History of the British Film Industry

Steph Webb

Le Prince• The very first motion picture camera patented in the WORLD.. was patented in

England by French-born Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince in 1888.

• The first films were made on a sensitised paper roll a little over 2 inches wide. In 1889, Prince was able to obtain celluloid roll film from Eastman when it was introduced in England.

• Prince started commercial development of his motion picture camera in early 1890 with an updated version.

• September 16 1890: Prince never arrived in Paris. No trace of Prince OR his motion picture camera were EVER found. The mystery was never solved.

• 2 fragments of film is all that has survived from Prince and his camera. Both taken in 1888, one at 10 frames per second and one at 20 frames per second.

Early History• Innovations in the late nineteenth century, mostly in the United States, France and the United

Kingdom.

• In the first decade of the twentieth century, more than 30 film studios were established in and around London.

• British films rapidly established a substantial share of the market at home and abroad – 15% of American market by 1910.

• The industry's share of its home market fell from half to less than 10 per cent by 1914.

• Investment in cinemas surged, with the founding of many new companies and investment of £1.5m (£140m at current prices) in cinemas in 1908 alone.

• The rate (between 25 and 50 per cent of the price of cinema ticket), was reduced in the 1920s and then raised during the Second World War.

• It was finally abolished in 1960.

First Government Support• By 1925, British film production had declined to a point where fewer than 40

feature films a year were being made, compared with over 150 in 1920.

• In 1927, the Government recognised the importance of film production to the British economy and its role in stimulating exports of other goods and services.

• The Act (Cinematograph Films Act 1927) recognised the interdependency of production, distribution and exhibition.

• The Act was a success - production of films in the UK more than doubled by the end of the decade + resulted in the establishment of several new production companies.

The Challenge Of American Film Exports• American authorities were even quicker to recognise its importance as an export

industry.

• 1910s: American missions abroad were reporting on foreign film market opportunities.

• 1926: Congress appropriated $15,000 to set up the Motion Picture Section within the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce of the Department of Commerce.

• This collected market information through 44 foreign offices and 300 consular offices.

• The film industry was responsible for about 2 per cent of over-all U.S. GDP-growth and about 3 percent of overall productivity growth between1900 and 1938.

The 1930s: Boom And Bust• The arrival of "talkies" in 1928 had a positive effect on British film production - the

result was that the industry experienced a boom.

• The most successful British film production company was London Film Productions, founded by an immigrant from Hungary, Alexander Korda.

• The company's breakthrough success was The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933).

• By the late 1930s, the boom in British film production came to a sudden end.

• Over-rapid expansion led to bankruptcies.

• The number of feature film productions peaked in 1936 at just under 200 and fell by two thirds in the next four years.

The quota provisions in the Cinematograph Film Act 1927

• Had been agreed for ten years and the Act contained a sunset clause.

• The Cinematographic Films Act 1938 confirmed the retention of quotas, at 15 per cent for distributors and 12.5 per cent for exhibitors.

• This was intended to encourage bigger budget films, which could compete internationally.

• It also encouraged American film companies to make films in the UK, thus getting around the quota restrictions.

• Warner Bros and Twentieth Century Fox had already established production facilities in the UK.

World War II And The Post-war Boom• The British film industry was still in recession at the beginning of the war but,

despite the constraints of the wartime economy, it began to flourish.

• Number of studios available decreased, but cinema attendance rose from 19m a week in 1938 to 30m a week by 1945.

• A series of popular films were made which helped to shape the image of a nation at war, including In Which We Serve (1942) and Millions Like Us (1943).

• The immediate post-war years saw a surge in British film production to more than 120 films in 1950.

World War II And The Post-war Boom

• 1940s: Saw the rise of the first British company to attempt to compete with the Hollywood studios in size and scope.

• Starting in 1936, J Arthur Rank had built a vertically-integrated film organisation, buying up distributors, cinema chains and production companies.

• Between 1941 and 1947, The Rank Organisation financed half the films made in the UK, controlled over 600 cinemas and was the largest film distributor.

UK cinema admissions and number of screens, 1945-2008

• British film production climbed steadily through the late 1990s to a peak of nearly 180 films in 2002—second only to 1936.

• This included many accomplished and financially successful films.

• February 2004: The Inland Revenue announced that it was closing a loophole in the tax relief arrangements to prevent tax avoidance schemes.

• The closing of this and other loopholes in 2004 caused the immediate collapse of a number of film projects in production or pre-production at the time - downturn in film production, with employment dropping by 33 per cent between 2003 and 2008.