COMM 1500 Chapter 7

European Union's definition of product placement

"any form of audio-visual commercial communication consisting of the inclusion of or reference to a product, a service or the trade mark thereof so that it is featured within a program, in return for payment or for similar consideration.

First movie to make $100 million at the box office

1975 Jaws In 2018 Avengers: Infinity War made over $100 the day in opened, the third movie to do so after Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015 and Star Wars: The Last Jedi in 2017. In 2018 three other movies--Black Panther, Incredibles 2, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom--took two days to break the $100 million mark at the box office Granted, all of these movies actually opened the night before they officially opened, so that first "day" is more like 30+ hours long. The key factor in why over 200 movies have made $100 million in ten days or less is because, again, ticket prices have gone up so much each and every decade. The other thing to notice is that all of these movies from this decade are sequels

Point where product placement entered national consciousness

1982 with Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and a scene where young Elliott coaxes the abandoned alien by leaving a trail of candy on the ground. Spielberg wanted a partnership with a candy company that would help promotion for the movie, but Mars, Inc., makers of M&M's, passed. Instead, Hershey signed on to promote their Reese's Pieces line, produced a million dollars worth of advertisements for the movie, and even put E.T.'s face right on the packaging for their candy. A decade later, Wayne's World (1992) would show Mike Myers' Wayne Campbell and Dana Carvey's Garth Algar holding up a product, looking directly into the camera, and smiling, all the while complaining about the practice of product placement in movies.

American Montage

A montage sequence that violates time and/or space. In our previous examples, each sequence took place in the same time and space: a water hole in Africa several million years ago and a bathroom in one of the rooms at the Bates Motel. When 2001: A Space Odyssey jumped several million years into the future, we never cut back to prehistoric man-apes. But with American Montage the editing is between scenes at different times (now versus before or later) or between scene in different places (here versus there). Ex: In the Baptism Sequence in The Godfather (1972), director Francis Ford Coppola uses sixty-seven shots over 5 minutes, cutting back and forth between the baptism of the godson of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) and the brutal slaying of the Corleone family's enemies taking place in other parts of New York City and also in Las Vegas. Clearly these events are taking place in different spaces, and although it seems they are all taking place at the same time, that is probably not literally true. It would make sense for Michael to take out the heads of the other crime families at roughly the same time, so that word of one killing does not tip off the other targets, but it is only by cinematic license that they not only happen simultaneously but at the very moment the priest switches from Latin to English and asks Michael if he renounces Satan, so that the irony between Michael's words and the actions he ordered is obvious. Also, note again how music plays a crucial role in the sequence, with an organist playing Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, a last minute addition suggested by one of the film's editors when Coppola was not happy with how the sequences was working. Ex: In The Silence of the Lambs, this same approach is used to trick the viewer. FBI agents led by Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) are moving in on the Calumet City, Illinois, house of serial killer Jame Gumb (Ted Levine), a.k.a., "Buffalo Bill." The movie cuts back and forth between the agents approaching the house and Gumb in his basement. An agent pretending to be a florist rings the doorbell and Gumb goes up to answer the door. But when the agents burst into the house they find it empty and when Gumb opens the front door he find Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), because he is not in Illinois but in Belvedere, Ohio, living under a different name.

Montage and "Psycho"

Alfred Hitchcock used this same basic approach in the shower sequence in Psycho (1960), a 3-minute sequence of fifty cuts in which Janet Leigh's Marion Crane is attacked with a knife. Viewers see the attacker stabbing toward the camera with a knife and Marion trying to defend herself, but what they never see is the knife actually cut Marion. The cuts make it clear that is what happens, and they "hear" the knife entering flesh (created by plunging a knife into a casaba melon), but it is never actually shown. It should also be noted that the screeching strings used by composer Bernard Hermann (titled "The Murder") adds to the intensity of the scene as well.

Eisensteinian Montage

Another Soviet film director, Sergei Eisenstein, refined the Kuleshov effect into his own theory of montage, which he used to great effect in the Odessa Steps sequence from his masterpiece Battleship Potemkin (1925), a silent movie that dramatizes a mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers. The best known sequence in the film takes place on the Odessa Steps, which connect the central city with the waterfront. When the people of Odessa celebrate the rebellion by the soldiers, a detachment of dismounted Cossacks march down the steps toward the unarmed civilians. The soldiers stop and fire a volley of bullets into the crowd. Overall, the sequence constitutes an example of dynamic editing, which demonstrates the power of montage. Eisenstein uses long shots to establish the crowd fleeing down the steps away from the advancing soldiers, then using medium shots to focuses on particular characters, and finally close ups to show their reactions to the killing. The flow down the steps is countered by the woman cradling her dead son and walking back up the steps, before the culminating movement down the steps of the baby carriage. The Odessa Steps sequence lasts about 7 minutes, but the way it is cut plays with the audience's perception of time by stretching out the flight of the crowd down the steps. Eisenstein is basically writing the textbook on what can be done with montage in this sequence

Technical

Assembling all of the film, which has been shot in an edited cut, is the pivotal part of the postproduction stage. Sometimes additional scenes need to be reshot or actors need to loop dialogue because of sound problems with the film that has been shot. But this is where music, special effects, and other key elements are added before a cut is finalized for distribution: Editor. Works closely with the director to craft the finished film, selecting the scenes to be shown and the specific takes to be used of various shot, and putting them together. Music Editor. Responsible for all the music featured on film soundtracks. Composer. Responsible for writing original music for films. Special Effects Artist. Creates mechanical, optical, and computer-generated illusions for movies, television programs, and computer games. Sound Designer. Manages the sound postproduction process. Foley Artist. Uses creativity to make viewers believe that the sound effects are actually real by adding them in post production after the film has been shot. Re-Recording Mixer. Works with all the sound elements and mixes them together to create the final soundtrack. Formerly known as dubbing mixers. Post production Supervisor. Looks after the postproduction process, making sure that the postproduction budget is on target and that all deadlines are met. Colorist. Makes sure that all shots in each scene match one another by balancing color saturation and luminance from shot to shot. Subtitler. Adds subtitles to describe the dialogue and sound effects for deaf and hard of hearing audiences. Title Designer. Designs the graphics for the opening titles, captions, and end cards of movies.

