tailieunhanh - Profitability trends in Hollywood, 1929 to 1999: somebody must know something

Given all these changes, we think itmakes sense to speak of an evolution for Hollywood film, one that increasingly makes presentational aspects of film either closer to what we perceive in the natural world (color, surrounding sound, enlarged images, etc) or aspects that capitalize on what has been discovered to be perceptually and cognitively acceptable (cuts, shot-reverse-shot composition and point-of-view editing, the optics of cameramovements without feedback fromeyemovements, etc). This evolution would also appear to reflect a goal of Hollywood filmmakers: to increase their control over viewers’ attention, and possibly to increase viewer engagement. If true, some long-termresults of filmmakers’ explorations exercising this control should be found in. | THE ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW Economic History Review 63 1 2010 pp. 56-84 Profitability trends in Hollywood 1929 to 1999 somebody must know something By MICHAEL POKORNY and JOHN SEDGWICK This article presents an overview of the development of the US film industry from 1929 to 1999. Notwithstanding a volatile film production environment in terms of rate of return and market share variability the industry has remained relatively stable and profitable. Film production by the film studios is interpreted as analogous to the construction of an investment portfolio whereby producers diversified risk across budgetary categories. In the 1930s high-budget film production was relatively unprofitable but the industry adjusted to the steep decline in film-going in the postwar period by refining high-budget production as the focus for profitability. Based upon the returns of films generated in the North American market during the 1980s and 1990s De Vany and Walls have demonstrated powerfully over the course of a series of articles that the distribution of returns to film production are stable yet highly skewed with thick right tails and are characterized by infinite variance meaning that the outcome of the film production process whether measured in terms of box-office revenues or profits is essentially 2 In a rare convergence between the rigour of academic analysis and the hyperbole of Hollywood these authors therefore provide compelling support for the screenwriter William Goldman s throwaway line concerning the profitability of film production that nobody knows anything elevated by Caves to the nobody knows However if it is the case that the film production environment can be characterized as being unpredictable then the central issue is the nature of the strategies that film producers have developed to deal with this unpredictability. For the fact is that Hollywood has consistently dominated global film production for nearly a century is manifestly