The biggest manufacturer of professional film equipment in the world is called Arnold & Richter Cine Technik, or better known as “Arri." This private company was created in 1917 in Munich. The two men of Arri took seven years to create their first camera, the Kinarri 35, which was known for being small and portable. Although it took them years to make an impact on the film camera market, the Arriflex 35 that Arri created in 1937 became one of the most widely used motion picture cameras in history. Today we are going to look at one of Arri’s most recent cameras, the Arri Alexa, which was the company’s first major step into the realm of digital motion picture cameras.

Arri's first digital motion picture cameras were the Arriflex D-20 and D-21, however were not widely used. The main difference between a traditional digital camera and these first two cameras produced by Arri, was the size of the sensor.  The digital sensor was the same size as a 35mm film camera, allowing for the camera to continue utilizing 35mm camera lenses. The Arri Alexa was the third digital camera that Arri manufactured, and maintained the Supper 35 sized CMOS sensor.

The Arri Alexa is a full featured, high-end camera with a SxS card encoder that records to ProRes 422 or ProRes 444 codecs. The Alexa can also record to DnxHD in 1080p resolution. Another interesting feature of Alexa allows for owners to purchase a “key” from Arri for an additional 1350€ ($1855.44) which will unlock the feature to record in ProRess 422 HQ up to 120fps. In addition to recording in a variety of ProRes formats, the camera can record to ArriRaw as well to external recording devices.

Overall the Arri Alexa has received fantastic reviews and has been used overwhelmingly in the market. While the Arriflex 35 solidified the company in the film industry originally, the Arri Alexa has re-branded the company into the digital age of film production. This German-based film company is truly a master at creating perfect film equipment for professions in the industry and has been able to find the perfect blend of simplicity and high performance. Notable productions that used this camera include:

·         Downton Abbey (2010-2014) – A television show on PBS
·         Game of Thrones (2011-present) – a television show on HBO that has received critical acclaim
·         Hugo (Martin Scorcese, 2011) – winner of the Academy Award for Best Cinematography
·         Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011) – a critically acclaimed film
·         Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012) – the first digitally shot James Bond film
·         Life of Pi (Ang Lee, 2012) – winner of the Academy Award for Best Cinematography
·         Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012) – winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture
·         Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012) – a critically acclaimed film
·         The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012) – the third highest grossing film of all time
·         Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) – a critically acclaimed film

Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, No Country for Old Men), who is arguably considered the greatest cinematographer of the last few decades first used digital cameras for In Time (Andrew Niccol, 2011), using particularly the Arri Alexa. He enjoyed using the camera so much, that he decided to use it for Skyfall the following year. This is what he had to say about the Alexa: 

"We shot for 128 days with the camera, and I can’t remember one problem. We put it through a lot of different type of situations. I mean, talk about the low-light night stuff, which is a very extreme contrast ratio in the Shanghai set. On the other side of the spectrum, we’re shooting the bright sun on the Mediterranean, and it looked great. That was unexpected. I thought shooting in such extreme, bright sunlight it would have had problems, but it didn’t. The camera behaved as well or better than it would have on film."

by Mark Young

The Academy Awards, commonly referred to as the Oscars, is considered the crowning achievement in the Hollywood film industry.  The Academy Awards is an annual ceremony put on by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  The Academy is made up of over 6,000 actors, directors, musicians, and other industry professionals.  And as we approach the 84th Annual Academy Awards, I find myself, as I usually do, full of questions.  But, as I cannot possibly answer all these questions in a single article I will limit myself to just one.  How did this all get started?

It all started at a dinner party in 1927.  Louis B. Mayer, the studio chief and one of the M’s in MGM studios, along with three of his dinner guests began conceiving the idea of an organization to benefit and promote the film industry.  They had a second dinner party the following week to gather more clout amongst other industry professionals such as Mary Pickford, Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, and Irving Thalberg.  The idea was well received and within a few months the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was born.

