The ‘film industry’ is what we call the selection of industries that combined produce films. These include production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screen writing, pre-production, Set building, post production, distribution, film directors, Film crew, etc. The Movie Industry can be one of the most exciting industries to work in. This is because it is a business where the revenue of a single feature film (such as Titanic), can approach or exceed £1 billion or ruin you with bad publicity and therefore little profit.
The film industry became particularly big just after the WW1. This was because during the 1920’s the Wall Street Crash happened impacting on many people, mainly Americans. When WW2 came about the cinema was used for propaganda and as another way for the Governments to try and keep their countries calm and following the war, movies were made about the ‘valiant soldiers who fought hard for their country’. This helped to raise peoples moral and the film industry then began to grow, and at a rapid rate.
Like in music where there are the ‘Big Three’ producers there’s the ‘Big Eight’ who own the ten major film studios. These are News Corporation (20th Century Fox), The Walt Disney Company (Buena Vista, Walt Disney Studios and Miramax/Dimension Films), Viacom (Paramount Pictures), Sony (Warner Bros. and MGM), Time Warner (Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema) and NBC Universal (Universal Studios).
Each of these studios has produced largely distributed films however Oligopoly (The control of the market for a particular product) can be applied to three of these studios. The studios people tend to remember in today’s society are Universal Studios, Warner Bros. and the family favourite, Walt Disney Studios.
Universal studio’s frequently releases films for a variety of ages that end up being hits. For example the ‘Despicable Me’ set of films appealed to families, ‘Pitch Perfect’ appealed to a rather large audience and became even...