Film Studies The Studio System

Faculty of English Llanishen High School Film Studies The Studio System Key point about the studio system could be: Despite being one of the biggest industries in the United States, indeed the World, the internal workings of the 'dream factory' that is Hollywood is little understood outside the business. The Hollywood Studio System: A History is the first book to describe and analyse the complete development, classic operation, and reinvention of the global corporate entities which produce and distribute most of the films we watch. Starting in 1920, Adolph Zukor, head of Paramount Pictures, over the decade of the 1920s helped to fashion Hollywood into a vertically integrated system, a set of economic innovations which was firmly in place by 1930. For the next three decades, the movie industry in the United States and the rest of the world operated by according to these principles. Cultural, social and economic changes ensured the demise of this system after the Second World War. A new way to run Hollywood was required. Beginning in 1962, Lew Wasserman of Universal Studios emerged as the key innovator in creating a second studio system. He realized that creating a global media conglomerate was more important than simply being vertically integrated. Gomery's history tells the story of a 'tale of two systems 'using primary materials from a score of archives across

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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The stimulus we were given to look at was the play 'Too Much Punch for Judy', written in 1987 by British playwright, Mark Wheeller. Mark Wheeller

Too Much Punch for Judy : Portfolio 2 Response The stimulus we were given to look at was the play 'Too Much Punch for Judy', written in 1987 by British playwright, Mark Wheeller. Mark Wheeller was born in 1958 and grew up in Bristol. He began writing plays during his schooldays and now 'Too Much Punch for Judy' is one of the most performed plays ever, having toured schools, colleges, prisons, army camps and the workplace, both here and abroad. The play tells the story of the drink driving incident which happened on 20th May 1983. Its main characters are two young sisters, Jo and Judy, who like to go out for a drink and have fun. It shows how one drunken night went too far. Jo and Judy had been to an aerobics session followed by a trip to the local wine bar. Judy hadn't been drinking as much as Jo, but had still had over three quarters of a bottle of wine. They began to argue about who should drive home, Jo had previously been convicted for drink driving so, even though it was Jo's car, Judy took to the wheel. Judy wasn't used to driving Jo's car and so when they approached a bend at Scratch Bridge, she didn't turn the wheel enough and the car came off the road, hitting the bridge. The scaffolding construction sliced through the car, Judy escaped unhurt, but Jo was killed outright. The first on the scene was a man called Duncan, who lived close to where the crash happened.

  • Word count: 12476
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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The route to achieving good production sound - pre-production process.

Pre-Production The route to achieving good production sound Good production sound does not happen by accident nor on its own. It requires concerted efforts from all the production executives (producer, director, production manager) as well as from members of the crew. Achieving good Production Sound, as does every aspect of filmmaking, hinges upon decisions made early on during the pre- production process. Location Scouting One of the most critical areas for Sound is the selection of the shooting location. All too often, sites are selected without even remote regard for noise or acoustic conditions. Unlike the camera lens, which can frame out those items which the director does not wish the audience to see, the microphone cannot be particularly selective in what it hears. Unwanted background noise is omnipresent, and will permeate a set irregardless of camera framing or the addition of a few flats & props. For example, imagine the production of an 1860's period western. The camera operator can remove a tall radio tower gridwork from the visual background by either framing it out or blocking it from view with a strategically placed foreground cactus tree. The sound mixer, on the other hand, has no simple method of "framing out" distracting sound such as a busy freeway directly behind the setup. In this situation-a western being shot in an urban location-the odds are

  • Word count: 11310
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Choose a modern day situation (e.g. at school, a party, a mealtime etc.) and create a short improvisation showing this. THEN choose a period of time between 1850 and 1960 and re-enact the same scene, as you think it may have happened at the time.

