Paramount Pictures

Today, we begun our case study on the company 'Paramount Pictures', and what kind of films they produce in which are popular.


 Paramount Pictures was founded by Adolph Zukor, Jessie L. Laskey and W.W. Hodkinson in 1914. The film company has made many famous franchises' films, such as Transformers and G.I. Joe. It is seen as one of the 'Big Six' of Hollywood, producing entertaining films, often more-so aimed at males. They aim to make much more action oriented films using digital effects to maximize their special effects and potential realism; not producing an animated film yet. Many of the films are fictional, but have a base that has been worked off, such as the Transformers' films and Titanic being based off the true story.

One of the main type of films that Paramount have made that is popular is psychological thrillers. Examples of these are 'Shutter Island', 'The Conversion' and 'Rosemary's Baby'. These are all popular as they have induced their audience within the films, and made them enjoyable overall. I have looked into reviews from the following websites.Rosemary's Baby Review
Shutter Island Review
The Conversation Review
These reviews all have some things in common that they talk about. One of which is an interesting protagonist. This is done by giving them a niche feature, such as in 'The Conversation' where the protagonist is bad at their job, but is quite an important job. This is important as the protagonist has to be interesting to watch, or the audience may not enjoy the film.
It was also common to hear about an interesting plot. The plots of each are well written and, while not all original,(Rosemary's' Baby is quite similar to Psycho), it still has a reason to watch. In the case of 'Rosemary's' Baby' it was still different to 'Psycho', even if both protagonists were widows.
One complaint I saw from 'Shutter Island' was that is was too 'classy' for it's setting. This is important as the props and background had to be considered, but quite new and classy furniture was around on an isolated island full of mental people. The use of mise-en-scene is key to thrillers, and wasn't used as effectively as others.
There were also many other thrillers that I looked into as well.


The Film "Zodiac" was based on a true story that revolves around the "Zodiac Killer". The people that are more aware of the Zodiac Killer will already be more aware of the real life event and so will be a little harder to impress but for the newer audience you need to feed the story in a way that everyone would enjoy.
"The whole story is very chilling and kept you going.
The Zodiac Killer is a case that forever will remain a mystery and it was a
great idea for a film" one public reviewer stated on the IMDb website, and
the film gained an overall rating of 7.7 on the same website.It seems as though the film was a very effective thriller and
was received very well by critics. The look of the film was largely revolved
around the real 1970's case, so it is filmed in an aspect that would be similar
to the movies seen in the 70's. This helped to create more of an atmosphere
because you were made to feel as though you were looking into the past.
 Psycho (1998) is a fictional remake of a horror thriller of
the same name about a woman who is murdered in a motel and her sister, boyfriend
and a private investigator try to find her (because they don't know she was
murdered).The film received a review score of 4.6 on IMDB and many or
the reviews question why the remake was actually made because the original
Psycho was a classic film."My biggest question is "Why did they re-make a
classic Hitchcock movie?" It's a "no-win" situation", one
person said.The film did not receive very high review scores wherever you
look and thus was a very unpopular movie.