This book explores why word of mouth is the most important determinant of a movie's success. Beginning with a discussion of the enduring appeal of movies, and why the box office has survived the disruption of television and will likely survive the disruption of streaming services, Owen Eagan goes on to discuss the unpredictable nature of movies and ways to mitigate their risk. His astute analysis sheds light on the role of film festivals, film critics, Oscar campaigns, and word of mouth in influencing a film's success. Eagan concludes with a summary of why word of mouth is the most influential among all the variables that affect a film's outcome. Expertly synthesizing quantitative analyses of box office data with illuminating insights from industry experts, this concise and engaging book presents findings with important implications for scholars, industry insiders and marketing professionals alike.

"The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry" is a collection of essays by leading scholars that examines the state of the U.S. film industry, from the l980s to present day.
Includes important discussions of the industry's labour and star systems, as well as intellectual property and state relations
Considers the role of independent producers, the global marketplace for Hollywood product, corporate changes, and various new media windows, including video, DVD to cable, satellite, and online channels of delivery
Brings together an international team of leading film scholars
Offers a balanced and fresh approach to this important contemporary period in Hollywood

This book gives a panoramic view of the rise and growth of Nollywood, Nigeria's movie and home video entertainment industry, into the second largest and most prolific movie-producing industry in the world. It offers an analysis of Nollywood's influence as a local and global cultural force. Scholars from Africa, the African Diaspora and beyond examine the factors that have shaped Nollywood's unique story-telling, production, and distribution system. The volume shows how internal and external economic, social, cultural and technological changes intersect to define Nollywood's film-making and entertainment ethos. It is grounded in sound theoretical perspectives that help readers understand the texts and subtexts of the industry's emergence, transformation, and impact. The range of subjects covered span Nollywood's historical roots in Nigeria pre-colonial traveling/community theatre to colonial era film-making, and its contemporary spin-offs and inspired cousins across Africa and in Europe. It illuminates the interface of artistic, business, cultural and technological innovation and creativity at the heart of Africa's local and global pop culture explosion.

As World War II wound down in 1945 and the Cold War heated up, the skilled trades that made up the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) began a tumultuous strike at the major Hollywood studios. This turmoil escalated further when the studios retaliated by locking out CSU in 1946. This labor unrest unleashed a fury of Red-baiting that allowed studio moguls to crush the union and seize control of the production process, with far-reaching consequences.

This engrossing book probes the motives and actions of all the players -- union activists, studio heads, mobsters, film stars, and Communist organizers -- to reveal the full story of the CSU strike and the resulting lockout of 1946. Gerald Horne draws extensively on primary materials and oral histories to document how limited a "threat" the Communist party actually posed in Hollywood, even as studio moguls successfully used the Red scare to undermine union clout, prevent film stars from supporting labor, and prove the moguls' own patriotism. Horne also discloses that, unnoticed amid the turmoil, organized crime entrenched itself in management and labor, gaining considerable control over both the "product" and the profits of Hollywood.

This research demonstrates that the CSU strike and lockout were a pivotal moment in Hollywood history, with vital consequences for everything from production values, to the kinds of stories told in films, to permanent shifts in the centers of power. Because this story has never been completely told before, this book will be important and fascinating reading for everyone interested in Hollywood filmmaking, labor and Cold War history, American cultural studies, southern California history, and Jewish studies.

The expert contributors together trace how the arts of editingand effects have evolved in tandem, starting with the 'trick films'of the early silent era, which astounded audiences by splicingin or editing out key frames, all the way to today's cutting-edgeeffects technologies. Multiple filmmaking techniques are exploredthroughout, from classic Hollywood's rear projection and matteshots to the fast cuts and wall-to-wall CGI of the contemporaryblockbuster. The book introduces readers to the analog and digitaltools used in these crafts, showing the impact of changes in the filmindustry itself.

If in doubt fall on your arse. That was the mantra of Fred Karno: acrobat, comedian, writer, music hall impresario, film producer and the undisputed king of slapstick. From his famous nursery of nonsense, the 'Fun Factory', the Guv'nor conquered the world, built an empire, made millions and lost the lot. In the process he discovered and trained the early twentieth century's greatest comedians: Will Hay, Robb Wilton, Sandy Powell, Syd Walker, Frank Randle, Max Miller, Billy Bennett, the Crazy Gang, and most significantly of all Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin. He pioneer physical sketch comedy and developed the raw material that Hollywood later fashioned into the finest comics of silent film. The phrase 'It's like Fred Karno's Army' entered the lexicon to describe any chaotic situation, but his extraordinary legacy is largely forgotten, lost in the mists of time and sullied by a tarnished personal reputation. This book tells the remarkable story of the man behind the myth and reveals Karno's huge contribution to comedy and popular culture - an impact which still resonates today.

