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A Brief History of the Reproduction of Sound in Movie Theaters What should sound sound like? When you stand in the stereo showroom, or when you move your speakers around the family room, how do you know when the sound sounds right? When THX creator Tomlinson Holman designs crossover circuitry or specifies speaker type and…
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What? Color in the Movies Again? Reprinted from Fortune Magazine, October, 1934 October, 1934, the nation, indeed the world, was strangling in the Great Depression. It was a time like no other since. President Roosevelt assumed the responsibility of bolstering the national morale. Prohibition had just been repealed and yet the nation was still gulping…
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In 2004, after a series of false starts on other projects, filmmaker Ross Bigley began production on the first feature length film from Dirty Job Films, DISEMBODIED. During February of that year Ross worked on the main story with fellow filmmaker Mariko Ujihisa who was locked in as the lead. Shooting began three weeks later with the film’s…
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Nearly all good films build around engaging stories with memorable characters. Thus, Hollywood and Independent filmmakers have often turned to novels for raw material. With a novel, you at least know that you start with something that works. But, the novel is just a starting place – for as certainly as a great novel like A…
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You Don’t Need Film To Make Movies These Days When there comes the time that a product that gave its name to an entire industry has become outmoded, while the industry rolls on, you have to marvel at the staggering pace of technology. We refer here to film, the product of choice for a century…
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Two film scripts sit on my desk. One is from a writer and director in Colorado, a script that Regent University just optioned and will begin to shoot this May on a two-million-dollar budget. The other shows promise but needs a major revision before any producer will consider it seriously. That makes this second effort,…
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Tommy Richards, early TV 12, Milwaukee, WI “Richards appeared as an old theater usher named “Pops”, who worked at the fictional Bee-Jou (Bijou) Theater. With a studio audience full of cub scouts and brownies, Pops told tasteless jokes, talked about his wife Effie, and introduced the showing of old Three Stooges shorts by shouting “Roll…
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When a film is working, none of the individual elements stand out; that is, we are so caught by the complete work that we aren’t conscious of where the camera is positioned or what filters cover the lens or whether an actor is reciting a script or improvising. Such matters are for subsequent viewings; in…
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The world of movies and television offers an incredibly broad landscape. Not only can stories be told in a wide assortment of genres, styles, and mediums, but the undergirding values and themes of stories will also vary greatly depending on the storytellers and their cultural backgrounds. Different cultures can have incredibly unique approaches to crafting…
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Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ may turn out to be one of the more influential works of Christian art to come along in quite some time, and not only because of its staggering box office success. Gibson’s film has inclined the Christian community, and particularly the evangelical community, toward reconciliation with the film industry…
