Directing Feature Films Mark Travis Pdf 12
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During my 40 year career, I've worked asa film director,television producer, first assistant director and series creativeconsultant. I've had the opportunity to work on all kinds of productions, from industrial films todocumentaries; TVcommercials to music videos; TV series to Hollywood feature films. As a Director, I have directedover 30 episodes of Television Drama and I have written,directed or produced over 50 hours of documentary and educationalprograms. (My dramas and documentaries have won, or been nominatedfor,14 International film awards.) I have also spent 25 years as a FirstAssistant Director havingworkedon 12Hollywood Feature Films, 15 Television Movies, 6 Television Series, 4TV Pilots and over 20 Commercials.
"Seventh Heaven" (also referred to as "7th Heaven"), directed by Frank Borzage and based on the play by Austin Strong, tells the story of Chico (Charles Farrell), the Parisian sewer worker-turned-street cleaner, and his wife Diane (Janet Gaynor), who are separated during World War I, yet whose love manages to keep them connected. "Seventh Heaven" was initially released as a silent film but proved so popular with audiences that it was re-released with a synchronized soundtrack later that same year. The popularity of the film resulted in it becoming one of the most commercially successful silent films as well as one of the first films to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Janet Gaynor, Frank Borzage, and Benjamin Glazer won Oscars for their work on the film, specifically awards for Best Actress, Best Directing (Dramatic Picture), and Best Writing (Adaptation), respectively. "Seventh Heaven" also marked the first time often-paired stars Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell worked together.Expanded essay by Aubrey Solomon (PDF, 694KB)
Stanley Kubrick's landmark epic pushed the envelope of narrative and special effects to create an introspective look at technology and humanity. Arthur C. Clarke adapted his story "The Sentinel" for the screen version and his odyssey follows two astronauts, played by Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, on a voyage to Jupiter accompanied by HAL 9000, an unnervingly humanesque computer running the entire ship. With assistance from special-effects expert Douglas Trumbull, Kubrick spent more than two years creating his vision of outer space. Despite some initial critical misgivings, "2001" became one of the most popular films of 1968. Billed as "the ultimate trip," the film quickly caught on with a counterculture audience that embraced the contemplative experience that many older audiences found tedious and lacking substance.Expanded essay by James Verniere (PDF, 691KB)
When Richard the Lion-Hearted is captured and held for ransom, evil Prince John (Claude Rains) declares himself ruler of England and makes no attempt to secure Richard's safe return. A lone knight, Robin Hood (Errol Flynn), sets out to raise Richard's ransom by hijacking wealthy caravans traveling through Sherwood Forest. Aided by his lady love, Maid Marian (Olivia de Havilland), and band of merry men (including Alan Hale and Eugene Pallette) Robin battles the usurper John and wicked Sheriff of Nottingham to return the throne to its rightful owner. Dashing, athletic and witty, Flynn is everything that Robin Hood should be, and his adversaries are memorably villainous, particularly Basil Rathbone with whom Flynn crosses swords in the climactic duel. One of the most spectacular adventure films of all time, and features a terrific performance by the perfectly cast Flynn. Only a spirited and extravagant production could do justice to the Robin Hood legend; this film is more than equal to the task. Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score won an Oscar, as did the editing and art direction.
Based on the memoir by "Washington Post" reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about uncovering the Watergate break-in and cover up, "All the President's Men" is a rare example of a best-selling book transformed into a hit film and a cultural phenomenon in its own right. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, the film stars Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, and features an Oscar-winning performance by Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee. Nominated for numerous awards, it took home an Oscar for best screenplay by William Goldman (known prior to this for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and after for "The Princess Bride"). Pakula's taut directing plays up the emotional roller coaster of exhilaration, paranoia, self-doubt, and courage, without ignoring the tedium and tireless digging, and elevating it to noble determination.Expanded essay by Mike Canning (PDF, 72KB)
Called the master of "cosmic cinema," Jordan Belson excelled in creating abstract imagery with a spiritual dimension that featured dazzling displays of color, light, and ever-moving patterns and objects. Trained as a painter and influenced by the films of Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren, and Hans Richter, Belson collaborated in the late 1950s with electronic music composer Henry Jacobs to create elaborate sound and light shows in the San Francisco Morrison Planetarium, an experience that informed his subsequent films. The film, Belson has stated, "was probably the space-iest film that had been done until then. It creates a feeling of moving into the void." Inspired by Eastern spiritual thought, "Allures" (which took a year and a half to make) is, Belson suggests, a "mathematically precise" work intended to express the process of becoming that the philosopher Teilhard de Chardin has named "cosmogenesis."
