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190-464: Eraserhead is a 1977 American independent surrealist body horror film written, directed, produced, and edited by David Lynch . Lynch also created its score and sound design, which included pieces by a variety of other musicians. Shot in black and white , it was Lynch's first feature-length effort following several short films. Starring Jack Nance , Charlotte Stewart , Jeanne Bates , Judith Anna Roberts , Laurel Near, and Jack Fisk , it tells

380-603: A midnight movie . Since its release, it has been praised and considered a cult film . Its surrealist imagery and sexual undercurrents have been seen as key thematic elements, and its intricate sound design as its technical highlight. In 2004, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Henry Spencer's face appears superimposed over

570-412: A sphere or a torus . An infinite-bandwidth white noise signal is a purely theoretical construction. The bandwidth of white noise is limited in practice by the mechanism of noise generation, by the transmission medium and by finite observation capabilities. Thus, random signals are considered white noise if they are observed to have a flat spectrum over the range of frequencies that are relevant to

760-554: A 1993 review for the Chicago Tribune , Michael Wilmington described Eraserhead as unique, feeling that the film's "intensity" and "nightmare clarity" were a result of Lynch's attention to detail in its creation due to his involvement in so many roles during its production. In the 1995 essay "Bad Ideas: The Art and Politics of Twin Peaks", critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that Eraserhead represented Lynch's best work. Rosenbaum wrote that

950-711: A DVD and Blu-ray release by the Criterion Collection in September 2014. In 2004, Eraserhead was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress . Selection for the Registry is based on a film being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Eraserhead was one of the subjects featured in the 2005 documentary Midnight Movies: From

1140-649: A Gaussian white noise w {\displaystyle w} is defined as a stochastic tempered distribution, i.e. a random variable with values in the space S ′ ( R ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}'(\mathbb {R} )} of tempered distributions . Analogous to the case for finite-dimensional random vectors, a probability law on the infinite-dimensional space S ′ ( R ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {S}}'(\mathbb {R} )} can be defined via its characteristic function (existence and uniqueness are guaranteed by an extension of

1330-425: A Gaussian white noise vector will have a perfectly flat power spectrum, with P i  =  σ for all  i . If w is a white random vector, but not a Gaussian one, its Fourier coefficients W i will not be completely independent of each other; although for large n and common probability distributions the dependencies are very subtle, and their pairwise correlations can be assumed to be zero. Often

1520-424: A big budget adaptation of Frank Herbert 's science fiction novel Dune for Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis 's De Laurentiis Entertainment Group , on the condition that the company release a second Lynch project, over which the director would have complete creative control. Although De Laurentiis hoped it would be the next Star Wars , Lynch's Dune (1984) was a critical and commercial flop, grossing

1710-410: A billion-dollar deal, acquired New Line Cinema, Fine Line Features , and Castle Rock Entertainment in 1994. The acquisitions proved to be a good move for Turner Broadcasting as New Line released The Mask and Dumb & Dumber , Castle Rock released The Shawshank Redemption , and Miramax released Pulp Fiction , all in 1994. The acquisitions of the smaller studios by conglomerate Hollywood

1900-468: A built-in national rating, in order to avoid presenting movies to inappropriately young audiences. Following the advent of television and the Paramount Case , the major studios attempted to lure audiences with spectacle. Widescreen processes and technical improvements, such as Cinemascope , stereo sound, 3-D and others, were developed in an attempt to retain the dwindling audience by giving them

2090-453: A centralized archive. Founded in 1962 by Jonas Mekas , Stan Brakhage , Shirley Clarke , Gregory Markopoulos , and others, the Cooperative provided an important outlet for many of cinema's creative luminaries in the 1960s, including Jack Smith and Andy Warhol . When he returned to America, Ken Anger would debut many of his most important works there. Mekas and Brakhage would go on to found

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2280-408: A character, Spencer has been seen as an everyman figure, his blank expression and plain dress keeping him a simple archetype. Spencer displays a pacifistic and fatalistic inactivity throughout the film, simply allowing events to unfold around him without taking control. This passive behavior culminates in his sole act of instigation at the film's climax; his apparent act of infanticide is driven by

2470-481: A costly distribution system or concede defeat. The veteran producer Joseph Schenck was hired as president. Not only had he been producing pictures for a decade, but he brought along commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge , his sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge , and his brother-in-law, Buster Keaton . Contracts were signed with a number of independent producers, especially Samuel Goldwyn , Howard Hughes and later Alexander Korda . Schenck also formed