This book offers an industrial, economic and aesthetic history of the early years of the British film industry from 1899-1911, through a case study of one of the most celebrated pioneer film makers, Cecil Hepworth. Presenting a picture of daily life in his film studio, an analysis of Hepworth's films is offered including the development of their content, production methods and marketing in this formative period. The early twentieth century saw British film production develop from a cottage industry of artisans to a multi-modal complex economic system with a global reach. Changes in the nature of exhibition and distribution caused a major crisis in the years 1908-1911, whereby Britain lost its status as a world leader in film making. Existing histories of this period lay this crisis at the feet of pioneers like Hepworth, whose perceived inability to improve the quality of film production led to stagnation. Brown attempts to challenge this assumption by analysing Hepworth's development of production methods as well as his strategies towards sales in the market to demonstrate the impact on the modernisation of the film industry.

Examines how Hollywood responded to and reflected the political and social changes that America experienced during the 1930sIn the popular imagination, 1930s Hollywood was a dream factory producing escapist movies to distract the American people from the greatest economic crisis in their nation's history. But while many films of the period conform to this stereotype, there were a significant number that promoted a message, either explicitly or implicitly, in support of the political, social and economic change broadly associated with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programme. At the same time, Hollywood was in the forefront of challenging traditional gender roles, both in terms of movie representations of women and the role of women within the studio system. With case studies of actors like Shirley Temple, Cary Grant and Fred Astaire, as well as a selection of films that reflect politics and society in the Depression decade, this fascinating book examines how the challenges of the Great Depression impacted on Hollywood and how it responded to them.Topics covered include:How Hollywood offered positive representations of working womenCongressional investigations of big-studio monopolization over movie distributionHow three different types of musical genres related in different ways to the Great Depression the Warner Bros Great Depression Musicals of 1933, the Astaire/Rogers movies, and the MGM 'kids' musicals of the late 1930sThe problems of independent production exemplified in King Vidor's 'Our Daily Bread'Cary Grant's success in developing a debonair screen persona amid Depression conditionsContributors Harvey G. Cohen, King s College LondonPhilip John Davies, British LibraryDavid Eldridge, University of HullPeter William Evans, Queen Mary, University of LondonMark Glancy, Queen Mary University of LondonIna Rae Hark, University of South CarolinaIwan Morgan, University College LondonBrian Neve, University of BathIan Scott, University of ManchesterAnna Siomopoulos, Bentley UniversityJ. E. Smyth, University of WarwickMelvyn Stokes, University College LondonMark Wheeler, London Metropolitan University

This book is about how to work with people in the film industry, about who they are, what they do, and what they need. Most importantly for the reader, it is also about how to become one of them. Need to know who the real players are and how to network with them? Or, ten ways to keep a script out of the trash? This book offers the reader rare advice on how to anticipate and navigate both, the business and politics of the film business. With a down-to-earth, tell it like it is approach, the author offers insight through relatable, real-world experience and one- on-one interviews with working professionals who are already at the top of their game. Having an insider's understanding of the entire filmmaking process from start to finish, fundraising to distribution, is imperative to finding success in the industry.

"Reel Racism: Confronting Hollywood's Construction of Afro-American Culture "goes beyond reflection theories of the media to examine cinema's active participation in the operations of racism --a complex process rooted in the dynamics of representation. Written for undergraduates and graduate students of film studies and philosophy, Reel Racism focuses on methods and frameworks that analyze films for their production of meaning and how those meanings participate in a broader process of justifying, naturalizing, or legitimizing difference, privilege, and violence based on race. In addition to analyzing how the process of racism is articulated in specific films, Reel Racism examines how specific meanings can resist their function of ideological containment, and instead, offer a perspective of a more collective, egalitarian social system-- one that transcends the discourse of race.

Regarded as the undisputed Bible of the movie industry, Ephraim Katz's "The Film Encyclopedia" is the most comprehensive one-volume encyclopedia on film available. This all new seventh edition includes up-to-date additions, and features more than 8,000 A-Z entries on the artistic, technical, and commercial aspects of moviemaking, including: directors, producers, stars, screenwriters, and cinematographers, styles, genres, and schools of filmmaking, motion picture studios and film centers; film-related organizations and events; industry jargon and technical terms; inventions, inventors, and equipment; and, an index of Academy Award winning films and artists, top grossing films, and much, much more. The editors have updated every single page, giving more thorough coverage to independent films, and adding new entries for all the latest stars and trends, from Sofia Coppola (director, "Lost in Translation" and "The Virgin Suicides") to Johnny Depp (Oscar nomination for "Pirates of the Caribbean") to "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy ("Return of the King" won a record-tying eleven Oscars). With the abundance of movies available through standard and electronic channels, this is the essential sourcebook every film buff, student, aspiring artist, and armchair movie lover needs.

