posted 04-23-2004 10:53 AM                       

quote:

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Raubkopierer sind Verbrecher
(Internet film pirates are criminals)
Ad that stresses that internet film piracy is criminal
Film and video industry federations in Germany estimate that in the first eight months of 2003, 13.3 million feature films were illegally downloaded from the internet, almost as many as in the whole of 2002, when film pirating cost the country's industry 800 million Euros (nearly $1 billion).



Raubkopierer sind Verbrecher is the slogan of an aggressive German campaign with an unambiguous message: internet film pirating is illegal and punishable by law. Berlin-based DP Björn Haneld shot the campaign's commercials, intended to provoke and shock cinema audiences. "Kodak wanted to support our project and gave us the opportunity to test Kodak VISION2 Expression 500T 5229, so I used the stock for two of the three spots." In collaboration with Director Tibor Glage, he settled for a classic narrative storytelling approach, with a distinctly different visual style for each of the hard-hitting commercials. "It's absolutely vital that our message gets into people's minds, after all internet film pirates are criminals," declares Haneld.




Prison mimics a prison movie trailer and opens with stills of inmates and cell scenarios. "As the two film pirates enter the prison hall, the dialogue begins and the camera starts to move," says Haneld, who used dolly tracks to achieve dynamic floating camera effects. He chose a high contrast look with deep blacks and occasional burning highlights to depict the cold and rough atmosphere of the Berlin prison location. "My Gaffer, Marc Kubick and I placed very hard top lights with HMI PARs from the second floor of the hall and let the guys walk through. I overexposed the 5229 by 3 half stops and the lights bounced really well into the guys' faces from the towels they carried. We didn't have a big lighting package, but with 5229 we managed to capture a truly amazing amount of detail."

Haneld describes the two elements of Police, also shot with Kodak VISION2 Expression 500T 5229. "By means of camera moves and lighting, we accentuated the emotional distance between a beautiful girl who waits impatiently in a bedroom, while her boyfriend downloads movies from the internet. The boy sits at his computer screen, motionless except for his finger on the mouse, while the girl moves around the bedroom and becomes increasingly agitated. We took static shots of the boy from the point of view of the computer screen and positioned a desk lamp alongside him, adding 1 / 4 CTB gels to the light sources to create a harsh, cool light. In comparison, we used Kino Flos to give the girl very soft, warm lighting, but we had to ‘fight' the location's white walls and ceilings with egg crates and a lot of black flags. The angrier the girl becomes, the more I moved the camera in out-of- balance pans," explains Haneld.




Daddy was shot with Kodak Vision 250D 5246 and tracks a young girl as she walks around an apparently deserted house and garden searching for her Daddy. Eventually, the girl encounters her mother, but she doesn't respond. "Tibor and I wanted to create an organic look and an uncomfortable atmosphere, so I hand-held the ARRI 535 on an Easy Rig and used slightly shaky camera movements. Alternating short and long lenses and an observing perspective intensify the disturbing effect. I placed several HMI 4kW PARS outside through frames, utilised backlit diffusion and supported the soft key light with a 6kW HMI, bounced against a 12 x 12 butterfly frame with Griffolyn. 5246 produced a really fine grain and a great range of contrasts, with good, deep blacks."

James Norman, Senior Colourist at Das Werk, Hamburg, used C-Reality for post-production work on Raubkopierer sind Verbrecher. "Kodak VISION2 Expression 500T 5229 proved versatile, effective and aesthetically pleasing, particularly when shooting skin tones at high speed. The highlights were soft, smooth and lifelike and didn't burn out and manipulating the upper gammas and highlights was a joy, considering the speed of the stock."

Crew List
Director Tibor Glage
Producer Volker Steinmetz
Director of Photography Björn Haneld
Clapper-Loader Ole Hoffmann
Focus-Puller Phil Petri
Gaffer Marc Cubic

Erste Liebe Filmproduktion

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posted 04-23-2004 12:13 PM                       

quote: Thomas Procyk

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They should just show the footage of us bombing Iraq during "Shock and Awe" and say, "This is what will happen to you if you bootleg this movie."

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Since Saddam and his cronies did like watching (illegal copies of) American movies, I thought that's another reason why the US invaded Iraq. WOULD-BE FILM PIRATES BEWARE!!! :

http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/5934996.htm?1c

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Saddam, Uday and the theory about movie violence

BY PATRICK HEALY

Boston Globe

BAGHDAD — For Uday Hussein, the cutthroat son of Saddam, high culture came to Iraq when Russell Crowe entered the arena, sword in hand, ready to kill.

Three days after "Gladiator" was released in the United States, Uday was "going mad" to find a bootleg copy of the swords-and-sandals epic, his chief movie translator recalled in an interview. Uday had followed the buzz about "Gladiator" on the Internet, which he checked weekly for U.S. box-office tallies, and it sounded like his kind of picture: severed limbs, bloody revenge and a take-no-prisoners antihero.

His translator, Saad Al-Izzi, scoured Baghdad for a tape for five days. His boss wasn't the most patient of men (just ask the marathon runners Uday had beaten for lagging on the track). Uday's men finally found a copy, and Izzi's boss gave him an afternoon to translate, dub, and print "Gladiator" in Arabic.

