movie in our life essay

Essay on Impact of Cinema in Life for Students and Children

500 words essay on impact of cinema in life.

Cinema has been a part of the entertainment industry for a long time. It creates a massive impact on people all over the world. In other words, it helps them give a break from monotony. It has evolved greatly in recent years too. Cinema is a great escape from real life.

Furthermore, it helps in rejuvenating the mind of a person. It surely is beneficial in many ways, however, it is also creating a negative impact on people and society. We need to be able to identify the right from wrong and make decisions accordingly.

Advantages of Cinema

Cinema has a lot of advantages if we look at the positive side. It is said to be a reflection of the society only. So, it helps us come face to face with the actuality of what’s happening in our society. It portrays things as they are and helps in opening our eyes to issues we may have well ignored in the past.

Similarly, it helps people socialize better. It connects people and helps break the ice. People often discuss cinema to start a conversation or more. Moreover, it is also very interesting to talk about rather than politics and sports which is often divided.

Above all, it also enhances the imagination powers of people. Cinema is a way of showing the world from the perspective of the director, thus it inspires other people too to broaden their thinking and imagination.

Most importantly, cinema brings to us different cultures of the world. It introduces us to various art forms and helps us in gaining knowledge about how different people lead their lives.

In a way, it brings us closer and makes us more accepting of different art forms and cultures. Cinema also teaches us a thing or two about practical life. Incidents are shown in movies of emergencies like robbery, fire, kidnapping and more help us learn things which we can apply in real life to save ourselves. Thus, it makes us more aware and teaches us to improvise.

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Disadvantages of Cinema

While cinema may be beneficial in many ways, it is also very damaging in various areas. Firstly, it stereotypes a lot of things including gender roles, religious practices, communities and more. This creates a false notion and a negative impact against that certain group of people.

People also consider it to be a waste of time and money as most of the movies nowadays are not showing or teaching anything valuable. It is just trash content with objectification and lies. Moreover, it also makes people addicts because you must have seen movie buffs flocking to the theatre every weekend to just watch the latest movie for the sake of it.

Most importantly, cinema shows pretty violent and sexual content. It contributes to the vulgarity and eve-teasing present in our society today. Thus, it harms the young minds of the world very gravely.

Q.1 How does cinema benefit us?

A.1 Cinema has a positive impact on society as it helps us in connecting to people of other cultures. It reflects the issues of society and makes us familiar with them. Moreover, it also makes us more aware and helps to improvise in emergency situations.

Q.2 What are the disadvantages of cinema?

A.2 Often cinema stereotypes various things and creates false notions of people and communities. It is also considered to be a waste of time and money as some movies are pure trash and don’t teach something valuable. Most importantly, it also demonstrates sexual and violent content which has a bad impact on young minds.

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• Essay On Impact Of Cinema On Life

Essay on the Impact of Cinema on Life

500+ words essay on the impact of cinema on life.

Cinema is a motion picture, or to put it simply, it means movies. Most of us love watching movies and wait eagerly for the next new release. These movies take us on an entertaining journey to a whole new world. From the time it came into existence, cinema has had a great impact on our lives. Cinema is also a great medium of education. From bringing different cultures and traditions across the globe together to raising awareness about important issues, cinemas educate us in many ways.

Origin of Cinema

Cinema is short for cinematography. Cinematography is the illusion of movement seen on a screen. This illusion of movement is a result of recording and then projecting several still photographs rapidly on the screen. This medium of mass communication and entertainment is a product of 19th-century science. Unlike most scientific inventions, the cinema doesn’t have just one inventor. Several scientists of the time, like Edison and the Lumiere brothers William Friese-Greene, worked to invent motion pictures and the cameras that recorded them.

The Edison company invented a device called the Kinetoscope, which allowed a person to view moving pictures through a peephole. In 1895, the Lumiere brothers invented a device called the Cinématographe, which could project moving pictures onto a screen. The Cinématographe was a three-in-one device, it was a camera, a projector and a film printer.

The first films were short, lasting a few minutes and did not have synchronized sound or dialogues. But with more scientific innovations, production houses started making feature-length movies with colour and synchronized sound. Roundhay Garden Scene, which was recorded by English photographer Louis Le Prince is believed to be the first motion picture ever made. The motion picture was recorded in Leeds, England, in 1888. The first Indian cinema was Raja Harishchandra, which was recorded and shown to the public in 1913.

Impact of Cinema on Our Lives

Cinema is mainly a medium of entertainment and communication. It is also a great medium to educate the masses. A movie has the power to bring distant, unseen lands, their culture and traditions before the audience. It can help raise awareness about social and cultural issues and help people understand the difference between good and bad. It can be inspirational and push the audience towards achieving their goals and dreams. Cinemas are also great stress relievers. It helps transport the audience to a distant, make-believe land that helps them forget their troubles for a little while.

While it has its merits, cinema does have several disadvantages too. There are several ways in which it could affect our lives negatively. It is up to the individuals to choose what to watch.

Impact of Cinema on Students

Young children are very impressionable and pick up things quickly. While the educational part of films is a good influence on them, the negative aspects can be a bad influence. Movies can also fuel their imagination and creativity and introduce them to new concepts. It can also inspire them and push them to work hard towards achieving their goals. At the same time, some movies can have a negative impact on students. So, parents and educators should ensure that movies shown to young children and students should be properly vetted and age-appropriate.

In conclusion, cinemas have had a vast impact on our lives. From educating and entertaining us to opening our minds to new possibilities and inspiring us, movies have changed our lives in several ways. The best way to ensure cinema doesn’t have a negative impact is to appreciate and learn the good aspects while leaving out the bad.

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Essay on Impact of Cinema in Life for in English Children and Students

Table of Contents

Essay on Impact of Cinema in Life: Cinema is an extremely popular source of entertainment worldwide. Numerous movies are produced each year and people watch these in large numbers. Cinema impacts our life both positively and negatively. Just as everything else in this world, cinema also has positive as well as negative impact on our life. While some movies can change our thinking for good others can invoke a feeling or pain or fear. Despite having a regulatory mechanism, movies these days display a good amount of violence and other illegal and immoral activities. While these activities don’t have much effect on matured adults, it could however adversely affect children or teenagers. Kids in their tender age are unable to make right decisions and are easily influenced by what is shown in the cinema.

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It exposes us to different types of art and helps us learn about how people from various backgrounds live. In a sense, it brings us together and makes us more open to diverse art forms and cultures. Movies also provide valuable lessons for real life.

Long and Short Essay on Impact of Cinema in Our Life in English

Here are long and short essay on impact of cinema in life in English, of varying lengths to help you with the topic in your exam or other activities.

You can choose any Impact of Cinema in Life Essay as per your need and interest during your school/college essay writing competition or in a debate, discussion with your class mate on topics relevant to the subject.

So, go through this page and select the one essay which is best for you:

Essay on Impact of Cinema in Our Life 200 words

Since the beginning of the human existence, man has been searching for different ways for recreation. He has been looking for something that gives a little break from his exhausting schedule of day to day life. Cinema has come forward as a great way of recreation since around a century. It has been one of the most loved pastimes since its inception.

Initially theatres were the only way to get access to the cinema but with the popularity of television and cable TV, watching movies became easier. With the advent of internet and mobile phones, we now get access to the cinema on our mobile screens and can watch them just about anywhere and anytime.

Everyone today is more or less connected to the cinema. When we see certain incidences shown in movies that we can relate to we naturally let them influence our mind-set and thought process. We even idealize certain characters and scenarios from the movies. We want our personality and life to be just like the life of the movie character we idealize. Some people get so hooked on to these characters that they become an integral part of their life.

Thus, we can conclude that cinema has a great influence on the lives of the people and society. It is rightly said that we are more or less carved out from the type of movies we see, songs we hear and the books we read.

Essay on Impact of Cinema on Students Life 300 words

Exploring the world of cinema has been a craze for the young generation ever since the initiation of the movies. They follow it like a passion and thus the young generation mostly the teenagers are the ones largely impacted by cinema. This is mainly because it is an age wherein they are about to step into the real world with dozens of notions and at times unreasonable optimism, and the films play a prime role in catering to them.

Positive Impact of Cinema on Students

• All kinds of movies are made to cater to the interest of different types of audience. There are movies that include educative content. Watching such movies widens the knowledge of the students and has a positive impact on them.
• Students need to juggle between their studies, extra-curricular activities and competitions. Amid such mad rush and rising competition, they need something for relaxation and movies are a good way to relax.
• Students can also bond well with their family and extended family as they plan to go out with them to watch cinema.

Negative Impact of Cinema on Students

• While cinema may be educative, watching too much of it can prove to be a waste of time for the students. Many students get addicted to the movies and spend their precious time in watching movies rather than studying.
• Certain movies contain inappropriate content such as violence and other A-rated scenes that have a negative impact on the students.
• Watching too much cinema and other video content can weaken the students’ eye sight and also hamper their power to concentrate.

Whatever a movie maybe about, one should not forget that a movie is a portrayal of writer’s imagination unless it’s a biopic. One should not madly follow them. Students must to realize that it isn’t necessary for their lives and situations to have resemblance with the movie. They should understand and know the difference between the reel life and real life and try to inculcate only the positive aspects of cinema.

Essay on Impact of Cinema on Society 400 words

Cinema has been a major source of entertainment for the people of every age group around the world. Different genres of movies are produced and these influence the public in different ways. Since movies are explored by all, they influence the society immensely. This impact can be both negative and positive.

Positive Impact of Cinema on the Society

Here is a look at the positive impact of cinema on the society:

• Cinema has a major influence on the society. So it can be used as a major tool for creating public awareness. Bollywood films like Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Taare Zameen Par and Swades have helped in bringing about positive changes in the society.
• Certain good movies and biopics can genuinely influence the viewer’s mind positively and can motivate him or her to work hard in life.
• Movies and songs can give rise to the feeling of patriotism in the viewers.
• A movie is always a good sort of entertainment. It lets you forget all your problems and can take you to an all new world of imagination, which can be beneficiary at times.
• Films at times can also widen your scope of knowledge according to their genre. A historic film can improve your knowledge in history; a sci-fi movie can touch you with some knowledge of science and so on.
• Good comedy movies have the power to make you laugh and can thus enhance your mood.
• Adventure movies can arise in you a spirit of adventure and motivation.

Negative Impact of Cinema on the Society

Here is a look at the negative impact of cinema on the society:

• Most of the movies nowadays show violence which can affect the public in a negative way. It can indirectly contribute to violent thoughts in one’s mind especially in the youth.
• Certain content shown in the movies is not appropriate for some people. It can actually mess up with their mind.
• People at times fail to differentiate between the movie and reality. They get so engrossed in it that they somehow start to believe that the reality is the same as portrayed in the movie which can have undesirable side effects.

It is a world in which everyone has their own different perspective which may not be right from the view of the others. Certain movies can thus hurt the feelings of certain audience. Some movies have hurt the religious sentiments of people and even resulted in riots.

Thus, we can conclude that movies can have a great impact on the viewer’s mind. It becomes the moral duty of the team to prepare the content that is appropriate and has a positive impact on the society.

Essay on Influence of Cinema on Youth 500 words

It is a well-known fact that one can learn and remember things easily if it has got both audio and visual aids instead of just audio. Keeping this thing in mind, many study sessions are taken where students are taught with the help of videos. Cinema has been popular since its inception. People came to realize that students can remember more through videos than just from verbal sessions as they observed kids remembering dialogue of the movie they watched a week ago but nothing from the lecture they attended in the morning.

Young Minds are influenced by what they see

Humans have this tendency of adopting the way of talking, walking and behaving of the person they are with for a long time. A person always leaves a mark in other person’s head according to his behaviour.

This notion is more popular among the people belonging to the teenage and also among the kids of age less than 13 years as they have massive grasping power. They want to mimic and copy everything they see in the cinemas, hairstyles, fashion, actions, body language, way of talking, everything. They think that by doing all this they can become popular and cool which seems to be important for today’s youth.

Cinema has a Major Impact on the Youth

Cinema is basically considered as the best among all means of entertainment. Young people watch cinema to get relax and entertained though along with this they learn a number of new things. The normal human tendency is to apply these things in their lives too. That is why it is very important that they grab only the positive points from the cinemas.

As youth is the future of any nation so it is essential that they build a positive mindset. It is thus essential for them to watch good quality of cinema that helps them grow mentally and makes them more knowledgeable and mature. Not only the actions and body language but their level of command on the language is also influenced by the cinema.

Moreover, many movies don’t just entertain, but also provide lots of information regarding different aspects of life. It also helps the young to develop an open-minded mentality which can be very helpful for their progress in lives.

Negative Impact of Cinema on Youth

Cinema has both negative and positive impact on the youth. In the form of action, showing various ways of killing people is a common sight in the movies these days. These things affect the people watching it at a psychological level. They create a mentality among the youth that to show power you need to fight with few, kill few or dominate few. This is a very wrong notion.

Not just this, even the adult scenes, including sex are misguiding for the youth who have not even been provided sex education to understand what is wrong and what is right. Showing excess of nudity and lust can make them do things that they are not supposed to at their age. Moreover, too much time and money is also wasted on viewing cinema.

Hence, cinema impacts the youth in various ways. However, it depends on their maturity and understanding on what they adopt the most.

Essay on Advantages and Disadvantages of Cinema 600 words

Cinema is a source of entertainment for millions of people around the globe. It serves as a tool against boredom and an escape from the monotonous life. A good movie offers a relaxing and entertaining experience. It takes you to a new world of imagination, away from all the troubles. It has the power to refresh and rejuvenate your mind. However, it also has certain set of disadvantages attached to it. Here is a look at the advantages as well as disadvantages of cinema:

Advantages of Cinema

Here is a look at the advantages offered by the cinema:

• Social Advantages

Among the teens the trend of watching movies is followed as a passion. Looking at the type of movies a person prefers to watch one can judge his preference and personality. Movies help in socialising as they offer a common ground of discussion. You can always discuss about the content you have watched while sitting in a group or at parties. It offers as a good conversation starter. It is an interesting topic unlike politics and sports that many people find boring.

• Inspires Imagination

Movies at times show the weirdest imagination of the writer. It shows the world that is unseen and unexplored with advanced graphic technology which can help us enhance our imagination too.

• Reflection of Art and Culture of Different Parts of the World

Different movies have varied plots that are set around varied cultures and people belonging to different places across the globe. This helps one broaden his or her knowledge about people living in different parts of the world and their way of living.

• Improvises Thinking Capacity

Success stories and biographies can inspire people to not give up in life. There are certain scenes in the movies wherein cases of emergency such as fire, bomb blast, robbery, etc are shown. We may not know what to do in such moments in real life if we ever come across them. Movies can help improvise our thinking capacity and help us understand how to act in such situations.

Disadvantages of Cinema

• Creates False Notion

Movies contribute greatly towards forming false notion in people especially kids. Situations and societies in every part of the world are different. People are different on screen and in reality. However, many individuals fail at realize the gap between the movie world and reality which causes problems.

• Waste of Money and Time

Movie is a mere representation of the writer’s thoughts and imagination and they are not always worth our time and money. What’s the point in investing into something if it isn’t worth our time and we feel disappointed at the end of it?

• Violent and Adult Content

To make a movie fetch more profit unnecessary scenes of violence, action, nudity and vulgarity are added to it, making it inappropriate for the kids and young adults. It can have a negative impact their mind.

Movies have at times proved to be over addictive for certain people. Not every movie is worth watching. There are so many other productive and interesting things to do in life other than unnecessarily wasting hours on useless movies. The involvement in movies up to certain extent is alright but undue craze for cinema and wasting money for overhyped movies is not preferable.

There are always two aspects of a thing – a positive one and a negative one. One must watch movies and let them impact oneself to a limit to avoid all the negative aspects of it. As it is rightly said, everything done in limit is beneficiary. Similarly, investing time into movies that are worth watching is fine but getting addicted to them should be avoided, as it would not only waste our time but we’ll also miss out other things that are actually worth our time.

Essay on Impact of Cinema in Life FAQs

What is the impact of cinema on youth.

Cinema can influence youth by shaping their beliefs, values, and behaviors through the stories and characters they see on screen.

What is the impact of cinema in India?

In India, cinema is a powerful cultural and entertainment medium that reflects the diversity, traditions, and societal issues of the country.

What are the benefits of cinema?

The benefits of cinema include entertainment, education, cultural representation, and a platform for storytelling.

What is the impact of cinema in our life?

Cinema impacts our lives by providing a source of entertainment, inspiration, and a means to connect with diverse perspectives.

In India, cinema is a significant part of the cultural fabric, influencing society, and addressing important issues.

What was the impact of cinema as a means of mass communication to the society?

Cinema, as a means of mass communication, has the power to inform, entertain, and shape public opinions on various topics.

Why is cinema important in our daily life?

Cinema is important in daily life as it offers relaxation, escape from reality, and a window to different worlds and experiences.

In India, cinema has a profound impact on culture, society, and the way people perceive and connect with their surroundings.

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Why We Watch Movies

The ritual of cinema adds to its appeal..

Posted June 21, 2021 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

It is illuminating to consider how religion and belief have been transformed into seemingly secular activities in the modern world. One way to approach this is to identify our rituals, to think about what people do at night, in the darkness beyond the demands of labor and domestic life. We are thus led to the spaces we set aside for communal behaviors that are unique from prosaic life. These sacred spaces are separate from the everyday, the profane. As Émile Durkheim wrote over a hundred years ago, sacred spaces are those in which powerful, transformative events take place for individuals as part of a collective.

Rituals, like a sacrifice, occur in the enclosed space of the ritual arena. In these spaces, different rules apply. They bring about different ways of relating to the community, to ancestors, time, and fundamental notions of meaning and significance. In this essay, I claim cinema is such a sacred space and discuss how and why it works so effectively.

Movies and the power of ritual

Myth and ritual are central to how every society collates, creates, and perpetuates the core of its significances, values, aspirations, origins, goals , and ethical lineaments. Over the last 80 years, cinema has become a reliable, effective medium for telling stories. In other words, cinema is a preeminent mode for the generation of participation in the myths of our times. The emotional intensity of the ritual, of contact with mythology, is what draws belief, salience, and importance into the encounter.

In movies , the scale of human action takes on mythic proportions. Not only in size but also in terms of the importance of gesture, storyline, character, emotions, settings, and scenes. Archetypal characters bring to life finely-wrought scripts wherein storylines illustrate moral reflections, aspirational narratives, and the dramatization of historical events. The finely selected dialogue in movies is so crucial that it resembles the manifest content of dialogue in dreams . Freud of course claimed that every word uttered in a dream is of utmost importance since the medium of dreams is visual, and thus any words that sneak through the censor must be vital.

The art of filmmaking is extremely difficult; one look at the credits tells you hundreds of people and hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone into any given movie. The layers of censors from investors to editors to distribution companies (and so many more) make every scene highly improbable. Relative to the stories of all the people in the theater and the people who made the film, the production necessary to make a film demonstrates that it functions at a higher level of proportionality. Granted, not all movies are effective and worthy of the treatment I describe here, but many are—those are the movies to which I apply these reflections.

It is also the atmosphere of cinema that creates a form of ritual space. The movie theater, a room with no windows suffused with darkness but for the light burning through translucent celluloid. We sit among strangers with whom we share emotional reactions to shared events. By sharing reactions, we share and reinforce a cultural lens.

