August 14, 2008

Three of the World’s Best Film Schools

Category: Evening movie review — admin @ 3:08 pm

There are many really good film schools around the world. Some of the world’s best film schools are located in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Many of the are located in California, New York, or have places across the world. Examples of the world’s best film schools include Vancouver Film School, New York Film Academy, and UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. All of these are considered to be some of the best in the world, and a person going to one of them is sure to learn a lot about filming.

Among the world’s best film schools, Vancouver Film School stands out in filming. The school actually gets over 50% of their students from outside of Canada, which makes it a very international filming school. The school also has representatives from top filming and entertainment companies such as Pixar, Electronic Arts, and Dreamworks.

Another of the world’s best film schools is the London Film School, which is another international school. Over 70% of its students are from countries other than Britain. The school teaches its students on the actual film sets, rather than through classrooms. It is one of two schools in the United Kingdom that has been recognized as a Center for Excellence by Skillset.

Located in Los Angeles, The UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television is yet another internationally recognized film school. Students at this school will not only learn about filming, but they also combine theory and practice. This filming school teaches many different aspects of the industry, including acting, playwriting, and screenwriting.

The world’s best film schools are considered the top places to learn about movie making. Places such as Vancouver Filming School, London Filming School, and UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television rank among the world’s best film schools and they all produce some of the best filming eduction available. They all are internationally recognized as the best, and all teach the many aspects of filming. Anybody who goes to one of these schools will be able to learn a lot about filming.

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Everything You Must Know About the Promotional Techniques of Hollywood

Category: Evening movie review — admin @ 8:08 am

A film is promoted with the aim to reach the maximum number of target audience. Film producers presently invest quite a huge amount of money in promotional techniques especially in big industry like Hollywood. They leave no stone unturned in using various kinds of promotional techniques so that the film will capture the attention of the viewers. In fact, promotion is done as an effort to recover the costs of the production of the film and to make sure that that the investors get expected profits.

Audience activity is the most important aspect of media promotion. Different theoretical models have grown because of this audience activity. There was constant work going on along with it to promote the films through different media so that it can have a wider range and mass appeal. One of the major concerns for the filmmakers and distributors is to maintain the viewers’ attention.

Keeping in mind the promotional aspect, one can say that the ultimate aim of promotional technique was to arrest the audience with a larger than life experience Cinemascope, technical improvements, and wide screen projection were invented. Though all possible measures were taken to make cinema livelier, the need to reach the youth was still felt.

A considerable expense is there in marketing campaigns to maximize profits. There are both traditional and modern techniques used to serve the purpose of promoting a film. Television and radio play a major role in this promotional campaign, as they not only deal with entertainment but also business to a large extent.

The first hand knowledge about a soon-to-be-released-film goes to the audience through these entertainment media. The trailers are shown on television. One of the eye-catching techniques that Hollywood used in promoting the film Memoirs of Geisha is worth remembering. The clippings of the film were shown throughout an episode of a television show. This kind of marketing is called product placement.

Along with it, there is extended placement, where talk shows discuss the film and the participants include the members of film crew like cinematographer, choreographers who discuss the technical part of the film, and the stars and the director who talks about incidents that occurred while the film was being shot.

In the age of Internet, Hollywood uses the virtual world as one of their major promotional techniques due to its power to reach millions across the globe. There are websites showing short trailers of the film along with rushes from the film. Moreover, there are user generated content and blogs.

The paid advertisement in newspapers and magazines, one of the earliest and traditional methods of promotion techniques, forms a significant component of the campaign. There are paid co-branding and co-advertising, for instance in BMW and James Bond films. A major aspect of this marketing is promotional tours made by the actors to different places to market the film.

The year 2000 saw the film industry spending around 2 billion dollars yearly in marketing alone. In this way we can see that the film patterns have changed drastically in each era but the medium is still lively and entertaining. A lot of money is involved in promoting a film.

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Spider-Man Movie Review

Category: Evening movie review — admin @ 12:08 am

Aside from the first 45 minutes of this film which puts an easily identifiable adolescent spin on the superhero genre, there’s nothing in this film that’s been done any differently in other big superhero origin films, with the most direct example being the original Christopher Reeve Superman. It basically follows the same plot and for me it just didn’t differentiate itself enough to make it something special. As a result, I came out of the film feeling like I hadn’t really seen anything new, nor did I feel, apart from the arbitrary plot devices which create Spiderman, that this film establishes Spiderman at least in context with other superhero films with which it competes.

No doubt the vast majority of the audience disagrees as it was one of the most popular blockbusters of recent times, breaking countless records including the first film to exhume over $100 million at the US box office in its opening weekend. It all appears quite faithful to the comic book. The CGI rendering of Spiderman himself is flawlessly done; you’d think they got a stunt man to swing around the dizzying heights of the New York skyline.

The first 45 minutes of this film are the strongest. We are introduced to Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and his life as the nerdy teenager, in love with the gorgeous Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) but never really able to catch her attention. We see a lot of things that as an adolescent (particularly a male adolescent) can relate to, including the various plans Parker puts in to place to try and catch her attention. You see his interactions with classmates who bully him, but after he gets his spidey-powers, all of a sudden it’s the ultimate nerd fantasy with Parker being able to utilise his new powers to defend himself and catch the attention of the girl.

Everything else about the film is mediocre at best. I’m the first to say that Tobey Maguire doesn’t do much for me. He plays the nerd part of Peter Parker sufficiently, but he doesn’t seem to have much depth in his acting abilities (shock horror, I’m asking for depth in a film like this…). Kirsten Dunst is quite good as the love interest as is James Franco, Peter’s best friend.

The villain was a disappointment. Willem Dafoe is a great actor and does a really great job of portraying the psychotic Norman Osborne/Green Goblin, especially in the scene where he is talking to himself in the mirror, but the overall design of the Goblin is just silly. I’m sure it looked great in the comic books but not being able to see his face is a huge problem; he just isn’t menacing.

After that first act, the film really does go in to the standard conventions of the superhero defeating the villain, but it doesn’t really resonate much because we’ve seen it all before, only we’re seeing Spiderman do it. I just wished they had done something to really define Spiderman away from the other superhero films (as there’s been many now). It also would have been nice to see the film in the full widescreen format. A film of this scale tries to be an epic and not shooting it in that format negates that aspect. Also, because I was getting fidgety and bored by the end, I happened to notice a whole bunch of continuity problems in the final scene between Peter and Mary Jane; watch the movement of her hand on Peter’s face throughout this scene, it’s all over the place!

Overall, it’s partly fun and entertaining, fresh in parts, but overall, nothing really special.

For the original DVD review, click this link: http://www.allaboutmovies.net/dvdreviewspiderman.htm

Alex DeMattia is the lead DVD reviewer at the film/DVD review web site All About Movies.net - He is also an administrator of the web site http://www.approachingsexywomen.com

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