Errors of haste were unavoidable: Ten seconds of a speech by Oliver Reed's gladiator-herdsman, rallying his posse before battle, were cut incorrectly, so the character's lips moved without making a noise.

Izzi thought he'd be thanked for his quick work. Instead, two of Uday's men came to his office the next day to beat him for the error.

Izzi's boss lied that he was out, promising to punish him later.

"OK," one of the men said, according to Izzi. "Take off your shoes. We'll beat you just to be sure that you beat him." And they whacked the boss's feet with a sharp wooden reed until they were bloodied.

Perhaps Uday Hussein and his father were simply Patrick Bateman-like characters out of "American Psycho," slaughtering for the swagger and sake of it. But if there's something to the theory that violent movies spawn violent behavior in their viewers, then Hollywood shoulders some blame for the legacy of bloodshed left by the Hussein men.

According to Izzi, they were fixated on American-made movies, directing their representative at the United Nations, Tariq Aziz, to bring back dozens of videos each time he left New York. And "Pollyanna" these were not: "Silence of the Lambs," "Casino" and "Rob Roy" for Saddam and "From Dusk Till Dawn," "The Mummy" and "Bride of Chucky" for Uday.

Saddam's all-time favorite movie was "Braveheart," the Mel Gibson Oscar winner, Izzi said. "If I had such a worthy opponent like that man," Saddam was said to have commented, "I could not bring myself to kill him."

Uday's obsession was "Gladiator," but he also screened the 2000 indie picture "Deterrence" over and over again. In that futuristic film, a U.S. president confronts an Iraq apparently armed with nuclear weapons, with an Uday character running Baghdad, threatening to blow away Western capitals.

"Uday loved it — finally in charge!" said Izzi, 28, who now works as a translator for the Boston Globe staff in Iraq.

ONE WAY TO AVOID CONSCRIPTION

As a college intern at Baghdad's Al-Shabab TV, or Youth TV, Izzi himself fell in love with American entertainment. He drew on his English-language studies to translate what he described as some of the station's most elite fare — "operas, Michael Bolton, musical concerts, 'Baywatch.' " After graduation day in 1998, he was facing his mandatory military service when a job offer came to lead the TV station's new translation department.

"They said the magic words — we'll get you out of the Army," Izzi said.

His first movie translation was "Titanic," requested by Uday, whose usual translator at Iraq TV was away. But it was Izzi's work on his ninth translation, of "Little Women," starring Susan Sarandon, that earned him Saddam's praise.

Iraq TV had mangled its own translation — the Arabic version was in black and white instead of color, Izzi said, and the audio and translation were both horrendous. Saddam Hussein told his people to try Izzi, who sought to retain some of Louisa May Alcott's poetry and turn Claire Danes's deathbed speeches into riveting theater. Saddam was, apparently, impressed.

"I was told he said that all translations must now be done by Shabab," Izzi said. "From then it was my full-time job." He was paid 20,000 dinars ($13) per movie.

The pressures quickly became enormous. His boss resented Izzi's exclusive role as translator to the stars. He juggled movies with translations for news interviews. The dubbing equipment failed practically on cue. And he worked from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. to heed his patrons' unpredictable calls.

ECLECTIC TASTES

Saddam's men once insisted that the Robert Redford version of "The Great Gatsby," a mediocre translation to begin with, be turned in at 6:10 p.m. — and not a minute later. Uday's office sent over a 3-CD set of "The Mummy" at 7 p.m. and demanded it back by 7 a.m., Izzi's boss said. Impossible, Izzi said, but he muddled through anyway.

"I doubted Uday even gave such an order. I think it was just my jerk boss who wanted to look good in front of Uday," Izzi said.

Both Husseins were partial to Oscar winners and box-office blockbusters, and their tastes were eclectic, ranging from period dramas such as "Howards End" and "Out of Africa" to eyebrow-raising favorites of both men, "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and "Rasputin." Most of the movies were later broadcast in Iraq, though a few were not, for political reasons; "Ben-Hur," for instance, was translated for Uday while he was taking a class in military studies, but its Jewish hero was enough to keep it off the average Iraqi's TV.

Action and horror movies are widely popular in Baghdad. At Dheaa's Center, a video store along busy Karrada Street, owner Dheaa Nimnim said "Spider-Man" and the "Superman" and "Batman" series were the hottest rentals, which go for 500 dinars (33 cents) a night.

"XXX movies are liked, too, but the government made us edit too many nude scenes," Nimnim said.

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posted 04-26-2004 01:20 PM                    

quote: Leo Enticknap

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Hitler's favourite film was either King Kong (claimed in Goebbels's diary), or Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (as depicted in the film Hitler, A Film from Germany).

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Goebbels admired Disney's animated films so much that he ordered to start a central German animation studio called Deutsche Zeichenfilm AG. He made a plan that they would start out with short subjects and proceed to feature films that would rival Disney on the world markets...release time of first german animated feature was scheduled for...1950 !

Judging from the surviving shorts' animation quality, Disney could still sleep well at night...