Much like the Oscars, the Emmys are awards that honor the actors, directors, editors, writers, producers, and all the creative talents that go into making high quality television. And like the Oscars, the Emmys has a big gala event, broadcast live on primetime television, with secret ballots and moments of suspense as we await the names of the winners.

But unlike its Hollywood cousin, the Emmy awards are actually a series of events for the various categories of TV shows (e.g., drama, sitcoms, live shows, soap opera, news, sports, cable, children shows) as well as local shows that only air regionally (think Evening News).  As such, there are several award shows in various area-specific ceremonies held all through the year. But for most of us, it’s the Primetime Emmys that we love; the one we’re compelled to watch to see if our favorite show (like Madmen, Breaking Bad or The Walking Dead) will be named the best on TV. So since we’re such TV (and movie) fanatics, we asked the same question again, “How did this all begin?”

When the Oscars started in 1929, television hadn’t even been invented yet. Even after World War II, televisions were only in 4,000 homes in Los Angeles; and in only about 50,000 homes across the United States. It took only a little time for the new industry to grow to the point that an awards show would make sense. It’s no wonder that the first Emmy Awards, presented on January 25, 1949 at the Hollywood Athletic Club, was a small dinner ceremony that was not broadcast.

As it turns out, the fledgling Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) created the Emmys to honor shows produced and aired locally in the Los Angeles area as part of a public relations opportunity. And the ATAS founder, Syd Cassyd, really just wanted the Academy to be a serious forum where issues about the young TV industry could be discussed. Glam was of no interest to Cassyd and he even opposed the idea of handing out awards, like that other Hollywood based Academy. Fortunately for us, some of the other founders wanted to emulate the Oscars, so in the early 1950’s the ATAS expanded the Emmys into a national event and presented awards to TV shows that were broadcast nationwide.

Now this is where the story gets a little complicated. Most of the TV shows in the 1950’s were still broadcasting from New York; so not to be outdone by their West Coast brethren, a few top level TV producers created the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) in 1955. The NATAS was formed in New York to serve members on the East Coast, and help supervise the Emmys. The NATAS also established regional chapters throughout the U.S., with each one developing their own local Emmy awards show for local programming.  ATAS and NATAS merged to oversee the national Emmys, but both organizations maintained separate control of regional ceremonies that honored local programming.

Soon there were several regional Emmy award shows and one national award show. To further complicate things, in the early, 1970’s; the Daytime Emmys began to honor soap opera and daytime talk shows that were usually shunned by the Primetime awards.  Then other groups began to have their own Emmy awards, and now we have local, regional and national Emmy award shows that cater to different segments of the television industry.  In 1977, due to various conflicts, the ATAS and the NATAS split apart but agreed to share ownership of the Emmy statue and trademark, and with each responsible for administering a specific set of award shows.

While there may be many versions of the Emmys in any given year, it is the Primetime Emmys that captivates us each Fall. The most recent awards were given out last September 22, 2012, at the Nokia Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles.  It was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, with AMC’s Mad Men — last year’s winner for best drama series — and the FX series American Horror Story topping the list with 17 nominations apiece.  As a sign of how much things have changed in recent years, all of the drama series nominated for “Best Show” were on non-traditional networks: Boardwalk Empire (HBO); Breaking Bad (AMC); Downton Abbey (PBS); Game of Thrones (HBO); Homeland (Showtime); and Mad Men (AMC). In fact, HBO led all of the networks with 81 nominations.  And it seems that all this competition is making television better than ever. It’s great for us, the viewer, to have all these wonderful award winning shows to watch.  Now we just have to make room on our DVRs to record all of our favorite series.

Copyright – New Show Studios 2013

Images:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/2012/06/mademmy_a.jpg

http://cdn02.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/paul-emmy/bryan-cranston-aaron-paul-emmys-2010-red-carpet-05.jpg

Sources:

http://www.emmys.com/award_history_search

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Award

http://www.emmys.tv/academy/history-television-adacemy

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/emmys/la-et-st-emmys-2012-winners-nominations-complete-list,0,6754414.htmlstory

The newest Superman movie Man of Steel is set to open throughout the United States on June 14th. This will be the sixth major motion picture based on the 1930s comic book character—there were serialized shorts in theaters in the 1940s—and Henry Cavill will be the third actor to portray Superman on the big screen. But Superman has a long history in television as well. In fact, the adventures of Superman predate television and go back to the early comic books, comic strips and radio. So let’s take a look at the rich and colorful history of this iconic American character.

