Film 101
Film 101: Movie Soundtracks
by Erika Olson | October 17th, 2011 | Filed under: Film 101, MoviesAfter seeing (and, like Locke, enjoying) this weekend’s Footloose remake, I got to thinking about the power of movie soundtracks. You old-timers might remember that the Footloose album took the #8 spot in my “Top Ten Movie Soundtracks of All Time” list back in December 2008. I had braced myself for totally new (lame) songs [...]
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Film 101: More on Trailers
by Erika Olson | October 12th, 2010 | Filed under: Film 101, TrailersLast month we covered the origins of movie trailers in the 1910s and some highlights of their evolution up until the ’60s. Let’s continue from that point, shall we? Before there were dedicated trailer production companies, almost all theatrical advertising was controlled by the National Screen Service, which had been around since 1920. That’s why [...]
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Film 101: The Origins of Movie Trailers
by Erika Olson | September 8th, 2010 | Filed under: Film 101, MoviesWe always have fun discussing movie trailers here on redblog, but we’ve never actually covered how trailers came to be in the first place. So I looked into the history of these typically two-and-a-half-minute promotional clips, and was surprised to learn that movie trailers emerged in the early 1910s. There seems to be a discrepancy [...]
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Do You Agree with Yahoo!’s “Modern Classics” List?
by Erika Olson | April 16th, 2010 | Filed under: Film 101, Other BitsI am one of those people who loves lists. I am always making lists (if only you could see the volume of sticky notes displaying To Do reminders scattered around my condo…), I live for checking things off of lists, and I also enjoy reading other people’s lists. So when I saw that the folks [...]
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Film 101: Practical Magic
by Locke Peterseim | September 16th, 2009 | Filed under: Film 101This weekend, teen-horror-film fans will be treated to more than just Jennifer’s Body–they’ll also get Jennifer’s projectile vomiting of icky black bile. After all, she is possessed by a demon. Large amounts of puke are the number one sign of demon possession. Or bad shrimp at a summer street fest. But there’s something special about [...]
Read Full Post 1 CommentFilm 101: Stages of Filmmaking
by Erika Olson | September 9th, 2009 | Filed under: Film 101In past Film 101 installments, we've talked about things that happen during pre-production (location scouting) as well as post-production (sound editing). However, we never actually explained what pre-production and post-production are, so I'm going to remedy that today. There are typically five major stages in the filmmaking process, so let's take a high-level look at [...]
Read Full Post 4 CommentsFilm 101: Hark! From Whence Comes That Sound?(And Who is Wilhelm and Why is He Screaming?)
by Locke Peterseim | September 2nd, 2009 | Filed under: Film 101You know how it goes: you’re at your Oscar party, filling in your picks for your pool, and you come to… Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. Eep! Eeny, meeny, miny, moe time! So let’s do a quick rundown of some of the terms and stages of creating non-musical sound for film. A sound designer is [...]
Read Full Post 1 CommentFilm 101: Location Scouting
by Erika Olson | August 27th, 2009 | Filed under: Film 101When we asked redblog readers what they'd like us to cover in future Film 101 installments, "Nick" let us know that he was curious about the location scouting process, and specifically how certain buildings come to be in movies. He mentioned the beach house in Weekend at Bernie's as an example. I did manage to [...]
Read Full Post 8 CommentsFilm 101: Zoom, Dolly, and Zolly!
by Locke Peterseim | August 19th, 2009 | Filed under: Film 101Most good filmmakers don't just wildly swing the camera around to show off (though even the best may have gone through a bit of a show-off phase at some point–yeah, I'm looking at you, Coen Brothers and David Fincher). When the camera moves, it's usually done to either draw the viewer's attention to something on [...]
Read Full Post 2 CommentsFilm 101: Producer vs. Director
by Erika Olson | August 12th, 2009 | Filed under: Film 101(If you missed our introduction to the Film 101 series, catch up here.) School's in! But since it's only mid-August, I guess that makes our first Film 101 lesson technically a part of Summer School, right? (I really wish I was talking about the classic '80s Carl Reiner movie.) Therefore, we're going to take it [...]
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