Film Final

Who is Walt Disney?

An American pioneer of animation, film producer, and entrepreneur who co-founded The Walt Disney Company. He revolutionized entertainment by creating iconic characters like Mickey Mouse and producing the first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He also designed and built Disneyland.

Who are the Fleischer Brothers?

• The Fleischer Brothers (Max and Dave) were Disney’s primary competitor in the 30s

• Cartoons produced by the Fleischer studio tended to be more adult in
  tone than the Disney studio.

• The brothers were known for pioneering rotoscoping, that is, photographing something in live action and then tracing over it for
  more naturalistic movement

• Many consider their greatest achievement to be their Superman
  cartoons in the late 40s, shortly before the studio was acquired by
  their distributer, Paramount.

Who are the Hollywood 10? (don’t need to know all ten of their names, just why they were important)

A group of ten screenwriters, directors, and one producer who strongly refused to answer HUAC’s questions, arguing that the questions themselves were illegal, arguing that government investigations into political beliefs and activities violated the First Amendment.

Who is Ida Lupino?

• She became a star in the British film industry as a teenager, playing mostly adult roles.

• She eventually was pursued by Hollywood and moved to the United
  States, where she also became a star, playing a variety of parts

• As the studio system declined (stay tuned) many stars began to establish their own production companies. Along with her husband, Collier Young, Lupino founded The Filmmakers, with goal of creating low-budget, socially conscious dramas

Who is Oscar Micheaux?

• Possibly the most prolific independent director of the Classical Hollywood Era

• initially a novelist and was pursued by the African American-owned
  Lincoln Motion Picture Company for the rights to his novel The Homesteader

Who is Laura Mulvey?

A British feminist film theorist and filmmaker best known for coining the term "male gaze" in her seminal 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". She is a pivotal figure in second-wave feminist film theory, analyzing how Hollywood cinema reinforces patriarchal power structures through the objectification of women.

Who is Steven Spielberg?

• Most commercially successful filmmaker of all time and is probably the most influential director alive.

• He was largely self taught (autodidact) and was discovered as an intern at Universal.

• He was heavily influenced by classical Hollywood masters like Disney.

Who is Kevin Smith?

• Born in Red Bank, New Jersey

• attended Vancouver Film School for one semester but dropped out, choosing to spend his tuition money to finance a film as opposed to his
  education.

• Smith wrote, directed and acted in Clerks while still employed in the very convenience store in which the movie takes place

• The movie was shot for under $30,000, at night while the store was closed with a completely unknown cast.

• The picture played at the Sundance Film Festival and was
  later bought by Miramax pictures and became a hit on the
  indie circuit, and later video and DVD

Who is Darryl Zanuck?

A towering American film producer, screenwriter, and studio executive who played a pivotal role in Hollywood's studio system for over four decades. As a co-founder of 20th Century Fox, he produced numerous acclaimed films, winning three Academy Awards for Best Picture, and was instrumental in developing the sound era, gangster films, and widescreen CinemaScope.

Why is RKO not associated with any particular kind of film?

RKO had a far less stable history than the other studios, without one figure being dominant throughout the studio’s history. For this reason, there was less of a “house style” or philosophy of filmmaking, resulting in several different types of films being made.

What was the red scare?

The Red Scare refers to periods of intense anti-communist paranoia and moral panic in the U.S., marked by widespread fear that left-wing ideologies (communism/socialism) would ruin American society. Two major scares occurred: 1917–1920 (post-WWI) and 1947–1954 (Cold War/McCarthyism), leading to mass political persecution, government repression, and violated civil liberties.

What is the male gaze?

The concept of the “Male Gaze” was developed by English film theorist Laura Mulvey, Mulvey argues that the vast majority of films provide pleasure to their audience by taking a visually male point of view. Specifically, women are seen from male perspective, for the edification of the audience.

What is the Bechdel Test?

A film passes the Bechdel Test if it:
• 1. Has at least two women it
• 2. The two women talk to each other
• 3. The subject the two women talk to each other about is something other than a man

What is cultural competence?

Defined as a set of values, behaviors, attitudes, and practices within a
system, organization, program or among individuals and which enables them to work effectively cross culturally. Further, it refers to the ability to honor and respect the beliefs, language, interpersonal styles and behaviors of individuals and families receiving services, as well as staff who are providing such services. Striving to achieve cultural competence is a dynamic, ongoing, developmental process that requires a long-term commitment.

What is independent cinema?

• independent films are any film made outside the Hollywood studio system.

• movies that are seen as being more artistic with a small budget, and usually not intended to a mass audience, or at least the general audience that Hollywood targets.

What are roadshow presentations?

a much more expensive ticket, reserve seating, and usually an overture, intermission, entr'acte and exit music, similar to a Broadway play or musical. Usually, these films also had a long running time.

