Why I Like Watching Movies

Stress from work and from having a busy lifestyle could really be exhausting for me. When I feel so tired, I just want to take my mind off work and glaring deadlines. I relax by watching movies from my favorite top Hollywood producers like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Walter Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer. Walter Disney is a known filmmaker and is a favorite among the children due to the great Disney movies like "Bambi", "Dumbo", and "Cinderella". Watching these movies, would help me to unwind and get in touch with the "inner child" in me to help me smile despite having a very tiring day. Being in touch with the "inner child" in me is a big help when I need to get those creative juices flowing for my kind of work.

Watching movies for me is like escaping into another world where there are no worries and no troubles. It's like being transported into a whole new world where only excitement and mystery exists. Another film producer that had me hooked in watching movies is Steven Spielberg because he knows how to connect with his audiences. The movies "E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" made me rethink on how I see the world. Movies like these helped me to broaden my horizon and really get my imagination going. You see, I am one who believes that imagination is one of the key ingredients for success.

I also like watching the Sci-Fi movies by the great filmmaker George Lucas because this man really has visions. He was the executive producer for the "Star Wars" saga and the raiders of the "Lost Ark". The "Star War Trilogy" did not disappoint me; it was packed with action, heartwarming scenes, a great story and it allowed me a peek into the great beyond where anything could happen.

Have you ever seen movies by the producer Jerry Bruckheimer like "Top Gun" and "Con Air"? I fell in love with these movies not only because of the very handsome leading men which were Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage but also because they were made and conceptualized well.
There are many promising young filmmakers today but they still need refinement and polishing with their skills although I am pretty sure they would be considered as top producers in Hollywood someday. Since they are still new to the industry, they still need to work on how to move the emotions and tickle the fancy of the moviegoers.

Aside from all these wonderful and positive things that I can get out of watching movies, it is also a very inexpensive way to relax. If you compare watching movies with some other hobbies like going to the spas and malls, it's really a budget saver. I could just buy or rent DVD tapes, make popcorn and call my friends to have some great time. For me movies are the best, it can make my cry, laugh and it can even make me fall in love.

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5 Movies With Film Locations in Portugal

Portugal is becoming an increasingly attractive destination for film productions with a wide variety of locations of every description. But there haven't been very many major movies so far that feature locations in Portugal, so we've dug into the archives to search out a few that you may remember.

If 007 visits you can be sure it will be remembered. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) is one movie that puts Portugal on the map, even though with George Lazenby as 007 it was perhaps one of the least popular of the old Bond movies. The movie kicks off on Guincho beach near Cascais west of Lisbon with Bond rescuing Tracy di Vicenzo, mobster's daughter, from the sea. We see plenty more scenes of Portugal including the dramatic 25 de Abril suspension bridge in Lisbon and the glamorous Palacio Estoril Hotel where Bond stays. Much of the rest of the drama shifts to Switzerland, but these scenic landscapes of Portugal are still memorable today.

Bond's more enduring face, that of Sean Connery, visits Lisbon in another role and another era. The Russia House (1990) is a spy thriller based on a Le Carre novel and the film stars Michelle Pfeiffer as well as Sean Connery. While most of the movie is set in Russia, (and filmed on location there, a first for western films at the end of the Cold War era) Barley, Sean Connery's heavy drinking publisher character has a home in Lisbon where he takes refuge in the middle and at the end of the movie, as he waits for the girl to join him after her escape from Russia.

The House of Spirits (1993) has an all-star cast with Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas, and Vanessa Redgrave in a supporting role. The movie is set in Chile, based on the novel by Isabel Allende, but was filmed on location in Portugal and on set in Denmark. The rural Alentejo region in the South of Portugal with its rolling hills, mountains and hot dry summers doubles for Chile, and Lisbon provides some of the city backdrop to the drama.

Contemporary thriller, The Ninth Gate (1999) by Roman Polanski stars Johnny Depp as a rare book dealer seeking out a supernatural demon text. In the course of his travels around Europe through France and Spain, to track down the authentic copy of the book for his client, he visits Sintra in Portugal. It's a picturesque area of Portugal just outside Lisbon with plenty of atmospheric hilltop palaces and castles. Depp visits Chalet Biester with its turreted outline tucked into lush green woodland exuding mystery.