The communal setting of the ritual arena of theater itself elevates the event. It confirms us as a community and builds our shared history and interpretation of reality out further and further. Light flickers on the screen, which is 45 to 65 feet wide and as tall as 30 feet. Cinema is larger than life; that is how it can represent life to us in a mimetic ritual of drama . We understand something about ourselves by becoming other, by being taken in by the story and coming out the other end in a slightly different form.

Then there is the narrative, the aesthetic charm poured into the dramatic form. That distillation of life into moments, sieved into distinct tales of definite memorability. The overwhelmingly melodramatic format of the journey, the love triangle, the conflict, etc., pushes us to identify with the characters. We are brought into an empathetic mood. Some movies bring us into the community of the characters such that plot development resembles nothing so much as gossip.

Time is transformed in the cinematic state; for us, it is an escape , a vacation, a portal out of the world and the uncontrollable nature of time. The liminality of being out of time in a dark room doing nothing allows for separation from so much that binds us. We are freed from speaking, from the dense maze of active interactions that make up public life. Here we are voyeurs who participate emotionally even when nothing is asked of us. The filmmaker does it all: through montage, a story comes together; through casting, we are directed to recognize characters; through lighting and sound, we are immersed in environments. All we have to do is keep our eyes and ears open. If we give our attention , the screen creates the illusion of four dimensions. It offers them to us; it takes them all up and drags us in its wake.

After the liminal space of the ritual of cinema, we walk out of the room discombobulated, sensitive to light and motion. We reaggregate ourselves after having become part of a different reality. We reflect upon what we saw and heard, in groups or in internal dialogue. The movie becomes part of our memory ; sometimes we get confused about whether the stories we remember come from cinema or stories we’ve heard about people. We take the movie in through the sacred space of the theater and leave with its messages.

When the ritual is over, when the crow and the raven are silent, we return to each other with stories and characters, memories of events that never happened. We want to share them further; we recommend movies, talk about their virtues and failures, and interleave them into our memories of all the other movies and stories we have lived through. The myth has been received, the experience has become a part of us.

Durkheim, Émile, 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, a Study in Religious Sociology. London : New York :G. Allen & Unwin; Macmillan.

Turner, V. W. 1969. The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.

Rami Gabriel, Ph.D. , is Associate Professor of Psychology at Columbia College Chicago, where he is a founding Fellow of the Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture.

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Essays About Cinema: Top 5 Examples and 10 Prompts

Are you writing an essay on cinema? Check out our round-up of great examples of essays about cinema and creative prompts to stir up your thoughts on this art form.

Cinema is primarily referred to as films. With the power to transport people to different worlds and cultures, cinema can be an evocative medium to tell stories, shape beliefs, and seed new ideas. Cinema can also refer to the production process of films or even film theaters.

If you’re writing an essay about cinema, our inspiring essay examples and prompts below can help you find the best way to express your thoughts on this art form:  

Best 5 Essay Examples

1. french cinema is more than just entertainment by jonathan romney, 2. “nope” is one of the greatest movies about moviemaking by richard brody, 3. the wolf of wall street and the new cinema of excesses by izzy black, 4. how spirited away changed animation forever by kat moon, 5. from script to screen: what role for intellectual property by cathy jewell, 1. the history of cinema, 2. analysis of my favorite movie, 3. the impact of cinema on life, 4. the technological evolution of cinema, 5. cinema and piracy, 6. how to make a short film, 7. movies vs. film vs. cinema, 8. movie theaters during the pandemic, 9. film festivals, 10. the effect of music on mood.

“In France, cinema is taken seriously, traditionally considered an art rather than merely a form of entertainment or an industrial product. In that spirit, and in the name of ‘cultural exception,’ the French state has long supported home-grown cinema as both art and business.”

The culture of creating and consuming cinema is at the heart of French culture. The essay gives an overview of how the French give premium to cinema as a tool for economic and cultural progress, inspiring other countries to learn from the French in maintaining and elevating the global prestige of their film industry.

“‘Nope’ is one of the great movies about moviemaking, about the moral and spiritual implications of cinematic representation itself—especially the representation of people at the center of American society who are treated as its outsiders.”

The essay summarizes “Nope,” a sci-fi horror released in 2022. It closely inspects its action, technology play, and dramatic point-of-view shots while carefully avoiding spoilers. But beyond the cinematic technicalities, the movie also captures Black Americans’ experience of exploitation in the movie’s set period. 

“These films opt to imaginatively present the psychology of ideology rather than funnel in a more deceptive ideology through moralizing. The hope, then, perhaps, that indulging in the sin that we might better come to terms with the animal of capitalism and learn something of value from it. Which is to say, there is a moral end to at all.” 

This essay zooms into various movies of excess in recent times and compares them against those in the ‘60s when the style in the cinema first rose. She finds that current films of excess do not punish their undiscerning heroes in the end. While this has been interpreted as glorifying the excess, Black sees this as our way to learn.

Check out these essays about heroes and essays about college .

“Spirited Away shattered preconceived notions about the art form and also proved that, as a film created in Japanese with elements of Japanese folklore central to its core, it could resonate deeply with audiences around the world.”

Spirited Away is a hand-drawn animation that not only put Japanese cinema on the map but also changed the animation landscape forever. The film bent norms that allowed it to break beyond its target demographics and redefine animation’s aesthetic impact. The Times essay looks back on the film’s historic journey toward sweeping nominations and awards on a global stage long dominated by Western cinema. 

“[IP rights] help producers attract the funds needed to get a film project off the ground; enable directors, screenwriters and actors, as well as the many artists and technicians who work behind the scenes, to earn a living; and spur the technological innovations that push the boundaries of creativity and make the seemingly impossible, possible.”

Protecting intellectual property rights in cinema has a significant but often overlooked role in helping make or break the success of a film. In this essay, the author identifies the film-making stages where contracts on intellectual property terms are created and offers best practices to preserve ownership over creative works throughout the film-making process.

10 Exciting Writing Prompts

See below our writing prompts to encourage great ideas for your essay:

In this essay, you can write about the beginnings of cinema or pick a certain period in the evolution of film. Then, look into the defining styles that made them have an indelible mark in cinema history. But to create more than just an informational essay, try to incorporate your reflections by comparing the experience of watching movies today to your chosen cinema period.

Pick your favorite movie and analyze its theme and main ideas. First, provide a one-paragraph summary. Then, pick out the best scenes and symbolisms that you think poignantly relayed the movie’s theme and message. To inspire your critical thinking and analysis of movies, you may turn to the essays of renowned film critics such as André Bazin and Roger Ebert . 

Talk about the advantages and disadvantages of cinema. You can cite research and real-life events that show the benefits and risks of consuming or producing certain types of films. For example, cinematic works such as documentaries on the environment can inspire action to protect Mother Nature. Meanwhile, film violence can be dangerous, especially when exposed to children without parental guidance.

Walk down memory lane of the 100 years of cinema and reflect on each defining era. Like any field, the transformation of cinema is also inextricably linked to the emergence of groundbreaking innovations, such as the kinetoscope that paved the way for short silent movies and the technicolor process that allowed the transition from black and white to colored films. Finally, you can add the future innovations anticipated to revolutionize cinema. 

Content piracy is the illegal streaming, uploading, and selling of copyrighted content. First, research on what technologies are propelling piracy and what are piracy’s implications to the film industry, the larger creative community, and the economy. Then, cite existing anti-piracy efforts of your government and several film organizations such as the Motion Picture Association . Finally, offer your take on piracy, whether you are for or against it, and explain. 

A short film is a great work and a starting point for budding and aspiring movie directors to venture into cinema. First, plot the critical stages a film director will undertake to produce a short film, such as writing the plot, choosing a cast, marketing the film, and so on. Then, gather essential tips from interviews with directors of award-winning short films, especially on budgeting, given the limited resource of short film projects. 

Beyond their linguistic differences, could the terms movie, film, and cinema have differences as jargon in the film-making world? Elaborate on the differences between these three terms and what movie experts think. For example, Martin Scorsese doesn’t consider the film franchise Avengers as cinema. Explain what such differentiation means. 

Theaters were among the first and worst hit during the outbreak of COVID-19 as they were forced to shut down. In your essay, dig deeper into the challenges that followed their closure, such as movie consumers’ exodus to streaming services that threatened to end cinemas. Then, write about new strategies movie theater operators had to take to survive the pandemic. Finally, write an outlook on the possible fate of movie theaters by using research studies and personally weighing the pros and cons of watching movies at home.

Film Festivals greatly support the film industry, expand national wealth, and strengthen cultural pride. For this prompt, write about how film festivals encouraged the rise of specific genres and enabled the discovery of unique films and a fresh set of filmmakers to usher in a new trend in cinema.

First, elaborate on how music can intensify the mood in movies. Then, use case examples of how music, especially distinct ones, can bring greater value to a film. For example, superhero and fantasy movies’ intro music allows more excellent recall. 

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers . 

If you’re still stuck, check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

Yna Lim is a communications specialist currently focused on policy advocacy. In her eight years of writing, she has been exposed to a variety of topics, including cryptocurrency, web hosting, agriculture, marketing, intellectual property, data privacy and international trade. A former journalist in one of the top business papers in the Philippines, Yna is currently pursuing her master's degree in economics and business.

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The Role of Television and Movies in Our Life Essay

Nowadays, mass media and television have taken the separate cultural domain. It reveals through a wide impact of television and movies on democratic life. Mass communication has penetrated the awareness and outlook of society on the culture. Thus, people become dependent on TV programs and movies that do not always reveal useful information. Some mass media researchers believe that television and movies should be more realistic and reveal the violence and profanity. Others insist on the fact that the main function of TV is to eliminate brutality from real life. My strong belief is that television should introduce people with cardinal virtues by broadcasting educational programs and movies with clear language and moral messages due to numerous reasons.

First of all, the movies revealing violent and cruel attitudes toward people contribute to the increase of the crime rate. Many researchers figured out the consequences of watching television violence and found out that children suffer from it in most cases since it provokes aggression towards others (Dorpat, Th 30). The increase of the children’s aggression level evokes an indifferent attitude to the violence in reality. Some people while watching movies depicting violence and brutality are eager to witness bad “guys” be punished and, hence, they take pleasure from watching the cruelties. The nature of violence lies in a person’s psychological perception of violence as the cause of the conflict between people. In other words, people are unlikely to accept the good features of negative characters in the movies (Rosenberg, M. B. 18). The same concerns children who always emulate their parents’ habits believing there is only one way to punish the evil. As a result, children’s outlook on good and evil is significantly distorted and in the future children will not be able to distinguish between the actual evil and a slight offense. Moreover, violence is included in the tradition of American movies.

The profanity was especially increased over several decades of the last century. Instead of movies and TV programs overwhelmed with cuss words and the usage of abusive language, media should be directed on the education of the society. The fact that the current TV viewers are more likely to watch programs overwhelmed with scandals and obscene language should make the government to think over the future of the television media. Those surveys constitute low educational level of the society and moral degradation of the population. The situation is aggravated by the growing tendency to use cuss words by TV reporters. Television journalists are free to use taboo words such as “hell” or “damn” during the news programs holding at dinner time, the time when children are likely to be at home (Gans, H.J. 244). Therefore, government policy must be directed on the elimination of the scandalous TV shows that distort the social and moral outlooks of the society on the culture of language and behavior. That is why, people should be culturally active advocating the main moral principles. In addition, violent movies and Hollywood movies propagate the unhealthy way of life where all heroes used to smoke and to drink spirits. Currently, smoking and dissipated way of life are out of date. Besides, more programs on healthy lifestyle tend to be introduced on TV.

The exposure to the nudity and sexual scenes may lead to the early sexual contacts that can hamper the healthy development of a teenager. Nowadays, the youth is stressed with a growing amount of sexual scenes so that they get used to the growing amount of the sexual crimes. Consequently, children do not analyze what they watch on TV but perceive it as the reality. The outcome of such perception may lead to blurring the limits between the real world and the movie world as well as to the corruption of children’s innocent mind (Gauntlett, D & Hill 277). Instead, some scientific and educational programs should be provided that would cultivate the teenagers’ right outlook the sexual relationships.

However, nudity as an art should not be conflated with erotic scenes and pornography, if we talk about nudity as cult of the human body beauty. Nudity is also presented in works of famous architects and painters who glorified the beauty of male and female bodies. In this respect, nudity has nothing in common with sexual scenes and violence and has the right to be shown on TV.

In conclusion, I believe that television’s main function is to cultivate the moral values of the younger generation, which is obsessed with TV programs and movies. Hence, the television should be directed on the healthy development of the children’s personality and to the cultivation of the positive outlook on the reality. In addition, adults should be more conscious of what they watch and should not overuse it as the main means of entertainment. The government, in its turn, should take more attention to the development of mass media and set up a more strict censure on TV programs due to fact that television has the greatest impact on the current society.

Works Cited

Dorpat, Th. L. Crimes of Punishment: American’s Culture of Violence. US: Algora Publishing, 2007.

Gans, H.J., Deciding What’s News: a Study of CBS Evening News, NBC nightly news. US: Northwestern University Press, 2004.

Gauntlett, D & Hill, A. TV Living: Television, Culture, and Everyday Life. London: Routledge, 1999.

Rosenberg, M. B. Nonviolent Communication: a Language of Life US: PuddleDancer Press, 2003.

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IvyPanda. (2021, November 13). The Role of Television and Movies in Our Life. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-role-of-television-and-movies-in-our-life/

"The Role of Television and Movies in Our Life." IvyPanda , 13 Nov. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/the-role-of-television-and-movies-in-our-life/.

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IvyPanda . 2021. "The Role of Television and Movies in Our Life." November 13, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-role-of-television-and-movies-in-our-life/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Role of Television and Movies in Our Life." November 13, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-role-of-television-and-movies-in-our-life/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Role of Television and Movies in Our Life." November 13, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-role-of-television-and-movies-in-our-life/.

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Essay on Impact of Cinema in Life

All of us just like watching movies and some of us are just crazy about a new release. It is one of the best sources of entertainment and we prefer watching movies on our weekends. Somehow it affects our life as well as society in many ways.

Short and Long Essays on Impact of Cinema in Life in English

Find here some essays to know more about the Impact of Cinema in our Life .

Impact of Cinema in Life Essay 10 Lines (100 – 150 Words)

1) Cinema is a great source of entertainment for humans.

2) It plays an important role in bringing different cultures together.

3) Different issues of society can be raised through cinema.

4) Some movie inspires us and provokes us to achieve our goal.

5) It helps us to know many unfamiliar incidents and information.

6) It also helps in reducing stress and improving mood.

7) Many science fiction movies positively affect children.

8) Cinema also shows bad things like alcohol, smoking, etc which negatively affect children.

9) Cinema is also responsible for promoting vulgarity, which is not good for youths.

10) All types of emotions are shown in the cinema, therefore, we need to select the appropriate one.

Essay 1 (250 Words) – Impact of Cinema in Life

Introduction

Cinemas are not only the best ways of entertainment but they also teach us and we learn a lot from them. Either it is a good habit or a bad one because they show everything and it is up to us as what we choose. I can say that it has really affected us and its impact can be easily seen in our society as well as on us. All of us love watching movies and really can’t imagine a life without cinemas.

Impact of Cinema

It will be not wrong if I say we have developed a lot and one of the best ways to analyze our development is cinema. You can watch a 90’s movie and then watch the latest release and the difference will be just in front of you.

Impact of Cinema on Students

Students learn things quickly and whenever a character gets popular; its dialogues and name get automatically popular among students. Some movies are all about imagination and a writer writes a story and a director makes the story survive in the society in the form of a movie. Sometimes they also make movies on science fiction and this helps students to enhance their imagination and create something new. I can say that students get affected a lot with these movies, they lean all good and bad habits from it.

Impact of Cinema on Normal People

They show different types of social issues in a movie and it directly affects people. It helps them to think and take some action. One of the very best examples is our police, past in the history police had a very bad image of taking a bribe or behaving like a don, etc. But thanks to movies the image has changed and now people know that it is not every police officer the same. Due to some people, the whole system was degraded.

It shows that movies play a very important role in our life. People easily get the effect with them and get manipulated with movies. This is the reason why some movies get banned and some of them are strongly opposed. Overall, I can that they are good and one should really learn from them.

Essay 2 (300 Words) – Some Positive and Negative Aspects of Cinemas

I love watching movies and sometimes a thrilling story brings goosebump whereas sometimes it also makes me cry. Depending on the story, directors make it look real and that is called a cinema or movie. Movies are of different types some are carton movies whereas some are real story-based, etc. We can relate some of the stories with our day to day life.

Positive Aspects of Cinemas

Many movies or stories are inspiring and they affect us in many ways. We learn a lot from it; actually you can say that movies are the mirrors of society. Sometimes the stories inspire us whereas sometimes it also fills with happiness.

• We learn new ideas from movies because they show some virtual technologies which inspire us to make them and give us new ideas.
• We also know the latest trend, either it is fashion or something else, it is very first seen in movies and then it goes viral.
• Some movies inspire us a lot and sometimes it also changes our lives and fills us with new hope.
• Some movies are made as a satire on the taboos in our society which helps us to change our mentality and bring a change in society.
• Movies are also known as stress busters because we just forget our own stuff and live in another story, which sometimes also makes us laugh as well as sometimes makes us cry.

Negative Aspects of Cinema

There is no doubt that movies are good in many ways still there are some factors which affect us and our society directly, I have mentioned some of them below;

• Some people get addicted to movies and this is not a good thing because everything should be in a limit. Overdoes of anything is harmful to health.
• They show everything in a movie like Drugs, Alcohol, etc; sometimes youngsters and students get prone to these things and it badly affects their life.
• Movies are of different categories and some adult movies badly affect children. So, parents always have to keep an eye on children to be safe.

Nowadays moves are not only just a medium of entertainment but they also educate and bring change in our society. There are thousands of movies that have helped people and have also filled new hope in them. Really our film industry is doing a very good job and we should respect them.

Essay 3 (500 – 600 Words) – What is a Cinema and How it is Affecting Us?

There are different mediums of entertainment in our life, sometimes we like to read a book whereas sometimes we watch a movie. Movies are one of the best and never-ending fun for most of us. We like spending our time watching a movie.

What are Movies and How it Came into Existence?

Movies are short stories dealing with some people. Sometimes they are based on some true stories whereas sometimes they are simply based on imagination.

It was Roundhay Garden Scene the first motion picture ever made in the year 1888 and it was Raja Harishchandra which was the Indian movie made in the year 1913. We can easily see the impact of our society in the movies of that era.

Movies can be termed as the mirrors of society and they show what’s going on in society. Some movies are satires on some bad cultures or something wrong happening in our society; whereas some movies are simply directed to entertain us.

How Movies Affect our Society

Movies play a very important role in building our society; there are many movies that reflect what’s going on in society: the caste system, dowry, killing of the girl child, etc. Many movies were made to teach society and really, they helped a lot to bring some change.

When people see, feel, and understand, it automatically helps them to change. Today there is a drastic change in the ratios of the girls’ literacy rate, the killing of a girl child, etc. Movies have played a major role in abolishing these taboos from society.

How Movies Affect our Youth

Movies have also played a very important role in changing our mentality. Our youth is fastly adopting western culture, attire, we can say everything. Nowadays movies are the main source of knowing other cultures. Hollywood movies are so famous in India and we also want to be like them.

So, I can say that our youth is fastly accepting another tradition and it is not a good thing. Everything should be in a limit; one should not forget his roots and traditions. Our youth should understand the importance of their own culture.

