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Movie Director

Movie director

A film director orchestrates the artistic and dramatic aspects of a film. The role typically includes:
- Defining the overall artistic vision of the film.
- Controlling the content and flow of the film's plot.
- Directing the performances of actors, both mechanically by putting them in certain positions (i.e. blocking), and dramatically by eliciting the required range of emotions.
- Organizing and selecting the locations in which the film will be shot.
- Managing technical details such as the positioning of cameras, the use of lighting, and the timing and content of the film's soundtrack.
- Any other activity that defines or realizes the artistic vision the director has for the film. In practice the director will delegate many of these responsibilities to other members of his or her film crew. For example, the director may describe the mood she or he wants from a scene, then leave it to other members of the film crew to find a suitable location, or to set up the appropriate lighting. The degree of control that a director exerts over a film varies greatly. Many directors are usually, but not essentially, subordinate to the studio and producer. This was especially true during the "Golden Era" of Hollywood from the 1930s through the 1950s, when studios had stables of directors, actors and writers under contract. Other directors bring a particular and intensely focused artistic vision to the pictures they make (see auteur theory). Their methods range from some who like to outline a general plot line and let the actors improvise dialogue (such as Robert Altman and Christopher Guest), to those who control every aspect, and demand that the actors and crew follow instructions precisely (such as Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, and Stanley Kubrick). Some directors also write their own scripts (such as James Cameron, Frank Darabont, and Quentin Tarantino), while others collaborate on screenplays with long-standing writing partners (such as Billy Wilder and his writing partner I.A.L. Diamond). Finally, certain directors star, often in leading roles, in their films, from Orson Welles to Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood to Mel Brooks. Directors often work closely with film producers, who are usually responsible for the non-artistic elements of the film, such as financing, contract negotiation and marketing. Directors will often take on some of the responsibilities of the producer for their films (e.g. Steven Spielberg), or work so closely with the producer that the distinction in their roles becomes blurred (as is the case with Joel and Ethan Coen). The early silent film director Alice Guy Blaché not only produced her own pictures but actually created her own highly successful studio. The official American film directors' trade union is the Directors Guild of America (DGA). In DGA pictures the credit for the director will always be the last credit in the film's title sequence. Directors, however, often get a second credit, "An (Insert Director Here) Film". The SAG has attacked this credit during contract negotations, arguing that it implies that directors have more authorship of films than actors. The key person in the making of a film is the director, the individual who visualizes the script and guides the production crew and actors to carry out that vision. The director has artistic control over everything from the script itself to the final cut of the film. It is the director's sense of the dramatic along with the creative visualization of the script that transforms a story into a well-made motion picture. The director is usually selected by the producer. Along with the producer, the director then puts together the production team

See also


- List of notable film directors
- Alan Smithee: often credited, but not a real film director
- Television director
- Theatre director
- Contrast with Film producer

External links


- [http://www.medialawyer.com/DIRART2.htm Smooth Negotiating: Making the Director Deal]
- [http://www.dga.org Director's Guild of America] Category:Entertainment occupations
- Film director Category:Film crew ja:映画監督



Plot

Plot in literature, theater, movies

According to Aristotle's Poetics, a plot in literature is "the arrangement of incidents" that (ideally) each follow plausibly from the other. The plot is like the pencil outline that guides the painter's brush. An example of the type of plot which follows these sorts of lines is the linear plot of development to be discerned within the pages of a bildungsroman novel. Aristotle notes that a string of unconnected speeches, no matter how well-executed, will not have as much emotional impact as a series of tightly connected speeches delivered by imperfect speakers. The concept of plot and the associated concept of construction of plot, emplotment, has of course developed considerably since Aristotle made these insightful observations. The episodic narrative tradition which Aristotle indicates has systematically been subverted over the intervening years, to the extent that the concept of beginning, middle, end are merely regarded as a conventional device when no other is at hand. This is particularly true in the cinematic tradition where the folding and reversal of episodic narrative is now commonplace. Moreover, many writers and film directors, particularly those with a proclivity for the Modernist or other subsequent and derivative movements which emerged during or after the early 20th century, seem more concerned that plot is an encumbrance to their artistic medium than an assistance. The main plot in a story is called the A-Plot. The B-Plot is another independent plot within the same story.

Elements of plot in a story


- 1. Initial situation - the beginning. It is the first incident that makes the story move.
- 2. Conflict or Problem - goal which the main character of the story has to achieve.
- 3. Complication - obstacles which the main character has to overcome.
- 4. Climax - highest point of interest of the story.
- 5. Suspense - point of tension. It arouses the interest of the readers.
- 6. Denouement or Resolution - what happens to the character after overcoming all obstacles and reaching his goal.
- 7. Conclusion - the end of the story.

Plot in printing

A plot is a drawn graphical representation of data, such as the output of a plotter or the process of plotting data by hand. Plots are used in
- Mathematics: plotting the graph of a function
- Meteorology: weather plots - isobar, isotherm, isogon, isotach, isohume, isodrosotherm
- CPU design design: plots of integrated circuits can resemble die photos.

Other meanings


- A small piece of planted ground, as for a garden. A cemetery provides plots for the deceased.
- A plot is a planned conspiracy. E.g.,the Babington plot, July 20 Plot or The Passover Plot.
- Epistemological historian Paul Veyne (1971: 46-47; English trans. by Min Moore-Rinvolucri 1984: 32-33) defines a plot in the following way: "Facts do not exist in isolation, in the sense that the fabric of history is what we shall call a plot, a very human and not very "scientific" mixture of material causes, aims, and chances--a slice of life, in short, that the historian cuts as he [sic] wills and in which facts have their objective connections and relative importance...the word plot has the advantage of reminding us that what the historian studies is as human as a play or a novel....then what are the facts worthy of rousing the interest of the historian? All depends on the plot chosen; a fact is interesting or uninteresting...in history as in the theater, to show everything is impossible--not because it would require too many pages, but because there is no elementary historical fact, no event worthy atom. If one ceases to see events in their plots, one is sucked into the abyss of the infintismal."

See also


- Plot device
- Dramatic structure
- Plot hole
- Georges Polti's The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations Category:Narratology ja:プロット (物語)

Movie camera

camera currently used on major productions.]] The movie camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on film; once developed this film can be projected as a motion picture. In contrast to a still camera which captures a single snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images, each called a "frame". This is accomplished through an intermittent mechanism. The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the "frame rate" (number of frames per second) to give the illusion of motion. Our eyes and brain merge the separate pictures together to generate the illusion, a phenomenon called the "persistence of vision". Most of the optical and mechanical elements of a movie camera are present in the movie projector. The camera will not have an ilumination source and will maintain its film stock in a light-tight enclosure. A camera will also have exposure control via an iris aperature located on the lens. Otherwise, the requirements for film tensioning, take-up, intermittent motion, loops, and rack positioning are almost identical. See the movie projector article for these details and for the various film formats used. Video cameras (not movie cameras) can broadly be classified into two categories: analog and digital. Analog cameras are of the "tube" type; they are bulky and generally used in professional studios. Digital cameras are of the "CCD type"; they are light and portable, and generally used for home/office purposes. Video camera camera]] The normal frame rate for commercial film is 24 frames per second. The standard commercial, i.e. movie theater film width is 35 millimeters, while many other film formats exist. The standard aspect ratios are 1.66, 1.85, and 2.39 (anamorphic widescreen). NTSC video (common in the U.S. and Japan) plays at 29.97 frame/s; PAL (common in most other countries) plays at 25 frame/s. Both of these video formats also has different resolution and color encoding. Many of the technical difficulties involving film and video concern translation between the different formats. Video aspect ratios, always measured as whole numbers, are 4:3 for full screen and 16:9 for widescreen. One of the continuing problems in film is synchronizing a sound recording with the film. No film cameras record sound; instead, the sound is captured by a precision audio device separately. The clapper board which typically starts a take is used as a reference point for the editor to sync the picture to the sound (provided the scene and take are also called out so that the editor knows which picture take goes with any given sound take). It also permits scene and take numbers and other essential information to be seen on the film itself. Aaton cameras have a system called AatonCode that can "jam sync" with an timecode-based audio recorder and prints a digital timecode directly on the edge of the film itself. However, the most commonly used system at the moment is unique identifier numbers exposed on the edge of the film by the film stock manufacturer (KeyKode is the name for Kodak's system). These are then logged (usually by a computer editing system, but sometimes by hand) and recorded along with audio timecode during editing. In the case of no better alternative, a handclap can work if done clearly and properly, but oftentimes a quick tap on the mike (provided it is in frame for this gesture) is preferred. Some cameras have low-accuracy ("non-sync" or MOS) film-advance systems. One of the most common uses of these cameras in commercial films are the spring-wound cameras used in hazardous special effects, known as "crash cams". Scenes shot with these have to be kept short, or resynchronized manually with the sound. MOS cameras are also often used for second-unit work or anything involving variable or non-standard speed filming. Due to their non-sync nature, some designs forgo traditional low-noise considerations for a studio camera and thus are quite noisy. The most popular 35 mm cameras in use today are Arriflex, Moviecam (now owned by the Arri Group), and Panavision models. For very high speed filming, PhotoSonics are used.

