Information on Hollywood

[Brooks Productions]

I'm currently writing a 3000 word essay for my film studies project and i need some information.

I?ve been searching google for a good couple of hours and i haven?t got anything :S

I need these questions answered on both Hollywood and the eastern (Japanese, Chinese) film industry.

How long they have been production films?
How much money they spend a year?
How much money they make in a year?
What countries they distribute to?
Also what genres are do they heaviely use

Any help would be fantastic, also if its not to much to ask will you post where you got the information from for my bibliography.

Thanks a lot

[Bnew]

Originally posted by Brooks Productions:
I'm currently writing a 3000 word essay for my film studies project and i need some information.

I need these questions answered on both Hollywood and the eastern (Japanese, Chinese) film industry.

How long they have been production films?
How much money they spend a year?
How much money they make in a year?
What countries they distribute to?
Also what genres are do they heaviely use

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">What level film studies mate?

After looking at some of your questions I find it odd that they would make you write a 3000 word essay on this without having taught you certain things. Perhaps you really ought to be speaking to your tutor? I'll help with what I can though, but it's a good idea to talk with your tutor anyways about all coursework (i'm assuming this is GCSE or A-Level coursework).

How long they have been production films?

If you're being specific to Hollywood, then D.W. Griffith is generally considered the father of American cinema, as he gathered an ensemble of actors and took them over to the west coast (for better weather to film in), his film 'Birth of a Nation' (1917) was pivotal in establising the language of film (IMR), and then in 1919 began the studio system by forming United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks (all big people in the industry). However, film production in america had been going on a lot longer than that...but that's the start of Hollywood/the studio system as we know it.

As for Eastern/Asian cinema, I don't know.

How much money they spend a year?
How much money they make in a year?

These questions are very difficult to answer, they're a bit like "how long is a piece of string?" It will vary year to year for example, depending on a variety of things. Also, the 'eastern' industry, is made up of several individual industries, you'd either have to be more specific and choose one, or find figures for each of those and total them. If you don't need to be exact you might be able to find rough figures, or just pick one year. I would suggest trying The American Film Institute for Hollywood figures, as for Asia I would suggest trying here.

What countries they distribute to?

Again this could be a difficult one to answer, firstly are you talking about just theatrical distribution, or video/dvd too?

The main distributors are 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Universal, MGM
Sony Pictures and Paramount, but there are also independant distributors like Lions Gate Films, and Miramax (although they're owned by Disney).
Many of these also have subsidiaries or sister companies which they also distribute through, but i'm sure you can probably find the details you need on their websites.

As for eastern cinema, this site has details of distributors (and plenty of other info you might find useful too) for East Asian countries (China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea), but I don't really know about South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan), but this BFI mini-site might be of some use.

Also what genres are do they heaviely use

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hollywood's popular genres have varied over the years (as have the demographics), e.g. westerns, or melodramas are no longer popular but once were, so do you mean since the industries inception, or present day? Today's Hollywood favours Action movies, Romantic Comedies, Thrillers, and obviously their sub-genres (e.g. sci-fi thriller, teen comedies etc) but also Crime-related movies have always been popular (and are even moreso after Pulp Fiction), and there's been a resurgence of the historical epic after Gladiator.

As for Eastern Cinema, that's more difficult to answer. Each Eastern country's industry has it's own unique identity and the films can vary wildly between them. e.g. Bollywood, Hong Kong action films and Japanese Anime.

I hope this has been of some help, but I really would suggest speaking to your tutor. A great resource for information in general though is the British Film Institute

Good luck with your project mate.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ February 03, 2005 10:29 AM: Message edited by: Bnew ]</font>