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Preparing independent or guerrilla filmmakers for the legal, financial, and organizational questions that can doom a project if unanswered, this guide demystifies issues such as developing a concept, founding a film company, obtaining financing, securing locations, casting, shooting, granting screen credits, distributing, exhibiting, and marketing a film. Updated to include digital marketing and distribution strategies through YouTube or webisodes, it also anticipates the \"problems\" generated by a blockbuster hit: sound tracks, merchandizing, and licensing. Six appendices provide sample contracts, copyright forms and circulars, Writer's Guild of America definitions for writing credits, and studio contact information.

Broadcasting Hollywood: The Struggle Over Feature Films on Early Television uses extensive archival research into the files of studios, networks, advertising agencies, unions and guilds, theatre associations, the FCC, and key legal cases to analyze the tensions and synergies between the film and television industries in the early years of television. This analysis of the case study of the struggle over Hollywood's feature films appearing on television in the 1940s and 1950s illustrates that the notion of an industry misunderstands the complex array of stakeholders who work in and profit from a media sector, and models a variegated examination of the history of media industries. Ultimately, it draws a parallel to the contemporary period and the introduction of digital media to highlight the fact that history repeats itself and can therefore play a key role in helping media industry scholars and practitioners to understand and navigate contemporary industrial phenomena.

Tracing the international consumption, distribution, and cultural importance of silent film serials in the 1910s and 1920s, Canjels provides an exciting new understanding of the cultural dimension and the cultural transformation and circulation of media forms. Specifically, he demonstrates that the serial film form goes far beyond the well-known American two-reel serial—the cliffhanger. Throughout the book, Canjels focuses on the biggest producers of serials, America, France, and Germany, while imported serials, such as those in the Netherlands, are also examined. This research offers new views on the serial work of well known directors as D.W. Griffith, Abel Gance, Erich von Stroheim, and Fritz Lang, while foregrounding the importance of lesser known directors such as Louis Feuillade or Joe May. In the early twentieth-century, serial productions were constantly undergoing change and were not merely distributed in their original form upon import. As adjusted serials were present in large quantities or confronted different social spaces, nationalistic feelings and views stimulated by the unrest of World War I and the expanding American film industry could be incorporated and attached to the serial form. Serial productions were not only adaptable to local discourses, they could actively stimulate and interact as well, influencing reception and further film production. By examining the distribution, reception, and cultural contexts of American and European serials in various countries, this cross-cultural research makes both local and global observations. Canjels thus offers a highly relevant case study of transnational, transcultural and transmedia relations. Rudmer Canjels is a film scholar and lecturer interested in silent film, fan culture, transmedia storytelling, and documentary film. He has published on the international distribution and cultural transformations of silent film serials ( Distributing Silent Film Serials , Routledge, 2011) and industry sponsored films ( A History of Royal Dutch Shell and Films that Work ). Currently he is researching the use of industrial film in Nigeria as it became an independent country in 1960. I. Film Seriality and Its Serial Uses: Transition and Beyond 1. Seriality Unbound 2. Monopolizing Episodic Adventuress II. Localizing Serials: Translating Spectacle and Daily Life Beyond 3. American Mysteries in France 4. German Spectacle from Within 5. Adjusting Seriality in the Netherlands III. Confronting Seriality in Europe and America 6. Consuming New World Views: American Serials in Germany 7. Minds that Cannont Condense: European Serials in America 8. Overshooting inAmerica IV. Another Time 9. Adjusting Forms and Diminishing Uses Distributing Silent Film Serials makes a \"substantial contribution to new cinema histories,\" it is filled with \"potent points of comparison between different national traditions,\" giving \"fascinating insights,\" and leading \"to a rethinking of the significance of seriality in the broader context of film history.\"- Joe Kemper, Early Popular Visual Culture \"This book provides new insights ino the serial productions of both well-known [such as Abel Gance, Erich von Stroheim or Fritz Lang] and more obscure directors. […] Distributing Silent Film Serials is supplemented by thorough notes, a well-chosen bibliography, and a useful appendix, listing serial films, chronologically arranged under importing country and by earliest known premier date. The text is complemented by many interesting photographs, posters and advertisements […]. It is packed […] with interesting anecdotes and solid information, and serves as a welcome addition to the burgeoning body of important literature elucidating the history of silent cinema.\"- Jeffrey Mifflin, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television \"Distributing Silent Film Serials is part of the \"important studies of exhibition [that] have recently emerged from what has been called the ‘new cinema history.’ \"- Jessica L. Whitehead, Early Popular Visual Culture

