Juan Monroy — Movies

Theatrical Films
- Films created to be shown first in traditional movie theaters
- These appear in nontheatrical locations after they have completed their runs in movie theaters in the United States and abroad.
Edison
- Nontheatrical exhibition
- Phonograph
  - Parlors
- Kinetoscope
  - Parlors
Lumière Brothers
- Cinematographe
- Public Screening, 1895
- Theatrical Model
  - copied by Edison
  - Vitascope, 1896
- Invention of the Cinema
  - “First time someone showed a film and charged money for the experience”
Historical Major Studios
- MGM
- Warner Brothers
- 20th Century Fox
- Paramount
- RKO
- Universal
- Columbia
- United Artists
Studio System
- Late–1920s to the 1950s
- Assembly Line Production
- Star System
  - promoted actors by name
  - under-contract to particular studio
- Feature Films
  - films lasting over 70 minutes in length
- A and B Pictures
  - developed as part of double features, 1930s
Vertical Integration
- Production facilities
- Distribution networks
- First-run exhibition
- Broken up in the 1940s
Three Tier System
- Production
- Distribution
- Exhibition
Contemporary Major Hollywood Movie Firms
- AT&T/Warners
- Disney-Fox
- Sony/Columbia
- Viacom/Paramount
- Comcast/NBC-Universal
Conglomerates
- film studios are valued for their content libraries
- conglomerates can distribute film over the network
Production and Distribution Firms
- Film Production Firms
- Film Distribution Firms
- Independent Producers
Development
- Coming up with an idea, writing a script, and pitching it
  - Sources for Ideas
    - Adaptations
      - Books are a significant source for movie ideas
  - Scriptwriters
- Talent Agents
- Packaging
  - The selling by a talent agency of the personal services of multiple agency clients, particularly leading actors and director, to a studio or independent producer for a project.
  - Assembling by a talent agency of most if not all facets of a project, including script, talent, production, marketing, distribution, and financing, employing as many agency clients as possible.
- Pitch
- Treatment
- On-Spec
- Green Light
Compensation
- Salary
- Back-End Deals
Pre-Production
- Developing, planning, and visualizing the idea
- Preparing the budget
- Hiring crew members
- Making a schedule
Production
- Shooting scenes
- Working with cast
- Securing Locations
- Reviewing Footage
Post-Production
- Editing the Film
- Adding Titles
- Adding Music and Foley
- Compositing Special Effects
Distribution
- distribution rights
- DVD region codes enforce territorial distribution rights
Releasing Movies
- Release date
- Historically, American movies would be released to US theaters first… then to foreign markets
- Day-and-Date Release
Distributors
- Big Six
- Independent Distributors
Release Patterns
- Wide release
- Saturation release
- Platform release
- Exclusive release
- Block Booking
  - historical practice, outlawed in the 1940s
  - distributor forces exhibitors to book blocks of their films
- Roadshow Release
  - historical practice
  - a film opened in a limited number of theaters in large cities like New York City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City, Los Angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles, Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago and other major cities around the world for a specific period of time before the worldwide general release.
Exhibition
Movie Theaters
- Multiplexes: theaters with 8–15 screens
- Megaplexes: theaters with more than 16 screens.
Movie Theater Chains
- Regal
- AMC
- Cinemark
- Carmike
- Cineplex Entertainment
- Rave
MPAA Ratings
- G
- PG
- PG–13
- R
- NC–17
Exhibition license
- an agreement between a distributor and an exhibition firm that specifies the date on which the distributor will make the film available to the exhibition firm’s theaters, the number of weeks the theaters agree to run the film, and when and where competing theaters can show the same film; it also sets the financial arrangements between the distributor and the exhibition firm.
- Distributor takes a certain percentage of ticket revenues from the film with the exhibitor keeping the rest.
- Percentage-above-the-nut
- Typically distributors get about half the box-office receipts
Digital Distribution to Theaters
- Film: prints had to be duplicated and distributed to theaters.
- Digital cinema package
- Satellite cinema package
Post-Theatrical Windows
- Television outlets
  - Subscription TV
    - HBO, Showtime, Starz
  - Cable TV
    - TNT, USA, AMC
  - Broadcast networks
    - NBC, Fox
  - Local TV stations
- Home Video
  - Direct-to-Consumer
  - Videocassette recorders, 1970s
  - Digital video disc, 1990s
- Home video distribution
  - Sell-through outlets
    - stores in which consumers buy the videos rather than just renting them.
    - e.g., Best Buy
  - Rental outlets
    - companies that purchase releases from movie distributors and then rent them to individual customers on a per-day basis.
    - e.g., Blockbuster
Digital Direct-to-Consumer
- Movie download
  - when a person pays a company to send a digital copy of a movie to his or her computer, digital TV set, or smartphone.
  - Sale: “owned” by the user who can replay it and move it to another device
  - Rental: stored on the device but not permanently stored or available, usually 2–3 days.
- Movie Streaming
  - Cable company, Netflix, Hulu, etc.
  - Viewable on digital TV, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
  - File is not stored on the device.
Piracy
- Film piracy is the unauthorized duplication of copyrighted films for profit
- Made much easier in the digital age
- Peer-to-Peer Networks
- Data/Digital Locker