Updated in a new 6th edition, Movies and Meaning is a comprehensive introduction to the film industry that focuses on three topics: how movies express meanings, how viewers understand those meanings, and how cinema functions globally as both an art and a business. It examines both how filmmakers create images and sounds and the mechanisms and processes by which viewers make sense of images and stories on screen.

Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film, 6th Edition

Humor & Entertainment

Prince, Stephen

Movies

Pearson

This comprehensive introduction to film focuses on three topics: how movies express meanings, how viewers understand those meanings, and how cinema focuses globally as both an art and a business.  Using clear, accessible, and jargon-free writing, this is the only introduction to film to examine the elements of film style and the viewer's contribution to the cinema experience. How do viewers interpret the effects filmmakers create? How do filmmakers anticipate, and build on, the likely ways viewers will react to certain kinds of stories and audio-visual designs? Accordingly, the text examines how filmmakers create images and sounds and also closely examines the mechanisms and processes by which viewers make sense of images and stories on screen. This approach helps readers understand not only the basic concepts but also how their own reactions and opinions impact the overall film experience, making the course even more meaningful.  For anyone interested in film and film appreciation.

Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film (2nd Edition)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Allyn&Bacon

This comprehensive introduction to the film industry focuses on three topics: how movies express meanings, how viewers understand those meanings, and how cinema functions globally as both an art and a business. Movies and Meaning examines both how filmmakers create images and sounds and the mechanisms and processes by which viewers make sense of images and stories on screen. This approach helps readers understand not only the basic concepts but also how their own reactions and opinions impact the overall film experience.

Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film

This package contains the following components: -0205653081: Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film 
-0205688004: MyCommunicationKit

Movies and Meaning + Mycommunicationkit: An Introduction to Film

Pearson College Div

Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism

It was believed that September 11th would make certain kinds of films obsolete, such as action thrillers crackling with explosions or high-casualty blockbusters where the hero escapes unscathed. While the production of these films did ebb, the full impact of the attacks on Hollywood's creative output is still taking shape. Did 9/11 force filmmakers and screenwriters to find new methods of storytelling? What kinds of movies have been made in response to 9/11, and are they factual? Is it even possible to practice poetic license with such a devastating, broadly felt tragedy? Stephen Prince is the first scholar to trace the effect of 9/11 on the making of American film. From documentaries like Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) to zombie flicks, and from fictional narratives such as The Kingdom (2007) to Mike Nichols's Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Prince evaluates the extent to which filmmakers have exploited, explained, understood, or interpreted the attacks and the Iraq War that followed, including incidents at Abu Ghraib. He begins with pre-9/11 depictions of terrorism, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936), and follows with studio and independent films that directly respond to 9/11. He considers documentary portraits and conspiracy films, as well as serial television shows (most notably Fox's 24) and made-for-TV movies that re-present the attacks in a broader, more intimate way. Ultimately Prince finds that in these triumphs and failures an exciting new era of American filmmaking has taken shape.

Columbia University Press

Visions of Empire explores film's function as a medium of political communication, recognizing not just the propaganda film, but the various ways that conventional narrative films embody, question, or critique established social values underlying American attitudes toward historical, social, and political events. Stephen Prince discusses Hollywood film productions of the 1980s in terms of salient political issues of the period, including anxieties about declining U.S. military power, the wars in Central America and the prospects for U.S. intervention, the legacy of the Vietnam War, and urban decay. In analyzing these images and narratives, the author also describes and evaluates the cinematic styles available in the Hollywood tradition to filmmakers who address political issues.
Chapter 1 establishes the theoretical framework by considering features of the political landscape of the Reagan era. Theories about political representation and the place of ideology in film are also examined. Chapters 2 through 5 focus on the major cycles of political films. Chapter 2 examines the new Cold War films which played upon fears of the Soviet menace (Rambo, Invasion USA, Red Dawn, and Top Gun). Chapter 3 discusses the small group of films--Under Fire, Salvador, El Norte and others--that addressed the wars in Latin America and the ways they explained the origins of the conflicts and the U.S. role therein. Various histories and mythologies on film of the Vietnam War are examined in Chapter 4 as examples of the symbolic reconstruction of social memory. Chapter 5 looks at politicized science fiction films (Blade Runner, Aliens, Robocop, and Total Recall) offering critical commentaries on the pathologies of contemporary urban society and capitalism.

Visions of Empire: Political Imagery in Contemporary American Film (Praeger Series in Political Communication)

Praeger

Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies

More than any other filmmaker, Sam Peckinpah opened the door for graphic violence in movies. In this book, Stephen Prince explains the rise of explicit violence in the American cinema, its social effects, and the relation of contemporary ultraviolence to the radical, humanistic filmmaking that Peckinpah practiced.Prince demonstrates Peckinpah's complex approach to screen violence and shows him as a serious artist whose work was tied to the social and political upheavals of the 1960s. He explains how the director's commitment to showing the horror and pain of violence compelled him to use a complex style that aimed to control the viewer's response.Prince offers an unprecedented portrait of Peckinpah the filmmaker. Drawing on primary research materials—Peckinpah's unpublished correspondence, scripts, production memos, and editing notes—he provides a wealth of new information about the making of the films and Peckinpah's critical shaping of their content and violent imagery. This material shows Peckinpah as a filmmaker of intelligence, a keen observer of American society, and a tragic artist disturbed by the images he created.Prince's account establishes, for the first time, Peckinpah's place as a major filmmaker. This book is essential reading for those interested in Peckinpah, the problem of movie violence, and contemporary American cinema.

University of Texas Press

More than any other filmmaker, Sam Peckinpah opened the door for graphic violence in movies. In this book, Stephen Prince explains the rise of explicit violence in the American cinema, its social effects, and the relation of contemporary ultraviolence to the radical, humanistic filmmaking that Peckinpah practiced.
Prince demonstrates Peckinpah's complex approach to screen violence and shows him as a serious artist whose work was tied to the social and political upheavals of the 1960s. He explains how the director's commitment to showing the horror and pain of violence compelled him to use a complex style that aimed to control the viewer's response.
Prince offers an unprecedented portrait of Peckinpah the filmmaker. Drawing on primary research materials—Peckinpah's unpublished correspondence, scripts, production memos, and editing notes—he provides a wealth of new information about the making of the films and Peckinpah's critical shaping of their content and violent imagery. This material shows Peckinpah as a filmmaker of intelligence, a keen observer of American society, and a tragic artist disturbed by the images he created.
Prince's account establishes, for the first time, Peckinpah's place as a major filmmaker. This book is essential reading for those interested in Peckinpah, the problem of movie violence, and contemporary American cinema.

A brisk, accessible, and informative introduction to film genres.An Introduction to Film Genres, written by leading film scholars specifically for undergraduates who are new to the study of film, provides an introduction that helps students see thirteen film genres in a new light---to help them identify the themes, iconography, and distinctive stylistic traits of each genre.

An Introduction to Film Genres

Kozloff, Sarah

Friedman, Lester

Desser, David

Nochimson, Martha

W.W.Norton&Company

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Prince, Stephen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Prince, Stephen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Prince, Stephen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film, 6th Edition

Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film (2nd Edition)

Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film

Movies and Meaning + Mycommunicationkit: An Introduction to Film

Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism

Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism

Visions of Empire: Political Imagery in Contemporary American Film (Praeger Series in Political Communication)

Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies

Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies

An Introduction to Film Genres