In 1933, high school students Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first conceived Superman as a villain bent on world domination but soon re-envisioned the character as a hero who would combat evil and tyranny, right the wrongs of the world, and fight for social justice. It took them a few years to find a publisher, but the pair never gave up; and in 1938, the first Superman comic book was published by Action Comics. The comic book became an instant hit and spawned a daily newspaper comic strip. Soon a radio series, Adventures of Superman, premiered in 1940, and several animated film shorts were produced for theatrical use in the 1940s. Then, in 1948, the live-action serial Superman (starring Kirk Alyn) brought a real-life Superman to life on the big screen.

In 1951, a television series was created—Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves—and ran from 1952 to 1958.  The series was such a hit that George Reeves became type-cast as Superman, and was often shunned for other roles.  In fact, Reeves had a small role in the movie From Here to Eternity, but when the studio prescreened the film, people in the audience kept shouting, “Hey look, its Superman.” The producers reluctantly had to cut out all of the scenes of Reeves so that the audience would focus on the plot and not get sidetracked by Superman. Reeves’ subsequent bitterness of his typecasting and his mysterious death in 1959 were the subject of the 2006 movie Hollywoodland starring Ben Affleck as Reeves.

In 1978 the first of the major motion pictures was released with Christopher Reeve as Superman. Directed by Richard Donner and co-written by Mario Puzo, the films tag line was “You’ll believe a man can fly,” and clearly people agreed.  Superman: The Movie was released and received critical acclaim and financial success. Its success spawned three sequels, Superman II (1980), Superman III (1983) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987).

Its reincarnation as a television series—Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman—aired on ABC from 1993 to 1997. This version had a different twist in that it focused as much on the relationship between Clark Kent and Lois Lane as on the adventures of Clark’s alter-ego Superman. In fact, the series creator Deborah Joy LeVine is said to have followed the philosophy that Clark Kent was the true personality, and Superman was the secondary persona. Either way, the love story drew in a new demographic, and the steamy relationship between Clark/Superman (Dean Cain) and Lois (Teri Hatcher) was a hit for both the network and the two stars.

In 2001, Smallville the television series was launched with Tom Welling playing Clark Kent. Smallville focused on the adventures of Clark as a teenager before he assumes the mantle of Superman. The series lasted for ten seasons, first on the WB and later on the CW network.

In 2006, Bryan Singer directed Superman Returns starring Brandon Routh as Superman. The film was written as a loose sequel to the second Christopher Reeve film with Superman leaving Earth for years before returning. The film was released to positive reviews and actually received a few award nominations, but the studio was disappointed with the $391 million worldwide box office return and squelched creating a sequel.

As you can see, the iconic story of Superman has been popular for nearly 80 years—and we haven’t even mentioned the several animated television shows that have aired, the 1966 Broadway musical It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman, the spin-off 1984 film Supergirl, or the live-action CBS television series The Adventures of Superboy, that ran from 1988–1992.

Now a new director hopes to reboot the Superman brand much like Christopher Nolan did for the Batman franchise with his movie trilogy.  The Man of Steel directed by Zack Snyder and starring Henry Cavill opens this Friday in theaters around the country.  Given our love-affair with the Man of Steel, we can count on him to be around for generations to come.

Photos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Action_Comics_1.jpg

http://www.thewb.com/media/759ca51ea8/lois_and_clark.jpg

http://www.reviewtrailers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/man-of-steel-fan-poster2.jpg

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman

http://www.supermanhomepage.com/news.php#

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywoodland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallville

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_Returns

FX started as a network featuring a lot of reruns interspersed with live programming broadcast from New York. Today, with original series such as “Justified, ”Sons of Anarchy,” “The Americans,” “Louie,” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” the little network of reruns all of a sudden has become a network heavyweight contender that can hold its own with the big boys like HBO and Starz. And if that wasn’t enough, they just announced that a new cable channel called FXX will launch in the Fall 2013 season dedicated to more comedic fare; look out Comedy Central. So how did a Fox spin-off network become one of the top five cable networks? Let’s find out.

FX started as a basic cable channel founded in 1994 by Fox Entertainment Group. Originally called fX, the network featured live “Wayne’s World”-type shows in primetime while showing classic TV reruns such as “Batman” and “The Green Hornet” during the day. Broadcasting from a large ‘apartment’ in Manhattan, fX was one of the first forays into large-scale primetime interactive television. This format didn’t last very long because of the expenses involved in producing live talk-shows, so they began interspersing reruns, like “Ally McBeal and “Married…with Children.” By 1998, FX had dropped the live broadcasts and added NASCAR to become a network of repeats, old movies, and car racing.

