Kristina Doyle
ACH 102
Digital Dreams

Magic of Movies
Manuel Proissl, a Stony Brook Alumni and CEO of the NY Dance Project, graduated from Stony Brook with a degree in physics. Besides his career as a graduate physics student at Stony Brook, he has always been passionate about movies and production. This passion led Proissl to a two year research marathon that inspired him to write his first screenplay, “An American Dream”, based on a true life story. His project in 2007 turned into a major motion picture production of Paramount Pictures with a budget of 250 million dollars. Manuel Proissl’s presentation focused on the mechanics of movies such as the personnel of movie production as well as screenwriters, filming techniques, and acting.
Proissl first explained the basic knowledge necessary for understanding jobs involved in movie production. Screen writers are the most important when producing a movie or show because they write the script that is the basis of producing that project. A director is the person who directs the making of the film or show. A film director visualizes the script, controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects, while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfillment of their vision. A producer creates the conditions for making movies. The producer initiates, coordinates, supervises and controls matters such as fundraising, hiring key personnel, and arranging for distributors. The producer is involved throughout all phases of the filmmaking process from development to completion of a project. Without people filling these roles, production would be impossible. There are many different approaches for writing screenplays. In the entertainment industry there are multiple examples of approaches used in writing screenplays. For example spec screen writing, feature assignment writing, rewriting and script doctoring, television writing, and video game writing. There are also theories on writing screen plays such and the three act structure, which consists of three, acts the beginning, middle and end. More specific theories include the setup of the location and characters, confrontation of the problem, and resolution of the problem. Another example is the hero’s journey structure, and an eight sequence approach. A very important issue when filming is the camera angle because these angles can illustrate different sides of a script. The choice of a shooting angle influences the emotional appearance of an actor. Angles can also help show a climax of a scene and show different viewpoints of a scene. A dolly shot for example is where you follow the scene with the camera on a moving vehicle which moves alongside the action generally following a moving figure or object. Hand Held shots provide a jerky, ragged effect.

Film financing is also an important challenge when producing a screenplay. It is difficult to predict the revenues that any one film will generate. Therefore it is hard to obtain financing because companies don’t want to invest in a movie that will not make any money. The main factors determining the commercial success of a film include public taste, artistic merit, competition from other films released at the same time, the quality of the script, the quality of the cast, and the quality of the director and other parties put forth into the movie. There are four main methods of raising finance for the production of a film: government grants, tax schemes, debt finance, and equity finance. For example government grants are given by states for example hoping to attract creative individuals to their territory and stimulate employment and a particular location can have the benefit of advertising that location to an international audience.
Manuel Proissl covered the main ideas and concepts of screen writing and filmmaking. While attempting to actively involve us by showing clips of movies and showing us the techniques he was explaining. Proissl’s academic endeavors showed our class that you don’t have to be bounded by the extent of your education.