Film crew

“Ah, the audience doesn’t care.” But George Lucas, director of the Star Wars film series, isn’t talking about Alfred Hitchhock’s entire film The 39 Steps. Instead, he is referring to a MacGuffin, a common plot device that motivates the protagonist(s) without much additional development of its own. Lucas’s remark can be untraditionally applied to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, for the dragon Smaug’s ostensibly antagonistic role left the reader ambivalent. However, this is not entirely due to a…

way that I would a superhero. Nevertheless, director Steven Soderbergh’s hit film, “Ocean’s Eleven” accomplishes this feat in a 2001 remake of the original 1960's film which starred Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. The modern take stays true to suave Hollywood glamour in using today’s brightest stars; a list that includes George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Julia Roberts in the leading roles. The film follows a crew of expert thieves and their attempts to plan a robbery involving the three…

director of Fight Club and The Social Network spoke these words about film directing. Those words can truly sum up the rewarding yet stressful career of a film director. Film is a broad spectrum that has been shaped throughout history, from silent films to the invention of sound and color. To advance in the film industry, directors need to have a certain skill set, and obtain a film degree, or a media production degree. During the pre film era of the 1920s, optical illusion toys using…

Currently, American films are a common way for the average American to spend his/her free time. Individuals watch movies for escapism and entertainment, but the art form that the film industry grew out of is not as common to the public eye: modern American theatre. Modern American film and modern American theatre have more in common than what people might believe, while still retaining their own uniqueness. For example, one similarity both theatre and film share is the formula, or definition, of…

of a film. It was, at one point, taking every shot filmed on location, and putting them all together in a way so that the film makes sense. Nowadays, the editor may also add special effects or background music, in addition to selecting and combining the scenes. There are several major techniques of editing, including thematic montages, sequences shots and various types of cutting, such as classic, abstract, and continuity. In Now You See Me, all editing techniques are expressed within the film,…

One aspect of filmmaking that both directors seem to concur on is that films are composed in almost equal parts by all of the characters and creators involved in the production process, a process that includes the film's audience. Their opinions on the theoretical subject matter of filmmaking are largely exemplified in Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and Tim Burton's Ed Wood. As pieces of meta-theater both films allow the directors to express their perception…

mainstream cinema to create and produce successful films. Even if the New Wave wasn’t really a conscious movement it left a legacy with films like À bout de soufflé/Breathless (written and directed by Jean-Luc Goddard). French New Wave rejected the idea of a traditional story in films – they didn’t follow the structure and the narrative. The French filmmakers wanted the audience to react to their film like they would react in real life and wanted the films to be realistic as possible. The…

There are a lot of things that need to be taken into consideration when making a documentary film. One common issue that arises with documentary filmmaking is ethical issues. When people go to see documentaries, they are usually looking to be informed on some kind of topic, but some filmmakers might not use the most ethical approach to achieve that goal. Documentaries can “stand for or represent the views of individuals, groups, and institutions” (Nichols, 45). This can lead to issues later,…

short film about a limbless man with a circus crew fighting against what society thinks of him. Within Catholic Social Teaching, there is a set of moral principles that provide a foundation for making social policy decisions. The eight principles are Human Dignity, Community, Common Good, Participation, Subsidiarity, Preferential Option for the Poor, Stewardship, and Solidarity. There are many examples of Catholic Social Teaching being applied in this film. In the first part of the film “The…

Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a novel, written by Ken Kesey and published in 1962. The novel was adapted into a film, produced by Michael Douglass and released in 1975. The film was directed by Milos Forman, with screenplay by Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben, and was the second film to ever be awarded all five major academy awards. The film is a moderately accurate portrayal of the film, but it loses the crucial aspect of Chief's point of view. Chief is a half Native American patient in the…