The very first Academy Award ceremony took place on May 16th, 1929 and was held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.  They had a dinner banquet with less than three hundred people in attendance.  All of the actors, directors, and other professionals already knew who was going to win as the winners had been announced three months prior.  In fact the first winner in the Best Actor category, Emil Jannings, was unable to attend the dinner and was given his award prior to the ceremony and is now credited as being the first Academy Award winner.  There were only 12 categories awarded that evening with fifteen statuettes being handed out.  The entire handing out of awards lasted almost fifteen minutes.

Over the years that followed the Awards evolve into the ceremony that it is today.  The second show changed by announcing the winners the night of the ceremony instead of months in advance.  Only newspapers were given advanced notice of who would win so they could be published in the following morning early edition.  The closed envelope system wasn’t invented for another ten years when the L.A. times published the names of the winners in advance of the evening ceremony, thus ending any advance notice for the press.

Over the years many categories were dropped or added, and the amount of nominations has changed many times.  For more on the history of the Oscars check out their website here: History of the Academy Awards.  And for a complete list of this year’s nominees click here: 2014 Oscar Nominees.

One of the greatest directors of all time and probably the best of his generation is 3-Time Academy Award Winning director Steven Spielberg. Born December 18, 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Spielberg, as with many directors today, began experimenting with film early in his life. In his early teens, he started making movies that he would show to his family (The Biography Channel).

To accommodate his father’s job, Spielberg and his family often moved around to different cities. After doing a couple short films, Spielberg produced his first feature-length film “Firelight” at Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona on a budget of only $400. The film ended up making a solid profit after it was shown at a local theater (The Biography Channel).

Upon his parents’ divorce, Spielberg moved with his father to California. He repeatedly tried to get into the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television and the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema and Television, but he failed to gain admission into the schools. He eventually attended California State University in Long Beach and got his first position as an unpaid intern in the editing department of Universal Studios. His job at Universal essentially came by accident as, while on a tour bus, Spielberg jumped off the bus and wandered inside one of Universal’s studio buildings. Seeing Spielberg’s interest and enthusiasm, the workers at Universal allowed him to return and watch the directors at work. Spielberg came back every day for the rest of the summer, even finding an office and moving in (The Biography Channel).

During this time at Universal, Spielberg released his first professional film, “Amblin”. The 24-minute picture impressed the Universal executives to such a degree that they signed him as a television director. As a result, Spielberg promptly dropped out of college in 1969, and interestingly wouldn’t end up finishing his degree until decades later in 2002 (The Biography Channel).

After directing several TV shows such as “Night Gallery”, “Name of the Game”, and “Columbo”, Spielberg eventually created his first professional feature film “Sugarland Express” in 1974. Though the film was not a box office success, Spielberg was viewed as a potential star by many critics and industry executives.

The following year, however, would launch Spielberg into international stardom. In 1975, he released the horror/thriller Jaws, a film based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley about a giant killer shark that goes on a feeding frenzy of the inhabitants of Amity Island. On a budget of $8 million, the film grossed an incredible $191 million in the year of its release. Worldwide, the film ended up grossing $430.5 million. Jaws ended up winning 3 Oscars for Best Editing, John William’s iconic haunting music for Best Original Score, and Best Sound. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, but lost to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Importantly, because of its massive success at the box office, Jaws was credited as the first ever blockbuster film. Spielberg himself saw the film as a somewhat accidental success, as the robotic shark used in the film suffered countless technical problems. As a result, Spielberg had to revert to using POV (Point-of-View) shots for the shark, which incidentally ended up creating a more horrifying effect for the audience.

After Jaws, Spielberg’s next film was the science fiction film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spielberg re-casted Richard Dreyfuss from Jaws and teamed up again with composer John Williams. The film garnered 6 Academy Award nominations, including Best Director for Spielberg, and eventually won one for Best Cinematography.

Spielberg next suffered his first “flop” film, 1941, in 1979. However, Spielberg quickly rebounded with several action-adventure blockbusters. The first of these was Raiders of the Lost Ark, which ended up being the first in the Indiana Jones series and the biggest picture of 1981, earning Spielberg another Best Director nomination.

