Magnate · version 1

Ince

Thomas H. Ince, 1880 to 1924. The man who gave the movies a production plan.

Before Ince, a film was mostly made up on the day. He changed that. At Inceville, the studio he built on the California coast in 1912, every picture began as a detailed shooting script: scene by scene, with the cast, the locations and the schedule worked out before a camera turned.

He split the work into units, each with its own director, and stayed above them as the producer who kept every picture on plan. He could run several films at once and know where each one stood. That way of working became the studio system.

He made hundreds of pictures, helped make the Western a serious form, co-founded Triangle with D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett, and built two studios in Culver City that went on to house some of Hollywood's best-known films.

Every version of Magnate is named for a producer who changed how pictures get made. Ince comes first because his idea is ours: know the plan, and know where every piece of it stands.