My Speech about The King's Speech (Movie)

Last week, I saw The King's Speech with my dad at the movie theaters. It was an awesome movie for a lot of reasons, but the main reason is probably because it inspires hope for people. In this movie for example, a King with little confidence in his voice is able to change that with the help of a special voice teacher. Played by Geoffrey Rush, the voice teacher not only helps the King be able to talk, but also helps him realize what's important to consider in life. Colin Firth plays the main character, the King of Britain, and does a great job on the acting performance. Below is the trailer for the movie:



The website for the movie is actually pretty cool too. It gives all the information about the movie, and the cast history. It also gives a bunch of different interviews with the main cast, and also some important things to look for while watching the movie. It also shows how well the picture has done at the Oscars and other big award shows. This movie won picture of the year at the Oscars. What an honor for these guys!The website is: The King's Speech - Official Site.

For more reviews on the movie, you can visit: The King's Speech Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes. "RottenTomatoes" is a very famous movie review website that pulls together a bunch of different movie critics to give reviews. The great thing about the website is that the critics don't hold back on box office movies. Like the movie "Grown Ups" for example, critics all around the country hated this movie for the most part. And on the website, it got under 20% out of 100%. It's cool because the critics really give their honest opinion, regardless of how popular a movie may be in the box office. As for the King's Speech's rating, Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 95% while the audience gave it a 94%. This is considered one of our analytical tools for our 21st Century Media Education, that tool being "scientific evidence". This movie got a 95% by movie critics which is a very high rating. This evidence shows that the movie was deserving of the best picture award at the Oscars.




(http://www.altfg.com/Stars/photo-actors-c/colin-firth-the-kings-speech-king-george-vi.jpg Above: Colin Firth)


The main character as I mentioned earlier, is the King of the UK played by Colin Firth. I thought he did a splendid job acting in this movie. Colin had to use his "Limbic" brain to be able to use feeling and emotions for his character. The character had very low self-confidence, and needed to change his attitude from the beginning to end of the movie. This must have been very hard to do, and he must have really had to have a connection to this character. He had to very emotional. For example, he had to say what messed-up his speech in the first place. The reason was that his bad grandma didn't feed him for weeks at a time as a kid because she didn't like him. This is very abusive, and requires a lot of emotion by Firth.

I believe that a "Personal Shift" was used in this movie. The King had to stop speaking to the masses at a distance and had to really team up with his people. His people needed a good King, and needed hope from him. The only way to do this was for the King to get on the people's side and become a teammate of theirs. This was done by making the relationship personal between the King and his people, which is a shift from talking at his people instead. And of course, "Discursive Shift" could be used because of the radio broadcasts the King gave to his people. The King gave these broadcasts on Christmas and whenever a war was at hand with Germany and other countries. He needed to talk to his people to give them hope, and to give them confidence. He basically saved his country from not trying in the war, to influencing troops to fight for their great nation. None of that would have been possible without this discursive shift to radio communication.

"Production Techniques" and "Value Messages" are 2 of the 'Seven Basic Principles of Media Education'. Production techniques is an obvious one for any movie because all movies require production techniques to make the movie. Value Messages is a little different because not all movies have good messages, but this one does. This movie has one of the best messages in a movie I have ever seen, that your voice can make a difference with a little confidence. It was very important for the King's voice to be heard. It was life or death for his people, and he ended up making the right choice by sticking with his voice coach. The video below shows the production techniques involved with the making of the movie. It's cool because you get to hear what the director thinks about a particular scene in the movie and his input on it:




The King's Speech earned 129 million dollars for The Weinstein Company movie corporation. The Weinstein Company is an independently owned movie production company. According to the book, Independent movies make 4.9% of the market share of U.S. film studios and distributors as of 2007. (Campbell, Pg. 240) The company is not part of the "Big Six", in which the book writes, "The current Hollywood commercial film business is ruled primarily by six companies...Except for Disney, all these companies are owned by large patent conglomerates...Dreamworks SKG...control more than half the movie market in Europe and Asia". (Campbell, Pg. 240-241) This proves, with scientific evidence, that indpendent studios can be just as successful as the Big Six after the King's Speech won best picture of the year at the Oscars.

(http://www.shoppingblog.com/2011pics/kings_speech_oscars.jpg

Thanks for reading!