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30-612: The Tempelhof Studios are a film studio located in Tempelhof in the German capital of Berlin . They were founded in 1912, during the silent era , by German film pioneer Alfred Duskes , who built a glass-roofed studio on the site with financial backing from the French company Pathé . The producer Paul Davidson 's PAGU then took control and constructed a grander structure. The First World War propaganda drama The Yellow Passport ,

60-404: 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

90-573: A failed exotic animal show, David Horsley went back into the motion picture business with David Horsley Studios and using the animals from the failed show, established the Bostock Jungle Films Company. By the spring of 1917, he had outfitted his new operations in Los Angeles at Main and Washington streets however a series of setbacks cost Horsley his entire fortune and left him in debt. David Horsley died in Los Angeles. He

120-613: 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

150-656: 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

180-597: 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

210-733: A name it is a true piece of Hollywood history. In the fall of 1911, the Nestor Motion Picture Company opened the first motion picture studio in Hollywood in the Blondeau Tavern building at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street. With Horsley was Al Christie who served as general manager in charge of Christie Comedies plus Charles Rosher who lent his expertise as the studio's full-time cameraman. Other East Coast film companies recognized Horsley's advantage and quickly followed his lead. In April 1912,

240-597: 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

270-533: A week, including the Mutt and Jeff comedies. David and William Horsley, along with other film independents , succeeded in defeating the monopolistic hold on the industry of Thomas Edison 's Motion Picture Patents Company . However, weather conditions on the East Coast made filming an uncertain proposition because camera technology at the time relied on sunshine. Frustrated, and realizing that California afforded

300-407: 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

330-733: 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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360-703: The Universal Film Manufacturing Company was formed and David Horsley and other small studios merged, each accepting shares in Universal as payment for their business. Horsley received $ 175,000 in preferred stock and $ 204,000 in common stock in the new Universal Film Company and was also appointed the company's treasurer. However, the peaceful merger soon turned sour and in 1913 Horsley sold his interest to Carl Laemmle . A wealthy man, David Horsley travelled to his birthplace and around Europe. After returning to California, and investing in

390-459: 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

420-407: 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

450-640: 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

480-568: 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,

510-629: 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

540-729: 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

570-527: The historical comedy Madame DuBarry and the expressionist 1920 silent film The Golem were made there by PAGU. During the 1920s the site came into the hands of the dominant German company UFA which also controlled the Babelsberg and Staaken Studios in the city. It was used for several of the company's major productions during the Weimar Republic including The Last Laugh . It

600-475: 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

630-528: The opportunity to make films year round, David Horsley moved his operations to the West Coast. Among the first motion pictures ever filmed in Hollywood was taken on October 26, 1911 in the orchards of H J Whitley's estate ( D.W. Griffith filmed Love Among the Roses at the studio of famed French floral painter, Paul de Longpre at his home and studio in Hollywood in 1909). Although the movie never really had

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660-495: 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

690-578: 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

720-601: 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

750-584: 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

780-532: Was born in Stanley, County Durham in northern England. In 1884, the family moved to Bayonne, New Jersey where as a young man he built a bicycle business and ran a pool hall. It was then that he met a former employee of Biograph Studios , Charles Gorman, and along with his brother William Horsley (1870–1956), they formed the Centaur Film Company . By 1910 their operation was producing three films

810-485: Was created by Universal Pictures and Fox Searchlight was created by 20th Century Fox for this purpose. David Horsley David Horsley (March 11, 1873 – February 23, 1933) was an English-American pioneer of the film industry. He founded the Centaur Film Company and its West Coast branch, the Nestor Film Company , which established the first film studio in Hollywood in 1911. Horsley

840-435: 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

870-399: 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

900-801: Was partly used by Terra Film during the Nazi era . In 1945 the studios were captured by Soviet Army troops during the Battle of Berlin while the shooting of the comedy film Tell the Truth was under way. It was later located in Western Berlin and used for West German film and television production during the Cold War . This article about a film studio is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Film studio There are also independently owned studio facilities, who have never produced

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