Where is the place of the voice in film? Where others have focused on Hollywood film, this volume aims to extend the field to other cinemas from around the world, encompassing Latin America, Asia and Africa amongst others. Traditional theoretical accounts, based on classical narrative cinema, examine the importance of the voice in terms of a desired perfect match between visuals and sonic effects. But, as the chapters of this volume illustrate, what is normative in one film industry may not apply in another. The widespread practices of dubbing, postsynch sound and "playback singing" in some countries, for instance, provide an alternative means of understanding the location of the voice in the soundtrack. Through seventeen original chapters, this volume situates the voice in film across a range of diverse national, transnational and cultural contexts, presenting readings which challenge traditional readings of the voice in film in exciting new ways. By taking a comparative view, this volume posits that the voice may be best understood as a mobile object, one whose trajectory follows a broader network of global flows. The various chapters explore the cultural transformations the voice undergoes as it moves from one industry to another. In doing so, the volume addresses sound practices which have been long been neglected, such as dubbing and non-synch sound, as well the ways in which sound technologies have shaped nationally specific styles of vocal performance. In addressing the place of the voice in film, the book intends to nuance existing theoretical writing on the voice while applying these critical insights in a global context.

"On Story is film school in a box, a lifetime's worth of filmmaking knowledge squeezed into half-hour packages." -Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times Austin Film Festival (AFF) is the first organization focused on the writer's creative contribution to film. Its annual Film Festival and Conference offers screenings, panels, workshops, and roundtable discussions that help new writers and filmmakers connect with mentors and gain advice and insight from masters, as well as refreshing veterans with new ideas. To extend the festival's reach, AFF produces On Story, a television series currently airing on PBS-affiliated stations and streaming online that presents footage of high-caliber artists talking candidly and provocatively about the art and craft of screenwriting and filmmaking, often using examples from their own films. On Story-Screenwriters and Filmmakers on Their Iconic Films presents renowned, award-winning screenwriters and filmmakers discussing their careers and the stories behind the production of their iconic films such as L.A. Confidential, Thelma & Louise, Groundhog Day, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Silence of the Lambs, In the Name of the Father, Apollo 13, and more. In their own lively words transcribed from interviews and panel discussions, Ron Howard, Callie Khouri, Jonathan Demme, Ted Tally, Jenny Lumet, Harold Ramis, and others talk about creating stories that resonate with one's life experiences or topical social issues, as well as how to create appealing characters and bring them to life. Their insights, production tales, and fresh, practical, and proven advice make this book ideal for film lovers, screenwriting students, and filmmakers and screenwriters seeking inspiration.

Shorlisted for the BAFTSS 2020 Award for Best Monograph Starting out as an independent filmmaker, and despite his films being subjected to censorship in his native China, Jia Zhangke has become the country’s leading film director internationally. Seen as one of world cinema’s foremost auteurs, he has played a crucial role in documenting and reflecting upon China’s era of intense transformations since the 1990s.. Cecília Mello provides in-depth analysis of Jia’s unique body of work, from his early films Xiao Wu and Platform, to experimental quasi-documentary 24 City and the audacious Mountains May Depart. Mello suggests that Jia’s particular expression of the realist mode is shaped by the aesthetics of other Chinese artistic traditions, allowing Jia to unearth memories both personal and collective, still lingering within the ever-changing landscapes of contemporary China. Mello’s groundbreaking study opens a door into Chinese cinema and culture, addressing the nature of the so-called ‘impure’ cinematographic art and the complex representation of China through the ages. Foreword by Walter Salles and with a new preface by the author.

Flickering Empire tells the fascinating yet little-known story of how Chicago served as the unlikely capital of American film production in the years before the rise of Hollywood (1907-1913). As entertaining as it is informative, Flickering Empire straddles the worlds of academic and popular nonfiction in its vivid illustration of the rise and fall of the major Chicago movie studios in the mid-silent era (principally Essanay and Selig Polyscope). Colorful, larger-than-life historical figures, including Thomas Edison, Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Micheaux, and Orson Welles, are major players in the narrative-in addition to important though forgotten industry titans, such as "Colonel" William Selig, George Spoor, and Gilbert "Broncho Billy" Anderson.