 He followed Raiders of the Lost Ark with another science fiction film, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which was nominated for 9 Academy Awards. The film was a huge critical and box office success and ended up becoming the highest-grossing movie in film history (at the time).

After directing the next two “Indiana Jones” sequels, (with several other successful films in between), Spielberg directed another iconic film, Jurassic Park, for which he was praised for creating the best sequences of awe and terror since Jaws. The film, like Jaws, was based on a novel of the same name (this one by Michael Crichton). The story centered on a paleontologist who, with his girlfriend, visits a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica, where dinosaurs have been genetically cloned. However, after a power outage from a storm, the electric fences fail and the dinosaurs are released from their paddocks, and terror ensues.  The film had ground-breaking special effects (which still hold up today) from ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) animation and Stan Winston’s animatronics. The film won 3 Academy Awards for Best Sound, Best Effects and Sound Effects Editing, and for Best Visual Effects. Jurassic Park was also a box-office smash and ended up overtaking Spielberg’s earlier film, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial to become the highest grossing film of all time (James Cameron's Titanic would later take over that mark in 1997).

Despite easily being the most successful director of his period, it wasn’t until his 1993 film Schindler’s List that Spielberg received his first Academy Award for Best Director. The film centered on Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German industrialist who helped save over 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust.

Over the following years, Spielberg repeatedly continued to create critical and box office smashes. Among these was the 1998 war film, Saving Private Ryan, which took in 5 Academy Awards. He continues to make these successful films, even up to 2012’s historical film, Lincoln, which won 2 Academy Awards.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest directors to ever come out of the film industry. He has written, directed, and produced almost countless blockbusters that we know and love today and has made an incredible and unforgettable resume for himself. Because of these massive successes, Spielberg is one of the wealthiest directors in the industry today and has been a household name for several decades. The film industry owes a debt of gratitude to this incredibly influential director.

Spielberg has numerous trademarks. He frequently hires 5-Time Academy Award winning composer John Williams to score the music for his films. Also, he frequently casts Tom Hanks, Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Frank Welker, and Tom Cruise. His films usually reference World War II, and he oftentimes references Disney films, music, or theme parks. In the stories of his films, the protagonists often come from families with divorced parents. This reflects Spielberg’s own experience with his parents’ divorce. In using special effects for his films, Spielberg has consistently used Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) for animation. The only exception was The Terminal, whose effects were done by Digital Imageworks. In his camera work, Spielberg frequently uses the “dolly zoom” camera effect, which conveys an emotional impact or realization in a character. This was most notably used in Jaws when Chief Brody witnesses a shark attack (IMDB).

Written by Anthony Watkins

WORKS CITED
IMDB. 2014. 01 Jan. 2014. <http://www.imdb.com>.

“Steven Spielberg Biography.” The Biography Channel. 2013. 17 Feb. 2014.
<http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/steven-spielberg.html>.

            Over the course of the past decade, the superhero film has become a common fixture in most theaters all over the world. Although these films were once typically considered extensions of the science fiction or fantasy genre, their sheer volume in recent years begs the question of whether or not the superhero film should be viewed as a credible genre in and of itself. But what exactly has inspired this modern fascination with the larger-than-life superhero figure?

            Ever since their introduction to the world of cinema, superhero movies have largely functioned as big-screen adaptations of the comic book heroes created by DC and Marvel comics. However, as demonstrated by Adam West’s Batman of 1966, most of these early efforts were rather campy and aimless. But with Richard Donner’s mega-hit Superman (1978) functioning as a catalyst for further exploration into the superhero movie, due to its enormous success (grossed $300.22 million) and memorable performances from Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman, interest in superhero movies as a cinematic genre grew exponentially (Smith). This paved the way for additional Superman films, as well as Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), which played an enormous role in establishing the modern superhero film as a means of filmmaking to be taken seriously. Instead of being associated with all things camp and kitsch, with Tim Burton’s film, the superhero movie became a somber, gritty, and psychologically heavy picture.

