history of hollywood cinema

Film first started officially in the 1900s with the silent film 'the great train robbery' but the movie industry didn't take off until the 1920s where Hollywood became the hub of American cinema and film theatres  where built all over the country. By the 1920s the concept of the movie star was born and actors would star in multiple movies each year. Studios that became industry giants that are still active today such as 'warner brothers', '20th century fox', 'paramount' and Colombia pictures were all huge names at the time. 

At the time, there was also a boom in animation and Disney was the first to create a feature length animation 'snow white' which allowed them to dominate the animation studios at the time since they mostly just created animation shorts for people to see at the cinema often. 

This also saw the birth of the director which allowed films be styled and unique to each director which wasn't possible due to restraints with budget and technology.

the 1930s was labelled the golden age of cinema but it also saw the birth of the 'code' which was a set of oppressive and now outdated rules that censored films, some of the rules include no homosexual or interracial couples as well as no drugs, gore or sexual imagery but these rules were gradually broken until they were thankfully a thing of the past. 

the 1930s also saw the first uses of sound and genre in film and later on the 1940s saw the first primitive uses of colour with the invention of two strip technicolour which was created when red dyed and green dyed strips of film were glued together to create limited and primitive colour film.

later on, kinema colour  was invented where the huge invention of cameras that would develop colour film as it would record but these cameras were huge, needed a lot of bright light and made so much  noise that they would have to be insulated in a blimp made of soundproof foam. 'The wizard of oz' was the most notable use of this type of camera and the constraints of the camera was worked around such as the studio lights being so bright that the set would reach boiling temperatures and a set that was in sepia tones was built for the beginning and end of the film to give the illusion of black and white to colour.

by the 1950s almost every American household had a television which brought on the concept of the target audience and more films were aimed towards the American youth and the invention of pop culture. the 1960s and 1970s were slow due to depression and the Vietnam was but the huge cultural shift for civil rights which affected the movies people watched.

the 1980s was the start of an era of unoriginality and the concept of movie sequels became popular and practical effects became more outlandish and advanced than ever before.

by the 1990s DVDs were becoming popular and would ultimately replace videotapes altogether, this saw the rise of rentals overtaking the sales of cinema tickets since it would be easy and cheap to pick out any film you wanted from a shelf instead of watching whatever the cinema was playing.

the digital age made film tape obsolete and is now widely used by most filmmakers apart from some who chose physical film for aesthetic reasons.

now we can watch films wherever we want with the advent of smartphones and streaming services such as Netflix etc and DVDs tapes and even cinemas are now on there way out. film has come a very long way in a relatively short amount of time and it all arguably couldn't have happened if it wasn't for Hollywood.