THE NEW HOLLYWOOD AND INDEPENDENT FILM-MAKING

Francis Coppola, William Friedkin, Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, George Lucas, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese – If you are a Film Enthusiast, it is impossible for you not to know these men.

During mid-1960s, Hollywood film industry was very strong, until problems arose. Then by 1969, Hollywood companies begun to lose hundreds of million every year. But that was not a reason for Hollywood companies to give in. Remember the quotation, “When a door closes, a window opens”? So yeah, the producers fought back and their downfall served as a way for them to see another opportunity to level up and to come up with something new. One strategy that they come up with was producing counterculture-flavored films, but it didn’t work. So they consider again another strategy. And this time, their films that aimed for broader audiences, finally lifted the industry’s fortunes once again. Those men I have mentioned at the beginning are the most successful directors and came to be known as the ‘movie brats’.

These men that are known as the movie brats were graduated from film schools. So meaning, they have advantages from the earlier Hollywood directors because they were able to study and adapt styles from them. That’s why some of them have created films based on the old Hollywood like De Palma’s films. But of course, as time goes by, there must always be improvement and they must add something new because audiences or people always tend to seek more. Well that’s human nature. And I guess, these new breed of Hollywood filmmakers were able to make the old style enhanced which indeed satisfies the audience ‘for now’…

Soon there might be a problem again that will rise in some film industry, and I wonder how the next breed of directors will overcome the problem that will result into a better or enhanced style.

Moreover, several directors moved from independent film into the mainstream. But still, there are those who remained independent to the studios.

In terms of style, there was no single coherent film movement emerged during the 1970s and 1980s, according to Bordwell and Thompson. The most mainstream of the young directors continued the tradion of classical American cinema; the continuity editing and the traditional storytelling strategies with some new or added techniques.