            With the release of Bryan Singer’s X-Men in 2000, this direction for the superhero film was solidified. By providing a psychological character study of the various disenfranchised souls who comprise the X-Men, Singer not only communicated that superhero movies could function as more than ludicrous fantasy, but also supplied viewers with a metaphor for society’s suspicion of outsiders. This idea of superheroes catering to society’s concerns and perceptions is something that I have found to be very interesting, and was actually a topic that I spent a great deal of time researching in a college course on Communication Theory. Although the details of my findings could stand alone as a separate blog post altogether, in short, I concluded that comic book superheroes could be critiqued as symbolic equipment for disclosing real situations or concerns raised by society, and through careful consideration, these figures could effectively project a “solution” for alleviating various societal ills. Building off of this conjecture, it naturally follows that superheroes should provide more cultural value to society at its lowest points. As an example of this, when The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008) was released, American culture was enraged with governmental entities, and many people sought to embrace an agent of change, which was observable in protests over inequality. However, through the character of the Joker in The Dark Knight, the film provided a “solution” for the time by suggesting that anarchy and the deconstruction of our current government would not be nearly as glamorous as it sounds, considering that some people simply want to “watch the world burn.”

            Given The Dark Knight’s significant societal and psychological value, as well as its financially impressive grossing of over $1 billion worldwide, it certainly seems reasonable to describe it as one of the greatest superhero movies ever made (Smith). However, with additional successes from films like Spider-Man (Raimi, 2002), Iron Man (Favreau, 2008), and The Avengers (Whedon, 2012), the superhero movie shows no immediate signs of slowing down, and has shown great promise of the diversity that it has to offer. While the superhero movie certainly suffers from the rapid release of blockbuster franchise films seeking to turn an enormous profit, I personally believe that the superhero movie has gradually developed into a credible cinematic movement and should be viewed as a reputable genre in and of itself, due to its ability to shed light on and offer solutions for relevant societal issues in an entertaining fashion.

Works Cited

Smith, James. "The Art of the Superhero Movie." Daily Lounge. Web. <http://dailylounge.com/the-daily/entry/the-art-of-the-superhero-movie>.

With the Oscars approaching, I thought it would be appropriate for me to overview an award category, giving you some history as well as some information on previous winners and the current nominees. One of the special characteristics of cinema that has helped cultures fantasize for over a century now is the ability for a filmmaker to create an image for the audience that is nonexistent in the real world. The Academy Award for Best Visual Effects (VFX) tries to find the film during that year in which the filmmaker was able to most effectively create illusions for his story. When looking at this award historically, it typically was able to highlight films which were especially influential to the direction in which film ended up heading.

Numerous popular classics have received Best VFX, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977), Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991), and Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) to name a few. More recently, films like King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005), Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), and Hugo (Martin Scorcese, 2011) have won the award, mainly for there ability to use digital filmmaking to its fullest potential.

Let's take a look at two films which won the award in the past.

2001: A Space Odyssey is still to this day renowned for its groundbreaking use of special effects. From start to finish, there were techniques that the great Stanley Kubrick engineered and created, laying out the visual effect techniques for filmmakers until the digital revolution in the early 90's. In the scene above, where the average monkey discovers a bone which he can use as a tool, Kubrick used front projection, which until this film never existed. Instead of doing the typical process in which the background was projected behind the subjects in the shot, the environment was overlaid on top of the monkey, giving a more realistic shot to the audience. He used this not only in his historic "Dawn of Man" scene, but throughout the entire film. This brilliant new technique was one of many reasons why this film in the end won the award for Best Visual Effects.

Let's look at a more recent film, Hugo, which won the award in 2011.

