“Thomas Ince was a classic example of a theatre actor who, during a brief period of unemployment in 1910, turned to cinema, which had just been born, as an alternative way of earning a living. But his influence on the industry in the long-term was to be of great importance. After working for IMP and then for Biograph, he returned to IMP when he was offered a job as director. He completed his first film in December 1910. But Ince immediately became tired of the one-reel format and in Autumn 1911 he accepted a job as director for Adam Kessel’s and Charles Bauman’s New York Motion Picture Company. He moved to Edendale, California, where a small group of people was producing films. At that time, the studio was a converted shop – a single stage (without even a canvas covering), a store room for scenery, a small laboratory and office and a hut which was used as a changing room. Ince wrote, directed and edited his film in a week. Starting from these small beginnings, by 1913 the studio had developed a full scenery procedure and, by 1916, had built a 500,000 dollar studio in concrete on a 170,000 square metre site”.

(Janet Staiger, Division of Labour and Production Control. Thomas Ince and the birth of the Studio System, from Griffithiana, 1984)