The New Hollywood The industry's success was based on very few films.

Per year only ten or so blockbusters or " must see" pictures comprised the bulk of admissions, while most of the Major's releases failed to break even. So the industry therefore tried to minimize the risks and looked for ways to make money, not loose it. - Companies began releasing their big-budget films in the peak leisure periods, summer and Christmas. - Universal aired many television ads for Jaws - and released the film to hundreds of the theaters simultaneously - Most major releases would put their fates primarily on one opening weekend - Studios learned that it was profitable to extend runs for big films when people kept coming back to see Jaws. Studios also opted for sequels and TV series based on their successes, such as the Rocky films and the Star Trek saga. - A new important way for studios to have an extra income was merchandising. The merchandising income exceded its box-office take. So the studio quickly created their own merchandising divisions. Except for a few productions made by independent distributors the market was ruled by the major distribution companies, they had about 90 percent of all theater revenues. A film that was financed outside the studios could not get widely screened unless it was distributed by a top company.The standard distribution fee was 35 percent. Studios tried having long-term relationships with producers who could bring together a script, a director and stars. During this time, the 1970s initiated an era dominated by "the deal". The development deals generated income for the agents, producers, scriptwriters and stars. The overall deals paid stars and directors to develop vanity projects for studios and Housekeeping Deals gave their production companies an office on the studio lot. Successful filmmakers like Spielberg and Coppola started to gain more control over their projects and the budgets often inflated. (cost overruns) Coppola's Apocalypse Now took three years to shoot and cost over $30 million. A cost overrun gone wrong was the case for the movie Heaven's Gate by Michael Cimino.

The budget rose to $40 million, highest production costs of the 1970s, and earned less than $2 million in rentals. Superman: the movie took two years to make and wound up costing somewhere between $40 million and $55 million. It eventually grossed over $80 million in its US run. It's Warner Bros most profitable film to date and spawned three sequals and millions in merchandising. --------------------------------------------------------------At the beginning of the 1970s there were a few powerful producers that redefined what Hollywood cinema might be. They were called the big three: Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. They were more filmmakers than just directors, having tried their hand at every aspect of the craft, from writing to postproduction. Coppola broke through first. His youth comedy You're a big boy now (1967) borrowed the flashy techniques of Richard Lester's Beatles films and the swinging London pictures. [CLIP // 1:10 the fast cutting] [PICTURE // A hard day's night 2 screenshots] He tried different aspects of filmmaking: directing the musical Finian's Rainbow (1968) and screenwriting the Oscar winning script for Patton (1970). His most famous movies are the Godfather (Part 1 through 3) and Apocalypse Now (1979). Coppola at first did not even want to direct the Godfather. He wanted to make small European-like movies. Eventually he did made this movie and wanted to use this movie as a metaphor for capitalism. Making the Godfather could be called risk taking cinema. Coppola fought Paramount to hire Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, even though Paramount was against casting them. Coppola also refused the fast cutting and camera movements of the early 1970s. Instead he used long scenes. Coppola and his cinematographer Gordon Willis settles upon a tableau style that emphasized a static camera and actors moving through rich, often gloomy and dark interiors. [CLIP] In Apocalyse Now, Coppola strived to give the Vietnam War an overpowering visual presence, with psychedelic color, surround sound and slow hallucinatory dissolves.

While Coppola wanted to turn Hollywood into a center of artistic cinema, the other two of the big three, Spielberg and Lucas wanted to modernize the system without disturbing it. By contrast, Spielberg and Lucas sought to recover their boyhood pleasure in movies: - uncomplicated fun in space opera (Star Wars) - Action packed serials (Indiana Jones series) - Fantasy (Close Encounters, ET, Gremlins) - Adventure (Willow) - Cartoon comedy (Who framed Roger Rabbit) Spielberg divided his attention between that what he called fast food movies (Jaws and the Indiana Jones series) and more upscale directorial efforts (The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun) A returning aspect in the films by Spielberg are the drama of a broken family and a child's yearning for happiness. In a lot of Spielberg's films each sequence hit a high pitch of emotional tension, and scene by scene the audience's anxiety is ratcheted up through crisp editing, John William's ominous score and inventive Panavision compositions.

While Coppola loved working with actors and even had big dinners with them, George Lucas avoided even talking with them except for the occasional FASTER while make Star Wars. Lucas looked more forward to creating his scenes digitally, shooting isolated actors against blank screens or creating characters wholly on computer like Jar Jar Binks, who was the first wholly computer generated character in a major live action feature film. George Lucas used a New Age theme, like Spielberg like to use in his films. For example in Star Wars the Force represents God, the cosmos or anything the viewer was comfortable with. By 1980 Lucas and Spielberg had become the most powerful directorproducers in the industry, while Coppola stayed more in the background with less hits than his colleague directors, his biggest hit after the 1970s being The Godfather Part 3 (1990).