1.
Film studio
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The majority of firms in the entertainment industry have never owned their own studios, but have rented space from other companies. The largest film studio in the world is Hengdian World Studios, in Zhejiang and he distributed these movies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgrounds. The pioneering Thanhouser film studio was founded in New Rochelle, New York in 1909 by American theatrical impresario Edwin Thanhouser, the company produced and released 1,086 films between 1910 and 1917, successfully distributing them around the world. The first film ever, Million Dollar Mystery, was released by the Thanhouser company in 1914. In the early 1900s, companies started moving to Los Angeles, although electric lights were by then widely available, none were yet powerful enough to adequately expose film, the best source of illumination for motion picture production was natural sunlight. Some movies were shot on the roofs of buildings in Downtown Los Angeles, early movie producers also relocated to Southern California to escape Edisons Motion Picture Patents Company, which controlled almost all the patents relevant to movie production at the time. The first movie studio in the Hollywood area was Nestor Studios, in the same year, another 15 independents settled in Hollywood. Other production companies eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in such as Culver City, Burbank. Five large companies, 20th Century Fox, RKO Pictures, Paramount Pictures, smaller studios operated simultaneously with the majors. Together with smaller outfits such as PRC TKO and Grand National, the Big Fives ownership of movie theaters was eventually opposed by eight independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Walt Disney, Hal Roach, and Walter Wanger. In 1948, the government won a case against Paramount in the Supreme Court. This decision, reached after years of litigation, hastened the end of the studio system. By the 1950s, the components of a typical major film studio had become standardized. Movement in and out of the studio is normally limited to specific gates, Studio premises generally feature multiple sound stages along with an outside backlot, as well as offices for studio executives and production companies. There is normally a studio commissary, which is the term in the film industry for what other industries call a company cafeteria. With the growing diversification of studios into such fields as video games, television, theme parks, home video and publishing, instead the studios transformed into financing and distribution entities for the films made by their affiliated production companies. With the decreasing cost of CG and visual effects, many studios sold large chunks of their once massive studio spaces or backlots to private real-estate developers. Century City in Los Angeles was once part of the 20th Century Fox backlot, in most cases portions of the backlots were retained and are available for rental by various film and television productions
2.
Television studio
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A television studio is an installation in which video productions take place, either for the recording of live television to video tape, or for the acquisition of raw footage for post-production. The design of a studio is similar to, and derived from, movie studios, a professional television studio generally has several rooms, which are kept separate for noise and practicality reasons. These rooms are connected via intercom, and personnel will be divided among these workplaces, the studio floor is the actual stage on which the actions that will be recorded and viewed take place. The on-screen talent themselves, and any guests - the subjects of the television show, a floor manager, who has overall charge of the studio area stage management, and who relays timing and other information from the television director. One or more camera operators who operate the video cameras. Master control is the hub of a broadcast operation common among most over-the-air television stations. Master control is distinct from a PCR in television studios where the such as switching from camera to camera are coordinated. A transmission control room is smaller in size and is a scaled-down version of centralcasting. The master control room houses equipment that is too noisy or runs too hot for the control room. It also makes sure that coax cable and other wire lengths and installation requirements keep within manageable lengths and this can include the actual circuitry and connections between The master control room in a US television station is the place where the on-air signal is controlled. The term studio usually refers to a place where a local program is originated. If the program is broadcast live, the signal goes from the PCR to MCR, a television studio usually has other rooms with no technical requirements beyond broadcast reference monitors and studio monitors for audio. Among them are, one or more make-up and changing rooms a reception area for crew, talent, and visitors, commonly called the green room
3.
