Matthew Gates http://www.notetoservices.com 4m 993 #critic
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Everyone’s a Critic for the Movies
There is nothing like showing up to the movies early, sitting back, and watching the movie previews. Not only do we get to judge the movie previews, but we get to judge the movie we just saw as well. Whether or not we are with someone, we determine whether it is going to be a good movie or not, based on what we saw in the previews. After we watch the main movie, we also make our judgments based on what we saw.
For those who love action movies, they may judge more harshly an action movie, while they might totally write off a romance movie, opting to never see it. For those who love horror movies? While horror movies used to be about the killer and the slashing and dashing, they have evolved into suspense, thriller, and mystery, which may be favored more by horror lovers. We judge movies based on what we see, our past experience of movies, whether we like the actors or not, and many other factors.
Of course, there are just the few who actually get paid to review and rate movies. The rest of us get to secretly judge and rate movies in our heads, write on our blogs, or share our opinions with our friends and family.
Regardless of our opinions, movies go through an entire process of ever coming into production, from the writing of the script, to the proposition of the idea, to acquiring the necessary funding and investors, to the obtaining the production rights to the movie and any music soundtracks involved, to hiring all the designers of the sets, costumes, and nitty gritty details of every single thing on set, to getting and paying the actors and actresses, making sure they have their place to stay and are taken care of, along with all the staff involved, to ensuring that there is a few lawyers on hand for any halts towards movie production.
After all this is done, the actors and actresses must learn their lines, the movie must be filmed, and the editing staff needs to go through it to make the exact movie they want with the exact scenes they want – as most film scenes are never filmed in the exact order they are seen. Directors and producers must also be involved in this process to make sure that the film is cut to the time length allowed, normally an hour and forty-five minutes to two hours and thirty minutes, which is the average length of most films. They must also determine what rating they want the movie to be, from G, PG, PG13, R, or NC17, in which parts that may be deemed unsuitable for children must be edited out, if the movie is to receive a certain rating.
Finally, advertising and marketing comes into play, with huge reliance on commercials and celebrities themselves to urge people to go see the movie, in order for it make money in each of the movie theaters it is released in, so that the movie can usually earn back what it cost to make the film.
Depending on the circumstances of the movie, further films may be planned, toys and attractions, games, and even a DVD disc-set comes into production normally six months to a year after a film has been released.
If you want to see all the work that went into a movie, just wait until the end. Watching through the credits, which often roll for about ten to twenty minutes after a film has ended, to see the credits, all the names of people and work that were involved. Each and every movie generates jobs and income for people, but it all depends on the returns.
If a movie does great, it makes money. If it does not, the movie may end up losing money and all its investors make no money and usually, any further production of future films is never discussed again.
Every single thing you see in a movie is planned, including open spaces, in which it seems like the general public is walking around on the street, but in reality, the street was closed off, and those are extras walking around acting like the “general public”, but most are unpaid and volunteers who saw an ad in the paper for a chance to star in a movie.
We love to sit there and judge movies without ever thinking about how much actual time, money, and work went into making that film. We tend to even judge the more action-packed movies, thinking at the end, “It was okay.” or “It was good.” along with thoughts like, “They could have… done this or that.”
Really? They could have what? Every explosion you saw in that movie, computer generated or not, cost a lot of money to make happen. Every explosion you saw in that movie was someone’s job, not only to make the explosion happen, but to ensure the safety of everyone in the surrounding area.
The Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans put on shows to entertain people, sometimes at the cost of human and animal life, but especially at the cost of the Empire or the King. Nothing was free then and it certainly is not now. Everything costs money to make and the entertainment we receive is certainly something that should never be taken for granted.
We might pay the $10 to see a movie and think that is expensive, as movies at one time may have cost as little as a nickel or twenty-five cents, but the cost to actually make and produce that movie, with everything that is involved, is more than most of us can ever imagine. Learn to appreciate movies, good or bad, great script or not, action-packed or not, a lot certainly went into making that movie, all so you could sit in a dark room and pretend to be an important movie critic.
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