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36-690: Gainsborough Pictures was a British film studio based on the south bank of the Regent's Canal , in Poole Street, Hoxton in the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch , northeast London. Gainsborough Studios was active between 1924 and 1951. The company was initially based at Islington Studios , which were built as a power station for the Great Northern & City Railway and later converted to studios. Other films were made at Lime Grove and Pinewood Studios . The former Islington studio

72-404: A security guard . The sound stage is the central component of a studio lot. Most studios have several; small studios may have as few as one, and large studios have as many as 20 to 30. Movie studios also provide office space for studio executives and production companies, and makeup rooms and rehearsal rooms for talent. If space allows, a studio may have an outside backlot . Finally, there

108-526: A time machine . A costume-production, many of which are immaculate, the film made extensive use of the Gainsborough wardrobe. Entertainers Bill and Susie Barton are on tour when Bill's old friend Tommy shows up soliciting funds for a new scheme, Time Ferry Services Limited. Bill has given Tommy $ 10,000 to help Professor McAndrew develop the Time Ball, a primitive time machine. Enraged, Susie goes to

144-613: A faster recovery, contributing to the increasing dominance of Hollywood over New York City. The Big 5 By the mid-1920s, the evolution of a handful of American production companies into wealthy motion picture industry conglomerates that owned their own studios, distribution divisions , and theaters , and contracted with performers and other filmmaking personnel led to the sometimes confusing equation of studio with production company in industry slang. Five large companies: RKO Radio Pictures , 20th Century Fox , Paramount Pictures , Warner Bros. , and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer came to be known as

180-656: A growing proportion of Hollywood movie revenue, with approximately 70% of total movie revenue coming from international ticket sales; and the Chinese domestic box-office revenue is projected to outpace those of US in 2020. The growth of film studios and filmmaking outside of Hollywood and the US has produced popular international film studio locations such as Hollywood North ( Vancouver and Toronto in Canada ), Bollywood ( Mumbai , India ), and Nollywood ( Lagos , Nigeria ). As

216-597: A motion picture of their own because they are not entertainment companies or motion picture companies; they are companies who sell only studio space. In 1893, Thomas Edison built the first movie studio in the United States when he constructed the Black Maria , a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories in West Orange , New Jersey , and asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for

252-573: A new swindle by claiming to "own" America and selling off pieces of land to members of the court. The Professor is arrested and jailed in the Tower of London for being a Scottish spy, trapping the group in the past. Meanwhile, Susie meets William Shakespeare and feeds him some of his own lines, which he eagerly writes down. Susie and Bill meet Captain John Smith and Pocahontas in a tavern and steal their identities so they can gain an audience with

288-532: A stable of leading British actors, among them Margaret Lockwood , James Mason , Stewart Granger and Patricia Roc . The studio also made modern-dress comedies and melodramas such as Love Story (1944), Two Thousand Women (1944), Time Flies (starring Tommy Handley , 1944), Bees in Paradise (with Arthur Askey directed by Val Guest , 1944), They Were Sisters (1945), and Easy Money (1948). Subsequent productions, overseen by Betty Box (who at

324-654: A tram tour of the backlot where films such as Psycho and Back to the Future were once shot. In fall 2019, movie mogul Tyler Perry opened Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta . The studio lot is claimed to be larger than any movie-studio lot in Hollywood. In the 1980s and 1990s, as the cost of professional 16mm film equipment decreased, along with the emergence of non-film innovations such as S-VHS and Mini-DV cameras, many young filmmakers began to make films outside

360-407: Is a secure compound enclosed by a tall perimeter wall. This is necessary to protect filmmaking operations from unwanted interference from paparazzi and crazed fans of leading movie stars . Movement in and out of the studio lot is normally limited to specific gates (often capped with grand decorative arches), where visitors must stop at a boom barrier and explain the purpose of their visit to

396-733: Is a studio "commissary", which is the traditional term in the movie industry for what other industries call a company cafeteria . In addition to these basic components, the largest film studios are full-service enterprises offering the entire range of production and post-production services necessary to create a motion picture, including costumes, props, cameras, sound recording, crafts, sets, lighting, special effects , cutting, editing, mixing, scoring, automated dialogue replacement (ADR), re-recording, and foley . Independent suppliers of all these services and more (e.g., photographic processing labs) are often found in clusters in close proximity to film studios. Nitrate film , manufactured until 1951,

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432-651: The Almeida Theatre Company, April–July 2000, directed by Jonathan Kent and starring Ralph Fiennes , and a closing Hitchcock season in October 2003. The buildings began to be cleared in 2002, and apartments named Gainsborough Studios were built on the site in 2004 by architects Munkenbeck and Marshall. 51°32′09″N 0°05′19″W  /  51.5357°N 0.0886°W  / 51.5357; -0.0886 Film studio There are also independently owned studio facilities, who have never produced