While Martin Scorcese is not a director who is known particularly for his visual effects, his film that features a boy living in a train station during the 1930's used visual effects to enhance his tribute to the origins of film. As a result, Hugo received the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. One scene from the film that juxtaposed the currently emerging visual techniques as well as a comically classic anecdote from the early era of film is when Hugo dreams that a train at the station runs off the track, terrorizing the people crowding the station. The Lumiere Brothers, considered the first group of filmmakers ever, were showing one of their many short films, which was simply a train arriving at a station. As the train approached the edge of the frame, travelling "towards" the audience, the film entitled The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (The Lumiere Brothers, 1895) frightened the audience so suddenly, that most of the audience panicked and ran out of the room. Similarly, Hugo showed a train running off the tracks towards the people in the station, frightening them. Scorcese, being the brilliant filmmaker that he is, by using 3D, was able to replicate the feeling of panic that the Lumiere Brothers were able to achieve when they invented cinema. It was this level of brilliance that gave Hugo the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Both of these films were prime examples of how intelligent filmmakers were able to receive this award, however other films such as Jurassic Park, Star Wars, or Alien were simply breathtaking in their visual effects as well. Let's take a quick look at the films that have been nominated for this category at the 86th Academy Awards:

• Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron, 2013)
• Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2013)
• Star Trek: Into Darkness (J.J. Abrams, 2013)
• The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (Peter Jackson, 2013)
• The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski, 2013)

Keep a lookout on this year's Oscars to see which film will win the award this year.

by Mark Young

This weekend will mark the opening of the twentieth year of the Sedona International Film Festival.  This year’s festival is expected to pull out all the stops with one hundred and sixty films, a lifetime achievement award for Susan Sarandon, and the always favored workshop by Frank Warner.

The Sedona International Film Festival (SIFF) is known as one of the top festivals in the nation.  SIFF is a 9 day event beginning on February 22nd and continuing through March 2nd.  The event takes place in Sedona, Arizona at the Harkins Theatre, The Mary D. Fisher Theatre, and the Sedona Performing Arts Center.  The festival features independent films in a wide variety of categories from feature length films, to short films, to documentaries and animation.  There are even a number of indie films presented by Actors and Directors of Hollywood success.  The festival will also be featuring the short film nominees for the Academy Awards which has become something of a tradition over the past 9 years.

In addition to screening films this festival is known for their high quality workshops which allow film students and cinephiles a chance to work side by side with leaders in the film industry.  The workshops are not part of the paid event of the festival but instead are free and open to the public.

Among the films that will be screened at the festival are Forrest Whitaker’s Repentances, Academy Award nominee The Act of Killing, and Girl on A Bicycle from Jeremy Leven known for screenwriting The Notebook.  For a full list of films to be screened click here.  This film festival is one that all film students and lovers of film should make an effort to attend at some time in their life.

One of the most iconic movie props to ever be developed and used on film was the DeLorean time machine that was used in Robert Zemeckis’ hit trilogy, Back to the Future. In the many years that have followed the films’ release, countless toys and models have been produced and sold of the famous vehicle. Also, some (lucky) people who possess a DeLorean today have even taken it upon themselves to modify the vehicle into the one used in the films.

So we see that it's clearly evident the production team behind Back to the Future struck gold in creating the DeLorean time machine. So how exactly did director Robert Zemeckis and his crew develop the original idea and look of the famous time traveling vehicle?

Interestingly, the original idea for the time machine in the film wasn’t for a DeLorean, or for a car at all for that matter. The very first form of the time machine used in the original draft of the screenplay was a laser device that was attached to a refrigerator. The refrigerator was then transported to a nuclear bomb site. Ultimately, however, the idea of the time machine being a refrigerator was abandoned, as Zemeckis stated that he feared children, after watching the film, would start climbing in refrigerators and get trapped. After the refrigerator, Zemeckis next came up with the idea of the time machine being a vehicle, as this would end up making the machine mobile (Back to the Future DVD).