Raoul Walsh filming The Big Trail

At the same time, Walsh was shooting the 70 mm version, he was also filming a standard 35 mm version, sometimes shooting a scene simultaneously with both cameras Additionally, Fox simultaneously produced four foreign-language 35 mm version of the movie using different casts and different character names for release in other countries Shooting and producing six different versions of the same film was certainly not a common practice, but it does indicate a desire to find ways to make more money off of motion pictures However, when The Big Trail was released in 1930 it quickly became a box office bomb because it was released in a wide-screen format at a time when few movie theaters had the proper projector or screen on which to show the film, it barely made back its huge $2 million investment

Jobs in Movie Making

For many of the technical and creative jobs there are assistant positions such as assistant art director or assistant production buyer. There are also positions that work under others, such as associate producers and camera trainees, as well as positions that are responsible for groups of people working under them, such as Chargehand Rigger or Supervising Sound Editor. There are also high specialized jobs, such as Steadicam Operator or Drapesmaster, so we are covering only a fraction of all the jobs that currently exist in the movie industry

Preproduction

Formally begins once a movie project has been greenlit. This usually involves confirming financing and many of the key elements of the production, such as principal cast members, director, and cinematographer. By the end of the preproduction phase the screenplay is usually finalized

Most Paid to See Movie in US History

In 1939, Gone with the Wind opened as only a road show engagement at a limited number of theaters at prices upward of $1, more than double the price of a regular first-run feature. After six months the show finally entered general release with ticket prices cut in half. Work out the math and it suggests that more people paid to see Gone with the Wind than any other movie in history, even though the population of the United States was less than half (131 million in 1939), that it is today (326 million in 2018)

Kuleshov Effect

In the early days of Soviet cinema, filmmaker Lev Kuleshov did an experiment. He began with the image of a man, looking into the camera with an expressionless face. We wonder what he is thinking and feeling, but from that single image we have no way of knowing. Following Kuleshov's experiment, we juxtapose the shot of the man with another shot. The viewer assumes that the second shot is what the man is looking at: a coffin with a flower arrangement in a mortuary (as you will see in the following video link, the actual shot that Kuleshov used was of a young girl in an open coffin). In this context, the viewer concludes that the man is feeling grief or deep sorrow over the death of the child. But what happens when the shot of the man is juxtaposed with something different? Now the viewer thinks the man, looking at the bowl of soup, is hungry. Kuleshov then offered a third juxtaposition. With the man looking at the beautiful woman on the couch, the viewer now concludes that the man is feeling lust. The "catch" to all of this is something you probably already noted as you looked at each set of photographs. The shot of the man is exactly the same. The viewer imposes the idea the man is feeling grief, hunger, or lust based on the juxtaposition of the shots (some representations of this experiment go back to the image of the man, an ABA sequence, to reinforce the idea the two shots are connected). One of the things to understand is that just because two shots follow one another does not mean they were taken in the same place at the same time, even though the editing makes us think that is the case. For example, in the Anne of Green Gables (1985) miniseries, there is a scene where Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert see Anne Shirley off at the Avonlea train station as she leaves for college. However, the shots of the Cuthberts in front of the train station and the shots of Anne in front of the train were shot at two different locations miles apart. But you could never tell that from watching the shots editing together in the sequence.

Mise-en-scene

Literally meaning "placing on stage," mise-en-scène refers to everything that appears before the camera and how it is arranged. This covers a lot of elements of filmmaking: Set design: the setting of a scene and the objects (props) visible in a scene, whether the movie is shot on location or on a set. Lighting: the intensity, direction, and quality of lighting, providing texture, shape, distance, mood, time of day or night, season, glamour, and so forth. Costume: the clothes the characters wear, which extends to certain designs or colors. Makeup and hair styles: can establish time period, reveal character traits, or signal changes in character. Acting: covering a wide range of performance styles, from melodramatic to relatively naturalistic. Composition: the organization of objects, actors, and space within the frame. We can also talk about elements of cinematography, such as whether the filmstock is going to be color or black and white, fine-grain or grainy, and the aspect ratio establishing the relation of the width of the rectangular image to its height.8

Marketing

Marketing refers to the array of efforts undertaken to get audiences to come see a movie. This can also involve preliminary screenings of various cuts of the film, using feedback from producers and audiences to determine changes, additions, or deletions necessary to make the movie better: Distributor. Creates plans for film releases to ensure they reach big audiences and earn a profit. Marketing and Publicity Manager. Oversees the creation and planning of marketing campaigns for films, working with the distributor, film studios, and filmmakers. Publicist. Works with the film distributor and producer to prepare publicity campaigns to promote the release of the movie. Beyond marketing the movie when it is in theaters there are also campaigns to get them nominated for awards and sell them for viewing on cable, online, or on DVDs.

The two basic components to film making

Mise-en- scène and montage "Three questions confront the filmmaker: What to shoot? How to shoot it? How to present the shot? The domain of the first two questions is mise-en-scène, that of the last, montage. While our emphasis is on the visual dimensions of cinema, keep in mind that in addition to the visual image, information can be communicated by print and other graphic elements, speech, music, and noise (sound effects). Notice that of those five elements, the last three are all auditory rather than visual. Only the visual image and the noise are continuous. The other three are not always present and indeed can be totally absent from a film

