THRILS CONCEPT

What is your favorite movie? Maybe you like cartoon-like movies. Maybe you like a movie that is full of action. Movies are a wonderful kind of make-believe. A movie is a series of pictures. Each image is a still photograph, just like a picture you take with a regular camera. But the pictures flash by so fast in a movie that the images blend together and overlap. As a result, you see horses run, people talk, cars plunge over mountainsides, and other kinds of motion. That’s why movies are sometimes called motion pictures. Movies are also called films because they are photographed, or filmed. HOW DO THEY MAKE CARTOONS? Cartoons are called animated films. Artists draw the scenes. They draw the background and the characters. Each drawing of the character is slightly different. For example, the legs are in different places if the character is running. A special camera takes pictures of each scene the artist has drawn. When the pictures are played back, it looks like the character is running. Making drawings that seem to move is called animation. Some enjoyable animated films include Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Lion King (1994), and Finding Nemo (2003). In some films, there are both animated characters and human actors, as in Space Jam (1996). Space Jam stars Bugs Bunny and basketball star Michael Jordan. WHO WORKS ON MOVIES? Many different people work on a movie. The producer finds money to pay for the film, hires people to make the movie, and gets the movie to theaters. The director imagines how the film should look and guides the actors and the crew as they make the movie. Assistants help the producer and the director. Screenwriters write an original story for the movie, or they work with a story told in a book. Actors play characters in the story. A music composer writes background music for the film. Most members of the movie crew work behind the scenes. Designers make the sets and costumes. The camera crew runs the cameras that film the movie. Dozens of short scenes have to be put together after the filming is done. That is the job of the film editors. Sound editors add background noises, such as honking horns in a scene on a busy street. In action films, stuntmen and stuntwomen often fill in for the actors and perform dangerous moves that could lead to injury. HOW DO THEY SHOOT A MOVIE? Lots of work has to be done before the filming begins. The producer and director plan how and when they will film each scene. A movie is filmed scene by scene, and a scene is filmed shot by shot. The scenes are not usually filmed in the order that you see them in the movie. Sometimes the weather is bad and an outdoor scene cannot be filmed. Big, fancy sets take a long time to build. Scenes using these sets are often shot later even though you may see them at the beginning of the film. When it is time to film a scene, the designers get the set ready. The actors run through their lines and movements. The director of photography arranges the lights. The camera operator checks camera angles for the shot. The sound crew sets up microphones. The cameras roll. Each filmed shot is called a take. The director may ask for many takes before he or she is satisfied with the scene. WHAT ARE SPECIAL EFFECTS? Special effects create the illusion of things that moviemakers could not possibly shoot. Special effects include small models of huge scenes, cleverly designed sets, and computer-generated images. Moviemakers use these to film scenes and places that do not exist. They might use a small model of a large building to stage and film the building falling down. Some sets for the movie Titanic (1997) had to look like a sinking ocean liner. The moviemakers could not film the inside of a large ship sinking. So the set designers built the ship’s grand staircase and dining saloon over a huge tank that held 5 million gallons (19 million liters) of water. They lowered the sets into the water tank to make it look as if the rooms were sinking. COMPUTERS AND SPECIAL EFFECTS Films can be digitized, or turned into computer files. Moviemakers can then change the images any way they want. They can use computers to make new images. Dinosaurs made by computer looked like they were charging toward people in Jurassic Park (1993). Computers can even make images of actors. Many images in Titanic, including crowds of people on the ship, were actually made by computer. In The Matrix (1999), computers were used to make the actors look as if they were fighting while floating in the air. OPERA PART OF THE WHOLE THING The lights in the theater dim, and the orchestra plays. The curtains swing open to reveal a stage full of people. They start to sing! You are at your first opera. The sounds and sights are spectacular. But what is opera all about? OPERA TELLS A STORY Opera is a kind of drama. It tells a story. The words of the story are set to music and sung. Operas are performed on a stage in a theater or opera house. Most operas have lavish scenery and costumes. An orchestra plays as the singers sing. A conductor directs both the orchestra and the singers. Many operas tell very dramatic and emotional stories. Some are tragic. Tragic operas usually end with the death of the hero or heroine. La Bohème (“The Bohemian”) and Madame Butterfly are famous examples of tragic operas. Both operas were written by Giacomo Puccini of Italy. Other operas are comic and end happily. A famous example is The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of Austria. OPERA HAS MANY ELEMENTS Opera depends on both words and music. It works best when the music expresses the same feelings as the words. The words of an opera are called the libretto. Sometimes the composer writes the libretto as well as the music. Sometimes a different person writes the libretto. Opera composers often highlight a particularly important or dramatic moment in the story with an aria or a duet. An aria is a song for one singer. A duet is for two singers. Through the words and music of an aria or duet, the singers can express the thoughts and feelings of the characters they play. Sometimes, several people sing different tunes at the same time on stage. This is called an ensemble. The different characters may sing the same words. Or they may sing different words, perhaps expressing disagreement or conflict. Many operas also have a chorus, a group that sings together. The singers sometimes speak some parts of the libretto. Through these spoken lines, the composer can give the audience information about the plot between arias, ensembles, and choruses. Many operas start with a short introduction by the orchestra. This is called the overture. The orchestra usually plays the overture before the curtain goes up to reveal the stage. The overture is often made up of tunes that will appear later in the opera. OPERA SINGERS AND THEIR VOICES Singing is at the heart of opera. The singers play the characters in an opera. In addition to singing accurately and with feeling, singers must also be good actors. Opera singers are grouped according to the range of their voices—that is, how high or low they can sing. The highest female voice is the soprano. The lowest female voice is the contralto. The mezzo-soprano sings in a range between soprano and contralto. The highest male voice is the tenor, and the deepest is the bass. The baritone sings in a range between tenor and bass. Over the centuries, composers have come to associate different types of voice with certain parts in an opera. Heroes and heroines are usually tenors and sopranos. Villains and figures of power and majesty are usually baritones or basses