See also


- Animation camera
- Camcorder
- Eyemo
- History of cinema
- Konvas
- Prestwich Camera Category:Video and movie technology Category:Cameras by type

Lighting design

This article is about lighting design in theater. If you are looking for lighting design in architecture, visit Architectural Lighting Design. Architectural Lighting Design The role of the theatre lighting designer (or LD) within theatre is to work with the theatre director, set designer, and costume designer to create an overall 'look' for the show in response to the text, but bearing in mind issues of visibility, safety and cost. In very large shows, the LD also works closely with the stage manager on show control programming. Some eminent lighting designers working in the US today are: Ken Billington, Howell Binkley, Peggy Eisenhauer, Jules Fisher, Paul Gallo, David Hersey, Donald Holder, Natasha Katz, Allen Lee Hughes, Brian Mac Devitt, John McKernon, Ken Posner, and Jennifer Tipton, many of whom have been honored with a Tony Award for Best Lighting Design. Pioneers in the industry include: Stanley McCandless, Jean Rosenthal, and Tharon Musser

During pre-production

The role of the lighting designer varies greatly depending on whether a production is professional or amateur. For a Broadway show the LD is usually an outside freelance specialist hired early in the production process, but most permanent theatre companies will have a resident lighting designer responsible for most of the company's productions. At the amateur level the LD will often be responsible for much of the hands-on work (hanging instruments, programming the light board, etc.) that would be the work of the lighting crew in a professional theatre. The LD will read the script carefully and make notes on changes in place and time between scenes - such changes are often done just with lighting - and will have meetings with the Director, Designer and production manager during the pre-production period to discuss ideas for the show and establish budget and scheduling details. The LD will also attend several later rehearsals to observe the way the actors are being directed to use the stage area ('blocking') during different scenes, and will receive updates from the stage manager on any changes that occur. The LD will also make sure that he or she has an accurate plan of the theatre's lighting positions and a list of their equipment. The LD often takes into account the show's mood and director's vision in creating a lighting plan. All this information is vital for the preparation of an accurate lighting plan and lighting plot. The plan is a scale drawing of the theatre's stage and auditorium lighting positions with the show's lanterns marked on it. Next to each lantern will be information for any color gel, gobo, animation wheel or other accessory that needs to go with it, and its channel number. Professional LDs usually use special computer-aided design packages to create accurate and easily read plans that can be swiftly updated as necessary. The LD will discuss the plan with the show's production manager and the theatre's lighting chief to make sure there are no unforeseen problems with the plan before the latter places a hire order for any specified extra equipment. The lighting plot is a list of the lighting states that the LD intends to use for each scene during the show. Ideally, a pre-production lighting plot will have levels specified for every lantern and up and down times for each lighting state, or cue, but it is accepted that there will usually be many changes during the technical rehearsal of the show.

During fit-up(Load-In/Focus/Cue to Cue) and technical rehearsals

The lighting designer is responsible, in conjunction with the production's independently hired "Production Electrician" who will interface with the theatre's Master Electrician, for directing the theatre's electrics crew in the realization of his or her designs during the technical rehearsals. The LD usually sits at a temporary desk somewhere in the auditorium where they have a good view of the stage and talks to the lighting board operator/programmer over a headset. The LD will direct the focusing (pointing, shaping and sizing of the light beams) and gelling of each lighting unit before recording a version of the lighting plot. After Focus, if scheduled, and depending if the production is following closely on schedule there is a period of one to two days that are allowed for pre-lighting. At an arranged time the actors arrive and the play is worked through in chronological order, with occasional stops to correct sound, lighting, entrances etc. The lighting designer will work constantly with the board operator to refine the lighting states as the technical rehearsal continues, but because the focus of a "tech" or "cue-to-cue" rehearsal is the production's technical aspects, the LD may require the actors to pause ("hold") frequently. Nevertheless, any errors of focusing or changes to the lighting plan are corrected only when the actors take a break. Once the show is open to the public the lighting designer will stay and watch several performances of the show, making notes each night and making desired changes the next day. However they can only make changes during the preview process of the show; once it officially opens the lighting designer can no longer make changes to it. Changes can no longer be made AFTER THE JOB IS DONE! Sometimes that is before opening, most of the time that is by opening. But sometimes changes ARE made after opening. Such situtations occur for a number of reasons such as, casting changes, changes to the show after reviews (Yes this happens!), or maybe the tech and/or preview period (if there was a preview period) was too short to accomodate as thorough a cueing as you might have wanted (this is particularly common in dance productions). The goal should be to finish by opening (especially since most often the last payment of your fee is contingent on a completed job), but what is most important is that not only you think your job is done, but also the director and producer think your job is done. If that happens to be by opening night, then after opening no changes are made, to that particular production run at that venue. Then you get to go have drinks on the beach in Tahiti. NB: There are different protocols between European technical theatre and American technical theater. Category:Stage lighting

Soundtrack

Soundtrack refers to the recorded sound accompanying a visual medium such as a motion picture, television show, or video game.

Physical portion of film

In terms of film formats, the soundtrack is the physical area of the film which records the synchronized sound.

Movie and television soundtracks

The term soundtrack most commonly refers to the music used in a movie (or television show), and/or to an album sold containing that music. Sometimes, the music has been recorded just for the film or album (e.g. Saturday Night Fever). Often, but not always, and depending on the type of movie, the soundtrack album will contain portions of the score, non-diegetic music composed for thematic effect as the movie's plot occurs. In 1916, Victor Schertzinger recorded the first music specifically for use in a motion picture, and releasing soundtracks of songs used in films became standard in the 1930s. Henry Mancini, who won an Emmy Award and two Grammys for his soundtrack to Peter Gunn, was the first composer to have a widespread hit with a song from a soundtrack. The soundtrack on a record can contain all kinds of music (including "inspired by"; see the Harry Potter soundtracks), contained in a movie; the score contains only music by the original film's composer(s).

Video game soundtracks

Soundtrack may also refer to the music used in video games. While sound effects were nearly universally used for action happening in the game, music to accompany the gameplay was a later development. Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway were early composers of music specifically for video games for the 1980s Commodore 64 computer. Koji Kondo was an early and important composer for Nintendo games. As the technology improved CD-quality soundstracks replaced simple midi files starting in the early 1990s and the soundtrack to popular games such as the Final Fantasy series began to be released separately.

