John_Escott-The_Cinema

More books on http://adapted-english-books.
site
The Cinema
by John Escott
(Adapted book. Pre-Intermediate level)
CHAPTER ONE
'Let's go to the cinema!'
Today it is possible to buy or hire a video and watch a
film at home, but millions of people all over the world still
prefer to go to their town or city cinema for a 'night out'. And
before television arrived in people's homes, a visit to the
cinema was something really special to look forward to.
The 'golden age' of film-making - and going to the
cinema - was between about 1930 and 1950. Film stars
seemed like kings and queens. Cinemas were 'picture
palaces' where, for the price of a ticket, you could enter into
a magical world where anything and everything was
possible.
In 1946, 1,650,000,000 cinema tickets were sold in
Great Britain. That's thirty-three tickets for every man,
woman and child in the country.
And in the year 1939 - the year when audiences first
saw Cone With The Wind - 30,000 people were employed by
the big film studios in Hollywood. They made 400 films
every year. Americans called the moving pictures, 'the
More books on http://adapted-english-books.site
movies', and fifty million of them went to the cinema every

week. They wanted to see the magic of the movies!
But how did it all begin...?
CHAPTER TWO
In the beginning
The first moving pictures were simple 'shadow shows'
or 'shadow plays'.
Then came the magic lanterns which projected painted
glass slides on to a screen. These became very popular in
Europe in the 18th century, and lantern showmen travelled
from village to village.
But in the 1820s, Nicephore Niepce invented
photography, and soon photographs were used instead of the
much more expensive glass slides. But these were not
movies. The pictures did not move. To make moving
pictures it is necessary to take a large number of photographs
very quickly, one after the other. Then, when the
photographs are projected, the person or animal in the picture
appears to move.
In 1878, the British photographer, Eadweard
Muybridge, who was living in California, fixed twelve
cameras beside a racetrack and took pictures of a racehorse -
very quickly, one after the other. The American inventor,
Thomas Edison, watched the work of Muybridge with great
interest. (Edison had invented the phonograph - an early
'record player' - in 1877.) By 1890, William K. L. Dickson,
who was working with Edison, had managed to take 'moving
pictures' with something called the Kinetograph.
In 1893 the world's first film studio was built by Edison

in West Orange, New Jersey. Actors from Buffalo Bill's
Wild West Show, and Barnum and Bailey's Circus were
filmed there. The films were shown in Kinetoscope
machines. These machines did not project the film on to a
screen, they had 'peep-holes' that one person at a time could
look through.
It was the Lumiere brothers, in France, who invented a
camera and projector in one - the Cinematographe. Now
large audiences could watch projected pictures on a screen.
And because films were longer, people were happy to pay
more to see them.
The Lumiere brothers gave the first performance of
their Cinematographe in Paris in 1895, in a room under the
Grand Cafe, 14 boulevard des Capucines on 28th December.
They borrowed a hundred chairs from the cafe, but only
thirty-five seats were sold at one franc each. But it was the
world's first 'film show'.
Then Edison introduced the Vitascope projector in New
York on April 23, 1896. And by the end of that year, films
were flickering on screens all over Europe and America.
(Films were often called 'flickers' or 'flicks'.)
At first, people did not mind what they watched, it was
exciting enough just to be able to see real moving
photographs of people and animals.
But slowly films with stories began to appear, and the
Frenchman, Georges Melies, began to use clever
photography to make strange things happen. These were

some of the first 'special effects'.
Film fact
There was a bad accident in May 1897. A
Cinematographe show was part of the great Charity Bazaar
in Paris. But the projectionist was careless and the film
caught fire. This started an even bigger fire, and 140 people
died. Many of them were very rich and important people.
CHAPTER THREE
The cinema comes to Hollywood
How did Hollywood begin? A Kansas couple, Harvey
and Daidia Wilcox, came to Los Angeles in 1883, when
there were just orange and lemon farms in the area. Three
years later, they owned fifty hectares of land which they
called Hollywood.
The Wilcoxes sold the land, bit by bit, and the first
Hollywood studio was built in 1911 by the Nestor Company.
The American filmmakers came to California because the
weather was good, and because the Californian workers were
cheap to employ. In 1913, Cecil B. DeMille came to
Hollywood and started what became known as Paramount
Studios. Universal Studios started about the same time, the
Fox Company two years later (joining with 20th Century
Pictures in 1935), United Artists in 1919 and Warner
Brothers, MGM, and Columbia in the early 1920s. If you
wanted to 'get into the movies', Hollywood was the place to
go!
The first films were silent. The words of the actors
appeared on cards which were shown every twenty seconds
or so. Suitable music was played during the film by an
orchestra, or by one person on a piano.
Edwin S. Porter was the filmmaker who introduced
film 'editing' - cutting the film and putting it back together
again with the shots in a different order. This made the films
more exciting to watch. His film, The Great Train Robbery

