CINE Edison and the Trust

Thomas Armat

Edison liscenced technology from him to try and get in on the film projection movement instead of his lil peepshow he had going on

The Motion Picture Patents Company (aka MPPC aka The Trust)

Edison merges with American Mutoscope and Biograph and Eastman Stock (controlled the raw stock in the industry); own licensing company and theatres (1909); massive media giant at the time, controlled the whole market; were challenged and within a few years were gone; sold films as a commodity, the way you would sell sugar; didn't want to innovate or change; didn't want to invest in hiring stars

General Film Company

a motion picture distribution company in the United States. Between 1909 and 1920, the company distributed almost 12,000 silent era motion pictures. The General Film Company was formed by the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) in an attempt to monopolize distribution. In 1909, the General Film Company tried to seize the equipment of independent distribution companies to discourage their activities.[1] Using their control over several film patents, the General Film Company and MPPC tried to force independent distribution companies to sell out or lose their patent licenses

Black Maria

all black theatre that spun around 360 degrees with a roof that opened for sunlight long before artificial light came along; also name for a Patty wagon (truck used to transport prisoners) → suggested that film was a low form of entertainment

Thomas Edison

basically begins Hollywood industry with his invention; claims to have invented film, creates patents but are proved void, developed phonograph; wanted to do for the eye what the phonograph did for the ear; envisioned film taking place in small boxes for individual viewing

American Mutoscope and Biograph

biggest Edison competitor; develop their own film technology and many patents

Latham Loop

developed by American Mutoscope and Biograph; put a bit of slack before and after the film begins to allow for longer films (??)

phonograph

developed by Edison and team though it would be used for recording speeches

Edison v Lubin

didn't like each other very much at all

Vitascope

film projector by Armat

Kinetograph

for projecting film for mass viewing; designed by Dickson and his team w/ Edison

Kinetoscope

for viewing pictures individually; Edison envisioned an arcade like film set up; many short films in a room full of Kinetoscopes; boxing, vaudeville performers = very popular film topics (specticals)

the independents

formed a few days after the trust; challenged the trust; wanted to reach a middle class audience; started to reach out to stars; eventually began to lead the way for big movie stars to be made; made feature films; closer to modern theatre experience than the theme park feel they had before; eventually push The Trust entirely out of the picture

Carl Laemmle

founded The Independents and later on Universal Studios

National Board of Review

founded in 1909 in New York City, just 13 years after the birth of cinema, to protest New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.'s revocation of moving-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. The mayor (son of the famed Civil War general) believed that the new medium degraded the morals of community. To assert their constitutional freedom of expression, theatre owners led by Marcus Loew and film distributors (Edison, Biograph, Pathé and Gaumont) joined John Collier of The People's Institute at Cooper Union and established the New York Board of Motion Picture Censorship, which soon changed its name to the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures to avoid the taint of the word "censorship".

WKL Dickson

head of Edison Motion Picture team

US v MPPC

ruled that the MPPC's acts went "far beyond what was necessary to protect the use of patents or the monopoly which went with them" and was therefore an illegal restraint of trade under the Sherman Antitrust Act. An appellate court dismissed the Patent Company's appeal, and officially terminated the MPPC in 1918

Edwin S. Porter

starts off showing films in New York; is hired by Edison to direct films (The Great Film Robbery)

Paper Prints

used for copyright of early films; Edison used to copyright all his films and put in library of congress