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The Journal of Economic Surveys is an international economics journal publishing new ideas in economics, econometrics, economic history and business economics. Abstract Twenty years ago, there were all but a handful of scholarly studies published about the economics of the motion picture industry.
There was a time when landline phones where the only means of communication in the film industry. There were no indie trade organizations or studio specialty divisions, HBO had just been born, cable television was a luxury, videocassette machines cost between five hundred and seven hundred dollars, and foreign-language films were the main source of alternative cinema.
- Introduction
- Before Cinema
- Technological Origins
- The Emergence of Cinema
- The Quality Race
- The Decline and Fall of The European Film Industry
- Market Shares by National Film Industries, U.S., Britain, France, 1893-1930
- The Rise of Hollywood
- The Coming of Sound
- The Economics of The Interwar Film Trade
Like other major innovations such as the automobile, electricity, chemicals and the airplane, cinema emerged in most Western countries at the same time. As the first form of industrialized mass-entertainment, it was all-pervasive. From the 1910s onwards, each year billions of cinema-tickets were sold and consumers who did not regularly visit the ci...
In the late eighteenth century most consumers enjoyed their entertainment in an informal, haphazard and often non-commercial way. When making a trip they could suddenly meet a roadside entertainer, and their villages were often visited by traveling showmen, clowns and troubadours. Seasonal fairs attracted a large variety of musicians, magicians, da...
In the early 1890s, Thomas Edison introduced the kinematograph, which enabled the shooting of films and their play-back in slot-coin machines for individual viewing. In the mid-1890s, the Lumière brothers added projection to the invention and started to play films in theater-like settings. Cinema reconfigured different technologies that all were av...
For about the first ten years of its existence, cinema in the United States and elsewhere was mainly a trick and a gadget. Before 1896 the coin-operated Kinematograph of Edison was present at fairs and in entertainment venues. Spectators had to throw a coin in the machine and peek through glasses to see the film. The first projections, from 1896 on...
Once Nickelodeons and other types of cinemas were established, the industry entered a new stage with the emergence of the feature film. Before 1915, cinemagoers saw a succession of many different films, each between one and fifteen minutes, of varying genres such as cartoons, newsreels, comedies, travelogues, sports films, ‘gymnastics’ pictures and...
Because the quality race happened when Europe was at war, European companies could not participate in the escalation of quality (and production costs) discussed above. This does not mean all of them were in crisis. Many made high profits during the war from newsreels, other short films, propaganda films and distribution. They also were able to part...
Note: EU/US is the share of European companies on the U.S. market, EU/UK is the share of European companies on the British market, and so on. For further details see Bakker 2005.
Once they had lost out, it was difficult for European companies to catch up. First of all, since the sharply rising film production costs were fixed and sunk, market size was becoming of essential importance as it affected the amount of money that could be spent on a film. Exactly at this crucial moment, the European film market disintegrated, firs...
In 1927, sound films were introduced. The main innovator was Warner Brothers, backed by the bank Goldman, Sachs, which actually parachuted a vice-president to Warner. Although many other sound systems had been tried and marketed from the 1900s onwards, the electrical microphone, invented at Bell labs in the mid-1920s, sharply increased the quality ...
Because film production costs were mainly fixed and sunk, international sales or distribution were important, because these were additional sales without much additional cost to the producer; the film itself had already been made. Films had special characteristics that necessitated international sales. Because they essentially were copyrights rathe...
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Jan 9, 2024 · Independent cinema originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the period which is also referred to as the early days of filmmaking and cinema. During this period, the cinema industry was a monopoly of major studios, i.e., they dominated the business of films. There were five major studios at the time, namely Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ...
Mar 6, 2024 · March 06, 2024. The American film and television industry supports 2.74 million jobs, pays out $242 billion in total wages, and comprises more than 122,000 businesses—according to an analysis of the most recent economic figures released by the Motion Picture Association. For a more detailed analysis of the industry’s economic impact ...
Jan 17, 2019 · The film industry is changing, and this is reflected in ongoing market trend analysis for independent films.Mainstream Hollywood’s dominance of the global film industry likely isn’t going ...
Traces the history of independents from the birth of cinema in the 1890s through 1999, arguing that an “indie system” of production and exhibition is an essential support mechanism if filmmakers are to have creative and financial control over their activities. Lively and opinionated. Includes an indie-film timeline (pp. 413–423).