After deciding on the machine being a vehicle, the question became, “What kind of car?” Ultimately, the decision landed on the DeLorean DMC-12. The specific reason for the DeLorean was mostly for the sake of the plot of the film. In the beginning, Marty (Michael J. Fox) travels back to 1955. Upon “re-entry” from 1985, he crashes into a barn. When the residents hear the crash and investigate, they see Marty (still with his radiation suit on) opening the characteristic “gull-wing” doors of the DeLorean, and as a result they believe the machine to be an alien spaceship. This is particularly why Zemeckis needed a "futuristic" looking vehicle with gull-wing doors, as the DeLorean sported (Back to the Future DVD).

After choosing the type of car, the development moved to the look of the vehicle. Artist Andrew Probert was the first hired to develop designs for the exterior of the DeLorean. Probert came up with fantastic sketches of the time machine, but ultimately Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale felt that Probert’s designs were “too perfect”, as the time machine was supposed to be a vehicle that was built in a garage and made out of various parts from a hardware and electronics store. Eventually another artist, Ron Cobb, stepped in and started coming up with new sketches. Cobb added things like coils to the rear of the DeLorean, and even came up with the previously desired nuclear component by adding a nuclear reactor to the back of the vehicle. Ultimately, this was a vital choice by Cobb as the nuclear component of the time machine became a key plot point in the film. After adding the reactor, Cobb also added a single rear vent to the vehicle. Ultimately, however, to make the car more “symmetrical”, another vent was added to the back of the DeLorean so there was one on each side, thereby “balancing” the car. For the interior of the car, the production design team added several buttons and lights (including various aircraft parts) to not only make the vehicle look complex, but also to add appeal and interest for the viewer. Besides adding CGI to display the time travel, the production team added liquid nitrogen to the DeLorean in an effort to complete the time travel effect. This gave the impression of the vehicle being extremely cold due to traveling through time (Back to the Future DVD).

In conclusion, the DeLorean time machine used in Robert Zemeckis’ hit Back to the Future trilogy has perhaps forever sparked interest in the DeLorean vehicle. As already mentioned, countless toys and die-cast models have been produced and sold as a result of the series. After the film, the creator of the DeLorean and founder of the DeLorean Motor Company, engineer John DeLorean, wrote a personal letter to director Robert Zemeckis, thanking him for choosing and using his vehicle for the Back to the Future trilogy. Ultimately, the trilogy and the DeLorean have captivated audiences and will continue to do so for many years to come.


Written by Anthony Watkins

WORKS CITED
Back to the Future. Screenplay by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Prod. Neil Canton and Bob     
     Gale. 1985. Special Edition DVD. Universal Pictures, 1985. 

            Given its unique ability to cater to American sensibilities and nostalgia for the early days of the expansive, untamed American frontier, the Western could be observed as the quintessential genre of the American film industry. However, despite being one of the oldest and most enduring genres of American filmmaking, the popularity of the Western seems to have significantly diminished. Should this observation be noted as an indicator of the Western’s passing, or has the Western instead evolved into something more relatable to the modern viewer?

            Without a doubt, even throughout its prolific era, the Western remained a flexible genre, capable of providing unique societal insights that were relevant to different time periods. During the silent era, the Western grew alongside the development of Hollywood’s studio production system and sought to capture moviegoers’ imaginations. But it was with Edwin Porter’s pioneering Western, The Great Train Robbery (1903), that the genre truly established itself as a valuable cinematic movement through the film’s utilization of innovative crosscutting editing techniques and the institution of essential conventions of typical Westerns (e.g. good guys vs. bad guys, a final showdown, a natural setting, etc).

            Although the early Westerns continued to adopt a very similar style, during the 1930s, singing cowboy movies were released, which sought to highlight the musical talents of the featured actors (such as Roy Rogers), and through the 1940s and 1950s, actors like John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Gary Cooper starred in movies that idealized the cowboy as a clean-cut hero (Perry). This optimistic presentation of the Western ushered in its “golden age,” and solidified the legacies of directors like John Ford and King Vidor.

