Hollywood's Golden Age vs Modern Hollywood notes

Hollywood's Golden Age compared with current Hollywood

In the beginning of Hollywood and it's Golden Age, there were five main studios: Warner Brothers, Paramount, Fox Film, RKO Pictures and Loew. Currently, 4 out of these 5 studios are still in business - with Fox Film changing their name to 20th Century Fox and Loew changing their name to MGM - while RKO Pictures was dissolved in 1959. Not only this, but there are over a dozen major film studios in LA including the ever-growing DreamWorks Studios and Walt Disney Studios.

To begin with, film studios had control over everything to do with a movie - from the actors, to the directors, the film studios controlled everything that was going on, meanwhile in current day Hollywood, the studios make film deals while having ongoing deals with directors - such as Steven Speilburg, who has a 'first option' choice of film with Dreamworks - so he gets first dibs on any of their film deals.

When films were first made - and particularly in Hollywood's Golden Age - they were much more experimental with camera angles and story lines - however they would still go for similar types of actors and/or characters, however there were always favoured genres - specifically during the Golden Age, romance, comedy and western films were preferred by the masses, most likely due to the family friendliness most of them had, allowing for the family to go for a night out together.

Meanwhile, current day Hollywood films are much more set in their ways for cinematography and target audiences, although through advances in technology such as CGI, they've been able to expand their audiences - not only this, but they've also managed to expand their range of actors and character types, thus becoming much more inclusive. Not only this but the general popularity of film genres currently have shifted to more action-based films such as comic-book and novel adaptions (e.g. Marvel comics and Harry Potter). Also, where as in the Golden Age, all the profit had to come from the box office sales alone, currently the merchandise sold during and after the films release brings in most of the profits (from DVD's to posters to mugs to t-shirts).