Discussion

1. How do national dance companies reach the high level of professionalism?

2. Compare the repertories of Virsky Ukrainian National Dance Company and Mazowsze.

3. What does a good choreographer have to do to create a successful dance company?

Project Topics

1. Myroslav Vantuch: his way to the top.

2. Ukrainian folk dance in its variety.

3. The Irish school of dance.

Unit 3.

C inema/Theatre/TV Art

Lesson 1. Motion picture industry Quiz

1. What film directors have you heard of? What are they famous for?

2. Who is Steven Spielberg? Have you seen any of his films?

3. What is “Oscar”? Have you seen any film – Academy Award (“Oscar”) winner?

Hollywood

Hollywood is a district of the City of Los Angeles, California, USA.

Hollywood was founded in 1857. In 1910, the townsmen voted to become part of Los Angeles. The word "Hollywood" is also used to refer to the Film and Television Industry in Southern California, the term deriving from the famous community.

In the early 1900s, motion picture production companies from New York and New Jersey started moving to sunny California because of the good weather and longer days. There were no electric lights then, and the best source of illumination to adequately expose the film was natural sunlight. The first movie studio in the Hollywood area was founded in 1911 by David Horsley for the Nestor Company. In the same year, another fifteen Independents settled there.

(www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/h/ho/hollywood__california.html)

Film Director

A film director directs the artistic and dramatic aspects of a film. The role typically includes:

• Defining the overall artistic vision of the film.

• Controlling the content and flow of the film's plot.

• Directing the performances of actors, both mechanically by putting them in certain positions, and dramatically by setting the required range of emotions.

• Organizing and selecting the locations in which the film will be shot.

• Managing technical details such as the positioning of cameras, the use of lighting, and the timing and content of the film's soundtrack.

• Any other activity that defines or realizes the artistic vision the director has for the film.

In practice the director will delegate many of these responsibilities to other members of his film crew. For example, the director may describe the mood she or he wants from a scene, then leave it to other members of the film crew to find a suitable location, or to set up the appropriate lighting.

The degree of control that a director exerts over a film varies greatly. Many directors are subordinate to the studio, especially true during the "Golden Era" of Hollywood from the 1930s through the 1950s, when studios had lots of directors, actors and writers under contract.

Other directors bring a particular artistic vision to the pictures they make. Their methods range from some who like to outline a general plot line and let the actors improvise dialogue (such as Robert Altman and Christopher Guest), to those who control every aspect, and demand that the actors and crew follow instructions precisely (such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick). Some directors also write their own scripts (such as Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino), while others collaborate on screenplays with long-standing writing partners (such as Billy Wilder and his writing partner I.A.L. Diamond.) Finally, certain directors star, often in leading roles, in their films, from Orson Welles to Woody Allen to Barbra Streisand.

Directors often work closely with film producers, who are usually responsible for the non-artistic elements of the film, such as financing, contract negotiation and marketing. Directors will often take on some of the responsibilities of the producer for their films (e.g. Steven Spielberg), or work closely with the producer (as is the case with Joel and Ethan Coen).

The official film directors' union is the Directors Guild of America (DGA).

(www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/f/fi/film_director.html)

A motion picture director in many respects occupies a position analogous to the leader of an orchestra. The leader has to wave a baton in order to get the right tempo. He has to see that the bassoon does not come in while the violin is playing its solo. Likewise a motion picture director has to hold together all the departments, he has to see that they all function on time, and that everything meets on the little set where the camera is going to turn for a few minutes.

There are three classes of directors. There is the director who has been successful enough in the past to have the confidence of his institution and is allowed to choose more or less his own subject. There is the director who is sent for and handed a manuscript and told: "This is what you shoot." He takes that manuscript, works on it, and says, "I suggest the following changes." Then there is the director to whom you say, "Take this manuscript and shoot it just the way it is written and don't change anything."

Take a scene where a man comes in, sits down, and picks up the telephone. The first-class director has the man come in, sit down, and pick up the telephone. Your highest class director says, "How can I make that interesting, so it will hold an audience for just a second, so that it is not just a man coming in, sitting down and picking up a telephone? What twist can I give that to make a little smile come to the audience? If the cord of the telephone catches in the drawer that little incident means a lot because the audience thought they were going to be bored and then they say, Oh! That little exclamation, Oh! has a great psychological effect." That is the way every scene should be worked out in the mind of the director.

Then he calls in the art director. The term art director is sometimes a bit misleading. He is the man who designs or has designed the sets. He is the head of that department. If the story is modern, again comes the point of "How can we make this a little more interesting, a little different from the last picture made?" He says, "Well, this series is a short series. We have a set already that was used in such and such a picture." The director says, "Can you change that door into a window so it will not be recognized as the set that was used in the last picture?" The art director says he can or cannot.