It is good to learn new things but one should also think about his own culture. Our youth is orienting towards the west and movies have badly affected our culture. For example, if there is a tradition of opening shoes out of the home means one should understand the science behind it. Actually, our shoes carry lots of bacteria with them so it is a better option to open them outside.

How Movies Affect our Life

It is human nature that we don’t like to follow a strict rule; we try our best to figure out an easy way of doing a particular work. As a result, we are skipping some of our rituals.

Electronic media has played a very important role in developing our society either the growth is social or personal. We have changed a lot and day by day learning new things just because of these mediums. These mediums have made easy access to movies as a result anyone can watch a movie anywhere.

We have developed technologies, and also want to look smart and sophisticated. The new hairstyle or hair colour gets viral within a day and people rush towards the shops to buy similar things. I can say that this was never seen before. This is the impact of cinemas in our life.

It is quite good to change but one should not forget his own tradition and culture. Our moves should also promote our tradition. Movies have both positive as well as negative impacts and we should teach our children to learn good habits.

FAQs: Frequently asked Questions

Ans . Cinema literally means a place where films are shown.

Ans . The cinema came into existence in the world in 1895.

Ans . Cinema begins in India in 1913 when the first silent film Raja Harishchandra was made.

Ans . Dhundiraj Govind Phalke is known as the father of Indian cinema.

Ans . The name of India’s first talkie film was Alam Ara.

Ans . The youth tries to implement the same in their life whatever they watch in the movies.

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Step By Step Guide to Writing an Essay on Film

By Film Threat Staff | December 29, 2021

Writing an essay about a film sounds like a fun assignment to do. As part of the assignment, you get to watch the movie and write an analytical essay about your impressions. However, you will soon find that you’re staring at an empty sheet of paper or computer screen with no idea what to write, how to start writing your essay, or the essential points that need to be covered and analyzed. As an  essay writing service proves, watching the movie countless times isn’t all there is to write a film analysis essay. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you with an essay service :

1. Watch the Movie

This is the obvious starting point, but surprisingly many students skip this step. It doesn’t matter if you’ve watched the movie twice before. If you’re asked to write an essay about it, you need to watch it again. Watching the film again allows you to pay more attention to specific elements to help you write an in-depth analysis about it.  

Watching the movie is crucial because it helps you not specific parts of the movie that can be used as illustrations and examples in your essay. You’re also going to explore and analyze the movie theme within your structured plan. Some of the critical elements that you have to look out for while watching the movie that may be crucial for your essay are:

• Key plot moments
• Editing style
• Stylistic elements
• Scenario execution
• Musical elements

2. Introduction

Your introduction will contain essential information about the film, such as the title, release date, director’s name, etc. This familiarizes the reader with the movie’s primary background information. In addition, researching the filmmaker may be crucial for your essay because it may help you discover valuable insights for your film analysis.

The introduction should also mention the movie’s central theme and explain why you think it was made that way.

Do not forget to include your thesis statement, which explains your focus on the movie.

3. Write a Summary

According to an  essay writing service  providing students   help with essays , a movie summary comes after the introduction. It includes the film’s basic premise, but it doesn’t have to reveal too many details about the film. It’s a summary, after all. Write the summary like your readers have not heard about the movie before, so you can mention the most basic plots but assume you have minimal time so you won’t be going into great details.

4. Write Your Analysis

This is the central part of the essay in which you analyze the movie critically and state your impressions about the film. Ensure to support your claims with relevant materials from the movie.

There are also several creative elements in a movie that are connected to make the film a whole. You must pay attention to these elements while watching the movie and analyze them in this part of the essay.

In this, you are looking out for the dialogs, character development, completion of scenes, and logical event sequences in the film to analyze.

Ensure you try to understand the logic behind events in the film and the actor’s motives to explain the scenario better.

The responsibility of different parts of the movie, such as plan selection and scenario execution, falls on the director. So, your analysis here focuses on how the director realized the script compared to his other movies. Understanding the director’s style of directing may be crucial to coming up with a conclusion relevant to your analysis and thesis.

The casting of a film is a significant element to consider in your essay. Without a great actor, the scriptwriter and director can’t bring their ideas to life. So, watch the actor’s acting and determine if they portrayed the character effectively and if their acting aligns with the film’s main idea.

• Musical element

A movie’s musical element enhances some of the sceneries or actions in the film and sets the mood. It has a massive impact on the movie, so it’s an essential element to analyze in your essay.

• Visual elements

This includes special effects, make-up, costumes, etc., which significantly impact the film. These elements must reflect the film’s atmosphere. It is even more crucial for historical movies since it has to be specific about an era.

Ensure to analyze elements relevant to your thesis statement, so you don’t drift from your main point.

5. Conclusion

In concluding your essay, you have to summarize the primary concepts more convincingly to support your analysis. Finally, you may include a CTA for readers to watch or avoid the movie.

These are the crucial steps to take when writing an essay about a film . Knowing this beforehand prevents you from struggling to start writing after watching the movie.

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It’s really amazing instructions! I have got the great knowledge.

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I can’t list the number of essays that don’t follow this format in the least. But then I find most reviews of movies terrible and most people who purport themselves to be writers as people who need to spend more time drafting and editing before publishing.

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Film: HOW TO WRITE ESSAYS THAT UNCOVER THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL IMPACT OF MOVIES

by Aveline MacQuoid on July 2, 2023

in Extras , Film

Movies have long captivated audiences with their ability to transport us to different worlds, evoke emotions, and provoke thought. Beyond mere entertainment, movies hold a significant role in shaping and reflecting the social and cultural landscape of our society. They have the power to shed light on pressing social issues, challenge norms, and influence our collective consciousness. As students and scholars, we have the unique opportunity to delve into the social and cultural impact of movies through insightful essays. In this article, we will explore the art of writing essays that uncover the profound influence of movies on society, and provide valuable guidance on how to effectively analyze their impact.

In today’s digital age, where a vast array of online resources and services are readily available, it is essential to approach essay writing with precision and depth. Just as we seek assistance from reputable sources like Ukwritings dissertation service for comprehensive dissertation support, we can apply a similar approach to crafting essays that delve into the social and cultural impact of movies. By examining the intricate threads of storytelling, representation, and audience reception, we can uncover the layers of meaning and significance that movies bring to our collective consciousness.

The purpose of this article is to offer practical guidance on how to write essays that delve into the social and cultural impact of movies. We will explore various key aspects, such as analyzing themes and messages, examining representation and diversity, and assessing audience reception and influence. By honing our critical thinking skills and sharpening our analytical lenses, we can delve into the rich tapestry of social and cultural issues that movies explore. Together, let us embark on a journey of discovery, unlocking the profound insights that movies offer and capturing their enduring impact on our world.

Analyzing Themes and Messages

Movies have a remarkable ability to convey powerful themes and messages that resonate with audiences on a deep level. When writing essays that uncover the social and cultural impact of movies, it is crucial to delve into the underlying themes and messages they convey. By critically analyzing these elements, we can gain profound insights into the intricate relationship between movies and society. Identifying the themes and messages allows us to explore how movies address social issues, challenge cultural norms, and even provide a lens into historical events. For example, movies for students like “Dead Poets Society” not only explore the power of literature and the pursuit of individuality but also shed light on the rigid educational systems and societal expectations that shape young minds.

As we analyze the themes and messages of movies, it is important to examine the social issues and cultural aspects they tackle. Movies have the power to create awareness and initiate conversations about pressing societal concerns. They serve as a mirror that reflects the triumphs, struggles, and complexities of our world. For instance, movies like “ Black Panther ” have sparked discussions about representation, identity, and social justice. By exploring the themes and messages within such movies, we can gain a deeper understanding of the social dynamics at play and the impact they have on our collective consciousness. It is through these thought-provoking analyses that we can uncover the layers of meaning and appreciate the significant social and cultural influence that movies hold.

Examining Representation and Diversity

In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on representation and diversity in movies. The portrayal of diverse characters and experiences plays a crucial role in shaping our understanding of the world around us. When writing essays that uncover the social and cultural impact of movies, it is essential to examine how movies tackle representation and diversity. Movies have the power to challenge stereotypes, break down barriers, and promote inclusivity. By exploring the diverse range of characters and narratives depicted on screen, we can gain insights into the lived experiences of marginalized communities and appreciate the importance of authentic representation. For example, movies like “Moonlight” and “Crazy Rich Asians” have been hailed for their groundbreaking portrayal of underrepresented communities, shedding light on their stories, struggles, and triumphs.

Examining representation in movies goes beyond mere on-screen visibility. It involves critically analyzing the depth, complexity, and authenticity of the portrayals. Movies have the potential to shape public opinion, challenge biases, and contribute to social change. When movies present diverse perspectives and challenge prevailing narratives, they open up opportunities for dialogue and understanding. By exploring how movies navigate representation and diversity, we can gain a deeper understanding of the social dynamics at play and their impact on viewers’ perceptions. It is through these critical examinations that we can appreciate the transformative power of movies in shaping social and cultural landscapes.

Assessing Audience Reception and Influence

When it comes to writing essays that uncover the social and cultural impact of movies, it is crucial to assess the audience reception and influence of these films. Movies have a significant impact on audience perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors. They can evoke emotional responses, spark conversations, and shape cultural trends. By examining how movies resonate with audiences, we can gain insights into their societal and cultural influence. For example, movies like “Black Panther” not only captivated audiences worldwide but also had a profound impact on discussions surrounding representation and diversity in the film industry, inspiring and empowering marginalized communities.

Understanding audience reception goes beyond box office numbers or critical reviews. It involves considering the social and cultural context in which movies are viewed and how they resonate with different communities. Movies have the power to reflect and reinforce existing cultural values, as well as challenge and subvert them. By analyzing audience reactions and engaging with diverse perspectives, we can uncover the nuanced ways in which movies influence our collective consciousness. By assessing the audience reception and influence of movies, we can gain a comprehensive understanding of their social and cultural impact, allowing us to write insightful essays that explore the profound effects they have on society.

In conclusion, writing essays that uncover the social and cultural impact of movies is a valuable endeavor that allows us to delve deeper into the profound influence of this powerful medium. By analyzing themes, examining representation and diversity, and assessing audience reception and influence, we can unlock a wealth of insights and understanding about the movies that shape and reflect our society.

It is important to approach this task with critical thinking and a keen eye for detail. By exploring the underlying messages and themes portrayed in movies, we can uncover their significance in addressing social issues and cultural norms. Additionally, examining the representation and diversity depicted on screen helps us understand the impact of movies in challenging stereotypes and promoting inclusivity.

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• Speech on Impact of Cinema in Life

Long and Short Speech on Impact of Cinema in Life

Cinema is a form of entertainment that is used to tell a story. Cinema helps us in making new friends. Cinema is the invention that has changed the way a story is viewed by people. Many families spend time together watching movies in Cinema. Cinema has changed our point of view towards life as it tells stories that make the viewers think. Cinema is considered to be the most expensive form of art as millions of dollars are spent to create sets, advertisements, etc.

Here we have provided a long and short speech on the impact of cinema in life and along with that we have also given 10 line pointers speech on the importance of cinema in life

Long Speech on Cinema in Life

A warm welcome to everyone present. In my speech on cinema today, I shall discuss its impact on our lives. Cinema, as we all know, is a form of art that is used to show a story. Before cinema was found, people used to watch a story unfold on stage dramas. On December 28, 1895, the world’s first commercial movie screening took place at the Grand Cafe of Paris. We should be thankful to two French brothers who go by the name of Louis and Auguste Lumiere. They were the ones who introduced the world to the art of cinema.

Cinema is a visual medium that helps in telling a story. Cinema is the most collaborative and the most expensive expression of art where millions of dollars are spent to show a story to the audience. Cinema could be anything ranging from a movie, television series, or even small commercial advertising the product. Cinema through many years has had a huge impact on the majority of the population and we surely cannot imagine our lives without it.

Cinema also shows everyone the reality of life. The events that have happened all around the world are usually scripted again and filmed to be shown as a movie in theatres. I do believe that cinema creates a huge impact on society both good and bad. The audience viewing the content should decide on his or her own what shown is as right or wrong.

The advantage of cinema is it attempts to narrate a story to the viewers. Cinema also shows the reality of life. Many incidents are happening all around the world both good and bad and Cinema becomes a medium through which many people can get to know the story and review it on their own.

Secondly, the art of cinema helps us to socialize with people. Here is a small example of the impact of cinema. I believe that many people have read comics or novels? There are many movies and television shows that are inspired by comics and novels. These movies are discussed by many people all over the world.

Strangers from various countries discuss the stories and the theories related to comic book movies on various social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Cinema plays a huge role in bringing people together which makes a huge impact on society.

The third and most important thing cinema provides is jobs. In the USA alone there are more than 2.1 million jobs available for people with a total wage of 129 billion paid to people every year. Cinema also helps in boosting the economy of the country as many tickets are sold. Cinema also derives its income from the food, drinks, and merchandise sales. Public fundings and revenue earned through advertisement play an important role in boosting the economy of the country.

There has also been a negative impact of cinema in real life. Cinema divides people on different ideas. Due to this different groups are formed supporting different ideas, which causes a rivalry between these groups.

Few creators also use cinema to show unnecessary sexual content to attract many people to watch their content. Crime and violence have also been shown on a larger scale in cinemas by few creators.

A survey showed that the youth consumes the content provided by cinema the most and if sexual content, crimes, and violence are shown, the youth get influenced by the ideas shown. This is one of that is the reason that eve-teasing and sexual harassment cases are increasing day by day.

Cinema is very addictive and many people waste their time watching movies and other entertainment content. The same amount of time could be used to learn a new skill if invested properly.

Cinema has also often objectified women and has shown false cases through its content. We know that in many movies a big actress is signed to just star in a flashy song to advertise the movie. It might be helpful to sell the movie but it objectifies women. Many young people follow the movies and the big movie stars and learn from them and if a movie or a show defines women only by how she looks, this will create a pseudo mindset in which they will start to treat people around them as shown in the movies.

In conclusion, I read out an important quote, “The one who controls his or her mind is the strongest person in the world”. Cinema is an art designed to share different stories with us. Through these stories, we learn and also make friends. As time has passed many people have exploited the art of cinema to earn money.

It depends on individuals to control themselves and not get addicted to the cinema. Parents need to know what their child is watching. Let us all appreciate the art of cinema. Let us all laugh sometimes and also cry sometimes while watching movies but never exploit the art of presenting the story. Thank you for listening.

Short Speech on Impact of Cinema on Life

Greetings to everyone present over here. Today I am going to give a small speech about the impact of cinema on our life.

On December 28, 1895, the first commercial film was shown at the Grand Cafe of Paris and the credit goes to two French brothers by the names Auguste and Louis Lumiere. Cinema is a form of art that helps in telling a story. Before cinema was found actors used to perform a drama on the stage. Cinema is considered to be the most successful form of art in the world.

Millions of dollars are spent to make a set and shoot a movie. It is the most collaborative expression of art where many actors participate to present the audience with a story. Cinema could be anything ranging from television shows to movies. For more than a century, cinema has had a huge impact on the vast majority of the population and I am sure we cannot imagine our lives without cinemas as it’s the only source of entertainment.

Cinema sometimes helps in showing the reality of the world through its movies which many people avoid. Documentaries about the different incidents which occurred around the world are also shown. Cinema creates a huge impact on society in both good and bad ways. It depends on the viewer to view quality cinema.

The advantage of cinema is that it helps in bringing together people from different communities. Many movies cause a sense of excitement in the community which leads to people discussing the story and theories related to the movie. We often see a movie being discussed on many social media platforms like youtube, Facebook, and Instagram. 

I do believe that cinema in a way helps in bringing people from different parts of the world together. Cinema or the film industry provides millions of jobs around the world. The USA alone accounts for providing 2.1 million jobs to people with total pages paid up to 129 billion US dollars annually. The money generated through the ticket sales, selling of popcorn and other food items, and the merchandise sold helps in boosting the economy of the country.

The negative impact of cinema on real life is that in many movies there are scenes that show crime and violence and also unnecessary sexual content. The youth get influenced by this and we see through the news that there is an increase in cases of eve-teasing and sexual harassment cases around the country.

Cinema is also very addictive. A survey shows that many people waste the time-consuming content provided by the cinema. Instead of wasting time watching movies, the same time could be used to develop a new skill which would help them in the future.

I believe that  “The one who controls his or her mind is the strongest person in the world”. We as responsible audiences have should be careful of what we see. Cinema was the art designed to tell a story but it has been exploited by few people to earn money. Let us all respect this form of art and not exploit it. Thank you.

10 Lines Speech on the Importance of Cinema in Life

Cinema is the form of art that is used to tell a story.

Cinema is also a form of communication that connects millions of people through its stories. 

Cinema is the most expensive and collaborative form of art that spends millions of dollars to tell a story. 

The world’s first commercial movie screening took place on December 28, 1895, at Grand Cafe, Paris.

Cinema has a huge impact on the majority of the population.

Cinema helps in showing the reality of life. Many events that happened around the world are scripted and are shared with viewers as a film.

Cinema also provides jobs to many people. A survey shows that the USA provides 2.1 million jobs in the film industry.

There are also negatives of cinema like in many ways many creators objectify women.

Cinema also shows violence and unnecessary sexual content.

 Cinema is very addictive as many people waste their time watching movies.

Focus on the format compiled by the experts for short and long speeches on this topic. Learn how they have focused and balanced the good and bad sides of cinema. Get the idea and compile your own speech to woo the audience. Search Vedantu for speeches on other topics.

FAQs on Speech on Impact of Cinema in Life

1. What are the Cinema's Disadvantages?

While a film can be good in many ways, it can also be harmful in several ways. For starters, it stereotypes a wide range of topics, including gender roles, religious behaviours, and communities. This generates a false impression of that particular group of individuals, as well as a detrimental impact on them.

People also think it's a waste of time and money because most movies nowadays don't show or educate anything useful. It's just garbage content that's full of objectification and lies. Furthermore, it makes individuals addicted because you've probably seen movie buffs swarm to the theatre every weekend just to see the latest film to see it.

2. What are the Benefits of Cinema?

When we consider the positive aspects of cinema, there are numerous advantages. It is thought to be merely a reflection of society. It also makes it easier for people to socialize. It brings people together and helps to break the ice. People frequently discuss movies to start or continue a conversation. Furthermore, rather than politics and sports, which are frequently divided, it is also highly intriguing to discuss. Cinemas bring the world together and make them more accepting of other art forms and cultures in certain ways. Cinemas also provide knowledge about some things that we can opt to live in the real world.

3. What is the role of cinema in society?

Movies are societal stories that depict the current situation and topics that are frequently overlooked by the public. It is a means of communication that also educates individuals, instills moral ideals, and supplies us with facts and information we would not otherwise have access to.

Cinemas have both beneficial and harmful societal consequences. Individuals are inspired, our limited knowledge is expanded, and economic progress is boosted, but it can also make people greedy, spread terrible thoughts and messages, and cause violence and harmful habits.

4. What is the impact of cinemas on our life?

Cinema brings people together and serves as a conversation starter. It expands our view and thinking by enhancing creativity and showing the entire world numerous perspectives. Most significantly, it bridges the gap between cultures, introduces us to diverse forms of art, and enriches our life with previously unseen information and facts. Read the essays compiled by the experts of Vedantu to understand its importance in modern-day life.

