#nonphotographer

[qu-film-history-to-1968]

How Movies and America Changed Post 1948

  Hollywood and the US after 1948 has a lot of interesting history behind it. Within the readings for this week there was a lot of information that I had never heard of before that focused around this time period. In his article, THE FILMS OF BILLY WILDER, Stephen Farber wrote about filmmaker Billy Wilder and his dilemma in making films, which is described as, “The question is whether you have a right to get people into the theater, and they expect a cocktail and they get a shot of acid. People don't want to hear that they stink” (1). He was trapped in making what the people wanted to see, and in many ways that still applies today as the most successful films are limited by the desire to appeal to as many people as possible. 

In their article, The Post-World War II Suburb in the United States, Seth Browner writes about the origins of the suburb in America. The creation of the suburb had a few patterns form with it, as Browner writes, “One distinction is the “low-density pattern” of settlement. The open land on which suburban residences were developed provided for reduced numbers of humans per square mile; this fact is a marked contrast from urban settlement tendencies” (3). This is an interesting change in the dynamic of living in America as it entirely changed the number of people one would be living around.

In their article, Widescreen, Paul Schrader and Robert Brink write about the introduction of widescreen to movies. This change would completely change how movies would be formatted in the future. The reason this change was made is because, “WÍDESCREEN IS JUST COMMON SENSE. IT'S HOW WE SEE THE WORLD. OUR EYES sit side by side, not stacked on top of each other. And we tilt up and down much more than we pan left or right. So a widescreen presentation in film is a more accurate representation of the world as we see it” (1). This was something I had never thought about before but it makes sense. This change made films more pleasant to watch, and was an important step in the development of film.

In their article, Hollywood's Conversion to Color: The Technological, Economic and Aesthetic Factors, Gorham A. Kindem writes about how movies began to use color. One interesting hiccup in the production of color films was actually the introduction of sound, “Hollywood's conversion to sound had impeded the proliferation of nonphotographic* color processes” (3). With films being a medium with so many different aspects, it’s interesting to hear how the steps to getting us where we are today weren’t linear, but instead often taken at the same time.

In their article, Witchcraft, Paul Thomas writes about the Hollywood blacklist. This presented a lot of problems with creative freedom with making films at this time as Thomas writes, “The studio heads could either resist HUAC and refuse to collaborate with people whose interference they resented—in which case they would risk accusations of disloyalty and “anti-Americanism”; or they could aid and abet HUAC and collaborate in a witch hunt.” (2). This essentially forced major studios to comply and blacklist certain films and people from ever working with them. The time after 1948 provided not only a lot of changes to America but also Hollywood as well.

Michael Jones

[alexandredonzesolis]

Illusions #engoguette #athenes #athens #alexandredonzésolis #illusions #voyage #like4like #follow4follow #artoftheday #carnetdevoyage #ruins #acropolis #greece #amazing #nonphotographer #iphonemade #apple #illusion #ads #decoration #plexi #kaleidoscope #mood #art #myart #creation #colors #texture #architecture #city #landscape #addicted #adsfashiondesign (à Athens, Greece)

[carljungdepthpsychology]

Incantations ~Carl Jung Nonphotographic representaton of the Merseburg Incantations manuscript (Merseburger Domstiftsbibliothek, Codex 136, f. 85r, 10th Cy.) Christmas has come.

[lbrfragments]

[...] the effort we all make, photographers and nonphotographers, to affirm life without lying about it.” 

- Robert Adams, Why People Photograph