Bravura Beginnings: Paul Leni and the Art of the Prologue

This chapter looks at the conclusion of Leni’s film-related work in Germany and the beginning of his employment with Universal Studios. “Bravura Beginnings” argues that the bridge between these two phases of Leni’s career was his work on a series of prologues: live stage productions that led into others’ films. Relying heavily on contemporaneous newspaper and trade-journal accounts, this chapter examines Leni’s work immediately before and after his arrival in Manhattan in 1926. In particular, it explores the prologues he staged in Berlin for Ernst Lubitsch’s Forbidden Paradise, E. A. Dupont’s Varieté, and Herbert Brenon’s Peter Pan, and two he created for Universal: ‘The Police Sergeant’s Story,’ performed as a lead-in to Tod Browning’s Outside the Law, and ‘Tremendous Trifles,’ which served a similar introductory function for William Seiter’s Rolling Home. This chapter posits that Leni’s work on these live productions paved the way for his brief but successful career as a Hollywood director and carried themes and motifs that later appeared in his films for Universal.

Cinematic blueprint on Social Media: A comparative analysis

This paper aims to analyze the activity of the three biggest movie studios in social media, 20h Century Fox, Warner Bros and Universal Studios, and how that is affecting in the numbers and importance of each. Through deep searches, professional advice and the use of some statistic programs, we were able to pull out some interesting assumptions that will be discussed. We have focused in different parts of each Social Media since, we think, each one is designed to fulfill one specific aspect, for example create discussions or just present a piece of work or trailer in our case. With that approach we expect to determine which of the companies has understood better the way they have to be used and if they had won any kind of advantage through the good use of this medias presented as more interaction between themselves and the viewers and a more effective way to present their products. We conclude a correlation between movie studios impact and social media in terms of posts and comments. YouTube is the main social media for movie studios companies.

QUEM SEMPRE ESPERA POR VOCÊ? UMA CAMPANHA DO MCDONALD'S PARA O MCLANCHE FELIZ

A partir do dispositivo teórico da Análise de Discurso, linha francesa, analisa-se os discursos publicitários divulgados na campanha do McLanche Feliz, lanche especial para crianças, da rede de fast-foods Mc’Donald’s. O corpus desse artigo foi coletado no canal McDonald’s Brasil, via plataforma Youtube, trata-se de um vídeo elaborado para a campanha/2019 intitulado Quem sempre espera por você? cujos protagonistas são os personagens do filme Pets2: a vida secreta dos bichos, produzido pela Universal Studios. O enunciador propõe, através da memória discursiva, que os pets estão sempre à espera de seus tutores e os cãezinhos são associados, através dos brindes, ao McLanche Feliz. Isso facilita a adesão da criança ao discurso que está sendo apresentado e um possível consumo e fidelização ao produto.

The Pulse of Film

Chapter 5 considers psychophysiological efforts to assess the emotional responses of filmgoers by photographing their facial reactions and registering changes in their vital signs. These studies were done in the USSR for the purpose of raising the effectiveness of film propaganda among proletarian, rural, and juvenile audiences, and in the United States, for identifying crowd-pleasing narrative formulae. The chapter juxtaposes spectator tests conducted by the inventor of the polygraph lie detector, William Moulton Marston, for Universal Studios in Hollywood with analogous initiatives launched by various agencies under the jurisdiction of the Narkompros (a Soviet ministry for education and propaganda). I further trace the roots of these empirical methods to late 19th-century trends in physiological psychology, when chronophotography served alongside the kymograph for obtaining indexical records of corporeal processes that were thought to reflect the workings of the psyche. Offering a critical reading of this legacy, the chapter shows how these spectator studies replicated the universalist fallacies of biologically oriented psychology, in addition to strengthening a patronizing attitude toward the subjects of research: women, children, and illiterate peasants.

Monstrously Feminine: Orientalism Embodied in 2017’s The Mummy

In 2017, Universal Studios released a new version of The Mummy. The rebooted tale of an ancient Egyptian mummy come to life featured a female villain for the first time. The decision to feature a woman in the role was pushed by the film’s producers, director, and stars as an innovative and groundbreaking change. Audience goers did not seem to agree. The film was not successful at the box office and the studio scuttled the Dark Universe slate of films that The Mummy was supposed to launch. Informed by scholarship on Orientalism, as well as literature on the idea of the monstrous feminine, this article examines the narratives of East and West produced by the film. It shows how the film, rather than being innovative, traffics in stereotype, helping perpetuate the ancient idea that the East is an other the West must fear and conquer.

Infinite Narratives on Infinite Earths. The Evolution of Modern Superhero Films

After almost 20 years of a succesful run of superhero films it seems that we are now entering into the fully-developed format of this kind of cinema. Through films like “Avengers: Infinity War”, “Logan” or “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse” the general audience all over the world is becoming familiar with strictly comics-based forms and ideas like retcon, crossover or the multiverse paradigm (that serves as a model for ‘infinite’ superhero narratives and limitless iterations of characters). Despite the fact that popular cinema had already introduced some of these elements before – like the crossover aesthetic in Universal Studios’ horrors from the 1930s and 1940s – modern superhero cinematic universes can be seen as much more demanding productions for the viewers in terms of following strongly comic books-based modes of the ‘multiverse-centric’ perception. As a result we can right now observe an emerging process of turning even the non-superheroic popular cinematic features into very ‘comic booky’ narrative patterns. In this article I’m interested in analyzing the most recent cases of superhero cinema by looking at some specific titles as a way of introducing the narrative systems and tools from superhero comics into cinema.

Universal Studios Sebagai Surga Wahana Modern di Singapura

Makalah ini merupakan hasil laporan Foreign Case Study untuk syarat publikasi ilmiah di Sekolah Tinggi Pariwasata Ambarrukmo Yogyakarta dengan judul Universal Studios Sebagai Surga Wahana Modern di Singapura.

“The Greatest Picture Ever Made”

The subject of this chapter is the Oscar-winning film All Quiet on the Western Front. After discussion of why the Laemmle family’s Universal Studios wanted to make film of Erich Maria Remarque’s celebrated novel, the chapter considers the screenplay adaptation, casting of Lew Ayres in leading role, the revolutionary sound design, influence of Sergei Eisenstein’s montage technique, reception and political reaction to the film in the United States, and changing attitudes towards World War I. The final section focuses on the hostile reception of the film in Germany, where it was used by the Nazi leaders, especially Joseph Goebbels, for propaganda purposes, and how the film’s global renown changed Milestone’s life.