THX 1138 - Ideology

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Originally uploaded by larrybob18

This week in class we watch the movie THX 1138 written and directed by George Lucas the creator of the Star Wars trilogy that began appearing in theatres in the late 1970s and did not stop until the 2009 and they are still going strong today. In class this week we took a look at Chapter 10 Ideology. Ideology according to Wikipedia is a set of ideas that discusses one's goals, expectations, and actions. This pertains to the movie industry because every now and then movies that are made in America have a message behind them and are not just for the amusement of the audience or just a crowd pleaser. An example of this type of movie is the Passion of the Christ which was released in 2004 and was about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the trials and tribulations that he experienced during his last few moments as stated by the bible. Ideology is used in the study of film because when you look at every film that is made there is always a message regardless of whether it was obvious or hidden well. Another example would be the Bourne Series. The message in that would be for the government to learn to accept the consequences of there mistakes and not cover them up. All in all every movie has a message or ideology behind it.

Kick-Ass

There are a lot of things that go into making an awesome movie. These things are especially important when they come from books or graphic novels because the reader creates their own imagine in their brain and they use that as the visual part of the book and if things are changed too much in the movie versus the book/comic the audiences that read the book/comic and saw the movie are going to have a strong opinion of what they feel the sets,costumes, music and characters should look like. An example of where the author of a series of books actually worked with the production of the film,was the Harry Potter Series. J.K.Rowling was actually in on the making of the films and that helps because the director used her visions to create what she tried to write in the books. This allows the audience to see the intent by the author. The Movie Kick-Ass was an amazing Graphic Novel that was released as a movie about the same time that the movie was being filmed and directored. when a screenplay is being produced from a book the events are usually mixed upped a little and/or have a tendency to be left out of the screenplay because one page of dialogue equals one minute. So if you have a book that is five hundred pages that would be a five hundred minute film which would over eight hours worth of film and you usually cannot keep an audience for more than about an hour and a half to two hours let alone over eight hours. One of the Main problems of taking books/comics and making them to the big screen is the length. They are too long and they need to broken down into parts or they need to cut parts from book/comic in order to make it so they can actually have an audience watching their production. A good current example of breaking a book into two movies is the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows because that book was so big and the information in was important to the story they are releasing the movie in to full length feature sections so that the whole story can be told. This is actually very rare for a book to be broken up into two pieces. Usually each book is a piece but it is on the director and the screenplay writers. Another big part that usually changes when something goes to the Big screen is the writing. for example they characters may not always be talk the same way you thought they would because the book was too small so they added dialogue in order to make it a full length feature film. Without a good script to back up the awesome book you will not have a great movie. An example of this would be Lenomy Sniket's: A Series of Unfortunate Events was not that great of a movie hence why they have created the rest of the books to big screen yet. Those books were entirely too small in order to be made into their own full length feature film and it showed in the movie when I believe they combined three of the books all into one movie when each book should have been their own movie in order for it to make the most sense to the viewers. Taking a book/comic and moving it to the big screen just does not happen overnight and the writers and their work are extremely important part of the success and failure of the movie. The movie and the comic have a lot of things in common but not are all in the right order.

Pan's Labyrinth and Drama

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Originally uploaded by larrybob18

This week in class we watched Pan's Labyrinth. It was an extremely interesting movie. The movie has a realistic and fantasy look to it.. The realistic part is the war fighting, forts, amount of food during wartimes. Some fantasy the parts are going into the tree after the frog and making it puke up a key, eyeballs coming out of that mans hands and the mystical creature that she met all along here journey. It kind of towed the line between what can actually happen (reality) and not actually in real life (fantasy). I would rate the 4.5 out of 5, because of the suspense and the drama. During the movie you were not sure what the next thing that was going to happen. It was not like some of those movies where you can say that character is going to get stabbed or a fight is going to happen now.

What are the particular challenges of adapting a piece of theater to film? First of the sets have to be designed very differently in order to be used for a theatre production versus a film productions. The set for a film production if the actor is on higher platform the camera can stop and they can have a transition that allows him to get to the lower for the next part of the scene. If they were in the theatre the audience would still have there eyes on him and he does not have the time in order to make down there. A film set can be where ever the scene takes them. For example if I am making a movie and I need a shot of a water park. I could use KennyWood Park for a film but it would be extremely difficult in order to build KennyWood Park on the theatre stage which would make it almost impossible to use KennyWood in the theatre but if was film you pay the park owner and you can get the shots that you need and for the movie. Another challenge that directors face is adding the elements of weather to there film. For example it would be hard to make it rain in the middle of theatre but in a studio or outside you can use whatever weather conditions that director desires. A third thing that can challenge a director is the costumes with the time they have in between the shooting of scenes and not having a live audience the actors for film have a much easier time changing there outfits than somebody who acts in theatre because you just slow down how productive you are in a day. Lightning can be also be a problem because you are not always in a studio so you will have to deal with the elements of the area where you are taping like right know if you were taping anywhere on the East Coast you would have to deal with the hot weather. There are many factors that affect how a film and transform from the stage to a studio and there things that need to be done in order to take a film to the stage.