Historical Improvisation Notebook By Kate Graham 7th March In this lesson, we were some preparation work to prepare us for our historical improvisation piece. We had the choice of two tasks, . Choose a famous event from history and create an improvised piece which details this event, or 2. Choose a modern day situation (e.g. at school, a party, a mealtime etc.) and create a short improvisation showing this. THEN choose a period of time between 1850 and 1960 and re-enact the same scene, as you think it may have happened at the time. Our group decided to choose the second task, and we all decided that doing a piece set in 1960 would be very interesting. When we had chosen the time our piece was to be set in, the majority of our group wanted to set our piece in a party, but Kayleigh wanted to perform a piece set in a school, and the rest of the group all agreed that this was an excellent idea, and could turn out some interesting differences between the 60's and today's school environment. Donna didn't really want to base our performance in the sixties but eventually the group managed to talk her round to our way of thinking, and Donna was quite happy to perform with us. I decided to go home, and research everything I could about the sixties, so that next drama lesson, we would have plenty of information with which to make our piece historically accurate. I have

  • Word count: 10929
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Nights at the Circus

Nights at the Circus Nights at the Circus (1984), Angela Carter's penultimate novel, epitomizes her wildly inventive, highly idiosyncratic mode of fiction, centered as it is on Fevvers, a Cockney artiste who claims to have grown wings. Most critics and reviewers have seen the main thrust of the novel to reside in the portrayal of Fevvers as a prototype of the New Woman whose wings help her to escape from the nets of a patriarchal nineteenth century culture into a twentieth century feminist haven of freedom. The novel ends with Fevvers astride her American lover, Walser (she now playing the missionary role), enjoying apparently two triumphs - sexual and psychological - in one: "'To think I really fooled you!' she marveled. 'It just goes to show there's nothing like confidence'" (295). Yet when Carter was asked by John Haffenden what Fevvers means by this, she replied, "It's actually a statement about the nature of fiction, about the nature of her narrative" (90). The more you look closely at this novel, the more you realize just how literal Carter was being in that reply. More than any other of her works of fiction, Nights at the Circus takes as its subject the hypnotic power of narrative, the ways in which we construct ourselves and our world by narrative means, the materiality of fiction and the fictionality of the material world, and the contract between writer

  • Word count: 9318
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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DIGITAL SPECIAL EFFECTS

STRUCTURED RECORD DRAMA Question 1 In what way was the stimulus material developed through the drama process? In the beginning we wanted our audience to feel relaxed and felt that music will be the best way to achieve this effectively. We used to pieces of music produced in the olden days, one was called 'Fings aint what they use to be' by Max Bygrave and 'I don't want to set the world on fire' by Inkspots. We felt that this music will help us set the type of mood we want our audience to feel. Our teacher brought in our first stimulus which was the film called 'The cream cracker under the settee' starring Doris who talked about her past life and present life and pointed out issues which effected her life as an elderly person. We wanted to portray some of these issues into our play and therefore looked deeply into these issues of old age, analyzed and discussed the different ways elderly people may feel at this present moment or may have in the past. These in addition help us deepen the drama because we came across some of the emotional feelings elderly people feel or may have felt. This is where we decided it would be best to focus our play on one character and portray her emotional feelings. We wanted to show the different stages of our characters life until she was classified as an old woman. We wrote down all the issues mentioned and talked about in the film called

  • Word count: 8611
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Discuss How You Would Direct Two Key Scenes in Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Discuss How You Would Direct Two Key Scenes in Whose Life Is It Anyway? There is a range of deep, complicated moral and ethical themes in this play. The playwright causes the audience to emotionally contribute strong views on what is right and wrong, within the course of the staging. Because Brian Clarke handpicked such a controversial ethical issue as this, he caused his audience to express strong personal beliefs as well as playing a technique of the 'defence and prosecution' (two sides), whereby Clarke keeps the substance and pace in the play to quell his audience's thirst for action. There is a direct consequence to this- this resides in the fact that opposing judgments are not ignored, thereby keeping the spice and momentum going. To actually stage the play would be also take an original approach due to Ken Harrison's paralysis, where he must be kept on-stage throughout the play (because the director must try to impress realism). As a result of paralysis from the neck-down, Ken is unable to express his emotions and temper through effective body language and thus his ability to relate with the audience is terribly hindered. However, facial expression and his tone of voice remain at his disposal. In a director's sense, Ken must preside good control over these features to compensate his lack of body language, and successfully implement these to an effective end. His