Then in 2002 things changed. In a foray into original scripted content, the network released its edgy breakout police drama “The Shield,” portraying corrupt police officers who will stop at nothing to bring their version of justice to the streets. The show went on to win a Golden Globe Award for Best Dramatic Television Series. This success continued the following year with “Nip/Tuck,” a drama about two plastic surgeons in L.A. and “Rescue Me”, about FDNY firemen and their lives post-9/11. In 2007, they premiered “Damages,” a legal thriller starring the multi-Oscar nominated actress Glenn Close. With these shows, FX proved that the network was willing to take risks with their programming and push the envelope of what can be shown on television, even if that meant having restrictive TV-MA ratings.

In 2008, FX hit a homerun when they decided to broadcast a show about gun-running, drug-dealing, motorcycle gangs.  “Sons of Anarchy” opened to critical acclaim and has become one of the top rated programs on cable, garnering 5 million viewers a week in its third season. A couple of years later they debuted “Justified” based on the popular Elmore Leonard character Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens from the short story Fire in the Hole. The show is about a tough federal lawman enforcing his own brand of justice in his Kentucky hometown, and has been nominated for seven Primetime Emmy Awards and won the 2011 Peabody Award.  Most recently, “The Americans”—a show about two Soviet KGB officers posing as an American married couple in the suburbs of Washington DC—premiered to critical acclaim earlier this year.

Not to be type-cast as a drama-only network, FX has debuted some of the best comedies on the air, with shows like “Archer,” “Louie,” “Wilfred,” and the popular “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” They plan on expanding their comedic offerings with the announcement of a new cable channel called FXX, which will be launched in the Fall and be dedicated to comedy. And if that wasn’t enough, along with the introduction of FXX, FX Networks will also introduce its own version of TV Everywhere to make cable programming available to subscribers who want to watch shows on smartphones and tablets. So from a modest start twenty years ago as a rerun house, FX is suddenly creating the high quality shows we will all be happy to watch for many years to come.

Copyright New Show Studios 2013

Images:

http://images.tvrage.com/shows/24/23472.jpg

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Sons_of_Anarchy_Poster.jpg

http://egrift.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/sunnyinphil.jpg

Sources:

http://mediawiki.middlebury.edu/wiki/FMMC0104/FX

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/business/media/a-new-channel-fxx-hopes-to-extend-the-fx-brand.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack/2013/04/fx_network_is_taking_over_and.php

http://www.goldderby.com/news/4248/justified-timothy-olyphant-walton-goggins-emmys-tv-entertainment-news.html

Game of Thrones is the epic story of nine noble families caught up in a fight for the Iron Throne and the right to rule a magical realm where summer can last ten years and winter can last a lifetime. The HBO original series is an adaptation of George R.R. Martins bestselling fantasy novel series A Song of Fire and Ice, and is named for the first book in that series—Game of Thrones. The show, which is now airing its third season and preparing to start filming the fourth season in July, was an instant hit with fans and critics alike.  How did this extremely complex fantasy saga end up being such a big hit on the small screen?

The first installment of Martin’s novel series had already been around for ten years by the time David Benioff, who is a novelist and screenwriter (Troy and X-Men Origins: Wolverine), began reading it in 2006. He was so completely enthralled by A Game of Thrones that he called his friend D.B. Wiess, and asked him to read it too. Wiess found the book equally compelling, and finished the 700 page book in just a day and a half. Though they were originally reading the book to consider adapting it for a feature film, both were convinced that the novels would make a fantastic television series.

Benioff and Wiess met Martin for lunch and spent several hours trying to convince him that they could adapt the books for television. This took a lot of convincing, because Martin became a novelist, in part, so that his writing and imagination wouldn’t be limited by budget and scheduling restrictions that he had experienced as a screenwriter for television. He thought he had written novels that would be impossible to film—with stories too complex for even the longest film and scenes too expensive to produce for television. Martin explained why he never said yes to the many requests to make his novels into films:

The novels were simply too big and too complex, and to make the sort of deep cuts that would be necessary to get them down to feature length would have required losing nine-tenths of the characters and three-quarters of the plot.

But television production quality and visual effects technology had come a long way since he first started writing his novel series. Benioff and Wiess were able to convince Martin that his novels could be adapted for television, and that they had a passion for the story and an understanding of the characters necessary to create a successful series. Martin actually tested their understanding with the question: “Who is Jon Snow’s mother?”  and they got the answer right.