(1903), is a good example of this.
Until 1910, audiences did not know the names of their
favourite actors and actresses. Actresses were given names
like 'The Biograph Girl' or 'The Vitagraph Girl' or were not
named at all. Carl Laemmle, chief of Independent Motion
Pictures (which later became Universal Studios) was the first
to name a star, when he employed Florence Lawrence. By
1913, every studio was naming its actors and actresses.
CHAPTER FOUR
Famous faces
Although the first films were silent, during the years
after 1910, going to the cinema was becoming more and
more popular.
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were busy making
audiences laugh.
Rudolph Valentino, an Italian actor, became the 'great
lover' of the silent screen, and millions of women sent him
love letters after films like The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse and The Sheik (both 1921). Sadly, he died in
1926 when he was only thirty-one.
Douglas Fairbanks was the star of some of the best
adventure films... and audiences loved the beautiful Clara
Bow.
One very famous silent film was The Birth of a Nation,
directed by D. W. Griffith. It was first shown in 1915 and
was almost three hours long. It was about the American Civil
War, and a lot of people who had never been inside a cinema
before came to see this film.
The first 'serial' - a film shown a bit at a time, usually
one bit (or 'episode') each week - arrived in 1912. Audiences
rushed back each week to see the next episode. A favourite
serial was The Perils of Pauline (1914) starring Pearl White.
Pearl had to fight Indians in one episode, was pushed off the
Rocky Mountains in another, and was blown up at sea in
another. But she always seemed to escape for another

exciting day.
Film fact
By 1916, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin were each
earning $10,000 a year. By 1918, both had contracts for
more than $1 million a year.
CHAPTER FIVE
The golden age
The golden age of the cinema began with the talkies -
when the actors on film were able to talk for the first time. In
1927, at New York's Warner Theatre, Al Jolson, the Russian-
born Hollywood actor and singer, spoke, and sang six songs
in the Warner Brothers film, The Jazz Singer. The first words
that he spoke in the film were: 'You ain't seen nothing yet!'
The audiences loved him.
At first there were many problems with talking
pictures. Microphones picked up the noises in the studio,
directors had to stop shouting orders to the actors, and the
actors had to learn all their words.
Some stars of the silent screen could not make the
change to 'talkies'; audiences laughed at their funny voices.
But the deep, mysterious voice of silent star Greta Garbo was
a great success when she appeared in Anna Christie. The
film magazines said: 'Garbo talks!' (She also made it
fashionable for women of the time to wear berets!) Garbo's
career ended in 1942 when she left Hollywood, saying that
she would never act again.
By 1930, all films were 'talkies', and many actors and
directors moved from the theatre into the cinema. Actors like
Edward G. Robinson, Spencer Tracey, Humphrey Bogart,
Clark Gable and Bette Davis began to appear on the screen.
Musical films began to be popular in the 1930s. Fred

Astaire and Ginger Rogers starred in Flying Down to Rio
(1933). This was the first of nine films which they made
together.
And then there were the fast-moving crime films of
James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson.
One of the best was The Roaring Twenties.
The 1930s also introduced 'singing cowboys' like Roy
Rogers and Gene Autry. But it was the film Stagecoach,
directed by John Ford in 1939, which made a star of one of
Hollywood's most famous cowboys - John Wayne.
The year 1939 was when audiences first saw what is
now sometimes described as the greatest film ever made:
Gone With The Wind, starring Clark Gable and Vivien
Leigh. The book appeared in 1936 and sold a million in the
first six months. The film has earned more than $300 million,
and won eight Oscars (with the first one ever given to a black
actress, Hattie McDaniel, who played the part of 'Mammy').
Film fact
Alfred Hitchcock made the first British talking picture
in 1929. It was called Blackmail, and was first written as a
silent film. Hitchcock quickly added words and sound when
he saw how popular talking pictures were becoming.
CHAPTER SIX
The 'star system'
In 1932, Technicolor introduced a camera which could
produce 'natural' colours for the films that were shown in the
cinemas. Filming in Technicolor was expensive, but soon
every kind of movie could be seen for the first time 'In
Glorious Technicolor.'
The golden age of the cinema continued through most
of the 1940s. Audiences filled the 'picture palaces' in their
towns, enjoying exciting films like Citizen Kane, Casablanca
and Double Indemnity, and musicals like Meet Me in St
Louis and Easter Parade.
During the Second World War, many people went to
the cinema for another reason as well. They could see the
main film, but they could also see newsreels - films of the
week's news - with all the latest film and information about
the war.
At this time, actors worked for just one company. This
was known as the 'star system'. MGM Studios told everyone
that it had 'more stars than there are in heaven' working for
them; stars like Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Jean Harlow,
Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Joan Crawford.
Studios often chose or wrote stories especially for their
big stars.
And sometimes a director would be brought in from
another studio to do a film because that star liked him, or
worked well with him. Or a cameraman would be brought in