See also


- Film score
- List of soundtrack composers
- Soundtrack album
- Soundtrack Pro — music composing software and audio editor by Apple Computer

External links


- [http://www.soundtrackinfo.com/ the SoundtrackINFO project]
- [http://soundtrack.net/ SoundtrackNet - the art of film and television music]
- [http://filmtracks.com/ Filmtracks Modern Soundtrack Reviews]
- [http://www.scorereviews.com/ scorereviews.com soundtrack reviews] ja:サウンドトラック

HollywooD

:For the American film industry, see Cinema of the United States. Cinema of the United States Hollywood is a district of the city of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., situated northwest of Downtown. Due to its fame and identity as the historical center of movie studios and stars, the word "Hollywood" is often used colloquially to refer to the American film industry. Today much of the movie industry has dispersed into surrounding areas such as Burbank and the Westside, but significant ancillary industries (such as editing, effects, props, post-production, and lighting companies) remain in Hollywood. Several historic Hollywood theaters are used as venues to premiere major theatrical releases, and host the Academy Awards. It is a popular destination for nightlife and tourism, and home to the Walk of Fame. There is currently no official boundary of Hollywood (Los Angeles does not have official districts), but the [http://www.laalmanac.com/geography/ge30secession_hollywood.htm 2002 secession movement] and the current [http://www.allncs.org/hollywoodmap.htm Neighborhood Council boundaries] can serve as guides. Generally, Hollywood's southern border follows Melrose Avenue from Vermont Avenue west to La Brea Avenue. From there the boundary continues north on La Brea, wrapping west around the city of West Hollywood along Fountain Avenue before turning north again on Laurel Canyon Boulevard into the Hollywood Hills. The eastern boundary follows Vermont Avenue north from Melrose past Hollywood Boulevard to Franklin Avenue. From there the border goes west along Franklin to Western Avenue, and then north on Western into Griffith Park. Most of the hills between Laurel Canyon and Griffith Park are part of Hollywood. The commercial, cultural, and transportation center of Hollywood is the area where La Brea Avenue, Highland Avenue, Cahuenga Boulevard, and Vine Street intersect Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard. The population of the district is estimated to be about 300,000. Hollywood does not have its own government, but an appointed official serves as "honorary mayor" for ceremonial purposes. Currently, the mayor is Johnny Grant.

History

In 1853, one adobe hut stood on the site that became Hollywood. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished in the area with thriving crops. In the 1880s, Harvey Henderson Wilcox of Kansas, who made a fortune in real estate even though he had lost the use of his legs due to typhoid fever, and his wife, Daeida, moved to Los Angeles from Topeka. In 1886, Wilcox bought 160 acres (0.6 km²) of land in the countryside to the west of the city at the foothills and the Cahuenga Pass. Accounts of the name, Hollywood, coming from imported English holly then growing in the area are incorrect. The name in fact was coined by Daeida Wilcox. On a train trip to the east, Wilcox met a woman who spoke of her country home in Ohio named after a Dutch settlement called "Hollywood." Daeida liked the sound of it and upon returning to Southern California, bestowed the name to the family ranch. A locally popular (though inaccurate) etymology is that the name Hollywood traces to the ample stands of native Toyon, or "California Holly," that cover the hillsides. Harvey Wilcox soon drew up a grid map for a town, which he filed with the county recorder's office on February 1, 1887, the first official appearance of the name Hollywood. With his wife as a constant advisor, he carved out Prospect Avenue (later Hollywood Boulevard) for the main street, lining it and the other wide dirt avenues with pepper trees, and began selling lots. Daeida raised money to build two churches, a school and a library. They imported some English holly because of the name Hollywood, but the bushes did not last. By 1900, Hollywood also had a post office, a newspaper, a hotel and two markets, along with a population of 500 people. Los Angeles, with a population of 100,000 people, lay seven miles (11 km) east through the citrus groves. A single-track streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue from the city, but service was infrequent and the trip took two hours. The old citrus fruit packing house would be converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants of Hollywood. The first section of the famous Hollywood Hotel, the first major hotel in Hollywood, was opened in 1902 by a subdivider eager to sell residential lots among the lemon ranches then lining the foothills. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue. Still a dusty, unpaved road, it was regularly graded and graveled. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. Among the town ordinances was one prohibiting the sale of liquor except by pharmacists and one outlawing the driving of cattle through the streets in herds of more than two hundred. In 1904, a new trolley car track running from Los Angeles to Hollywood up Prospect Avenue was opened. The system was called "the Hollywood boulevard." It cut travel time to and from the city drastically. In 1910, because of an ongoing struggle to secure an adequate water supply, the townsmen voted for Hollywood to be annexed to the city of Los Angeles, as the water system of the growing city had opened the Los Angeles Aqueduct and was piping water down from the Owens River in the Owens Valley. Another reason for the vote was that Hollywood could have access to drainage through the city's sewer system. With annexation, the name of Prospect Avenue was changed to Hollywood Boulevard and all the street numbers in the new district changed; 100 Prospect Avenue, at Vermont Avenue, became 6400 Hollywood Boulevard; and 100 Cahuenga Boulevard, at Hollywood Boulevard, changed to 1700 Cahuenga Boulevard.

Hollywood and the motion picture industry

In the early 1900s, motion picture production companies from New York and New Jersey started moving to California because of the reliable weather and longer days. Although electric lights existed at that time, none were powerful enough to adequately expose film; the best source of illumination for movie production was natural sunlight. Besides the moderate, dry climate, they were also drawn to the state because of its open spaces and wide variety of natural scenery. Another factor in Hollywood's development was its great distance from New Jersey, which made it more difficult for Thomas Edison to enforce his motion picture patents. At the time, Edison owned almost all the patents relevant to motion picture production and, in the East, movie producers acting independently of Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by Edison and his agents. Thus, movie makers working on the West Coast could work independent of Edison's control. If he sent agents to California, word would usually reach Los Angeles before the agents did and the movie makers could escape to nearby Mexico. In early 1910, director D. W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the west coast with his acting troop consisting of actors Blanche Sweet, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and others. They started filming on a vacant lot near Georgia Street in Downtown Los Angeles. The Company decided while there to explore new territories and travelled several miles north to a little village that was friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. This place was called "Hollywood". D. W. Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood called "In Old California (1910)" a Biograph melodrama about Latino/Mexican occupied California in the 1800's. Biograph stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York. After hearing about this wonderdful place, in 1913 many movie-makers headed west. With this film, the movie industry was born in "Hollywood" which soon becoame the movie capital of the world. The first motion picture studio in the region was built in 1909 by the Selig Polyscope Company. The Selig studio was located in Edendale, just east of Hollywood. The first studio in Hollywood proper was Nestor Studios, founded in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley in an old building on the southeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street. In the same year, another fifteen Independents settled in Hollywood. Creators of dreams began arriving by the thousands; cameras cranked away, capturing images of custard pies, bathing beauties, comedy and tragedy, villains leering, heroines with long curls and heroes to save the day; and they built a new world to replace the lemon groves. Thus, the fame of Hollywood came from its identity with the movies and movie stars; and the word "Hollywood," a word that, when spoken in any country on Earth, evokes worlds, even galaxies of memories, came to be colloquially used to refer to the motion picture industry. In 1913, Cecil B. DeMille, in association with Jesse Lasky, leased a barn with studio facilities on the southeast corner of Selma and Vine Streets from the Burns and Revier Studio and Laboratory, which had been established there. DeMille then began production of The Squaw Man (1914). It became known as the Lasky-DeMille Barn and is currently the location of the Hollywood Heritage Museum. The Charlie Chaplin Studios, on the northeast corner of La Brea and De Longpre Avenues just south of Sunset Boulevard, was built in 1917. It has had many owners after 1953, including Kling Studios, who produced the Superman TV series with George Reeves; Red Skelton, who used the sound stages for his CBS TV variety show; and CBS, who filmed the TV series Perry Mason with Raymond Burr there. It has also been owned by Herb Alpert's A&M Records and Tijuana Brass Enterprises. It is currently The Jim Henson Company, home of the Muppets. In 1969, The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board named the studio a historical cultural monument. 1969 The famous Hollywood Sign originally read "Hollywoodland". It was erected in 1923 to advertise a new housing development in the hills above Hollywood. For several years the sign was left to deteriorate. In 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce stepped in and offered to remove the last four letters and repair the rest. The sign, located near the top of Mount Lee, is now a registered trademark and cannot be used without the permission of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which also manages the venerable Walk of Fame. Walk of Fame The first Academy Awards presentation ceremony took place on May 16, 1929 during a banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. Tickets were USD $10.00 and there were 250 people in attendance. Hollywood and the movie industry of the 1930s are described in P. G. Wodehouse's novel Laughing Gas (1936) and in Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), and is parodied in Terry Pratchett's novel Moving Pictures (1990), which is a takeoff of Singin' In The Rain. From about 1930, five major "Hollywood" movie studios from all over the Los Angeles area, Paramount, RKO, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros., owned large, grand theaters throughout the country for the exhibition of their movies. The period between the years 1927 (the effective end of the silent era) to 1948 is considered the age of the "Hollywood studio system", or, in a more common term, the Golden Age of Hollywood. In a landmark 1948 court decision, the Supreme Court ruled that movie studios could not own theaters and play only the movies of their studio and movie stars, thus an era of Hollywood history had unofficially ended. By the mid-1950s, when television proved a profitable enterprise that was here to stay, movie studios started also being used for the production of programming in that medium, which is still the norm today.

