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Hollywood's Future
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Hollywood's Future
Credit goes to Hollywood for influencing the
way most people in the new millennium view the future. Even
when those visions are "cheesy" (a reference usually to the
old "B" movies of the 50s and 60s) they still affected the
imagination. In movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still
(1951), War of the Worlds (1953 George Pal version),
and even Abbot and Costello Go to Mars (1953), special
effects capabilities were considerably limited by today's
standards. It was the days of flying plates with cups in the
center and bad actors covered in green paint. Well, it wasn't
that bad.
At the time, some of these movies were not considered cheesy
but innovative. Filmmakers began to look at the future and
the realm of sci-fi with relative seriousness. War of the
Worlds, directed by George Pal, won an Oscar for its special
effects. George Pal was to the 50s what Stanley Kubrick, Steven
Spielberg and George Lukas are to the 70s and now (2006).
But, we need to go back farther than the 50s when it comes
to sci-fi master visions of the future. H.G. Well's, The
Time Machine, was published in 1898. As much as we take
his novel for granted in the 21st century, it's important
to realize just how "visionary" Well's was in a time of no
cars and streets lit by gas lights, yet alone time machines.
Jules Verne preceded Wells in his 1864 novel, Voyage to
the Center of the Earth, a year before Lewis Carroll's,
Alice in Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland is considered
more fantasy than sci-fi, although the line between the two
genres is often a thin one. In The Time Machine, we
actually traveled into the future. But other sci-fi visions
were more imaginings of the time or no time in particular,
rather than prophetic visions of the future. It was a "vision"
of the way things could be now-now, being a relative term.
Of course, visions of the future are by no means solely credited
to fiction writers and moviemakers. Writers and movie makers
were-and still are-more like ambassadors for the scientists
and innovators who plot and plan for a changing world. Leonardo
da Vinci was fooling around with flying machines in the 1400s.
And long before that, Plato was envisioning utopia in his
imaginary city of Magnesia (Plato's, Republic, and
other works by Plato).
Hollywood Matures
Now Hollywood has grown up, and the special
effects (F/X) used in the New Millennium rival the most advanced
scientific technologies of the day. In fact Hollywood-or more
accurately the world of filmmaking-has been instrumental in
the development of new visualization techniques and tools.
Director George Lukas's use of a full motion camera in 1977
during the making of Star Wars was as innovative as
stop motion animation was in the early 1900s.
Willis O'Brien was a stop motion pioneer as early as 1916,
but it was his innovative work in King Kong (1933)
that put him on the F/X map. O'Brien's work led to Ray Harryhausen,
who lifted stop motion to new levels in the film, Jason
and the Argonauts (1963). Of course, credit must also
be given to Greek Mythology for the tales of Jason, the Argonauts
and the Golden Fleece.
Behind Hollywood movies is a technological backbone of immense
strength and power. Innovation comes from numerous companies
like Disney and Stan Winston, to the 1000s of artists and
technicians that make things happen. Three companies that
best represent this backbone are Industrial Light and Magic
(ILM), Pixar Animation Studios, and Silicon Graphics (SGI).
ILM: Industrial Light and Magic
Following a stream of lesser known successors
and born out of the success of Star Wars, George Lukas
launched Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) in the late 70s.
ILM's Computer Division is responsible for a slew of advances
in digital imaging, electronic editing, and interactivity.
Improving on the 3-D camera techniques of the 1950s and the
1960s, powerful tools were needed. Lucas built the framework
for computer animation and special effects (F/X), and continues
to push barriers through the new millennium. The success of
Star Wars changed movie history. Since its release, seldom
is there a movie produced without some kind of computer-generated
F/X. Computers became not only integral to how films were
made and produced, but even conceived.
ILM's Technology Timeline
Note: Not all technical achievements
are listed.
1977
Star Wars marked the first use of a motion control
camera.
1979
Lucas sets up ILM's Computer Division to explore new uses
of computers for digital imaging, electronic editing, and
interactivity.