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Everett Collection

Robert Donat in The Magic Box , 1951

In the film The Magic Box , which was made in England in 1950, the great English actor Robert Donat plays William Friese-Greene—one of the people who invented movies. The Magic Box was packed with guest stars. It was made for an event called the Festival of Britain. You had about fifty or sixty of the biggest actors in England at the time, all doing for the most part little cameos, including the man who played the policeman—that was Sir Laurence Olivier.

I saw this picture for the first time with my father. I was eight years old. I’ve never really gotten over the impact that it had. I believe this is what ignited in me the wonder of cinema, and the obsession—with watching movies, making them, inventing them.

Friese-Greene gives everything of himself to the movies, and he dies a pauper. If you know the full story of his life and its end, the line in the film about the invention of the movies—“You must be a very happy man, Mr. Friese-Greene”—of course is ironic, but in some ways it’s also true because he’s followed his obsession all the way. So it’s both disturbing and inspiring. I was very young. I didn’t put this into words at the time, but I sensed these things and I saw them up there on the screen.

My parents had a good reason for taking me to the movies all the time, because I had been sick with asthma since I was three years old and I apparently couldn’t do any sports, or that’s what they told me. But my mother and father did love the movies. They weren’t in the habit of reading—that didn’t really exist where I came from—and so we connected through the movies.

And I realize now that the warmth of that connection with my family and with the images on the screen gave me something very precious. We were experiencing something fundamental together. We were living through the emotional truths on the screen, often in coded form, which these films from the 1940s and 1950s sometimes expressed in small things: gestures, glances, reactions between the characters, light, shadow. These were things that we normally couldn’t discuss or wouldn’t discuss or even acknowledge in our lives.

And that’s actually part of the wonder. Whenever I hear people dismiss movies as “fantasy” and make a hard distinction between film and life, I think to myself that it’s just a way of avoiding the power of cinema. Of course it’s not life—it’s the invocation of life, it’s in an ongoing dialogue with life.

Frank Capra said, “Film is a disease.” I caught the disease early on. I felt it whenever I walked up to the ticket booth with my mother or my father or my brother. You’d go through the doors, up the thick carpet, past the popcorn stand that had that wonderful smell—then to the ticket taker, and then in some of the old theaters there would be another set of doors with little windows and you’d get a glimpse of something magical happening up there on the screen, something special. And as we entered, for me it was like entering a sacred space, a kind of sanctuary where the living world around me seemed to be recreated and played out.

What was it about cinema? What was so special about it? I think I’ve discovered some of my own answers to that question a little bit at a time over the years.

First of all, there’s light.

Light is at the beginning of cinema, of course. It’s fundamental—because cinema is created with light, and it’s still best seen projected in dark rooms, where it’s the only source of light. But light is also at the beginning of everything. Most creation myths start with darkness, and then the real beginning comes with light—which means the creation of forms. Which leads to distinguishing one thing from another, and ourselves from the rest of the world. Recognizing patterns, similarities, differences, naming things—interpreting the world. Metaphors—seeing one thing “in light of” something else. Becoming “enlightened.” Light is at the core of who we are and how we understand ourselves.

And then, there’s movement…

I remember when I was about five or six, someone projected a 16mm cartoon and I was allowed to look inside the projector. I saw these little still images passing mechanically through the gate at a very steady rate of speed. In the gate they were upside down, but they were moving, and on the screen they came out right side up, moving. At least there was the sensation of movement. But it was more than that. Something clicked, right then and there. “Pieces of time”—that’s how James Stewart defined movies in a conversation with Peter Bogdanovich. That wonder I felt when I saw these little figures move—that’s what Laurence Olivier feels when he watches those first moving images in that scene from The Magic Box .

The desire to make images move, the need to capture movement, seemed to be with us 30,000 years ago in the cave paintings at Chauvet—in one image a bison appears to have multiple sets of legs, and perhaps that was the artist’s way of creating the impression of movement. I think this need to recreate movement is a mystical urge. It’s an attempt to capture the mystery of who and what we are, and then to contemplate that mystery.

Which brings us to the film of boxing cats illustrated here, one of the lesser-known scenes that Thomas Edison recorded with his Kinetograph in his Black Maria studio in New Jersey in 1894. Edison, of course, was one of the people who invented film. There’s been a lot of debate about who really invented film—there was Edison, the Lumière brothers in France, Friese-Greene and R.W. Paul in England. And actually you can go back to a man named Louis Le Prince who shot a little home movie in 1888.

And then you could go back even further to the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge, which were made in the 1870s and 1880s. He would set a number of still cameras side by side and then he’d trigger them to take photos in succession, of people and animals in motion. His employer Leland Stanford challenged him to show that all four of a horse’s hooves leave the ground when the horse is running. Muybridge proved they did.

Does cinema really begin with Muybridge? Should we go all the way back to the cave paintings? In his novel Joseph and His Brothers , Thomas Mann writes:

The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable.

All beginnings are unfathomable—the beginning of human history, the beginning of cinema.

A film by the Lumière brothers of a train arriving at a station in France is commonly recognized as the first publicly projected film. It was shot in 1895. When you watch it, it really is 1895. The way they dress and the way they move—it’s now and it’s then, at the same time. And that’s the third aspect of cinema that makes it so uniquely powerful—it’s the element of time. Again, pieces of time.

When we made the movie Hugo (2011), we went back and tried to recreate that first screening, when people were so startled by the image of an oncoming train that they jumped back. They thought the train was going to hit them.

When we studied the Lumière film, we could see right away that it was very different from the Edison films. The Lumière brothers weren’t just setting up the camera to record events or scenes. This film is composed. When you study it, you can see how carefully they placed the camera, the thought that went into what was in the frame and what was left out of the frame, the distance between the camera and the train, the height of the camera, the angle of the camera—what’s interesting is that if the camera had been placed even a little bit differently, the audience probably wouldn’t have reacted the way it did.

Georges Méliès, circa 1929, with a painting for his 1902 film A Trip to the Moon

Georges Méliès, whose contribution to early cinema is at the core of Hugo , began as a magician and his pictures were made to be a part of his live magic act. He created trick photography and astonishing handmade special effects, and in so doing he remade reality—the screen in his pictures is like a magic cabinet of curiosities and wonders.

Over the years, the Lumières and Méliès have been consistently portrayed as opposites—the idea is that one filmed reality and the other created special effects. Of course this kind of distinction is made all the time—it’s a way of simplifying history. But in essence they were both heading in the same direction, just taking different roads—they were taking reality and interpreting it, reshaping it, and trying to find meaning in it.

And then, everything was taken further with the cut. Who made the first cut from one image to another—meaning a shift from one vantage point to another with the understanding that we’re still within one continuous action? Again, to quote Thomas Mann—“unfathomable.” One of the earliest and most famous examples of a cut is in Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 milestone film The Great Train Robbery . Even though we cut from the interior of the car to the exterior, we know we’re in one unbroken action.

A few years later, there was a remarkable film called The Musketeers of Pig Alley , one of the dozens of one-reel films that D.W. Griffith made in 1912. It’s commonly referred to as the first gangster film, and actually it’s a great Lower East Side New York street film, despite the fact that it was shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey. There’s a very famous scene in which the gangsters move along a wall, each one slowly approaching the camera and coming into dramatic close-up before they exit the frame. And in this scene they’re crossing quite a bit of space before they get to Pig Alley, which is in fact a recreation of a famous Jacob Riis photo of Bandit’s Roost, but you’re not seeing them cross that space on the screen. You’re seeing it all in your mind’s eye, you’re inferring it. And this is the fourth aspect of cinema that’s so special. That inference. The image in the mind’s eye.

For me it’s where the obsession began. It’s what keeps me going, it never fails to excite me. Because you take one shot, you put it together with another shot, and you experience a third image in your mind’s eye that doesn’t really exist in those two other images. The Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein wrote about this, and it was at the heart of what he did in his own films. This is what fascinates me—sometimes it’s frustrating, but always exciting—if you change the timing of the cut even slightly, by just a few frames, or even one frame, then that third image in your mind’s eye changes too. And that has been called, appropriately, I believe, film language.

In 1916, D.W. Griffith made a picture—an epic—called Intolerance , in part as an act of atonement for the racism in The Birth of a Nation . Intolerance ran about three hours and Griffith goes much further with the idea of the cut here: he shifts between four different stories—the massacre of the Huguenots, the passion of Christ, the fall of Babylon, and a modern story set in 1916 about conflicts between rich and poor Americans. At the end of the picture, Griffith cut between the different climaxes of these different stories—he cross-cut through time, something that had never been done before. He tied together images not for narrative purposes but to illustrate a thesis: in this case, the thesis was that intolerance has existed throughout the ages and that it is always destructive. Eisenstein later wrote about this kind of editing and gave it a name—he called it “intellectual montage.”

For the writers and commentators who were very suspicious of movies—because after all they did start as a Nickelodeon storefront attraction—this was the element that signified film as an art form. But of course it already was an art form—one that started with the Lumières and Méliès and Porter. This was just another, logical step in the development of the language of cinema.

That language has taken us in many directions, from the pure abstraction of the extraordinary avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage to a very well done commercial by the visual artist and filmmaker Mike Mills, made for an audience that’s seen thousands of commercials—the images come at you so fast that you have to make the connections after the fact.

Or consider the famous Stargate sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s monumental 2001: A Space Odyssey . Narrative, abstraction, speed, movement, stillness, life, death—they’re all up there. Again we find ourselves back at that mystical urge—to explore, to create movement, to go faster and faster, and maybe find some kind of peace at the heart of it, a state of pure being.

But the cinema we’re talking about here—Edison, the Lumière brothers, Méliès, Porter, all the way through Griffith and on to Kubrick—that’s really almost gone. It’s been overwhelmed by moving images coming at us all the time and absolutely everywhere, even faster than the visions coming at the astronaut in the Kubrick picture. And we have no choice but to treat all these moving images coming at us as a language. We need to be able to understand what we’re seeing and find the tools to sort it all out.

We certainly agree now that verbal literacy is necessary. But a couple of thousand years ago, Socrates actually disagreed. His argument was almost identical to the arguments of people today who object to the Internet, who think that it’s a sorry replacement for real research in a library. In the dialogue with Phaedrus, Socrates worries that writing and reading will actually lead to the student not truly knowing—that once people stop memorizing and start writing and reading, they’re in danger of cultivating the mere appearance of wisdom rather than the real thing.

Now we take reading and writing for granted but the same kinds of questions are coming up around moving images: Are they harming us? Are they causing us to abandon written language?

We’re face to face with images all the time in a way that we never have been before. And that’s why I believe we need to stress visual literacy in our schools. Young people need to understand that not all images are there to be consumed like fast food and then forgotten—we need to educate them to understand the difference between moving images that engage their humanity and their intelligence, and moving images that are just selling them something.

As Steve Apkon, the film producer and founder of the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York, points out in his new book The Age of the Image , * the distinction between verbal and visual literacy needs to be done away with, along with the tired old arguments about the word and the image and which is more important. They’re both important. They’re both fundamental. Both take us back to the core of who we are.

When you look at ancient writing, words and images are almost indistinguishable. In fact, words are images, they’re symbols. Written Chinese and Japanese still seem like pictographic languages. And at a certain point—exactly when is “unfathomable”—words and images diverged, like two rivers, or two different paths to understanding.

In the end, there really is only literacy.

Paramount Pictures/Photofest

Kim Novak and James Stewart in Vertigo , 1958

The American film critic Manny Farber said that every movie transmits the DNA of its time. One of the really great science fiction films of the golden era of American cinema is Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still . It was made in 1951, in the early years of the cold war, and it has the tension, the paranoia, the fear of nuclear disaster and the end of life on planet earth, and a million other elements that are more difficult to put into words. These elements have to do with the play of light and shadow, the emotional and psychological interplay between the characters, the atmosphere of the time woven into the action, all the choices that were made behind the camera that resulted in the immediate film experience for viewers like myself and my parents. These are the aspects of a film that reveal themselves in passing, the things that bring the movie to life for the viewer. And the experience becomes even richer when you explore these elements more closely.

Someone born today will see the picture with completely different eyes and a whole other frame of reference, different values, uninhibited by the biases of the time when it was made. You see the world through your own time—which means that some values disappear, and some values come into closer focus. Same film, same images, but in the case of a great film the power—a timeless power that really can’t be articulated—is there even when the context has completely changed.

But in order to experience something and find new values in it, the work has to be there in the first place—you have to preserve it. All of it. Archaeologists have made many discoveries by studying what we throw away, the refuse of earlier civilizations, the things that people considered expendable and that accidentally survived.

For example, there’s a Sumerian tablet that is not a poem, not a legend, but actually a record of livestock—a balance sheet of business transactions. Miraculously, it’s been preserved for centuries, first under layers of earth and now in a climate-controlled environment. When we find objects like this, we immediately take great care with them.

We have to do the same thing with film. But film isn’t made of stone. Until recently it was all made of celluloid—thin strips of nitrocellulose, the first plastic compound. For the first few decades of cinema, preservation wasn’t even discussed—it was something that happened by accident. Some of the most celebrated movies were the victims of their own popularity. In certain cases, every time they were rereleased, the prints were made from their original negatives, and in the process those negatives became degraded, hardly usable.

It wasn’t so long ago that nitrate films were melted down just for the silver content. Prints of films made in the 1970s and 1980s were recycled to make guitar picks and plastic heels for shoes. That’s a disturbing thought—just as disturbing as knowing that many of those extraordinary glass photographic plates taken of the Civil War not long after the birth of photography were later sold to gardeners for building greenhouses. Whatever plates survived are now in the Library of Congress.

We have to look beyond the officially honored, recognized, and enshrined, and preserve everything systematically. At this point in film history, many people have seen a 1958 picture directed by Alfred Hitchcock called Vertigo . When the film came out some people liked it, some didn’t, and then it just went away. Even before it came out, it was classified as another picture from the Master of Suspense and that was it, end of story. Almost every year at that time, there was a new Hitchcock picture—it was almost like a franchise.

At a certain point, there was a reevaluation of Hitchcock, thanks to the critics in France who later became the directors of the French New Wave, and to the American critic Andrew Sarris. They all enhanced our vision of cinema and helped us to understand the idea of authorship behind the camera. When the idea of film language started to be taken seriously, so did Hitchcock, who seemed to have an innate sense of visual storytelling. And the more closely you looked at his pictures, the richer and more emotionally complex they became.

For many years, it was extremely difficult to see Vertigo . When it came back into circulation, in 1983, along with four other Hitchcock films that had been held back, the color was completely wrong. The color scheme of Vertigo is extremely unusual, and this was a major disappointment. In the meantime, the elements—the original picture and sound negatives—needed serious attention.

Ten years later, Bob Harris and Jim Katz did a full-scale restoration for Universal. By that time, the elements were decaying and severely damaged. But at least a major restoration was done. As the years went by, more and more people saw Vertigo and came to appreciate its hypnotic beauty and very strange, obsessive focus.

As in the case of many great films, maybe all of them, we don’t keep going back for the plot. Vertigo is a matter of mood as much as it’s a matter of storytelling—the special mood of San Francisco where the past is eerily alive and around you at all times, the mist in the air from the Pacific that refracts the light, the unease of the hero played by James Stewart, Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score. As the film critic B. Kite wrote, you haven’t really seen Vertigo until you’ve seen it again . For those of you who haven’t seen it even once, when you do, you’ll know what I mean.

Every decade, the British film magazine Sight and Sound conducts a poll of critics and filmmakers from around the world and asks them to list what they think are the ten greatest films of all time. Then they tally the results and publish them. In 1952, number one was Vittorio de Sica’s great Italian Neorealist picture Bicycle Thieves . Ten years later, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane was at the top of the list. It stayed there for the next forty years. Last year, it was displaced by a movie that came and went in 1958, and that came very, very close to being lost to us forever: Vertigo . And by the way, so did Citizen Kane —the original negative was burned in a fire in the mid-1970s in Los Angeles.

So not only do we have to preserve everything, but most importantly, we can’t afford to let ourselves be guided by contemporary cultural standards—particularly now. There was a time when the average person wasn’t even aware of box office grosses. But since the 1980s, it’s become a kind of sport—and really, a form of judgment. It culturally trivializes film.

And for young people today, that’s what they know. Who made the most money? Who was the most popular? Who is the most popular now, as opposed to last year, or last month, or last week? Now, the cycles of popularity are down to a matter of hours, minutes, seconds, and the work that’s been created out of seriousness and real passion is lumped together with the work that hasn’t.

We have to remember: we may think we know what’s going to last and what isn’t. We may feel absolutely sure of ourselves, but we really don’t know, we can’t know. We have to remember Vertigo , and the Civil War plates, and that Sumerian tablet. And we also have to remember that Moby-Dick sold very few copies when it was printed in 1851, that many of the copies that weren’t sold were destroyed in a warehouse fire, that it was dismissed by many, and that Herman Melville’s greatest novel, one of the greatest works in literature, was only reclaimed in the 1920s.

Just as we’ve learned to take pride in our poets and writers, in jazz and the blues, we need to take pride in our cinema, our great American art form. Granted, we weren’t the only ones who invented the movies. We certainly weren’t the only ones who made great films in the twentieth century, but to a large extent the art of cinema and its development have been linked to us, to our country. That’s a big responsibility. And we need to say to ourselves that the moment has come when we have to treat every last moving image as reverently and respectfully as the oldest book in the Library of Congress.

August 15, 2013

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Martin Scorsese's article in this issue was delivered in somewhat different form as the 2013 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. (August 2013)

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The Movie That Changed My Life

The movie that changed my life edited by david rosenberg viking penguin $21.95.

The Movie That Changed My Life, edited by David Rosenberg, introduces a new and provocative method of considering film. Rosenberg has collected a diverse series of accounts by contemporary authors remembering their most powerful response to a film. The essays reflect upon a movie's personal significance to them when they first saw it and now, upon re-viewing.

In his introduction, Rosenberg explains his view on the potency of film. He posits, "Wouldn't most of us acknowledge we were first up close in the dark with the myths of adult life-love, sex, death, evil-in the movies?" The writers in Movie address the initiation and evolution of their relationship as viewers to what was foreign or tabooed to them as children.

Many authors choose movies in which they originally identified with a central character. This is true for Meg Wolitzer's piece on Teresa Wright's role as Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt. Wolitzer related to the character's youthful naivete and fascination with her mysterious Uncle Charlie. Looking back, Wolitzer sees that the question of otherness explored by director Alfred Hitchcock, in the elder Charlie, captivated both Wright's Charlie and herself-- otherness in terms of age and gender.

Leonard Michaels's essay on Gilda offers the corresponding male version. Michaels recalls his first awareness of sexuality sparked by a seductive Rita Hayworth belting out "Put the Blame on Mame." He reminisces: "If it was a real feeling, could I be violated by it, my own real feeling? Could it happen to anyone? If so, could anyone ever be a good person?"

Looking back, Michaels remains haunted by Hayworth, but realizes how manufactured Hayworth's Gilda and film, in general, are. Nothing her turbulent life and five marriages, he now sees Hayworth differently: "So much of her life was public, spectacular imagery that it is hard to suppose she had a real life, or to suppose that her feelings about Rita Hayworth were not the same as ours."

Elsewhere, Movie describes how a film can reveal truths about society. David Bradley's offers a chilling account of watching Birth of A Nation twice while attending the University of Pennsylvania as one of the few Black students on campus. The experience of seeing the movie first as a sideshow at a fraternity party, then lauded as a work of art at a campus film festival alerts Bradley to the general indifference most white society felt to blatant racism.