Pitching the show to HBO was a little harder. For one thing, the executive they pitched to made it very clear she wasn’t a fan of the fantasy genre; but, fortunately, they were able to convince her that though the story takes place in a fantasy world, the characters feel like real human beings. Another thing that made pitching the show challenging was that Benioff and Wiess didn’t have experience creating television:

 When HBO was mulling whether or not to green-light the pilot, we kept telling them the show would be a big hit. But we’d never made a TV show before so we didn’t actually know what we were talking about. And we knew we didn’t.

They finally did make a deal and received the green-light to shoot the pilot, but they weren’t satisfied with the results. They ended up rewriting many scenes, recasting two key roles, and moving the scenes originally shot in Morocco to new locations in Malta. These changes meant that almost every scene had to be reshot. Benioff said reshooting the pilot not only gave them the opportunity to work with director Timothy Van Patten, who helped them establish the tone and look of the show, but also gave them some valuable insights:

It was a good experience for us, in that we got to go back and…learn from some of the mistakes we made the first time, some of which were scripted ones. We would show the original pilot to friends of ours…and they would get to the end of the pilot and have no idea that Cersei Lannister and Jaime Lannister were brother and sister…So, we clarified some of the relationships.

This time, they got it right. They created a beautiful and compelling pilot that set up the complex story with dozens of characters and multiple plotlines. Today, with just one episode left in season three, millions of fans look forward to the big finale and hope for the best for their favorite characters; because in this world, no one is safe—after all: ‘Winter is coming.’

Images:
http://www.makinggameofthrones.com/storage/game-of-thrones-poster.jpg

http://fourthdayuniverse.com/reports/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Game-of-Thrones-Cast-Wallpaper-1-image-credit-GameofThronesWallpaper.com_.jpg

Resources:

http://collider.com/david-benioff-db-weiss-interview-game-of-thrones/

http://winteriscoming.net/2013/05/benioff-weiss-interviewed-on-kcrws-upclose/

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/03/hbo-game-thrones-season-3-interview-david-benioff-dan-weiss

http://web.archive.org/web/20120516224747/http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117957532?refCatId=14

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones

Famous film actors have worked on the small screen for most of television history, and today, television is attracting more successful film stars than ever before. Some say it’s because the number and quality of dramatic film roles has been reduced by the recent trend toward comedies and big blockbusters. Others say that the incredible improvement in the quality of television writing and production has attracted many stars to the small screen. Then again, it may just be the very large and relatively steady pay checks. Whatever the reason, we’re grateful that these wonderful talents are coming into our living rooms every week, so we thought we would take a look at some stars that have shined on the big and small screen.

Kevin Bacon: Kevin Bacon’ film career started in the late seventies with National Lampoon’s Animal House, but it was the 1984 film Footloose that made him a big star. In the ‘90s, he had  roles in so many quality films— such as The River Wild, Apollo 13, A Few Good Men, and Mystic River–and worked with so many famous actors, that a game was developed called “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” in which players try to link Bacon to any actor in Hollywood in the least number of connections. In 2013, he turned his attention to television and took on the leading role in the chilling crime series The Following.

Glenn Close: Glenn Close started her career on stage and moved to film when she landed a role in The World According to Garp. Since then, she has been nominated for six Academy Awards for her work in films such as The Big Chill, The Natural, Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, and Albert Nobbs. She is also the voice of Cruella de Vil in Disney’s 101 Dalmatians. In the last decade, Close has had great success on television as well. She was a guest star on The West Wing, was nominated for an Emmy for her work on The Shield, and has won two Emmys and a Golden Globe for her starring role in the series Damages.

Martin Sheen: Martin Sheen—who became famous for his roles in films such as Badlands and Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece Apocalypse Now—actually spent most of his early career playing guest parts on television series such as The Outer Limits, Mission Impossible, Hawaii Five-O, Mod Squad, and Columbo. So in 1999, Sheen was actually returning to television when he took on the lead role in the critically acclaimed television series The West Wing. In recent years, he has appeared in many films including The Departed and The Amazing Spider Man; and has had a reoccurring role on son Charlie Sheen’s show Anger Management.

Barbara Stanwyck: It could be said that the first really big film star to take on a television role was Barbara Stanwyck. Before becoming the matriarch of the Barkley family on The Big Valley and the Carson family in The Thorn Birds, Stanwyck was the star of dozens of Hollywood films, including the film noir classic Double Indemnity. Stanwyck’s costar in that fantastic film, Fred MacMurray, also became a television star when he played the father in the television series My Three Sons.