468-459: The patents relevant to movie production at the time. Early movie producers relocated to Southern California to escape patent enforcement, thanks to more lenient local courts and physical distance from company detectives and mob allies. (Edison's patents expired in 1913.) The first movie studio in the Hollywood area was Nestor Studios , opened in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley . In

504-407: The vertically integrated structure of the movie industry constituted an illegal monopoly . This decision, reached after twelve years of litigation, hastened the end of the studio system and Hollywood's "Golden Age". By the 1950s, the physical components of a typical movie studio had become standardized. Since then, a movie studio has usually been housed on a "studio lot." Physically, a studio lot

540-550: The "quality" pictures, Gainsborough mainly produced 'B' movies and melodramas at its Islington Studios . Both studios used continental film practices, especially those from Germany , with Alfred Hitchcock being encouraged by Balcon — who had links with UFA — to study there and make multilingual co-production films with UFA, before World War II . In the 1930s, actors Elisabeth Bergner and Conrad Veidt , art director Alfred Junge , cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum and screenwriter/director Berthold Viertel , along with others, joined

576-640: The Big Five, the majors, or the Studios in trade publications such as Variety , and their management structures and practices collectively came to be known as the studio system . The Little 3 Although they owned few or no theaters to guarantee sales of their films, Universal Pictures , Columbia Pictures , and United Artists also fell under these rubrics, making a total of eight generally recognized major studios. United Artists, although its controlling partners owned not one but two production studios during

612-749: The Gainsborough banner, that quickly ceased, and no further Gainsborough films were released after 1951. It was revived in 1987 and made the television film , A Hazard of Hearts . The original Lime Grove site was taken over by the BBC in 1949 and remained in use until it was closed in 1991. The buildings were demolished in the early 1990s, and have been since replaced with housing presently called Gaumont Terrace and Gainsborough Court. The former Islington Studios, in Poole Street, remained largely derelict after their closure in 1949 apart from occasional art performances, including two epic Shakespearean productions by

648-568: The Golden Age, had an often-tenuous hold on the title of major and operated mainly as a backer and distributor of independently produced films. Smaller studios operated simultaneously with the majors. These included operations such as Republic Pictures , active from 1935, which produced films that occasionally matched the scale and ambition of the larger studio, and Monogram Pictures , which specialized in series and genre releases. Together with smaller outfits such as PRC TKO and Grand National,

684-629: The camera. He distributed these movies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgrounds. The first film serial , What Happened to Mary , was released by the Edison company in 1912. The pioneering Thanhouser movie studio was founded in New Rochelle, New York in 1909 by American theatrical impresario Edwin Thanhouser . The company produced and released 1,086 movies between 1910 and 1917, successfully distributing them around

720-729: The film industry had once hoped—movie studios were increasingly being used to produce programming for the burgeoning medium. Some midsize film companies, such as Republic Pictures , eventually sold their studios to TV production concerns , which were eventually bought by larger studios, such as the American Broadcasting Company which was purchased by Disney in 1996. With the growing diversification of studios into such fields as video games , television stations , broadcast syndication , television , theme parks , home video and publishing , they have become multi-national corporations. International markets account for

756-554: The lavish apartment where Tommy and the Professor are staying to demand the money back. However, the group discovers that Tommy is actually a valet and has been pretending to be wealthy by borrowing his employer's apartment and clothes. His boss calls the police and the group hides in the Time Ball. Tommy closes the hatch, accidentally activating the invention, and they are sent back in time to Elizabethan London where Tommy befriends Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth I . He starts

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792-475: The minor studios filled the demand for B movies and are sometimes collectively referred to as Poverty Row . The Big Five's ownership of movie theaters was eventually opposed by eight independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn , David O. Selznick , Walt Disney , Hal Roach , and Walter Wanger . In 1948, the federal government won a case against Paramount in the Supreme Court , which ruled that

828-445: The queen and ask her to pardon the Professor. However, they are unmasked and sentenced to be executed along with the Professor and Tommy. The queen's soldiers try to burn them alive in the Time Ball, but the professor fixes it and they return to the modern day. However, they show up several weeks too early and gradually fade away due to a temporal paradox . Sky Cinema gave the film two out of five stars, its review stating: "Despite

864-555: The same year, another 15 independents settled in Hollywood. Other production companies eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in places such as Culver City , Burbank , and what would soon become known as Studio City in the San Fernando Valley . The stronger early public health response to the 1918 flu epidemic by Los Angeles compared to other American cities reduced the number of cases there and resulted in