Creative Staff

Normally a movie project begins with a script, although sometimes just a hot idea is enough to get going. Once a script has been greenlit, these are the key people making up the creative team who start putting the production together: Screenwriter. Researches and develops story ideas and writes screenplays. Script Editor. Helps screenwriters and producers improve the screenplays. Director. Directs the making of a film, controlling the artistic and dramatic aspects, and visualizing the script while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfillment of that vision. Director of Photography. Works with the director, camera crew and lighting department to create the visual identity of the film. Agent. Represent performers and creative team members working not only in movies but also television, radio, and theater. Development Executive. Responsible for finding and developing stories and screenplays for films Casting Director. Organizes the casting (selecting) of actors for all roles in a film, from leading roles to extras. Choreographer. Plans, creates and realizes the dance or movement design concepts for directors, producers and designers, as well as training dancers and actors in those routines and movements. Production Designer. Defines and manage every visual aspect of a movie, working with the art director. Art Director. Realize the production designer's creative vision for all the sets and locations that give productions their look and feel. Storyboard Artist. Draws a series of pictures or paintings to represent a script or screenplay. Usually the director is the first person hired for a film project, although there are often instances when the director is the one who came up with the project in the first place. Other times an actor purchases the rights to a script and is the moving force behind getting the movie made. Directors, usually in consultation with the producer, bear the responsibility for selecting these key positions on the creative team, often working with the some of the same people movie after movie

Montage

On the most basic level montage simply refers to film editing, which originally required different strips of film to be spliced together to make up a movie. The shot is the basic unit of film construction. A single shot can be as short as 1/24 second (one frame) or last as long as 10 minutes (given that most motion picture cameras can only hold 10 minutes of film). With pre-digital technology a single shot could be as short as 1/24 of a second (one frame) or last as long as 10 minutes, given that most motion picture cameras can only hold 10 minutes of film (with digital technology the Russian director Alexadner Sokurov shot the 2002 historical drama Russian Ark at the Russian State Hermitage Museum using a single 96-minute Steadicam shot). When you take two shots and decide to show them in either order AB or BA, which is montage. But the expanded notion of montage involves a specific technique in film editing, where a series of shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information.

Where Product Placement Began

Product placement began in the nineteenth-century, when transport and shipping companies lobbied author Jules Verne to be included in his adventure novel Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), although it is unknown if Verne actually accepted payment or simply used the names of real companies for verisimilitude. In the Marx Brothers movie Horse Feathers (1932), a character falls out of a canoe and calls for a "life saver," only to have Groucho Marx toss her a Life Savers candy as a joke.

Eisenstein's definition of montage

Relating adjacent shots in such a way that SHOT A/SHOT B combine to produce another meaning, C, which is not actually recorded on the film. As the Cossacks are firing on the crowd of unarmed civilians, one of the soldiers uses a sword to attack a woman: SHOT A: The soldier slashes at the camera with his sword, CUT to SHOT B: A woman with a bloody face. The wound looks more like it was inflicted by a gunshot, but the juxtaposition of the two shots leads the audience to assume MEANING C that soldier slashed her face with his sword, despite the fact we never see the sword hit her face. SHOT A does not suggest the woman and SHOT B does not suggest the soldier with a sword, so neither shot by itself can communicate the MEANING C that is created by the CUT.

Designers

Responsible for building sets and dealing with locations for shooting the movie, the technical crew has a lot to cover before the actors show up to do their part: Concept Artist. Produces the illustrations that help production designers realize their vision. Scenic Artist. Paints backdrops, murals, and many other elements on movie sets. Carpenter. Builds, installs and removes wooden structures on film sets and locations. Set Decorator. Finds, hires, or commissions props for the movie set. Property Master. Runs the property department and oversee the sourcing and making of props. Costume Designer. In charge of designing, creating, acquiring, and hiring all costumes for actors and extras. Costume Maker. Makes, fits, and alters all costumes that cannot be bought or hired by the costume designer. Most of these represent departments, so that while there is a Head Carpenter or a primary costume designer, there will be other carpenters and designers under them. Obviously it would take more than one person to make all the costumes a production would require.

Cast

The cast of a movie is made up of all of the actors, dancers, or singers who perform in front of the camera: Actor. Plays a role in the movie. This includes starring and featured roles, essentially includes any speaking role in the movie. Dancer. Dances in the film. Singer. Performs the music in the film. Stunt Performer. Carries out supervised stunts and take the place of actors when dangerous or specialized actions are required by the script. Walk On and Supporting Artists. Provide background action on movie and television productions. Also known as "Extras."

Box Office Champions

The current list of box office champions is based on the gross of a movie, which is a separate figure from how much profit a particular movie might make In 2017, the top grossing film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($620.2 million), was not nominated for Best Picture. The film that won the Oscar, The Shape of Water, finished 46th ($63.9 million) This is par for the course in Hollywood. In 2016 the top grossing film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ($532.2 million) was not nominated for Best Picture while the Oscar winner, Moonlight, finished 92nd ($27.9 million). Since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King the only top grossing films to get nominations were Avatar (2009), Toy Story (2010), and American Sniper (2014) Given that box office numbers are changing all the time, the Top 10 movies on that list will undoubtedly change over time. After all, only one movie on the list--Titanic (1977)--is from the previous century; only two--Avatar (2009) and The Dark Knight (2008)--are from the previous decade

Product Placememt

The practice of companies paying for their products or services to be featured in movies and television programs "Brand integration" or "embedded marketing" Marketing strategy The benefit to the advertiser comes from the context and environment within which the product is being used or displayed Ex: When James Bond drove a DB5 Aston Martin in Goldfinger (1964), millions of movie goers around the world suddenly knew the name of the British manufacturer of luxury sports cars Two thirds of advertisers use product placement and brand integration, with 80% of that consisting of commercial television programming, most notably with reality television shows such as The Biggest Loser, American Idol, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Production Team

The production team with a motion picture deals with the raising and spending of money, with a goal toward staying within the budget, but also with an eye out for making a profitable film, which often requires spending additional money to get things (hopefully) just right: Producer. Responsible for all aspects of a film's production, putting together the cast and crew, and turning story ideas into profitable movies. Executive Producer. Oversees the work of the producer on behalf of the studio, financiers, or distributors. They ensure the film is completed on time, within budget, and to agreed artistic and technical standards. Also known as the Executive in Charge of Production. Unit Production Manager. Manages the production budget and production schedule. Line Producer. Supervise the preparation of a film's budget and cost the production for investors. Location Manager. Finds ideal locations for a film shoot and negotiates the fees, terms and permission. Production Accountant. Calculates finances, works out the cost of a production, communicates with financiers, and controls the flow of cash and spending on the movie.