            However, with films like The Searchers (Ford, 1956), the Western came to embrace the role of the anti-hero. In The Searchers, John Wayne played a racist, hate-driven loner, obsessively searching for his Comanche-kidnapped niece. Building on this darker presentation of the Western, Sergio Leone released his “spaghetti” Westerns, which brought fame to Clint Eastwood and depicted the frontier as a harsher, more violent land, void of morals and controlled by greed. With the release of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Leone, 1968), the Western entered its “renaissance” era, where good and evil became ambiguous states. But with the release of Unforgiven (Eastwood, 1992), the genre experienced what many believed to be its swan song.

            Without a doubt, the popularity of the Western as we know it has significantly diminished. In fact, some of the more recently successful Westerns are actually remakes of classics (e.g. the Coen brothers’ True Grit and James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma). Does this indicate that the Western genre is indeed dead? While it might be valid to state that the Western of the “golden age” is no more, I personally find it foolish to disregard the Western genre’s place in cinema today. With films such as No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers, 2007), which utilizes elements of the Western to tell the cat-and-mouse story of a drug deal gone wrong, or television series like Deadwood, which takes place in a South Dakota town filled with corruption and crime, I believe that the Western has proven its evolution and can still be appreciated by modern viewers, albeit through quite a different, darker approach than at the point of its origin.

Works Cited

Perry, C.J. "The Evolution of the Western Genre." Film Slate Magazine. 6 Feb. 2014. <http://www.filmslatemagazine.com/filmmaking/the-evolution-of-the-western-genre>.

            Over the course of his vast and prolific career, Martin Scorsese has always shown an interest in portraying the debauched American anti-hero. In Scorsese’s latest work, The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) plays this amoral role as a swindling, exploitative stockbroker. Although greed and the pursuit of power are common themes in the work of Scorsese, this message might never be as profoundly clear as it is in The Wolf of Wall Street, where the true story of Belfort forces viewers to consider the destructive nature of capitalist excess.

            Adapted by screenwriter Terence Winter from the personal memoir of Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street indicates that when Belfort first attempted to establish himself on Wall Street, he did so in a more traditional and honest manner. However, Belfort’s twisted boss, Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey), quickly dismisses and distorts any notion of pursuing a morally just path to success and convinces Belfort that drugs, sex, and greed are a necessity to prosper on Wall Street. After being laid off during the market crash of 1987, Belfort takes Hanna’s advice to heart and starts his own “chop shop” brokerage in a converted garage, ripping off people by selling them unregulated penny stocks over the phone. Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) joins Belfort in this business venture early on and quickly becomes Belfort’s right hand man, as well as his wingman in their unending conquest of money, drugs, and prostitutes. By giving their business an old money name, Stratton Oakmont, Belfort and his employees gain the confidence of higher income investors, and through “pump and dump” operations, they find ways of turning enormous profits.

              Ultimately, the presentation of their savage pursuit of money and power is where the film truly succeeds. In the earlier scene with Hanna, there is one point where he thumps a drum pattern on his chest while humming along. Eventually this becomes the anthem of Belfort’s firm and largely operates as a tribal, barbaric song for the ruthless pursuit of more material goods, revealing the central premise of the film that more is never enough. In addition, it provides depth to the animalistic nickname of “the Wolf” that Belfort is given. However, despite being a rather corrupt and menacing businessman, DiCaprio’s performance and witty narration as Belfort makes him an oddly likable scoundrel. Furthermore, the stylistic inclusion of narration naturally brings to mind Scorsese’s earlier films, Goodfellas and Casino. But whereas each of these earlier pieces made use of mild distancing through the narration, in The Wolf of Wall Street, we are always right in the thick of things, which yields a suffocating effect that quickens the pace of the film and enhances our understanding of the chaotic lifestyle that Belfort and his staff embraced.

            Aided by excellent acting from DiCaprio, we truly see how warped Belfort’s mentality becomes from his pursuit of capitalist excess. In one scene, Belfort talks about a depressed employee who killed himself, but quickly moves onto another topic. In another scene, Belfort explains how the brokers classified prostitutes by cost and attractiveness, referring to them as “blue chips,” “NASDAQs,” and “pink sheets.” Nevertheless, through DiCaprio’s eccentric performance, we are largely blinded to how squalid the majority of The Wolf of Wall Street actually is.