1982
The "Genesis sequence" for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,
marks the first completely computer-generated sequence.
1984
Lucasfilm pioneers disc-based computerized electronic nonlinear
editing for picture and sound and premiered EditDroid and
SoundDroid at the National Association of Broadcasters conference.
1985
The first completely computer-generated character is created
with the "stained glass man" in Young Sherlock Holmes.
1986
Lucas sells off the rendering software portion of ILM's Computer
Division. The spin-off becomes the leading animation company
in the world, Pixar Animation.
1988
The first morphing sequence for motion pictures in created
for the movie, Willow. ILM wins technical achievement
awards for the development of Morf, a computer-graphics program
allowing the fluid, onscreen transformation of one object
to another.
1989
The first computer generated three-dimensional character,
"pseudopod," debuts in The Abyss.
1991
The first computer graphics generated lead character is created
with the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Skywalker Sound introduces the first utilization of T-1 tie-lines
for real-time digital audio transmission to distant locations.
1993
ILM wins its 12th Academy Award for computer graphics work
on Death Becomes Her and its fifth Academy Technical
Achievement Award. The Award marks the first time human skin
texture is computer generated.
Avid Technology acquired the EditDroid and SoundDroid technologies
and joined forces with Lucasfilm to develop and produce the
next generation of digital picture and sound editing systems.
Lucas Digital Ltd. and Silicon Graphics formed an exclusive
alliance to create JEDI, a unique networked environment for
digital production. JEDI is a beta test sight for Silicon
Graphics equipment and allows the artists and technicians
at ILM to advise SGI on future developments.
1994
ILM wins its 13th Academy Award for work on the computer-generated
dinosaurs for Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park and
its sixth Academy Technical Achievement Award for pioneering
work on film digitization. Digital technology is used for
the first time to create a living, breathing dinosaur with
skin, muscles, texture, movement and personality.
1995
ILM wins its 14th Academy Award for its breakthrough work
on Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump features a slew
of breakthroughs such as the seamless integration of historical
documentary footage, computer-generated jets, helicopters,
birds, crowds, and even ping-pong balls bouncing back and
forth during a playoff.
An Oscar nomination is won for the first photo-real cartoon
character in The Mask. ILM turns a human being into
a cartoon character.
The first fully synthetic speaking characters with distinct
personalities and emotions are created for the movie, Casper.
The ghost characters garnish more than 40 minutes of screen
time.
The first computer-generated photo-realistic hair and fur
are created for the digital lion and monkeys in Jumanji.
The stampede scene, featuring dozens of elephants, rhinos,
zebras and pelicans, were all computer-generated.
1996
ILM wins another Technical Achievement Award for pioneering
work in digital film compositing.
In Mission: Impossible, the first fully virtual set
is used for the climactic action sequence, requiring a computer-generated
train speeding through a computer-generated tunnel followed
by a computer-generated helicopter. Actors were digitally
composited into the virtual set to complete the scene.
Twister's Digital tornadoes in Twister were entirely
computer-generated using particle systems animation software.
ILM's proprietary facial animation software gives life to
the 3D digital character Draco in Dragonheart.
1997
Two more Technical Achievement Awards are earned for the creation
and development of the Direct Input Device used by stop-motion
animators and for the development of a system to create and
control computer-generated hair and fur.
ILM gets a Scientific and Engineering Award for the development
of the Viewpaint 3D Paint System. The system allows artists
to color and texture details to computer-generated effects.
This is the 12th Scientific and Engineering award won by ILM.
Skywalker Sound installs the Capricorn, manufactured by AMS
Neve, the largest digital audio console at any audio post-production
facility in the world.
Soundtrack mixes for Contact and Titanic earn
Academy Award nominations for best sound. Utilizing more sound
elements (including dialogue loops and sound effects) than
any feature film in history, Titanic wins an Oscar
for best sound combined with best awards from Motion Picture
Sound Editors and Cinema Audio Society.
