[14] The earliest recorded instance of motion capture was Eadweard Muybridge’s series of photographs depicting a running horse, which he took in Palo Alto, California using a set of still cameras placed in a row.

[29] An alternative was Los Angeles, which had mild winters, a large selection of places to film, and, most importantly, it was only 90 miles to the border of Mexico, in case they needed to flee from Edison's enforcement agents.

[32] In the Sultan's Power, directed by Boggs for Selig Polyscope Company, also starring Bosworth, is considered the first film shot entirely in Los Angeles, with shooting at 7th and Olive Streets, in 1909.

[33][32] In early 1910, director D. W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the West Coast with his acting troupe, consisting of actors Blanche Sweet, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and others.

Other movie makers arrived from Europe after World War I: directors like Ernst Lubitsch, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir; and actors like Rudolph Valentino, Marlene Dietrich, Ronald Colman, and Charles Boyer.

For example, To Have and Have Not (1944) is notable not only for the first pairing of actors Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) and Lauren Bacall (1924–2014), but because it was written by two future winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), the author of the novel on which the script was nominally based, and William Faulkner (1897–1962), who worked on the screen adaptation.

A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively unknown actors: Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles (1915–1985) and often regarded as the greatest film of all time, fits this description.

The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Only Angels Have Wings, Ninotchka and Midnight.

Among the other films from the Golden Age period that are now considered to be classics: Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night, the original King Kong, Mutiny on the Bounty, Top Hat, City Lights, Red River, The Lady from Shanghai, Rear Window, On the Waterfront, Rebel Without a Cause, Some Like It Hot, and The Manchurian Candidate.

[51] This stoked already widespread frustration at the practice of block-booking, in which studios would only sell an entire year's schedule of films at a time to theaters and use the lock-in to cover for releases of mediocre quality.

Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold—a noted "trust buster" of the Roosevelt administration—took this opportunity to initiate proceedings against the eight largest Hollywood studios in July 1938 for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

It has been argued that new approaches to drama and characterization played upon audience expectations acquired in the classical period: chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature "twist endings", and lines between the antagonist and protagonist may be blurred.

[55] Filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, and William Friedkin came to produce fare that paid homage to the history of film and developed upon existing genres and techniques.

[56][59][60] According to award-winning author Toni Bentley, Radley Metzger's 1976 film The Opening of Misty Beethoven, based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (and its derivative, My Fair Lady), and due to attaining a mainstream level in storyline and sets,[61] is considered the "crown jewel" of this 'Golden Age'.

While the early New Hollywood films like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider had been relatively low-budget affairs with amoral heroes and increased sexuality and violence, the enormous success enjoyed by Friedkin with The Exorcist, Spielberg with Jaws, Coppola with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, Scorsese with Taxi Driver, Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Polanski with Chinatown, and Lucas with American Graffiti and Star Wars, respectively helped to give rise to the modern "blockbuster", and induced studios to focus ever more heavily on trying to produce enormous hits.

Though not on the scale of George Lucas's $1  billion prequel to the Star Wars Trilogy, The Blair Witch Project earned the distinction of being the most profitable film of all time, in terms of percentage gross.

NBCUniversal released Trolls World Tour directly to video-on-demand rental on April 10,[77] while simultaneously receiving limited domestic theatrical screenings via drive-in cinemas;[78] CEO Jeff Shell claims that the film had reached nearly $100 million in revenue within the first three weeks.

[81][82][83][84][85] By December 2020, Warner Bros. Pictures announced their decision to simultaneously release its slate of 2021 films in both theaters and its streaming site HBO Max for a period of one month in order to maximize viewership.

[88][91] Critic Matt Zoller Seitz has described the release of Avengers: Endgame in 2019 as "represent[ing] the decisive defeat of 'cinema' by 'content'" due to its grand success as a "piece of entertainment" defined by the Marvel brand that culminates a series of blockbuster films that has traits of serial television.

"[93][99][100][94] Martin Scorsese has warned that cinema as an art form is "being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced" to "content" and called blockbusters' overemphasis on box-office returns "repulsive".

[117] On February 20, 2007, for example, Democratic then-presidential candidate Barack Obama had a $2,300-a-plate Hollywood gala, being hosted by DreamWorks founders David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Steven Spielberg at the Beverly Hilton.

A modern example common in the United States is Copaganda, in which TV shows display unrealistically flattering portrayals of law enforcement, in part to borrow equipment and get their assistance in blocking off streets to more easily film on location.

Hollywood producers sometimes seek to comply with the Chinese government's censorship requirements in a bid to access the country's restricted and lucrative cinema market,[122] with the second-largest box office in the world as of 2016.

[124] In 2016, Marvel Entertainment attracted criticism for its decision to cast Tilda Swinton as "The Ancient One" in the film adaptation Doctor Strange, using a white woman to play a traditionally Tibetan character.

[125] Actor and high-profile Tibet supporter Richard Gere stated that he was no longer welcome to participate in mainstream Hollywood films after criticizing the Chinese government and calling for a boycott of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

The success of Hollywood export markets is reflected in the boom of American multinational media corporations across the globe and the ability to make big-budget films that appeal to popular tastes in many different cultures.

"[153] Filmmakers like Edward James Olmos and Robert Rodriguez were able to represent the Hispanic and Latino American experience like none had on screen before, and actors like Hilary Swank, Jordana Brewster, Jessica Alba, Camilla Belle, Al Madrigal, Alexis Bledel, Sofía Vergara, Ana de Armas, and Rachel Zegler have become successful.

[151] The decision to hire Naomi Scott, the daughter of an English father and a Gujarati Ugandan-Indian mother, to play the lead of Jasmine in the film Aladdin also drew criticism as well as accusations of racism, as some commentators expected the role to go to an actress of Arab or Middle Eastern origin.

[165] In January 2018, it was reported that white extras were being applied brown make-up during filming in order to "blend in", which caused an outcry and condemnation among fans and critics, branding the practice as "an insult to the whole industry" while accusing the producers of not recruiting people with Middle Eastern or North African heritage.

The 150,000 member-strong International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) represents most of the crafts, such as the grips, electricians, and camera people, as well as editors, sound engineers, and hair & make-up artists.