This engaging, deeply researched study provides the richest and most nuanced picture we have to date of cinema—both movies and movie-going—in the early 1910s. At the same time, it makes clear the profound relationship between early cinema and the construction of a national identity in this important transitional period in the United States. Richard Abel looks closely at sensational melodramas, including westerns (cowboy, cowboy-girl, and Indian pictures), Civil War films (especially girl-spy films), detective films, and animal pictures—all popular genres of the day that have received little critical attention. He simultaneously analyzes film distribution and exhibition practices in order to reconstruct a context for understanding moviegoing at a time when American cities were coming to grips with new groups of immigrants and women working outside the home. Drawing from a wealth of research in archive prints, the trade press, fan magazines, newspaper advertising, reviews, and syndicated columns—the latter of which highlight the importance of the emerging star system—Abel sheds new light on the history of the film industry, on working-class and immigrant culture at the turn of the century, and on the process of imaging a national community.

Distribution Revolution is a collection of interviews with leading film and TV professionals concerning the many ways that digital delivery systems are transforming the entertainment business. These interviews provide lively insider accounts from studio executives, distribution professionals, and creative talent of the tumultuous transformation of film and TV in the digital era. The first section features interviews with top executives at major Hollywood studios, providing a window into the big-picture concerns of media conglomerates with respect to changing business models, revenue streams, and audience behaviors. The second focuses on innovative enterprises that are providing path-breaking models for new modes of content creation, curation, and distribution—creatively meshing the strategies and practices of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. And the final section offers insights from creative talent whose professional practices, compensation, and everyday working conditions have been transformed over the past ten years. Taken together, these interviews demonstrate that virtually every aspect of the film and television businesses is being affected by the digital distribution revolution, a revolution that has likely just begun. Interviewees include: • Gary Newman, Chairman, 20th Century Fox Television • Kelly Summers, Former Vice President, Global Business Development and New Media Strategy, Walt Disney Studios • Thomas Gewecke, Chief Digital Officer and Executive Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, Warner Bros. Entertainment • Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer, Netflix • Felicia D. Henderson, Writer-Producer, Soul Food, Gossip Girl • Dick Wolf, Executive Producer and Creator, Law & Order

The emergence of the double-bill in the 1930s created a divide between A-pictures and B-pictures as theaters typically screened packages featuring one of each. With the former considered more prestigious because of their larger budgets and more popular actors, the lower-budgeted Bs served largely as a support mechanism to A-films of the major studios-most of which also owned the theater chains in which movies were shown. When a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust ruling severed ownership of theaters from the studios, the B-movie soon became a different entity in the wake of profound changes to the corporate organization and production methods of the major Hollywood studios.InThe Battle for the Bs, Blair Davis analyzes how B-films were produced, distributed, and exhibited in the 1950s and demonstrates the possibilities that existed for low-budget filmmaking at a time when many in Hollywood had abandoned the Bs. Made by newly formed independent companies, 1950s B-movies took advantage of changing demographic patterns to fashion innovative marketing approaches. They established such genre cycles as science fiction and teen-oriented films (thinkDestination MoonandI Was a Teenage Werewolf) well before the major studios and also contributed to the emergence of the movement now known as underground cinema. Although frequently proving to be multimillion-dollar box-office draws by the end of the decade, the Bs existed in opposition to the cinematic mainstream in the 1950s and created a legacy that was passed on to independent filmmakers in the decades to come.

