Movie Serials Essay Research Paper All but

Movie Serials Essay, Research Paper

All but forgotten today, except by nostalgia buffs, movie serials were at one time one of the most popular pure entertainment forms in Hollywood and one of the most reliable for the studios in terms of making money, as well as a unique form of the filmmaker's art. From their beginnings in 1912, to the release of the last of the serials in 1956, serials were also one of the formative entertainment experiences for two generations of Americans, ending with the postwar baby boom. Essentially, the serial — or chapterplay, as it is also called — is a multi-episode film, intended to be shown over a period of months, its plot unfolding each weeks. The first such film ever made and shown was the Edison-produced What Happened To Mary, released in 1912 and serialized simultaneously on screen and in a national women's magazine. Ironically, the film was produced merely as an adjunct to enhance the audience for the identically named magazine series in McClure's Ladies World, and it succeeded beyond anyone's hopes. During 1914, the cliffhanger ending — in which a key dangerous plot element formed the basis for each weekly installment's ending, thus guaranteeing that audiences would return the following week — was debuted in The Adventures of Kathlyn. That same year saw the release of the first serial to achieve major international popularity — and which defined the genre both in terms of its content and name — The Perils of Pauline, starring Pearl White and produced by Pathe. Pearl White became the definitive serial star of the silent era, and the success of that first chapterplay led to the production of dozens of additional such films, not only at Pathe but also at other rival studios. Although Pauline's 20 chapters set the standard for such releases, many ran longer, and The Hazards of Helen was the most ambitious of all, drawing its audience back to theaters for 119 episodes for a year and a half between 1914 and 1917. By the early 1920s, there were upwards of three-dozen serials in production in American studios each year, all fed by audience enthusiasm and the attendant support of theater owners who relished the availability of weekly chapters that would guarantee them a paying clientele, regardless of the feature films they might be running. The American-spawned genre also took root in Europe, most notably in France before World War I and in Germany after the war. These silent serials were generally serious dramas, often spiced with adventure and action sequences but aimed at general audiences, including adults. The coming of sound saw a major change in the serial genre, as many production companies — their facilities and budgets already stretched by the introduction of sound — abandoned chapterplays in favor of feature-film production. The serials that went into production after the introduction of sound — with Universal's The Ace of Scotland Yard (1929) — were aimed primarily at children and intended to be shown on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, rather than with main features as part of a regular schedule. They were often long on action and on leading men, whose primary skill lay in their ability to read lines quickly and convincingly (with the help of good stuntmen) and to fight their way out of a room of evildoers — they were also short on character development, and usually included women only as objects for the hero to devote his attentions to in terms of rescue. The dominant serial producers during the talkie era included Universal, Columbia, and Mascot, which quickly developed effective low-budget production techniques, relying heavily on stock footage, very efficient stunt work, and a corp of the most productive — if not always subtle — directors in the business, among them Joseph Kane (who was later to distinguish himself in "B"-westerns) and B. Reeves "Breezy" Eason, who had served as a second-unit director on the 1927 silent version of Ben Hur. Mascot was merged with two other small studios in the mid-1930s under the auspices of Consolidated Film Laboratories, to form Republic Pictures under the presidency of former advertising executive Herbert J. Yates. Incorporating the best employees of Mascot, Monogram, and the other studios involved, Republic became a powerhouse in the field of low-budget "B"-movie and serial production and within three years, along with Universal, dominated the entire landscape. The economics of serial making during the sound era were relatively simple and very straightforward. A serial running 12, 13, or 15 chapters (only one, Republic's Robinson Crusoe of Clipper Island, ever ran a different length, 14 chapters) would open with a first chapter running 25 or 30 minutes that introduced the major characters and the basic challenge to the hero. Subsequent chapters would run 20 minutes (post-World War II serial chapters were usually 15 or 16 minutes) for a total running time of between 250 and 315 minutes, presented once each week. Of this running time, 15 percent would be recapitulation material at the opening of each new chapter, repeating material from the previous chapter, and chapter 10 would routinely be a recapitulation chapter, summarizing the plot from the previous nine, just to make sure that the audience didn't lose track of any important plot elements over the previous two months of viewing. A serial would be shot quickly, over a period of six weeks with another two weeks for retakes,