Crash

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Originally uploaded by larrybob18

This week in class we watched the movie “Crash.” It was an amazingly thought out movie and the Director was able interweave the stories in order to get the audience to see the big picture of what was going on. There are some differences between screen acting and stage acting.

Screen Acting is when the person is acting for the camera and not for a live audience. This allows them to take there multiple shots and combine them together. This allows the director to enact his vision that he sees down to the exact location of every bug. When one of the actor screws up in the filming of the shots then they just take another take and they can mix the best of all the shots. They can also have as many settings as they can design and place because they use the studio and shoot as many scenes that are needed with this as the set.

If it had been stage acting then there would be a live audience that is watches the performance. If the actors were eventually to screw they would have to move on because they were performing live so they do not get any do overs or mulligans. Stage acting also has to do only with the props that they can create and place in will the curtains are closed or another scene is going on so they are limited to what is carried out for the background and that because it does not look right if everything brought with the actors still acting on the front of he stage unless the curtain is closed.

Stage Acting and Screen Acting are two different types of acting and styles. The main differences between the two styles of acting are the amount of takes. The second thing that is different is props that are used in scene if you are acting on stage props are brought out at a certain and if a camera is used they stop the camera and change the props.

District 9

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Originally uploaded by larrybob18

This week in class we watched the movie “District 9.” The sound effects in that movie were amazing because they a lot of them were designed just for the District 9 Movie and they worked hard to create and not just pulled off a cd that has a collection of sound effects on them. There are a few relative advantages that they have by using subtitles instead of dubbing the audio.

If you actually dubbing the audio to a movie then if you actually pay real close attention that you can see that the mouths do not match what is coming out of them. For example if you look at the movie we watched in Week three, Run Lola Run, we watched it in German language with English subtitles in order to understand it. If we would have changed the movie to the English Language it would have changed the view of the movie and it may no have the same affect as the director wanted it to because it was because the original language has changed. Dubbing audio changes how the director envisioned because in some languages words have different meanings. Subtitles leave the audio alone they just put the meaning of the words on screen. That is why subtitled are better than dubbed motion pictures.

Raging Bull

Raging Bull was an extremely accurate portray of Jake La Moto's life as a boxer and showed the audience how different things were then versus how they are now. An example of that wold be now a days it would be considered abuse if you hit your wife and you would be considered a wife beater and could be in jail but back then when the movie was actually happening it was considered acceptable to beat your wife for doing something wrong if thought I do not agree with it that is was people were accustom to. The movie was shot ing black in white because it added to the effects of the movie showing people that this film was actually happened when color movies were just coming out so it added to the effects to have it in black and white. I would give this movie 4 out of 5 stars. In this movie there are distinct timing and editing features that are extremely apparent in this movie.

Real time is a one minute on screen. Once you have one minute on screen you actually have page worth of script that has to be read in the one minute. Screen time is the time that the movie runs and there are actually things happening on screen and not just credits. The restructuring of time is when they edit and make it so that everything happens how it is supposed to like the police do not so up before a bank robbery to catch the suspect before the robbery evens happens. The rhythm of edited sequences is when the frames are added together in order to make the movie actually real and making it the best possible outcome using what the director shot and the vision of the writer.

This was extremely well planned and edited using transitions footage that was shot as different angles in order to give the audience a three dimensional visual of the actual scene. Raging bull was an accurate portray of a boxer's life and struggles in the 1940s and how society treated people.

Movement in Run Lola Run

Movement in Run Lola Run was one of the best out there. The movie was shot from a lot of different angles. It was really a masterpiece because they had right balance between of the animations and the different camera angles that were shot and edited together in order to give the audience a complete viewing of the action and the different angles along with so the difference that time makes in the outcome of the movie. For example when she was just a few seconds late and Manni was unable to hear her screams he decides to rob the grocery store. In the second scenario she robs the bank and walks out and the police think she was an innocent civilian when in reality she was the bank robber that they just let get away. In the third scenario she makes it in plenty of time but Manni was not there.

Animated movies are extremely popular among little children. They are used because when you use animated series they do not have be real and people understand that animated movies do not have to be real and they are reviewed on the basics that they are more for comedy or morales stories that meant for children to learn from. The animations were used as Lola was leaving her building complex running to help Manni. It was placed in the movie in order to give the audience how much running and that she will do anything in order to help protect Manni.

Live action movies are movies that are meant to be really and are supposed to be as life like as possible. They are supposed to be base mainly on things that the director and writers are trying to convey. The message that they want to get across to the audience for example like the fact that robbing a grocery story will never pay off for you because you will most likely be caught, shot, or killed. In Run Lola Run they used live actions shots as she was running to get to Manni in order to keep him from doing something stupid.

Throughout Run Lola Run there were many actions shots that showed her running to various place along with her surroundings in order to give the audience a sense of feeling that we were actually there in Germany as they were shooting the movie. The animations actually added to the to the movie. The angles and movement added to the movie making it a great show and something that everybody should watch.