The 3 Act Film

          For my three act movie, I'll be talking about Fight Club. The first act, or the introduction, begins by actually starting at the end of the movie and then going through a flashback. It introduces the main character's insomnia and builds up more quickly after meeting Tyler Durden. It eventually peaks when they first introduce the actual fight club. The second act, or the complication, begins with the start of the fight club. It escalates as Tyler Durden starts giving the members more and more violent and destructive "homework." I would have to say that it peaks when the main character, often called the narrator, finds out that he and Tyler Durden are, in fact, the same person. The climax starts after, with the narrator turning himself in to the police to try and prevent Tyler from blowing up the headquarters of all the major credit card companies but winds up having to escape. He is eventually knocked unconscious, which is when Tyler gets control of his body. Then the peak is when he actually finds out how to kill Tyler. Unfortunately however, he didn't stop the bombs from going off and the movie ends with the buildings falling in the distance.

The Sitcom

          The characteristic of having mini resolutions is fairly central to most sitcoms. They typically have some problem or flaw in character that they wind up learning about and say they'll work on fixing it. This idea really goes hand in hand with the idea of character growth which usually tries to show a character growing, maturing and learning from his or her respective mistakes.

          My example for each would have to be an episode of Full House i watched recently. Stephanie, the middle daughter, entered a spelling bee fully confident she would win because her dad taught her a trick to remember how to spell things easier. She got up on stage and and completely blanked on the first word. Afterwards, she was being a poor sport and ran off stage. Then they went home, where the winner of the bee showed up to give her her ribbon. They wound up having a mini spelling bee in which she misspelled the word sarsaparilla and ran out of the room again. Her dad walked in the room and told her he was disappointed and then explained why. There's your mini lesson. She then vowed to be a better loser and said she couldn't wait to lose to show her dad how good she was at it. And there's your character development.

Let Me In

Let Me In is a movie about a vampire girl who befriends a young boy and in this movie are several examples of different shots talked about this week. There is one scene, which was a longshot, near the beginning of the movie where the boy is in the courtyard of his apartment complex and he's stabbing and talking like the kids that bully him. The shot was, if I remember it correctly, a long overhead shot to convey sadness, loneliness, an powerlessness. Another shot was a close up with a slight downward angle where the vampire is losing control at the sight of blood. They wanted to show the details in her face while showing how she too is powerless at times. There were also scenes in which the kid was bullied and those were medium shots to show the relationship of the bullies and the boy.

The Studio System

          The studio system after the starting to fail, changed the way it operated and still remain this way today.  Now all they do is financially support movies that other people bring them in exchange for the rights to distribution, but back in the mid 1900s, they did pretty much everything themselves, from hiring the actors to distributing and writing the movie. An important aspect to me was the fact that each studio had actors on contract and the studio would market them. They also wound up creating movies for specific actors and actresses, and the actors also played pretty much the same role in every movie.

          My specific example would have to be Humphrey Bogart. He was contracted to Fox Film Corporation, and starred in a movie called The Petrified Forest in which he played a gangster. He was then typecast as a gangster and starred in a series of B movie gangster films.

Late But Great?

This is late because i forgot and I'm hoping that I still get some credit.

All in the Family was very different from 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter. One difference is that if they tried to say "fag" on 8 Simple Rules, I'm pretty sure they would've been censored or cancelled. Another is that they did fight a lot, but for some reason I felt like in All in the Family, Archie was a lot meaner than really anyone in 8 Simple Rules. 

Some similarities of both include: the bickering or petty fighting. In both, there was a lot of fighting about things that are really just ridiculous to fight about. Archie calling a guy a fairy is clearly insensitive and mean, and two sisters fighting over boys is equally pointless, though without dealing with a big issue like All in the Family. 

8 Simple Rules dealt mainly with the petty issues that teenagers face, but also the issue of losing a parent and trying to move on and keep living after it happens. I also think that 8 Simple Rules dealt with the issue of gay discrimination like All in the Family did.

Do I Sound Like I'm on Old Time Radio?

          I think that technological change had the most influence, partly because I'm a huge geek and would like to think that about everything, and partially because technology changes everything. Technology, in general, shapes everything we do. We use it every day, from when we get on a bus, use our phone, use our computer, or turn on the television. With the arrival of new technology comes the arrival of something new and exciting. Even if there is no way for someone to obtain whatever it is, just the fact that it's there is exhilarating. 

          Once the technology became readily available, the newfound industry grew by leaps and bounds. It wasn't just a way for the government to communicate across long distances anymore. It brought music, entertainment, and news directly to the people. It brought people together, but it also opened up a world of possibilities in the economy. Radio operators, technicians, actors, and anchors were all needed, not to mention the fact that it was now significantly easier to hear music and bands had an easier time gaining popularity. Basically, technology is a major influence in how the world changes.

Priming

          I think that the theory of priming is definitely something that if it is true, would be hard to prove. Priming Theory is a theory that basically states that once someone sees something, they're likely to repeat it. I, personally, have been playing video games and watching violent movies and TV my entire life, but I have never gone out and reenacted things that I've seen. It may affect some people but I would be willing to bet that a good majority of people use those things as a release and not as a way to get new awesome finishing moves.

          This article: http://videogames.procon.org/, states that there are many articles and studies that link video games to increased violence, but there are also many things that contradict this statement. It lists many results found by these studies. Unfortunately whenever studies are trying to find out if video games are linked, they don't usually look at the casual games and the impact that they have. No one has all horribly violent video games and if they do, that was a product of something else entirely, like people bullying you, or abuse at home.