because he knew how to make the star look his or her best on
screen.
The Academy Awards are given every year by the US
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They are
called 'Oscars', and they are supposed to have got their name
because they looked like the Uncle Oscar of Margaret
Herrick, a lady who worked in the Academy film library.
The first Awards were given in May, 1929, and the Oscars
were awarded for silent films only. In 1930, the award-
giving was broadcast on the radio, and today it is seen on TV
by millions of people all over the world.
Film fact
One star, Marlon Brando, was paid $2.25 million for
ten days work on Superman (1978). He appears on the screen
for about ten minutes in the film.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bigger and better!
In the 1950s, people stopped going to the cinema two
or three times a week, and stayed at home to watch TV
instead. The cinema queues got shorter, and the film
companies realized that they had to fight back. They tried to
do this by making films that looked as different as possible
from TV.
TV in the 1950s was in black-and- white, and the
pictures were shown on very small screens. So the cinema
produced Cinemascope, which made it possible to show
films on a much wider screen than ever before, and, of
course, in colour. And 'big screens' meant 'big' films that
looked good on a wide screen. Films like The Robe (1953)
and Ben Hur (1959).
Then came 3-D, where the pictures seemed to jump off
the screen at the audience.
Warner Brothers had a success with House of Wax in
1953, and there were nearly twenty more 3-D films shown in
cinemas that year. Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder
(1954) was popular. But the people in the audience had to
wear special coloured glasses to see the effects of 3-D, and
they soon became bored with having to do this. And so the
studios stopped making 3-D films.
Cinerama films were popular for a short time, but it
needed three projectors and a bigger screen again to show
them. People had to move their heads from side to side to see
what was happening at both ends of the screen! But
Cinerama films were very expensive to make, and it was
difficult to put the very big screens into most cinemas.
The studios continued their fight with TV, but
television was becoming more and more popular. Then, in
1955, RKO studios needed money quickly to stay alive, and
they sold their films to television. Other studios soon began
to do the same and old films became popular on TV.
But although the 'golden age' of the cinema was
finished, films continued to be made. And there were some
big successes - like the James Bond films From Russia with
Love (1963), and Goldfinger (1964). There were popular
family films starring Julie Andrews - Mary Poppins (1965)
and The Sound of Music (1965). Then the 1970s brought
The Godfather (1972),
Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977) and Superman (1979).
In the 1980s, young people hurried to see E.T. The Extra-
Terrestrial (1982), Ghosthusters (1984), Back to the Future
(1985) and Batman (1989).
And in the 1990s came Stephen Spielberg's Jurassic
Park (1993) with its wonderful special effects and exciting
story. You can see the video of Jurassic Park at home on
your own television. But the special effects are much more
frightening on a big screen in a dark cinema.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Animation
Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry, Popeye, Rugs Bunny.
All these famous cartoon characters began their lives as
simple pictures on paper.
Cartoon characters are painted on to sheets of clear
film, called 'cels', so that the painted 'background' can be
seen through the unpainted parts of the cel. Then they are
photographed. Each cel will have one picture, and each
picture will be a little different, to make the characters
appear to move when they are projected at twenty-four
pictures every second.
The characters must look and sound the same in every
film.
Everybody recognizes the voice of Bugs Bunny ('Eeh,
what's up, Doc?'), spoken by Mel Blanc. Blanc also gave the
character the name 'Bugs'.
The most famous producer of animated films was Walt
Disney. He introduced Mickey Mouse to audiences in 1928
in a black-and- white cartoon, Plane Crazy. At first the
mouse was called Mortimer, but then the name was changed
to Mickey.
Disney also produced the first Walt Disney colour
cartoon, Flowers and Trees (1932), and the first animated
feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. More
followed: Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Cinderella,
The Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book,

Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas and The Hunchback of
Notre Dame.
Walt Disney studied at the Kansas City Art Institute.
He made animated cartoons for the Kansas City Film Ad
Company before going off to Hollywood and starting a
company with his brother Roy in 1923.
In the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), cartoon
characters and real actors appear together.
Today, more and more animators are using computers,
instead of employing people to do all the painting.
Some animators use marquettes (models) instead of
pictures, and bend the model's arms and legs, or change its
face, to make the character 'move'. Creature Comforts,
produced by Aardman Animations, who use models in all
their films, won an Oscar for best animation.
CHAPTER NINE
Behind the camera
A lot of people are needed to make a film, as well as
the actors and actresses. They are all the other people whose
names appear at the beginning or end of a film. Some of
them have strange-sounding jobs like 'Best Boy' or 'Key
Grip'. Let's look at just some of them.
Producer - the person who chooses which film to make,
who gets the money needed to make it, and who takes care of
all the business problems.
Director - the person who decides how to 'shoot' (or
film) each scene, and who controls all the actors and other
people who are helping to make the film. The director is the
one who shouts 'Action!' when he or she is ready. One piece
of film which is filmed without stopping the camera is called
a 'take'.
Screenwriter - the person who writes the screenplay or
script of a film. Sometimes many screenwriters are employed
before a director is happy with a screenplay. And when a
book is made into a film, it is not usually the writer of the
book who writes the screenplay. A screenwriter is usually
given this job.
Editor - the person who 'cuts' and then puts together the
film after the filming has finished, and makes it into the final
movie.
Set Designer - the person who arranges the furniture

and scenery needed in the film. The designer often plans by
making models of the scenery before working on the final
set.
Wardrobe Designer - the person who designs or
chooses the clothes that the actors wear in the film. These are
often got from special companies who keep every kind of
film and theatre clothes that you can think of.
Gaffer - the lights and lighting chief in the studio.
Best Boy - the Gaffer's assistant.
Key Grip - the person who moves the camera around.
Boom Operator - the person who moves the
microphone above the heads of the actors when they are
speaking.
Film facts
In the film, Cleopatra, made in 1963, 26,000 costumes
were used. But 32,000 were used to make the film Quo
Vadis in 1951.
Warner Brothers paid $5 million to American writer,
Tom Wolfe, to make the film of his book, Bonfire of the
Vanities (1990), starring Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith and
Bruce Willis.
CHAPTER TEN
Inside or outside?
In the very early years of the cinema, almost all filming
was done outside. Today, filming is done 'on location' when
it is impossible to build a real city, or a mountain or
something, inside the studio. Also, some directors prefer to
film on location. It is then that the cameras go out into the
real world.
All of some films are shot on location, but others have
only short outside scenes to join with the scenes that are shot
in the studio.
As an example, suppose it is important to show a
policeman arriving at an office on Fifth Avenue, in New
York, and meeting a businesswoman inside the building. A
location film crew will 'shoot' the policeman getting out of a
taxi on Fifth Avenue and walking into the office building.
But the scene where he meets the businesswoman in the
office will be filmed inside a studio, perhaps days or weeks
later.
All studios have large 'stages' where the sets are built.
One of the biggest in the world is at the British studios of
Pinewood in Buckinghamshire, where one of the stages is
102 metres long.
Sets are sometimes used for more than one film, and
this was very true for cowboy films that were made in the
1920s and 1930s. Then, a Hollywood studio often made
thirty or forty of them in a year, and the street where the