Why do older movies not make the top of box office lists?

The reason for this is that ticket prices have increased dramatically over time. In 1977 the average ticket price was $2.23; twenty years later in 1997 it was over twice that at $4.59. In the summer of 2017 the average ticket price was $8.97 (up from $8.65 in 2016 and $8.25 in 2015), an increased spurred in part by 3D releases but also by theater renovation with more comfortable seats (but less of them in each theater). All this means that movies released today can essentially make twice as much as a movie seen by twice as many people released twenty years ago

How the same story (or the same history, if you will), even the same words, can be told in two different ways

There are two movie versions of Shakespeare's history play Henry V made by celebrated English actors who both played the title role and directed the film. The first was made by Laurence Olivier in 1944, during World War II, and the second by Kenneth Branagh in 1989, in the wake of Vietnam and the decline of the British Empire. Stylistically, the films are quite different. Olivier uses bright colors and the shots are brightly lit. Branagh favors drab colors and scenes are dimly lit with lots of shadows. The opening of Olivier's movie takes place on a recreation of the Globe Theatre, favoring medium and full shots as his Henry declaims his lines in a loud voice Even the showcase tracking shots in each film during the Battle of Agincourt reflect the difference. In the 1944 film version it moves right to left, following the French knights on their armored war horses, moving from a walk, to a trot, to a canter, to a glorious charge at full gallop, only to fall before the arrows of the English archers. The Battle of Agincourt stands out in English history as a great victory of a small force against a larger one, reflecting Great Britain in its struggle against Hitler's Nazi Germany. There is an inherent nobility to the struggle. But in the 1989 version, the lesson of Vietnam is that war is ugly and horrible. In the tracking shot, the camera moves left to right, starting with a bloodied Henry carrying the body of a boy (young Christian Bale actually), killed by the French when they violated the rules of war and attacked the English baggage train and killed the boys watching the horses, across the battlefield after the English have won the day, past tableaus of death and destruction. There is no longer a pretense to the nobility of war. It is a wretched business. These two examples of Henry V give us a clear indication of how the same story (or the same history, if you will), even the same words, can be told in two different ways. But now let us consider what happens when Hollywood comes up tells different stories about a historical event. For our specific case study let us look at movies made over the course of an entire century about George Armstrong Custer and his death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, paying attention to how the movies reflect a changing society with an evolving view of Custer and his campaign against the Plains Indians.

Montage Example with "Dawn of Man"

What is considered by some to be the most famous CUT of all time, from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The opening sequence of the film is entitled "The Dawn of Man." The setting is in an African desert millions of years ago, where a tribe of man-apes are driven from their water hole by a rival tribe. They wake to find a featureless black monolith has appeared before them. The monolith seems to be emitting something and after touching the monolith one of the man-apes is able to figure out how to use the bone of a dead pig as a weapon to kill the leader of the rival tribe and reclaim the watering hole. In triumph, the man-ape flings the bone into the sky. The crucial two shots are the last one in "The Dawn of Man" sequences and the cut to the first shot of the film's second sequence: SHOT A: The bone falling back to earth, CUT to SHOT B: A weapon platform in space SHOT B is a match cut in that both the angle of the object (bone/weapon platform) are the same and also that both are "falling" toward the bottom of the frame. MEANING C: We have jumped millions of years into the future. Of course, this assumes that we are still in the vicinity of Earth. SHOT B in and of itself does not represent a jump of millions of years. If the viewer assumes the shot represents 2001, in 1968 when 2001: A Space Odyssey was released that was only thirty-three years into the future. Show that same shot at the start of a movie today and the audience will probably assume that the setting is "today," as opposed to sometime in the past or sometime in the future. But it is only by cutting from SHOT A, when apes are taking the next evolutionary step into becoming human beings, to SHOT B, a technological future well beyond using a bone as a tool, that "tells" us we have jumped millions of years into the "future."

Reverse Product Placement

Where real products are created to match those seen in movies and television shows, such as the dozen stores rebranded by 7-Eleven as "Kwik-E-Marts" selling Buzz Cola and Krusty-O's cereal as inspired by The Simpsons, or the real world Willy Wonka candy company established after the release of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971).

Cinema

aesthetics (e.g., acting, mise-en-scene, montage, acting). Motion pictures collectively, as an art

Chapter 7 Timeline

1877: PRECURSOR: Eadweard Muybridge catches motion on film when he uses twelve cameras to photograph a horse's movement for Leland Stanford in Palo Alto, California 1889: INVENTION: Thomas Alva Edison perfects his kinetograph and kinetoscope. The kinetograph was an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent (a.k.a., stop-and-go) film movement, to photograph movies for commercial kinetoscope presentations. The kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device. While the kinetoscope was not a movie projector, it did introduce the basic approach that would became the standard for cinematic projection 1897: DEVELOPMENT: The Edison Company's Vitascope popularizes large-screen film projection in the United States. Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat modified Jenkins' "Phantoscope" Vitascope was a large electrically-powered projector that used light to cast images and the technology was adopted nationally, winning the competition with other projection systems such as the Eidoloscope, the Lumière Cinématographe, Birt Acres' Kineopticon; and the Biograph marketed by the American Mutoscope Company 1908: Edison and George Eastman move to corner the market on the movie business by creating the Motion Picture Patents Corporation (a.k.a., The Trust). To escape the reach of The Trust, filmmakers left the center of the early industry in New York and headed for California and "Hollywoodland." 1927: MATURITY: The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length motion picture with sound, opens in New York City 1930: The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association adopts a production code to control movie content. 1939: Gone with the Wind headlines the Golden Year of Movies. The other movies nominated for Best Picture that year were: Dark Victory; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Love Affair; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Ninotchka; Of Mice and Men; Stagecoach; Wuthering Heights; and The Wizard of Oz. In 1940, Gone with the Wind replaces The Birth of a Nation as the highest-grossing film of all-time 1948: The US Supreme Court breaks up the large studios' control of Hollywood by deciding that the studios are a monopoly in the cast of United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. et al. The government forced studios to sell their theaters in a move against vertical integration 1953: The Robe is the first movie shot in Cinemascope, using anamorphic lenses to create an image of up to a 2.66:1 aspect ratio, almost twice as wide as the previously common Academy format's 1:37:1 ratio 1975: Steven Spielberg's Jaws makes people afraid to go into the water and introduces "summer blockbuster." With Steven Spielberg and George Lucas reinventing the blockbuster as fast-paced entertainment, major film studios and distributors are forced to plan their annual marketing strategy around a big released by July 4. 1977: VHS-format videocassette recorders (VCRs) hit the consumer market, creating a movie rental and purchase industry 1999: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace becomes the first Hollywood movie to be digitally distributed to theaters 2009: Netflix eliminates any waiting time with its streaming service, allowing customers to instantly access thousands of films and television shows 2010: 3-D movies begin to generate higher revenues for the industry and help director James Cameron's Avatar replace his film Titanic, as the highest-grossing film in history

