern day movie making in Nigeria.
The movie capital of the country was in Lagos. However, over the years,
there has been a shift from Lagos to Enugu, in the eastern part of the
country. This shift is said to be championed by Pete Edochie - a veteran in
the communications industry who turned an actor and has become one of the
most successful in Nigeria.
Now, with the launching of TINAPA Studios in Cross River State of Nigeria,
we expect yet another shift in the regular base of the movie industry in
Nigeria, considering the attractive ultra modern facilities, and beautiful
scenery and location of Calabar, the capital of Cross Rivers.
The movie industry in Nigeria would not be complete without a mention of
those behind the movies. Not the actors this time, but the sponsors or
producers who are mostly based in Onitsha, the commercial capital of Anambra
State, of Nigeria.
Cameroon
The film industry in Cameroon is still
developing with a few films produced here and there. This delay in the
taking off of the Cameroonian film industry, as opposed to other African
countries, is due principally to lack of finance and film schools to train
the personnel that can pilot the growth of the industry. The modern
Cameroonian film industry started slowly about 1995 with the production of
the first Cameroonian home video on VHS, Love Has Eyes by Mfuh Ebeneser.
Other Cameroonian productions include: Potent Secrets, Last of the Serpents,
Heaven Forbids, Peace Offering, Wendy, Blues Kingdom, Public Order, Sweetest
Bitterness, Paris at all Cost, & most recently, The Good Mother of Abangoh
([1]). Having been in the film industry for about 14 years since the
production of Love Has Eyes, and identifying that lack of trained personnel
(besides finance) is the main reason why the film industry is not taking
off, Mfuh Ebeneser has created a film academy accredited by Cameroon's
Ministry of Employment and Vocational training with the support of the
ministry of culture. The academy called KM Professional Film Academy, is the
first of its kind in Cameroon.
History
The first feature film ever made was that of
The Story of the Kelly Gang, an Australian film based on the infamous Kelly
Gang. In 1906 Dan Barry and Charles Tait of Melbourne produced and directed
The Story of the Kelly Gang, a silent film that ran continuously for a
breathtaking 80 minutes. It wasn’t until 1911 that countries other than
Australia began to make feature films. By this time Australia had made 16
full length feature films.
In the early 1900s, in the earliest years of the industry, motion picture
production companies from New York and New Jersey started moving to
California because of the good weather and longer days. Although electric
lights existed at that time, none were powerful enough to adequately expose
film; the best source of illumination for movie production was natural
sunlight. Besides the moderate, dry climate, they were also drawn to the
state because of its open spaces and wide variety of natural scenery.
Another reason was the distance of Southern California from New Jersey,
which made it more difficult for Thomas Edison to enforce his motion picture
patents. At the time, Edison owned almost all the patents relevant to motion
picture production and, in the East, movie producers acting independently of
Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by
Edison and his agents. Thus, movie makers working on the West Coast could
work independent of Edison's control. If he sent agents to California, word
would usually reach Los Angeles before the agents did and the movie makers
could escape to nearby Mexico.
Hollywood
The first movie studio in the Hollywood area,
Nestor Studios, was founded in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley in an
old building on the northwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street.
In the same year, another fifteen Independents settled in Hollywood.
Hollywood came to be so strongly associated with the film industry that the
word "Hollywood" came to be used colloquially to refer to the entire
industry.
In 1913, Cecil B. DeMille, in association with Jesse Lasky, leased a barn
with studio facilities on the southeast corner of Selma and Vine Streets
from the Burns and Revier Studio and Laboratory, which had been established
there. DeMille then began production of The Squaw Man (1914). It became
known as the Lasky-DeMille Barn and is currently the location of the
Hollywood Heritage Museum.
The Charlie Chaplin Studios, on the northeast corner of La Brea and De
Longpre Avenues just south of Sunset Boulevard, was built in 1917. It has
had many owners after 1953, including Kling Studios, who produced the
Superman TV series with George Reeves; Red Skelton, who used the sound
stages for his CBS TV variety show; and CBS, who filmed the TV series Perry
Mason with Raymond Burr there. It has also been owned by Herb Alpert's A&M
Records and Tijuana Brass Enterprises. It is currently The Jim Henson
Company, home of the Muppets. In 1969, The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage
Board named the studio a historical cultural monument. More about
Movie Production Companies.
The famous Hollywood sign originally read "Hollywoodland." It was erected in
1923 to advertise a new housing development in the hills above Hollywood.
For several years the sign was left to deteriorate. In 1949, the Hollywood
Chamber of Commerce stepped in and offered to remove the last four letters
and repair the rest.
The sign, located at the top of Mount Lee, is now a registered trademark and
cannot be used without the permission of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce,
which also manages the venerable Walk of Fame.
The Hollywood Sign as it appears today. The first Academy Awards
presentation ceremony took place on May 16, 1929 during a banquet held in
the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard.
Tickets were USD $10.00 and there were 250 people in attendance.
From about 1930, five major Hollywood movie studios from all over the Los
Angeles area, Paramount, RKO, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and
Warner Bros., owned large, grand theaters throughout the country for the
exhibition of their movies. The period between the years 1927 (the effective
end of the silent era) to 1948 is considered the age of the "Hollywood
studio system", or, in a more common term, the Golden Age of Hollywood. In a
landmark 1948 court decision, the Supreme Court ruled that movie studios
could not own theaters and play only the movies of their studio and movie
stars, thus an era of Hollywood history had unofficially ended. By the
mid-1950s, when television proved a profitable enterprise that was here to
stay, movie studios started also being used for the production of
programming in that medium, which is still the norm today.
The film industry
consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking:
i.e.
film production companies,
film studios, "Movie Production Companies",
cinematography,
film production,
screenwriting,
pre-production,
post production,
film festivals,
distribution; and actors,
film directors and other film
personnel.