2660-490: A crowd of like-minded avant-garde filmmakers who were interested in creating films as works of art rather than entertainment. Based upon a common belief that the "official cinema" was "running out of breath" and had become "morally corrupt, aesthetically obsolete, thematically superficial, [and] temperamentally boring", this new crop of independents formed The Film-Makers' Cooperative , an artist-run, non-profit organization which they would use to distribute their films through

2850-482: A decade. Unlike the former, John Waters released most of his films during his early life through his own production company, Dreamland Productions . In the early 1980s, New Line Cinema agreed to work with him on Polyester (1981). During the 1980s, Waters would become a pillar of the New York–based independent film movement known as the " Cinema of Transgression ", a term coined by Nick Zedd in 1985 to describe

3040-501: A fellow studio convert, George Lucas , a fan of Eraserhead and now the darling of the studios, offered Lynch the opportunity to direct his next Star Wars sequel, Return of the Jedi (1983). However, Lynch had seen what had happened to Lucas and his comrades in arms after their failed attempt to do away with the studio system. He refused the opportunity, stating that he would rather work on his own projects. Lynch instead chose to direct

3230-535: A few dozen or possibly a few hundred screens in select urban markets. Films like these usually cost less than $ 10 million, but frequently less than $ 5 million, with small marketing budgets that escalate if and when a particular film performs. The independent film industry exists globally. Many of the most prestigious film festivals are hosted in various cities around the world. The Berlin International Film Festival attracts over 130 countries, making it

3420-476: A grown woman grab her breasts and speak like a baby, complaining her nipples hurt. This kind of thing will set you back". In his book David Lynch: Beautiful Dark , film critic Greg Olson posits that this time contrasted starkly with the director's childhood in the Pacific Northwest , giving the director a "bipolar, Heaven-and-Hell vision of America" which has subsequently shaped his films. Initial casting for

3610-405: A larger-than-life experience. The 1950s and early 1960s saw a Hollywood dominated by musicals, historical epics, and other films which benefited from these advances. This proved commercially viable during most of the 1950s. However, by the late 1960s, audience share was dwindling at an alarming rate. Several costly flops, including Cleopatra (1963) and Hello, Dolly! (1969) put severe strain on

3800-446: A limited pressing of 1,500 copies. The album has been seen as presaging the dark ambient music genre, and its presentation of background noise and non-musical cues has been described by Pitchfork ' s Mark Richardson as "a sound track (two words) in the literal sense". Eraserhead 's sound design has been considered one of its defining elements. Although the film features several hallmark visuals—the deformed infant and

3990-472: A loose-knit group of like-minded New York artists using shock value and humor in their Super 8 mm films and video art . Other key players in this movement included Kembra Pfahler , Casandra Stark , Beth B , Tommy Turner, Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch . Rallying around such institutions as the Film-Makers' Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives, this new generation of independents devoted themselves to

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4180-423: A man torturing two women—one again played by Coulson—with a car battery, and one of Spencer toying with a dead cat. The soundtrack to Eraserhead was released by I.R.S. Records in 1982. The two tracks included on the album feature excerpts of organ music by Fats Waller and the song " In Heaven ", written for the film by Peter Ivers . The soundtrack was re-released on August 7, 2012, by Sacred Bones Records in

4370-526: A mere $ 27.4 million domestically against a $ 45 million budget. De Laurentiis, furious that the film had been a commercial disaster, was then forced to produce any film Lynch desired. He offered Lynch only $ 6 million in order to minimize the risk if the film had failed to recoup its costs; however, the film, Blue Velvet (1986), was a resounding success, earning him another Academy Award for Best Director nod. Lynch subsequently returned to independent filmmaking, and did not work with another major studio for over

4560-432: A negative review, calling it "a sickening bad-taste exercise". The review expressed incredulity over the film's long gestation and described its finale as unwatchable. Comparing Eraserhead to Lynch's next film The Elephant Man , Tom Buckley of The New York Times wrote that while the latter was a well-made film with an accomplished cast, the former was not. Buckley called Eraserhead "murkily pretentious", and wrote that

4750-403: A nervous energy". The Film4 reviewer wrote that Eraserhead was unlike most films released to that point, save for the collaborations between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí ; however, Lynch denies having seen any of these before Eraserhead . Writing for The Village Voice , Nathan Lee praised the film's use of sound, writing "to see the film means nothing—one must also hear it". He described

