ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how those with little corporate funding pull off feature production, and how opportunities have grown over the last decade to produce and market such video and to alter the look of gender on screen. As early films became more popular and drew more audiences a century ago, the US industry solidified in Los Angeles, and studios incorporated. During Hollywood's Golden Age of the 1930s–50s, fewer studios survived, and those that did centralized control over the industry. Studios have beaten back political calls for change before. Hollywood corporations began to hire black crewmembers in the mid-1960s, in response to Civil Rights–era pressure from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the California State Employment Bureau. Studios and unions do open opportunities for female, queer, and/or nonwhite video-makers and stories when new technologies of recording and distribution and new markets promise new profits.
