Sunday, August 2, 2015

From Realism to Transformations

Jaws was such a popular film because of it`s realism. Before Jaws, Hollywood films were not shot on the ocean. Steven Spielberg really wanted to portray realism in this movie. This continued through the Twentieth Century Fox period which defined a new Hollywood. During this time, there were many blockbusters especially the ever so popular titanic. The titanic also had a sense of realism as the shooting took place at the reconstruction of a ship built in a 40 acre studio that included a 50 foot lifting platform for the sinking sequences of the film. 

During this period of time, not only were movie sets changing and evolving but so were the ways of movie presentation- with the development of home video.  After the coming of cable TV, and home video sets, most people watched films on a television set.  Years later, the internet has changed the way people view films and television as it can easily be streamed to our portable devices.  According to the text, the most important transformation in movie watching was the innovation of the video cassette recorder (VCR), which then transformed into DVD players, and now we have DVR players. 

                                   This section was a  blast to the past, really. There were thousands and thousands of places that would rent or sell home videos (blockbuster being one of the largest) which then became DVD rentals which then ended up going out of business and then there was RedBox, Netflix, Hulu, and a million other streaming outlets. We have lived to see so many transformations in film and video. 


Saturday, August 1, 2015

Applying Film History

As this course is beginning to come to a close, I wanted to reflect on film history and how it can be applied to our lives. This class was so much more than watching some of our favorite films. We appreciate cultural history because we can look at how far we have come as a culture. As a communication studies student focusing in on media studies, broadcasting, and some film I have learned to appreciate all of the developments in the film industry that have gotten the film industry where it is today and have inspired today's directors to create such great films. 

This course has covered such a wide variety of topics in such a short amount of time- from the silent cinema to the development of audio, and color films, to the the television era, satellite television, and the video to digital era. This course was so interesting because as I am learning how to produce short films or and videography segments and short stories I can't help but appreciate all of the resources and options we have today to make our stories more creative. 


What has everyone else taken away from this course?