Of course, there are many more film actors who have brought their talent to television and even a few that seem to be able to move effortlessly between the two worlds—Jeremy Irons, Sally Field, Steve Buscemi, Holly Hunter, Alec Baldwin, Gary Senise, Zooey Deschanel, Angelica Houston, Joseph Fiennes, Jim Caviezel, Ashton Kutcher, Kathy Bates, Kiefer Sutherland, Helen Hunt, and Maggy Smith—just to name a few. And, if Kevin Spacey’s new Netflix original series House of Cards is a success, we may be seeing more of our favorite film stars streaming directly to an even smaller screen.

Images:

http://www.spoilertv.co.uk/images/cache/The%20Following/Season%201/Posters%20and%20Wallpapers/o-THE-FOLLOWING-KEVIN-BACON-570_FULL.jpg

http://mutantreviewers.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/footloose1.jpg

http://vinnieh.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/glenn-close-and-john-malk-0011.jpg

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/graphics/news3/Damages_S1_DVD_early.jpg

http://cakeordeathcartoon.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/martin_sheen_in-apocalypse_now.jpg?w=450

http://tvlistings.zap2it.com/tv/the-west-wing/EP00316991?aid=zap2it

http://www.impawards.com/1944/posters/double_indemnity.jpg

Sources:

http://www.imdb.com

http://www.biography.com

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/15/entertainment/la-et-emmy-movie-tv-20110715

http://tv.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/arts/television/house-of-cards-on-netflix-stars-kevin-spacey.html?_r=0

With his new movie After Earth coming out this week, we thought now would be a good time to take a look at the amazing career of Will Smith.  Most people remember that before he became a huge movie star, Smith was also a popular television actor who starred in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.  But how many remember that before he became a TV star, Smith was also a highly successful recording artist and rapper – and won four Grammys to boot.  So how did a kid from West Philly become such a big star?  Let’s find out.

Will Smith was born in 1968 and grew up in a middle class area of West Philadelphia called Wynnefield.  Though a very good student with high scores, Smith decided not to go to college after graduating high school, and, instead, started as the MC of the hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. They added third member, Ready Rock C as the human beat box and performed humorous, radio-friendly songs. The group gained critical acclaim and won the first Grammy awarded in the Rap category in 1988.

In 1990, Smith had a dream come true when NBC television network signed him to a contract and built a sitcom around him called The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The lead character was loosely based on Smith, as a street-smart teenager from West Philadelphia who is sent to live with his aunt and uncle in their Bel-Air mansion.  Or as explained in the show’s opening song that Smith co-wrote with Quincy Jones:

In West Philadelphia born and raised – On the playground where I spent most of my days - Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool – And all shooting some b-ball outside of the school - When a couple of guys, they were up to no good – Started making trouble in my neighborhood - I got in one little fight and my mom got scared – And said “You’re moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air“

The show was a typical ‘fish out of water’ story where his street-smart lifestyle often clashed with that of his rich and somewhat stuffy relatives.  It became instantly popular, running for nearly six years (1990–1996) on NBC and has been in syndication consistently since 1994 on various networks.

Smith’s first major movie role came in 1993 in the drama Six Degrees of Separation and was followed by the action film Bad Boys in 1995. In 1996, Smith starred as part of an ensemble cast in Independence Day which became the second highest grossing film in history at the time and establishing Smith as a prime box office draw. To date, he has starred in 23 motion pictures, receiving Best Actor Oscar nominations for Ali and The Pursuit of Happiness.  He is probably most associated with his role of Agent J in the Men in Black franchise, which he starred alongside Tommy Lee Jones (and Josh Brolin in Men in Black III.)  Rumor has it that there will be a fourth film coming out in 2015.

Images:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c8/Freshprincelogo.jpg/250px-Freshprincelogo.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Men_In_Black_3.jpg

Resources:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000226/

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/w/will+smith/fresh+prince+of+bel+air_20146970.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Smith

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fresh_Prince_of_Bel-Air

In 1998, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane sold his pilot for the animated primetime series to FOX Television when he was just 24 years old. As if being the youngest showrunner in television history weren’t enough, he also composed music for the show and became the voice of its three main characters—Peter, Stewie, and Brian Griffin. The show’s success has opened many doors for MacFarlane, including creating several more television shows, writing, producing, and directing his first feature film Ted, and hosting the 2013 Academy Awards.