Shot

A single piece of film, however long or short, without cuts, exposed continuously

Our focus in this section has been on what Hollywood films have done to distort American history, but there are obviously other concerns, even with fictional movies:

Conservative critics attacked WALL-E (2008) as a denunciation of over consumption, big corporations, and the destruction of the environment, while liberal critics went after The Help (2011), for the patronizing arc of a white heroine lending a noble hand to help black characters who supposedly could never have succeeded on their own. Meanwhile, critics across the political spectrum urged a boycott of the film version of Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), for telling women that sexual violence was enjoyable. There was even greater backlash against The Help in 2020, when it became the #1 film viewed on Netflix in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Karen Attiah, the global opinions editor at the Washington Post, was one of many who argued the film was not a good way to learn about race and inequality, tweeting: "Please don't watch 'The Help' to understand this moment we are in. Or 'The Green Book', or 'Crash' (ugh)." Instead, Attiah recommended three movies "as a primer to race issues and racism": I Am Not Your Negro, 13th, and Get Out. The Criterion Channel lifted its paywall to allow classic films focusing on black lives such as Daughters of the Dust, Black Panthers, and Maya Angelow's Down in the Delta to be streamed for free. Bryce Dallas Howard, one of the stars of The Help, posted that she treasured the friendships she made while making the film, but it is: "a fictional story told through the perspectives of a white character and was created by predominantly white storytellers. We can all go further." Howard listed Eyes on the Prize, Malcolm X, Just Mercy, Selma, and Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland as "powerful, essential, masterful films and shows that center Black lives, stories, creators, and/or performers." Howard emphasized that, "Stories are a gateway to radical empathy and the greatest ones are catalysts for action." The lesson, of course, is that we are being more than entertained.

Greenlit

Giving permission or a go ahead to move forward with a project

Son of the Morning Star: Custer as Egotistical Butcher

If Little Big Man went too far in correcting the historical record in presenting Custer as a lunatic, Son of the Morning Star provided the proper perspective on both the man and the battle in which he died. The 1991 two-part television mini-series based on Evan S. Connell's best-selling book of the same name, Son of the Morning Star (the title is the name the Crow had for Custer), parallels the stories of Custer and Crazy Horse, and establishes the idea that "Custer's Last Stand" was the end for the Plains tribes as much as it was for Custer. Narrating the story are Custer's wife, Libby, and a young Cheyenne woman, Kate Bighead, providing competing perspectives (e.g., each provides different casualty count for the Indians after one of the battles). The movie begins in the aftermath of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, when Captain Frederick Benteen, who has already admitted to General Alfred Terry that "Mistakes were made," discovers the bodies of Custer and his command on Last Stand Hill. "Damn him," says Benteen as the camera turns and zooms in on the corpse of Custer (Gary Cole), before the scene cuts back to 1866, with Custer grooming himself in front of a mirror. Custer's military ambitions and his campaigns against the Plains Indians are covered, including his denunciations of the provisions being provided to the Indians and his conflicts with the administration of President Grant, and ending with a half-hour recreation of the Battle of the Little Big Horn that is the most detailed and probably the most accurate done in any movie to date, capturing both the chain of errors made by Custer in his search for redemption and the frenetic chaos of the actual battle. Custer follows his standard strategy of dividing his force in half to attack both ends of the camp, only to discover to his horror that what he is attacking is not the end of the village, but the middle of the largest such village ever seen. Custer and his troopers retreat back the way they came, until the last group falls on Last Stand Hill, the other companies of the 7th Cavalry unable—or unwilling—to come to his aid. After the battle, the Indian women punctured the dead Custer's ears with their sewing awls. Kate Bighead's narration explains: "They did this so that he would hear better. He had promised never again to make war on the Cheyenne, and we had promised his death if he did. He forgot his promise. He did not remember our words. In the next life, he should hear us better." The movie ends with the killing of Crazy Horse (Rodney A. Grant) in captivity, his arms held by one of his own people as he is bayoneted by a soldier, singing his war song as he dies. Bighead's narration ends with the surrender of Sitting Bull, the attempt of the Ghost Dancers to bring back the buffalo, and the end of the Plains War with the Battle of Wounded Knee. The implication is that this avenged Custer's death, but also reinforces the idea that the treatment of the Native Americans by the US Government was inherently racist and dishonest. Similar in perspective were a pair of television films, Crazy Horse (1996), focusing on the life of the Oglala Lakota war chief, and Stolen Women: Captured Hearts (1997), in which a woman living in Kansas is kidnapped by a band of Lakota after Custer destroys a Cheyenne village in 1868. The Battle of Washita River and the Battle of the Little Big Horn were parts of two episodes of the miniseries Into the West (2005), earlier episodes having detailed the Sand Creek Massacre and the Fetterman massacre. The common denominator is all of these works view negatively the treatment of the Native Americans by both the government and the army. There were still some portrayals that avoided dealing with rendering a verdict of Custer. He was the only recognizable name in Class of '61 (1993), which looked at several West Point cadet classmates who were finding themselves on opposite sides at the start of the Civil War. Custer was also a recurring character on the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman in the 1990s, his every appearance colored by the audience knowing full well what would be his fate, but that has always been an omnipresent element of these depictions of Custer. P.S. Now that we have considered three different approaches to telling the story of General Custer at the Little Big Horn, we can see that each approach corresponds to what Kenneth Burke established as a different poetic category. For Burke, these poetic categories represented different ways of telling a certain type of story that organized the plot and characters in predictable sequences that produced specific emotional responses. From Burke's perspective, They Died With Their Boots On represents the "heroic" category, depicting Custer's courageous and committed action in the name of a higher ideal. Little Big Man represents the "comic," where Custer's absurd antics are seen as less virtuous and stupid. Finally, with Son of the Morning Star, we have the "tragic" category, where Custer's path ends in pain, suffering, death, and failure. This is not to suggest that Hollywood was aware of these poetic categories, but simply to recognize that in regards to George Armstrong Custer, each of these poetic categories came to dominate a specific set of films about that particular historical figure.