The Lisbon Story (1994) was never a big box office draw, but being produced by Wim Wenders it has a certain appeal to movie buffs. Set in and around Lisbon it was originally commissioned as a promotional documentary by the city until Wim Wenders added a story line and some fictional characters to turn it into a full length movie. Of all these movies it is the one that probably shows the most representative views of the Lisbon itself, though the others have bucket loads more glamour!

Keep looking out for modern movies with locations in Portugal, as it's sure to feature more and more on the film production companies' lists of desirable destinations.

Prinz Productions offers premier stills and film production services based in Cape Town, South Africa and Lisbon, Portugal. Browse through their locations Portugal galleries for more inspiration.

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Making Movies and Film Investors

There are extremely talented potential filmmakers out there that never make a movie because they just can't bring themselves to take the leap of faith. Saying yes to making a movie starts with an attitude that regardless if your movie is entertaining or terrible at least you give it an honest go to see if you got the fire in you to make movies.

In the world of making of movies, especially at the indie film level, there are zero guarantees that every aspiring filmmaker that sets out to go from screenplay to distributed movie will make it to the end. Making movies is risky creatively and financially. Sometimes a movie falls apart during pre-production, filming or in post-production for lots of different reasons.

Making a movie to me is like gambling. You try your best as a filmmaker to tilt the odds in your favor as much as possible so you can win. Professional gamblers make educated bets and so should filmmakers. The one thing that successful gamblers and filmmakers need is the attitude that they are going to go all in on their movie making risk.

Saying yes to making a movie is really putting your ass out there creatively and financially. Many indie films are funded through family, friends, online movie crowd funding or your own cash. I'm still on the fence if it's harder to say yes to making a movie with money from family and friends and your own pocket or to deal with film investors.

Honestly, using online movie crowd funding to me is risk free filmmaking. The people that donate aren't giving you money expecting to ever see anything back or get a return on investment. It's like gambling with a bankroll that's free. When I donate money to the people that set up shop outside of stores I don't expect anything back when I put money in the box or bucket.

It's like lending money to that one relative or friend that you know will never be able to pay it back, but you like them and still want to help them out without holding it over their head.

When you use money from family, friends, your own money or film investors cash there is a much stronger sense to get the movie done in my opinion. No filmmaker wants to face family, friends or film investors and say they couldn't finish the movie. Friends and family are always forgiving in the end, but you'll still feel an emotional letdown if you can't deliver a finished movie like you told them you would.

Film investors are not forgiving and will cut you off from future film funds. They can write off the loss, but your reputation will take a hit and you'll lose out on them investing in your movies in the future. Finding money to make movies is harder than making the movie. Without film financing you only have a screenplay and a movie making dream keeping you company.

I always like to try to put out the brutal honesty first before getting to the feel good part of things. The great thing about saying yes to making a movie is you're moving from being one of the people that only talks about making movies and never does it.

When you're not even in the game you can't win or lose. You sit on the creative sidelines as a spectator thinking "woulda, coulda, shoulda" about your movie making passion. When you mentally commit to taking the creative leap of faith you'll feel a rush of genuine excitement. That's living!

You're movie making fire is now lit and you're ready to roll. You're no longer going to be a talented potential filmmaker. You will be a filmmaker doer. Each movie project is different, but here are few thoughts that might help sharpen you're movie production. This isn't for aspiring filmmakers that want to write a screenplay that needs a million dollar budget.

Thoughts on Making Movies

First, think of your marketing and distribution plan before writing the screenplay. This gives you the chance to think of movie product placement and other marketing avenues you can write into the screenplay to boost earning potential.

Second, before writing a screenplay think about the film budget you will need and where you plan on getting that money. Indie filmmakers are masters at writing screenplays based on what their resources are.

I know it sounds like the craft of screenwriting should come first, but for a first time indie filmmaker it's important to understand making movies is a business. You need to be able to exploit, yes exploit, as many marketing and product placement opportunities as possible.

Family and friends will invest in you because of your relationship, but still respect their hard earned money like you would if they were film investors you didn't know. Avoid being sloppy with paperwork. Give them the same kind of investor package you would if you were pitching to a film investor that wanted a return on investment.

Make sure the locked screenplay is tight as possible before spending one dollar of film investor money. A screenplay that is overwritten and packed with fluff will burn through production money fast.

During filming don't take the approach studio budget movies do. You're not going to be able to have 20 takes of scene to get it right. There's not enough money in an indie film budget to shoot it with a Hollywood filmmaker mentality.

You're really have to get in there on set and kickass on scenes. Not every take you're going to love or even like, but it's a time issue when shooting indie films. You have to be able to accept you're not going to have the luxury of doing take after take.

