After screening the last 3 minutes of
Rear Window, let's chat about the 1950's:
Drive-In Theatres:
Richard Hollingshead, a young sales manager at his dad's Whiz Auto Products, invented something that combined his two interests: cars and movies.
Richard Hollingshead's vision was an open-air movie theater where moviegoers could watch from their own cars. He experimented in his own driveway in New Jersey. Hollingshead mounted a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car, projected onto a screen he had nailed to trees in his backyard, and used a radio placed behind the screen for sound. Clever!
The inventor subjected his beta drive-in to vigorous testing: for sound quality, for different weather conditions (Hollingshead used a lawn sprinkler to imitate rain) and for figuring out how to park the patrons' cars. He lined up the cars in his driveway, which created a problem with line of sight. By spacing cars at various distances and placing blocks and ramps under the front wheels of cars, Richard Hollingshead created the perfect parking arrangement for the drive-in movie theater experience.
The first patent for the Drive-In Theater (United States Patent# 1,909,537) was issued on May 16, 1933. With an investment of $30,000, Richard opened the first drive-in on June 6, 1933 at a location in Camden, New Jersey. The price of admission was 25 cents for the car and 25 cents per person.
The design did not include the in-car speaker system we know today. The inventor contacted a company by the name of RCA Victor to provide the sound system, called "Directional Sound." Three main speakers were mounted next to the screen that provided sound. The sound quality was not good for cars in the rear of the theater or for the surrounding neighbors.
The largest drive-in theater in patron capacity was the All-Weather Drive-In of Copiague, New York. All-Weather had parking space for 2,500 cars, an indoor 1,200 seat viewing area, kid's playground, a full service restaurant and a shuttle train that took customers from their cars and around the 28-acre theater lot.
Please take a look at these clips. Drive in down memory lane...
Clip A.
Clip B.
Science Fiction (or sci-fi), the Cold War, and its result:
The Cold War and the fear of nuclear annihilation by the communists is reflected in the many b-films made in the 1950's. Here's a sampling. Enjoy!
Ed Wood (Jr.) (10 October 1924 – 10 December 1978) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, actor, author, and editor, who often performed many of these functions simultaneously. In the 1950s, Wood made a run of cheap and poorly produced genre films, now humorously celebrated for their technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, large amounts of ill-fitting stock footage, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric casts and outlandish plot elements, although his flair for showmanship gave his projects at least a modicum of critical success.
Wood's popularity waned soon after his biggest 'name' star, Béla Lugosi, died. He was able to salvage a saleable feature from Lugosi's last moments on film, but his career declined thereafter. Toward the end of his life, Wood made pornographic movies and wrote pulp crime, horror, and sex novels. His posthumous fame began two years after his death, when he was awarded a Golden Turkey Award as Worst Director of All Time. The lack of conventional film making ability in his work has earned Wood and his films a considerable cult following.
Roger William Corman (born April 5, 1926), sometimes nicknamed "King of the Bs" for his output of B-movies, is a prolific American producer and director of low-budget movies, some of which have an established critical reputation: many of his films derived from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe.
Corman has apprenticed many now-famous directors, stressing the importance of budgeting and resourcefulness; Corman once joked he could make a film about the fall of the Roman Empire with two extras and a sagebush.
Samuel Z. Arkoff and
American International Pictures (or AIP). The material below will help you understand this period of history as we move into the strange 1950's. Please take notes of key ideas and information. Read the handout for the exam next week.
From IMDB.com:
"By the early 1950's,
Samuel Z. Arkoff was a brash lawyer scratching out a living by representing his in-laws and the Hollywood fringe, which included many of now-infamous director/angora-clad transvestite Edward D. Wood Jr.'s social circle. Arkoff was physically imposing and capable of scaring anyone who opposed him. One of his clients was Alex Gordon, a screenwriter who had submitted an unsolicited script to Realart Pictures, an outfit that was profitably re-releasing 20-year old movies, often under new titles conjured up by it's owner, Jack Broder.
One such film,
Man Made Monster (1941), had just been re-issued as
The Atomic Monster, coincidentally the same title of Gordon's screenplay. Zarkoff paid Mr. Broder a $500 settlement. Broder's sales manager, James H. Nicholson was dumbfounded by Zarkoff's ability to extract a dime out of his tightfisted boss and proposed a partnership. American Releasing Corporation was founded in 1954 and their first release was a low-budget feature by 29-year old producer
Roger Corman. Made for less than $50,000, it netted $850,000 and Corman was brought into the fold as a silent partner.
By 1955 the company was renamed American International Pictures, or simply AIP within the industry. Initially focusing on westerns on the premise that locations came cheap, and although profitable, Arkoff was unhappy with the returns and solicited theater owners for advice on what types of films filled seats. By the mid-1950's, thanks to television, the audience numbers had dwindled considerably with the key demographic now teenagers and young adults, who craved horror movies and drive-ins. AIP jumped into the horror genre with both feet and made a fortune. Under Nicholson and Arkoff, the company survived in a constricting industry by catering to the whims of the teenage trade and adapting to trends.
AIP's long (350-plus) roster of kitsch classics, running the gamut from horror to rock'n'roll, from juvenile delinquency to Italian musclemen, and from Edgar Allan Poe to Annette Funicello, have formed their own unique niche in film history. His company became infamous for clever advertising schemes that were often more entertaining than AIP's movies. Arkoff never tolerated egos and his films were more often than not, profitable, thanks to tight budgets and a sharp understanding of the target market. After Nicholson's 1972 resignation, Arkoff assumed full control of the company and remained in charge until the 1979 merger with Filmways prompted his own departure. He then became the head of Arkoff International Pictures."
Much of this horror and science fiction material began to change what was allowed in films. With a market of teens, films began to cater to them. The Hays Code was beginning to crack! Read the article about the relaxation of the MPAA code.
Psycho: 1960, Alfred Hitchcock (Part 1)
One way to appreciate film is by examining its narrative structure. As young writers, this is a great exercise. You can learn a lot about writing by paying attention to narrative.
Narrative can be:
• Omniscient
• Limited (over the shoulder)/Restricted
• Multiple Perspective
Narrative largely depends on how
time (or chronology) works in the story.
Chronology: (how time works in a story)
• Chronological/linear time
• Non-chronological/non-linear
• Flashback
• Frame
When we examine time and narrative in film, we should ask:
- Who does the camera favor?
This is your clue as to who you need to be concerned with/about. Try to use this technique in your film projects.
Hitchcock applies several effective narrative techniques to keep his audience on its toes. The most famous of these is:
The MacGuffin: an object of importance to the characters but of little interest to the director (and consequently to the viewer).
As you watch
Psycho, pay attention to:
1. The MacGuffin (what is it for which character?)
2. the Set-up
3. the 1st turning point or crisis
4. Development & shifting of POV (and our loyalties/concerns)
5. Other turning points (there can be several of these)
6. the Climax
7. the Resolution: how the film ends (and what that suggests)
HOMEWORK: Rad and annotate the articles on Samuel Z. Arkoff (AIP), and the relaxation of the MPAA for our test next week. Continue to work on your film script projects. Film scripts are due Friday.