John Wayne

In the lead role of Breck Coleman, Walsh cast a young actor named Marion Morrison, who had previously been a only a bit player in movies. However, the studio did not like the actor's name and the actor changed it to John Wayne. The failure of The Big Trail has led some to call it "the film that did not make John Wayne a star." That would come in 1939 after almost a decade of acting in poverty-row westerns when Wayne starred in John Ford's classic Western Stagecoach.

The History of General Custer in Films

Known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass by the Lakota, the Battle of the Little Bighorn (a.k.a., Custer's Last Stand), was a major engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes against the 7th Cavalry Regiment during the Great Sioux War of 1876. The battle was fought June 25-26, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in what was then eastern Montana Territory. Five of the 7th Cavalry's twelve companies were annihilated, including Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Having graduated last in his West Point class in 1861, Custer was a highly effective cavalry commander during the Civil War, rising to the rank of (brevet major general at the age of 25. Custer was the second most photographed person of the nineteenth century (after Frederic Douglass, and ahead of Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln). In Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., looks at the history behind Custer's last stand: Historically, Custer laid the groundwork for his own death when he invaded the Sioux's sacred, treaty-protected Black Hills in 1874 and announced that he found gold there. Unable to halt the ensuing gold rush, the government tried unsuccessfully to buy the Black Hills from the angry Indians, then ordered the Sioux off their hunting grounds and onto reservations. When many of these Indians—under such chiefs as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull—did not comply, the government deployed troops, including Custer's Seventh Cavalry, to enforce the reservation order. Sent out ahead to find the Indian's whereabouts, Custer discovered the huge camp on the Little Bighorn, where he attacked and was swallowed up by the stiff resistance and overwhelming numbers of Sioux and Cheyenne.9 The defeat of Custer became a popularized episode in the history of the Plains War due in no small part to an advertising campaign by the Anheuser-Busch brewery, which ordered reprints of dramatic paintings of "Custer's Last Fight" to be framed and hung in saloons across America, helping to creating a lasting impression of both the battle and the brewery's beverages. There were several silent movies made about Custer's Last Stand, beginning with Custer's Last Fight (1912), directing and starring Francis Ford (older brother of four-time Academy Award winning director John Ford), and a comedy, Colonel Custard's Last Stand (1914). At the start of the sound era Custer's Last Stand (1936) was a serial, later edited into a feature film under the same name. Sometimes Custer was a supporting character as in The Last Frontier (1932), The Plainsman (1936), and Santa Fe Trail (1940). In that last film, Custer is played by Ronald Reagan, who in the years before the Civil War competes with young Jeb Stuart (Errol Flynn) for the hand of Kit Holliday (Olivia de Havilland) and stop John Brown's attempt to start a rebellion. Custer graduated from West Point in 1861 and Stuart in 1854, and there is no historical evidence the two ever met. Of course, Flynn ends up with de Havilland, just as he did in Captain Blood (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and again a year later playing Custer himself in They Died With Their Boots On (1941).

The Most Profitable Movie of All Time

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Controversial Contemporary Films

