WHAT IS A FEATURE FILM OR THEATRICAL FILM? (In the Entertainment industry.)

Feature Films / Photo Credit: Christos Karamanis

WHAT IS A FEATURE FILM OR THEATRICAL FILM? (In the Entertainment industry.)  

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What is a Feature Film or Theatrical Film?

A feature film (or just “feature”) is a full-length film, the kind you buy a ticket for at your local theater. The term is also used to distinguish between films that are first shown theatrically versus those made for television.

A feature film, feature-length film, or theatrical film is a film (also called a motion picture or movie) with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole film to fill a program. The term feature film originally referred to the main, full-length film in a cinema program that also included a short film and often a newsreel. The notion of how long a feature film should be has varied according to time and place. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute, a feature film runs for more than 40 minutes, while the Screen Actors Guild asserts that a feature's running time is 75 minutes or longer.

Most feature films are between 75 and 210 minutes long. The first narrative feature film was the 60-minute The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906, Australia). The first (proto)-feature-length adaptation was Les Misérables (1909, U.S.). Other early feature films include The Inferno (L'Inferno) (1911), Defense of Sevastopol (1911), Quo Vadis? (1913), Oliver Twist (1912), Richard III (1912), From the Manger to the Cross (1912) and Cleopatra (1912).

Description

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, and the British Film Institute all define a feature as a film with a running time of 2,700 seconds (i.e. 45 minutes) or longer. The Centre National de la Cinématographie in France defines it as a 35mm film longer than 1,600 metres (5,200 ft.), which is exactly 58 minutes and 29 seconds for sound films, and the Screen Actors Guild gives a minimum running time of at least 75 minutes.

The term feature film came into use to refer to the main film presented in a cinema and the one which was promoted or advertised. The term was used to distinguish the longer film from the short films (referred to as shorts) typically presented before the main film, such as newsreels, serials, animated cartoons, live-action comedies, and documentaries. There was no sudden increase in the running times of films to the present-day definitions of feature-length; the "featured" film on a film program in the early 1910s gradually expanded from two to three to four reels. Early features had been produced in the United States and France, but were released in individual (short film) scenes. This left exhibitors the option of playing them alone, to view an incomplete combination of some films, or to run them all together as a short film series.

Early features were mostly documentary-style films of noteworthy events. Some of the earliest feature-length productions were films of boxing matches, such as The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight  (1897),Reproduction Of The Corbett-Jeffries Fight (1899), and The Jeffries-Sharkey Fight (1899). Some consider the 100-minute The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight to be the first documentary feature film, but it is more accurately characterized as a sports program as it included the full unedited boxing match. In 1900, the documentary film In the Army was made. It was over one hour in length and was about the training techniques of the British soldier. Inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth (1901) ran for 35 minutes, "six times longer than any previous Australian film", and has been called "possibly the first feature-length documentary made in Australia". The American company S. Lubin released a Passion Play titled Lubin's Passion Play in January 1903 in 31 parts, totaling about 60 minutes. The French company Pathé Frères released a different Passion Play, The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, in May 1903 in 32 parts running about 44 minutes.

Defined by length, the first dramatic feature film was the Australian 70-minute film The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). Similarly, the first European feature was the 90-minute film L'Enfant prodigue (France, 1907), although that was an unmodified record of a stage play; Europe's first feature adapted directly for the screen, Les Misérables, came from France in 1909. The first Russian feature was Defense of Sevastopol in 1911. Early Italian features were The Inferno (L'Inferno) (1911), Quo Vadis? (1913), The Last Days of Pompeii (1913), and Cabiria (1914). The first UK features were the documentary With Our King and Queen through India (1912), filmed in Kinemacolor and Oliver Twist (1912). The first American features were adaptations of Oliver Twist (1912), From the Manger to the Cross (1912), Cleopatra (1912), and Richard III (1912). The latter starring actor Frederick Warde starred in some of these movie adaptations. The first Asian feature was Japan's The Life Story of Tasuke Shiobara (1912), the first Indian feature was Raja Harishchandra (1913), the first South American feature was Brazil's O Crime dos Banhados (1913), and the first African feature was South Africa's Die Voortrekkers (1916). 1913 also saw China's first feature film, Zhang Shichuan's Nan Fu Nan Qi.

By 1915 over 600 feature films were produced annually in the United States. It is often incorrectly cited that The Birth of a Nation (1915) was the first American feature film. The most prolific year of U.S. feature production was 1921, with 682 releases; the lowest number of releases was in 1963, with 213. Between 1922 and 1970, the U.S. and Japan alternated as leaders in the quantity of feature film production. Since 1971, the country with the highest feature output has been India, which produces a thousand films in more than twelve Indian languages each year.

References & Credits: Google, Wikipedia, Wikihow, WikiBooks, Pinterest, IMDB, Linked In, Indie Wire, Film Making Stuff, Hiive, History Channel, Film Daily, New York Film Academy, The Balance, Careers Hub, The Numbers, Film Maker, TV Guide Magazine, Blurb, Media Match, Quora, Creative Skill Set, Chron, Investopedia, Variety, No Film School, WGA, BBC, Daily Variety, The Film Agency, Best Sample Resume, How Stuff Works, Studio Binder, Career Trend, Producer's Code of Credits, Truity, Production Hub, Producers Guild of America, Film Connection, Variety, Wolf Crow, Get In Media, Production Beast, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, UCAS, Frankenbite, Realty 101, Careers Hub, Screen Play Scripts, Elements of Cinema, Script Doctor, ASCAP, Film Independent, Any Possibility, CTLsites, NYFA, Future Learn, VOM Productions, Mad Studios, Rewire, DP School, Film Reference, DGA, IATSE, ASC, MPAA, HFPA, MPSE, CDG, AFI, Box Office Mojo, Rotten Tomatoes, Indie Film Hustle, The Numbers, Netflix, Vimeo, Instagram, Pinterest, Metacritic, Hulu, Reddit, NATO, Mental Floss, Slate, Locations Hub, Film Industry Statistics, Guinness World Records, Audiopedia, The Anonymous Production Assistant,

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Feature Films / Photo Credit: Christos Karamanis