g322 tina: History of the British Film Industry

Early History:

Cinema as an entertainment industry emerged from a series of innovations in the late nineteenth century mostly in United States, France and the United Kingdom.
Small studios were established around London producing short films for use by travelling showmen and in music halls.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, more than 30 film studios were established.
British films rapidly established a large share of the market at home and abroad.
This included 15 per cent of the American market by 1910.
The initial success faded as American production took off, using expensive and heavily marketed film.

At the same time as film production was declining, going to the cinema flourished as a pastime of the British public.
In 1908 Investment in cinema increased with the founding of many companies and investments of £1.5m.
The government recognised the potential of the film industry as a source of revenue, when it included cinema together with other entertainment, music hall and theatre, in the entertainment tax, introduced in 1916.
The rate was 25-50 percent of the price of cinema tickets then got reduced in the 1920's but was abolished in 1969.

First Government Support:

1925 British film production had declined.
Fewer than 40 feature films were being made a year.
The majority of films shown were American.
May 1925, lord Newton raised the issue in the house of lords, 'industrial, commercial, educational and imperial interests'.
In 1927, the government recognised the importance of film production to the British economy.
The Cinematograph Films Act 1927 recognised the interdependency of production, distribution and exhibition, and sought to encourage home production by setting quotas for British-made films to be met by both distributors and exhibitors.
The act was successful in the sense that production of films in the UK doubled.
It also established several new production companies, including British international Pictures at new studios in Elstree, Warner studios at Teddington and Fox's studios at Wemberly.

The Challenge of American Film Exports:

Government was quick to recognise the domestic importance of the film industry and film production.
The American authorities were even quicker to recognise the importance as an export industry.
American missions abroad were reporting on foreign film market opportunities as early as the 1910's.
1926, congress appointed $15,000 to set up the Motion Picture section within the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce of the department of commerce.
This collected market information through 44 foreign offices and 300 consular offices.
The section also appointed a trade commissioner in Europe.
Harvard business school started to offer seminar series in the business and management of the film industry and several other American business schools and universities followed.
Domestically the film industry was responsible for about 2 percent of overall US.
The hollywood studios generally broke even on the American market and derived their profits from export revenues.

The 1930's boom and bust:

The arrival of the 'talkies' in 1928 had a positive effect on British film production.
Their films were projected in the home market and, unlike the French and German film industries, able to compete with American sound films without the need for dubbing.
The result was that the industry experienced a boom.
The most successful British film production company was London Film Production.
This was founded by an immigrant from Hungary, Alexander Korda.

Emergent British Cinema 1880-1900:

Modern cinema is generally regarded as descending from the work of the French Lumiere brothers in 1892.
The first moving Pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park in 1889 by William Friese Greene.

Film Production from 2012:

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