Seth MacFarlane started drawing cartoon characters when he was just two years old. When he was nine he had his first job creating a weekly cartoon strip for his home town newspaper. His early interest in art was supported by the strong Performing Arts department at his school in Kent, Connecticut—a private school where his mother worked as a teacher. His parents found him a book on animation and gave him an 8mm-video camera so he could experiment on his own and figure out how animated cartoons were made.

“I did spend a lot of time in solitude drawing, trying to make films, trying to figure out exactly how animation worked. You know, it was before the internet, before instant access to whatever information you wanted, and I didn’t know how cartoons worked, I just knew I wanted to be in that business.”

After graduating from high school, he continued his study of animation and video at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). It was there that he made his senior thesis film The Life of Larry that included many of the design elements and themes he would later use in Family Guy. He credits RISD for not only teaching him the skills he would need to succeed, but for also helping him get his first job in television animation:

“They [RISD] sent my film to Hanna-Barbera to compete in this student film competition. I didn’t even know they were doing it. And I ended up winning. It brought me to the attention of that studio, and…I got a job offer there, probably about 2 weeks before I was supposed to graduate, and it was pretty exciting.”

So in 1995, MacFarlane moved to Los Angeles to start his career. He enjoyed working at Hanna-Barbera and learned a lot about many aspects of creating cartoons, especially from his work writing scripts for Jonny Bravo. He also did some freelance work for Disney animated television, but he really wanted to work in primetime animation so that he could deal with adult themes and express his edgy and slightly twisted sense of humor.

He kept working on refining the concepts in The Life of Larry and created a second film Larry and Steve. Then MacFarlane got a meeting with executive at FOX to pitch his idea for a new primetime animated series. After seeing his films, executives at FOX wanted him to develop his idea for Family Guy into a short animated series to be shown on MADtv; but the deal didn’t work out because MADtv didn’t have enough money to do animation. Fortunately, MacFarlane didn’t give up:

“So it didn’t go at that time. It just kind of sat on a shelf. About a year later, I called FOX, just for the hell of it, to find out what the story was. I spoke to Leslie, who I had met in the first meeting, and she said, ‘You know what, why don’t you come in? We’re thinking we might want some new animation.’”

FOX offered him a shot at a series if he could make a pilot for Family Guy for fifty thousand dollars. Now, this was a very unusual offer because creating an animated half hour show usually costs about twenty times that amount; but of course, MacFarlane said yes. He spent six months at home animating like crazy to create his pilot. Though the pilot was very crudely animated with just enough detail to demonstrate the tone of the show, FOX loved it, and announced that they were picking up 13 episodes of Family Guy that would begin airing in 1999.

Since then, Seth MacFarlane and Family Guy have become more and more popular. He has been very successful with other animated shows for Fox– American Dad and The Cleveland Show—and is producing a new live action show called Dads.  He had a big hit with his feature film Ted for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. He is also writing, directing and starring in the live action film A Million Ways to Die in the West, producing a remake of Carl Sagan’s documentary Cosmos, and has announced that there will be a Ted 2.

Images:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=seth+macfarlane+academy+awards&source=images

http://magazine.100percentrock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Family-Guy.jpg

Resources:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2003/07/21/an-interview-with-seth-macfarlane?page=3

http://www.biography.com/people/seth-macfarlane-20624525

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-fox-seth-macfarlane-cosmos-neil-degrasse-tyson-20130513,0,6987830.story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_MacFarlane 

Netflix was founded in 1997 as a mail-order company that rented and sold DVDs over the internet. Today Netflix is the world’s leading internet television network with more than 36 million members in 40 countries enjoying more than one billion hours of TV shows and movies every month.  On a normal weeknight, Netflix accounts for almost a third of all internet traffic entering North American homes. That’s more than YouTube, Hulu, Amazon.com, HBO Go, iTunes, and BitTorrent combined. What’s more, like other networks that started out broadcasting other peoples content (e.g., AMC, HBO), Netflix has recently begun creating new content in the form of original series such as House of Cards and Hemlock Grove.  So how did a DVD mail order company become the world’s largest provider of on-demand internet streaming media?  Let’s find out.

Netflix was established in 1997 with a new business model of renting DVDs through a mail-order service and in 1999 they launched their subscription service, offering unlimited rentals for one low monthly subscription. By 2007 Netflix had 7.5 million members in their subscription service. That was also the year they introduced streaming, which allows members to instantly watch television shows and movies on their personal computers.  Streaming had already been out for a few years, thanks to Microsoft, RealNetworks, and Macromedia, and really caught on when YouTube was launched in 2005 as a video sharing website.  And in 2007, Hulu, a joint venture of NBC Universal Television Group, Fox Broadcasting Company, and Disney-ABC Television Group started as a website offering on-demand streaming video of TV shows, movies, webisodes and other new media, trailers, and clips, and from NBC, Fox, ABC, TBS, and many other networks and studios.

