Professor Lynn Raymond UWRT 1103-015 October 1, 2015 The Evolution of Film Production Companies Throughout the semester, our group is required to create a multimodal project. The term multimodal simply means creating a presentation including varying elements of communication to discuss a topic. Through conversations with each other, our group decided to focus our project on the evolution of film production companies. Rather than just researching the different organizations and how they differ, we decided to research how each company differs from their own past productions and present ones as well. Specifically, we have decided to focus on eight popular film production companies. When briefly discussing our topic, we chose to concentrate on the top eight film companies, or most frequently heard of; these eight include: DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Universal Studios, Paramount, Warner Bros, Pixar Animation, and Marvel Studios. Within each of these eight branches, we will be researching content regarding different aspects of the filmmaking process. Therefore, in order to create a comparison, as well as propose similarities, between each of the companies, we chose to elaborate on facets such as average budgets, commonly hired actors or actresses, and popular locations the companies chose as the setting of the story. By choosing to elaborate on such comprehensive topics, it is important for us to maintain a meticulous plan of organization. Particularly, we have decided the best method of breaking up the information in an understandable way would be to provide three slides per organization. On the first slide concerning a specific company, we have proposed the idea of
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providing background information unique to the company, such as the date it was founded and by whom; this will allow the viewer to recognize the differences among each company and to develop a timeframe of when the blossoming of the filmmaking business commenced. Secondly, our group will elaborate on the varying phases of the filmmaking procedure, such as financial preferences, following the history of each company. In addition to the history and features of filmmaking, our group has decided to complement our multimodal project by providing an additional intriguing piece. As a significant portion of our project will be comparing each company to the others, we found it as equally important to compare the company to itself over the course of a couple of years. Therefore, in order to do so, we have decided to deliberate popular sequels each company has produced. Precisely, we plan to display a clip from the first movie of a sequel, in comparison to one from the last, to demonstrate the evolution of the individual company in regards to its productions. By branching away from mere words on a PowerPoint slide, this characteristic of our project provides a visual for our audience to be captivated by. In addition to the pictures and sounds of a movie clip, we have chosen rather popular sequels from each establishment in hopes of intriguing our viewers even further. These sequels include, Shrek from DreamWorks and Jurassic Park from Universal Studios, as well as Warner Bros Harry Potter. By making these comparisons from the first movie of a sequel to the last, we are able to discuss how budgets, as well as filmmaking technology, have grown, or evolved, over a period of time. As important as it is to elaborate on our topic as much as possible, it is equally as important for us as group to develop a scheduled time frame of when to have our project completed. Our first proposed idea was to break down the workload by company based on each others schedules. For purposes of this project, Savannah will be researching the matters
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regarding DreamWorks, Pixar Animations, and Marvel Studios; likewise, Victor will discuss Paramount and 20th Century Fox, while Daniel focuses his attention on MGM, Universal Studios, and Warner Bros. This delegation will in return make it easier for the overall project creation because we each can focus on our specific slides and edit the others prior to presenting. With that being said, we intend to use a 27 slide PowerPoint, including our names and resources, with each slide containing images and sounds best representing the company at hand. We are hopeful to finish compiling information about each company by October fifteenth so we allow ourselves enough time to compose, and perfect, our PowerPoint by the beginning of presentations, which is on November twenty-fourth.