DON'T Read The Book!

As many of you may know a lot of movies and shows are based off of books. Some of the most well known movies such as the Harry Potter series is taken from the original books. For years though people always told me that you should read the book before seeing the movie. However I've found that this is not always the best course of action. This week I'll establish the times when it may or may not be best to read the book first.

Let's start with stand alone movies. These would be movies based off one book and are a single movie and not a series. Such examples are The Great Gatsby or Forrest Gump. In a movie where the plot is self contained and there are no prequels, or sequels to the book, I feel it is ok to read the book first. This gives you more insight into the characters that you may not get because of things that must be cut out for time purposes. So when a character makes a decision you have that prior supporting knowledge on why that choice was made. Now what about Harry Potter or The Chronicles Of Narnia? These are more of the opinion of the viewer. Because one book follows into the next one but doesn't leave you at a huge cliff hanger I feel reading the book first is ok. Their individual stories are always wrapped, sure you may want to know what they do next but you basically know how the next one will be or the story is wrapped so well you don't know what will happen next but its not a cliff hanger. 

Then there is a series like The Hunger Games. With this is advise NOT to read the book first. There are two qualities to a series like this. First of all the main plot is a competition. Whats the point of watching a competition if you know what's going to happen? Would you pay to go to the Super Bowl already knowing who wins and every play that will be made? Reading the book in this case takes away from the dramatics of it. Also they leave their books with cliff hangers, the end of the second book and movie specifically ends in a cliff hanger full of questions. This adds a lot more to the experience in my opinion and makes it worth watching. So those are just my opinions on when you should and shouldn't read the book before seeing the movie and of course this is all up to your personal preference this is just my advisory on it. 

Music Makes The Movie

Everyone likes music. It's a way to pass time, have a conversation or add feeling to something. This traslates in to how we use music in television and in movies. The job of music is to make the audience feel a certain way through the emotional power music has. For instance when you have a scene thats building up to a climatic part, the music should build on top of itself as more instruments and such are added in and it gets louder or more powerful. Also it's important that when you want to add music you think about the end result you want it to have and what will help you achieve that. For instance if you want a love sequence to make people feel emotional you wouldn't want a metal guitar blaring in the background. Also most people probably want to throw in professional music from your favorite bands. While this may seem cool you need to first make sure you have the ability to legally do this and even if you can does it add more than a custom track made yourself would? Also while making your film or show you should allow your music to take a feel of it's own. This means that your music should have a sound to it no matter what kind of feel it's supposed to give off. This will make it easy for your audience to relate hearing that music to your film or show.  

Getting Into Character

When you're acting it's important to LEARN YOUR CHARACTER. Yes you need to make the character your own but you need to analyze the character so that you can do it correctly. Whenever I receive a role there are a few things I've learned you should always do to learn your character. First of all you need to know the time period. Obviously someone in the 1920's isn't going to have their hand on their hips or other quirks we have in our modern society. Time period is also important because people behaved different within families, schools and every day life. This brings me to my next tip that you need to learn character interaction. Look at the other people your character will be in contact and interact with. If you're doing a reenactment or a show previously done or if there is a movie use those past performances to see how your character should talk, behave and act towards the other characters. If this is an original work, ask the director or writer how they imagined your character acting towards the others and the kind of relationships they have. Finally ALWAYS learn your character's history. Learn their backstory, what they are driven to do, and who they are, as if doing a history report. If you don't know who they are, how can you pretend to be them? And also make sure to enjoy it. It should be fun getting to be in another person's shoes for the sake of entertainment.

Lions and tigers and animals movies OH MY!

Ahhh animal movies, we've all seen them. Beethoven, Shiloh, Shaggy Dog and so on. There are a lot of extra steps in making movies like these, the biggest being the animals. You need to get the animals, the trainers, pay for their special food and needs. Also unlike humans you need to be more patient with them during scenes because they don't function like human beings do. But what really drives people to make these movies? I mean sure some like the Air Bud series has TONS of movies and probably made the recurring actors a lot of money but how much could it really be making for the film maker. It seems to me that the cost of making these movies should highly outweigh the profits especially since they are geared to a younger audience who now in days want more mature content. Anyway thats just my thoughts on theses movies and hope this provoked some thought for you as well.

What Is Slow Motion?

Hello internet, this week we're talking about something most people have seen. SLOW MOTION! Everybody love's watching some good slow motion, but how is real slow motion done? Some would say that you just run slow and slur your voice. Others would say you just take your video and slow down the playback rate. Now people could even say you shoot something on the new iPhone. But real slow motion is much more than that. For real slow motion you shoot with specially designed cameras. One of the most common brand names for slow motion cameras is called the Phantom cameras. Cameras like these record slow motion by recording tens of thousands of frames per seconds (differing from each model). At normal playback of 30 frames per second you could have only a few seconds of video play back at a duration of a couple of minutes. However this isn't something just anyone can do. It costs a lot of money to purchase one of these cameras and special training to operate them. So creates a special career field for camera operators who'd like to invest in doing slow motion as their job. For a great example of slow motion in use for fun ways you can check out www.youtube.com/theslowmoguys. It's a channel where a professional slow motion camera operator uses his phantom to shoot really cool entertaining things in slow motion. Until next week I'll leave you with their newest video you wouldn't wanna miss.

Music Sways The Scene

Music is a big component in television in movies. A lot of things in television in movies can trigger emotions like acting, visuals, but nothing does it better than music. For some reason well composed music can trigger the proper emotions. Music power doesn’t just lie with itself. Music helps to aid whatever scene is currently playing on screen. It may not even support the current action but if the music does something like start to sound creepy it preludes to what’s about to happen next. Its all about timing though. Trying to push a love song in the middle of an argument won’t do anything but confuse the audience. You need to have the feel for when and where music belongs to properly execute it to its fullest use. This takes time and reviewing past uses of music. So this has just been a quick idea that been running through my mind recently. See you guys next week and take care.

Let's Backtrack

Continuing on with last week's theme of debatable decisions for TV and movies this week we'll be taking a look at a device used in many. It's that thing a lot of people hate, when they know the end from the beginning. Ever watch a show or movie and it starts with a lot of stuff going on and you have no idea what happening. Then suddenly it cuts to black says something like "12 hours earlier". The audience now knows what will be happening later or in the end of the episode.

But is this a good idea? For instance I've noticed that this has been done in a lot of crime or investigation shows. When I'm watching one of those I'd rather try to figure out what's going to happen myself, I don't want something like that spoiling my fun. The worst is when they have an opening like that who reveals who the antagonist is in the show or movie because when you're watching it and the character is acting like a good guy still (because obviously he isn't going to give himself away) it just annoys me and takes away what's generally a good reveal and plot point of the plot. So once again this is an open ended thought provoking post to see what you think about this type of thing that is done in TV and movies.