By 2011, Netflix had 20 million members and realized that most of their customers were trending toward the streaming service.  Seeing this change in customer preference lead the company to a rare misstep. To enable Netflix to focus its resources and energy on acquiring streaming content and to phase out the less profitable DVD-by-mail service, Netflix unveiled plans to raise prices and separate into two companies—a DVD mailer called Qwikster and a streaming entity still under the Netflix name. The split was never well-articulated and Netflix lost millions of customers (and market capital) in the process.  But after realizing this move had backfired, they killed Qwikster and mounted one of the all-time great comebacks. Not only did they focus like a laser on streaming movies and television shows, but began to developing their own original content.

In a move that has industry insiders saying that Netflix wants to become the next HBO, the company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in original series, such as the political drama House of Cards, which stars Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, the murder mystery Hemlock Grove and Orange Is the New Black, a show set in a women’s prison that will air in July. They also acquired the rights to and produced the fourth season of the critically-acclaimed comedy Arrested Development, which will air later this month, and co-produce the second season of Lilyhammer starring Steven Van Zandt.  If that wasn’t enough, they have also created a Ricky Gervais show called Derek and a children’s show called Turbo: F.A.S.T. that is co-produced with DreamWorks Animation.

Currently Netflix is taking a big gamble that a lot of people will want to stream entertainment to their mobile personal electronic devices rather than stay stuck in their living rooms and their cable boxes.  If they’re right, the next few years could see a monumental shift in how we watch ‘television.’

Images:

http://mereorthodoxy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/house-of-cards-final-poster.jpg

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2013/01/09/ad-netflix_610x447.png

Sources:

https://signup.netflix.com/MediaCenter/Press

http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/30/4287290/netflix-continues-original-programming-onslaught-with-orange-is-the-new-black-july-11

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/mar/01/history-streaming-future-connected-tv

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/netflix-inc-history/

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-09/netflix-reed-hastings-survive-missteps-to-join-silicon-valleys-elite

Breaking Bad is the story of a respectable fifty year old high school chemistry teacher who finds out that he’s dying of cancer and turns to a life of crime to secure his family’s financial future. The show, which airs on AMC, has many cinematic elements, including a main character that has a drastic transformation over time, something most television shows don’t do.  In fact, most main characters have pretty much the same world view in the pilot episode as they do in the series finale, so presenting someone who changes so dramatically throughout the course of the series was considered very risky at the time. So how did such an unusual story get on the air?

Show creator Vince Gilligan said it all started with a gripe session with his friend, Tom Schnauz, about how hard it was to find good writing work. They had both been staff writers for The X-Files during the last seasons of that show, but hadn’t worked much since the series was cancelled. Tom happened to mention a New York Times article about a drug dealer who was arrested for cooking crystal meth in the back of an RV, and they started joking about giving up screenwriting and just traveling around the country in an RV cooking meth and making money.

As they were talking, the idea for a main character popped into his head—a middle aged man who transforms himself from a good man into a ruthless criminal. He then had to figure out why his character turns to a life of crime, and how he had the means to get himself into that world. So the idea for the story started with the main character and that characters transformation, which Gilligan describes as a transformation from ‘Mr. Chips to Scarface.’

“I had this full-fledged character, this good, law-abiding man who suddenly decides to become a criminal. I was so intrigued by the character that I didn’t really give much thought to how well it would sell, which is good because Breaking Bad is such an odd, dark story, it’s not easily sold.”

Fortunately, Gilligan had worked with a couple of people at Sony Pictures Television who had once bought a pilot script from him and nearly had it in the pre-production phase before CBS pulled out of the project. Despite this setback, the Sony executives said that they loved his work, and asked him to bring any new show ideas to them first. As it turned out, they loved the story for Breaking Bad, so they all began pitching the idea.

Despite their passionate efforts, Breaking Bad was turned down all over town. Executives at TNT loved it, but they couldn’t put a story about a meth dealer on their network. They asked if the main character—Walter White—could be a counterfeiter instead, but that didn’t fit Gilligan’s dark vision of Walt’s descent into the criminal world. HBO executives didn’t show any interest at all. FX liked it, and actually bought the pilot script, but later decided against doing the show. When AMC decided that they wanted to do the show, FX graciously let them buy the rights, and in February of 2007, AMC announced casting and production for a one hour pilot for Breaking Bad.