When a scene is covered move on and don't look back even if it didn't turn out how you envisioned. Being take happy during filming will lead to you running out of money and having an unfinished film that will need finishing funds to complete.

Tackle post-production with the same attitude you did on set to get the movie done.

Film investors will ride your ass unlike family or friends when it comes to when the movie will be done, sold and their money paid. Don't get shaken or take it personally. The business world is not warm and fuzzy full of hugs and kisses.

At the end when you finish your movie you will have a feeling like none you've ever had before. It's a creative climax saying yes to making a movie.

It beats the hell out of only talking about making movies. Good luck with your future film and cheers.

Get the inside scoop on writing, producing, directing, and movie distribution at Slice Of Americana Films. Check out the life and times of filmmaker Sid Kali.

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Home Movies - A Vital Piece of Family History

Colorlab in Rockville, Maryland specializes in not only restoring and transferring old home movies, but also preserving and restoring film from the Smithsonian Institute and the Library of Congress. Jake Kreeger, General Manager at Colorlab, answers some common questions about preserving your old home movies.

Why do people put off transferring their old home movies?
I don't think people put it off intentionally. They usually rediscover their past sitting in a shoebox and get curious. I think it's simply because they forget about it and then come back to it eventually.

What do you want to know from someone before they come to see you?
The two questions I always ask people when they contact me ahead of time is, "How old is the film?" and "How has it been stored?" If someone calls from the Deep South, I usually know the film is not going to be in very good condition. Environment is very important. The two evils of film are heat and moisture. If I hear someone say that their films have been in their father's attic for 50 years, I grit my teeth. The heat and moisture causes the film to become brittle and crinkle. In the Northeast or Midwest, environments where temperatures are moderate year-round, film tends to be in good shape.

So where should we store our old films?
What's good for film is cool and dry. When we do archival film preservation for the Smithsonian, we store the film in an environment where the temperature is in the twenties and humidity is in the teens. That environment can make it last for about 1500 years. The average home movie is not treated this way, but the best place in your house is where it's cool and dry--a dry basement, if you have one. (Definitely not the refrigerator!)

I just found some old home movies and still have a projector. Should I break out the popcorn and have a screening party?
By all means, watch your home movies, but do so with a great deal of caution. If the films are quite old, there could be film shrinkage. This means that if the film shrinks even a little bit, the sprockets won't engage properly with the film and this could damage your film. You can't see the shrinkage with the naked eye, so be cautious. If you start to hear the film chattering or making other strange noises, stop the projector-you could do more damage if you continue.

Once our films are transferred, what should we do with them?
Once we do the work, we tell people that the original film is the preservation element. It is NOT recommended you discard it unless there is nothing more to do with it in the future (meaning it is beyond repair and you will never transfer it again.). Film is a more permanent medium than any other medium introduced to date. All the digital media in the world will be gone in the blink of an eye technically speaking, as formats are always changing. But if your film is stored properly, decades from now you can take it out and still view it properly. You can't stop the aging process, but you can slow it down with some of our techniques we use in our preservation and transfer process.

What about old VHS tapes?
Storage is critical for VHS tapes and again, heat and moisture (which can create mold on the tape) are the enemy. It's hard to say how long an old VHS tape will last, but one thing that's different than a DVD is that every time you play a VHS tape, you run the tape across a head, which deteriorates the tape. It's best to transfer VHS to another format as soon as possible. One thing to realize, though, is that when you transfer VHS to DVD, the resolution (picture quality) will retain it's original 200 lines of resolution (versus 400 lines for DVD).

DMB Pictures is a boutique video production company specializing in producing broadcast-quality personal stories for families, non-profits and small businesses. The company opened its doors in January 2006 led by Debbie Mintz Brodsky, a three-time Emmy Award-winning television producer with more than 20 years of experience.

Visit us at http://www.dmbpictures.com/

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Watch Your Home Movies: Editing Your Video Footage Into A Film

One of the most important things I do in my job is editing. When people first think about sharing their life story, they are overwhelmed with the volumes of information to relate and recount. It's my job to help them focus, to record and produce a clear, concise and entertaining story.

One of the hardest things to do is edit your own family footage. In your eyes, everything that was filmed feels like it has great significance and meaning. But a larger audience may not feel the same way. This is why you MUST edit down your footage if you plan for others to sit and watch it for any great length of time. You must get to the heart of the story and eliminate all non-essential details.

