The Pre-Hollywood Era: Difference between revisions
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The main pioneers of the early commercial motion picture industry were Thomas Alva Edison and William Kennedy Dickson, the inventors of the Kinetoscope. This early film exhibition device created the standard for all cinematic presentation before the advent of video—running a strip of perforated film bearing sequenced images over a light source with a high-speed shutter to create the illusion of movement. Developed simultaneously was the Kinetograph, the first film camera, which set the standard of 35 mm film as the basic film gauge. Note that sound recording and synchronization are not part of this package of inventions—the technology to put synchronized sound into motion pictures was still decades away, meaning that all films from this era were [[Silence Is Golden|silent]].
Edison ran the first public exhibition of the Kinetoscope in 1894 in [[New York City]], and the novelty of the device made it an immediate success, earning Edison more than $85,000. The invention of projection technology to go with the Kinetoscope (before, movies could only be viewed through a screen inside the device) helped to ensure its profitability. New York and New Jersey soon became the center of the burgeoning motion picture industry, with Edison using his profits to establish Edison Studios in West Orange, New Jersey. Notable films produced by Edison Studios include the 1896 film ''The Kiss'' (notable for causing [[Trope Maker|the first]] [[You Can Panic Now|moral panic]] over indecency in film), the 1903 film ''[[The Great Train Robbery]]'' (a pioneering [[The Western|Western]] that introduced countless filmmaking techniques), and the original 1910 ''[[Frankenstein]]'' film (the first [[Horror]] movie in history—reviewed by [[James Rolfe]] [
Unfortunately, Edison was also using his patents to try and monopolize the film industry. In 1908, he and several other early studios created the Motion Picture Patents Company to shut out smaller filmmakers. The MPCC would use Edison's patents to seize the cameras of filmmakers who had not paid the patent fee. While the MPPC was dissolved in an antitrust ruling in 1915 (an act that, combined with the loss of European markets during [[World War I]], forced Edison to sell his studio), it had already caused countless filmmakers to pack up and head out west to shoot their movies, hoping to escape Edison's reach. Many of them headed to places like [[The Windy City|Chicago]], Florida and Cuba, but one of the most popular destinations was the little town of Hollywood, California...
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