Since 1999, South Korean films have dominated roughly 40 to 60 percent of the Korean domestic box-office, matching or even surpassing Hollywood films in popularity. Why is this, and how did it come about? In "Unexpected Alliances," Young-a Park seeks to answer these questions by exploring the cultural and institutional roots of the Korean film industry's phenomenal success in the context of Korea's political transition in the late 1990s. The book investigates the unprecedented interplay between independent filmmakers, the state, and the mainstream film industry under the post-authoritarian administrations of Kim Dae Jung (1998-2003) and Roh Moo Hyun (2003-2008), and shows how these alliances were critical in the making of today's Korean film industry.
During South Korea's post-authoritarian/reform era, independent filmmakers with activist backgrounds were able to mobilize and transform themselves into important players in state cultural institutions and in negotiations with the purveyors of capital. Instead of simply labeling the alliances "selling out" or "co-optation," Young-a-Park explores the new spaces, institutions, and conversations which emerged and shows how independent filmmakers played a key role in national protests against trade liberalization, actively contributing to the creation of the very idea of a "Korean national cinema" worthy of protection. Independent filmmakers changed not only the film institutions and policies but the ways in which people produce, consume, and think about film in South Korea--blurring the rigid boundaries that separated the state and political activism, corporate conglomerates and independent artists, and local and global cultural realms.

In Exception Taken, Jonathan Buchsbaum examines the movements that have emerged in opposition to the homogenizing force of Hollywood in global filmmaking. While European cinema was entering a steady decline in the 1980s, France sought to strengthen support for its film industry under the new Mitterrand government. Over the following decades, the country lobbied partners in the European Economic Community to design strategies to protect the audiovisual industries and to resist cultural free-trade pressures in international trade agreements. These struggles to preserve the autonomy of national artistic prerogatives emboldened many countries to question the benefits of accelerated globalization. Led by the energetic minister of culture Jack Lang, France initiated a series of measures to support all sectors of the film industry. Lang introduced laws mandating that state and private television invest in the film industry, effectively replacing the revenue lost from a shrinking theatrical audience for French films. With the formation of the European Union in 1992, Europe passed a new treaty (Maastricht) that extended its legal purview to culture for the first time, setting up the dramatic confrontation over the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in 1993. Pushed by France, the EU fought the United States over the idea that countries should preserve their right to regulate cultural activity as they saw fit. France and Canada then initiated a campaign to protect cultural diversity within UNESCO that led to the passage of the Convention on Cultural Diversity in 2005. As France pursued these efforts to protect cultural diversity beyond its borders, it also articulated "a certain idea of cinema" that did not simply defend a narrow vision of national cinema. France promoted both commercial cinema and art cinema, disproving announcements of the death of cinema.

Today, in a world of smartphones, tablets, and computers, screens are a pervasive part of daily life. Yet a multiplicity of screens has been integral to the media landscape since cinema's golden age. In On the Screen, Ariel Rogers rethinks the history of moving images by exploring how experiments with screen technologies in and around the 1930s changed the way films were produced, exhibited, and experienced. Marshalling extensive archival research, Rogers reveals the role screens played at the height of the era of "classical" Hollywood cinema. She shows how filmmakers, technicians, architects, and exhibitors employed a variety of screens within diverse spaces, including studio soundstages, theaters, homes, stores, and train stations. Far from inert, screens served as means of structuring mediated space and time, contributing to the transformations of modern culture. On the Screen demonstrates how particular approaches to the use of screens traversed production and exhibition, theatrical and extratheatrical practice, mainstream and avant-garde modes, and even cinema and television. Rogers's history challenges conventional narratives about the novelty of the twenty-first-century multiscreen environment, showing how attention to the variety of historical screen practices opens up new ways to understand contemporary media.

This witty and fascinating study reminds us that there was animation before Disney: about thirty years of creativity and experimentation flourishing in such extraordinary work as "Girdie the Dinosaur" and "Felix the Cat." "Before Mickey," the first and only in-depth history of animation from 1898-1928, includes accounts of mechanical ingenuity, marketing and art. Crafton is equally adept at explaining techniques of sketching and camera work, evoking characteristic styles of such pioneering animators as Winsor McCay and Ladislas Starevitch, placing work in its social and economic context, and unraveling the aesthetic impact of specific cartoons.
""Before Mickey"'s scholarship is quite lively and its descriptions are evocative and often funny. The history of animation coexisted with that of live-action film but has never been given as much attention."--Tim Hunter, "New York Times"

Out-of-control costs. Box office bombs that should have been foreseen. A mania for sequels at the expense of innovation. Blockbusters of ever-diminishing merit. What other industry could continue like this--and succeed as spectacularly as Hollywood has? The American movie industry's extraordinary success at home and abroad--in the face of dire threats from broadcast television and a wealth of other entertainment media that have followed--is David Waterman's focus in this book, the first full-length economic study of the movie industry in over forty years.

