The first American company to open offices in London and Paris was Vitagraph. At first, companies sold their films indirectly to export agents or foreign distribution firms. Soon the American firms realized selling their films themselves would make a much bigger profit. Foreign markets were cut off from European films so they took a great interest in American films. Since American firms were making big profits from the exports, it gave their films a bigger budget to work with. Therefore, producers invested in big sets, impressive costumes, and more lighting equipment. Other countries could not compete with the Hollywood production values because they had low budgets, which in return led to them making low profits. Many American companies also built larger studio buildings so that their films would look more realistic and have room to make any kind of setting their film may need. These studios were much more effective than their earlier open-air stages that had no room to do anything advanced with their film. Many of the new studios had glass walls to let sunlight in and also included electric lighting. This made it so that their films could use deeper, more three-dimensional settings and artificial lighting. Moreover, major studios began to form such as Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Fox Film Corporation (20th Century Fox), and MGM. These studios developed methods that made films as efficiently as possible. Things such as a continuity script made it so that the people working on the film could have planned out what needed to be done. This also increased their profits because films would get made faster so more were being made to make a profit. Obviously American films became very advanced in technology because they were making great amounts of money whereas foreign countries were not.
Many of the foreign audiences that were cut off from American films were amazed at how much they had improved.