Bradley's attitude towards the film mirrors his evolving attitude on the issue of all art he finds objectionable. After initially wanting to stop the film-ban it-Bradley now accepts it as a form of expression.

Bradley's account, like most pieces in Movie, is convincing and sensitive. However, it is just one essay in a collection which is impressively diverse, both in terms of the writers' perspectives and the movies discussed. The Movie That Changed My Life adds an imaginative and unique element to film criticism.

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College Nut

The Art of Writing College Essays Inspired by Movies

Why movies are a great inspiration for college essays.

Movies have the power to move us emotionally and intellectually. They can make us laugh, cry, and even change our perspectives on life. As such, movies are a great source of inspiration for college essays. Not only do they provide an opportunity to showcase your creativity, but they also allow you to convey your thoughts and ideas in a unique and memorable way.

How Movies Can Help You Choose a Topic

One of the biggest challenges of writing a college essay is choosing a topic. You want to write about something that is meaningful to you, but you also want to impress the admissions committee. Movies can help you with this by providing a wide range of subjects to explore. For example, if you are passionate about social justice, you could write about the themes of discrimination and inequality in the movie “The Help.” Or, if you are interested in science, you could write about the ethics of cloning in the movie “Jurassic Park.”

How to Incorporate Movie References in Your Essay

Once you have chosen a movie to draw inspiration from, the next step is to incorporate it into your essay in a meaningful way. One way to do this is by using quotes or references from the movie to support your argument. For example, if you are writing about the importance of perseverance, you could use the quote from “Rocky Balboa” where he says, “It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

How Movies Can Help You Stand Out

One of the main goals of a college essay is to stand out from the crowd. Movies can help you achieve this by providing a unique lens through which to view your experiences and ideas. For example, instead of writing a generic essay about your summer vacation, you could write about how watching the sunset in “The Notebook” inspired you to pursue a career in environmental conservation.

How to Use the Structure of Movies in Your Essay

Another way to draw inspiration from movies is to use their narrative structure in your essay. Just like movies have a beginning, middle, and end, your essay should also have a clear structure. You could use the three-act structure of movies to organize your thoughts and ideas. The first act could introduce your topic and thesis statement, the second act could provide supporting evidence and arguments, and the third act could conclude with a powerful message or call to action.

Tips for Writing an Effective College Essay Inspired by Movies

1. choose a movie that resonates with you.

The key to writing a great college essay is to choose a topic that is meaningful to you. When selecting a movie to draw inspiration from, choose one that resonates with you on a personal level. This will make it easier for you to connect with the material and write a compelling essay.

2. Use Your Own Voice

Another important aspect of writing a college essay is to use your own voice. Don’t try to sound like someone else or use big words that you don’t understand. Be yourself and write in a way that feels natural to you. This will make your essay more authentic and memorable.

3. Show, Don’t Tell

One of the biggest mistakes that students make when writing college essays is telling rather than showing. Instead of simply stating that you are passionate about a certain topic, show it through a personal anecdote or example. This will make your essay more engaging and persuasive.

4. Edit and Revise

Writing a great college essay takes time and effort. Don’t be afraid to revise and edit your essay multiple times. Have someone else read it and provide feedback. This will help you catch any mistakes or inconsistencies in your writing.

5. Be Honest and Vulnerable

Finally, don’t be afraid to be honest and vulnerable in your essay. Admissions committees want to see the real you, not a perfect version of yourself. Share your fears, doubts, and struggles. This will make your essay more relatable and memorable.

In conclusion, movies can be a great source of inspiration for college essays. They provide a unique lens through which to view your experiences and ideas. Use them wisely and incorporate them into your writing in a meaningful way. Remember to be yourself, show, don’t tell, and be honest and vulnerable in your writing.

Exploring the Moral Impact of Movies

What if movies can help us become better people? What if the stories we see onscreen could be parables for our time? What if religions understood more about the moral power of onscreen stories?

For the first time in decades of polling, Gallup tells us that fewer than half of Americans in 2020 were members of a church, synagogue or mosque. Meanwhile, subscriptions to Netflix and other streaming services continue to uptick worldwide even as movie theaters reopen their doors.

Together, these trendlines suggest that many people today may be more likely to be influenced by what they see on a screen rather than what they experience through a religious affiliation. Movies have become one of the most powerful and pervasive languages of our time.

We’re becoming a culture that increasingly congregates around onscreen stories.

Trends such as these can be troubling for religions and people of faith. However, Carl Plantinga, Ph.D., professor of film and media at Calvin University , believes there are many reasons movies can be a force for good — a powerful vehicle for developing moral understanding and spiritual sensibilities.

“There’s been a lot of fear about the power of movies in the past,” Plantinga notes. “But I want to look at the opposite: whether they can play a positive role in our lives that specifically has to do with moral learning as it relates to spirituality. Is it possible that movies can teach us something about what it means to be an empathetic person, for example? Or to understand the injustices of certain kinds of situations? Or what it might mean to be a spouse in a difficult relationship and how to work through issues like that?

“Can movies teach us things that are beneficial to our lives from a moral perspective? I think they can. But the question is what kind of movies? Under what conditions? And in what kind of context can that occur?”

With funding from Templeton Religion Trust, Plantinga is orchestrating an interdisciplinary investigation into such questions. His hypothesis and hope is that by bringing together scholars from psychology, the social sciences, philosophy and film studies to share their knowledge, perspectives and methods, the results will be foundational, empirical insights into how movies influence us — and how much.

More than Just Knowing

Moral understanding is our rulebook-in-motion for how to live as we go along a perpetual journey of reevaluation. While our brains may hold onto hand-me-down cultural or religion-based values such as sharing, truth-telling, nonviolence and compassion, our grasp on them is constantly tested in day-to-day experiences. Sometimes the difference between right and wrong can seem more muddy than obvious. Racism is one example Plantinga points to. We might think we know what racism is, and be against it. But we might not know how to really discern it in our workplace, our neighborhood or even ourselves.

Movies can show us — in advance and without consequences — how certain decisions and actions play out. In this way, they may reinforce and deepen our understanding of what moral virtues can and should mean in our lives.

A Powerful Combination of Thinking and Feeling

Whether in a darkened theater or curled up with our cat on the couch at home, the unique blend of multisensory stimulations that define a movie can capture our attention and stir our emotions for hours.

On the one hand, movies provide an escape from our real-world problems in exchange for those of someone else. And yet, how often do you find yourself running a dialogue in your head as the story plays out about what you might do differently? Or even yelling out loud when you feel outrage or endorse some turn of events?

But under what circumstances are such effects likely to occur? Just what ingredients do screen stories use to engender such deep responses? What variables affect the relationship between the media and the viewer? And how might these variables affect how we respond, both in the moment and later as we incorporate the aftereffects into our everyday lives?

Three Big Areas of Inquiry

The initial phase of Plantinga’s study is a series of seminars in which participants will focus on three facets of the movie-viewing experience:

1. Transfer and Cultivation – how beliefs and responses from screen stories are transferred to the real world and how they may influence moral codes

Is it the general theme that’s transferred, the attitudes toward character stereotypes such as the hero or villain, or the scripts that call for actions in specific circumstances?

While transfer can occur with documentaries, it seems especially prevalent with fictionized stories that activate our imaginations. Seeing complicated situations from the perspective of a character who we know isn’t real, paradoxically, may produce a clearer picture in our minds of what our own responses would or should be.

2. The Role of the Affective Experience – how the moods and emotions created by a film may contribute to moral understanding

Although it’s tempting to stop watching once the credits start to roll, each element of a film matters to the overall effect. Films are incredibly complex, multifaceted creations. Sound effects, music, the pacing of edits, closeups on a character’s face and many more techniques all contribute to the physiological “magic” — the powerful moods and strong emotions that films elicit.

Earlier investigations have often focused on the mostly thinking-based nature of our empathy for fictional characters. But what about the moods and emotions that cause us to feel outraged in response to a depicted moral wrongdoing? Can these and other emotional responses be categorized, further studied and quantified?

3. The Role of the Reflective Afterlife – what kinds of stories and contexts contribute to moral reflection after viewing a film?

Complex ideas and experiences take time to unpack, so the period after a film may be as important as the time spent watching it. And this process often takes place with others. Reflecting on the characters and events in a story is a way of developing moral understanding within community. The implications of a powerful film are often enduringly integrated into our cultural fabric through reviews, social media, fan cultures, and the publishing and teaching practices of academia.

Are some of these more influential than others in helping us distill moral understanding from the movies we see –or could they be? And might there be a role for religion to play in the reflective mix?

From Understanding to Action

As stories leap from screens into our minds, emotions and maybe even our souls, they may well be where many of our modern mindsets now germinate. Movies allow us to share common narratives in our society even as other forms of discourse have deteriorated.

More than mere entertainment, movies can be powerful rallying cries for addressing real-world issues. Some perhaps even function as parables for our time: earthly stories with heavenly meanings, a way to enliven and deepen our spiritual understanding. In this way, maybe even new-release blockbusters may have ancient ties.

“The arts emerged in human history out of religion — their original function was to express religious ideas,” Plantinga reminds. “And fundamental in those religious ideas were spiritual ideals about how we ought to live and how we ought to think about our ethical obligations to others. So it strikes me that even in more secular times, the arts can still harbor some of those functions, just in different ways.”

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Film Analysis

What this handout is about.

This handout introduces film analysis and and offers strategies and resources for approaching film analysis assignments.

Writing the film analysis essay

Writing a film analysis requires you to consider the composition of the film—the individual parts and choices made that come together to create the finished piece. Film analysis goes beyond the analysis of the film as literature to include camera angles, lighting, set design, sound elements, costume choices, editing, etc. in making an argument. The first step to analyzing the film is to watch it with a plan.

Watching the film

First it’s important to watch the film carefully with a critical eye. Consider why you’ve been assigned to watch a film and write an analysis. How does this activity fit into the course? Why have you been assigned this particular film? What are you looking for in connection to the course content? Let’s practice with this clip from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Here are some tips on how to watch the clip critically, just as you would an entire film:

• Give the clip your undivided attention at least once. Pay close attention to details and make observations that might start leading to bigger questions.
• Watch the clip a second time. For this viewing, you will want to focus specifically on those elements of film analysis that your class has focused on, so review your course notes. For example, from whose perspective is this clip shot? What choices help convey that perspective? What is the overall tone, theme, or effect of this clip?
• Take notes while you watch for the second time. Notes will help you keep track of what you noticed and when, if you include timestamps in your notes. Timestamps are vital for citing scenes from a film!

For more information on watching a film, check out the Learning Center’s handout on watching film analytically . For more resources on researching film, including glossaries of film terms, see UNC Library’s research guide on film & cinema .

Brainstorming ideas

Once you’ve watched the film twice, it’s time to brainstorm some ideas based on your notes. Brainstorming is a major step that helps develop and explore ideas. As you brainstorm, you may want to cluster your ideas around central topics or themes that emerge as you review your notes. Did you ask several questions about color? Were you curious about repeated images? Perhaps these are directions you can pursue.

If you’re writing an argumentative essay, you can use the connections that you develop while brainstorming to draft a thesis statement . Consider the assignment and prompt when formulating a thesis, as well as what kind of evidence you will present to support your claims. Your evidence could be dialogue, sound edits, cinematography decisions, etc. Much of how you make these decisions will depend on the type of film analysis you are conducting, an important decision covered in the next section.

After brainstorming, you can draft an outline of your film analysis using the same strategies that you would for other writing assignments. Here are a few more tips to keep in mind as you prepare for this stage of the assignment:

• Make sure you understand the prompt and what you are being asked to do. Remember that this is ultimately an assignment, so your thesis should answer what the prompt asks. Check with your professor if you are unsure.
• In most cases, the director’s name is used to talk about the film as a whole, for instance, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo .” However, some writers may want to include the names of other persons who helped to create the film, including the actors, the cinematographer, and the sound editor, among others.
• When describing a sequence in a film, use the literary present. An example could be, “In Vertigo , Hitchcock employs techniques of observation to dramatize the act of detection.”
• Finding a screenplay/script of the movie may be helpful and save you time when compiling citations. But keep in mind that there may be differences between the screenplay and the actual product (and these differences might be a topic of discussion!).
• Go beyond describing basic film elements by articulating the significance of these elements in support of your particular position. For example, you may have an interpretation of the striking color green in Vertigo , but you would only mention this if it was relevant to your argument. For more help on using evidence effectively, see the section on “using evidence” in our evidence handout .

Also be sure to avoid confusing the terms shot, scene, and sequence. Remember, a shot ends every time the camera cuts; a scene can be composed of several related shots; and a sequence is a set of related scenes.

Different types of film analysis

As you consider your notes, outline, and general thesis about a film, the majority of your assignment will depend on what type of film analysis you are conducting. This section explores some of the different types of film analyses you may have been assigned to write.

Semiotic analysis

Semiotic analysis is the interpretation of signs and symbols, typically involving metaphors and analogies to both inanimate objects and characters within a film. Because symbols have several meanings, writers often need to determine what a particular symbol means in the film and in a broader cultural or historical context.

For instance, a writer could explore the symbolism of the flowers in Vertigo by connecting the images of them falling apart to the vulnerability of the heroine.

Here are a few other questions to consider for this type of analysis:

• What objects or images are repeated throughout the film?
• How does the director associate a character with small signs, such as certain colors, clothing, food, or language use?
• How does a symbol or object relate to other symbols and objects, that is, what is the relationship between the film’s signs?

Many films are rich with symbolism, and it can be easy to get lost in the details. Remember to bring a semiotic analysis back around to answering the question “So what?” in your thesis.

Narrative analysis

Narrative analysis is an examination of the story elements, including narrative structure, character, and plot. This type of analysis considers the entirety of the film and the story it seeks to tell.

For example, you could take the same object from the previous example—the flowers—which meant one thing in a semiotic analysis, and ask instead about their narrative role. That is, you might analyze how Hitchcock introduces the flowers at the beginning of the film in order to return to them later to draw out the completion of the heroine’s character arc.

To create this type of analysis, you could consider questions like:

• How does the film correspond to the Three-Act Structure: Act One: Setup; Act Two: Confrontation; and Act Three: Resolution?
• What is the plot of the film? How does this plot differ from the narrative, that is, how the story is told? For example, are events presented out of order and to what effect?
• Does the plot revolve around one character? Does the plot revolve around multiple characters? How do these characters develop across the film?

When writing a narrative analysis, take care not to spend too time on summarizing at the expense of your argument. See our handout on summarizing for more tips on making summary serve analysis.

Cultural/historical analysis

One of the most common types of analysis is the examination of a film’s relationship to its broader cultural, historical, or theoretical contexts. Whether films intentionally comment on their context or not, they are always a product of the culture or period in which they were created. By placing the film in a particular context, this type of analysis asks how the film models, challenges, or subverts different types of relations, whether historical, social, or even theoretical.

For example, the clip from Vertigo depicts a man observing a woman without her knowing it. You could examine how this aspect of the film addresses a midcentury social concern about observation, such as the sexual policing of women, or a political one, such as Cold War-era McCarthyism.

A few of the many questions you could ask in this vein include:

• How does the film comment on, reinforce, or even critique social and political issues at the time it was released, including questions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality?
• How might a biographical understanding of the film’s creators and their historical moment affect the way you view the film?
• How might a specific film theory, such as Queer Theory, Structuralist Theory, or Marxist Film Theory, provide a language or set of terms for articulating the attributes of the film?

Take advantage of class resources to explore possible approaches to cultural/historical film analyses, and find out whether you will be expected to do additional research into the film’s context.

Mise-en-scène analysis

A mise-en-scène analysis attends to how the filmmakers have arranged compositional elements in a film and specifically within a scene or even a single shot. This type of analysis organizes the individual elements of a scene to explore how they come together to produce meaning. You may focus on anything that adds meaning to the formal effect produced by a given scene, including: blocking, lighting, design, color, costume, as well as how these attributes work in conjunction with decisions related to sound, cinematography, and editing. For example, in the clip from Vertigo , a mise-en-scène analysis might ask how numerous elements, from lighting to camera angles, work together to present the viewer with the perspective of Jimmy Stewart’s character.

To conduct this type of analysis, you could ask:

• What effects are created in a scene, and what is their purpose?
• How does this scene represent the theme of the movie?
• How does a scene work to express a broader point to the film’s plot?

This detailed approach to analyzing the formal elements of film can help you come up with concrete evidence for more general film analysis assignments.

Reviewing your draft

Once you have a draft, it’s helpful to get feedback on what you’ve written to see if your analysis holds together and you’ve conveyed your point. You may not necessarily need to find someone who has seen the film! Ask a writing coach, roommate, or family member to read over your draft and share key takeaways from what you have written so far.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Aumont, Jacques, and Michel Marie. 1988. L’analyse Des Films . Paris: Nathan.

Media & Design Center. n.d. “Film and Cinema Research.” UNC University Libraries. Last updated February 10, 2021. https://guides.lib.unc.edu/filmresearch .

Oxford Royale Academy. n.d. “7 Ways to Watch Film.” Oxford Royale Academy. Accessed April 2021. https://www.oxford-royale.com/articles/7-ways-watch-films-critically/ .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Critic’s Pick

‘In Our Day’ Review: Meditations on the Spice of Life

The Korean director Hong Sang-soo winds together the slenderest strands of two intersecting stories to make a tender film about simple pleasures.

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By Brandon Yu

In another world there’s a Hong Sang-soo Cinematic Universe, where a rabid fandom celebrates the one or two movies every year featuring a revolving door not of familiar superheroes but of poets, filmmakers and actors, each of them contending with questions of life and love rather than planetary threats. Those elements, of artists in quotidian scenarios, drinking soju and smoking amid everyday conversation, are present in many of the small humanist gems that make up this South Korean auteur’s filmography, and the same goes for his latest, “In Our Day.”

The film, as warm and wise as it is simple and languid, follows two separate parties (diptychs are another Hong trademark) across a single afternoon. One involves Sangwon (Kim Min-hee, Hong’s frequent collaborator and offscreen partner), an actress pondering retirement, as she spends the day with her friend and her younger cousin; the other involves Uiju (Ki Joo-bong), an old poet dispensing life lessons in his apartment to two university students, one of whom is filming him for a documentary.

The two story lines don’t cross paths, as they often do in Hong’s films; they are united only by the deployment of a culinary hack: mixing hot pepper paste into ramyun. His gochujang-inflected noodles provide a simple pleasure made all the more satisfying in recent days for Uiju, who, on doctor’s orders, is abstaining from drinking and smoking. But he can’t quite resist on either front, reflecting a sentiment from early in the film when Sangwon, offering up treats to a friend’s cat, says, “What’s the point of living, anyway? Eat your fill.”

It’s a glimmer of existential wisdom buried in the mundane, if you look at it the right way. Most of the film is made up of these moments. Isn’t life like that, too? To search for or expect more would be to court disappointment. “Don’t look for meaning. That’s cowardice,” Uiju tells a young pupil searching desperately for grand answers. “Just jump in the water. Don’t try knowing it all before jumping, like a coward.”

In Our Day Not rated. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters.

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How to Format Movie Titles in Writing: A Comprehensive Guide

My name is Debbie, and I am passionate about developing a love for the written word and planting a seed that will grow into a powerful voice that can inspire many.