Shepherd's Bush
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Shepherds Bush is an area of west London in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Although it is residential in character, its focus is the shopping area of Shepherds Bush Green. The main thoroughfares are Uxbridge Road, Goldhawk Road and Askew Road, all containing a number of small and mostly independent shops, pubs. The Loftus Road football stadium in Shepherds Bush is home to Queens Park Rangers, in 2011, the population of the area was 39,724. The district is bounded by Hammersmith to the south, Holland Park and Notting Hill to the east, Harlesden to the north and by Acton, White City forms the northern part of Shepherds Bush. Shepherds Bush comprises the Shepherds Bush Green, Askew, College Park & Old Oak, Kensal Green and White City wards. The areas focal point is Shepherds Bush Green, an area of about 8 acres of open grass surrounded by trees and roads with shops. This position makes it an important node of the bus network and it is also served by five London Underground stations, Shepherds Bush, White City, Shepherds Bush Market, Goldhawk Road and Wood Lane. Originally built in the 1970s with a car park and connecting bridge to the station. The bridge was removed, and the now houses several chain stores, a 12-screen cinema, gym, pub, restaurants, a medical practice. The small shops continue along Uxbridge Road to the west for some distance, many of these establishments cater for the local ethnic minority communities. The Westfield Group opened a centre in October 2008. The same building also houses Escape Studios, an art school providing computer graphics training for the visual effects industry in London. The residential areas of Shepherds Bush are primarily located to the west of the Green, either side of Uxbridge Road and Goldhawk Road to the southwest, and about as far as Askew Road in the west. Much of the housing in this area consists of three- or four-storey terraces dating from the late 19th century, Shepherds Bush is also home to the White City Estate, a housing estate that was originally constructed in the 1930s and further extended after the war in the early 1950s. The name Shepherds Bush is thought to have originated from the use of the land here as a resting point for shepherds on their way to Smithfield Market in the City of London. An alternative theory is that it could have named after someone in the area. Evidence of human habitation can be traced back to the Iron Age, Shepherds Bush enters the written record in the year 704 when it was bought by Waldhere, Bishop of London as a part of the Fulanham estate
4.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
5.
Gaumont Film Company
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The Gaumont Film Company is a French mini-major film studio founded by the engineer-turned-inventor Léon Gaumont, in 1895. It is the first and oldest film company in the world, founded before other studios such as Pathé, Titanus, Nordisk Film, Universal, Gaumont predominantly produces, co-produces, and distributes films, and in 2011, 95% of Gaumonts consolidated revenues came from the film division. The company is becoming a TV series producer with its new American subsidiary Gaumont International Television as well as its existing French production features. Originally dealing in photographic apparatus, the company began producing films in 1897 to promote its make of camera-projector. Léon Gaumonts secretary Alice Guy-Blaché became the motion picture industry’s first female director, from 1905 to 1914, its Cité Elgé studios at La Villette, France, were the largest in the world. The company manufactured its own equipment and mass-produced films until 1907, when World War I broke out, he was replaced by Léonce Perret, who continued his career in the United States a few years later. The company headquarters are in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Gaumont opened foreign offices and acquired theatre chains Gaumont British, which later notably produced several films directed by Alfred Hitchcock such as The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes. Along with its competitor Pathé Frères, Gaumont dominated the industry in Europe until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Following the World War I, Gaumont suffered economic losses due to increased competition from American Hollywood productions, in 1925, the studios output had decreased to only 3 films. In addition, Gaumont was unable to pace with the cost of technological changes. Struck by mounting debts in the early 1930s and the effects of the Great Depression, in 1937, the studio ceased production and operated only as a theater and distribution company. The company was purchased by the French corporation Havas in 1938, renamed Société Nouvelle des Etablissements Gaumont, during the later years of World War II, Gaumont was effected by the financial ruin of Frances economy as well as the physical destruction of its facilities. The company ceased production until 1947, the period was to see the return to prominence of Gaumont Studios. On February 2,2000, Philippe Binant, technical manager of Digital Cinema Project at Gaumont, from 1993 to early 2004, Gaumount and Disney made a partnership for producing films for theater distribution. In 2001, Gaumont spun off the division into a joint-venture with Pathé since known as Les Cinémas Gaumont Pathé. Gaumont owns a 34% stake in the entity, which controls a large network in France, Switzerland. As of 2011, this stake is worth €214 million, in 2004, Gaumont continued its development with Pathé to set up another joint-venture, Gaumont-Pathé Archives. Gaumont owns 57. 5% of this entity, which contains newsreels, documentaries, from early 2004 to 2007, the company had a partnership with Sony for producing films and for theater and DVD distribution worldwide
6.