            Although Scorsese is now in his early 70s, The Wolf of Wall Street feels very much like a younger man’s film. While the three hour long film does tend to drag at moments, I still believe that the film’s intended depiction of capitalist addiction resounds quite strongly. By the film’s end, even though Belfort is removed from his position at Stratton Oakmont, he doesn’t seem to show any sort of remorse for his unethical actions. Instead, Belfort becomes a motivational speaker that seeks to sell the “American Dream.” Through this ending, we are forced to evaluate our own views on capitalism and really question greed in America. Overall, given the film’s strong acting, excellent directing, and relentless storytelling, it seems quite evident that Scorsese is still capable of producing great movies, furthering his legacy as one of America’s finest directors of all time.

Today I would like to start off a new issue of blog posts in which I select a recent film and discuss the various technical choices the directors and cinematographers used to capture their footage. Recently we reviewed the critically acclaimed film Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013) (which can be viewed here: http://tinyurl.com/o7s9w44), which is a story about a woman trapped alone in space after a disaster at her space station. This is not meant to be another review of Gravity, but rather a glimpse into the world of the filmmaker and how they go about achieving what you as the audience inevitably see on the screen.

First, I will talk about the camera work used by Alfonso Cuarón and his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who has worked with numerous influential directors such as Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men), Terrance Malick (Tree of Life), and The Coen Brothers (Burn After Reading). The camera they used primarily in the production of Gravity was the Arri Alexa, which was released in 2010 as the first digital camera created by the company Arri.  This camera is incredibly popular with filmmakers and has made a groundbreaking impact on the recent film industry, being used on films such as The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012), Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011), and even Best Picture winner Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012). This camera was seen as an answer to the Red One, which showed remarkable popularity when it was originally released. Given that the setting for Gravity was mainly space, and therefore required a large amount of digital post-production editing, the Arri Alexa was a smart choice for Cuarón and Lubezki, giving them a reliable machine to shoot stunning footage as well as give versatility to the VFX directors. Cuarón and Lubezki also used the Arri 765, which shoots on celluloid instead of digital, for the final shots of the film which took place on Earth, to provide some contrast and noticeable difference from the fluidity of space.

Alfonso Cuarón's vision would not have been possible if it were not for the quality of VFX today. An interesting fact that shocked me about Gravity was the percentage of CGI that was used for the final completed film. While Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), a film that was praised for its groundbreaking use of CGI and VFX production, had about 60% of the total image in computer graphics, Gravity had 80%, significantly more than almost any feature film to date. There is a specific reason for this fact: for almost every space sequence in the film, the only part of the original image that was used in the completed film were Bullock's and Clooney's faces. Otherwise, the picture was created digitally in post-production. This use of VFX was remarkable, because it allowed a talented writer and director like Alfonso Cuarón to create a visualization that without the advanced technology of digital filmmaking would not have been possible.

When examining the production of a film, you need to look at the production of sound as well as the production of the image. In analyzing Gravity, it is immediately obvious that Cuarón was aware of the environment that he was trying to replicate, which is specifically seen in his use of sound in the film. Besides the voices of the two actors through their headsets, the sounds of the explosions and the breaking of various space parts that are accompanying the characters, there is no background noise present in the film. Cuarón did his research and understood that because space is simply one giant vacuum, and there is no atmosphere, sound does not travel when you are in the great beyond. In order to combat the dull nature of space due to the lack of noise, Cuarón provides a soundtrack composed by Steven Price.

I hope you found this article interesting and informative about some of the processes and technical machinery that filmmakers use by taking a behind-the-scenes look at the production of Gravity. Later I will continue this in looking at some other recent productions in order to give you a more complete view on how filmmakers create what you see on the screen. To get a closer look at some of the points I described above, watch the video below. Be sure to leave your comments on what you think about what I discussed in this article.