In the 20th century, if people wanted to watch the latest flick, they had to buy a ticket at a theater to watch it. TV films were not as prominent back then as they are now. If a large group of friends wanted to watch a movie, they would book an entire row to share their experience during a film.
Before VHS, the only way to watch a movie or TV show was to watch it when it was available. For a movie, that meant seeing it in the theater when it was released – and maybe once more when it got a TV showing. If you wanted to see it again, well, tough: Buy the movie novelization. VHS changed all of this.
Films were also shown in other kinds of theatrical spaces—vaudeville theaters and opera houses, for example—particularly but not exclusively prior to 1910. Movies were also shown in high schools, churches, amusement parks, YMCAs, tents, vacant lots, and fraternal and social clubs.
How did people re-watch films they liked before home video was invented? We waited and read the TV Guide and waited until the TV would run the movie again. Occasionally, there would be an older movie shown at a theater. Also, back in the days before VCRs, there were film collectors.
Drive-ins gained immense popularity 20 years later during the 1950s and '60s with the Baby Boomer generation. There were over 4,000 drive-ins throughout the U.S., and most were in rural areas.
Their primary equipment was the silent 16mm film projector, made by either Eastman Kodak or Filmo. In the 1930s, 8 mm and 16 mm with sound were introduced. In the 1950s, Kodak 8 mm film projector equipment became more affordable, resulting in the increased popularity of home movies.
The first was that you could record stuff from the TV (albeit 13 years late…) and rewatch it whenever you felt like it, the other was that you could go to a shop, rent a film and bring it home on a Friday night to watch with the family.
“When the movie production companies started selling movies on tape, we could buy them to watch at home, on our VCRs. We could also rent movies at Blockbuster (yes, they went out of business) to watch at home. It was a little bit like borrowing a book from the library, but we had to pay to borrow them.
In the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, a typical home cinema in the United States would have a LaserDisc or VHS player playing a movie, with the signal fed to a large rear-projection television set, with the audio output through a stereo system. Some people used expensive front projectors in a darkened viewing room.
"Drive-ins started to really take off in the '50s," Kopp said. "They offered family entertainment. People could sit in their cars, they could bring their babies, they could smoke. Drive-ins offered more flexibility than indoor theaters."
As the popularity of “moving pictures” grew in the early part of the decade, movie "palaces" capable of seating thousands sprang up in major cities. A ticket for a double feature and a live show cost 25 cents.
The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diameter typically spans 30 cm (12 in).
Betamax (also known as Beta, as in its logo) is a consumer-level analog recording and cassette format of magnetic tape for video, commonly known as a video cassette recorder. It was developed by Sony and was released in Japan on May 10, 1975, followed by the US in November of the same year.
Another way people were able to watch movies at home was through their cable or satellite television provider. Pay-per-view was available as early as the 1960s when you could call in and pay to watch a sports program on a private channel.
If we look back at the history of home movies, most people didn't even have the ability to make them until around the 1980s--that is, until a magical device called the VHS tape made recording home videos easy, fun, and basically foolproof. That doesn't mean there weren't video formats before the VHS.
By the mid-1970s, it was clear that videotape was the future of home theater movies. And in 1975, Sony released the Betamax as the latest videotape format. A better (and smaller) tape alternative to U-Matic, Betamax was a technological marvel of the time.
In the 1940s, American movies changed. Flashbacks began to be used in outrageous, unpredictable ways. Soundtracks flaunted voice-over commentary, and characters might pivot from a scene to address the viewer. Incidents were replayed from different characters' viewpoints, and sometimes those versions proved to be false.
Beginning in the late 1890s, film was becoming the new popular entertainment in cities and towns across the United States. The first film screening in America took place in April 1896 at a New York City music hall, Koster and Bial's. Its success attracted many entrepreneurs into the business.
How did people entertain themselves before movies?
People found entertainment and information through various means such as reading, listening to the radio, attending live performances, and spending quality time with friends and family.
The first motion picture film is believed to be Louis Le Prince's Roundhay Garden Scene. This film was recorded in Leeds in England in 1888. It is approximately 2 seconds long and shows some of Louis Le Prince's family members walking around a garden. But how was it filmed?
What was the first movie played to a public audience?
The first to present projected moving pictures to a paying audience were the Lumière brothers in December 1895 in Paris, France. They used a device of their own making, the Cinématographe, which was a camera, a projector and a film printer all in one.
Some actors who have been in the industry for longer may prefer not to watch their movies. They might enjoy performing, but are not interested in watching the film itself; or they might avoid watching their movies to prevent being self-critical and negatively affecting their future performances.
Did people watch movies during the Great Depression?
Even at the Depression's depths 60 to 80 million Americans attended the movies each week, and, in the face of doubt and despair, films helped sustain national morale. Although the movie industry considered itself Depression- proof, Hollywood was no more immune from the Depression's effects than any other industry.
