All About Eve and Good Backstage Drama

     With actors involved there's always drama. All About Eve is a backstage drama written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz centering around an aging theater star. Bette Davis plays Margo Channing, a snide actress on her way out who takes a young girl named Eve under her wing.

     The movie begins with Eve, played by Ann Baxter, accepting an acting award. We don't know who she is or why she's won, we just know that the guild loves her. And we meet Margo and her friends who don't applaud at the acceptance ceremony.        Eve, is young with no connections. When a friend of Margo's introduces them Margo is warmed by Eve's love of the theater and her love of Margo as an actress. Margo allows Eve to work for her as her assistant and the two strike up a friendship.

     Quickly though Margo grows tired of Eve. She's always around and sometimes she makes important personal decisions, like telephoning Margo's boyfriend, without consulting her first. Margo drops Eve and feels excluded by her friends who are all smitten with her.

   As things begin to unravel it becomes clear that Eve is more than she appears to be. She is manipulative of everyone in the film. Eve is an actress and a damn good one. She's put on a different face for every person that she meets.

     All About Eve is an Oscar winning film for one reason. It created a character who wanted something and showed to the lengths in which they would go to get that. The conflict of Al About Eve isn't terribly complicated, the cinematography isn't out of this world. But it's simple storytelling that makes the film so effective. That and Bette Davis in full form.

Drive-In Delight

The drive-in movie theater screened its first film (Wives Beware) on June 3rd, 1933. Families were tempted into attending with the advertising line, "The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are!" However, attendance has significantly declined throughout the past eighty years of its existence. With the drive in being an experience like any other, it could seem mysterious as to why they've almost reached extinction. The rise of television is one plausible excuse for the slow death in drive in interest and there are some cons that even I sometimes pretend to avoid in the whole experience itself. We'll cover it all!

     I was exposed to the glory of all that is drive-in the first time I watched Grease. I was blown away and thought they were a thing of the past until my pops told me that we had one in our town. That weekend, the entire family and I were pulling up to the screening of Lilo and Stitch and Iron Man. It was a hot summers night, and all of the other kids were getting all of their excitement out on the big field in front of the screen. I remember joining in the rambunctious behavior but being distracted by the overwhelming structure that was our movie screen for the evening.

     Our van was parked backwards in a large sandy lot, blankets sprawled amongst pillows on the flattened backseat. It didn't take long for my impatience to boil over. By dusk it took every molecule of power to prevent my whining and then, trailers for other films began rolling. We could see them, but not a sound emerged from the speakers of our car or the little radio provided in our parking space. It took a bit of fiddling to correct the station for the theater to our car, and even when it did, white noise crackled along with it. The picture wasn't impressive by any means. At the age of 7 I could tell that the light pollution from our town and surrounding neighborhood was messing up the works. Not to that precise explanation by any means, just that even in the middle of the night it was "too light out for the movie." The funniest part was that it was still a delightful time for the five of us. All of us huddled in a cuddle puddle, laughing at the punchlines we managed to comprehend through the soft fuzz of the speakers and the conversations of surrounding families (Apparently that good ol' tagline has people thinking they're now entitled to talk through a movie.)

     None of that mattered though because my sisters and I still got to play with all of the other kids, and see the whole town gathered in one spot, and smell the summer air while we all laughed along to Lilo and Stitch. It's kind of not about the movie per se, but the overall experience of gathering everyone and going to the drive-in. Unfortunately, the experience hasn't lured people enough to keep most of them up and running.

In the 1980s the US was home to about 3,500 drive-in movie theaters. After ten years, that number dropped to about 1,000. Today? There are only around 300 drive-ins in America. Why? Certainly some moderately flawed sound and screening aren't ideal, but they don't eliminate the plethora of pleasant aspects of this mode of movie consumption.

     The biggest cause for the closing of most drive-in-doors is 35 millimeter film was no longer being distributed and all theaters were forced into digital projection. The booming AMCs or Regal Cinemas had minimal trouble fueling the bandwagon but the less-popular outdoor theaters struggled to fund the changes required to project digitally. The drive-in in my town had to go a big community fundraiser to keep ours open.

     There is good news! Johnny Rockets announced a new partnership with USA Drive-Ins. The two businesses plan on opening roughly 200 outdoor theaters by 2018. That's practically doubling the current amount. So if you ever come across an outdoor theater, perhaps consider giving it a try. They're all converted to the new software now so I hear the sound and picture is better than ever.