Formatting Movie Titles in Writing: A Comprehensive Guide

– understanding the importance of formatting movie titles, – capitalization rules for movie titles, – italics or quotation marks: choosing the right format, – correctly formatting movie titles in essays and research papers, – formatting movie titles in screenplays and scripts, – handling foreign-language movie titles, – how to format movie titles in social media and blog posts, – additional tips and guidelines for formatting movie titles, frequently asked questions.

When it comes to writing about movies, it’s essential to know the proper formatting for movie titles. Correctly formatting movie titles not only ensures consistency and professionalism in your writing, but also shows respect for the creative works you’re discussing. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through the essential rules and conventions for formatting movie titles.

1. Capitalization and punctuation: – In general, capitalize the principal words of the movie title. – Use italics to format movie titles, unless you’re writing by hand or on a platform without italics capability. – Don’t place a period at the end of a movie title, even when the title itself is a complete sentence.

2. Styling specific movie types: – For feature films, documentaries, and TV series, capitalize the first and last word of the title, as well as any other principal words. – Denote a series or franchise by including the series name or number in italics after the movie title, separated by a comma. – When discussing a specific episode of a TV series, put the episode title in quotation marks instead of italics. Examples: “The One Where They All Turn Thirty,” Friends; “The Winds of Winter,” Game of Thrones.

By following these guidelines, you’ll be able to confidently format movie titles in your writing, whether it be for blog posts, essays, or academic papers. Remember, accurate formatting not only enhances the readability of your work, but also displays your adeptness as a skilled writer.

Formatting movie titles correctly is crucial for several reasons. First and foremost, it enhances the overall professionalism and aesthetic appeal of any written or digital content. Properly formatted movie titles demonstrate attention to detail and respect for the art of filmmaking. Whether you’re writing a review, creating a poster, or citing sources in an academic paper, applying the appropriate formatting to movie titles stands as a testament to your meticulousness and expertise.

Secondly, consistent and accurate formatting ensures clarity and avoids confusion for readers or viewers. By adhering to the correct formatting guidelines, you enable people to easily identify and locate the movies you’re referring to. This is particularly important in an era where countless films are released each year across various platforms. Consistency also helps maintain the integrity of databases, libraries, and online streaming platforms, enabling users to easily search, sort, and access movie titles without any ambiguity or mix-ups.

Capitalization Rules for Movie Titles

When it comes to capitalizing movie titles , following the correct rules can make a significant difference in your writing. Here are some guidelines to help you get it right:

– Always capitalize the first and last word of the title, regardless of their parts of speech. For example, “The Lord of the Rings” and “Gone with the Wind.” – Capitalize all principal words in the title, including nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Skip articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, but, or), and prepositions (in, on, at) unless they are the first or last word in the title. For instance, “Singin’ in the Rain” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.” – Capitalize any other words that are typically capitalized, such as proper nouns and proper adjectives. Notable examples include names of specific people, places, or brands within the title. For example, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”

When it comes to emphasizing words or phrases in your writing, two common options are italics and quotation marks. These formatting choices can add clarity and emphasis to your text, making it easier for readers to understand your intended meaning. However, deciding between the two can sometimes be a daunting task. Let’s delve into the differences and help you choose the right format for your needs.

Italics are typically used to emphasize words or phrases by shifting the font style to a slanted position. Italicized text stands out as it appears slightly different from the surrounding text. You can use italics in various scenarios, such as:

1. Titles of works: Italicize book titles, newspaper or magazine titles, movie or song titles, or even the titles of TV shows to help them stand out. 2. Foreign words or phrases: Italics can be used when incorporating non-English words or phrases to indicate that they are not part of the native language. 3. Introducing new terms: If you introduce a new technical or scientific term, you can italicize it to draw attention and let readers know it’s something they should pay attention to.

On the other hand, quotation marks are punctuation marks used to enclose quoted or spoken language within a text. They are useful in various situations, such as:

1. Direct quotations: When directly quoting someone’s words, enclose them in quotation marks to indicate that the words are not your own. 2. Words used in a special way: Quotation marks can be used to highlight words used in an ironic or sarcastic sense or when discussing the definition or meaning of a specific word. 3. Titles of shorter works: Unlike italics, quotation marks are used to identify shorter works, such as chapters, articles, or short stories, within a larger body of work.

Overall, the decision to use italics or quotation marks depends on the specific context and purpose of your writing. Both formats have their own significance and can be powerful tools in effective communication. Taking a moment to consider the most suitable option for each situation will ensure that your words are formatted in a way that resonates with your readers.

When it comes to correctly formatting movie titles in your essays and research papers, it is important to follow specific guidelines to ensure clarity and consistency. Here are a few tips to help you appropriately format movie titles:

1. Capitalization: The first and last words of the title should always be capitalized, regardless of their part of speech (e.g., nouns, pronouns, verbs). Additionally, all major words in the title should be capitalized. However, minor words such as articles (e.g., a, an, the), conjunctions (e.g., and, but, or), and prepositions (e.g., of, in, on) should be lowercase unless they are the first or last word of the title.

2. Formatting Dialogue: When referencing movie titles that include dialogue, it is important to properly format the dialogue. Enclose the dialogue in double quotation marks and use single quotation marks within the dialogue for any relevant quotes or references. This helps distinguish the dialogue from the rest of the title and ensures clarity for the readers.

Remember, correct formatting of movie titles not only enhances the overall presentation of your essay or research paper but also shows your attention to detail. By following these guidelines, you will create a polished and professional document that adheres to proper formatting standards.

When it comes to formatting movie titles in screenplays and scripts, it’s important to follow certain conventions to ensure clarity and professionalism. Here are some guidelines to help you correctly format movie titles in your writing:

1. Capitalization: Movie titles should be capitalized, including all major words. This applies to both the main title and any subtitles. For example, “The Dark Knight Rises” or “Avengers: Endgame.”

2. Italicize or Underline: Movie titles should be italicized or underlined to distinguish them from the rest of the text. This helps make them stand out and easily identifiable to readers.

3. Quotation Marks: If you’re writing a screenplay or script that is referencing a specific scene or dialogue from a movie, you can use quotation marks around that particular reference. For instance, if a character exclaims, “I’ll be back,” make sure to enclose it in quotation marks to indicate that it’s a direct quote from a movie.

Foreign-language movies often come with intriguing titles that can leave us curious and sometimes confused. But fret not! Here are some tips on how to handle those foreign-language movie titles with ease.

1. Research the literal translation: Often, foreign-language movie titles are translated into English preserving the original meaning. To uncover the essence behind a title, search for its literal translation. For example, the French film “Amélie” translates to “The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain.” Knowing the original translation can give you a clearer understanding of what the movie might be about.

2. Pay attention to cultural significance: Different languages and cultures have unique ways of assigning meaning to words. Some movie titles may have cultural references that may not make sense when directly translated. Keep an open mind and try to grasp the cultural implications associated with a title. For instance, the Spanish film “Volver” means “to return” but carries a deeper connotation of going back to one’s roots or returning to a familiar place.

3. Consider international recognition: Sometimes, foreign-language films gain international fame and decide to keep the original title for marketing purposes. If a title remains unchanged, it’s essential to include the original language to distinguish it. For example, the Japanese film “Ringu” became a global sensation and is commonly referred to as “The Ring” internationally. Including the original language helps connect the film to its origins and allows audiences to identify it correctly.

4. Embrace subtitles: While some foreign-language movie titles are eventually translated into English, many films keep their original titles with English subtitles during screenings. It’s important to remember that embracing subtitles is crucial to fully appreciate the artistry and authenticity of a foreign-language film. Subtitles ensure that language barriers are overcome without altering the essence of the movie.

Handling foreign-language movie titles may seem daunting at first, but with a little research and an open mindset, you can unlock a world of cinematic wonders. From understanding literal translations to recognizing cultural significance, these tips will help you appreciate foreign films in their truest form. So grab some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the captivating journey that foreign-language films have to offer.

When it comes to social media and blog posts, it’s essential to know how to properly format movie titles to engage your audience and maintain a professional appearance. Follow these simple guidelines to ensure that your movie titles stand out and capture readers’ attention.

1. Capitalize the principal words: When writing movie titles, capitalize all the principal words, such as nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. For example, “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.”

2. Use italics: Italicize movie titles to distinguish them from the rest of the text. This helps grab readers’ attention and enhances the aesthetic appeal of your post or article. For instance, “Have you watched the latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Widow ?” or “I was blown away by the cinematography in Inception !”

3. Include quotation marks for shorter works: If you’re referencing a shorter work within a blog post or social media content, such as a short film or an episode from a TV series, use quotation marks. For example, “I highly recommend watching the TV series episode titled ‘The One with the Embryos’ from Friends .”

Remember, consistency is key when formatting movie titles. By applying these guidelines, you’ll elevate the appearance and readability of your blog posts and social media content, allowing your readers to easily identify and engage with the movie titles you mention. Don’t be afraid to showcase your love for cinema through appropriately formatted movie titles – it’s a great way to capture your audience’s attention and fuel conversations about everyone’s favorite films!

When it comes to formatting movie titles, there are a few additional tips and guidelines that can help ensure consistency and professionalism. One important thing to remember is that all movie titles should be formatted in italics. This distinguishes them from regular text and makes them stand out. To format movie titles in HTML, you can use the ` ` tag for italics. For example, if you were referencing “The Shawshank Redemption,” you would write it as ` The Shawshank Redemption `.

Another tip to keep in mind is the correct capitalization of movie titles. In general, the first and last words in a title, as well as all major words, should be capitalized. This includes nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. However, do not capitalize articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or), or prepositions, unless they are the first or last word of the title. For instance, the correct formatting for “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” would be ` The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring `. Keep this capitalization rule in mind to ensure your movie titles are formatted correctly and consistently throughout your work.

Q: What is the correct way to format movie titles in writing? A: When writing about movies, there are specific formatting rules to follow for movie titles. Generally, italicizing movie titles is the preferred format. For example, “Gone with the Wind” or “The Shawshank Redemption” should be italicized. However, if you are unable to use italics, you can capitalize the title instead.

Q: Are there any exceptions to this rule? A: Yes, there are a few exceptions. Short films, like those you would find on YouTube or Vimeo, should be put in quotation marks. For example, “Piper” or “The Present” should be written with quotation marks. Additionally, the titles of movies that are part of a larger body of work, such as a series or trilogy, should be italicized or put in quotation marks, depending on the original format. For instance, “Star Wars: A New Hope” or “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.”

Q: What about titles within the movie, like the names of songs or books? A: If you need to mention a song or book title within your text, those should be formatted the same way as regular book titles, which is to italicize or underline. For example, if you were discussing the movie “La La Land,” you would italicize the song titles like “City of Stars” or “Another Day of Sun.”

Q: Can movie titles also be capitalized without using italics? A: Yes, if you are unable to use italics, another acceptable method is to capitalize the title instead. This is especially useful when writing by hand, such as in handwritten notes or on physical documents. For example, if you were creating a movie poster by hand, you can capitalize the movie title like “AVATAR” or “INCEPTION.”

Q: How should foreign movie titles be formatted? A: Foreign movie titles should be treated the same as English movie titles. If you can use italics, simply italicize titles like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” or “Amélie.” If italics are not available, you can capitalize the title instead, like “KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE” or “PAN’S LABYRINTH.” The key is to maintain consistency throughout your writing.

Q: Are there any other tips to keep in mind when formatting movie titles? A: Yes, it’s important to remember that regardless of the format—italics or capitalization—the title of the movie should always be written exactly as it appears. This means using any punctuation marks, abbreviations, or specific capitalization that were originally used in the title. However, articles like “a,” “an,” or “the” should typically be excluded when alphabetizing movie titles on reference lists.

In conclusion, correctly formatting movie titles ensures clear and professional writing. Whether you’re writing an essay or a screenplay, this guide has provided all the necessary guidelines for consistent and accurate formatting.

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Roger Corman: a career in pictures

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Best known for his low-budget Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, Corman also produced over 400 films and helped kickstart the careers of Jack Nicholson, Nicholas Roeg, Peter Fonda, James Cameron and Martin Scorsese

• News: Corman dies aged 98
• Peter Bradshaw’s appreciation
• Roger Corman obituary

Greg Whitmore

Sun 12 May 2024 03.59 EDT Last modified on Sun 12 May 2024 17.07 EDT

Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Day The World Ended, 1955

Photograph: Alamy

The Undead, 1957

Photograph: The Kobal Collection

Not Of This Earth and Attack Of The Crab Monsters, both 1957

Composite: Movie Poster Image Art/ Getty Images

Attack of the Crab Monsters, 1957

Teenage Doll, 1957

Photograph: Everett/REX Shutterstock

The Wasp Woman, 1959

Photograph: Moviestore/REX Shutterstock

The Fall of the House of Usher, 1960

The Little Shop of Horrors, 1960

The Pit and the Pendulum, 1961

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, 1963

Photograph: Public Domain

Tomb of Ligeia, 1964

The Masque of the Red Death, 1964

Composite: BFI

The Wild Angels, 1966

Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, 1967

Composite: REX Shutterstock/Alamy

The Trip, 1967

Photograph: Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images

Bloody Mama, 1970

Composite: REX/Ronald Grant Archive

Photograph: Getty Images

Frankenstein Unbound, 1990

Composite: REX Shutterstock

Photograph: Michael Yada/Getty Images

Photograph: Victoria Will/Invision/AP

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The day I returned home after being kidnapped by Islamic terrorists

Beth Rodden is a professional rock climber who, along with three other climbers, was kidnapped and held hostage by Islamic militants in 2000 while on a climbing trip in Kyrgyzstan. The following is excerpted from her new memoir, “A Light Through the Cracks,” about the day she returned home to the U.S. 

Amsterdam, August 2000

By the time my boyfriend, Tommy Caldwell, and I made it to Amsterdam’s gleaming, sterile airport, we had been passed along a half dozen times, like an important but increasingly well-worn package. Military helicopters had brought us and our other two climbing partners from base to base. We’d endured a surreal ride on a private jet from the last military base to the capital, Bishkek, traveling alongside the tipsy and jovial president of Kyrgyzstan. He’d patted us on the shoulders like a grandfather and claimed us long enough for a photo op and a speech to local media in a language we couldn’t understand. Then he handed the four of us off to the American embassy, which scrambled to find us flights home. A few days later, Tommy and I drove across the Kazakhstan border, in a hired car with a diplomatic escort, to the international airport in Almaty, and finally a commercial jet took us from Central Asia to the edge of the Atlantic. Now we had just one more flight to go.

Our tickets were a last-minute mess, and we needed to check on our connection. As we crossed the terminal, I carried a brown paper gift bag from the airport candy shop — despite what we’d been through, I still wanted to bring my older brother a present from this trip. I watched the families clustered around the gates, the lone business travelers perched at the bars, scanning each face around me. I’d been on edge through practically every step of the journey: The embassy in Bishkek had felt almost safe, but at the hotel where they’d sent us to get some sleep, I’d felt vulnerable and stayed vigilant.

In the airport, I was hungry again. When we’d made it to the second army base, the one that felt like a cluster of portable classrooms set down on a vast brown plain, we’d stuffed ourselves with barley and warm buttered bread, but I could not stay full. I had just eaten two chocolate croissants. Still, my stomach felt like a cavern. My brother didn’t really need a present, did he?

I ate half the chocolate in the bag before we got to our gate.

The line at the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines counter felt so orderly. The whole airport did. Just existing there felt like getting a big, soothing hug. When we’d boarded the flight in Kazakhstan, the passengers had formed no line. Everybody just pushed in a scrum toward the plane. Tommy and I stood frozen, like the good, shocked scouts that we were, and got lost in the flood. I felt so fragile, so extremely fragile, and so resigned to that fragile state.

We weren’t safe. That was obvious to me. No line, no order, no rule of law. I loved rules. People smoked openly on that first plane.

“Next,” the flight attendant said as we arrived at the counter. Her voice was as professionally cheerful as her uniform: light blue skirt, light blue jacket, white blouse underneath.

“We’re here to check in for our flight,” I said.

“Wonderful. May I please have your boarding passes?”

I mumbled something apologetic and handed her a few crumpled, dirty sheets of paper. “I think we have to get our seats and stuff from you.”

She pinched her brow as she read our mess of documents. She typed vigorously. I was sure this meant we weren’t going to make it home.

“Can you wait one second?” she asked, flashing a strained smile. She disappeared behind a wall.

I looked at Tommy. He stared into the blank space where the woman had just been. I couldn’t tell if he was as scared as I was, if he was also monitoring the people pooling and flowing around us for any threat. I felt like I had grown an invisible antenna that vibrated continually, never at rest. Never letting me rest. A memory tried to surface inside me: a body in silhouette, sailing off a dark cliff. A crunch, and an exhale. I forced it back down.

Two blond attendants now appeared where there had been one.

“Can you tell me: Was it something KLM did?” the new flight attendant asked.

I looked back at Tommy. Did he know what she was talking about? Did she know what had happened? Tommy shrugged.

“Wait, what?” I said. “What was something . . . ?”

“Well, um, how to say this,” the flight attendant said. “It says on your tickets, ‘Emotionally distressed passengers, please take care.’ So, we are just wondering if it’s something KLM did.” She looked concerned and defensive in her caring, like a hospital billing manager. She didn’t want to know the answer, but she had to ask.

I didn’t want a stranger to try to comfort me, but I did feel the need to comfort her. So I said, “Oh no, definitely not. We were just kidnapped and we want to go home.”

I couldn’t believe how easily the sentence came out. We were just kidnapped . . . I’d never said it so plainly before.

The flight attendant exhaled all her breath at once, stunned and relieved. “Well, good,” she said.

Well, good?

“KLM does our best. How about business-class seats for you two?” She printed our fresh, flat boarding passes. Tommy and I boarded the plane.

We ate every meal and every snack that was offered to us on the long ride home. My hunger was like a portal opened into a galaxy — infinite, absolute. When I was in middle school, I used to watch my older brother, David, eat, stunned by the mountain of food he could consume. Now, it felt strangely freeing to eat with that type of abandon. I hadn’t done that since ninth grade, when I became obsessed with climbing.

I could eat, but I still couldn’t sleep. My anxiety kept me wide awake, and my wakefulness in turn meant I had nothing but space and time for the anxiety to spin itself tighter in my body. I kept wondering if the plane would crash. That seemed possible, maybe even probable, given how the rest of our trip had gone. An appropriate ending, in a way. I wondered if I’d be scared. What would Tommy say to me before impact? Would it hurt? Our backpack, stuffed at our feet, was filled with souvenirs purchased in a blur during our strange interlude in Bishkek, between our flight with the president and our diplomatic drive across the border. I had stuffed the paltry remains of the airport chocolate into our bag alongside the rest of the things we’d acquired: a hand-carved wooden chess set, a wool hanging. Proof that we’d done something major and been somewhere cool. What were we thinking?

The backpack that sat at our feet had been lost in transit when we’d first landed in Kyrgyzstan, full of hope for our climbing adventure, and was waiting for us, perversely intact, at the hotel in Bishkek after our escape. We’d left San Francisco with 20 expedition duffels, and all I had left was this backpack filled with trinkets from a country to which I’d never return. Maybe that was why we’d bought them, with the money Tommy had wadded up in his sock just before we were marched away from our camp at gunpoint. Maybe it was some attempt to fabricate a decent memory of the place.

