Big Ideas for the Movie Industry (Ch. 6)

1. The Motion Picture Patents Company (aka the Trust)
2. Distribution: Domestic vs. International
3. Stereotypes in Movies

The Motion Picture Patents Company was the idea of Thomas Edison in 1908 to control the technology of the film industry. Film producers had to pay a patent use fee in order to make movies, a fee they were unwilling to pay. Although the Trust had the money and power to improve the quality of motion pictures, the lack of competition in the film industry at that time made it too expensive for independent groups to produce movies. So at the time, the industry's center was in New York City, but in order to escape the Trust, filmmakers moved to California to make movies. And thus Hollywood was born. I don't know if the film industry would have made the move to California if the trust didn't come into existence BUT I found this fact interesting because movie from that point on continued to evolve and California became the ideal place for movies to be made down to this day.

The Next point that I found interesting was the international distribution of movies. Up until the 1970s, domestic theatrical accounted for most of a feature film's revenue, but since then international revenue for a movie has become more important. In some instances movie studios make more in revenue from international theatres. Of course, being about two years old, the chart in the textbook concerning the top grossing movies of all time is a little inaccurate, but when I looked online for the most current list I found that all of the movies listed in each list had one common thread: THE WERE ALL ACTION MOVIES! when I did a little more research i found that all of them mad more money in international sales then in domestic. For example, Avatar, the top gossing movie coming in at.....2, 700,000,000 bucks made the bulk of its revenue, the 2 billion, in international sales. So with this much money I can't help but wonder...will the international sales influence the type of movies made? has it already? (question of the day)

Lastly, stereotyping in movie has been a matter of controversy for many years. Critics say that the portrayal of certain minority and majority groups in movies can be very offensive. Movie producers respond by saying that stereotypes are an ingredient in story telling; shortcuts to making characters. After much thought, I came to the decision that I was on the side of the movie producers.  In literature, there are archetypes which are universally understood symbol, term, statement, or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype). I think that in movies there are archetypal characters or situation, but movies are stories brought to film, so people can't get mad if they see something they don't like. There is a fine line between archetype and offensiveness, and as a member or two groups often stereotyped: being African American and a women, I feel as though movies are art, and art imitates life. Movies need characters and sometimes the inspiration for these characters are drawn from certain aspects of life that people don't find so pretty, but life isn't always pretty. So should movie writers and producers be penalized for imitating life in their films? What kind of movies can be drawn from that?