1. Presentation for POL 338 Dr. Kevin Lasher

2. Film Basics Profit motive Mass public Collaborative enterprises
Avoid politics (generally)
Storytelling
Genre

3. Film Basics: Profit Motive
Movie business – ultimate goal is to make money
Sam Goldwyn: “messages are for Western Union”
More money through DVDs, Netflix, streaming, toys, merchandising
Liberal Hollywood is the most “capitalistic” enterprise
Looking for next blockbuster (international sales)

4. Film Basics: Profit Motive
Business supersedes ART
Win awards, prestige films
Certain directors (Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Steven Spielburg, others) can pursue artistic visions
Young directors with early success may disappear if films fail to make money
More outlets for “auteur films”

5. Film Basics: Mass Public
Today the focus is on youth and repeat business
Reflect opinion and tastes of audience (rarely challenge)
Entertainment/escapism

6. Film Basics: Mass Public
1920s-early 1950s film was the primary source of mass entertainment
Two-thirds of population went to the movies weekly

7. Film Basics: Mass Public
Today: International mass public
Today: mass pubic versus niche market

8. Film Basics: Collaborative Enterprise
Least common denominator versus auteur theory
Early studio system was an “assembly line process”
Studio head, producer, director, screenwriters, editing, technical, others
Audience is part of the collaborative enterprise

9. Film Basics: Collaborative Enterprise
Studio system is dead but collaboration remains
Any message can be “diluted” by multiple players, production companies, corporations

10. Film Basics: Avoid Politics
Films about politics are not very appealing, not profitable and possibly too controversial
Counterintuitive: politics is conflict
Small subset of all films
Directors want to send a political message (if they can), so they keep trying on occasion
Many of the AFI’s greatest films are “political”

12. Human beings have been telling stories since the creation of spoken language

13. Movies take us to a fictional world to tell a compelling story about interesting characters ---- NOT REAL

14. Film Basics: Storytelling
Classical Hollywood Narrative
“A story built around an active protagonist who struggles against primarily external forces of antagonism to purse his or her desire, through continuous time, within a consistent and causally connected fictional reality, to a closed ending of absolute, irreversible change.”

15. Film Basics: Storytelling
Classical Hollywood narrative
Protagonist(s) vs. antagonist(s)
Directional plot; conflict
Three act structure (generally)
Resolution of conflict (or failure)
Political films contain these components

16. Film Basics: Storytelling

17. Film Basics: Genre
Particular type of film in which audiences have certain preconceptions and expectations; which share comparable and recognizable patterns in theme, period and setting, plot, symbols and types of characters

18. Film Basics: Genre
Genres developed because of nature of studio “factory production system” ( )
Genres developed because audiences enjoyed certain types of films
Genres are not permanent, borders are flexible, old genres can die, new genres can emerge

19. Genres Westerns Gangster Films Horror Films Film Noir Musicals
Action/adventure
Science Fiction
Romantic comedy
Superhero
Others

21. The End