cowboys had their final gunfight often appeared in film after
film, with only small changes.
Film facts
The largest number of locations used in a Hollywood
film was 140, for Around the World in 80 Days (1956).
The largest number of cameras used for a single scene
was forty-eight for the sea battle in the 1925 film of Ben
Hur.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Special effects
Special effects are used when it is too difficult, too
dangerous, or too expensive to do something in the usual
way. They are used to make the audience think that they are
seeing something which they really are not.
For example, small models of towns or buildings are
very useful. In films, when you see a house catch fire, a
plane crash, or a bomb blow up a ship, you are probably
watching a model house, plane and ship. But you do not
realize this when you see it on the film.
The big dinosaurs in the film Jurassic Park (1993) were
not real, of course! Lots of models were made of each of
them.
Today, computers are used more and more in special
effects, making the impossible seem possible.
The first 'special effect' happened in the film The
Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, which was made in the
Edison studios in 1895. The audience appear to see Queen
Mary's head being cut off, but the director stopped the
camera and changed the actress for a dummy, whose head
was cut off in the next shot.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Stunts and make-up
Stuntmen and stuntwomen are used when something is
too difficult or too dangerous for the actor to do. Every stunt
is carefully planned before filming, and must be as safe as
possible.
They wear the same clothes and make-up as the star,
and are usually filmed so that their faces are not seen clearly.
They wear special clothes that will not catch fire if they
are to be filmed in a 'burning' building (although often there
is more smoke than fire, and the fire is carefully controlled).
Stuntmen often wear padding under their clothes so that
they do not hurt themselves when they fall from something
like a horse or a moving car.
Guns are not real guns, and knives are usually made of
rubber so that they will bend when somebody is hit.
Stuntmen who fall from buildings will fall onto something
soft (which you won't see in the final film, of course!). The
important thing is that it looks real.
Some stars do their own stunts, although film
companies would prefer that they didn't. The director doesn't
want his star to get hurt - it's too expensive for the film! Mel
Gibson did all his own stunts in Mad Max Beyond the
Thunderdrome (1985).
The make-up artist can change a nice-looking actor into
something very frightening... or a beautiful young actress
into an old woman. It took eight-and-a half hours each day to

change the actress Francesca Annis into a 100-year-old
woman in the 1982 film Krull.
Rubber masks are made for the actor to wear when it is
necessary to make very big changes to their face. Wigs,
beards, moustaches, false eyelashes - all these things help to
make a 'character'.
It is even possible to make a man look like a woman!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Picture palaces
The greatest of all the 'picture palaces' built in the
1920s and 1930s was the Roxy Cinema in New York. It cost
$12 million to build and had 6214 seats. Three hundred
people worked at the cinema, with sixteen projectionists and
110 musicians. It also had a hundred singers, and a group of
dancers to keep the audience happy - and its own hospital!
The Roxy opened in March 1927 and closed in March 1960.
Most of the cinemas in the big cities seemed like
palaces to the film-goer. Inside were comfortable seats, thick
carpets and coloured lights.
There was often a restaurant, and sometimes a dance
floor, too. Some American cinemas had creches where
mothers could leave their babies while they went to watch
the film.
A man or woman played a cinema organ while
audiences waited for the film to begin. The organ came up
out of the floor as the music started.
Film fact
The drive-in cinema became popular in the early 1950s
in America - very popular with young people! More than
4000 drive-ins opened between 1948 and 1956.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
What happens next?
Today, cinema audiences are much smaller (and
usually younger) than the audiences of the 'golden age'.
Many of the 'picture palaces' are now 'multi-screen' cinemas
with four or five small cinemas inside one building.
Today's films appear on video, and then on TV, after
they have been seen by cinema audiences.
But some old films don't look so good on TV. Cowboy
films are an example of this. The wonderful scenery in films
like How the West Was Won needs a large screen to show it
at its best. Television can't do it. For many people, the
cinema is still the only place to watch a film.
One of the cinema's newest ideas is IMAX projection.
A screen 19 metres high and 15 metres wide, and excellent
sound, makes an audience feel that they are 'really there'.
IMAX DOME theatres have a big, 30 metre screen
which puts the audience right in the centre of everything that
is happening in the film.
And with IMAX 3D, people find themselves reaching
out to try and touch what they can see, it is so real!
There are nearly 150 IMAX theatres in different
countries all over the world, and more are being built every
year.
So this is cinema today.
And as Al Jolson said in The Jazz Singer, 'You ain't

seen nothing yet!'
- THE END -
Hope you have enjoyed the reading!
Come back to http://adapted-english-books.site to find more fascinating and exciting
stories!

John_Escott-The_Cinema

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

John_Escott-The_Cinema

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

John_Escott-The_Cinema

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

More books on http://adapted-english-books.

movies', and fifty million of them went to the cinema every

In 1893 the world's first film studio was built by Edison

photography to make strange things happen. These were

more exciting to watch. His film, The Great Train Robbery

another. But she always seemed to escape for another

Musical films began to be popular in the 1930s. Fred

worked well with him. Or a cameraman would be brought in

The Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book,

Set Designer - the person who arranges the furniture

thirty or forty of them in a year, and the street where the

into an old woman. It took eight-and-a half hours each day to

And as Al Jolson said in The Jazz Singer, 'You ain't

You might also like