1998
ILM secures two patents for proprietary techniques. One for
"hair, fur and feathers," illustrated in the groundbreaking
images of the computer-generated gorilla in Mighty Joe
Young. The other patent was awarded for the facial animation
software initially developed in 1995 for Casper. Newer
versions were used in Men in Black and other movies.
Saving Private Ryan earns Skywalker Sound two Academy
Awards for best sound and sound effects editing. It's the
most realistic soundtrack ever used for a battle scene.
1999
The facial animation software "Caricature," having already
been awarded a patent, is given a boost with ILM's latest
Technical Achievement Award.
The award states: "By integrating existing tools into a powerful
interactive system, and adding an expressive multi-target
shape interpolation-based freeform animation system, the Caricature
system provided a degree of subtlety and refinement not possible
with other systems."
ILM's camera department received a Technical Achievement Award
from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
for pioneering work in motion-controlled, silent dollies.
The Mummy featured the most realistic digital human
character ever seen in film.
90% of George Lucas's Star Wars: Episode I "The Phantom
Menace" featured digital effects shots. Synthetic environments,
digital terrain generation, computer graphic lead characters
and 1000s of digital extras are completely computer-generated.
ILM wins an Academy Award nomination for best achievement
in visual effects.
2000
ILM wins a BAFTA Award for best special visual effects, and
a nomination for an Academy Award for best achievement in
visual effects, for the digital waves and weather created
for the movie, The Perfect Storm.
2001
ILM creates the first real-time interactive on-set visualization
process allowing filmmakers to place actors in virtual sets
providing complete freedom with camera moves. Steven Spielberg
uses the same process in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.
ILM earns another Academy Award nomination for best achievement
in visual effects.
Another nomination is given out for the attack scenes in Pearl
Harbor, featuring digitally manifested World War II era
airplanes and ships together with the fire and smoke generated
from all the explosions.
2002
Two more Technical Achievement Awards, numbers 15 and 16,
are earned for the creation and development of ILM's proprietary
Motion and Structure Recovery System (MARS) and ILM's Creature
Dynamics System.
The release of Star Wars: Episode II "Attack of the Clones"
marks the first major motion picture to be shot completely
on digital HD video.
2003
With the release of The Hulk, ILM creates a digital
human character with (green) skin, hair, muscles, clothing,
personality and emotions in the Hulk.
Pixar Animation Studios
Pixar started as the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics
Group in 1979, which was reorganized in 1983 to become Pixar
and a games division. It focused on software development,
but also designed and developed hardware in house. The Pixar
Image Computer, which was intended for the high-end visualization
markets such as medicine, was eventually sold. The commercial
group worked in the advertising area, and was discontinued
in 1995.
Pixar was purchased by Steve Jobs from Lucasfilm in 1986.
As part of the deal, Lucasfilm retained rights to access to
the Pixar technology. Software created by Pixar includes REYES
(Renders Everything You Ever Saw,) CAPS (with Disney), Marionette,
an animation software system that allows animators to model
and animate characters and add lighting effects, and Ringmaster,
which is production management software that schedules, coordinates,
and tracks a computer animation project.
The applications development group worked to convert the REYES
technology to the RenderMan product, which was commercialized
in 1989. It received Academy Technical Awards in 1992 for
CAPS (1992), RenderMan (1993), digital scanning technology
(1995), Marionette and digital painting (1997), and for laser
film recording technology (1999).
Pixar is well known for a series of short film productions,
including Luxo Jr. (1986), Red's Dream (1987),
Tin Toy (1988), KnickKnack (1989), Geri's
Game (1997), and One Man Band (2005). It won Oscars
for Tin Toy in 1988 (Luxo Jr. was nominated
in 1986) and Geri's Game in 1998. The company has won
several Academy Technical Achievement awards, Golden Globes,
and Clio's, and been awarded a number of U.S patents.
