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Presentation for POL 338 Dr. Kevin Lasher

Presentation for POL 338 Dr. Kevin Lasher. Film Basics. Profit motive Mass public Collaborative enterprises Avoid politics (generally) Storytelling Genre. Film Basics: Profit Motive. Movie business – ultimate goal is to make money Sam Goldwyn: “messages are for Western Union”

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Presentation for POL 338 Dr. Kevin Lasher

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  1. Presentation for POL 338 Dr. Kevin Lasher

  2. Film Basics • Profit motive • Mass public • Collaborative enterprises • Avoid politics (generally) • Storytelling • Genre

  3. Film Basics: Profit Motive • Movie business – ultimate goal is to make money • Sam Goldwyn: “messages are for Western Union” • More money through DVDs, Netflix, streaming, toys, merchandising • Liberal Hollywood is the most “capitalistic” enterprise • Looking for next blockbuster (international sales)

  4. Film Basics: Profit Motive • Business supersedes ART • Win awards, prestige films • Certain directors (Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Steven Spielburg, others) can pursue artistic visions • Young directors with early success may disappear if films fail to make money • More outlets for “auteur films”

  5. Film Basics: Mass Public • Today the focus is on youth and repeat business • Reflect opinion and tastes of audience (rarely challenge) • Entertainment/escapism

  6. Film Basics: Mass Public • 1920s-early 1950s film was the primary source of mass entertainment • Two-thirds of population went to the movies weekly

  7. Film Basics: Mass Public • Today: International mass public • Today: mass pubic versus niche market

  8. Film Basics: Collaborative Enterprise • Least common denominator versus auteur theory • Early studio system was an “assembly line process” • Studio head, producer, director, screenwriters, editing, technical, others • Audience is part of the collaborative enterprise

  9. Film Basics: Collaborative Enterprise • Studio system is dead but collaboration remains • Any message can be “diluted” by multiple players, production companies, corporations

  10. Film Basics: Avoid Politics • Films about politics are not very appealing, not profitable and possibly too controversial • Counterintuitive: politics is conflict • Small subset of all films • Directors want to send a political message (if they can), so they keep trying on occasion • Many of the AFI’s greatest films are “political”

  11. http://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx

  12. Human beings have been telling stories since the creation of spoken language

  13. Movies take us to a fictional world to tell a compelling story about interesting characters ---- NOT REAL

  14. Film Basics: Storytelling Classical Hollywood Narrative “A story built around an active protagonist who struggles against primarily external forces of antagonism to purse his or her desire, through continuous time, within a consistent and causally connected fictional reality, to a closed ending of absolute, irreversible change.”

  15. Film Basics: Storytelling • Classical Hollywood narrative • Protagonist(s) vs. antagonist(s) • Directional plot; conflict • Three act structure (generally) • Resolution of conflict (or failure) • Political films contain these components

  16. Film Basics: Storytelling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0yqUmedyOM

  17. Film Basics: Genre • Particular type of film in which audiences have certain preconceptions and expectations; which share comparable and recognizable patterns in theme, period and setting, plot, symbols and types of characters

  18. Film Basics: Genre • Genres developed because of nature of studio “factory production system” (1930-1960) • Genres developed because audiences enjoyed certain types of films • Genres are not permanent, borders are flexible, old genres can die, new genres can emerge

  19. Genres • Westerns • Gangster Films • Horror Films • Film Noir • Musicals • Action/adventure • Science Fiction • Romantic comedy • Superhero • Others

  20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS7EHDwIzPc&t=10s

  21. The End

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