Film - Simple English Wikipedia

# Film

### From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

This article is about motion pictures. For other uses of "film", see photographic film or film (disambiguation).

Films (movies, motion pictures) use moving pictures and sound to show stories. Films are popular in every part of the world. Films can be shown on a television, or in a cinema or movie theatre. Films are often seen at cinema screens before they are shown on television.

## [edit] How movies work

A movie camera takes lots of pictures very fast. It takes 24 pictures every second. When a movie projector, a computer, or a television shows the pictures at that speed, it looks like things are moving.

## [edit] How movies are made

A screenwriter writes a script. Actors and directors read scripts to find out what to say and what to do. Then a producer, who often works for a movie studio, hires people to work on the film. The director tells the actors what to do and a cameraman takes pictures of them. An editor puts the pictures together. When the movie is done, many copies of the movie are put onto film and are sent to cinemas. A machine shines light through the film, and people sitting in a dark room see it on a big screen.

## [edit] Genres

A genre is a word for a type of movie. Action movies are fast-paced movies that are often about people fighting. Dramas are serious, and often about love or people dying. Comedies are funny. Thrillers are usually about a mystery or crime that needs to be solved. Some movies are in more than one genre.

## [edit] Promotion

There are many different kinds of movie. Big, expensive movies with film stars are sometimes called blockbusters. This kind of movie will have a lot of promotion through television advertising, billboards and internet sites. Blockbusters often have generic storylines and can be franchises. Examples of franchises are the James Bond films or the Star Wars films. Smaller movies are sometimes called arthouse films. This kind of movie is often more creative than a blockbuster. However, they are also unlikely to make a lot of money. Arthouse films are generally promoted through word-of-mouth.

## [edit] Famous actors

- Humphrey Bogart
- Marlon Brando
- Charlie Chaplin
- Robert DeNiro
- Johnny Depp
- Cary Grant
- Alec Guinness
- Tom Hanks
- Dustin Hoffman
- Buster Keaton
- Paul Newman
- Jack Nicholson
- Al Pacino
- Sidney Poitier
- Sylvester Stallone
- James Stewart
- John Wayne

## [edit] Famous actresses

- Kathy Bates
- Doris Day
- Dakota Fanning
- Jodie Foster
- Audrey Hepburn
- Katharine Hepburn
- Angelina Jolie
- Nicole Kidman
- Vivien Leigh
- Julia Roberts
- Meryl Streep
- Reese Witherspoon
- Renée Zellweger

## [edit] Famous directors

- Robert Altman
- Frank Capra
- John Ford
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Terry Gilliam
- Howard Hawks
- Werner Herzog
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Stanley Kubrick
- Akira Kurosawa
- Spike Lee
- Sergio Leone
- Ang Lee
- Russ Meyer
- Martin Scorcese
- Ridley Scott
- Steven Spielberg
- Andrei Tarkovsky
- François Truffaut
- Orson Welles
- Billy Wilder
- Zhang Yimou

## [edit] Related topic

- Big 10 (America's ten largest movie studios)

## [edit] External links

- The Internet Movie Database
- Movie trailers – Watch movie trailers from Apple.com (You need QuickTime software on your computer).
- Rotten Tomatoes – Movie reviews.
- Yahoo! Movies
- Classic Movies (1939 - 1969)

Retrieved from "http://simple.wikipedia.org../../../f/i/l/Film.html"

Categories: Art | Movies

##### Views

- Article
- Talk
- Newest version

##### Search

##### In other languages

- Afrikaans
- Català
- Česky
- Dansk
- Deutsch
- English
- Esperanto
- Español
- Français
- עברית
- हिन्दी
- Hrvatski
- Magyar
- 日本語
- 한국어
- Nederlands
- Norsk (bokmål)
- Polski
- Português
- Română
- Slovenščina
- Svenska
- 中文(简体)
- 中文(繁體)
- Bân-lâm-gú