My hands trembled the whole 12 hours to San Francisco. I knew I needed sleep, but if the plane did crash, wasn’t I supposed to be awake for that? I had no idea how to act, what to do or say or who to be when we saw our parents. I’d left as a 20-year-old girl full of herself, ready for the world, sure I was doing something extraordinary. I was living out the dream I’d stared at in the posters I hung on my bedroom wall: climbing to incredible heights in far-off places. My mother had hardly traveled, certainly not by my age. I’d felt so awfully superior as I’d walked down the jetway when we left. I didn’t even turn back to wave.

My parents had given me everything — pride, freedom, confidence. They trusted me. They trusted my decisions. They trusted the world. Now I was returning home a broken mess. I’d spoken to them a few times from the embassy in Bishkek, the words mainly drowned in my tears. I wanted to be small again, so small I could crawl through the phone into their arms, where they’d hold me and shush me and stroke my head. I wanted my mother to say, “Mama’s here, Mama’s here,” just like she always did when I was a girl. I wanted to shrink back into that little-girl body and lay my head in her lap and cry.

How was I supposed to carry myself getting off the jetway? Was the idea to act strong, like I was fine? I was weirdly good at that. Or should I literally run into their arms?

Now — how to do this? How was I supposed to carry myself getting off the jetway? Was the idea to act strong, like I was fine? I was weirdly good at that. Or should I literally run into their arms, like I had been dreaming of doing for the past eight days? I’d never spoken easily with my parents about feelings. They were so kind, so present, and gently but firmly on my team. But inside, I always felt nervous, like there was a line I was afraid to cross, like I needed to be tougher, solid, unbreakable. And even if I could lay my head in my mother’s lap and have her say, “Mama’s here,” would that still work to soothe me? I was not the same person I had been when I left. My thoughts flapped like the loose end of a film in an old-fashioned movie projector, the front reel spinning empty.

I looked over at Tommy. Maybe he’d know what to do. His head was slumped at a 45-degree angle to his chest, his mouth dropped open, snoring. He was sick. His brain was more lucid and less spastic than mine, but his body was breaking down. He had a fever. I envied Tommy’s oblivion. I felt so alone.

We landed. My palms were sweating, but Tommy’s hands felt strong. That felt like a plan: I’d hold his strong hand and we’d present a united front, though I hadn’t told him about my looping, flapping mind. I was trying to stay composed — for him, for me, maybe for my parents too. We collected our bag of souvenirs from under the airplane seats. The souvenirs promised our trip was normal. We were normal. I grabbed a free chocolate bar and a package of cookies from the plane’s galley as we exited. I never did anything like that, but now instead of saying, “Don’t eat that, Rodden,” I thought, “Just in case we don’t have any other food.”

I didn’t race off the plane like I had seen people do in movies, straight into their loved ones’ arms. Instead I walked so slowly that other passengers started passing us. I was desperate to return home, to the narrow twin bed in my parents’ house, on our quiet block filled with minivans and white Honda sedans, to replant myself in the flat farmland around Davis, California, to recommit to the safe wide sidewalks. I just didn’t know how. I wondered if people could tell we’d changed: if we walked differently or stood slightly less straight, if we’d absorbed so much fear and terror that we now emitted it.

Excerpted from “A Light Through the Cracks: A Climber’s Story,” by Beth Rodden. © 2024 Published by Little A Books, May 1, 2024. All Rights Reserved.

Beth Rodden is the author of “A Light Through the Cracks: A Climber’s Story,” out May 2024. 

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'Back to Black': Marisa Abela suits up to uncannily portray Amy Winehouse in 2024 movie

Filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson was eager to cast British actress Marisa Abela as ill-fated singer Amy Winehouse in her biopic “Back to Black” (in theaters Friday). Then she got some shocking news.

Abela didn’t sing.

“She said to me, ‘By the way, how much singing is there in this movie?’ ” Taylor-Johnson recalls with a laugh. “I said, ‘Well, quite a lot.’ ”

But the director (“Nowhere Boy”) figured if Abela, 27, could “focus on embodying Amy on a soul level,” then lip-syncing to Winehouse’s famously unique voice would take care of the rest.

In the end, that wasn’t necessary. Thanks to incessant work with a vocal coach, Abela wound up mimicking Winehouse so well that even diehard fans will be hard-pressed to tell the two apart.

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“I had no sense of my own voice, so I could become a chameleon,” says Abela. “Amy had one of the most distinctive voices ever, so I had to listen hard to her influences and patterns in order to get close.”

Abela did the work. The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art graduate − who played Yasmin in HBO's "Industry" and Teen Talk Barbie in "Barbie" − listened to Winehouse's hits as a preteen, but dove in when she landed this role, moving to Camden, Winehouse's home turf, and frequenting her old nightlife haunts. She even lost weight, carefully, to play drug-addled Amy.

"I was a big Amy fan, but I was young," she says. " 'Valerie' was my song in childhood. But as an adult woman, I can truly understand what is behind songs like 'Wake Up Alone.' My respect for her now, as an artist and songwriter, is immense."

Her uncanny vocal resemblance makes “Back to Black” – also the title of Winehouse’s most iconic album – a compelling two hours. But at its core, the movie aims to serve less as a greatest hit vehicle and more as a means to understand Winehouse’s tragic life.

The child of divorce, Winehouse poured her conflicted emotions into songwriting. A popular singer at London neighborhood pubs, Winehouse had by age 19 already been signed to Simon Fuller’s 19 Management, the same outfit that shot the Spice Girls to fame. A year later, in 2003, she released her debut album, “Frank.”

Seven years later, the six-time Grammy winner would be dead from alcohol poisoning.

What happened in those intervening years is what “Back to Black” explores with unflinching candor. Mostly, it is the star-crossed lovers story of Winehouse and Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O'Connell), whom she married in 2007.

Their relationship was passionate, volatile and inextricably linked to the abuse of drugs and alcohol. Nevertheless, Winehouse’s commitment never flagged. Eventually, his did.

After a stint in rehab during a jail sentence, Fielder-Civil broke off with Winehouse and had a baby with another woman, just as his ex was also finally sober and now world-famous thanks to "Rehab," the ironic global hit off “Back to Black."

Emotionally undone by his new life, Winehouse spiraled again. Eventually, her body gave out.

While plenty of media accounts and a thorough Winehouse documentary (2015’s “Amy”) paint Fielder-Civil and Amy’s cab-driving father Mitch (Eddie Marsan) as toxic forces, Taylor-Johnson decided to view both differently.

“It was clear to me that I had to look at Blake and her father with love because I needed the audience to see what Amy saw in them,” she says.

Taylor-Johnson met with Winehouse’s parents while preparing for the film, although she did not need their approval to make it. During one meeting, she asked Amy's mother, Janis Winehouse-Collins (Juliet Cowan), if she liked her former son-in-law.

“She answered, ‘No, but I didn’t not like him, either.’ ... He showed (Amy) love, and that was important to Janis,” she says.

As for Mitch Winehouse, there is a scene in the movie where, after taking over Amy’s career, he is implored by family members to get his daughter into rehab. He rebuffs the request.

“I wanted people to think more broadly about what it really might be like to parent a child with addiction,” says Taylor-Johnson. “Do you turn a blind eye, hoping that by performing, Amy rediscovers her love of life? Or do you intervene? It is complicated. It’s easy to just say, ‘Who’s to blame?’ ”

Taylor-Johnson says that while Winehouse's parents haven't told her what they think of her film, they have requested numerous screenings for family and friends. "I think they've warmed to it," she says.

For her part, Abela also met with the Winehouse family. “My impression was that they were still deeply grieving Amy's loss,” she says.

Nevertheless, the family eagerly provided the actress with insights into Winehouse’s influences, which included jazz greats such as Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington.

Abela started her vocal training trying to sing like those legends “so that I could then see how Amy would add her own flavor to their work,” she says. “She switches her vocal registers so much, really using her voice like a jazz instrument − she’d go from something nasal and clipped to super chesty and big.”

Abela also got the full Winehouse treatment physically, wrapping her hair in a huge ’60s beehive and getting temporary versions of Winehouse’s innumerable tattoos, which included a pin-up girl, horseshoe and feather.

“With all those tattoos, I felt like a different person, honestly,” says Abela. “It felt cool, but more than that, you understood how little fear Amy had. She would feel things and then just get that put on her body in that moment, big and in color.”

Transforming into Winehouse turned Abela into a superfan who can reel off the star's entire catalog in a flash.

Her favorite Winehouse tune?

“That would be ‘Love Is A Losing Game,’ ” she says. “It’s a song where the music and lyrics speak to a time when she was the most vulnerable and honest.”

Just don’t ask her to sing it. She doesn’t do the human jukebox thing, thank you very much.

“My goal in playing her was about getting at who she was and how hard she loved,” says Abela. “So to sing a few bars of ‘Rehab’ without the whole context behind it wouldn’t make any sense to me. And trust me, it’d likely be terrible.”

A valid point. But we’re not buying it.

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Back to Black

The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.

• Sam Taylor-Johnson
• Matt Greenhalgh
• Marisa Abela
• Eddie Marsan
• Jack O'Connell
• 78 User reviews
• 99 Critic reviews
• 49 Metascore

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• Trivia Marisa Abela had done most of the singing in this film herself. She trained extensively to mimic Amy Winehouse 's vocals.

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• Runtime 2 hours 2 minutes

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The Real-Life ‘Fall Guys’: How a Tight-Knit Stunt Team Pulled off Ryan Gosling’s Death-Defying Scenes

By Katcy Stephan

Katcy Stephan

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SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains light spoilers for stunt sequences from “ The Fall Guy ,” in theaters now.

Leaping from a high-flying helicopter, being engulfed in flames, and rolling a car over eight and a half times—while these heart-stopping moments may be the stuff of nightmares for most, they’re just another day on the job for the daredevil stunt performers at the heart of David Leitch’s “The Fall Guy.” 

Ryan Gosling’s Colt Seavers is repeatedly put through the wringer in Universal’s action comedy based on the 1980s TV series of the same name. Lucky for the Oscar-nominated actor, a team of pros was there to do the heavy lifting. 

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How did you each get into stunt work and become involved with “The Fall Guy?”  

Logan Holladay: My dad was also a stuntman. It was never my goal to be a stuntman, but my dad was also a motorcycle racer. I loved motorcycles and I just wanted to be a dirt bike racer, and I wanted to try to be one of the best at it. Through all of that racing, I started doing photoshoots for different people. I was racing for Yamaha and Honda, then I started doing commercials with them. I was like, ‘I’ve raced a lot, and this seems like a lot of fun. I think I might just do this.’ I made a shift away from racing as I was getting a little bit burnt out, so I started doing stunts. I put it up, put everything I have into it. I treat it kind of like going into a race, and the only outcome I’m okay with is winning. 

Ben Jenkin: I was actually on another show. I got a call from [ stunt designer ] Chris O’Hara. I said, ‘I’ve never done a fire burn. I’ve never been hit by a car before. I’d love to do both.’ And he’s like, ‘Good thing that they’re both in the script. You can do both.’ Perfect! 

How do you get into the headspace to perform these tasks that could very well kill you? I freak out over a simple fender-bender!  

Holladay: I think we’re just different types of people. I could go do it right now. I don’t need to prepare my headspace for it. I like to really make sure I know exactly what I’m doing, but that’s it. We like adrenaline! We come from action sports. Our entire lives have been spent scarring ourselves and getting a thrill in achieving something.  

Logan, let’s break down your record-breaking eight-and-a-half cannon rolls in the film.  

Holladay: I don’t know how I could ever top that! We didn’t think that I was gonna get a Guinness World Record. We were just trying to do the biggest, best stuff that’s ever been done. The best part is, it’s someone else’s turn now to go out there and beat that set. I understand why it’s been so long since that world record was set for seven rolls because it’s hard . When you get to about five or six rolls in a car, it is extremely hard to do more. It just takes a lot of speed and a lot of commitment. Everybody always talks about that cannon roll, but I also jumped a trophy truck 225 feet over a canyon. For me, that was even scarier. That was an even bigger feat! 

Ben, how many times did you get lit on fire? And what did you think when you first read the fire scene, when Jody (Emily Blunt) forces Colt to perform the pyro stunt over and over again for revenge?  

Jenkin: I was lit on fire eight times. It was once the first day and then seven the next day. When I first heard about it, I mean, it’s hilarious. How can you not like it? She’s so pissed off at him that she’s like, ‘I’m gonna make you do this thing that sucks.’ It hurts getting slammed against the wall and set on fire. And you’re full of sand. It’s uncomfortable. All stunt performers have been in that situation where you do something and you’re like, ‘God, I hope we don’t have to do that again because that really hurt.’ 

Troy, how did you pull off that helicopter fall during the film’s climax?  

Brown: I didn’t even think that there was an airbag that existed that I could fall 150 feet into. The last time that my dad jumped into his airbag was in 2004 in Namibia, South Africa, in a movie called ‘Flight of the Phoenix.’ He sold that bag and left it there. He ended up finding the people that he sold it to, And they had just kept it in a box for the last 20 years. Universal had it shipped over to Sydney. I had to put some duct tape on it and sewed up a couple of things, but the material felt good. It was just a crazy thing for me, watching videos of that airbag since I was a super little kid, and then getting to like see it in person and jump into it. 

Your dad was on set for the fall, right?  

Jenkin: Everyone ran over. Everyone was crying.  

Holladay: I cried! 

This movie really feels like a love letter to stunt performers. Why is it so important for a project like this to shine a light on stunt work?  

Holladay: I think one of the reasons why it hasn’t been recognized is that for a very, very long time, actors would always say, ‘I do all my own stunts.’ They felt like they had to tell everybody that they’re actually the one that does this stuff. 

You have an amazing actor, like Ryan Gosling, who could deliver the story like nobody else. So now we have that piece of the puzzle: then his character has to do big car stunts, or his character has to parkour. Well, Ryan spent his whole life acting, so he’s amazing at acting. But if you want to have these things at the highest level, you’ve got to bring in the professionals. So we all come together, and we make this great character. 

Jenkin: Well, I think it goes hand in hand with the whole stunt industry being recognized. It’s, in my opinion, long overdue. We didn’t get into this to win awards, be famous, and be recognized. This whole thing is so new to us. We’ve never done press before in our lives! However, when you take a step back and think about it, every single department involved in the creative process of making these incredible movies deserves to be recognized. 

I just want to say ‘thank you’ to people like David and [producer Kelly McCormick], Ryan and Emily and all the cast that are really shining such a positive spotlight on the stunt industry. It’s about time that some people get recognized for the danger. People are really risking their lives for the love of making movies. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Impact of Films: Changes in Young People’s Attitudes after Watching a Movie

Nowadays films occupy a significant portion of the media products consumed by people. In Russia, cinema is being considered as a means of individual and social transformation, which makes a contribution to the formation of the Russian audience’s outlook, including their attitudes towards topical social issues. At the same time, the question of the effectiveness of films’ impact remains an open question in psychological science. According to the empirical orientation of our approach to the study of mass media influence, our goal was to obtain new data on the positive impact of films based on specific experimental research. The task was to identify changes in the attitudes of young people, as the most active viewers, towards topical social issues after watching a specifically selected film. Using a psychosemantic technique that included 25 scales designed to identify attitudes towards elderly people, respondents evaluated their various characteristics before and after watching the film. Using a number of characteristics related to the motivational, emotional and cognitive spheres, significant changes were revealed. At the same time, significant differences were found in assessments of the elderly between undergraduate students and postgraduate students. After watching the film, postgraduate students’ attitudes towards elderly people changed in a positive way, while undergraduate students’ negative assessments only worsened. The revealed opposite trends can be explained by individual differences of respondents, which include age, educational status as an indicator of individual psychological characteristics, the experience of interaction with elderly people and, as a result, attitudes towards elderly people at the time before watching the movie. The finding that previous attitudes mediate the impact of the film complements the ideas of the contribution of individual differences to media effects. Most of the changes detected immediately after watching the movie did not remain over time. A single movie viewing did not have a lasting effect on viewers’ attitudes, and it suggests the further task of identifying mechanisms of the sustainability of changes.

1. Introduction

With the development of information technology, a person’s immersion in the field of mass media is steadily increasing. A significant portion of consumed media products is occupied by cinema. According to sociological surveys, going to the cinema is the most popular way of spending leisure time in Russia today ( http://www.fond-kino.ru/news/kto-ty-rossijskij-kinozritel/ ); the audiences of cinemas are growing, the core of which are 18-24 years olds, as well as the frequency of visits—every tenth Russian goes to the cinema several times a month ( https://wciom.ru/index.php?id=236&uid=1785 ; https://wciom.ru/fileadmin/file/reports_conferences/2018/2018-04-03_kino.pdf ; http://www.fond-kino.ru/news/portret-kinoauditorii-rezultaty-monitoringa-za-i-kvartal-2019-goda/ ), the opportunities and frequency of Internet viewings is expanding, while interest in TV shows is also increasing. The importance of the role that cinema plays in Russia is also confirmed by the close attention currently being paid to the development of the cinema industry: the priority topics of state financing are defined (e.g., “Law and order: the heroes of modern society in the fight against crime terror, extremism and corruption”, “On the continuity of military generations, on the successors of military traditions”, "Images, patterns of behavior and creative motivation of our contemporary—a man of labor, in the military or a scientist"), while state programs are being launched to open new cinema theatres in small towns. Сinema becomes a “tool for broadcasting state ideology to the masses” (according to S. Zizek [ 1 ]), and is also being considered as a “means of individual and social transformation” (according to T. Kashani [ 2 ]) [ 3 ]. As a result, films are expected to form beliefs, influence opinions and change attitudes, including towards topical social issues.

However, the question of the efficiency of films remains open in psychology. In general, this is a key issue for mass communication research: how much emotion, cognition and behavior are changed under the influence of mass media [ 4 , 5 ]. There are various concepts about this: from “theories of a minimal effect” to “theories of a strong effect” [ 6 ]. Thus, for example, cultivation theory considers that mass communication contributes to the assimilation of commonly accepted values, norms and forms of behavior [ 7 ]; and a meta-analysis of studies leads to the conclusion that there is a relationship between the broadcast mass media image of reality and people’s attitudes towards it [ 8 , 9 ]. Despite criticisms, cultivation theory is currently being developed [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. On the other hand, supporters of the opposite viewpoint point out the weak effects of mass communication, caused, for example, by the fact that people are becoming more and more subject of their mass media activity as a result of a wider variety of sources of information now and expanding their choices [ 14 , 15 ].

It seems difficult to identify a single mechanism of mass media impact on the human psyche and behavior and to obtain an unambiguous answer to the question about its efficiency [ 6 ]. This is due to the interconnection of various factors that mediate the influence of mass media (personal experience, realistic content, depth of identification with heroes, personality traits, etc.) [ 16 , 17 , 18 ], as well as those factors that constantly impact persons besides those in the media. Therefore, our thoughts and ideas about this issue are largely based on empirical research data, and are not limited to one theory [ 19 ].

