THX 1138 - Ideology

thx11381
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

pans-labyrinth-1
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.