Chapter 5 Personal Expression and Studio Production 169The Motion Picture Business
To consider these questions, we will organize our investigation into two key
domains. Th e fi rst inquiry is about the creation and dissemination of motion
pictures, or “Who makes motion pictures and how do we get to see them?”
In the second part, you will explore key types of motion pictures.
Th e fi rst motion pictures were produced by a handful of entrepreneurs
and artisans who were interested in the creative and economic possibilities
off ered by this nascent medium. For a number of years, the distribution of
fi lms stemmed from this relatively small number of producers who were
willing to invest in the sets, equipment, materials, and processes of cinematic
production. Th e creation of motion pictures quickly developed a rhythm
similar to industrial production, with shorts being released and distributed
continuously by such companies as Biograph in the United States and Pathé
in France. In the early years of the cinema, the creation of many of the shorts
followed an assembly-line mentality—produce them as quickly and as cheaply
as possible—and with the technical limitations of the early cinema, creative
innovation was severely hampered.
Th e diffi culty in establishing strong storytelling is very obvious when we
watch movies from the fi rst decade of the twentieth century. Many movies
appear so fl at and stagy, with fi gures that look like they are stuck in a shoebox!
However, as we learned earlier, certain fi lmmakers devised imaginative
solutions in order to use the camera as a tool for actively establishing visual
narrative. Th rough simple but important innovations in camera perspectiveFigure 5-2 Studio
productions helped to
bring more spectacular
visuals and enhanced
camera perspectives for
fi lmmakers, as seen in this
large Roman set on the back
lot of Paragon studios in New
Jersey in 1917, (Courtesy Fort
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