When referring to research of cinema, we can find data on the diverse effects of film exposure. It should be noted that the effectiveness of the impact is determined by what it is directed at: it is more difficult to change human behavior than to influence opinions or attitudes [ 4 , 6 ]. In this regard, there is still a debatable problem on the influence of the media on the aggressive behavior of people [ 20 ]. This research focuses on the potential of pro-social, "humanistic" impact of films and their effectiveness in solving topical social issues. The studies reveal the influence of films on people’s beliefs and opinions, stereotypes and attitudes. Movies can have a significant impact on gender and ethnic stereotypes [ 21 , 22 ], change attitudes towards certain groups of people and cause newly formed opinions on various issues. For example, HIV films contributed to sympathy to people living with HIV [ 4 ], TV series with transgender characters contributed to positive attitudes towards transgender persons [ 23 ]; the portrayal of mental disorders in movies had an effect on people’s knowledge about and attitudes toward the mentally ill [ 24 , 25 ]. Also, viewing an empathy-arousing film about immigrants induced more positive attitudes toward them [ 26 ], and watching a movie offering a positive depiction of gay men reduced homophobia [ 27 ]. Other films influenced people’s attitude towards smoking and their intentions to quit [ 28 , 29 ], while a series with a positive donation message helped viewers to make decisions about their own donation [ 30 ]. It has been shown that emotional involvement in viewing, evaluated using surveys drawing on theories of social learning and social representations, increases the effectiveness of influence [ 30 ]; immersion in narrative, that correlates with the need for cognition, and is characterized by a shift of focus from the real world to the depicted one, explains the power of impact within the framework of transportation theory [ 31 , 32 ].

Cinema can change people’s opinions on specific issues without affecting more stable constructs: for example, the film “JFK” dedicated to the Kennedy assassination influenced judgments about the causes of this crime, but generally did not change the political beliefs of the audience [ 33 ]; at the same time, the movies “Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” changed viewers’ opinions about the U.S. government that reflected in an improvement in sentiments about this government and its institutions [ 34 ]. Movies create images of other countries and stimulate interest in them. For example, European films shaped young viewers’ ideas about other European countries—such results were obtained in a study of the role of films and series in the daily life of young Germans through interviews and focus groups [ 35 ]. Another study showed that whether the movies were violent, scary or happy, the more the viewers were immersed in the stories, the more favorable impressions they had of the places featured in them [ 36 ].

Various positive effects of films on children and adolescents were revealed. Dramatic films taught teenagers about social interaction with the opposite sex and adults [ 37 ], had a positive impact on their self-concept [ 38 ], and, as shown by experiments, increased ethnic tolerance [ 39 ]; humanistically oriented movies improved skills of children in communicating with peers, increased their desire to help and understand others [ 40 , 41 ].

One of the prime examples of positive impact is Cli-fi movies, which clearly show what we can expect in the near future, and offers ways to think about what can be done to avoid the darkest predictions. Thus, after watching the film “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004), viewers recognized their responsibility for the Earth’s ecology and the need to change consumer attitudes towards nature [ 42 ]. In general, the screening of films on climate issues increases the number of online requests and media discussions on these issues [ 43 ].

It should be noted that when analyzing the impact of films, conclusions about their effectiveness are the result of different methodological approaches, which have varying advantages and limitations. Content analysis reveals the images, attitudes, stereotypes broadcast by films (e.g., stereotypical portrayals of India [ 44 ], or images of scientists and current scientific ideas [ 45 ]) on large data sets; however, questions remain about effectiveness, strength and sustainability of the impact on the audience. The influence of films can be investigated through a survey of viewers; based on this, conclusions are drawn about the links between a person’s attitudes and his/her viewer experience, such as in the study of gender attitudes and their correlations with teen movie-viewing habits [ 21 ]. In experimental studies, exposure effects are detected using pre- and post-film questionnaires; however, the time interval between testing and a film screening, such as a few weeks before viewing the film or a several days after [ 26 , 27 , 29 ], can lead to distortion of the results that are caused by the influence on the viewers’ attitudes of other factors besides the film; moreover, usually it is not investigated whether new attitudes are retained over time. Often the effects of films are analyzed in experimental conditions where participants watch only short cut scenes from existing films [ 24 ], which limits the extrapolation of the results.

According to the empirical orientation of our approach, the goal was to obtain new data on the positive impact of films based on a specific experimental study. The task was to identify changes in young people’s attitudes towards topical social issues after watching a specifically selected film. Participants had to watch the full version of an existing fiction film. They were tested just before and immediately after watching the movie in order to avoid the influence of other variables on viewers’ attitudes. Repeated testing (two weeks after the first viewing) was intended to reveal the sustainability of the changes caused by the film.

In the process of developing the design of the work, it was specified what attitudes would be studied. The choice was determined, first of all, by the social relevance of the topic, but outside the focus of the media in order to reduce the impact of other media sources, and on the other hand, by the availability of a suitable film. Important topics as ethnic stereotypes, attitudes toward people with disabilities, etc. were considered. However, the choice of the topics had to be restricted for various reasons. For example, identifying attitudes toward certain professions (e.g., engineer), whose prestige has significantly declined in Russia in recent decades, was difficult due to the lack of relevant films popularizing them. At the same time, despite the availability of humanistically oriented films dedicated to people with disabilities, the identification of changes in attitudes to them was complicated by the need to take into account additional factors caused by increased attention to the topic and active discussion in various media, which could distort the influence of a film.

Given the limitations and opportunities for the implementation of research tasks, the subject of this study the attitudes towards elderly people. At present, attention to the topic concerning elderly people is growing in Russia, but there is still a prevalence of negative stereotypes [ 46 ]. A characteristic manifestation of age discrimination against the elderly—ageism—is a biased attitude towards them, especially among young people, as well as a low assessment of their intellectual abilities, activity and "usefulness" for society.

Studies show that the mass media have a significant impact on negative attitudes towards the elderly [ 47 ]: children have already demonstrated the same stereotypes of the elderly that were depicted in the media [ 48 ], while young people at large viewed the elderly in general as ineffective, dependent, lonely, poor, angry and disabled, which corresponded to the negative representations of elderly people in the most popular teen movies that cultivated their stereotypes [ 49 ]. Research of TV films from the 1980s–1990s revealed the stereotypes of elderly people as being social outsiders [ 50 ], but at the same time a display of positive prejudice contributed to an increase in tolerance towards them within society.

Improving the attitudes of young people towards elderly people is an important social and educational task, the solution of which involves the use of diverse opportunities. Various social projects can be implemented for this purpose, for example, "friendly visitor" types of programs in which young people visit the elderly [ 51 , 52 ], but also mass media, including films, which have a high potential for impact [ 53 , 54 ]. It was found that watching documentary films had a positive effect on both knowledge about aging and attitudes towards the elderly [ 55 ]; these films significantly improved empathy towards elderly people among university students [ 56 ].

We suggested that fiction movies, popular especially among young people, could contribute to changing existing biased attitudes towards elderly people. Based on this, the hypothesis states that there is a connection between watching a positive film about the elderly and changes in young people’s attitudes towards them in a positive way.

2.1. Participants

A total of 70 individuals participated in this study. Group one contained 40 students of The State Academic University for Humanities (25% male and 75% female). The average age was 19 (M = 19, standard deviation SD = 2.4). Group two consisted of 30 postgraduate students from Russian Academy of Sciences (47% male and 53 % female). The average age was 24 (M = 24, standard deviation SD = 1.6).

All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the local ethics committee (Review Board).

2.2. Materials

2.2.1. film.

The film—“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2011), the main characters of which were elderly people, was chosen to be shown to the respondents ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1412386/ ). Prior to this, a qualitative analysis of empirical material revealed the impact of this film on the attitudes towards elderly people among Russian viewers of different ages. Their reviews on the film, taken from Internet resources devoted to cinema, indicated cognitive effects, expressed in positive changes of ideas about the elderly; the film was perceived quite optimistically and gave hope [ 19 ]. It was supposed that the movie that humorously shows various situations happening to the elderly heroes would also affect the opinion of young people about elderly people, as it allowed to look at them from new viewpoints, to see that age is not an obstacle to having a full life, and even, conversely, open up new prospects.

2.2.2. Measures

To achieve the goal of the study, a psychosemantic approach is used, which is the most appropriate for studying a person’s attitudes towards various objects of reality by reconstructing individual meanings [ 57 ]. This approach allows us to determine the differences in evaluations of the same object (caused by mass media as well), made by different groups of respondents at different times. For example, changes in the stereotypes of viewers were revealed in relation to representatives of another nation (Russians about the Japanese) during viewing of a TV show [ 57 ]. In this work, the psychosemantic technique was used, developed specifically to identify attitudes towards the elderly (based on the Kelly’s Repertoire lattice method) [ 46 ]. The technique included 25 7-point scales, according to which respondents rated elderly people. For comparative analysis, the modern youth were evaluated by participants with the same scales.

The respondents also noted the frequency of watching movies ("every day"/"several times a week"/"several times a month"/"several times a year and less"), and evaluated the level of enjoying the film shown ("did not like"/"rather did not like than liked"/"rather liked than disliked"/"liked").

2.3. Procedure

The study was conducted in three stages: the respondents filled out the psychosemantic test before watching the film, then immediately after viewing and again in 2 weeks. During stage 3, only group one participated in the study.

The respondents did not see the film before participating in the study.

2.4. Statistical Methods

In accordance with the data characteristics, non-parametric comparative methods were used. To determine the differences in the assessments before and after watching the movie, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used. To determine the differences in the assessments between different groups of respondents, the Mann-Whitney U test was used. The IBM SPSS Statistics 20 statistical software package was used for data processing.

3. Results and Discussion

As a result of the preliminary data analysis of the group one (students), significant differences were obtained in the assessments given by them to the elderly before and immediately after watching the movie (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p < 0.05). However, the analysis of the combined sample (students and postgraduate students) did not reveal such significant differences. Therefore, it was decided to compare the assessments of these two groups of respondents. It appeared that the evaluation of elderly people differed among students and postgraduate students before the film was shown (18 of 25 scales, Mann—Whitney test, p < 0.05). This result could be explained by the individual differences of the participants (students and postgraduates), which led to the necessity to correct the hypothesis and form additional research tasks, including the comparison of groups. Further analysis was carried out separately for each group of respondents, but not for the united group.

Significant differences shown by respondents of the group one before and immediately after watching the film (students) were found in 12 out of the 25 scales ( Table 1 ).

Changes in assessments of the elderly people after watching the film (students).

Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Only the significant differences are represented: b—based on negative ranks, c—based on positive ranks. * inversive scales: a higher rating means a more negative attitude

The group of students revealed changes associated with ideas about activities. The respondents saw the elderly as having less initiative, and being purposeless and weak. Moreover, they defined elderly people’s way of life as more passive, having no desire for knowledge or for living a full life. The results immediately after watching the film demonstrated that the audience perceived the elderly as being those who strived less to learn new things and perceived them to be less positive and more limited in their interests. Also, the changes of assessments related to the emotional sphere were discovered. The elderly were characterized as even more unrestrained and conflict-prone with a tendency towards depression and showing no emotions.

Comparative analysis of assessments of elderly people before and after watching the film, given by respondents of the group two (postgraduate students), showed significant differences on 14 of the 25 scales ( Table 2 ). Postgraduate students evaluated the elderly, unlike students, more positively after watching the film. Changes on 9 common scales (purposeless - purposeful, cheerful - prone to depression, passive - initiative, conflict - peaceful, traditional - modern, etc.) for students and postgraduate students turned out to be of different directions. After watching the film, the elderly seemed to be more purposeful, active and successful, responsible and with a good sense of humor. There were changes in assessments of the emotional sphere (more cheerful, peaceful) and cognitive (more intelligent) in references to novelty and life in general (the strive to learn new things, the desire for a full life).

Changes in assessments of elderly people after watching the film (postgraduates).

Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The significant differences are only represented: b—based on positive ranks, c—based on negative ranks. * inversive scales: higher rating means more negative attitude.

Thus, the data revealed changes in attitude towards the elderly people after watching the film. According to a number of their characteristics related to motivational aspects—regulatory, emotional and cognitive spheres—significant changes were revealed, but the tendency of these changes was unexpected. After group one (students) watched the film, a tendency of worsening assessments was found. It was also determined that before the film, students described the elderly more negatively as being less intelligent and interesting, more conflict prone, angry and aggressive than young people (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p < 0.01). This generally negative attitude can be explained by a special view of quite young people on the "old age". But why, despite the attempt of the filmmakers to make the image of the elderly positive enough, did the film fail to change students’ attitude? Instead, it made the image of elderly persons even less attractive. Meanwhile, there was an opposite trend in group two (postgraduate students). Their assessments of elderly people after watching the film changed for the better. The postgraduate students, unlike undergraduate students, had already demonstrated a more "adequate" view on the elderly before watching the film. Despite a number of negative assessments, the elderly were seen by them as smart and striving for a full life, sociable and interesting.

Comparison of the two groups of respondents confirmed significant differences between students and postgraduate students in the evaluation of the elderly after watching the film ( Table 3 ). The assessments given by undergraduate students and postgraduates differed significantly on 21 out of 25 scales.

Comparison of groups of undergraduate students and postgraduates by assessments after watching the film.

Mann-Whitney U test. The significant differences are only represented.

The opposite tendencies found in assessments after watching the film could be explained by differences in individual characteristics of respondents, which were not initially considered in our study as factors mediating the impact of the film: age of respondents (more subtle differentiation), educational status, as an indicator of individual psychological characteristics and experiences of interactions with elderly people. The suggestion of differences between students and postgraduates by personality is consistent with the results of other studies [ 58 ], and is indirectly confirmed by the fact that only about 1 out of 40 students become postgraduate students (data for Russia). In our study, differences between students and postgraduate students already manifested in differences in their attitudes towards the elderly before watching the film.

Then the film, which showed some negative aspects of life for elderly people (loneliness, needlessness, diseases, fears, physical limitations “comic” behavior), despite the optimistic ending, could strengthen the negative attitudes of very young people (students) towards the elderly, whose images might not yet be fully formed. On the other hand, postgraduate students might have a more complex view on elderly people, because of age and more diverse interactions with the elderly, for example, in scientific work. In this case, their perceptions of the film could be focused on its positive ideas, strengthening their previously formed positive image of an elderly person. In addition, postgraduate students, who have chosen the scientific career path, most likely have a high level of analytical skills that contributed to more complex perceptions of the world and a deep assessment of the phenomena that could affect their attitudes towards the older generation and the interpretation of their images in the movies. At the same time, the characteristics of the film itself, as well as the cultural differences between its creators and viewers, might cause additional negative impacts on students’ perceptions. Comedy, as a genre, could have an opposite effect. Younger people perceived the desire of older characters to give their lives new meanings in their own way and they saw a futility in these attempts. Respondents with more experience could be more tolerant to the specifics of the genre, and their perception of the film was more complicated and implemented in a broader context.

Thus, comparison of the results of the analysis for both groups of respondents suggests that the different changes in viewers’ attitudes towards objects of reality that occur after watching a movie can be explained by differences in the attitudes before watching the film. This effect can also be explained by the degree of identification with the characters [ 31 , 59 , 60 ], which is influenced by the previous attitudes of the viewers. For example, a study of the impact of films on attitudes towards migrants showed that greater identification with the characters induced more positive attitudes toward immigration, but only when previous prejudice was low or moderate [ 26 ]. In this regard, the various effects of the film on students and postgraduate students could be caused by the different degrees of their identification with the characters of the film, despite the fact that a large difference in age with the characters could complicate this process for all participants in the study. The conclusion that previous attitudes mediate the impact of the film complements the ideas of the contribution of individual differences to media effects [ 61 ]. In addition, this conclusion has practical value: in order to achieve the desired impact of films, it is necessary to identify the viewers’ individual attitudes before a screening.

At the third stage of the study, it was examined whether changes remained over time. Two weeks after watching the movie, respondents (group one) re-took the test.

Significant differences were found only on 4 scales (strives to a full life - lost the meaning of life, craving for spirituality - limited interests, quickly tired – high in stamina, traditional - modern) ( Table 4 ). The continuing changes in the characteristics related to the inferiority and limitations of elderly people’s lives may indicate the most striking and memorable moments in the film that had the greatest impact on viewers. The assessments of the other characteristics did not differ significantly from those that were identified before watching the film. That leads to the conclusion that a single movie viewing, in general, did not have a lasting effect on the viewers’ attitudes toward the elderly. Most of the changes discovered immediately after watching the movie did not remain over time. Studying the mechanisms of the formation of sustainable changes is a task for future research. One of the directions of such research could be to investigate the influence of additional cognitive processing (e.g., discussion after watching the movie) on the viewers’ attitudes towards objects and the sustainability of changes over time.

Changes in assessments of the elderly people 2 weeks after watching the film (students).

Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Only the significant differences are represented: b—based on negative ranks, c—based on positive ranks. * inversive scales: a higher rating means a more negative attitude.

The correlation between the gender of the respondents and changes in attitudes after watching the film was determined by comparing the assessments separately for males and females in each group. As a result, in group one, women were found to have significant differences in ratings on 13 scales, and men in three, two of which were common (no desire to learn anything - the desire to learn new skills, traditional - modern, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p < 0.05). The data showed greater changes in the attitudes among women than among men after watching the film. At the same time, a comparison of the male and female participants in the group two did not reveal such results. The analysis found an equal number of significant differences in assessments (on 10 scales) before and after watching the film (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p < 0.05). Thus, it can be assumed that gender had a lower impact on changes in attitudes after watching a film than other individual characteristics of respondents.

The data on the frequency of watching movies was obtained: 56% of respondents watch movies several times a week and more often, 44%—several times a month and less often. However, there were no differences between these viewers in the assessments before and after watching the film (Mann-Whitney U test, p < 0.05). The degree of general interest in cinema did not affect the change of viewers’ attitudes after watching the film.

It was not possible to determine the connection between liking the film and the changes in attitudes, since the differentiation of respondents by this factor was not found. Only six young people noted they did not like the film, while the others gave it a positive evaluation.

The study has limitations caused due to an assumption of no significant differences between students and postgraduates in the effectiveness of the film’s impact on them. The revealed differences between undergraduate students and postgraduate students led to the initial sample of young people being divided into two samples with smaller sizes already used during the research. In addition, for the same reason, some variables that could more accurately demonstrate the differences between students and postgraduate students and explain the effects of the film were not considered. The respondents’ attitudes before watching the film were taken into account, as well as additional factors on the impact effectiveness, such as the degree of general interest in cinema and liking of the viewed film, which could presumably increase its impacts. But a deeper study, for example, of the processes of identifying viewers with the film characters, probably linked to the viewers’ attitudes before watching, could reinforce these findings.

4. Conclusions

As a result of the study, changes in the viewers’ attitudes after watching the film were identified. Young people changed their assessments of regulatory, cognitive and emotional characteristics of the elderly people after watching a film about the elderly. At the same time, significant differences were found between students and postgraduate students in their assessments of the elderly. After watching the film, students’ negative attitudes towards elderly people got worse, while postgraduate students’ assessments, on the contrary, changed for the better. The revealed opposite trends can be explained by individual differences between the respondents, which include age, educational status as an indicator of individual psychological characteristics, experience of interaction with elderly people and, as a result, attitudes towards elderly people at the time before watching the film. Most of the changes in the viewers’ attitudes detected immediately after watching the movie did not remain over time.

In general, the study confirms the potential for a positive impact, as in the case of improving the postgraduates’ attitudes, but at the same time demonstrates the need to take into account the individual differences of viewers to achieve desired results. In particular, differences in attitudes before watching a movie are probably causes of differences in the effectiveness of the film’s impact. The initially negative attitude towards elderly people among students could contribute to the negative influence of the film on them. The obtained results form the basis of further research and pose the important questions: clarifying the contribution of individual differences to the effectiveness of the impact, forecasting the positive influence of movies on different groups of people and determining the mechanisms of the sustainability of changes.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the engagement and involvement of the research participants.

The research was carried out within a state assignment of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, project №0159-2019-0005.

Conflicts of Interest

There is no conflict of interest.