From Silents to Studio' Golden Years

Part 1: Explore how the inclusion of sound in the movie pictures impacted the Movie Industry. Detail how it happened, who was effected, what was lost. The inclusion of sound occurred because the Warner Brother were struggling to survive in the Film Industry and despite the consequences of the "talkies", they  produced The Jazz Singer, the first film with dialogue. It only had 354 spoken words and background music, but it was enough to target the audience and revolutionize the film industry. The Warner Brothers immediately released another "talkie" called The Singing Fool which cost $200,000 to make and brought in $5M. However, this created an enormous change because most studios started to create films with dialogue even though they were sacrificing production value. In order to have audio the camera was housed in a soundproof, which made it immobile; thus making the shots static and non-creative. In addition, many actors had thick accents or their voices didn't match their image, therefore they lost their jobs. 

Part 2: The 20 years between 1930 and 1950 are generally recognized as the studio years. Describe what the pros and cons were of this factory system.The Studio Years, 1930-1950, brought pros to the factory system such as the expansion of film industry. They created elaborated sound stages across California, and theaters had 30 seats, 10 more than past theaters. In addition to the pros they also establish a medium price ticket with the purpose to have a combined audience of upper and lower class. However, there were cons to "The Studio Years" such as the people under contract were not being allow to work with other studios without permission. The term oligopoly also came in to play as a consequence. Oligopoly refers to when few companies control a large part of the industry which affects the rest. Overall, the Studio years brought more pros than cons because it contributed to the progress of the Film Industry.