While there is great skill involved in editing together an amazing film, for the average person, you need not have great skills to make something that's entertaining and watchable. Think of editing film as similar to editing a term paper using your computer's word processing program. You have lots of ideas. You just need to cut out the ones that don't add to your thesis and move the ones that do until they make sense and flow together.

And just like you need to find the right word processing software to edit your term paper, you will need to find the right film editing software that works best with your computer and your skill level.

There are many types of editing software out there for Mac and PC at varying price points. This article shares the top 5 software out there for novices and advanced alike. It's a great summary of the best that's out there and I strongly agree with their recommendations. http://lifehacker.com/5165944/six-best-video-editing-applications

Once you've chosen your software, the first step with editing your film is to CAPTURE all of the footage you shot and get it into your computer.

• If you filmed onto a removable drive, you can hook this up to your computer and find all the clips you shot ready for editing immediately.

• If you filmed onto digital tape, you will need to "digitize" your footage by hooking up your camera to your computer via USB or Firewire and then use editing software to convert the footage into files that can be read by the software.

• If you filmed onto a DVD, you will need to use software that breaks down the DVD into clips that can be used with the editing software. (I like MPEG Streamclip, for Mac or PC. It works well and it's free! http://www.squared5.com/ )

After you've captured your footage, you want to organize it into clips and bins that go with a theme or story, depending on how you decide to organize.

Once you've organized your clips, you will place them onto your software's timeline and start re-arranging them to create your story. Here is where you'll want to cut out all of those extra parts that aren't needed, such as the speakers' many "umms" and "ahhs," or the footage where you forgot to turn off the record button while you were setting up, or the footage from last year's Halloween party that was on the tape but isn't relevant to the story you are editing together about the family reunion. (You get my point.)

What will ultimately "connect the dots" and make your story flow is by using Cutaway Shots. A simple example is using photos or other non-interview footage to cover over the cut points from an interview. (When you edit down someone's interview and chop it into smaller pieces, it will end up being a series of "jump cuts." Cutaway or B-Roll shots cover these jump cuts.) The best cutaways are ones that are relevant to the story and enhance its meaning.

However you manage to edit down your footage, the key is to make it something that's shorter and even more meaningful than the original footage you shot. Your audience will thank you more than you will ever know!

DMB Pictures is a boutique video production company specializing in producing broadcast-quality personal stories for families, non-profits and small businesses. The company opened its doors in January 2006 led by Debbie Mintz Brodsky, a three-time Emmy Award-winning television producer with more than 20 years of experience.

Visit us at http://www.dmbpictures.com/

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How to Make Movies on Your Windows Computer

In this article I will explain a few simple steps to creating a movie on your Windows XP computer. Before you begin you will need any basic webcam and this can be purchased from any Wal-Mart. You will also need to download Windows Movie Maker which is a video/editing software application for Windows.

Ok so once you're finished downloading Windows Movie Maker just play around with the functions and try to get a little understanding of your tools. You will also want to get familiar with your webcam if you are not already. Learn all your functions that your webcam has, so it would be a good idea to read the manual before beginning.

Now that you have some basic info with your software click the task option in your toolbar until it says capture video. Make sure your camera is in webcam mode and then attach it to your computer using a USB which should be included with your camera when purchased.

Next you will click capture video then click next. Here you will enter a title for your scenes. After this you will want to select Best Quality for Playback on my Computer and then click next. Next you will want to position your camera for whatever you are trying to capture and keep in mind you want your clips to be clear and as still as possible. So it's best to have your camera mounted on your screen.

Don't forget to plug-in any microphone devices you may have if you wanted to add any sound to your film. Also any special effects you could add are always a great way to add excitement to your movie as well. Your next step is to begin filming by clicking Start Capture and whenever you're finished with your scenes click Stop Capture. Once you have finished creating your movie on your computer click Finish.

Your next steps will be to drag your clips to the Timeline/Storyboard at the bottom of your screen. If you click on View Video Effects you can adjust the brightness on any of your scenes or add any other effects to your clips. You can also add a movie title, transitions, and end credits.

Once you have finished creating your movie you can email it to your friends or even convert it to a CD-Rom. Remember to have fun and be creative while creating your film because that's what it's all about.

Hello my name is Steve Bean. I work with Octo Interactive. We are an Orlando FL Video Production Company that specializes in Web Video Production (321) 338 - 2962.

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