Blog #13: Reflection of Unit 3: Movie

In this unit 3, I have learned about movie. At the beginning of this unit, we discuss the terms of movies like sequel, Academy Awards, etc. I didn’t know that we can call film as flick too. I have never been curious about the term of movie section or movie related terms, but now that I have learn about the terms, I have little interest about movie. We also discuss the topic “Should movie starts earn a lot of money?”, my idea is that movie stars can make a lot of money but only if they are really good at acting, not because they are pretty or have a good figure. I think whether it is a movie or anything else, strength is the most important thing. 

Then, we start getting deeper. Learning about movie genres was an easy part for me, because when I watch a movie. I always pay attention to the genre of the movie, I try to avoid horror movies because I am afraid of that, even I like to listen to horror stories. We started studying about the topic of movies around Halloween, so we watch a small part of a horror movie. To be honest, I do not like to watch jump scare horror movie because it will only scare you suddenly instead of thinking deeply about it. We also watch the trailer of “Boo! A Madea Halloween” by Tyler Perry, it was a comedy horror movie. That was interesting to me, but I didn’t watch the whole movie. 

We also do a presentation about the genres, mine was about adventure. It is a subgenre of action movies that take place in vibrant, exotic locations. This subgenre has many small groups of genres like swashbuckler film, disaster film, historical fiction, epic film, etc. After learning about genre, we start learning about movie industry. We visited many movie company movies like Hollywood, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros, Tyler Perry Studios. I think the easiest one to understand was Warner Brothers page. It lists all their upcoming or already released movies on the homepage. 

Next, we started studying of cinema lecture. The history started in the 1920s, that was a long, long time ago. It is 100 years, I can’t believe that! In the 1930s was the golden ages of movie in America. In this decade, new genres like musicals, documentaries, comedies, westerns and horror were invented too. In the 1960s, golden age was end, but new Hollywood is born. After learning this, we watched a video about the historical details of the film by Craig Benzine. To be honest, I watch this video like 4 to 5 times to get the details because he talks too fast. Even so, I still get some details like film is at the intersection of art, industry, technology, and politics. Movies are magic because the creation of this entertainment was an accident. It is a magic trick which is a blend of literature, drama, photography, and music. I didn’t know that film exists because of these three reasons, which are happy accident, technical innovations, and scientific byproducts. Actually, in my opinion, I don’t think accidents are happy things. Probably to someone, it is funny but to me, it is not. Another very important thing is 1839. This is a very important year in film history because it is Photography’s Birthday. 

At the last part of the unit, we discuss about Tyler Perry, He is an African American director, a big-time movie star, but also called a phenomenon. His movies will be box office hits in the first week of release, that is why people call him as money machine. An important point is that all his actors were African Americans. For the same reason, most of his audience were African Americans too. My aha moment was when I visited his official page, it looks like a social media. It was an envy to see how big is his studio. I don't deny that I was very jealous. Finally, in this unit I learn many things of movie, such as, industry, terms, and history. It was a lot of information at once, so I guessed I may need to eat more walnut to improve my memorization.