\"Few guide books are as honest as Make Your Movie. The film industry is one of the hardest to break into and it's important to anticipate the major setbacks that can manifest. The book offers ways to cope with creative and financial difficulties as well as how to adequately put your work out there.\" -International Business Times \"Regardless if one wants to make it in the industry or not, Make Your Movie is a book that every filmmaker should read. Make Your Movie is bound to help you make a great film, hone your skill set or even get you a job. Focal Press makes some really great text books on filmmaking, but Barbara Doyle’s Make Your Movie is like an encyclopedia, enclosed in a small book. Highly Recommended!\" -Film Monthly, www.filmmonthly.com

This article examines the effects of market specialization on economic and social outcomes. Integrating two perspectives, we explore why products that span multiple categories suffer social and economic disadvantages. According to the audience-side perspective, audience members refer to established categories to make sense of products. Products that incorporate features from multiple categories are perceived to be poor fits with category expectations and less appealing than category specialists. The producer-side view holds that spanning categories reduces one's ability to effectively target each category's audience, which decreases appeal to audience members. Rather than treating these as rival explanations, we propose that both processes matter and offer a systematic, integrated account of how penalties arise as a consequence of audience-side and producer-side processes. We analyze data from two dissimilar contexts, eBay auctions and U.S. feature-film projects, to test the central implications of our theory. Together, these tests provide support for our integrated approach and suggest that both processes contribute to the penalties associated with category spanning.

ObjectiveTo compare how smoking was depicted in Hollywood movies before and after an intervention limiting paid product placement for cigarette brands.DesignCorrelational analysis.Setting/ParticipantsTop box office hits released in the USA primarily between 1988 and 2011 (n=2134).InterventionThe Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), implemented in 1998.Main outcome measuresThis study analyses trends for whether or not movies depicted smoking, and among movies with smoking, counts for character smoking scenes and average smoking scene duration.ResultsThere was no detectable trend for any measure prior to the MSA. In 1999, 79% of movies contained smoking, and movies with smoking contained 8 scenes of character smoking, with the average duration of a character smoking scene being 81 s. After the MSA, there were significant negative post-MSA changes (p<0.05) for linear trends in proportion of movies with any smoking (which declined to 41% by 2011) and, in movies with smoking, counts of character smoking scenes (which declined to 4 by 2011). Between 1999 and 2000, there was an immediate and dramatic drop in average length of a character smoking scene, which decreased to 19 s, and remained there for the duration of the study. The probability that the drop of −62.5 (95% CI −55.1 to −70.0) seconds was due to chance was p<10−16.ConclusionsThis study's correlational data suggest that restricting payments for tobacco product placement coincided with profound changes in the duration of smoking depictions in movies.

Videoland offers a comprehensive view of the \"tangible phase\" of consumer video, when Americans largely accessed movies as material commodities at video rental stores. Video stores served as a vital locus of movie culture from the early 1980s until the early 2000s, changing the way Americans socialized around movies and collectively made movies meaningful. When films became tangible as magnetic tapes and plastic discs, movie culture flowed out from the theater and the living room, entered the public retail space, and became conflated with shopping and salesmanship. In this process, video stores served as a crucial embodiment of movie culture's historical move toward increased flexibility, adaptability, and customization. In addition to charting the historical rise and fall of the rental industry, Herbert explores the architectural design of video stores, the social dynamics of retail encounters, the video distribution industry, the proliferation of video recommendation guides, and the often surprising persistence of the video store as an adaptable social space of consumer culture. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, cultural geography, and archival research, Videoland provides a wide-ranging exploration of the pivotal role video stores played in the history of motion pictures, and is a must-read for students and scholars of media history.