Pixar is especially well known for its animated feature-length
films. In 1995, Pixar created the immensely popular movie,
Toy Story. In 1998 the animated feature, A Bug's
Life, set box office records. Other major successes followed,
like Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters, Inc. (2001),
and Finding Nemo (2003), and the Incredibles
(2004). The film recording technology mastered by hardware
guru David DeFrancisco is being incorporated into a revolutionary
new laser film recorder called PixarVision.
From December 14, 2022 to February 6, 2006, The Museum of
Modern Art presented a special exhibit, "Pixar: 20 Years of
Animation." The major exhibit featured work by the artists
of Pixar Animation Studios that brought together all of Pixar's
feature films and shorts. Numerous other artists contributed
paintings, sculptures and other works of art using themes
from Pixar films. Pixar artists work in traditional media-hand
drawings, painting, sculpture, and CGI to create their films.
The Museum of Modern Art has a long history of presenting
exhibitions of animation art and animation screening. The
Department of Film and Media was founded in the 1930s, starting
with the exhibit, A Short History of Animation: The Cartoon
1879-1933. Gallery exhibitions have included Walt Disney's
Bambi: The Making of an Animated Sound Film (1942), That's
Not All Folks! Warner Bros. Animation (1985-86), and Designing
Magic: Disney Animation Art (1995). Most recently, MOMA presented
the animation film series, Anime!! (2005) and Hayao Miyazaki
and Isao Takahata: Masters of Animation (2005).
SGI: Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics (SGI) is perhaps the leading
maker of simulation, modeling and animation software and hardware,
combining high-performance computing and data management technologies
with advanced visualization capabilities. The world's leading
companies and institutions employ SGI technology. SGI caters
to virtually every industry.
SGI is best known for work done with Hollywood's special effects
studios. Silicon Graphics has a 20-year history in the entertainment
and production markets, helping to popularize 3D graphics
and animation with advances in OpenGL and API-compliant graphics
hardware and in the power of personal desktop computers. Silicon
Graphics visualization systems provide editing, compositing,
and film mastering and restoration applications in media.
These solutions are changing the way new films are made and
older titles are re-mastered.
The SGI Media Server for broadcast is designed with an understanding
of the needs for managing both video and data in a broadcast
facility. Superior LAN/WAN media distribution is a key element.
Broadcast system integration services include customer qualification,
site planning assistance, hardware installation, network configuration,
connection of peripheral devices, software configuration,
and integration with third-party systems.
SGI is the best example of the convergence of science and
entertainment. The entertainment industry and scientific community
use the same SGI applications.
Many diagnostic imaging devices and computer-aided surgical
tools in use today are powered by SGI computers, such as MRI,
CT, Computer-guided surgery devices, and surgery simulators.
SGI products have delivered reliable performance in a multitude
of health care environments, from radiology departments to
university research centers. Security features (standard to
the IRIX operating system) provide answers to the requirements
for healthcare information privacy.
A dedicated in-house team of medical industry experts, medical
physicists, physicians, and engineers coordinates the efforts
of SGI in the medical market space. SGI focuses on three areas:
diagnostic imaging, medical image management and communications,
and computer-aided surgery and simulation. SGI has long-standing
working relationships with the medical industry's leading
manufacturers and software providers.
Tools include scalable computational servers, high-performance
storage, and advanced 3D visualization combined with robust
and leading-edge application software. Research centers and
universities around the world use SGI technologies to store,
process, and interpret massive data sets.
Large data questions produce bigger data answers that strain
the human ability to understand the answer in order to ask
the next question. SGI's comprehensive visualization solutions
allow researchers to see their data, understand it quickly,
and formulate new questions in a timely fashion. Visualization
of data allows for unequalled collaborative interpretation
and decision making.
Solutions include SGI's proprietary Silicon Graphics Prism,
Silicon Graphics Onyx4, Universal access to advanced visualization
with Visual Area Networking, and group collaboration with
SGI Reality Center.
