Hollywood Formula versus European Style in Film: A Detailed Essay

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This essay provides a comparative analysis of Hollywood formula and European style in filmmaking, referencing the movies 'The Valley of Elah (2007)' and 'Cache (2005)'. It highlights key differences in plot development, timing, budget, studio influence, and character interactions. The Hollywood formula is characterized by big actions, drama, and carefully designed plots understood by a wide audience, often driven by producers and studios. European style, on the other hand, features fewer actions, more dialogue, lower budgets, and greater director control, resulting in more artistic and risk-taking films. The essay also notes differences in the use of body language, silence, and character interactions, concluding that while Hollywood emphasizes emotional connections and structured narratives, European cinema focuses on reality and artistic expression.
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Introduction.
Hollywood formula is used in writing American movies (Vale, 2013). Many people
think that Hollywood formula means strictly the normal formula but in the real sense refers to
the entire technique of writing Hollywood movies in America. On another hand, the
European style of writing movies entail the entire criteria involved in presenting European
movies different to Hollywood movies (Riegler, 2016). Therefore, Hollywood movie can also
be described as the movie produced by an individual or a company whose offices are in the
United States. There exists a clear distinction between the Hollywood formula and the
European style of writing movies (Kellner, 2010). In the essay, I will try to describe
principally differences between Hollywood formula and European style in reference to the
movies.
Differences between the Hollywood formula and European style.
Generally, there are key deviations between the Hollywood formula and European
style in reference to the movies of our interest (Trafton, 2016). The two styles of writing
movies differ in some sections. First, there is the distinct difference in the plot development
and timing of the entire movies and not excluding the purpose of two styles.
Firstly the Hollywood formula particularly incorporates big actions with less action and a lot
of drama while the European styles of producing ‘'The Valley of Elah (2007) and Cache
(2005)'' particularly the French films include fewer actions, made up of a lot of drama, they
involve a lot of dialogues and in most cases they do not cut on the action (Pollard, 2015).
On other hand studios in Hollywood formula on our movies of interest comprises the bigger
budgets with special makeup and a composition of blockbuster protagonists (Sánchez-
Escalonilla, 2010). European styles of writing our movies they tend to have lower budgets
and in most cases, they always have fewer effects in the studios and they often lack the major
characters who are only known in their specific countries (García-Mainar, 2016). This means
that European cinema is always unencumbered with the adequate incentive which helps to
make huge formulaic stars. It will be unfortunate to find any cinema franchises in any of the
European countries. This suggests that the government in these nations have emphasized on
investments in movie industry thus giving the grants which help the movie industries
(Buckle, 2011).
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In addition from the movies 'The Valley of Elah (2007) and Cache (2005)'' We notice that
European styles of movies tend to lack the plot and to some extent, they become more of
cinematic essays (Soberon, 2017). The Hollywood formula which caters for the American
scriptures is always taught that their Hollywood movies should comprise the carefully
selected and designed plots which can be easily understood by the editors and audiences.
Basically different authors argue that this European styles of the movies concentrate more
on the reality while the entire Hollywood style of presenting movies do not discuss more on
the reality (Soberon, 2017).
However, the majority of these movies 'The Valley of Elah (2007) and Cache (2005)'' in
European style are controlled by the directors whereby the directors are involved in creating
something new and of more artistic by taking risks and exposing them (Markert, 2011).On
the part of Hollywood formula on designing the Hollywood movies most of them tend to be
producer based or controlled by the studios in the countries. It is rare in Hollywood to find
directors creating new approaches and making movies more artistic. Due to this, Hollywood
movies have been described as the classical Hollywood movies in the United States
(Kaklamanidou, 2016).
The other key difference is that when one is viewing the European styles then he or she will
be able to identify that ''The Valley of Elah (2007) and Cache (2005)'' have body language
and closer facial expressions. In European movies, silence is always a virtue while on the
Hollywood formula includes the concept of talking in movies, European movies silence is
always a virtue while the Hollywood formula includes the concept of talking in movies
(Bedard & Fuhrken, 2011). This means that characters are prone to explain everything
through dialog. Hollywood formula will have three types of interactions by the characters.
This suggests that characters present through an appropriate structure whereby it includes the
protagonist, the antagonist and lastly the relationship characters in the movies (Mendiburu,
2012). At long last, the movie ends when the protagonist relinquishes the targeted goal .Also
it can end if the star is defeated by the antagonist whereby relationship character can be used
to recozile the characters. The Hollywood movies tend to be more emotional depending on
how characters are closer together.
Conclusion.
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Generally, the differences between the European style and the Hollywood formula
have clearly discussed (Jameson, Gooch, Broody, Burgoyne, Peebles, Hilsabeck, Bronfen,
2014). The two types differ in the studio section, the plot used for presenting movies, the
nature of characters and also the size of actions used by the two movies. Hollywood formula
uses its own version of presenting the 'The Valley of Elah (2007) and Cache (2005)'' movies
which are totally different from the one used by the European style.
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Reference
Bedard, C., & Fuhrken, C. (2011). Writing for the big screen: Literacy experiences in a
moviemaking project. Language Arts, 89(2), 113-124.
Buckle, C. (2011). The'War on Terror'metaframe in film and television (Doctoral dissertation,
University of Glasgow).
García-Mainar, L. M. (2016). A Documentary Aesthetic of Helplessness. In The Introspective
Realist Crime Film (pp. 107-140). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Jameson, F., Gooch, J., Brodey, I. S., Burgoyne, R., Peebles, S., Hilsabeck, B., ... & Bronfen,
E. (2014). The Philosophy of War Films. University Press of Kentucky.
Kaklamanidou, B. (2016). The" disguised" Political Film in Contemporary Hollywood: A
Genre's Construction. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Kellner, D. (2010). Cinema wars: Hollywood film and politics in the Bush-Cheney era. John
Wiley & Sons.
Markert, J. (2011). Post-9/11 cinema: Through a lens darkly. Scarecrow Press.
Mendiburu, B. (2012). 3D moviemaking: stereoscopic digital cinema from script to screen.
Focal Press.
Pollard, T. (2015). Post-9/11 Hollywood. In Hollywood 9/11(pp. 159-194). Routledge.
Riegler, T. (2016). "MIRRORING TERROR": THE IMPACT OF 9/11 ON HOLLYWOOD
CINEMA. Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies (ARCHIVES), 5(2),
103-119.
Sánchez-Escalonilla, A. (2010). Hollywood and the rhetoric of panic: The popular genres of
action and fantasy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Journal of Popular Film & Television,
38(1), 10-20.
Soberon, L. (2017). "The Old Wild West in the New Middle East": American Sniper (2014)
and the Global Frontiers of the Western Genre. European journal of American studies,
12(12-2).
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Trafton, J. (2016). The American Civil War and the Hollywood War Film. Springer.
Vale, E. (2013). Vale's technique of screen and television writing. Focal Press.
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