Happy watching!

A Perfect Blend - Theatre and Film

As I mentioned in class on Wednesday, I am a big theatre dweeb.  So of course, when Les Miserables hit theaters this past December, I had to see it.  As much as I love theater and film, I have never been a fan of when the two are blended together.  For example, I'm not the biggest fan of RENT which hit Broadway in 1996 and movie theaters in 2005.  Why?  Well, I could go on for a while for a lot of different reasons.  But one of the biggest reasons, which I know many will disagree, is that casting Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp was a mistake.  As we discussed in class, theatre acting and film acting are two very different things.  I think that Pascal and Rapp are phenomenal actors on stage and on film, but being thrown together with the rest of the broadway cast makes the film more "broadway" and not "film"- making the story seem fake and pieced together.

But back to where I was before, I think Les Mis was one of the BEST films I have seen that has been based on a musical.  What stood out to me was the audio.  There was no lip syncing which was impressive for the performer and the audio crew as well.  The sound was crystal clear.  I remember watching a scene where it was raining, and I felt like I could hear every single rain drop hit the ground perfectly.  Not to mention that since there was no lip syncing, it made the story feel that much more real.

Also, I need to talk about Anne Hathaway.  By far- one of the most compelling performances I have ever scene from an actress.  Her dramatic 25 pound weight loss to fit the role was only step one of her commitment to the role of Fantine.  Her emotional portrayal, particularly in "I Dreamed a Dream", was one of the most beautiful performances I have ever seen.  She nailed it.

Needless to say, I saw Les Mis twice, and wish I had time to see it again.

Old Forms New Conventions

View from the Window at Le Gras, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

To quote Hamlet on the Holodeck:

"...the inevitable process of moving away from the formats of older media and toward new conventions in order to satisfy the desires aroused by the digital environment."

How long does it take for people to start using the peculiarities of a new medium creatively?

Digital media is so new and moves so fast that we cannot even begin to recognize the difference with what has come before, because of the fact that digital media is itself an eternally shifting and morphing media.

When photography came into being all photographers could do to cope with such technology was to borrow from the portrait or landscape painting of their time. It took visionaries like Christian Schad, Man Ray, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, almost a hundred years since Nicéphore Niépce captured the view from his attic in 1826 to break away from the convention of the borrowed and explore the potential of the medium, but alas, it was short lived because the masses demanded their likeness more than that which they could not understand.

Then came film, which borrowed the narrative of theater (I am simplifying of course) and continued with the tradition of recording "reality" (that word...) while in fact it was, and always has been a mere optical trick and a little more that is hidden from the viewer

So now, when digital media arrives, we seem to be unable to grasp the potential, and how could we, if we look to the past instead of the future? Why does SL or any other VR looks as pedestrian as a mall, a battlefield, an airport, a castle, a house? What is it that we need that prevents us to discover the new?

The capability of Machinima was unprecedented in the world of Media, until the advent of FPS games. In a way it is similar to the advent of 8mm and then Super8 in the 60's. Lot's of people started making movies and that led to some interesting careers since some of those people are now known filmmakers.

One problem, that can be seen as an advantage as well as a step backward is that precisely the fact that production can be made on the cheap (or "free) and that anybody can swing a "camera" around makes for very poor end product. Machinima, despite its potential as a cheap story-telling medium or prototyping tool, an animatic of sorts (and I am interested in those aspects myself I should say), is that it also misses the point and becomes comfortable with emulating the rich uncle. Understandable though, since it lives and has grown precisely in that protected environment where the fascination with the new becomes very quickly a reflection of the old.

There is the chance of being one of those pioneers who dared to see outside of the box, if only for a short window of opportunity before it fossilizes into the same old crap dominated by corporations and transnationals to keep you under their control.

I think it is very exciting possibility to be one of those pioneers.

The Creator Short Cut

Baby Step Digital Design for theatre and dance

Tomorrow evening in the REVE from 7pm to 9pm Digital Design students from the School of Theatre and Dance will be presenting research regarding teledramatics, SecondLife virtual venue, polycom video conferencing and pidip and pdp, motion control DMX and remote Internet2 performance

Come check it out!!!