SGI provides solutions for science centers, planetariums,
and museums. Applications allow people to explore the universe,
cruise along a strand of DNA, stroll into a virtual model
of an Egyptian tomb, and examine minute details of priceless
works of art--interactively. There are many other "virtual
space" applications.
These compelling and educational applications, described as
experiential computing, are made possible by unique SGI visualization
technology. Experiential computing is defined as the combination
of high-resolution imagery, real-time interactivity, and immersive
visualization.
SGI Reality Center Advanced Visualization Facilities deliver
the highest realism and performance possible for collaborative
visualization. Reality Center facilities provide real-time,
highly interactive working solutions for design review and
engineering, complex data analysis, critical and/or hazardous
training, sales and marketing, scientific research and analysis,
education and exploration, command and control operations,
and Collaborative and interactive solutions.
Visualization is the common language that allows people from
different backgrounds, training, and expertise to engage in
an immediately productive working session. SGI Reality Center
facilities are powered by scalable visualization systems designed
to drive large-scale, immersive, and multi-projector environments.
SGI scalable visualization systems offer superior performance
and unique features such as clip-mapping, texture paging,
volume rendering, multi-stream HDTV video manipulation, multichannel
output, and immersion support.
SGI derives a large source of its revenue from government
applications by providing scalable computing, collaborative
visualization, and complex data management solutions. Government
applications cover ballistic missile defense, homeland security,
weather and climate forecasting, simulation-based acquisition,
training systems, research and development, command and control,
and surveillance and reconnaissance. The largest technical
users are governments worldwide that are focused on applications
of national defense and intelligence, law enforcement and
homeland security, health care and social services, scientific
research and education, transportation and communication,
and energy and the environment.
Other industries include manufacturing and energy in the automotive,
aerospace, electronics, and oil and gas sectors.
Hollywood and Science: A Love Story
The battle for envisioning the future between
sci-fi and real science is really a "which came first, the
chicken or egg" question. It's hard to say how many scientists
were influenced by Stanley Kubrick's, 2001: Space Odyssey,
or how much Kubrick was influenced by advances in computer
technology and space exploration. The Internet was born before
the movie Matrix, but the Matrix has eerily
prophesized where the Internet might be headed so many decades
into the future.
And the chicken or egg question is really a moot one. Let's
call the relationship between Hollywood and science a wonderfully
symbiotic one, neither of which can do without the other.
Hollywood will continue to push the barrier, allowing us to
see life on planets and imaginary futuristic worlds that telescopes
and scientific forecasting techniques can't give us. Meanwhile,
nanotechnology, genetic engineering and the building of biospheres
will inspire a whole new generation of films.
Hollywood's Construction of Reality
Hollywood doesn't just create an image or
even a vision. It creates entire universes with unknown galaxies.
It builds replicas of planets, spaceships, cities, ships and
every conceivable kind of building. Something most movie goers
don't realize is the end credits-when most everyone is walking
out of a theater or ejecting a video/DVD-is a list of names
and job titles represent nothing short of a small if not mid-sized
company. The crews for many films number in the hundreds.
The image-the view-we get as movie watchers is the result
of 100s of workers building sets, designing costumes, setting
lights, and planning camera angles. Each shot is often planned
with military precision. And what can't be done on a set is
now done on a computer.
Big budget special effects (F/X) movies like Star Wars,
the Lion King, Terminator, Titanic and Day after
Tomorrow, have become notorious for their whopping multi-million
dollar price tags. Price tags are not what are amazing. What's
amazing is what goes into creating what some call illusion,
others call fantasy, and still others call a glimpse of truth.
Constructing an image goes beyond the selection of a lens
and camera, set designer, costumer, production designer, stunt
coordinator and actors. It's not just a construction of an
image but a re-construction of reality. 150 million dollar
movies are now common knowledge. But what these movies really
are, are 150 million dollar images-visions of a team of talent,
crew and business who've come together to present their collective
view. It is their telling of a story; their "picture" of a
much larger picture. In fact, it's not a team. It's a company
of 200-300 employees taking months if not years of planning
to put together a "vision" that gets expressed in a two-hour
movie.
