The Unexpected to being the Standard

Hey there! I’m here with another film history sharing! This week I learned about a man who innovated the way film studios work. To be completely honest I have never heard of this man until recently. I learned that his work helped create our current film system. And the man’s name is Thomas H. Ince.

Thomas Ince came into the picture as a failed actor, but his failure didn’t stop him from his passion for film. In 1910 he directed his first film and by 1913 he was making about 150 two-reelers a year. But where in these 3 years does this “system” he discovered help the flow of how studios work? It was simply his method of producing his films. His biggest impact came by applying the lessons of mass production to the actual making of movies.

To help you understand how this affected the film studios at the time, we need to go back to the previous years before he came in. The old flow of most films was overseen by a director, a cameraman, then a single person who conceived the story, then worked with the actors and operated the camera and that was it! The roles were never clear at the time until Ince came in. He broke those roles into separate jobs, which we call the assembly line. It starts with the roles of a screenwriter, then given to a director, to an editor, followed by a producer, and lastly to a studio head, who’d oversee the entire studio. Ince standardized these roles into the system and is what we filmmakers use today!

It’s amazing how Ince started as an actor but when he hit the spot where he felt that his career as an actor was headed nowhere, he took it upon himself to think of another way to pursue his love for film, to finally reach the path of a director. It was an unexpected turn since he started his life as an actor early on. Now he is known as the “Father of Western”, a man who's made about 800 reelers and aided in the creation of mechanisms to help in film production. This showed me how when those moments of doubt hit you, you have the choice to solve that problem. And when you do it can lead you to unexpected results.