The TradeVine – Entertainment Trade Article Highlights May 26th
Welcome to the TradeVine whose purpose is to encourage the entertainment industry to read their trades: Variety, Backstage, Hollywood Reporter, etc. Enjoy learning about your industry.
Each Friday, The TradeVine seeks out a few of the informative trade articles you may have missed. Please visit the trade, itself, for the entire article.
Backstage – 4 Ways to Relax Your Singing Muscles, by Andrew Byrne
Tight throat when you perform? Here’s the answer.
Our brains do crazy things to our bodies when we’re nervous. How many of you have experienced shaking limbs, sweaty palms, and panicked breathing when the pressure is on? For a singer or an actor, one of the most troubling aspects of getting nervous is a throat that tightens up. We have a series of muscles that run down the back of our throats called constrictors, and they contract when the “fight or flight” response kicks in from our sympathetic nervous system. These constrictor muscles are very strong and are part of swallowing; to get a sense of how much you don’t want these muscles on when you’re singing or speaking, just try to talk and swallow at the same time. Not so easy, right?
There are lots of great ways to release muscle tension, like meditation (see here), mobility work, and awareness modalities such as the Alexander technique. Another great thing to try is laryngeal massage. Many performers aren’t even aware of what the structures of the larynx (voice box) are, so learning to do some self-massage can help to reduce strain and also make you more knowledgeable about your throat. The rules of this practice are:
1. Be precise with your movements.
2. Use firm pressure, but not enough to cause pain.
3. Assess and reassess after each part of the massage. Pick a phrase to sing or speak before and after you work with each body part. Use your voice to notice improvements.
4. Keep track of what works for you, and repeat these massage elements before you perform. Read Entire Artice Here
The Hollywood Reporter – Box Office: ‘Baywatch’ Swims to $1.3M in Wednesday Previews, by Pamela McClintock
The R-rated adaptation of the classic TV show stars Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron.
Baywatch — starring man-of-the-moment Dwayne Johnson alongside Zac Efron — swam out of the gate with $1.3 million in Wednesday night previews at the North American box office.
In a bold and risky move, Paramount and Skydance decided to make the film adaptation of the classic television show R-rated, with as many F-bombs as bikinis.
Baywatch got a jump on the long Memorial Day weekend by opening a day early and is projected to gross in the $40 million range for the five days, although Paramount is being more conservative in suggesting the low $30 million range. The movie will be a big test of Johnson’s star power, considering reviews have skewered it. Read Entire Artice Here
Variety – Disney CEO Bob Iger: Hacker Threat About Stolen Movie Was a Hoax, by Todd Spangler
Disney chief Bob Iger confirmed the company received a threat from cybercriminals who claimed to have stolen the digital copy of a movie — but that the studio believes the claims were false.
“To our knowledge we were not hacked,” Iger said in an interview with Yahoo Finance published Thursday. “We had a threat of a hack of a movie being stolen. We decided to take it seriously but not react in the manner in which the person who was threatening us had required.”
Iger added, “We don’t believe that it was real and nothing has happened.”
According to some reports, the movie in question was Johnny Depp-starrer “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.” But piracy-news site TorrentFreak, citing an email exchange with someone purporting to be behind the extortion attempt, reported that the hackers told Disney they stole an incomplete cut of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”
The unidentified hackers had demanded that Disney pay a ransom — in the untraceable bitcoin crypto-currency — or else they would release the purloined movie in five-minute chunks. According to Iger, Disney refused to pay anything. Read Entire Artice Here
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