Thames Television produced the series in the 1980, and it explored the making of Hollywood Studio and the influence it had on the culture of 1920s. Every episode of the thirteen in the series was made to center on a precise characteristic of Hollywood past. This term paper examines two episodes of “Hollywood-The Silent Era” namely; “The Pioneers” and “The Man with the Megaphone”. The documentary is written and directed by Kevin Burrow and David Gill.
The pioneers
The Pioneers is the first episode of the series, and it outlines the transition of the film over a period. The episode details how the movie industry in the silent era evolved to end up with what was considered to be the first plot driven film “The Great Train Robbery.” The episode’s main theme is to indicate the influence of the medium of silent film to the culture of the 1920s. The episode also touches on the Technicolor shots and other color technologies used during the silent era. Various individuals are interviewed in the course of the interview, all giving their opinions and factual information on the silent film era. Some of the interviewed were involved with the silent films making like Jackie Coogan and King Vidor.
The Man with the Megaphone
This episode has a central theme of covering the innovativeness of the film directors in the silent era. Most of the styles that are used by film directors to date were innovated by directors of the old times such as Allan Dwan and his colleagues as he explains in an interview. The episode also outlines some of the ways that the directors used to get desired emotions from the actors. They included music and body movements of the directors. The extreme conditions on which films were shot in also are explained in the documentary and how directors were able to overcome them to achieve results of chaos and confusion.