Modern Hollywood

On January 22, 1947, the first commercial TV station west of the Mississippi River, KTLA, began operating in Hollywood. In December of that year, the first Hollywood movie production was made for TV, The Public Prosecutor. And in the 1950s, music recording studios and offices began moving into Hollywood. Other businesses, however, continued to migrate to different parts of Los Angeles, primarily to Burbank, California. A lot of the movie industry remained in the area, although the district's outward appearance changed. The famous Capitol Records building on Vine Street just north of Hollywood Boulevard was built in 1956. It is a recording studio not open to the public, but its unique circular design looks like a stack of old 45rpm vinyl records. The Hollywood Walk of Fame was created in 1958 and the first star was placed in 1960 as a tribute to artists working in the entertainment industry. Honorees receive a star based on career and lifetime achievements in motion pictures, live theatre, radio, television, and/or music, as well as their charitable and civic contributions. In 1985, the Hollywood Boulevard commercial and entertainment district was officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places protecting important buildings and seeing to it that the significance of Hollywood's past would always be a part of its future. In June 1999, the long-awaited Hollywood extension of the Metro Red Line subway opened, running from Downtown Los Angeles to the Valley, with stops on Hollywood Boulevard at Western Avenue, at Vine Street and at Highland Avenue. The Kodak Theatre, which opened in 2001 on Hollywood Boulevard at Highland Avenue, where the historic Hollywood Hotel once stood, has become the new home of the Oscars. Motion picture production still occurs within the Hollywood district, although most major studios are actually located elsewhere in the Los Angeles region. Paramount Studios is the only major studio physically located within Hollywood. Other studios in the district include the aforementioned Jim Henson (formerly Chaplin) Studios, and Raleigh Studios. Several major local broadcasters such as KTLA also maintain studios here, while ABC still has a studio facility on Hollywood's east side although most of the network's programming is now produced out of the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. In 2002, a number of Hollywood citizens began a campaign for the district to secede from Los Angeles and become its own incorporated city. Secession supporters argued that the needs of their community were being ignored by the leaders of Los Angeles. In June, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors placed secession referendums for both Hollywood and the Valley on the ballots for a "citywide election." To pass, they required the approval of a majority of voters from all over Los Angeles. In the November election, the referendums failed to receive the required percentage of votes by a wide margin. Modern day Hollywood is a diverse, vital, and active community striving to preserve the elegant buildings from its past.

Runaways

A serious problem for Hollywood since the 1960s has been its attractiveness for desperate runaways. Every year, hundreds of runaway adolescents flee broken homes across North America and flock to Hollywood hoping to become movie stars, as portrayed by the lyrics of the Burt Bacharach song Do You Know the Way to San Jose "All the stars /That never were /Are parking cars / And pumping gas." They soon discover they have extremely slim chances of competing against professionally trained actors and end up sinking into homelessness, which is a severe problem in general in Hollywood for adults as well as youth. Some go home; some stay in Hollywood and join the prostitutes and panhandlers lining its boulevards; others go to Skid Row in Downtown; and some end up in the seamy underside of the entertainment business–the large pornography industry in the San Fernando Valley. This grim side of Hollywood was portayed in Jackson Browne's song, Boulevard, whose lyrics include reference to a notorious hustler hangout of the 1970s, "Down at the Golden Cup/They set the young ones up/Under the neon lights/Selling day for night", and in the books of Charles Bukowski.

Hollywood area neighborhoods


- Beechwood Canyon
- Franklin Hills
- Hollywood
- East Hollywood
- Hollywood Hills
- Laurel Canyon
- Little Armenia
- Los Feliz
- Melrose District
- Mount Olympus
- Sierra Vista
- Sunset Strip
- Spaulding Square
- Thai Town
- Yucca Corridor

Education

Pupils who live in Hollywood are zoned to Gardner Elementary, Valley View Elementary School, Cherimoya Grammar School, Bancroft Middle, La Conte Middle and Hollywood High School.

Landmarks and interesting spots

Hollywood High School
- ABC Television Center
- Amoeba Music
- Blessed Sacrament Church
- Bob Hope Square (Hollywood and Vine)
- Capitol Records
- CBS Columbia Square
- Charlie Chaplin Studios
- Cinerama Dome
- Crossroads of the World
- Grauman's Egyptian Theater
- El Capitan Theatre
- FOX Television Center
- Frederick's of Hollywood
- Frolic Room
- Gower Gulch
- Grauman's Chinese Theater
- Griffith Observatory
- Griffith Park
- Hollywood Athletic Club
- Hollywood Bowl
- Hollywood Forever Cemetery
- Hollywood and Highland
- Hollywood Heritage Museum
- Hollywood High School
- Hollywood Palace Theatre
- Hollywood Palladium
- Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
- Hollywood Sign
- Hollywood Walk of Fame
- Hollywood Wax Museum
- Janes House
- John Anson Ford Theatre
- KABC-TV
- KCBS-TV
- KCET
- Knickerbocker Hotel
- KNBC
- Kodak Theatre
- KTLA-TV
- KTTV
- Lake Hollywood
- Lasky-DeMille Barn
- The Magic Castle
- Masonic Temple
- Max Factor Building
- Musso & Frank's Grill
- NBC Radio City Studios
- Pantages Theatre
- Paramount Studios
- Pig 'N Whistle
- Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Odditorium
- Rock 'n' Roll Ralphs
- Rock Walk
- Sunset and Vine apartment complex
- Sunset Gower Studios
- William S. Hart Park
- Yamishiro Restaurant

See also


- Casting couch
- History of cinema
- Hollywood-inspired names
- List of movie-related topics
- List of Hollywood novels
- List of movies set in Los Angeles
- List of television shows set in Los Angeles
- West Hollywood, California
- :Category:Cemeteries in Los Angeles (Most Hollywood celebrities are buried locally).

