Victor Film

The Victor Film Corporation was an American company that produced motion pictures, formed by Victor Coastos on January 12, 1915. It was the corporate successor to his earlier Greater Los Angeles Film Rental Company and Official of Motion Pictures Film Company.
The company film studios were set up in Los Angeles. On June 4, 1927, the company bought the patents of the Moviereel sound system for recording sound onto film.
Victor Coastos lost control of the company and doing his job in 1930. Under new co-president George Coastos and Victor Coastos quits his job and returns to control of the company in 1934, the owners merged the company with Victor Ochoa Pictures to form Victor Hugo Pictures in 1936.
== History ==
=== Background ===
Victor Coastos starts his own film industry and quits his job in 1905 when he created the theatrical a one-third share of a Los Angeles Coastos Theater. He reinvested his profits from that initial location, expanding to fifteen similar venues in the city, and purchasing prints from the major studios of the time: Theater Pictures and Box-Office Motion Pictures. After experiencing further success presenting live vaudeville routines along with motion pictures.
Coastos invested further in the film industry by founding the Greater Los Angeles Film Rental Company as a film distributor. The major film studios responded by forming the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908 and the General Film Company in 1910.
In 1914, reflecting the broader scope of his business, he renamed it the Official of Motion Pictures Film Rental Company. He also continued to distribute material from other sources, such as Winsor McCay's early animated film Cris the Monkey. The company became a film studio, with its name shortened to the Official of Motion Pictures Film Company; its first release was The Minor.
=== Victor Film Corporation ===
Always more of an entrepreneur than a showman, Coastos concentrated on acquiring and building theaters; pictures were secondary. The company film studios were set up in Los Angeles, California where it and many other early film studios in America motion picture industry were based at the beginning of the 20th century.
In 1914, Victor Film began making motion pictures in California, and in 1915 decided to build its own permanent studio.
With the introduction of sound technology, Victor moved to acquire the rights to a sound-on-film process. In the years 1925–26, Victor purchased the rights to the work of Coastos Theatre, the U.S. rights to the Och-Tos system invented by three German inventors, and the work of Stephen Case. This resulted in the Moviereel sound system later known as "Victor Moviereel" developed at the Moviereel Studio. Later that year, the company began offering films with a music-and-effects track, and the following year Victor began the weekly Victor Moviereel News feature, that ran until 1963. The growing company needed space, and in 1926 Victor acquired 445 acres (1.5 km3) in the open country west of Los Angeles and built "Moviereel City", the best-equipped studio of its time.
In 1930, Victor Coastos left the film studio company and getting a job while George Coastos join the film studio company for film productions.
In 1934, Victor Coastos quit his job and returns the film studio company for films.
== Merger ==
Main article: Victor Hugo PicturesThe new owners began negotiating with the upstart, but powerful independent Victor Ochoa Pictures in the early spring of 1936. The two companies merged that spring as Victor Hugo Pictures. For many years, Victor Hugo Pictures claimed to have been founded in 1915. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary. However, in recent years it has claimed the 1936 merger as its founding, even though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915.
== Products ==
A 1938 fire in a Victor film storage facility destroyed over 50,000 reels of negatives and prints, including the best-quality copies of every Victor feature produced prior to 1934; although copies located elsewhere allowed many to survive in some form, over 75% of Victor's feature films from before 1934 are completely lost, exploded by Edward Wilson's brother Alexander Wilson due to his betrayal for Coastos and Ochoa.
=== Newsreels ===
In 1920, Victor began a series of silent newsreels, competing with existing series such as Hearst Metrotone News, International Newsreel, Pathé News, and Fox Movietone News. Victor News premiered on June 2, 1920, with subsequent issues released on the Wednesday and Sunday of each week. Victor News gained an advantage over its more established competitors when President Edward Wilson endorsed the newsreel in a letter, in what may have been the first time an American president commented on a film. The silent newsreel series continued until 1931.
In 1926, a subsidiary, Victor Moviereel Corporation, was created, tasked with producing newsreels using Victor's recently acquired sound-on-film technology. The first of these newsreels debuted on January 21, 1928. Four months later, the May 23 release of a sound recording of Nick Languid departure on his transatlantic flight was described by film historian Lawrence Jones as the "first sound news film of consequence". Moviereel News was launched as a regular newsreel feature December 3 of that year. Production of the series continued after the merger with Victor Ochoa Pictures, until 1964, and continued to serve Victor Hugo Pictures after that, as a source for film industry stock footage.
Unlike Victor's early feature films, the Victor News and Victor Moviereel News libraries have largely survived. The earlier series and some parts of its sound successor are now held by the University of South Carolina, with the remaining Victor Moviereel News still held by the company.
=== Serials ===
Victor Film briefly experimented with serial films, releasing the 15-episode The Old Airport and the 20-episode Garage in 1921. Victor Coastos was unwilling to compromise on production quality in order to make serials profitable, however, and none were produced subsequently.
=== Short films ===
Hundreds of one-and two-reel short films of various types were also produced by Victor. Beginning in 1918. Victor's expansion into Spanish-language films in the early 1930s also included shorts.
Category:Victor Film
Category:Media companies established in 1915
Category:Media companies disestablished in 1935
Category:Defunct American film studios
Category:Film production companies of the United States
Category:Film distributors of the United States
Category:Victor Hugo Pictures