After the arrangements are made for production, then comes the subject of cast. Is the story strong enough to be portrayed without using a star? Or is it so weak that you must have a great, well known personality in order to overcome the weakness of the story? That is the great struggle for stars too. A star gets most of the weak stories, because the good stories will sell themselves and the star doesn't need a good story because people will buy a Bill Jones or Susan Smith on the name.

The next point for the director is the camera. The selection of a camera man is very important. The director looks his set over carefully to see if anything has been neglected. One thing left out can cause the loss of a whole day's work. The director must have the vision of the picture completely in mind. He cannot just be thinking of the scene he is going to do. After looking the set over he says O.K. and fixes his camera line. He gets that camera line finally and then calls his people on for rehearsal. If he is a wise director he rehearses through the camera and he doesn't stand back and tell everybody what to do. He rehearses through the camera because that gives him the picture he is going to see on the screen. If he rehearses without looking through the camera he gets a big, broad canvas and what he is going to paint is a miniature. Actions viewed outside of the camera and viewed through the camera are often quite different.

One of the vital things for directors to remember is that you do not teach the actors how to act. The business of a director is not to show everybody how to act, because if he does he puts his personality into the actor instead of bringing out what the actor has in him; if I show them what to do I have six or seven little directors running around. In other words, they are all playing with your personality and are all playing with your ideas instead of your bringing out what is in them.

Music is an interesting factor in direction. We spend a lot of money to have an orchestra there to put the actor in a certain mood, to get a certain emotional response. That music is just as bad for the director as it is good for the actor, because it fills an emotional spot with him. In watching a scene while an orchestra is playing I always put my hands over my ears, so I will not hear it, because there may be a blank place in the scene which is filled by a beautiful note over here and gives you satisfaction, and when you see it on the screen you say, "Strange I didn't catch that. That point is wrong."

That is why the director has gray hairs, because he is the fellow who dreams, and he has to make his dreams come true. That is the advantage he has over most dreamers. He has no choice. If he does not make them come true he is like the general who does not win the battle, and you know what happens to generals who don't.

(www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf/10_cbd_4.htm)

Steven Spielberg (born on December 18, 1947 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American film director whose films range from science fiction to historical drama to horror. He is noted for the patriotism of his work and, in recent years, for his willingness to discuss controversial problems. One theme in his work is the abuse of others, whether it's a father abusing his children (physically or verbally), or capitalism or a government agency abusing an entire class of people.

Spielberg is perhaps the most financially successful motion picture director of all time. He has directed an astounding number of feature films that have become enormous box-office hits, and this has given him influence in Hollywood. As of 2003, he has been listed in Premiere and other magazines as the most "powerful" and influential figure in the motion picture industry. As of 2003, he is seen as a figure who has the influence and financial resources to make any movie he wants to make, whether it's a mainstream action-adventure movie (Jurassic Park) or a three-hour-long black and white drama about a controversial historical subject (Schindler's List).

Spielberg's tendency to make films with wide mainstream and commercial appeal had considerable success. Despite their commercial success, few film scholars and critics place such Spielberg films as Raiders of the Lost Ark or E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in the same class as The Godfather, Citizen Kane, or many other classics of the cinema. Several of Spielberg's more "serious" works, such as Empire of the Sun and The Color Purple, have been seen as attempts to be a maker of "serious" motion pictures. Spielberg finally won the critical acclaim when he made Schindler's List in 1993.

As of 2001, he had won two Academy Awards for Best Director, one for Schindler's List and another for Saving Private Ryan.

The most famous films he directed:

• Catch Me If You Can (2002)

• Minority Report (2002)

• A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)

• Saving Private Ryan (1998)

• Amistad (1997)

• The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

• Schindler's List (1993)

• Jurassic Park (1993)

• Hook (1991)

• Always (1989)

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

• Empire of the Sun (1987)

• The Color Purple (1985)

• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

• The Twilight Zone – The Movie (Episode: Kick the Can) (1983)

• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

• Raiders of the Lost Ark (also "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark") (1981)

• 1941 (1979)

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

• Jaws (1975)

Spielberg has produced (but not directed) a considerable number of films, and can be credited with launching the career of Robert Zemeckis. He is also a lover of animated cartoons, and has produced several hit cartoons (and a few flops), including Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and Freakazoid.

He is one of the co-founders of Dreamworks Studios, which has released all of his movies since The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997.

(www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/f/fi/film_director.html)