External links


- [http://www.hollywoodsign.org/webcams/index.html Hollywood Sign Panasonic Webcams – Live 24 Hours A Day]
- [http://www.hollywoodknolls.org/hollywood_reservoir.htm Lake Hollywood Reservoir (DWP) with maps and photos]
- [http://www.ulwaf.com/LA-1900s/05.02.html February 1905: "Hollywood's Bright Future" – from the L.A. Times – with photos]
- [http://www.newkerala.com/news.php?action=showcat&catid=31 Hollywood News, Interviews & Reviews]
- [http://hollywoodbid.org/hist/historic_sites.html Hollywood Historic Sites]
- [http://www.hollywoodmuseum.com/home/home_main.html Hollywood Entertainment Museum]
- [http://www.fabuloustravel.com/ww/haunthollywood/haunthollywood.html Hollywood's Most Famous Ghosts]
- [http://www.nrbooks.com/hollywoodtour.htm The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book]
- [http://www.hollywoodphotographs.com Hollywood Photographs]
- [http://www.talkingpix.co.uk/Article_Hollywood,critics.html Hooray For Hollywood article by Nigel Watson]
- [http://www.biographcompany.com Biograph Company] Category:Hollywood history and culture Category:Los Angeles neighborhoods Category:U.S. Highway 66 ja:ハリウッド

Robert Altman

Robert Bernard Altman (born February 20, 1925) is an American film director known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. His films M
- A
- S
- H and Nashville have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Early life and career

Altman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of wealthy, insurance man/gambler Bernard Clement Altman (who came from an upper-class German-American family) and Helen Mathews, a Mayflower descendant of English and Scottish ancestry. His family was devoutly Catholic. Altman attended Rockhurst High School and Southwest High School in Kansas City, and was then shipped off to Wentworth Military Academy in nearby Lexington, Missouri, where he attended through junior college. In 1945, at the age of 20, Altman enlisted in the Army Air Forces and was a pilot of a B-24, dropping bombs over enemy territory, for the remainder of World War II. It had been while training for the Air Force in California that Altman had first seen the bright lights of Hollywood and became enamored of the movieland. Upon his discharge in 1946, Altman began living in Los Angeles and tried out a number of schemes to position his foot firmly in Hollywood's door. Altman tried acting briefly, appearing in a nightclub scene as an extra in the Danny Kaye vehicle The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. He then wrote a vague storyline (uncredited) for the United Artists picture Christmas Eve, and sold to RKO the script for the 1948 motion picture Bodyguard, which he co-wrote with Richard Fleischer. This sudden success encouraged Altman to move to the New York area and forge a career as a writer. There, Altman found a collaborator in George W. George, with whom he wrote numerous published and unpublished screenplays, musicals, novels, and magazine articles. Altman was not as successful this trip, but back in Hollywood, he tried out one more big money-making scheme. He invented a strange dog-tattooing system for canine identification and invested a lot of his and his friends' money into a company called "Identi-Code." As one of their publicity stunts, Altman and his associates even tattooed President Harry Truman's dog, while Truman was still in the White House. However, the company soon went bankrupt, and in 1950 Altman returned to his friends and family in Kansas City, Missouri, broke and hungry for action, and itching for a second chance to get into movies.

Industrial film experience

In 1950 there were no film schools, but at the age of 25, Altman hit upon the next best thing. He joined the Calvin Company, the world's largest industrial film production company and 16mm film laboratory, headquartered in Kansas City. Altman, fascinated by the company and their equipment, started as a film writer (even though the writing he had done was with collaborators who did most of the real work), and within a few months began to direct films. This led to his employment at the Calvin Company as a film director for almost six years. Until 1955, Altman directed 60 to 65 industrial short films, usually made to promote a business, a service, or a government function, earning $250 a week while simultaneously getting the necessary training and experience that he would need for a successful career in filmmaking. The ability to shoot rapidly, on-schedule, and work within the confines of both big and low budgets would serve him quite well later in his career. On the technical side, he learned all about "the tools of filmmaking": the camera, the boom mike, the lights, etc. Although the Calvin Company never intended themselves to be a substitute film school, evidently they were, not only for Altman, but for a great number of other young filmmakers in the area. However, Altman soon tired of the industrial film format, and kept grasping for more challenging projects. He would occasionally leave for Hollywood and try to write scripts, but then return months later, broke, to the Calvin Company. According to Altman, each time the Calvin people would drop him another notch in salary. The third time, the Calvin people declared at a staff meeting that if he left and came back one more time, they were going to keep him.

First feature film

In 1955, Altman left the Calvin Company, not ever intending to return. He was soon hired by Elmer Rhoden Jr., a local Kansas City movie theater exhibitor, to write and direct a low-budget exploitation film on juvenile crime, titled The Delinquents, which would become the first feature film ever to be directed by Robert Altman. Altman wrote the script in one week and filmed it with a budget of $63,000 on location in Kansas City in two weeks. Rhoden Jr. wanted the film to kick-start his career as a film producer. Altman wanted the film to be his ticket into the elusive Hollywood circles. The cast was made up of the local actors and actresses from community theater who also appeared in Calvin Company films, Altman family members, and three imported actors from Hollywood, including the future Billy Jack, Tom Laughlin. The crew was made up of Altman's former Calvin cohorts and the local friends with whom Altman planned to make his grand "Kansas City escape." In 1956, Altman and his assistant director Reza Badiyi left Kansas City for good to edit The Delinquents in Hollywood. The film was picked up for distribution for $150,000 by United Artists, who released it in 1957, grossing nearly $1,000,000 with it.

Television work

The Delinquents was no runaway success, but it did catch the eye of Alfred Hitchcock, who was impressed and called up Altman to direct a few episodes of his Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series. From 1958 to 1964, Altman directed numerous episodes of numerous TV series including Combat, Bonanza, and Route 66.

Film career continues

Altman then mucked his way through several years of struggle after quarreling with Jack Warner and it was during this time that he first formed his "anti-Hollywood" opinions and entered that stage of his filmmaking. He did a few more feature films without any success, until 1969 when he was offered the script for M
- A
- S
- H, which had been previously rejected by about 15 other directors. Altman went ahead and directed the film, and it was a huge success, both with critics and at the box office. Altman's career took firm hold with the success of M
- A
- S
- H, and he followed it with many other similar, experimental films which made the distinctive "Altman style" well-known to almost every adult moviegoer in the country. As a director, Altman favors stories showing the interrelationships between several characters; he states that he is more interested in character motivation than in intricate plots. As such, he tends to sketch out only a basic plot for the film, referring to the screenplay as a "blueprint" for action, and allows his actors to improvise dialogue. This is one of the reasons Altman is known as an "actor's director," a reputation that helps him work with large casts of well-known actors. He frequently allows the characters to talk over each other in such a way that it's impossible to make out what each of them are saying. He notes on the DVD commentary of McCabe & Mrs. Miller that he lets the dialogue overlap, as well as leaving some things in the plot for the audience to infer, because he wants the audience to pay attention. Similarly, he tries to have his films rated R (by the MPAA rating system) so as to keep children out of his audience--he does not believe children have the patience his films require. Such a tendency sometimes spawns conflict with movie studios, who do want children in the audience because of the size of the demographic. Altman is a man who makes films when no other filmmaker and/or studio would. He was reluctant to make the original 1970 Korean War comedy M
- A
- S
- H because of the pressures involved in filming it, but it still became a critical success. It would later inspire the long-running TV series of the same name. In 1975, Altman made Paramount's Nashville, a semi-musical with a political theme set against the world of country music. Nearly all of his co-stars wrote the songs for the film (one of which won an Academy Award). The way Altman made his films initially didn't sit well with audiences. In 1976, he attempted to find some of his artistic freedom by founding the original Lions Gate Films. The few films he made for the company, including A Wedding, 3 Women, and Quintet, were critically acclaimed but seen by very few people. In 1980, he attempted a movie musical for Disney and Paramount, a live-action version of the comic strip/cartoon Popeye (which starred Robin Williams in his big-screen debut). The film did make money, but it was seen as a failure by some critics. During the 1980's, Altman did a series of films, some well-received (the Richard Nixon drama Secret Honor) and some critically panned (the highly underrated O.C. & Stiggs). He also garnered a good deal of acclaim for his presidential campaign "mockumentary" Tanner '88, for which he earned an Emmy Award. Altman's career began to reach his peak when he directed 1992's The Player for New Line subsidiary Fine Line Features. A satire on Hollywood and its troubles, it was nominated for three Academy Awards, including one for Best Director (Altman). Although it did not win any awards, Altman at last got the acclaim his body of work seemingly deserved. After the success of The Player, Altman directed 1993's Short Cuts, an ambitious adaptation of several short stories by Raymond Carver, which portrayed the lives of various citizens of the city of Los Angeles over the course of several days. The film's large ensemble cast and intertwining of many different storylines harkened back to his 1970s heyday, and earned Altman another Oscar nomination for Best Director. It was acclaimed as Altman's best film in decades (Altman himself considers this, along with Tanner '88, his most creative work) and, along with The Player, cemented his reputation as one of America's best filmmakers. Working with independent studios such as Fine Line, Artisan (now Lions Gate, ironically the studio Altman helped to found), and USA Films (now Focus Features), gave Altman the edge in making the kinds of films he has always wanted to make without outside studio interference. Altman is still developing new projects today, including a movie version of the public radio series A Prairie Home Companion.