We can take it for granted that any movie "inspired by true events" is going to be replete with mistakes that would made a historian's head explode. The claim used to be "based on a true story," but Hollywood has decided to water down the claim to realism (if you think about it, every movie is "inspired by true events" at some level). However, in looking at some contemporary examples of such controversies, our interest is in issues larger than anachronisms like the wrong types of weapons being used in a war movie or how Disney's Pocahontas (1995) erroneously has the Native American heroine and British settler John Smith fall in love. Specifically, we will look at the controversies surrounding a trio of recent movies: Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, and Selma. Lincoln (2012) was based on two paragraphs in Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, A Team of Rivals, talking about the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. Various claims about historical inaccuracies were made. Hendrik Hertzberg complained in The New Yorker that members of the House of Representatives were not allowed to address members directly, let along insult them the way Tommy Lee Jones does as Thaddeus Stevens (e.g., "You fatuous nincompoop!"), and that Mary Todd Lincoln did not attend the House debates.12 However, the main controversy over director Steven Spielberg's film had to do with the roll call vote of the House of Representatives. George Yeaman of Kentucky, a slave state, really did change his position on the amendment and vote yes, and Schuyler Colfax really did break tradition in order to cast a vote. But current Connecticut Congressman Joe Courtney was quick to point out that unlike what happens in the movie, none of Connecticut's representatives voted "No" on the 13th Amendment (Ironically, Courtney is a Democrat, and every vote against the 13th Amendment was cast by a Democrat). "How could congressman from Connecticut—a state that supported President Lincoln and lost thousands of her sons fighting against slavery on the Union Side of the Civil War—have been one the wrong side of history?" Courtney asked in a letter sent to Spielberg. Courtney wanted the movie changed before it was released on DVD, but that did not happen.13 Given that the names of the actual congressmen and their votes are all matters of the historical record, it is somewhat curious that the screenwriters did not get the votes right. Considerably more polarizing was another Oscar-nominated film, Zero Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, which critics complained left viewers with the false impression that water boarding and other forms of torture led to the finding and killing of Osama bin Laden, some going so far as to argue the movie constituted "torture porn." Bigelow's response to critics was that "depiction is not endorsement." While the torture scenes were considered broadly accurate with regards to the techniques employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the impression the interrogations provided clues to the identity of bin Laden's courier, who would ultimately lead the CIA to bin Laden himself, were attacked. At one point, Congress threatened to call in screenwriter Mark Boal to question him as to what exactly he had been told about waterboarding by the CIA, until cooler heads prevailed and the idea was abandoned. Other complaints about the movie challenged whether the main character of Maya (Jessica Chastain) was real or fictional, pointed out people in Abbottabad, Pakistan do not speak colloquial Arab, corrected the pronunciation of "Abbottabad," and also noted there is an easier way to get from the US Embassy to Abbottabad by turning left instead of right out of Islamabad. Seriously. Finally, the film Selma (2014) portrays President Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) trying to stop Martin Luther King, Jr., (David Oyelowo) from making the confrontational march. Joseph A. Califano, Jr., who was Johnson's top assistant for domestic affairs from 1965 to 1969, wrote a piece for The Washington Post complaining the film falsely portrayed LJB as being at odds with King and opposed to the Selma march. Califano insisted Selma was LBJ's idea and cited a transcript of a telephone conversation between the president and King where Johnson outlined a strategy for drawing attention to the injustice of barriers stopping black Southerners from voting: "And if you can find the worst condition that you run into in Alabama, Mississippi or Louisiana or South Carolina . . . and if you just take that one illustration and get it on radio, get it on television, get it in the pulpits, get it in the meetings, get it everyplace you can. Pretty soon the fellow that didn't do anything but drive a tractor will say, 'Well, that's not right, that's not fair,' and then that will help us on what we're going to shove through [Congress] in the end."15 Selma is different from our previous examples in that there was a controversy over the controversy, with counter-arguments being raised suggesting the movie was being fair in its portrayal of Johnson. In The New Yorker, Amy Davidson countered Califano's assertions, arguing the film depicted a conflict about the timing of the Voting Right Act, and that the historical record Califano cited did not prove his point, especially since King was already on his way to Selma.16 Such debates might bring us closer to an appreciation of the "truth" to such historical events, but do nothing to change a single frame of film. Even the 2016 Oscar winner for Best Picture, Spotlight (2015), which presented events as real that were compressed and exaggerated for dramatic effect, had at least four people who were portrayed in the film complaining the filmmakers made up the words that came out of "their" mouths in the film. At least one hired legal help and demanded the movie be edited and that he receive an apology.17 The point of these examples is not to suggest that every movie "inspired by real events" is a certifiable failure at representing history. The Big Short (2015) actually got a history grade of "A-" from The Guardian's "Reel history" review, which called it "a solid historical explanation of the subprime crisis."18 But time and time again we see clear evidence that Hollywood is willing to rewrite history to sell a movie.

Movies

economics (e.g., budgets, box office). Motion pictures as an industry, or as a genre of art or entertainment

Films

politics (e.g., rhetoric, persuasion, impact on society). Motion pictures as political works

The process of making a movie: three stages

preproduction, shooting, and postproduction

Little Big Man: Custer as Ruthless Megalomaniac

Little Big Man (1970) was a revisionist western directed by Arthur Penn (The Left Handed Gun, The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Clyde). It told the tale of 121-year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman), who claims to be the sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn. When his parents are killed by the Pawnee, young Jack is adopted by Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George), and brought up as a Cheyenne, earning the tribal name of Little Big Man. Returning to life as a white man, Jack has a series of misadventures and ends up as a muleskinner for General Custer (Richard Mulligan) and the 7th Cavalry. Disgusted by the slaughter of Indian women and children at the Washita River, he flees and goes back to this tribe and his grandfather, who are now living on a reservation. When Custer's troops attack the peaceful settlement Custer, declaring "Nothing in this world is more surprising than the attack without mercy," attacks the peaceful settlement, during which Little Big Man saves Old Lodge Skins. Enlisting again with Custer in order to kill him, Jack loses his nerve, and becomes a drunkard. After some more misadventures, Jack ends up scouting for Custer, and near the Little Big Horn takes advantage of the general's habit of always ignoring the advice of his scouts and officers: Jack Crabb: General, You go down there, if you've got the nerve.General Custer: You're advising me to go into the Coulee?Jack Crabb: Yes, sir.General Custer: There are no Indians there, I suppose.Jack Crabb: I didn't say that. There are thousands of Indians down there. And when they get done with you, there won't be nothing left but a greasy spot. This ain't the Washite River, General, and them ain't helpless women and children waiting for you. They're Cheyenne brave and Sioux. You go down there, if you've got the nerve.General Custer: Still trying to outsmart me, aren't you, mule-skinner. You want me to think that you don't want me to go down there, but the subtle truth is you really don't want me to go down there! (Laughs, turns to another officer). Are you reassured now, Major?11 So, the 7th Cavalry ends up on a bluff above the Little Bighorn River, where Custer and the troopers are overwhelmed. Jack is shot and then hit in the head, surviving only because he was saved by Younger Bear, a Cheyenne warrior whose life he had saved years earlier. Mulligan, who portrayed Custer as a borderline psychotic, had a talent for playing odd and crazy characters. In Teachers (1984), he played an outpatient from a mental hospital who is accidentally put in charge of a US history class in a high school and teaches it by impersonating historical figures, reprising Custer along with Abraham Lincoln reading the Gettysburg Address and George Washington crossing the Delaware. Little Big Man was early in his movie career and played a key role in establishing his reputation for such characters. But anybody familiar with Mulligan's career coming across the movie now would know from the start that his Custer is a lunatic. The French-Italian farce Don't Touch the White Woman! (1974) also depicted Custer as a vain figure and sets the Battle of the Little Bighorn in at a building site in Paris. Around this time bumper stickers could be purchased that said "Custer had it coming" and "Custer died for your sins." The latter was also the title of Vine Deloria, Jr.'s Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, whose paper cover declared it to be "The biting, brutally witty bestseller that massacres white America's murderous misconceptions about red Americans." The Court-martial of George Armstrong Custer (1977) was a made-for-television movie in which Custer survives the massacre and is placed on trial for his actions leading to the battle. The courtroom drama allowed the arguments on both sides to be dramatized, but nobody can understand what Custer is saying when he reads his statement to the court. The case ends with a deal being struck to save everybody's reputation and leaves it to the viewer to decide which side was right instead of actually taking a stand and justifying it. Cleary, Custer's cinematic reputation is open to interpretation at this point.

