Glen Gary Glenross

This week I watch the film Glen Gary Glenross which was originally a play written by famed playwright David Mamet. The film adaptation features a cast of legendary proportions. It stars Al Pachino, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon, and Alec Baldwin who perhaps delivers one of the most intimidating monologues that I have seen.  The film takes place in urban Chicago where it is centered on the sales office of vacation real estate property. Four salesmen are forced to participate in a sales competition where the man who made most sales would receive a brand new car. The man coming in second place received a set of steak knifes and the remaining two would be fired. Baldwin plays a successful businessman who is sent by the owners of the company to weave out all the unsuccessful workers out of their firm. His seven-minute speech is chilling, yet magnificent. I highly recommend youtube-ing it.

The film does a great job of using 180-degree turns on their shots. When the conversation was being transitioned from one character to the next the shot would swivel while staying in focus, which I thought was a cool effect. I recommend the film to all.

Ithaca College's Park School...

and it's lack of classes devoted to how the industry and business works.

I first thought of this when we watched that video in class on Wednesday.  Now, I know Arturo has told us certain things about the industry and how production is the best way to get into the business but it was interesting to watch the video and see the vast number of positions available in just one department on set.  I was really amazed that I had never really thought about that kind of stuff because knowing the business and its positions are extremely important as well as how the hierarchy works on a set.  A lot of times, we only learn production type things in park and I think because of this, we forget that learning about the industry we get into and how many of the different things work is extremely important.  I really wish the school would create a class or two other than the intro media industries class that students could take to learn in depth about how the industry works in different aspects.  Some things they could talk about would be how to get investors for films, going through all the production jobs on set of a movie or television show (field, live, sports, scripted, ect.), all about the different studios and how to get in contact with them, and even the different areas in the country and around the world that are hidden hotbeds for video other than LA and NYC.   I think this would be extremely beneficial for students to really fully understand the business other than only knowing how to produce things.


-Tyler Chadwick