Location advantage of Hollywood

Los Angeles has become the ultimate destination for global filmmakers mainly because of its unique natural conditions: mild climate, abundant sunshine, ideal outdoor shooting light source, picturesque ocean scenery and various mountain backgrounds; And a large area of undeveloped natural open space, suitable for building large-scale exterior scenes and arranging large-scale action shots.

The development and prosperity of Los Angeles itself is a great temptation. As a "land of hope", its huge investment potential attracts all kinds of gods of wealth, carving the vast desert, farmland and barren hills of Los Angeles into the fastest growing metropolis in the United States, and various cinemas have become the scenery of Los Angeles.

Today, the whole area of Los Angeles is 65,438+00,575.47 square kilometers, and 88 joint cities make up Los Angeles County. Los Angeles is just one of the cities, with an area of 1, 204.34 square kilometers, and it is the largest city in the United States. Hollywood is just a small town in Los Angeles. Most of Los Angeles and its neighboring communities are crawling in a flat basin surrounded by mountains in the northeast and facing the sea in the southwest, and spreading eastward to the vast and barren desert hinterland of 100 kilometers.

Apart from natural conditions, the most important factor for Hollywood's fame is the strong pressure from the film trust company founded by the inventor Edison. Edison was a famous inventor. He also has many inventions and innovations in film equipment, and has corresponding patents. From 1897 to 19 18, Edison provoked a film patent dispute in the United States and went to court with many film manufacturers. At the same time, he grasped the development prospect of the film industry, and used his trump card of film equipment to merge nine major film companies in the eastern United States into his own film patent company, thus controlling the film market. Those unwilling producers are looking for new ways to get rid of Edison's monopoly and start a new stove. At this time, a small studio (Presbyterian Film Company) that Edison had been shooting movies in Hollywood before he established the film patent company provided information about Hollywood. This film studio, originally located in New Jersey in the eastern United States, rented a factory in Hollywood at a low price and quickly produced the first Hollywood film "Her Indian Hero", which expanded the popularity of Hollywood. Those filmmakers who want to find their own way out are attracted by Hollywood's superior natural location and developed traffic conditions and come to Hollywood to start their own businesses. Besides, California is far from New Jersey, so it is difficult for Edison to control his patent here. There aren't that many Edison men in California. Even if he sent someone, the news would have leaked out long ago, so that Hollywood filmmakers could hide in nearby Mexico in time. Edison's arch-rival, Carl remus, also built a big house in Hollywood, founded Universal Pictures and became a new movie king. On the contrary, Edison's film patent company, as a Hollywood accelerant, only lasted for 10 years, and was declared as an illegal trust by an American court and went bankrupt.

Because of the vast land and sparsely populated, and underdeveloped public transportation, cars have become a necessity for Los Angeles residents. At least 5 million cars pass through the streets and highways of Los Angeles every day. The busiest intersection is the intersection of Hollywood Highland Street and Sunset Avenue, with at least128,000 cars passing every 24 hours. The daily traffic volume at intersections in major urban areas is also above100000. In order to meet the demand of 654.38+04 million cars, the expressways in Los Angeles extend in all directions like the subways in new york. The most spectacular expressway scene is the junction of 10 1 and 1 10 expressways in downtown Los Angeles. These two expressways were built in 1953, which is the first four-story interchange highway bridge in the world. The criss-crossing and overlapping bridges are 17 miles long, and 500,000 cars travel radially from the bridges in eight directions every day.

Palm trees are also the most distinctive landscape in Los Angeles. There are dozens of varieties, either tall and straight or slender and exquisite. Among them, only California palm is a local variety: the trunk is slender and vigorous (up to 15 to 80 feet), the crown is fluffy, and it bears fruit all the year round. It is the daily food of local Indians in 18 and 19 centuries. In the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of trees were planted on both sides of the streets of Los Angeles, which is still the main street view of Hollywood, West Hollywood and Santa Monica and a symbol of Hollywood. Some people say that as long as you see a palm tree, you will be in Los Angeles.

Because they are originally from Mexico, the influence of Mexican culture can be seen everywhere in Los Angeles. Mexicans have become the main body of local ethnic minorities, and their proportion is even higher than that of whites. The names of many cities, streets, buildings, food and music are in Spanish.

Los Angeles is the city with the most ethnic and cultural origins in the world. More than 80 different languages can be heard in the population of Los Angeles. These permanent residents come from 140 countries. The racial proportion in Los Angeles is roughly as follows: 42% Latino (mainly Mexican), 36% Anglian (white), 65,438+02% African-American (black) and 65,438+00% Asian. The following ethnic groups in Los Angeles are second only to their motherland: Mexicans, Armenians, Koreans, Filipinos, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Japanese, Cambodians and Vietnamese. In Los Angeles, more than 654.38 million people only speak English as a second language. More than 50 foreign-language newspapers are published in Los Angeles every day, and 17 foreign-language radio stations broadcast in Los Angeles. Spanish is the most common non-English language and has almost become the second official language in Los Angeles. Most public places and facilities use both English and Spanish. Other languages often heard on the streets of Los Angeles are Vietnamese, Cantonese, Tagalog, Hebrew, Russian, Korean, Armenian, Cambodian and so on. Restaurants with various dishes can also express the multicultural origin of Los Angeles. It is these immigrants from all over the world who helped to establish the special civilization of Los Angeles and make it an eternal source of stories.

Today's Hollywood is no longer beautiful. Although some post-production factories, film technical support companies and several major record companies are still located in Hollywood, Paramount is the only major film company that laid the foundation for Hollywood's glory in the past year. Most of the richest and most successful filmmakers left Hollywood decades ago. From the forties and fifties, Hollywood gradually declined, from a picturesque house, a sacred place for creation and tourism, to a bustling, lewd, low-level and sinful downtown, full of vulgar tourist souvenir shops, drug dealers, beggars, vagrants and prostitutes, until the end of the eighties, this decline scene reached the bottom.

Rebuilding Hollywood's glory became the top political event in the mayor's office of Los Angeles in the 1990s. Ironically, the riots in 1992 and the earthquake in 1994 made Los Angeles get a lot of money from the federal government, which made the reorganization of Hollywood possible and necessary. The reconstruction plan has achieved remarkable results. Since 1993, the crime rate has dropped by 2 1%, and the dirty and shabby streets have taken on a new look. Many landmark buildings have been rebuilt, including the Egyptian Grand Theatre at 67 12 Hollywood Boulevard. Elca Pitan Grand Theatre, a legendary movie palace that has been in disrepair for a long time, was also renovated by Disney Company, becoming Disney's window theater in Los Angeles and the highest single-act theater in the United States. Dozens of other projects have also broken ground, including the new Hollywood Entertainment Museum and the Hollywood History Museum. In addition to the original Hollywood logo on Hollywood Hill, the Hollywood Gate, the 3.5-mile-long Avenue of Stars, the handprints of stars' feet in front of the China Grand Theatre, the Hollywood Wax Museum, the Hollywood Film Studio Museum and the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, Hollywood still attracts tens of millions of tourists every year and spends about one billion dollars here. It seems that the glory of approximate town may make a comeback.