Postproduction Stage

Postproduction refers to all stages of production occurring after shooting the movie. It typically includes editing, adding visual special effects, mixing, and making copies of the film for distribution and exhibition. Today, postproduction work can often take longer than the actual shooting of the film, even though some of the work actually begins during the shoot and runs concurrently.

Motion Picture

Technology (e.g., cameras, projectors, sound). A sequence of consecutive pictures of objects photographed in motion by a specially designed camera and thrown on a screen by a projector in such rapid succession as to give the illusion of natural movement

Crew

The movie crew are the group of people hired by the production company for the purpose of producing a motion picture. The crew is distinguished from the cast, which refers to the actors who appear in front of the camera or provide voices for characters in the film. So there is a basic sense of the crew working behind the camera: Assistant Director. Tracks daily progress against the film production schedule, arranges logistics, prepares daily call sheets, checks case and crew, and maintains order on the set. Chief Makeup Artist. Designs and creates the makeup on feature films and big-budget commercials, as well as running the Makeup Department and supervising the application of all makeup. Makeup and Hair Designer. Responsible for the design, application, and continuity of makeup and hair for a film or television program. Makeup and Hair Artist. Creates makeup and hairstyles to meet production requirements and oversees makeup and hair continuity. Script Supervisor. Ensures that film and television shows, shout out of script sequence, maintain continuity. Camera Operator. Prepares and operates the camera and all its equipment, working with the director and director of photography. Video Assist Monitors. Sets up and maintains video playback equipment. Gaffer. Oversees all practical and technical aspects of the electrics and lighting to get the right effects. Also known as chief electrician or chief lighting technician. Best Boy. The best electrician in the team led by the Gaffer (the term applies to both men and women). Boom Operator. Operates the boom microphone and assists the production sound mixer. Grip. Builds and maintains all equipment that supports cameras as well as helping to position and move cameras. Transport Manager. Responsible for managing the transport of the equipment required by a movie production. Wardrobe Supervisor. Oversees the day-to-day running and use of the wardrobe on set. Unit Manager. Acts as the liaison between the movie crew and the location owners to keep residents and landlords happy during filming. Unit Still Photographer. Takes photographs on movie sets or studio shoots. Catering Crew. Provides daily meals, snacks, and drinks to film crews on location.

Shooting Stage

The shooting of a film or video (also called the production phase) involves both the cast of the film and additional crew members brought in to handle the technical end of the production behind the camera

Gross

The total box office revenue of a movie before expenses are deducted

They Died with Their Boots On: Custer as Defender of the Indians

They Died with Their Boots On, directed by Raoul Walsh (The Big Trail, High Sierra, White Heat) was released in the wake of Pearl Harbor, when the nation needed the inspiration of military heroes. As Josephy describes it, "The film tells not only a totally different, made-up story, but one that reflects how Hollywood, until only recently, played fast and loose with American Indian history, culture, and sensibilities."10 We can skip over the inaccuracies regarding Custer's military career during the Civil War, and focus on what happens once he reaches Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory to take command of the 7th Cavalry and pacify theSioux. Custer (Errol Flynn) and his entourage are attacked by Sioux , led by Chief Crazy Horse (Anthony Quinn), who later sues for peace. In a fictitious meeting with Custer, Crazy Horse actually declares the Indians will give up all of their land to the whites except for the sacred Black Hills, vowing the united tribes will defend it to the death. Custer promises to protect the Black Hills for the Sioux, but evil developers spread rumors that start a gold rush. Custer returns to Washington, DC, to tell Congress and President Grant of the great injustice being done to the Indians, returning to his regiment in time to say goodbye to his wife, Libbie (de Havilland), and ride off at dawn to the strains of his favorite song, "Garry Owen." After Custer is killed at the Little Big Horn, Libbie visits General Phil Sheridan and reads a letter from her fallen husband (a "dying declaration" presumably admissible in court) demanding the government "make good its promise to Chief Crazy Horse." Sheridan, who once purportedly claimed "The only good Indian is a dead one," tells her he has the promise of the president himself that Custer's demand will be met, before solemnly intoning the film's final line, "Come, my dear, your soldier has won his last fight after all." The historical irony is that Custer's preferred method of attack was to divide his forces in half, attack both ends of an Indian camp, and have his soldiers start shooting women and children until the braves surrendered. They Died with Their Boots On is as far removed from that reality as you can get, with Flynn's Custer martyring himself for the rights of the Indians who are killing him. Similarly, The Great Sioux Massacre (1965) and Custer of the West (1967) both focused on Custer as sympathetic to the plight of the Native Americans, fighting with corrupt government officials and duty-bound to obey the orders given to him. The Battle of the Little Big Horn is the backdrop for a love triangle involving a couple of 7th Cavalry soldiers in Bugles in the Afternoon (1952). Sitting Bull (1954) featured sympathetic portrayals of both the title character and Crazy Horse. Walt Disney's Tonka (also released as A Horse Name Comanche, 1958), was about the only US cavalry horse that survived the battle. Meanwhile, on a 1960 episode of the television series Cheyenne, the hero Cheyenne Bodie (Clint Walker) guides a party led by Custer into the Black Hills, who violates the treaty with the Sioux to survey for a fort location, but is rumored to really be looking for gold, a suggestion that Custer is not exactly a hero. On the three-part "Call to Glory" on Branded (1966), the hero tries to stop his old friend Custer, who has become a loose cannon, from going after the Sioux, representing another chink in the Custer armor. However, in the wake of the Sixties with the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Liberation, and Vietnam, Hollywood's attitude toward Custer would change radically.