4940-470: A non-white random vector (that is, a list of random variables) whose elements have a prescribed covariance matrix . Conversely, a random vector with known covariance matrix can be transformed into a white random vector by a suitable whitening transformation . White noise may be generated digitally with a digital signal processor , microprocessor , or microcontroller . Generating white noise typically entails feeding an appropriate stream of random numbers to

5130-696: A number of filmmakers responded by building their own cameras and moving their operations to Hollywood, California , where the distance from Edison's home base of New Jersey made it more difficult for the MPPC to enforce its patents. The Edison Trust was soon ended by two decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States : one in 1912, which canceled the patent on raw film, and a second in 1915, which cancelled all MPPC patents. Though these decisions succeeded at legalizing independent film, they would do little to remedy

5320-450: A number of young film makers began to experiment with transgression not as a box-office draw, but as an artistic act . Directors such as John Waters and David Lynch would make a name for themselves by the early 1970s for the bizarre and often disturbing imagery which characterized their films. When Lynch's first feature film, Eraserhead (1977), brought Lynch to the attention of producer Mel Brooks , he soon found himself in charge of

5510-573: A pencil factory to be turned into erasers . Awakened, Henry seeks out the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, but finds her with another man. Crushed, Henry returns to his room. He takes a pair of scissors and for the first time removes the child's swaddling clothes. It is revealed that the child has no skin; the bandages held its internal organs together, and they spill out after the bandages are cut. The child gasps in pain, and Henry stabs its organs with

5700-527: A planet in space. He opens his mouth and a spermatozoon -like creature emerges. The Man in the Planet, a male being working inside of the planet, moves a set of levers, and the creature swims away. In an industrial cityscape, Henry walks home with his groceries. He is stopped outside his apartment by the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, who informs him that his girlfriend, Mary, has invited him to dinner with her family. Henry leaves his groceries in his apartment, which

5890-760: A random vector that is Gaussian white noise in the weak but not in the strong sense is x = [ x 1 , x 2 ] {\displaystyle x=[x_{1},x_{2}]} where x 1 {\displaystyle x_{1}} is a normal random variable with zero mean, and x 2 {\displaystyle x_{2}} is equal to + x 1 {\displaystyle +x_{1}} or to − x 1 {\displaystyle -x_{1}} , with equal probability. These two variables are uncorrelated and individually normally distributed, but they are not jointly normally distributed and are not independent. If x {\displaystyle x}

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6080-702: A real-valued random variable . Also the covariance E ( w ( t 1 ) ⋅ w ( t 2 ) ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {E} (w(t_{1})\cdot w(t_{2}))} becomes infinite when t 1 = t 2 {\displaystyle t_{1}=t_{2}} ; and the autocorrelation function R ( t 1 , t 2 ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {R} (t_{1},t_{2})} must be defined as N δ ( t 1 − t 2 ) {\displaystyle N\delta (t_{1}-t_{2})} , where N {\displaystyle N}

6270-613: A result of the falling cost of technology to make, edit and digitally distribute films, filmmaking is more widely accessible than ever before. Full-length films are often showcased at film festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, South by Southwest Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and Palm Springs Film Festival. Award winners from these exhibitions are more likely to get picked up for distribution by major film distributors. Film festivals and screenings like these are just one of

6460-518: A run of screenings in New York and Los Angeles, Eraserhead was paired with the 1979 animated short film Asparagus , created by Suzan Pitt , for nearly two years. Eraserhead was a commercial success, grossing $ 7 million in the United States and $ 14,590 in other territories. Eraserhead was also screened as part of the 1978 BFI London Film Festival , and the 1986 Telluride Film Festival . Upon Eraserhead 's release, Variety offered

6650-501: A separate partnership with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name. Still, even with a broadening of the company, UA struggled. The coming of sound ended the careers of Pickford and Fairbanks. Chaplin, rich enough to do what he pleased, worked only occasionally. Schenck resigned in 1933 to organize a new company with Darryl F. Zanuck , Twentieth Century Pictures , which soon provided four pictures

6840-410: A similar hissing sound. In the context of phylogenetically based statistical methods , the term white noise can refer to a lack of phylogenetic pattern in comparative data. In nontechnical contexts, it is sometimes used to mean "random talk without meaningful contents". Any distribution of values is possible (although it must have zero DC component ). Even a binary signal which can only take on