Gainsborough Pictures
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Gainsborough Pictures was a British film studio based on the south bank of the Regents Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch, London. Gainsborough Studios were active between 1924 and 1951, the company was initially based at Islington Studios which were built as a power station for the Great Northern & City Railway and was later converted to studios. Other films were made at Lime Grove and Pinewood Studios, the former Islington studios were demolished in 2002 and flats built on the site in 2004. A London Borough of Hackney historical plaque is attached to the building, the studio is best remembered for the Gainsborough melodramas it produced in the 1940s. Gainsborough was founded in 1924 by Michael Balcon and was a company to the Gaumont British from 1927. Whilst Gaumont-British, based at Lime Grove Studios in Shepherds Bush produced the quality pictures, Gainsborough mainly produced B movies and melodramas at its Islington Studios. The studios opening logo was of a lady in a Georgian era period costume sitting in a frame, turning and smiling. The short piece of music was written by Louis Levy and called the Gainsborough Minuet, after the departure of Balcon to MGM-British, the Rank Organisation gained an interest in Gainsborough and the studio made such popular films as Oh, Mr Porter. By 1937, Gaumont-British were in crisis, and closed their Lime Grove studios. From 1942 to 1946, a series of morally ambivalent studio bound costume melodramas was produced by Gainsborough for the domestic market and they were mostly based on recent popular books by female novelists. Prominent titles included the The Man in Grey, Madonna of the Seven Moons, Fanny by Gaslight, The Wicked Lady, the films featured a stable of leading British actors, among them Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Stewart Granger and Patricia Roc. The studio also made modern-dress comedies and melodramas such as Love Story, Two Thousand Women, Time Flies, Bees in Paradise, They Were Sisters, unhappy with the performance of the studio, Rank closed it down in early 1949. Production was concentrated at Pinewood Studios, although at first films continued to be made there under the Gainsborough banner, this quickly stopped and no further Gainsborough films were released after 1951. The original Lime Grove site was taken over by the BBC in 1949 and used, mainly for TV current affairs and live programmes, the buildings were demolished in the early 90s, and have been since replaced with housing presently called Gaumont Terrace and Gainsborough Court. The buildings began to be cleared in 2002, and apartments named Gainsborough Studios were built on the site in 2004, by architects Munkenbeck and Marshall. Cook, Pam, Gainsborough Pictures, Harper, Sue, Picturing the Past, Gainsborough Pictures at the British Film Institutes Screenonline London’s Hollywood, The Gainsborough Film Studio’s Silent Years article at Brenton Film
7.
Islington Studios
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The studios are closely associated with Gainsborough Pictures which was based there for most of the studios history. During its existence Islington worked closely with its sister Lime Grove Studios in Shepherds Bush and many films were made partly at one studio, amongst the films made at the studios were Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, Will Hay comedies and Gainsborough Melodramas. The building was converted into a studio, and production began in 1920. During this era Alfred Hitchcock made his start in films, when he was employed as a writer at Islington. In 1924 the Hollywood company sold off the studios which were bought by Michael Balcons Gainsborough Pictures, the company enjoyed some success turning out silent films during the 1920s, at a time when other British companies were struggling. In the late 1920s Gainsborough merged with the larger British Gaumont which owned the Lime Grove Studios, the conglomerate had ambitious plans to challenge Hollywood and produce more than twenty films a year. The larger Lime Grove complex was selected to make films while Islington was designated the cheaper films. However, during these years it served as an overflow studio, during the Slump of 1937, British Gaumont shut down production. Although it considered giving up filmmaking completely, it was decided to continue Gainsborough Pictures making slightly cheaper films, Shepherds Bush was shut down and all production switched to Islington. The success of some of these late 1930s Islington productions such as The Lady Vanishes helped Gainsborough to keep in business, all production was switched to re-opened Lime Grove. Both studios came under the control of the Rank Organisation when it bought Gainsborough in 1941, following the war, Islington were re-opened. In 1946 Betty Box was placed in charge of the studios when her brother Sydney Box was appointed by Rank to run Gainsborough Pictures, over the next three years the studio turned out a large number of thrillers and comedies. In 1949 both Islington and Shepherds Bush were closed when Rank concentrated production at Pinewood Studios, today a block of flats stand where the studio used to be. List of Gainsborough Pictures films Macnab, Geoffrey, J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry. Realism and Tinsel, Cinema and Society in Britain, 1939-1949, British Film Studios, An Illustrated History. London’s Hollywood, The Gainsborough Film Studio’s Silent Years article at Brenton Film
8.
