INSTITUTION ANALYSIS – HOLLYWOOD
What is a Film Industry?
A film industry is basically an entertainment industry which is involved in producing and distributing many different kind of films.
There are 3 main Film Industries in the world which are Hollywood, Bollywood and British Film Industry.
Hollywood:
Cinema of United States of America is also known the Hollywood, It is the no.1 film industry in the world. Since 1920 Hollywood has engrossed a lot of money in the film industry and it approximately produces 500 films per year.
Bollywood:
This film industry is referred to Hindi language film industry which is restricted to Bombay only. India is the largest film producer in the world which produce approximately 1000 films per year. Indian cinema is gaining popularity all around the world in terms of ticket sale and film no. of films produced per annum.
British Film Industry:
The United Kingdom has had a significant film industry for over a century. Some of the films with the largest ever box office returns have been made in the United Kingdom, including the two highest grossing films (Harry Potter and James Bond).The identity of the British industry, and its relationship with Hollywood, has been the subject of debate.
I’ll explain Hollywood in greater detail now because I’ll be using it as an institution for making my media product.
HISTORY AND WORKING OF HOLLYWOOD
The American Film Industry started to develop in the era from 1895 to 1930. By the First Decade of 20th century people were beginning to hear about the moving pictures. By 1910 film making industry started to prosper. Hollywood film industry started to flourish during 1920-1930 though world war in 1940 had a bad effect on the film industry but strong ticket sales saved many of the Film institutions.
During the 1930’s American film industry were dominated by six major companies- 20th century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros, Colombia Pictures, Walt Disney and Universal Pictures. All the big five studios are vertically integrated. The American big six account for nearly 90% of the north-American Film market.
Hollywood is vast integrated commercial enterprises which produce and distribute feature length films.
Capital-intensive entertainment and media enterprises, has always tended toward an oligopoly structure—that is, a system whereby a few companies control a particular industry. This invokes the institutional aspect, in that the film industry has been dominated from the outset by a handful of movie studios—Paramount, Fox, Warner Bros.—many of which still operate and still rule the industry.
During the “classical” era of the 1920s through the 1940s, the most powerful studios controlled all phases of the industry (production, distribution, and exhibition) through a vertically integrated system that mass-produced movies for a receptive mass audience. The studios lost their collective control of the industry during the postwar era due to a combination of factors, including antitrust litigation, the rise of independent film production, and the juggernaut of commercial television. The studios adapted and survived, and since the 1970s, they have enjoyed a remarkable resurgence and have reasserted their collective control of the so-called New Hollywood.
Now the studios’ film divisions produce far more than simply feature Films, however, and the studios themselves are all subsidiaries of massive, transnational multimedia conglomerates such as Sony, Viacom, News Corp, and Time Warner. But even as subsidiaries, the studios represent the “core assets” of these media conglomerates due to the enormous popularity of Hollywood movies in the global entertainment marketplace.
The widespread appeal of Hollywood movies is due not only to the studios’ economic power and marketing prowess but also to the formal-aesthetic qualities of the films themselves. This third aspect of the term Hollywood has changed somewhat less than the industrial and institutional aspects, in that the cinematic style and narrative structure of Hollywood movies have persisted over the decades, despite the obvious need for novelty and innovation. In other words, what we call a “Hollywood movie” is much the same artifact today as it was in the late teens and early 1920s. Recent changes in Hollywood’s industrial and institutional operations threaten this formal-aesthetic stability, however, due to demands of the global entertainment marketplace and the conglomerates’ quest for “synergy” between their hit movie and other media-related divisions (TV, music, publishing, theme parks, etc.).
Genres used in Hollywood:
Hollywood films do not follow a pure genre as there is a love aspect in each of its films.
Genres preferred in Hollywood are ranked as follows:
• Comedy
• Family
• Action/Adventure
• Crime/Thriller
• Drama
• Fantasy/Science Fiction
• Romance
• Horror
Media Institutions:
A media institution is an established, and often profit based organization, that deals in the creation and distribution of films.
Hollywood has a no. of film institutions/companies which produce tons of different films per year.
The American film industry is now dominated by six major film companies known as Big Six – Warner Bros Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Walt Disney and Universal Studios.
Warner Bros Pictures:
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. is an American producer of film and television entertainment. It is one of the major film studios; it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank, California and New York City. Warner Bros. has several subsidiary companies, including Warner Bros. Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Home Video, New Line Cinema, TheWB.com, and DC Comics. Warner owns half of The CW Television Network. Warner Bros top grossing films are The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone, and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
20th Century Fox:
20th Century Fox is one of the six major American film studios as of 2010. It is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, just west of Beverly Hills, the studio is a subsidiary of News Corporation, the media conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch. The company was founded on May 31, 1935. It’s most popular film franchises include Avatar, The Simpsons, Star Wars, Ice Age, Garfield, Alvin and the Chipmunks, X-Men, Die Hard, Alien, Speed, Revenge of the Nerds, Planet of the Apes, Home Alone,Dr. Dolittle & Night at the Museum.
Paramount Pictures:
Paramount Pictures is an American film production and distribution company, located in Hollywood. F\It was founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America’s oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. Paramount is consistently ranked as one of the top-grossing movie studios. Top grossing Paramount film includes Titanic, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Dark of the moon, Forrest Gump, Shrek the Third.
Columbia Pictures:
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (CPII), founded in 1919, is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies in the world, a member of the so-called Big Six. It was one of the so-called Little Three among the eight major film studios of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Best 5 films made by Columbia Pictures are City Stickers, Taxi Drivers, Ghostbusters, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Super bad.
Walt Disney:
The Walt Disney Company was founded on October 16, 1923 by brothers Walt and Roy Disney as an animation studio, it has become one of the biggest Hollywood studios, and owner and licensor of 11 theme parks, and several television networks including ABC and ESPN. Disney’s corporate headquarters and primary production facilities are located at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. The company has been a component of Dow Jones Industrial Average since May 6, 1991; Mickey Mouse serves as the official Mascot of The Walt Disney Company. Their highest grossing films are Toy Story, the Lion King, The Avengers, Wall-E and Finding Nemo.
Universal Pictures:
Universal Pictures (sometimes called Universal City Studios or Universal Studios for short), a subsidiary of NBC Universal, is one of the six major movie studios. It was founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle; it is one of the oldest American movie studios still in continuous production. On May 11, 2004, the controlling stake in the company was sold by Vivendi Universal to General Electric, parent of NBC. The resulting media super-conglomerate was renamed NBC Universal, while Universal Studios Inc. remained the name of the production subsidiary. Jurassic Park, Despicable Me, E.T .the Extra – Terrestrial, Fast and Furious 6, Fast Five are Universals’ highest grossing films.
References:
Muneeb Baig - Media Studies 