Combining historical and economic analysis, "Hollywood's Road to Riches" shows how, beginning in the 1950s, a largely predictable business has been transformed into a volatile and complex multimedia enterprise now commanding over 80 percent of the world's film business. At the same time, the book asks how the economic forces leading to this success--the forces of audience demand, technology, and high risk--have combined to change the kinds of movies Hollywood produces.

Waterman argues that the movie studios have multiplied their revenues by effectively using pay television and home video media to extract the maximum amounts that individual consumers are willing to pay to watch the same movies in different venues. Along the way, the Hollywood studios have masterfully handled piracy and other economic challenges to the multimedia system they use to distribute movies.

The author also looks ahead to what Internet file sharing and digital production and distribution technologies might mean for Hollywood's prosperity, as well as for the quality and variety of the movies it makes.

In recent years, the film industry in the People's Republic of China has found itself among the top three most prolific in the world. When the Chinese government introduced a new revenue-sharing system in 1994, the nation's total movie output skyrocketed with gross box-office receipts totaling billions of yuan. This newfound success, however, has been built on an alternately competitive and collaborative relationship between the ascendant global power of China and the popular culture juggernaut of America. In China's Encounter with Global Hollywood, Wendy Su examines the intertwining relationships among the Chinese state, global Hollywood, and the Chinese film industry while analyzing the causes and consequences of the rapid growth of the nation's domestic film production. She demonstrates how the Chinese state has consolidated power by negotiating foreign interest in the lucrative Chinese market while advancing its cultural industries. Su also reveals how mainland Chinese and Hong Kong filmmakers have navigated the often-incompatible requirements of marketization and state censorship. This timely analysis demonstrates how China has cannily used global capital to modernize its own film industry and now stands poised to step clear of Hollywood's shadow. The country's debates -- on- and offscreen -- over cultural change, market-based economic reforms, and artistic freedom illuminate China's ongoing efforts to build a modern national identity.

Hollywood and Silicon Valley have long been uncomfortable bedfellows. Out of fear of pirating and lost profits, entertainment companies have historically resisted technological changes. Conversely, high-tech companies, more concerned with technological progress, have largely ignored the needs of the entertainment industry. Nevertheless, those products that we now take for granted, such as DVDs, MP3 players, and the Internet, are all due to the synergy of technology and entertainment. The switch to digital and web formats for entertainment represents huge potential market opportunities for both Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It has opened up new possibilities for entertainment and expanded the way content is created, distributed and consumed. Consider the phenomenon of YouTube and its wildly popular user-created content, or the ability to download movies and TV shows from sites such as iTunes and watch them on your iPod or computer, anytime and anywhere. The dual forces of consumer demand and rapidly changing content distribution are combining in new ways to create changes that will strike at the very foundations of the entertainment and technology industries. Depending upon how entertainment and technology companies respond, these changes can help them prosper or put them out of business. Media companies will have to become more like technology companies; and technology companies will need to change too. Because content creation, distribution and consumption are ever more tightly linked, Hollywood will need to understand what's happening in Silicon Valley and vice versa; changes in one industry will reverberate through the other. Some companies such as AOL and Time Warner have tried and failed (at least so far) to harness these forces, while a few companies such as Disney, Intel, and Google have recently taken the initial steps. But many more companies wait, afraid to change but knowing they cannot conduct business as usual. With an insider's knowledge, researcher and consultant, Philip Meza insightfully clarifies what managers and investors in media and technology companies will need to do in order to successfully navigate today's tricky environment. Coming Attractions? Hollywood, High Tech, and the Future of Entertainment discusses the history of the key forces driving the relationship between entertainment and technology today and into the future.

"See yourself in the movies!"   Prior to the advent of the home movie camera and the ubiquitousness of the camera phone, there was the local film. This cultural phenomenon, produced across the country from the 1890s to the 1950s, gave ordinary people a chance to be on the silver screen without leaving their hometowns. Through these movies, residents could see themselves in the same theaters where they saw major Hollywood motion pictures. Traveling filmmakers plied their trade in small towns and cities, where these films were received by locals as being part of the larger cinema experience. With access to the rare film clips under discussion, Main Street Movies documents the diversity and longevity of local film production and examines how itinerant filmmakers responded to industry changes to keep sponsors and audiences satisfied. From town pride films in the 1910s to Hollywood knockoffs in the 1930s, local films captured not just images of local people and places but also ideas about the function and meaning of cinema that continue to resonate today.