900-475: The studio made such popular films as Oh, Mr Porter! (1937) and Hitchcock 's The Lady Vanishes (1938). By 1937, Gaumont-British was in financial crisis, and closed its Lime Grove studios, moving all production to the Islington Poole Street studio. However, the tall factory chimney on the site was considered dangerous in the event of bombing during World War II, and so Gainsborough Studios

936-578: The studio system. Filmmakers and producers such as Mike Judge , Adam Sandler , Jim Jarmusch , Robert Rodriguez , Steven Soderbergh , Quentin Tarantino , Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater made films that pushed boundaries in ways the studios were then reluctant to do. In response to these films, many distributed by mini-studios like Miramax , the majors created their own in-house mini-studios meant to focus on edgier, independent content. Focus Features

972-601: The studios increased in size they began to rely on production companies like J. J. Abrams ' Bad Robot to handle many of the creative and physical production details of their feature films. Instead, the studios transformed into financing and distribution entities for their films (generally made by their affiliated production companies). With the decreasing cost of CGI and visual effects , many studios sold large chunks of their once-massive studio spaces or backlots to private real-estate developers. Century City in Los Angeles

1008-412: The subject and the cast, the treatment lacks vivacity". TV Guide rated it similarly: "A well-tuned script takes full advantages of the possibilities for comedy, but radio star Handley is a bit of a disappointment, looking sourly out of place on the screen"; The Radio Times rated it three out of five stars, concluding: "Some of the jokes have travelled less well and it falls flat in places, but it's

1044-610: The time was the only female producer in British cinema), included the neo-realist Holiday Camp (1947), Miranda (1948) and the Huggett family series, with Jack Warner , Kathleen Harrison , and Petula Clark , who had been introduced in Holiday Camp . Unhappy with the performance of the studio, Rank closed it down in early 1949. Production was concentrated at Pinewood Studios . Although films continued to be made there under

1080-522: The two studios. The studio's opening logo, of a lady (Celia Bird then Glennis Lorimer ) in a Georgian era period costume, sitting in an ornate frame, and turning and smiling, was based on the portrait of Sarah Siddons by Thomas Gainsborough . The short piece of music was written by Louis Levy and called the "Gainsborough Minuet". After the departure of Balcon to MGM-British , the Rank Organisation gained an interest in Gainsborough and

1116-584: The world. In the early 1900s, companies started moving to Los Angeles, California . Although electric lights were by then widely available, none were yet powerful enough to adequately expose film; the best source of illumination for motion picture production was natural sunlight. Some movies were shot on the roofs of buildings in Downtown Los Angeles . Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company , based in New York City, controlled almost all

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1152-637: Was converted to flats in 2004 and a London Borough of Hackney historical plaque is attached to the building. The studio is best remembered for the Gainsborough melodramas it produced in the 1940s. Gainsborough Pictures is now owned by Gregory Motton . Gainsborough was founded in 1924 by Michael Balcon and, from 1927, was a sister company to the Gaumont British , with Balcon as Director of Production for both studios. Whilst Gaumont-British, based at Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd's Bush , produced

1188-427: Was created by Universal Pictures and Fox Searchlight was created by 20th Century Fox for this purpose. Time Flies (1944 film) Time Flies is a 1944 British comedy film directed by Walter Forde and starring Tommy Handley , Evelyn Dall , Felix Aylmer and Moore Marriott . The screenplay concerns two music hall performers, an inventor and a con-man who travel back to Elizabethan times using

1224-612: Was evacuated to Lime Grove for the duration of hostilities. From 1943 to 1946, Gainsborough produced a series of studio-bound costume melodramas for the domestic market, which became known collectively as the Gainsborough melodramas . They were mostly based on recent popular books by female novelists. Prominent titles included The Man in Grey (1943), Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944), Fanny by Gaslight (1944), The Wicked Lady (1945) and Caravan (1946). The films featured

1260-435: Was highly flammable, and sets and backlots were and still are very flammable, which is why film studios built in the early-to-mid 20th century have water towers to facilitate firefighting . Water towers "somewhat inexplicably" evolved into "a most potent symbol ... of movie studios in general." Halfway through the 1950s, with television proving to be a lucrative enterprise not destined to disappear any time soon—as many in

1296-399: Was once part of the 20th Century Fox backlot, which was among the largest and most famous of the studio lots. In most cases, portions of the backlots were retained and are available for rental by various film and television productions. Some studios offer tours of their backlots , while Universal Pictures allows visitors to its adjacent Universal Studios Hollywood theme park to take

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