Interesting in how some stories are "timeless." Few survivors
and scattered accounts exist to tell the story of the Titanic.
No one was taking pictures at the time. No doubt by today's
standards, someone would have captured the horror on digital
video.
Suspension of Disbelief
In the movie, Titanic, James Cameron
came close to rebuilding the doomed ship. His "replica" was
built according to original blueprint specifications. In Jurassic
Park, paleontologists, along with Steven Spielberg's imagination,
combined to give us the closest we've ever come to knowing
what a dinosaur looks like.
Hollywood uses many tools and techniques to create images,
which ultimately tell a story: 3D Modeling, weather simulation,
set building, blue-screen projection, sound layering (F/X,
music and dialog), animation, stunts, lights, acting, storyboards,
puppets, CGI, and all the ingredients of a screenplay: the
blueprint of a movie.
The trick is to use drama to make the image seem real. But
no matter what tricks Hollywood uses, or how close it comes
to something real, movie makers are entirely dependent on
an audience's willingness to temporarily suspend disbelief.
People want to believe dogs can talk, angels exist, and some
regular Joe or Jane is going to save the planet from an alien
attack.
It's hard to say what effects giant sharks, evil fog, and
robot wars have on movie goers, yet alone a global audience.
Most people know when something is "only make believe". But
then, how many people could not go in the ocean after seeing
Jaws? Do we think twice about global warming after
seeing The Day After Tomorrow? The visions of Minority
Report, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Matrix and the whole
Star War series are certainly plausible ones in terms
of where technology is headed.
A popular image used to illustrate how far we've come technologically
is to show a group of cave dwellers or a primitive tribe viewing
a TV for the first time. Our perspectives of fantasy and reality
depend on what we have to use for comparisons.
Hollywood has been criticized for taking far too much liberty
with historical fact. The line of defense is poetic license,
or enhancement for dramatic effect. Like "Buyer Beware" in
product purchases, it's "Viewer Beware" in media consumption.
It's a tough call in saying whether films educate or entertain.
A story might not be historically accurate, but it can bring
attention to historical events that otherwise would go unnoticed.
The movie Braveheart is a good example, where only
the most astute students of history would know who William
Wallace was.
What could be more exciting than a motorcycle chase through
a herd of stampeding dinosaurs? In movies, drama and action
are used to enhance the image-make the image come alive. Animators
are performers, too. The goal of an animator is not only in
showing what a dinosaur looks like, but also how it moves,
what it eats, and what it sounds like. Ironically, it's the
use of fantasy to create realism.
The Story
The criticism that Hollywood is all about
special effects is not true. The heart of any movie lies in
its story…and there are many stories. There are heart-warming
tales of reunited fathers and sons, lovers meeting for the
first time, best friends growing up, and animals rescued from
near death.
We get to see the humanity in others who otherwise go unnoticed
in everyday life. Spiderman isn't so much about the
wish fulfillment of being a superhero as it is about an average
guy struggling with family and identity problems, meanwhile
searching for love. Rocky is not about a boxer winning
a championship, but about an ordinary person overcoming obstacles
to finally find a way to believe in himself. Sigourney Weaver
demonstrates in Alien how a woman can boldly and bravely
save the planet, even if it means fighting a very ugly monster
from outerspace.
Movie history is a fascinating one with very dramatic pivotal
events. Screenwriters weren't around when Thomas Edison first
invented the motion picture camera. In the silent era, a series
of vignettes or action sequences was the best anyone could
hope for in terms of a telling a story without sound. Without
sound, there's no dialog. Without dialog, there's no character.
Without character, there's no story.
However, there have been many interesting experiments done
in telling stories visually without dialog, or minimal use
of dialog. Quest for Fire and 2001: A Space Odyssey
are two examples. Plus, since movies are a visual medium,
it's the primary quest of a moviemaker to tell a story visually.
