4th Information Revolution: Entertainment n5r67

4th Information Revolution:

Entertainment BM - 4

Mass Entertainment • Population shifted from the villages and towns to cities • Coming of electricity • Immigrants were coming to America

Print Media & Entertainment • Hogan’s Alley – 1st colored effort for newspaper • Yellow journalism • Tabloid defines both the size and content of newspapers • Rise of magazines

The Start of Recorded Music

1857 – Leon Scott’s phonoautograph •

1807 – Thomas Young

1877 – Charles Cros

The Start of Recorded Music Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow.

• • • •

Thomas Alva Edison 1877 “talking machine” phonograph

Phonograph Parlors • Set in motion the demand for phonograph recordings • People would listen to phonograph recordings for a nickel • Marching band music were favorites • Patrons listened through the listening tube

From Cylinders to Disks • 1888 • Emile Berliner • “gramophone” • Invented a simpler way to record sounds using discs

The Victrola

1901 – Berliner teamed up with Eldridge Johnson to Form the Victor Talking Machine Company

Music is now affordable.

Portable Recording: the Audiotape

• 1888 • Oberlin Smith

•1898 •Valdemar Poulsen •Telegraphone

•1928 •Fritz Pfleumer •Built the successful prototype of a tape recorder

Broadcasting • • • •

Frank Conrad 1916 8XK Started the 1st commercial radio station, KDKA • November 2, 1920

Growth of Radio •1923 •Audience of 2M •500 stations •500k sets

•1925 •2million sets

•1926 •One house in six had a radio

Early Radio • Technology – brought the radio into the parlor • Gave multitudes of people a new, inexpensive source of information & entertainment • Commercialization of radio gave rs access to this audience at home • Radio programming: comedy, music, serials, drama & news.

Owning Cameras •George Eastman •Introduced the camera box and the film •Film: a light sensitive celluloid •Kodak •Three steps: pull the cord, turn the key and press the button •Fixed focus lens, one speed and a fixed aperture •$25 including a roll of 100 pictures •February 1900 – Brownie Camera was introduced •$1including a 6-exposure roll of film •Designed for children

You press the button, we do the rest.

Effects of Photography • Delivered information that words alone could not • As a tool of medicine, helped improve our health • As a tool of science, it has transformed what is unknown to what is known • In the field of art, portrait painting was “redefined”

Early Movies • Nickel theaters – nickelodeons • Most of the movie goers were the working class • Showed short films • Blacks were barred from the nickelodeons

Early Movies -Vaudeville houses were being converted to movie houses - Slowly, middle-class Americans were embracing the movies - Movie goers wanted to escape into fantasy

George Melies -1902 - George Melies (French) - a magician and a caricaturist - added fantasy to the movies - “trick movies” - used camera tricks

- “A Trip to the Moon” -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0BmQaIIR4& mode=related&search=

The Great Train Robbery: Edwin Porter -1903

- Edwin Porter - a film of many firsts:

- 1st to use film editing to establish relationships - camera moved with the action (indoors and outdoors) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8333027786739137075&sourceid=searchfeed

The Birth of a Nation (1915) •DW Griffith •Gave birth to visual language

•Had the accompaniment of live music •Racially biased movie

The Actors • 1909 - Carl Laemmle • Florence Lawrence – “the Biograph Girl” • Audiences showed by their ticket purchases an attachment for certain actors and actresses. • Creation of a star system

The Coming of Sound “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” - Harry M. Warner - Warner Bros. studios first used the Vitaphone - Vitaphone – system that synchronized phonograph disc recordings with a film projector - 1926 – Don Juan – silent film with musical score

The Triumph of Sound • 1927

• The Jazz Singer Wait a minute! Wait a minute, I tell ya! You ain’t heard nothing yet! • Most producers were annoyed with Warner for rocking the industrial boat

• Ticket sales rose sharply • More “talkies” were produced http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frPcFnVnXa0

The Coming of Color • 1922 • Herbert Camus • Invented the first commercially viable color motion picture camera and process in 1915 and changed the movie-going experience forever • Gone with the Wind – 1st film to be shot entirely in Technicolor

Other Developments in Films • Creation

of the studio

system •A studio hired a stable of stars and production, under contract

• 1903 – major studios moved to Hollywood • Block booking •Companies would sign up theaters for as many as 104 pictures at a time

To summarize: • NEED – To escape from reality, entertainment

• MEANS – Newspapers, phonoaunograph, motion picture, radio, camera

• SOLUTION – Tabloid, fantasy movies, records, personal cameras

• EFFECT – New use for mass media: diversion