Afilm studio (also known asmovie studio or simplystudio) is a majorentertainment company that makesfilms. Today, studios are mostly financing and distribution entities. In addition, they may have their ownstudio facility or facilities; however, most firms in the entertainment industry have never had their own studios, but have rented space from other companies instead. Day-to-day filming operations are generally handled by aproduction company subsidiary.
Another type of company is anindependently owned studio facility, which does not produce motion pictures by itself; such facilities only sell studio space.
In 1893,Thomas Edison built the first movie studio in the United States: he constructed theBlack Maria, a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories inWest Orange, New Jersey, and he asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for the camera. He distributed thesemovies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgrounds. The pioneeringThanhouser movie studio was founded inNew Rochelle, New York in 1909 by American theatrical impresarioEdwin Thanhouser. The company produced and released 1,086 movies between 1910 and 1917, successfully distributing them around the world.
In the early 1900s, companies started moving toLos Angeles, California, for location shoots. Althoughelectric lights were widely available by that time, none were powerful enough to expose film adequately; the best illumination for film production came from natural sunlight. Some movies were shot on building roofs in downtown Los Angeles. Edison'sMotion Picture Patents Company, based in New York City, controlled almost allpatents relevant to movie production at the time. Early movie producers relocated toSouthern California to escape patent enforcement, an advantage of more lenient local courts, as well as physical distance from company detectives and mob allies. (Edison's patents expired in 1913.)[citation needed]
The first film studio in Los Angeles was a branch studio ofSelig Polyscope, in theEdendale area in 1909. The first studio in theHollywood area wasNestor Studios, opened in 1911 byAl Christie forDavid Horsley. In the same year, another 15 independent studios settled in Hollywood. Other production companies eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in places such asCulver City,Burbank, and what would soon become known asStudio City in theSan Fernando Valley.Los Angeles had a strong, early, public-health response to the1918 flu epidemic,[1] relative to other American cities, which reduced the number of local cases and led to a faster overall recovery; this contributed to the increasing dominance of Hollywood over New York City in the movie industry.[2]
The Big 5
By the mid-1920s, a handful of American production companies had evolved into motion-picture conglomerates that owned their own studios,distribution divisions, andtheaters, and contracted with performers and other filmmaking personnel. This situation led to the sometimes confusing equation of studio with production company in industry slang. Five large companies—RKO Radio Pictures,20th Century Fox,Paramount Pictures,Warner Bros., andMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer—came to be known as the Big Five, the majors, or the Studios in trade publications such asVariety; their management structures and practices collectively came to be known as thestudio system.
The Little 3
Although they owned few or no theaters to guarantee sales of their films, several other studios also fell under the rubrics above:Universal Pictures,Columbia Pictures, andUnited Artists. There were thus a total of eight generally recognized major studios. United Artists, although its controlling partners owned two production studios during theGolden Age, often had a tenuous hold on the title of major; this studio operated mainly as a backer and distributor of independently produced films.
Smaller studios operated simultaneously to the majors. These minors includedRepublic Pictures, active from 1935, which produced films that occasionally matched the scale and ambition of larger studios; the minors also includedMonogram Pictures, which specialized in series and genre releases. Together with smaller outfits such asPRC TKO and Grand National, the minor studios filled the demand forB movies and are sometimes collectively referred to asPoverty Row.
The Big Five's ownership of movie theaters was eventually opposed by eight independent producers, includingSamuel Goldwyn,David O. Selznick,Walt Disney,Hal Roach, andWalter Wanger. In 1948, the federal government won acase against Paramount in theSupreme Court: the court ruled that thevertically integrated structure of the movie industry constituted an illegalmonopoly. This decision, reached after twelve years of litigation, accelerated the end of the studio system and Hollywood's "Golden Age".
