Hollywood the weather was ideal and there was quick access to various settings. Los Angeles became the capital of the film industry in the United States. The mountains, plains and low land prices made Hollywood a good place to establish film studios. Director D. W. Griffith was the first to make a motion picture in Hollywood. His 17-minute short film "In Old California" (1910) was filmed for the Biograph Company. Although Hollywood banned movie theaters—of which it had none—before annexation that year, Los Angeles had no such restriction. The first film by a Hollywood studio, Nestor Motion Picture Company, was shot
D. W. Griffith of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and among the most important figures in the history of film. He popularized the use of the close-up shot. Griffith was born on a farm in Oldham County, Kentucky, the son of Mary Perkins ("née" Oglesby) and Jacob Wark "Roaring Jake" Griffith a Confederate Army colonel in the American Civil War who was elected as a Kentucky state legislator. Griffith was raised a Methodist, and he attended a one-room schoolhouse where he was taught by his older sister Mattie. His father died when he was ten, and the