Filmography


- The Delinquents (1957) (Altman's big-screen directorial debut)
- The James Dean Story (1957)
- Countdown (1968)
- That Cold Day in the Park (1969)
- M
- A
- S
- H (1970)
- Brewster McCloud (1970)
- McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
- Images (1972)
- The Long Goodbye (1973)
- California Split (1974)
- Thieves Like Us (1974)
- Nashville (1975)
- 3 Women (aka Robert Altman's 3 Women) (1977)
- A Wedding (1978)
- Quintet (1979)
- Health (1979)
- A Perfect Couple (1979)
- Popeye (1980)
- Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
- Streamers (1984)
- Secret Honor (1985)
- Fool for Love (1985)
- Beyond Therapy (1987)
- O.C. & Stiggs (1987)
- Aria (short segment) (1987)
- Tanner '88 (1988)
- Vincent & Theo (1990)
- The Player (1992)
- Short Cuts (1993)
- Prêt-à-Porter (aka Ready to Wear) (1994)
- Kansas City (1996)
- The Gingerbread Man (1997)
- Cookie's Fortune (1998)
- Dr. T & the Women (2000)
- Gosford Park (2001)
- The Company (2003)
- Tanner on Tanner (2004)
- Paint (2005)
- The Last Broadcast (2006, in post-production)

Early Independent Projects

In the early Calvin years in Kansas City during the 1950s, Altman was as busy as he ever was in Hollywood, shooting hours and hours of footage each day, whether for Calvin or for the many independent film projects he pursued in Kansas City in attempts to break into Hollywood:
- Corn's-A-Poppin' (1951) (Altman wrote the screenplay for this poor Kansas City-produced feature film)
- Fashion Faire (1952) (A half-hour fashion parade written and directed by Altman for a fashion show agency)
- The Model's Handbook (1952) (A half-hour pilot for an unrealized television series sponsored by Eileen Ford and her agency and directed by Altman)
- The Pulse of the City (1953-54) (A low-budget television series about crime and ambulance chasing produced and filmed in Kansas City by Altman and co-creator Robert Woodburn using local talent. Ran for one season on the independent Dumont network)

Selected Calvin Industrial Films

Out of 65 or so industrial films directed by Altman for Calvin Company, all less than 30 minutes long, we have selected eleven which are notable for their relationship to the director's later work or for garnering national or international festival awards:
- The Sound of Bells (1950) (A Christmas-themed "sales" film produced for B.F. Goodrich about Santa Claus visiting a service station on Christmas Eve)
- Modern Football (1951) (A documentary-style training film on the rules and regulations of football, shot on location in the Southwest)
- The Dirty Look (1952) (A sales film for Gulf Oil starring "special guest" William Frawley as a prattling barber for comic relief. Calvin often used Hollywood stars in cameo or starring roles in their films to sell the film's message to viewers more easily)
- King Basketball (1952) (Another rules-of-sports films shot on location in the Southwest)
- The Last Mile (1953) (A bleak highway safety film also serving as an ad for Caterpillar Tractor's road-building equipment. Won awards from the Association of Industrial Filmmakers and the National Safety Council in 1953)
- Modern Baseball (1953) (Rules-of-sports film)
- The Builders (1954) (Promotional film for Southern Pine Association)
- Better Football (1954) (Rules-of-sports film, once again starring William Frawley as a pigskin coach who cannot resist the one-liner, for comic relief)
- The Perfect Crime (1955) (Another award-winning highway safety film, once again with a promotional message from Caterpillar)
- Honeymoon for Harriet (1955) (A promotional film for International Harvester, starring Altman's then-wife, Lotus Corelli, who also appears in The Delinquents as a mother)
- The Magic Bond (1956) (A documentary film sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, one of Calvin's and Altman's highest budgets to date, and one of Altman's last Calvin films. Also includes a startling opening sequence not only using the later Altman trademarks of an ensemble cast and overlapping dialogue, but also a sort of anti-war message which is also featured in Altman's 1960s episodes of the TV series Combat)

Bibliographies


- [http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/altman.html Robert Altman Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)]

Additional resources


- The director's commentary on the McCabe & Mrs. Miller DVD, while focusing on that film, also to some degree covers Altman's general methodology as a director.
- Patrick McGilligan's biography of Altman, Jumping Off the Cliff (St. Martin's Press, 1989) is greatly detailed in its writing about the Altman family's involvement in early Kansas City, Altman's childhood, his first films, and the workings of his mind and personality. However, after M
- A
- S
- H and its success, the look into Altman's mind and how it works becomes frustratingly elusive, instead concentrating on his movies in general. This book is where the information on Altman's childhood, military service, and early years of filmmaking in Kansas City comes from.

External links


-
- [http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/05/altman.html Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database]
- [http://www.robertaltman.com Altman's Annex] - Official Robert Altman Site
- [http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1205890,00.html Still up to mischief] - The Guardian, May 1, 2004
- [http://www.24liesasecond.com/site2/index.php?page=2&task=index_onearticle.php&Column_Id=82 Altman and Coppola in the Seventies: Power and the People] Essay (24 Lies A Second) Altman, Robert Altman, Robert Altman, Robert Altman, Robert Altman, Robert Altman, Robert Altman, Robert ja:ロバート・アルトマン

Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE (August 13, 1899 – April 29, 1980) was a British-born (later American as well) film director and producer, closely associated with the suspense thriller genre. He began directing in the United Kingdom before working in the United States from 1939 onwards, becoming an American citizen in 1956. He directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades, from the silent film era, through the invention of talkies, to the color era. Hitchcock remains one of the best known and most popular directors of all time, famous for his expert and often unrivaled control of pace and suspense throughout his movies. Hitchcock's films draw heavily on both fear and fantasy, and are known for their droll humour. They often portray innocent people caught up in circumstances beyond their control or understanding. This often involves a transference of guilt in which the "innocent" character's failings are transferred to another character and magnified. Another common theme is the exploration of the compatibility of men and women; Hitchcock's films often take a cynical view of traditional romantic relationships. Although Hitchcock was an enormous star during his lifetime, he was not usually ranked highly by contemporaneous film critics. Rebecca was the only one of his films to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, although four others were nominated. He was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in 1967, but never personally received an Academy Award of Merit. The French New Wave critics, especially Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and François Truffaut, were among the first to promote his films as having artistic merit beyond entertainment. Hitchcock was one of the first directors to whom they applied their auteur theory, which stresses the artistic authority of the director in the movie-making process. Through his fame, public persona, and degree of creative control, Hitchcock transformed the role of the director, which had previously been eclipsed by that of the producer. He is seen today as the quintessential director who managed to combine art and entertainment in a way very few have ever matched. His innovations and vision have influenced a great number of filmmakers, producers, and actors.

