Chapter 7 - Movies and the Impact of Images Flashcards
Celluloid
A transparent and pliable film that can hold a coating of chemicals sensitive to light.
Kinetograph
An early movie camera developed by Thomas Edison’s assistant in the 1890s.
Kinetoscope
An early film projection system that served as a kind of peep show in which viewers looked through a hole and saw images moving on a tiny plate.
Vitascope
A large-screen movie protection system developed by Thomas Edison.
Narrative Films
Movies that fell a story, with dramatic action and conflict emerging mainly from individual characters.
Nickelodeons
The first small makeshift movie theaters, which were often converted cigar stores, pawnshops, or restaurants redecorated to mimic vaudeville theaters.
Vertical Integration
In medi economics, the phenomenon of controlling a mass media industry at its three essential levels: production, distribution, and exhibition; the term is most frequently used in reference to the film industry.
Oligopoly
In media economics, an organizational structure in which a few firms control most of an industry’s production and distribution resources.
Studio Systems
An early film production system that constituted a sort of assembly-line process for moviemaking; major film studios controlled not only actors but also directors, editors, writers, and other employees, all of who worked under exclusive contracts.
Block Booking
An early tactic of movie studios to control exhibition, involving pressuring theater operators to accept marginal films with no stars in order to get access to films with the most popular stars.
Movie Palaces
Ornate, lavish single-screen movie theaters that emerged in the 1910s in the United States.
Multiplexes
Contemporary movie theaters that exhibit many movies at the same time on multiple screens.
Big Five
For the late 1920s through the late 1940s, the major movie studios that were vertically integrated and that dominated the industry. The Big Five were Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, and RKO.
Little Three
For the late 1920s through the late 1940s, the major movie studios that were vertically integrated and that dominated the industry. The Little Three were those studios that did not own theaters: Columbia, Universal, and United Artists.
Blockbuster
The type of big-budget special effete films that typically have summer of holiday release dates, heavy promotion, and lucrative merchandising tie-ins.
Talkies
Movies with sound, beginning in 1927.
Newsreels
Weekly ten-minute magazine-style compilations of filmed news events from around the world organized in a sequence of short reports; prominent in movie theaters between the 1920s and the 1950s.
Genre
A narrative category in which conventions regarding similar characters, scenes, structures, and themes recur in combination.
Documentary
A movie or TV news genre that documents reality by recording actual characters and settings.
Cinema Verite
French term for truth film, a documentary style that records fragments of everyday life unobtrusively; it often features a rough, grainy look and shaky, handheld camera work.
Indies
Independent music and film production houses that work outside industry oligopolies; they often produce less mainstream music and film.
Hollywood Ten
The nine screenwriters and one film director subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) who were sent to prison in the late 1940s for refusing to disclose their memberships or to identify communist sympathizers.
Paramount Decision
The 1948 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended vertical integration in the film industry by forcing the studios to divest themselves of their theaters.
Megaplexes
Movie theater facilities with fourteen or more screens.
Big Six
The six major Hollywood studios that currently rule the commercial film business: Warner Brothers, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Columbia Pictures and Disney.
Synergy
In media economics, the promotion and sale of a product (and all its versions) throughout the various subsidiaries of a media conglomerate.
Digital Video
The production format that is replacing celluloid film and revolutionizing filmmaking because the cameras are more prattle and production costs are much less expensive.
Consensus Narratives
Cultural products that become popular and command wide attention, providing shared cultural experiences.
