Homework: Watch Movies!!
Monday, October 26th, 2009 Tags: entertainment, films, homework, movies, tips
Category: Breaking In, Industry No Comments 
So you’ve moved to Hollywood to make movies huh? Let’s take a look back over the past 80 years of Hollywood film making. The Golden Age of Hollywood was such a triumphant time for this town from the 1927 release of The Jazz Singer to the notorious Citizen Kane (1941). Alfred Hitchcock created Spellbound in 1945 and Psycho in 1960. Western’s like Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly have topped charts. Francis Ford Coppola made arguably the best movie of all time in 1972 with The Godfather. The impact Star Wars (1977) has left on our childhood is incredible! Movies are always becoming more emotionally intense with films like The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Schindler’s List (1993). In today’s Hollywood we have There Will Be Blood (2007) and The Dark Knight (2008). Additionally there has been an astounding evolution of animation from Fantasia (1940) and Alice in Wonderland (1951) to Toy Story (1995) and Ratatouille (2007).
The filmmaking process has grown and evolved tremendously from the age of the talkie. Today’s productions take years of planning, months of production and years of editing before they even come close to the theaters. My question to you is… Have you seen enough of these films to understand Hollywood? You can have all the technical experience in the world but you also need to understand that movies live and breathe and have a flow to them. This is why it is important to watch as many movies as you can. Seriously – take a day during your unemployment an curl up on the sofa and watch movies….all day! It will be extremely beneficial. Make sure you watch “important” movies instead of just blockbuster flops.
Ways to become a true movie buff:
AFI Top 100: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI’s_100_Years…100_Movies - The original list is from 1998, but this link includes the updated copy from 2007. How many have you seen? Look at both lists!
iMDB Top 250: http://www.imdb.com/chart/top – Anyone can vote on this list, but it is generally a good guide for quality movies
Time Magazine Top 100: http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html – Another great movie list
Some of my favorite writers/directors: Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, The Coen Brothers, Mel Brooks, Oliver Stone, Robert Altman, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Steven Spielberg, Ingmar Bergman, Charlie Kaufman, Christopher Nolan, Robert Zemeciks, Ridley Scott, and the list goes on.
Grab a couple of films and some popcorn, and get to watching!
