Ill Be There For You

Were all different, therefore we all have different tastes about the food we eat, the music we hear, and the shows we watch.

I truly believe there is a sitcom for everyone. Sitcoms are our time to chill, time to laugh, time to forget about everything and just watch what out favorite characters have to deal with this time.

One of the characteristics of a sitcom is the three act structure.

This means that the sitcom 1) starts with a setup of the location and characters, 2) the characters o a character is faced by an obstacle that he/she/them have to resolve and it 3) ends with a resolution.

 

My favorite sitcom of all times is F.R.I.E.N.D.S. The story unfolds typically the same way every time. It starts with all of them (or atleast most of them) at Central Perk Café just hanging and talking when suddenly one of the FRIENDS starts to talk about a problem they might have and the rest of the episode revolves around that FRIENDs journey to fix the problem and how his friends are there to back him/her up getting them into more trouble than normal.

"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it"

What a director most important role? While some may say getting along with the actors, others may say controlling a films artistic and dramatic aspects, and others will even say post production. Nobody can argue a director has a lot of responsibilities in the making of a film, but what makes a director's film stand out from the rest? Along with many other things, the SHOTS he uses to film different scenes have a huge impact in how the story is told to audiences.


I will be discussing one of the scenes in my all time favorite  movie 'The Little Rascals". In one of the first scenes where Alfalfa and Darla are having a date on a boat the director applies what its called "Reverse Order" and starts with a Extreme Close Up (ECU) and ends with a Long Shot (LS).




First shot:  Extreme Close Up Shot (ECU). 
We yet don't know who is singing, all we see is this strand of hair (Alfalfas Trademark). The Director wants us to pay attention to that detail.

Second Shot: Close Up shot (CU) 

We now see Alfalfas Face while he is singing to Darla.

Darla enjoying her lover's serenade her. We know who is there and what they are doing and feeling, but we yet don't know about anything that surrounds them.

Third Shot: Middle Shot (MS)

Here we can see both Darla and Alfalfa in the screen, sitting on a boat in a river having a date.

Fourth Shot: Long Shot (LS)

With this shot we understand that Spanky and his friends caught Alfalfa on his date and are not very happy about it.

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul" - Marilyn Monroe

What does Michelle Rodriguez, Anna Faris, Jennifer Aniston, Bruce Willis and Michael Cera have in common? Aside from being movie stars is the fact that no matter what movie they are in, they ALWAYS play the same role. From being a badass- I-can-and-will-kick-your-butt type of girl (Michelle R) to being a Ditzy blonde, even though she isn’t really blonde (Anna Faris), some stars cant seem to be able to play different roles.

Not so long ago, during the 'Classical Hollywood era' this used to be the case for ALL STARS. Big studios would discover promising actors, sent them to dancing, singing, acting classes and then made them sign a contract that would made the stars literally belong to the studio for the next few years of their lives.

Sounds fun? Not really.  Not only did the actors not get paid enough, but they would have to play the roles the studio demanded them too. They would always play the same roles, no matter what movie they were in. The studio created an image for each of their stars and obliged them to live up to that image, especially in front of the media. Their image was more important than their acting.

So whenever someone went to see a movie, they just had to look who stars in it to know what to expect the movie to be about. How boring right? Nowadays you wouldn’t know what to expect from a movie just by knowing who is going to star in it, if that was the case I would have been more than excited to watch Valentines Day which had an all A LIST cast, but a pretty boring script. If this movie had come out in old Hollywood people would have known what to expect from each character.

Placed among the 10 greatest female artist of all time by the American Film institute, Judy Garland, who’s real first name was Frances Ethel Gumm, would be an excellent example of the star system in Old Hollywood. Discovered by MGM for who she worked for from 1935 to 1950, her typical roles were drama and musicals. She had a hard time battling with insecurity since film executives would tell her she was unattractive and manipulated her on screen appearance. When people went to see a Judy Garland movie, they knew she would burst into a song in no time and im sure they would have been surprised if she didn’t. 

"I was born at the age of twelve on an MGM lot"- Judy Garland 

ALL IN THE FAMILY VS WEEDS

The shows I will compare are ‘All in the Family’ and ‘Weeds’. What both show have in common is obviously that they try to portray families in different eras. They are both funny in different ways, and deal with family related issues and how the deal with stuff that happens day to day.

In the “all in the family” episode we saw, Archie discovers one of his good friend is gay. In this episode the characters keep making gay stereotype references and jokes that honestly don’t even make sense to me. One example was when the bartender tells Mike “I don’t want my place to become no hangout, if you know what I mean” clearly referring to the fact that he doesn’t want his bar to become a “gay bar”.  Or when they do the “chair” experiment where only the girls and STEVE could lift up the chair while no other male could and Mike concluded that because of that Steve was gay, reinforcing a fake stereotype.

Nowadays shows try to portray in the best way they can this kind of issues, instead of just talking about them. Sometimes they even make jokes about them. But the big difference between both of this shows is the kind of humor that is used, and I am sure that if all In The Family was still on today people wouldn’t be laughing as much as they did back then.

"It's not true that I had nothing on... I had the radio on" -Marilyn Monroe "

In the passing of years most technology has evolved in a way that 80 years ago not even the biggest crackhead could have imagined, and if he did, people would make him check into a mental facility.

OLD

NEW

I think the biggest force that influenced the shaping of the radio, since the beginning of times until today, is government regulation and intervention.

Today the government has regulations for most media, and the radio is certainly not an exception. By regulating the radio, the government (aka the illuminati) can shape and control what is transmitted and show what they want you to see.

The US Navy took control and standardized the technology, using it for the war and later opposing foreign control of it. Therefore American radio companies had a great advantage compared to foreign competitors after the war. If it weren’t for the government intervention, American broadcasting companies probably wouldn’t be as big and powerful they are today.

After the Titanic incident, people started realizing the potentials in the radio and how to use it in new different ways. And by setting up the RCA, American companies developed the radio into something that would revolutionize the world.

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