By the 1950s, the physical components of a typical movie studio had become standardized. Since then, a movie studio has usually been housed on a "studio lot."[3] Physically, a studio lot is a secure compound enclosed by a tall perimeter wall. This security is necessary to protect filmmaking operations from unwanted interference bypaparazzi and over-enthusiasticfans ofmovie stars.[4] Movement in and out of the studio lot is normally restricted to specific gates (often capped with decorative arches), where visitors must stop at aboom barrier and explain the purpose of their visit to a security guard.
Thesound stage is the central component of a studio lot.[5] Most studios have several: small studios may have as few as one, and large studios have as many as 20 to 30.[5] Movie studios also provideoffice space for studio executives and production companies, and makeup rooms and rehearsal rooms fortalent.[5] If space allows, a studio may have an exteriorbacklot. Finally, there is a studio "commissary", which is the traditional term in the movie industry for a companycafeteria.[5]
Beyond these basic components, the largest studios are full-service enterprises offering the range of production and post-production services necessary to create a motion picture; these services include costumes, props, cameras, sound recording, crafts, sets, lighting,special effects, cutting, editing, mixing, scoring,automated dialogue replacement (ADR), re-recording, andfoley.[5] Independent suppliers of these and other services (e.g.,photographic processing labs) are often found in clusters near film studios.[6]
Sets and backlots have always been highly flammable, andnitrate film (manufactured until 1951) was also very flammable. For this reason, film studios built in the early-to-mid 20th century havewater towers to facilitatefirefighting. These towers "somewhat inexplicably" evolved into "a most potent symbol ... of movie studios in general."[7]
Midway through the 1950s, withtelevision proving to be a lucrative enterprise that was unlikely to fade soon—as many people in the film industry had once hoped—movie studios were increasingly utilized to create programming for the expanding medium. Some midsize film companies, such asRepublic Pictures, eventually sold their studios toTV production concerns, which were later bought by larger studios; an example was theAmerican Broadcasting Company, which was purchased byDisney in 1996.
With the growing diversification of studios into such fields asvideo games,television stations,broadcast syndication,television,theme parks,home video andpublishing, studios have become multi-national corporations.
International markets account for a growing proportion of Hollywood movie revenue, with approximately 70% of total movie revenue coming from international ticket sales; the Chinese domestic box-office revenue is projected to outpace that of US in 2020.[8] The growth of film studios andfilmmaking outside of Hollywood and the US has produced popular international studio locations such asHollywood North (Vancouver andToronto in Canada),Bollywood (Mumbai, India), andNollywood (Lagos, Nigeria).[9]
As the studios grew, they began to rely on production companies such asJ. J. Abrams'Bad Robot to handle many creative and physical aspects of feature films. By reducing direct production activities, the studios transformed into financing and distribution entities for their films (generally made by affiliated production companies). With the decreasing cost ofCGI andvisual effects, many studios sold large chunks of previously massive studio spaces or backlots to private real-estate developers.Century City inLos Angeles was once part of the20th Century Fox backlot, which was among the largest and most famous of the studio lots. In most cases, portions of the backlots were retained and are available for rental by variousfilm andtelevision productions. Some studios offer tours of their backlots;Universal Pictures allows visitors to its adjacentUniversal Studios Hollywood theme park to take a tram tour of thebacklot where films such asPsycho andBack to the Future were shot.
In fall 2019, movie mogulTyler Perry openedTyler Perry Studios inAtlanta. Perry's studio lot is claimed to be larger than many studio lots in Hollywood.[10]
In the 1980s and 1990s, as the cost of professional16 mm film equipment decreased—along with the emergence of non-film innovations such asS-VHS andMini-DV cameras—many young filmmakers began to make films outside the studio system. Filmmakers and producers such asMike Judge,Adam Sandler,Jim Jarmusch,Robert Rodriguez,Steven Soderbergh,Quentin Tarantino,Kevin Smith andRichard Linklater made films that pushed artistic boundaries beyond studio norms. In response to these films (many distributed by mini-studios such asMiramax), the majors created in-house mini-studios to focus on edgier, independent content.Focus Features was created for this purpose byUniversal Pictures, as wasFox Searchlight by20th Century Fox.
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