What on earth is Hollywood about?

Hollywood is a literal place on the map in Los Angles, California. The area we now know as Hollywood had once been an agricultural community. Hollywood was named by H.J. Whitley who is known as the "Father of Hollywood". During the early twentieth century big film companies began to set up there companies in Los Angles because of the weather and its closeness to Mexico. Four major film companies had set up in Hollywood; Paramount, Columbia, RKO and Warner Bros. It was known as the first celebrity community. Hollywood is the centre of the American movie industry, one of the reasons it became so is because other film companies were using equipment they did not have the rights to and where being seized. The film industry before Hollywood was mostly centred in New York but because film companies had troubles there they relocated, in 1912 Hollywood was second to New York in movie production and by 1915 most of the films were being produced in Hollywood.

Now Hollywood is the centre of the movie industry and one of the most well known places in the world, it is known as a celebrity community as most of the Hollywood stars today reside there. It was later on in the twentieth century that other businesses began moving to Hollywood and recording studious. Though a lot of the industries had spread out into surrounding areas most of the; editing, props and post-production are still based in Hollywood. In the late 1980's it also became the centre point for the Hard Rock scene, such bands as Metalica and Motley Crue.

H.J. Whitley had brought the land we know as Hollywood in 1886, and this was before the film industries decided to set up there and it was only a small neighbourhood, so H.J.Whitley is the closest anyone has gotten to really owning Hollywood.
Hollywood is more a term put to the large movie industries in that area, people usually associate it with production companies, stars and recording companies so in that sense they own Hollywood. It is a part of Los Angles, annexed by them in 1910. The people we see as stars; Tom Cruise, Adam Sandler, Will Smith etc. are shown as prominent figures in the movie industry a lot of us believe to be Hollywood so in a way the stars own it to.
In the book "An empire of their own." Neal Gabler explains that the Jews had built Hollywood. These Jewish immigrants had come from poor fatherless backgrounds and felt like outsiders. In Hollywood these people were able to run their own industry and that it accomplished their goal of the American Dream. It is widely speculated that Jew's do own Hollywood.

The definition of a Hollywood studio is; A major film studio is a movie production and distribution company that releases a substantial number of films annually and consistently... an example of this would be Universal studios. This is a major corporation that owns theme parks, hotels and restaurants and its mascot is Woody the Woodpecker.
Marvel studios was original Marvel films. Its a television and motion picture studio based in Los Angles. Marvel in the mid 1980's began to sell options to major film studios to the rights to make a film on their super heroes, but this did not go well for them, on the other hand their rival DC was having massive success selling Superman and Batman films. Marvel created Marvel studious during the early nineties. They also began making television shows based on their super heroes. The first film that had come from Marvel studios was "Blade" starring Wesley Snipes. The film grossed over $131,183,530 world wide. Soon after Sony brought the rights to Spider man. The company was soon brought by Disney studios for four billion. The reason I believe Marvel made there own studio is because they were not doing well selling the rights to there super heroes and decided they could do it themselves, they have been very successful so far with the Avengers that ended up being a block buster. Disney brought the rights to Iron man 3 and the Avengers from Paramount pictures.

What makes a Hollywood film is; Synergy, Convergence, Marketing and Stars. A Hollywood film is usually perceived as a big budget and massive stars film, an A list film that will usually be Block buster.
Synergy is advertising techniques used by the producers to promote their films, through toys, posters, trailers, video games and soundtracks. All this is usually done before hand to draw attention to the film so you can spend money and go see it. An example of this is; before the spider man films came about they promoted this franchise by making toys and "web shooters" that attracted their target audience to the film.
Convergence is the idea that computer, television and radio are combining into a single media. An example of this would be a mobile phone and a camera, becoming two integrated technologies. Using the computer you can stream movies on line so film companies make a legitimate way to do this such as; Love film or Net Flix. Gaming consoles can also be used to do this, making a video game based on a film will not only promote it but will be a convergence. We can consume films and many different aspects of the media by convergence technology. An example of this would be; a film app for the Iphone. On one website for a brand new Hollywood film it gives at least eight ways of convergence and consumption of a Hollywood film. We'd consume the film through DVD and Blue Ray. The film will be converged into other media aspects by; You tube, Pod cast, Video games and Iphone apps.
Film marketing or promoting is advertising and branding your film before release so people can recognise and so the promoters can "build hype" over it, this is basically cementing your audience or target market of the film before it's release, you can do this through; Teaser trailers, posters, soundtracks etc. Trailers are usually the most effective because they are targeted at movie-goers. TV is an effective way to promote films because it is a visual medium and is quick to deliver to vast audience, this is effective because movies don't usually stay in the cinema longer then five weeks. Distributors can spend around four BILLION a year just advertising thirty second clips on TV and Radio. Another effective way marketing can be done through TV is if audiences hear a  mention of the film on a show, they watch and enjoy. Television talk shows can market these films by having interviews with the stars who talk about the film and market it themselves. Another way of doing this are the five minute behind the scenes documentaries seen before movies, the most recent being the James Bond Sky fall documentary of Film four. As well as TV the film can also be promoted through the Internet. The promoters can make a web site for the film with photo gallery's, trailers and interviews so people wanting to see the film can track its progress. To do all this the promoters will need to do an audience research.
Stars are just as important as marketing, synergy and convergence in making a Hollywood film what it is. If the star e.g. Will Smith is in a film, and he is been being consumed for years and years by fans then they would want to go see that film. The same also happened for his son, if it wasn't advertised so much that Jayden Smith was Will Smith's son would the film had been as popular as it had been?