To be more accurate, everything serves to tell a story, not
the other way around. The score, sets, costumes, sound effects,
camera angles, and even the actors, are all story telling
devices that when combined, tell a story.
As film technology developed, namely the addition of sound
and color, writers from all the worlds of literature, theater
and journalism poured into Hollywood. During the 30s, some
of the world's most famous writers wrote Hollywood scripts,
like William Faulkner, Ring Lardner, Jr., F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Berthold Brecht, and Thomas Mann.
This holds true today, although most movies based on well
known novels use screenwriters other than the original novelist
to write the screenplay. Peter Benchley was the source behind
Jaws. Ian Fleming launched the James Bond series. John
Grisham gave us The Pelican Brief. Gene Rodenberry
was behind Star Trek and J.K. Rowling is behind-the-scenes,
generating the phenomenally successful Harry Potter
series.
Very few screenwriters are as well known as novelists, but
that doesn't stop them from making millions of dollars, in
some cases. It wasn't always that way and very few screenwriters
command such high salaries. When scriptwriters aren't writing
screenplays, they're writing sitcoms for TV, an entirely different
way of telling a story.
Writing for TV presents an entirely different way of telling
a story largely due to two reasons: shows are syndicated over
time and are subjected to repeated commercial advertising
interruption. Throughout the history of radio and TV, it's
hard to say if programming served advertising, or if advertising
rode on the back of programming. With cable TV and subscription
services, that all changed. Plus, now TV shows can be downloaded
from the Internet, completely free of commercial interruption.
Although writers remain behind the scenes, there is not one
single Academy Award winning actor or actress who would've
won without a powerful, moving story behind them. An actor
can spend weeks, months, sometimes even years, searching for
the right script to launch or re-launch a career.
The impact stories in movies have on culture and society is
immeasurable. Box office sales and DVD/video rentals are one
way to measure in terms of business and commerce. But the
fact that many people know more about their favorite stars
than they do about their next door neighbors paints an entirely
different picture.
Famous lines like "Make my day" and "Here's looking' at you,
kid" become the language of pop culture. Everyone dreams of
being a famous Hollywood actor or actress; it's the best life
has to offer. But even more difficult to see, is the impact
a story has, without all the glitter and glamour attached
to it. We are frightened. We cry. We laugh. We are amazed.
We are inspired. We identify.
Hollywood, and the stories behind it, has a negative side
as well. From around 1947 to 1960, Senator Joseph McCarthy
and the House Un-American Activities Committee began a vicious
campaign against suspected Communists. Hollywood was one of
his main targets. Many writers, actors and other film personnel
were blacklisted, often forced to use fake names to continue
working.
Today, filmmakers--and writers--work under the scrutiny of
the Parental Advisory Board, an organization dedicated to
ensuring Hollywood stays on a good moral track. The pornography
world thrives in spite of any rating system. The rating system
is essentially one that rates content for violence and sex.
Some movies become targets for attack by other groups, like
Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ by Christian religious
groups and Philadelphia by gay groups.
Many scenes in movies manage to float just under the moral
radar, and parents can't watch their children all the time.
In fact, some parents seldom adhere to restricting their child's
viewing of movies based on ratings. Movies like Halloween
and I Know What You Did Last Summer are filled with
violence, and are openly targeted to those 18 and younger.
Watching the credits at the end of a movie will reveal there
are anywhere from a 100 to 200 people responsible for the
movie coming to life. Both those are only the people involved
in the making of the movie. From there, movie critics, theater
owners and a vast marketing and distribution system work to
make the movie a flop or a success. Ultimately, a movie's
success rests with the audience.
Why people love the movies goes beyond escapism or the need
to simply be entertained. True, movies are not like the documentaries
we see in school, showing the lives of insects and how trees
grow. But movies are definitely educational, if not in a scholastic
sense. They teach us about ourselves. They increase our awareness
about different cultures, technological change and places
we never knew existed.
The worlds of Hollywood, optics, photography, art and science
collide in a frenzied race to create a vision of the past,
present and future.
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