CEJN 136 Screen Writing - Hollywood Formula

Screen Writing

Introduction.

Hollywood formula is used in writing American movies (Vale, 2013). Many people think that Hollywood formula means strictly the normal formula but in the real sense refers to the entire technique of writing Hollywood movies in America. On another hand, the European style of writing movies entail the entire criteria involved in presenting European movies different to Hollywood movies (Riegler, 2016). Therefore, Hollywood movie can also be described as the movie produced by an individual or a company whose offices are in the United States. There exists a clear distinction between the Hollywood formula and the European style of writing movies (Kellner, 2010). In the essay, I will try to describe principally differences between Hollywood formula and European style in reference to the movies.

Differences between the Hollywood formula and European style.

Generally, there are key deviations between the Hollywood formula and European style in reference to the movies of our interest (Trafton, 2016). The two styles of writing movies differ in some sections. First, there is the distinct difference in the plot development and timing of the entire movies and not excluding the purpose of two styles.

Firstly the Hollywood formula particularly incorporates big actions with less action and a lot of drama while the European styles of producing ‘'The Valley of Elah (2007) and Cache (2005)'' particularly the French films include fewer actions, made up of a lot of drama, they involve a lot of dialogues and in most cases they do not cut on the action (Pollard, 2015).

On other hand studios in Hollywood formula on our movies of interest comprises the bigger budgets with special makeup and a composition of blockbuster protagonists (Sánchez-Escalonilla, 2010). European styles of writing our movies they tend to have lower budgets and in most cases, they always have fewer effects in the studios and they often lack the major characters who are only known in their specific countries (García-Mainar, 2016). This means that European cinema is always unencumbered with the adequate incentive which helps to make huge formulaic stars. It will be unfortunate to find any cinema franchises in any of the European countries. This suggests that the government in these nations have emphasized on investments in movie industry thus giving the grants which help the movie industries (Buckle, 2011).

In addition from the movies 'The Valley of Elah (2007) and Cache (2005)'' We notice that European styles of movies tend to lack the plot and to some extent, they become more of cinematic essays (Soberon, 2017). The Hollywood formula which caters for the American scriptures is always taught that their Hollywood movies should comprise the carefully selected and designed plots which can be easily understood by the editors and audiences. Basically different authors argue that this European styles of the movies concentrate more on the reality while the entire Hollywood style of presenting movies do not discuss more on the reality (Soberon, 2017).

However, the majority of these movies 'The Valley of Elah (2007) and Cache (2005)'' in European style are controlled by the directors whereby the directors are involved in creating something new and of more artistic by taking risks and exposing them (Markert, 2011).On the part of Hollywood formula on designing the Hollywood movies most of them tend to be producer based or controlled by the studios in the countries. It is rare in Hollywood to find directors creating new approaches and making movies more artistic. Due to this, Hollywood movies have been described as the classical Hollywood movies in the United States (Kaklamanidou, 2016).

The other key difference is that when one is viewing the European styles then he or she will be able to identify that ''The Valley of Elah (2007) and Cache (2005)'' have body language and closer facial expressions. In European movies, silence is always a virtue while on the Hollywood formula includes the concept of talking in movies, European movies silence is always a virtue while the Hollywood formula includes the concept of talking in movies (Bedard & Fuhrken, 2011). This means that characters are prone to explain everything through dialog. Hollywood formula will have three types of interactions by the characters. This suggests that characters present through an appropriate structure whereby it includes the protagonist, the antagonist and lastly the relationship characters in the movies (Mendiburu, 2012). At long last, the movie ends when the protagonist relinquishes the targeted goal .Also it can end if the star is defeated by the antagonist whereby relationship character can be used to recozile the characters. The Hollywood movies tend to be more emotional depending on how characters are closer together.

Conclusion

Generally, the differences between the European style and the Hollywood formula have clearly discussed (Jameson, Gooch, Broody, Burgoyne, Peebles, Hilsabeck, Bronfen, 2014). The two types differ in the studio section, the plot used for presenting movies, the nature of characters and also the size of actions used by the two movies. Hollywood formula uses its own version of presenting the 'The Valley of Elah (2007) and Cache (2005)'' movies which are totally different from the one used by the European style.

Reference

Bedard, C., & Fuhrken, C. (2011). Writing for the big screen: Literacy experiences in a moviemaking project. Language Arts, 89(2), 113-124.

Buckle, C. (2011). The'War on Terror'metaframe in film and television (Doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow).

García-Mainar, L. M. (2016). A Documentary Aesthetic of Helplessness. In The Introspective Realist Crime Film (pp. 107-140). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Jameson, F., Gooch, J., Brodey, I. S., Burgoyne, R., Peebles, S., Hilsabeck, B., ... & Bronfen, E. (2014). The Philosophy of War Films. University Press of Kentucky.

Kaklamanidou, B. (2016). The" disguised" Political Film in Contemporary Hollywood: A Genre's Construction. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Kellner, D. (2010). Cinema wars: Hollywood film and politics in the Bush-Cheney era. John Wiley & Sons.

Markert, J. (2011). Post-9/11 cinema: Through a lens darkly. Scarecrow Press.

Mendiburu, B. (2012). 3D moviemaking: stereoscopic digital cinema from script to screen. Focal Press.

Pollard, T. (2015). Post-9/11 Hollywood. In Hollywood 9/11(pp. 159-194). Routledge.

Riegler, T. (2016). "MIRRORING TERROR": THE IMPACT OF 9/11 ON HOLLYWOOD CINEMA. Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies (ARCHIVES), 5(2), 103-119.

Sánchez-Escalonilla, A. (2010). Hollywood and the rhetoric of panic: The popular genres of action and fantasy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Journal of Popular Film & Television, 38(1), 10-20.

Soberon, L. (2017). "The Old Wild West in the New Middle East": American Sniper (2014) and the Global Frontiers of the Western Genre. European journal of American studies, 12(12-2).

Trafton, J. (2016). The American Civil War and the Hollywood War Film. Springer.

Vale, E. (2013). Vale's technique of screen and television writing. Focal Press.