Biography

Early life

Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, in Leytonstone, London, the second son and youngest of the three children of William Hitchcock, a greengrocer, and his wife, Emma Jane Hitchcock (nee Whelan). His family was mostly Irish Catholic. Hitchcock was sent to Catholic boarding schools in London. He has said his childhood was very lonely and sheltered. At 14, Hitchcock lost his father and left the Jesuit-run St Ignatius' College, his school at the time, to study at the School for Engineering and Navigation. After graduating, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a cable company. About that time, Hitchcock became intrigued by photography and started working in film in London. In 1920, he obtained a full-time job at Islington Studios under its American owners, Players-Lasky, and their British successors, Gainsborough Pictures, designing the titles for silent movies.

Pre-war British career

As a major talent in a new industry with plenty of opportunity, he rose quickly. In 1925, Michael Balcon of Gainsborough Pictures gave him a chance to direct his first film, The Pleasure Garden, made at the Ufa studios in Germany. However, the commercial failure of this film, and his second, The Mountain Eagle, threatened to derail his promising career, until he attached himself to the thriller genre. The resulting film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, was released in 1927 and was a major commercial and critical success. Like many of his earlier works it was influenced by Expressionist techniques he had witnessed first hand in Germany. In it, attractive blondes are strangled and the new lodger (Ivor Novello) in the Bunting family's upstairs apartment falls under heavy suspicion. This is the first truly "Hitchcockian" film, incorporating such themes as the "wrong man". Following the success of The Lodger, Hitchcock began his first efforts to promote himself in the media, and hired a publicist to cement his growing reputation as one of the British film industry's rising stars. In 1926, he was to marry his assistant director Alma Reville. The two had a daughter Patricia in 1928. Alma was Hitchcock's closest collaborator. She wrote some of his screenplays and worked with him on every one of his films. In 1929, he began work on Blackmail, his tenth film. While the film was in production, the studio decided to make it one of Britain's first sound pictures. With the climax of the film taking place on the dome of the British Museum, Blackmail also began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as the backdrop to a story. In 1933, Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon at Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. His first film for the company, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), was a success, while his second, The 39 Steps (1935), is often considered one of the best films from his early period. It was also one of the first to introduce the concept of the "MacGuffin", a plot device around which a whole story would revolve. In The 39 Steps, the MacGuffin is a stolen set of blueprints. His next major success was in 1938, The Lady Vanishes, a clever and fast-paced film about the search for a kindly old Englishwoman (Dame May Whitty), who disappears while on board a train in the fictional country of Vandrika (a thinly-veiled version of Nazi Germany). By the end of the 1930s, Hitchcock was at the top of his game artistically, and in a position to name his own terms when David O. Selznick managed to entice the Hitchcocks across to Hollywood.

Hollywood

Hitchcock's gallows humour continued in his American work, together with the suspense that became his trademark. However, working arrangements with his new producer were less than optimal. Selznick suffered from perennial money problems and Hitchcock was often unhappy with the amount of creative control demanded by Selznick over his films. Subsequently, Selznick ended up "loaning" Hitchcock to the larger studios more often than producing Hitchcock's films himself. With the prestigious picture Rebecca in 1940, Hitchcock made his first American movie, although it was set in England and based on a novel by English author Dame Daphne du Maurier. This Gothic melodrama explores the fears of a naïve young bride who enters a great English country home and must grapple with a distant husband, a predatory housekeeper, and the legacy of her husband's late wife. It has also subsequently been noted for lesbian undercurrents. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940. Hitchcock's second American film, the European-set thriller Foreign Correspondent was also nominated for Best Picture that year. Hitchcock's work during the 1940's was very diverse, ranging from the romantic comedy, Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) and the courtroom drama The Paradine Case (1947), to the dark and disturbing Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Shadow of a Doubt, his personal favorite, was about young Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright), who suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Spencer (Joseph Cotten) of murder. In its use of overlapping characters, dialogue, and closeups it has provided a generation of film theorists with psychoanalytic potential, including Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek. The film also harkens to one of Cotten's better known films, Citizen Kane. Spellbound explored the then very fashionable subject of psychoanalysis and featured a dream sequence which was designed by Salvador Dali. The actual dream sequence in the film was considerably cut from the original planned scene that was to run for some minutes but proved too disturbing for the finished film. Notorious (1946) marked Hitchcock's first film as a producer as well as director. As Selznick failed to see the subject's potential, he allowed Hitchcock to make the film for RKO. From this point on, Hitchcock would produce his own films, giving him a far greater degree of freedom to pursue the projects that interested him. Starring Ingrid Bergman and Hitchcock regular Cary Grant, and featuring a plot about Nazis, radium and South America, Notorious was a huge box office success and has remained one of Hitchcock's most acclaimed films. Its inventive use of suspense and props briefly led to Hitchcock being under surveillance by the CIA due to his use of uranium as a plot device. Rope (his first color film) came next in 1948. Here Hitchcock experimented with marshalling suspense in a confined environment, as he had done earlier with Lifeboat. He also experimented with exceptionally long takes - up to ten minutes (see Themes and devices). Featuring James Stewart in the leading role, Rope was the first of an eventual four films Stewart would make for Hitchcock. Based on the Leopold and Loeb case of the 1920s, Rope is also among the earliest openly gay-themed films to emerge from the Hays Office controlled Hollywood studio era. Under Capricorn, set in nineteenth-century Australia, also used this short-lived technique, but to a more limited extent. For these two films he formed a production company with Sidney Bernstein, called Transatlantic Pictures, which folded after these two unsuccessful pictures.

Peak years and decline

With Strangers on a Train (1951), based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, Hitchcock combined many of the best elements from his preceding British and American films. Two men casually meet and speculate on removing people who are causing them difficulty. One of the men, though, takes this banter entirely seriously. With Farley Granger reprising some elements of his role from Rope, Strangers continued the director's interest in the narrative possiblities of homosexual blackmail and murder. Three very popular films, all starring Grace Kelly, followed. Dial M for Murder was adapted from the popular stage play by Frederick Knott. This was originally another experimental film, with Hitchcock using the technique of 3D cinematography. Rear Window, starred James Stewart again, as well as Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr. Here the wheelchair-bound Stewart observes the movements of his neighbours across the courtyard. He becomes convinced that the wife of a near neighbour has been murdered. To Catch a Thief, set in the French Riviera, starred Kelly and Cary Grant. In 1956, Hitchcock also remade his 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much, this time with James Stewart and Doris Day. 1958's Vertigo again starred Stewart, this time with Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. The film was a commercial failure, but has come to be viewed by many as one of Hitchcock's masterpieces. Hitchcock followed Vertigo with three very different films, which were all massive commercal successes. All are also recognised as among his very best films: North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963). The latter two were particularly notable for their unconventional soundtracks, both by Bernard Herrmann: the screeching strings in the murder scene in Psycho pushed the limits of the time, and The Birds dispensed completely with conventional instruments, using an electronically produced soundtrack. These were his last great films, after which his career slowly wound down. In 1972 Hitchcock returned to London to film Frenzy, his last major success. For the first time, Hitchcock allowed nudity and profane language, which had before been taboo, in one of his films. Failing health slowed down his output over the last two decades of his life. Family Plot (1976) was his last film. It related the escapades of "Madam" Blanche Tyler played by Barbara Harris, a fraudulent spiritualist, and her taxi driver lover Bruce Dern making a living from her phony powers. William Devane and Katherine Helmond co-starred. Hitchcock was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Years Honours. He died just four months later, on April 29, before he had the opportunity to be formally invested by the Queen. He was nevertheless entitled to be known as Sir Alfred Hitchcock and to use the postnominal letters KBE, because he remained a British subject when he adopted American citizenship in 1956. Alfred Hitchcock died from renal failure in his Bel Air, Los Angeles, home at the age of 80 and was survived by his wife Alma Reville, and their daughter, Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell. His body was cremated, and apparently there was no public funeral or memorial service.

