Exploring Movie Construction & Production: What’s so exciting about movies
Movie Construction, Production
What is it about watching movies that makes it one of our favorite pastimes? Is it the star of the movie? Is it the hype about the movie? Is it because it is an action movie or thriller? Do you like comedies so you can laugh? Most people do. Genesee Community College students made the following comments about the joy of watching comedy movies. “(I like) being able to watch a movie and relieving any sadness and negativity (in me) by laughing and realizing things are not so bad.” “I enjoy a movie because it takes me away from my problems in my life for a short period of time.” “I can escape life a little bit. I can just laugh and not think about work or school or any other stresses in life.” “I like to watch (a) comedy on a sad day because I can smile and laugh about it later.” “I like comedy movies because I love to laugh. Most comedies deal with real life things, which make me enjoy watching them.” Movies offer much more. Do you like suspense in a movie? How much of a movie do you remember two weeks after seeing it? Have you ever wanted to keep your adrenalin up after watching a suspenseful movie or keep your euphoric mood up after watching a comedy?
John Reich
Open SUNY Textbooks
Textbook
Movie
This book is designed in this manner because, as a college film instructor at a community college for 18 years, I have found that the biggest difficulty students have with a film course is the textbook. Other textbooks give examples from numerous movies to demonstrate a particular term. Most of the movies used in other textbooks, the students have not seen, resulting in the students not comprehending the technical film terms and rendering the textbook useless. A book on film should be about film terminology and the understanding of it. Movies then become more appreciated when watched, resulting in better understanding of the movie and the terminology.
http//:opensuny.org
Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning
Art, Design, Context
We live in a rapidly changing world in which images play an important, even central, role. With widespread use of personal electronics, we instantaneously deliver and receive sound, video, and text messages. Corporations and governments worldwide recognize the power of advertising. Art museums worldwide are putting large parts of their collections online. Today we are seeing theater-quality movies made with inexpensive equipment that was unavailable ten years ago. Selfies, personal video, and memes are everywhere. In 1968, artist Andy Warhol (1928-1967, USA) said, “In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” (Self Portrait, Andy Warhol: http://art.newcity.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/05/Warhol_SelfPortrait.jpg) We are seeing that prediction come true with the advent of personal electronics that rival the sophistication of the most advanced professional studios of only twenty years ago. We are surrounded by images, but, for all of our clever technical abilities, the fundamental dynamics of visual art remain the same.
Pamela Sachant, Peggy Blood
University of North Georgia Press
Music
The manner in which music theory has been traditionally taught is now in a state of flux. Originally, the study of music theory was designed to acquaint the music student or knowledgeable amateur with the composer’s working materials in “Classical” music roughly spanning the 17th- through the 19th Centuries. The role of music theory has expanded far beyond this mandate: theory training now incorporates greater or lesser explanations of music after 1900, music before 1600, idiomatic Jazz practices, elements of World Music, and Popular Song idioms. Such an expansion of means and methods in learning and teaching the fundamental language of music presents a formidable and almost daunting challenge: what to teach, how to teach it, and in what sequence
Mark Andrew Cook