NPR Analysis

Word Count 281

I listened to a radio interview entitled Hollywood makeovers, Frame by Frame on the website freshair.com. The interviewer knew about Hollywood film makers using digital enhancements for their movies. They do this because it greatly lessens the cost of production. The interviewer gave the example of how digital enhancements can change lighting, instead of using expensive lighting. The interviewer did mostly commentary and was “telling details” about the scene. She described a 40 something year old man working on a program called the “De Vinci”. The man worked in his “lonely” studio digitally changing skin tones, and even the weather in an upcoming movie.

She asked two questions, “You used the Da Vinci to get rid of Tom Cruise’s double chin?” and “Isn’t using this program dishonest, or the magic of movies?” There were no evasive answers they were all pretty straight to the point. The relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee was just that, they apparently had no prior connection to each other. The interviewer at first seemed to have a strategy to say that digital enhancements are a cop out to the real thing. However, toward the middle of the interview she mentioned the many perks to digitally enhancing feature films.

I learned a lot of things that I have always noticed, but have never really thought about before. For example, the films The Pirates of the Caribbean had almost every frame enhanced in some way to make it more believable. Today, about 95 percent of all films are color corrected, and digitally enhanced in some way. Many actors have color correcting written into their contracts. This interview definitely reinforced that old saying, don’t believe everything you see.