The Man Himself

I have decided to do a blog post on Georgey boy as I am planning on one of my first few slides to be a little bit of back ground knowledge into this legendary film maker.

So I thought id do a post her first so that I can get even more familiar with him and allow me to be more confident with my verbal-ness part of the presentation.

Born in New York on the 4th of February 1940 and attended a university in Pittsburgh and after graduating in 1960 he started a small time job shotting short films and commercials. After a while and numerous commercials later George and several friends got together and founded Image Ten Productions in the late 60s in which they all chipped in around 10 thousand dollars in order to create what would go onto become one of the horror genres classical films whilst simultaneously kick start the zombie horror sub-genre. But unfortunately due to a copyright problem Image Ten lost the rights to the film and subsequently lost out on much of films earnings as it turned public domain.

After Night in the 70s Romero left Image Ten and made a string of more horror films draped in his signature subtle social commentary. although none of them were as popular as Night. But in 1978 Romero returned to the zombie genre with Dawn. Dawn went on to be a massive success commercially and in the cult film circuit and earned 55 million dollars worldwide. Not bad for a zombie film huh? It also marked the start of a relationship between George and Tom Savini, one of the businesses finest make up artists.

Sadly the dawn of the 80s led to the down fall of Romero's career. His next Dead film, Day was set to be a zombie epic but didnt quite hit the mark due to budget reasons and it did not take in as much at the box-office either. After about 15 years of no film making he returned to the zombie horror genre with Land, which was frankly terrible. His most recent Dead film Diary wasn't exactly ground breaking either. But hey-ho thats how things go.

The majority of Romero's films are all filmed where he grew up in Pittsburgh with many other familiar trade marks to his films such as his widely regarded social commentary and
often features radio or television news broadcasts playing in the background of his films, usually to signify the role the media has during his films. Other trademarks also include Romero's casting of African-Americans in hero role, subverting race stereotypes in film of the black characters dying off early. Also like many other great directors (ala Hitchcock) Romero is also prone to cameos in his films and can be easily distinguished via his outfit containing some form of plaid. Dudes got style.

I will be making a proper start to my slide show this week now as I feel I have ample knowledge of my auteur and the slide show is slowly panning out in my mind as I type. Also I now have a decent usb :D

- Alex x

Some stuff.

As I knew I would be going away for a week I wanted to get ahead of everyone else before I left so when I came back I would not be inundated with work.

Something im kind of regretting. As before I left I posted a huge post on all the social commentary in the films that I knew of. So now ive not got much to write about. So I am going to describe how I intend for my presentation to go.

First off I will introduce the director briefly with some notes on the screen and verbally fill in some gaps. I will then introduce the three focus films Night, Dawn and Day. I will use brief on screen notes to introduce them and verbally tell of others. These slides will be followed by descriptions of the social commentary with in the films which I will build upon verbally.

After I have finished the three focus films I intend to do some criticism of Romero's wok in the form of Land of the Dead and how it, well, sucked. I also might touch upon Diary of the Dead and tell of how Romero has tried new things to reinvigorate his sub-genre and whether it worked or not?

I will then go on to the films that the Dead series has influenced such as Zombi 2 and pretty much any other horror film where the cast are stuck in one place and being attacked by something evil really. Don't worry it won't be that vague during the presentation.

I will also through out be using pictures.

I will introduce the films with their posters, ala;




Also I am currently in the process of downloading youtube videos in order to implement them into my presentation. Its a case of finding the videos though,


Thats all for now.

- Alex x