  • Word count: 6544
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Plot and subplot -

Plot and subplot "Our Country's Good," a play by Timberlake Wertenbaker, is about a group of English convicts bound for Australia by sea in 1788. In the first scene, Sideways, a convict on board the ship, is being brutally whipped and we are introduced to the constant, overwhelming fear, hunger and despair that the convicts are going through. We are also introduced to all the officials on board. They are debating the punishment of hanging that three of the convicts have received for stealing, and we see the different attitudes different characters have to this. Governor Arthur Phillip supports a humane approach to dealing with the convicts, but Judge David Collins believes that the law must be upheld and that a crime, however petty, is still a crime. Captain Watkin Tench says that the convicts are beyond redemption anyway, and Midshipman Harry Brewer takes the opinion that the convicts have become desensitized to hangings and even consider it "their theatre". In the end Governor Phillip believes that a play for the convicts to put on, with "fine language [and] sentiment" is the way to go in order to encourage the convicts to change their ways in this new environment. We learn the play chosen play is to be "The Recruiting Officer" (1706) by Irish actor-turned-playwright George Farquhar (1677-1707). It is about his experiences working as a recruiting officer for the army for

  • Word count: 5903
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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My drama script

Characters Rich Woman Ced - Precious Diamond Wilson Family (Poor - Bad Mother, and good daughter) Jo - Mrs. Charity Wilson (Bad Mother) Marie - Lucy Wilson (Good Daughter) Phillips (Poor - Good Mother and good daughter) Pearl - Grace Phillips (Good Mother) Kem - Niki Phillips (Good Daughter - Sociable) Policewoman Fows - PC Evans Boys Marie/ Ced - (Boy with AIDS) Akua, Maria, Kemesha, Fowsiya, and Joana - (Boy's Friends) Doctor Kem - Doctor Garrett Fows - Nurse Patients awaiting to see the doctor: . Marie - AIDS 2. Pearl - Cold 3. Ced - Broken Leg 4. Jo - High temperature Script A woman is astounded when she enters and glimpse the splendour of the room at the far corner of the wall, she can see a beautiful portrait. The furniture is made of the finest beach wood of dark mahogany. There is a couch slanted slightly to the left and it is filted with silken love cushions. There is a slight movement; she turns around to see her. Mrs Phillips: Oh you have a wonderful room, its so nice Miss Precious: Oh thank you Mrs Phillips: Emm, I just wanted to say thank you again for bringing us here, and looking after us, we are grateful, thank you so much. Miss Precious: Hey its ok, don't worry at all if you need anything, anything at all, just let me know, so what are we having for breakfast today then? Mrs Phillips: Anything you want Miss. In the

  • Word count: 5806
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Create a presentation in response to the thematic area IRONY.

Sophie Wong 11A Coursework and controlled test evaluation Introduction My task for this controlled test was to create a presentation in response to the thematic area IRONY. Our production was centred on the theme of irony and things are not what they seem. Although this theme ran throughout our presentation, we also used a different form of irony called dramatic irony. This is when the audience know something about the character or the plot but which the characters within the play are oblivious to. We were influenced on this by a theatre production entitled 'Blithe Spirits', in which a wife dies and returns as a spirit roaming around her own home as if she was still living. This is very similar to our storyline in which pair of female twins and their friend are on holiday when a schizophrenic murders one of the twins. The outline of the play is the living twin can see her spirit but the friend cannot. The dramatic irony within this is that the audience know she is dead but the characters do not. I chose to work in a group of five for a second time because I felt that the numbers worked well previously. It allowed us to have various characters and experiment with many different expressive arts techniques. I worked with Alison, Hannah, Rachel and Johanna and because we were all studying dance and drama, these were the focuses of the play. We chose to work in this group

  • Word count: 5501
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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