Beginning of short film and Hollywood's affect on it....

1895 is where it all began, with the short film "Sortie de L'Usine". The reason why films were so short at the beginning of the film industry was due to technological restrictions, and film was not proudced in a bulk as it is this present day. They were just regarded as 'experimental sequences' as opposed to something that would now be regarded as a billion dollar industry.
Within a matter of years, people were becoming experimental with their ideas:
painting film to be projected in colour, using special effects such as jump cuts to create certain moods and narratives.
A great example of this is "The X-Rays", 1897, which was one of the first comedy shorts (44 seconds long) to use jump cuts to ahcieve the effect that an X-Ray mahine had just been turned on and you could see a couple's skeltons. Another is one much later on, which is a lot more professional looking, "The Over-Incubated Baby" in 1901 by W.R.Booth was one of the first black comedy shorts, which could almost be regarded as science-fiction/fantasy too.

The Hollywood era then moved on to produce The "Classical Narrative" which was primarily 90minutes long, and sometimes still is today. When films began being produced in bulk, and celebrity culture grew, the experimental short film indutry became overshadowed by these big blockbuster movies. The Classical narrative was the "beginning-middle-end" sort of plot which had a storyline that was easy to follow etc. It appealed to mass audiences, which brought in the money a lot more.
People also didn't see the need to pay money just to watch a 10 minute film, where they could infact go to watch a 90 minute one instead. This was the era in which cinematic films were set into genres (rom-com, thriller, horror, comedy, sci-fi etc.) Going tot he cinema became an activity to do with friend etc and were then regarded as 'blocks' of two hour slots: allowing the customer to go to the toilet and buy food and drink such as popcorn and soft drinks, and then approx. 15minutes to watch the trailers before watching the movie itself. It was nopt only a form of entertainmetn, but a platform to sell products to audience (other films, food, drink and even this 'glamourous' lifestyle).