Why did the studio system collapse?

Due to the 1948 Paramount antitrust ruling forcing studios to sell their theaters, the rise of television, the decline of the long-term star contract system, and suburbanization

United States vs. Paramount Pictures

the Supreme Court ruled that Paramount and the other studios were in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The court required that the Big Five divest themselves of either their studios or their theatre chains. All of them chose the later, ending vertical integration. The court also ruled that block booking was illegal

What is New Hollywood?

Also referred to as American New Wave, a time where films were changing heavily. They became more violent, sexual, experimental, and liberal.

What was the Blockbuster era?

The Blockbuster Era, roughly spanning from the mid-1970s to the 2000s, revolutionized Hollywood by prioritizing high-budget, mass-marketed "tentpole" films designed to be massive summer hits, initiated by Jaws

What were the effects of Stars Wars on the film industry?

• Star Wars essentially marked the beginning of the end of the New Hollywood era

• Studios stopped relying on modest profits from a series of small or moderate budgeted films to a major profits on big budget films

• It ushered in an era of special effects and special effects pictures

What is Heaven’s Gate?

• No film demonstrates the demise of New Hollywood as much as
  this infamous disaster

Sex, lies, and videotape

• Steven Soderbergh’s debut feature is often seen as a breakthrough film for independents

• Budgeted at a very low $1.2 million and shot in the decidedly un-Hollywood location of Baton Rouge, Louisiana

• Put Sundance on the map and inspired numerous other filmmakers
  to direct independents.

What is the Sundance Film Festival?

• Takes place in Park City, Utah

• Synonymous with hip, independent moviemaking in
  the 90s.

What are the styles of animation?

• Cell animation

• Stop-motion animation

• Computer animation

What is the two strip technicolor?

Two-strip Technicolor (often called Process 2 or 3) was an early color film technology (1920s–early 1930s) that captured images using red and green filters on black-and-white film to create a distinctive, hand-painted look dominated by red, green, and flesh tones.

What is the three strip technicolor?

Three-strip Technicolor (1932–1955) was a, complex, expensive filmmaking process that used a specialized camera to split light through a prism onto three separate black-and-white film strips—recording red, green, and blue simultaneously—to produce vibrant, full-spectrum color prints

What is cinemascope/widescreen?

CinemaScope is an anamorphic filmmaking process, introduced by 20th Century Fox in 1953, that uses specialized lenses to "squeeze" a wide, typically to aspect ratio image onto standard film, which is then expanded during projection. Developed to compete with television, this widescreen format provided a panoramic, immersive experience often accompanied by stereophonic sound.

What is “opening wide”?

"Opening wide" in film refers to a "wide release" (or nationwide release), where a movie debuts simultaneously in a large number of theaters—typically over 600 in the US and Canada—to maximize early box office potential. It is a major marketing strategy for commercial, high-profile films

What is the fantasy genre?

• Has roots in literary mythology

• Relatively high number of fantasy films made in the early days of the silent era, numbers soon plummeted due to special effects difficulties

• Often based on European or Asian mythology

• Usually features a quest narrative: the protagonist seeks to do something/find something and in doing so, grows as a person

• The protagonists are often children or adolescents

• Frequently uses religious imagery

• Differentiated from science fiction in its emphasis on magic as opposed to science

What are backstage musicals?

• Often concerns itself with characters who are themselves performers. Most or all of the music in the film occurs naturally at a rehearsal or a performance

What are integrated musicals?

• The songs are integrated into the plotline of the film, with a relatively developed story, often (but not always) about a serious subject

• Most of these works are based on a novel, actual events, or a non-musical play

What is the production code?

• In the late 20s, the studios voluntarily claimed to adopt the Production Code, something that would guide the production of all films made in America as well foreign films exhibited in the USA

• The Production Code was not enforced until halfway through 1934

What is the MPA rating system?

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) film rating system is a voluntary US system introduced in 1968 to help parents decide if movies are appropriate for children.

Mutual vs. Ohio (case)

A landmark Supreme Court case that ruled movies were not protected by the First Amendment, deeming them a business for profit rather than a form of speech or art. This decision allowed states, including Ohio, to censor movies, a precedent that lasted for over 30 years.

Burstyn vs. Wilson (case)

A landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that established motion pictures are protected expression under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, reversing the 1915 precedent that movies were merely a business. The ruling held that states cannot ban films based on vague standards like "sacrilegious," ending widespread film censorship.

Media conglomerates

Massive parent corporations—often termed the "Big Five" (Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Skydance, Universal/Comcast, Sony)—that own multiple production studios, distributors, and media outlets (TV, streaming, publishing).