BBC
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The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. It is headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, the BBC is the worlds oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total,16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting, the total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed contract staff are included. The BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and used to fund the BBCs radio, TV, britains first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mails Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian Soprano Dame Nellie Melba, the Melba broadcast caught the peoples imagination and marked a turning point in the British publics attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts. But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests, John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved manufacturers, to this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to inform, educate and entertain. The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate, set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee and this was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired. The BBCs broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, the BBC was also banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00, and required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee, by now the BBC under Reiths leadership had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production and with restrictions on news bulletins waived the BBC suddenly became the source of news for the duration of the crisis. The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position, the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PMs own
9.
Gaumont British
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The Gaumont-British Picture Corporation was a company that produced and distributed films and operated a cinema chain in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1898 as the British subsidiary of the French Gaumont Film Company and it became independent of its French parent in 1922 when Isidore Ostrer acquired control of Gaumont-British. In 1927 a leading silent film maker, the Ideal Film Company, the companys Lime Grove Studios made films including Alfred Hitchcocks adaptation of The 39 Steps, while its Islington Studios made Hitchcocks The Lady Vanishes. In the 1930s the company employed 16,000 people, in the USA Gaumont-British had its own distribution operation for its films until December 1938, when it outsourced distribution to 20th Century Fox. In 1941 the Rank Organisation bought Gaumont-British and its sister company Gainsborough Pictures and they also took over many smaller cinemas across the country, eventually owning 343 properties. One such property was the Holderness Hall in Hull, built by the pioneering William Morton in 1912, many of the Gaumont cinemas had a theatre organ for entertainment before the show, in the intervals, or after the show. The name Gaumont was adopted to describe the style of the organ console case. Cinema exhibition in the UK was characterised by alignments between exhibitors and distributors, after the Odeon and Gaumont takeovers, Rank had access to the product of 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Walt Disney, Columbia, Universal, United Artists and its own film productions. Rivals ABC had only Warner Brothers, MGM and its own ABPC productions, with ample supply of product, Rank maintained the separate Odeon and Gaumont release pattern for many years. Some Odeon cinemas were renamed Gaumont when transferred to Gaumont release, as attendances declined during the 1950s many cinemas on all circuits were closed and eventually, the booking power of the Gaumont circuit declined. In January 1959 Rank restructured its operation and combined the best Gaumonts. In 1961, Paramount objected to Rank consigning its Dean Martin comedy All in a Nights Work to the national circuit, with the continuing decline in attendances and cinema numbers, the National release died on its feet and henceforth there were two release patterns, Rank and ABC. There was no reason to perpetuate the Gaumont name and in towns that lost their Odeon, even so, the Gaumont name continued to linger until, in January 1987, the last Gaumont, in Doncaster, was renamed Odeon. A subsidiary of Gaumont British — G. B, equipments Ltd made a number of 16 mm film sound projectors in Britain before and during World War II, including models such as the G. B. -Scope A and B, Grosvenor and G. B. Equipments Ltd decided not to manufacture models of their own — instead they began to manufacture, under license and these models, branded as either G. B. -Bell & Howell or Bell & Howell-Gamount in Great Britain, were identical to the American models except in model number. During the 1950s G. B. -Bell & Howell either manufactured, or distributed, in 1888 Abram Kershaw established a business in Leeds making photographic items, including lanterns and projection equipment. Kershaw produced cinema projectors under the Kalee trade name from the 1910s, later, the company became part of Amalgamated Photographic Manufacturers, forming the Kershaw-Soho Ltd group. The brand Kalee continued to be used until the Kershaw group was acquired by Gaumont British to become G. B. -Kalee Ltd