Now they had to cast an actor who could make Walter White remain a sympathetic character for as long as possible, even as he descended further and further into darkness. Though it was not immediately apparent to everyone involved in the selection process, Brian Cranston—who was best known for playing the father on Malcolm in the Middle—was clearly the perfect choice (he won three consecutive Best Actor Emmys for his role as Walter White). Cranston said he had no idea how intense and dark the story was going to get, but he did understand that Walt was a very unusual character for a television series:

“I did know when we first met that what he [Gilligan] was attempting to do had never been done in the history of television, is to start a character out one way—as you get to know them that way—and completely change that character into someone else.”

The story was originally to be set in Riverside, California, but setting the story and producing it in Albuquerque, New Mexico offered financial benefits, as well as some very visually interesting locations and beautiful skies. Five years after the pilot aired, critics continue to praise the show for its writing, directing, editing, and acting. A reporter for The New Yorker said, “Breaking Bad is an explicitly addictive series, full of cliffhangers, with a visual flair that is rare for television.”

The series fifth and final season was split into two 8 episode parts: the first half premiered in July 2012, and the second half will premiere August 2013.

Photo:
http://blog.sfgate.com/tgoodman/2010/03/12/breaking-bad-creator-vince-gilligan-celebrity-podcast-interview/

References:
Script Tease, by Dylan Callaghan
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2012/08/27/120827crte_television_nussbaum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad
http://www.emmys.com/shows/breaking-bad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=t9mtPhZEJoQ&feature=fvwp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIoRUtPo34Q

By now we would imagine that everyone has heard of “Bollywood,” the informal name for the vast Hindi-language film industry in India. But did you know that Bollywood also includes a huge television component as well as film? As it turns out, Bollywood is one of the biggest entertainment industries in the entire world today. In fact, Bollywood produces more films and television shows than any other country, even more than the United States. India’s large population and its people’s strong interest in entertainment, has made Bollywood a force to rival even Hollywood. So let’s find out more.

The name Bollywood is really more of a concept than an actual place. Unlike Hollywood, which is a town, Bollywood represents all of the Hindi-language film and television in India. The name is a mash-up of Bombay and Hollywood but the industry is not based only in Bombay (now called Mumbai) but all over the country. And global interest in Bollywood has been increasing in the last decade. In fact, Hollywood produced crossover films such as The Guru and Marigold: An Adventure in India in an effort to popularize Bollywood-themes and bridge the gap between Indian and American cinema. And with the recent success of films like Slum Dog Millionaire and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, interest in films made in India and about India has now become more mainstream.

Film in India goes all the way back to the beginning of cinema itself. The Lumiere Brothers—the first film makers in history—introduced cinema to India when they screened Cinematography in Bombay in 1896. By 1913, the home-grown Indian film industry began production on the first silent feature film made entirely in India. By the 1930s, the Indian industry was producing over 200 films per year, and in 1931 the first Indian movie, a musical, was released. The movie was such a big hit (like The Jazz Singer in the US) that most production companies quickly switched to sound.

After this, developments in the world of Indian cinema were rapid. World War 2, massive social changes, and independence from Britain completely reshaped Indian cinema. Before these changes, films were being made in various Indian languages with religion being the dominant theme. By the 1950s and 1960s, the themes changed to social issues relevant at the time. And by the 1970s, the “masala” film—the quintessential Bollywood movie—burst onto the scene. It included the elements we all think of when we think of Bollywood: bright colorful costumes, and a lot of song and dance numbers. In fact, song and dance remains the signature of Hindi films, which is why many Bollywood films tend to be musicals.

Also by the 1970s, television in India began to really expand. With such a large and diverse population, speaking several different languages, it’s not hard to imagine thousands of programs being broadcast in many languages. In India, film and television go hand-in-hand; and almost always they incorporate Bollywood-type dance numbers. Today, about 33% of all Indian households own a television, and with a population of 1.27 billion people, that’s a lot of television sets. As of 2010, the country has over 565 channels, of which 150 are premium pay channels.

So now we can see that Bollywood is not just a ‘want-to-be Hollywood’, but a sector of the entertainment industry that has a signature of its own. And as its popularity grows globally, it should be an entertainment force for many years to come.

Photos:
http://www.tvguideindia.com/images/slider-1.jpg
http://blogs.thenews.com.pk/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Bollywood.jpg

Sources:
http://www.tvguideindia.com/succes-of-india-film-industry.php
https://www.bollywoodtourism.com/bollywood-history