Actress Miriam Hopkins had a long and successful movie career, appearing in many classics, including "Trouble in Paradise" and "Design for Living." However, it is as this film's titular heroine that she received her only Academy Award best-actress nomination. Based upon Thackeray's novel "Vanity Fair," "Becky" is the story of a socially ambitious woman and her destructive climb up the class system. "Becky Sharp" merits historical note as the first feature-length film to utilize the three-strip Technicolor process, which, even today, gives the film a shimmering visual appeal. The lengthy, complicated restoration process of "Becky Sharp" by the UCLA Film and Television Archive marked one of the earliest archival restorations to garner widespread public attention. Partners in this painstaking effort included the National Telefilm Associates Inc., Fondazione Scuola Nazionale di Cinema, Cineteca Nazionale (Rome), British Film Institute, The Film Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Paramount and YCM Laboratories. More information can be found at -sharp-restoration External.
This riotously funny, raunchy, no-holds-barred Western spoof by Mel Brooks is universally considered one of the funniest American films of all time. The movie features a civil-rights theme (the man in the white hat (Cleavon Little ) turns out to be an African-American who has to defend a bigoted town), and its furiously paced gags and rapid-fire dialogue were scripted by Brooks, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg and Alan Unger. Little as the sheriff and Gene Wilder as his recovering alcoholic deputy have great chemistry, and the delightful supporting cast includes Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, and Madeline Kahn as a chanteuse modelled on Marlene Dietrich. As in "Young Frankenstein," "Silent Movie," and "High Anxiety," director/writer Brooks gives a burlesque spin to a classic Hollywood movie genre.Expanded essay by Michael Schlesinger (PDF, 662 KB)
Billed as a "sociological photodrama, "Bread" tells the story of a naïve young woman in a narrow-minded town who journeys to New York to become a star but faces disillusionment when she learns that sex is demanded as the price for fame. Ida May Park, director and scenarist of "Bread," was among more than a half-dozen prolific women directors working at the Universal Film Manufacturing Company during the period in which Los Angeles became the home of America's movie industry. Park directed 14 feature-length films between 1917 and 1920, and her career as a scenarist lasted until 1931. She reasoned that because the majority of movie fans were women, "it follows that a member of the sex is best able to gauge their wants in the form of stories and plays." In an essay Park contributed to the book "Careers for Women," she stated that women were advantaged as motion picture directors because of "the superiority of their emotional and imaginative faculties." In the two surviving reels of "Bread," one of only three films Park directed that are currently known to exist, she displays an accomplished ability to knowingly vivify her protagonist's plight as she fends off an attacker and places her frail hopes in a misshapen loaf of bread that has come to symbolize for her the good things in life.
"Brokeback Mountain," a contemporary Western drama that won the Academy Award for best screenplay (by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana) and Golden Globe awards for best drama, director (Ang Lee) and screenplay, depicts a secret and tragic love affair between two closeted gay ranch hands. They furtively pursue a 20-year relationship despite marriages and parenthood until one of them dies violently, reportedly by accident, but possibly, as the surviving lover fears, in a brutal attack. Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the short story upon which the film was based, described it as "a story of destructive rural homophobia." Haunting in its unsentimental depiction of longing, lonesomeness, pretense, sexual repression and ultimately love, "Brokeback Mountain" features Heath Ledger's remarkable performance that conveys a lifetime of self-torment through a pained demeanor, near inarticulate speech and constricted, lugubrious movements. In his review, Newsweek's David Ansen wrotes that the film was "a watershed in mainstream movies, the first gay love story with A-list Hollywood stars." "Brokeback Mountain" has become an enduring classic. 2b1af7f3a8