Themes and devices

Hitchcock preferred the use of suspense over surprise in his films. In surprise, the director assaults the viewer with frightening things. In suspense, the director tells or shows things to the audience which the characters in the film do not know, and then artfully builds tension around what will happen when the characters finally learn the truth. Further blurring the moral distinction between the innocent and the guilty, occasionally making this indictment clear, Hitchcock also makes voyeurs of his "respectable" audience. In Rear Window (1954), after L. B. Jeffries (played by James Stewart) has been staring across the courtyard at him for most of the film, Lars Thorwald (played by Raymond Burr) confronts Jeffries by saying "What do you want of me?" Burr might as well have been addressing the audience. In fact, shortly before asking this, Thorwald turns to face the camera directly for the first time — at this point, audiences often gasp. One of Hitchcock's favourite devices for driving the plots of his stories and creating suspense was what he called the "MacGuffin." The plots of many of his suspense films revolve around a "MacGuffin": a detail which, by inciting curiosity and desire, drives the plot and motivates the actions of characters within the story, but whose specific identity and nature is unimportant to the spectator of the film. In Vertigo, for instance, "Carlotta Valdes" is a MacGuffin; she never appears and the details of her death are unimportant to the viewer, but the story about her ghost's haunting of Madeleine Elster is the spur for Scottie's investigation of her, and hence the film's entire plot. In Notorious the uranium that the main characters must recover before it reaches Nazi hands serves as a similarly arbitrary motivation: any dangerous object would suffice. And state secrets of various kinds serve as MacGuffins in several of the spy films, like The Thirty-Nine Steps. Most of Hitchcock's films contain cameo appearances by Hitchcock himself: the director would be seen for a brief moment boarding a bus, crossing in front of a building, standing in an apartment across the courtyard, or appearing in a photograph. This playful gesture became one of Hitchcock's signatures. As a recurring theme he would carry a musical instrument — especially memorable was the large double bass case that he wrestles onto the train at the beginning of Strangers on a Train. In his earliest appearances he would fill in as an obscure extra, standing in a crowd or walking through a scene in a long camera shot. But he became more prominent in his later appearances, as when he turns to see Jane Wyman's disguise when she passes him on the street in Stage Fright, and in stark silhouette in his final film Family Plot. (See a list of Hitchcock cameo appearances.) Hitchcock also uses the number 13 in his films. Adding up various dates, street addresses, license plates, and other numbered items brings up the number 13 on a regular basis. Psycho (1960) provides several good examples. Norman Bates moves to select room 3, then room 1. The most recent date of entry in the logbook on check-in adds up to 13. Hitchcock seemed to delight in the technical challenges of filmmaking. In Lifeboat, Hitchcock sets the entire action of the movie in a small boat, yet manages to keep the cinematography from monotonous repetition. His trademark cameo appearance was a dilemma, given the claustrophobic setting; so Hitchcock appeared on camera in a fictitious newspaper ad for a weight loss product. In Spellbound two unprecedented point-of-view shots were achieved by constructing a large wooden hand (which would appear to belong to the character whose point of view the camera took) and outsized props for it to hold: a bucket-sized glass of milk and a large wooden gun. For added novelty and impact, the climactic gunshot was hand-colored red on some copies of the black-and-white print of the film. Rope (1948) was another technical challenge: a film that appears to have been shot entirely in a single take. The film was actually shot in eight takes of approximately 10 minutes each, which was the amount of film that would fit in a single camera reel; the transitions between reels were hidden by having a dark object fill the entire screen for a moment. Hitchcock used those points to hide the cut, and began the next take with the camera in the same place. His 1958 film Vertigo contains a camera trick that has been imitated and re-used so many times by filmmakers, it has become known as the Hitchcock zoom. Although famous for inventive camera angles, Hitchcock generally avoided points of view that were physically impossible from a human perspective. For example, he would never place the camera looking out from inside a refrigerator.

His character and its effects on his films

Hitchcock was in his mid-twenties, and a professional film director, before he'd ever drunk alcohol or been on a date. His films sometimes feature male characters struggling in their relationships with their mothers. In North by Northwest (1959), Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant's character) is an innocent man ridiculed by his mother for insisting that shadowy, murderous men are after him (in this case, they are). In The Birds (1963), the Rod Taylor character, an innocent man, finds his world under attack by vicious birds, and struggles to free himself of a clinging mother. The killer in Frenzy (1972) has a loathing of women but idolizes his mother. The villain Bruno in Strangers on a Train hates his father, but has an incredibly close relationship with his mother. Norman Bates' troubles with his mother in Psycho are infamous. Hitchcock heroines tend to be lovely, cool blondes who seem at first to be proper but, when aroused by passion or danger, respond in a more sensual, animal, perhaps criminal way. As noted, the famous victim in The Lodger is a blonde. In The 39 Steps, Hitchcock's glamorous blonde star, Madeleine Carroll, is put in handcuffs. In Marnie (1964), glamorous blonde Tippi Hedren is a kleptomaniac. In To Catch a Thief (1955), glamorous blonde Grace Kelly offers to help someone she believes is a cat burglar. After becoming interested in Thorwald's life in Rear Window, Lisa breaks into Thorwald's apartment. And, most notoriously, in Psycho, Janet Leigh's character steals $40,000 and gets murdered by a young man named Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who thought he was his own mother. (Or, as Norman put it himself, "My mother is — what's the phrase? — she isn't really herself today.") His last blonde heroine was French actress Claude Jade as the secret agent's worried daughter Michele in Topaz (1969). Hitchcock saw that reliance on actors and actresses was a holdover from the theater tradition. He was a pioneer in using camera movement, camera set ups and montage to explore the outer reaches of cinematic art. Hitchcock's most personal films are probably Notorious (1946) and Vertigo — both about the obsessions and neuroses of men who manipulate women. Hitchcock often said that his personal favourite was Shadow of a Doubt. Vertigo explores more frankly and at greater length his interest in the relation between sex and death. Kim Novak's character is most attractive as a blonde, and though Jimmy Stewart's character believes she is suicidal (he later discovers the truth about her), he falls in love with her and she with him. Stewart's character feels an angry need to control his lover, to dress her, to fetishise her clothes, her shoes, her hair.

His style of working

Hitchcock had trouble giving proper credit to the screenwriters who did so much to make his visions come to life on the screen. Gifted writers worked with him, including Raymond Chandler and John Michael Hayes, but rarely felt they had been treated as equals. Hitchcock once commented, "The writer and I plan out the entire script down to the smallest detail, and when we're finished all that's left to do is to shoot the film. Actually, it's only when one enters the studio that one enters the area of compromise. Really, the novelist has the best casting since he doesn't have to cope with the actors and all the rest." Hitchcock was often critical of his actors and actresses as well, dismissing, for example, Kim Novak's performance in Vertigo, and once famously remarking that actors were to be treated like cattle. (In response to being accused of saying 'actors are cattle', he said 'I never said they were cattle; I said they were to be treated like cattle'.) The first book devoted to the director is simply named Hitchcock. It is a document of a one-week interview by François Truffaut in