7030-449: A single realization of white noise is a random shock . In some contexts, it is also required that the samples be independent and have identical probability distribution (in other words independent and identically distributed random variables are the simplest representation of white noise). In particular, if each sample has a normal distribution with zero mean, the signal is said to be additive white Gaussian noise . The samples of

7220-426: A statistical model for signals and signal sources, not to any specific signal. White noise draws its name from white light , although light that appears white generally does not have a flat power spectral density over the visible band . In discrete time , white noise is a discrete signal whose samples are regarded as a sequence of serially uncorrelated random variables with zero mean and finite variance ;

7410-564: A studio's ability to package and release their work. This table lists the companies active in late 1935 illustrates the categories commonly used to characterize the Hollywood system. The studio system quickly became so powerful that some filmmakers once again sought independence. On May 24, 1916, the Lincoln Motion Picture Company was formed, the first movie studio owned and controlled by independent filmmakers. In 1919, four of

7600-515: A vacant lot near Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles . While there, the company decided to explore new territories, traveling several miles north to Hollywood , a little village that was friendly and positive about the movie company filming there. Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood, In Old California , a Biograph melodrama about California in the 1800s, while it belonged to Mexico. Griffith stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York. During

7790-502: A waitress and donated her income, and by Lynch himself, who delivered newspapers throughout the film's principal photography. During one of the many lulls in filming, Lynch was able to produce the short film The Amputee , taking advantage of the AFI's wish to test new film stock before committing to bulk purchases. The short piece starred Coulson, who continued working with Lynch as a technician on Eraserhead . Eraserhead 's production crew

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7980-413: A white noise signal may be sequential in time, or arranged along one or more spatial dimensions. In digital image processing , the pixels of a white noise image are typically arranged in a rectangular grid, and are assumed to be independent random variables with uniform probability distribution over some interval. The concept can be defined also for signals spread over more complicated domains, such as

8170-418: A year creating and editing the film's sound effects. The soundtrack is densely layered, including as many as fifteen different sounds played simultaneously using multiple reels. Sounds were created in a variety of ways—for a scene in which a bed slowly dissolves into a pool of liquid, Lynch and Splet inserted a microphone inside a plastic bottle, floated it in a bathtub, and recorded the sound of air blown through

8360-403: A year to UA's schedule. He was replaced as president by sales manager Al Lichtman who himself resigned after only a few months. Pickford produced a few films, and at various times Goldwyn, Korda, Walt Disney , Walter Wanger , and David O. Selznick were made "producing partners" (i.e., sharing in the profits), but ownership still rested with the founders. As the years passed and the dynamics of

8550-447: Is r σ 2 {\displaystyle r\sigma ^{2}} , where r {\displaystyle r} is the width of the intersection I ∩ J {\displaystyle I\cap J} of the two intervals I , J {\displaystyle I,J} . This model is called a Gaussian white noise signal (or process). In the mathematical field known as white noise analysis ,

8740-443: Is "so consumed with surreal imagery that there are almost limitless possibilities to read personal theories into it"; the reviewer's own take on these themes were that they represented a fear of personal commitment and featured "a strong sexual undercurrent". A reviewer writing for Film4 rated Eraserhead five stars out of five, describing it as "by turns beautiful, annoying, funny, exasperating and repellent, but always bristling with

8930-441: Is a multivariate normal distribution ; the independence between the variables then implies that the distribution has spherical symmetry in n -dimensional space. Therefore, any orthogonal transformation of the vector will result in a Gaussian white random vector. In particular, under most types of discrete Fourier transform , such as FFT and Hartley , the transform W of w will be a Gaussian white noise vector, too; that is,

9120-468: Is a nonexistent radio station (static). White noise is also used to obtain the impulse response of an electrical circuit, in particular of amplifiers and other audio equipment. It is not used for testing loudspeakers as its spectrum contains too great an amount of high-frequency content. Pink noise , which differs from white noise in that it has equal energy in each octave, is used for testing transducers such as loudspeakers and microphones. White noise

9310-772: Is a random variable that is statistically independent of its entire history before t {\displaystyle t} . A weaker definition requires independence only between the values w ( t 1 ) {\displaystyle w(t_{1})} and w ( t 2 ) {\displaystyle w(t_{2})} at every pair of distinct times t 1 {\displaystyle t_{1}} and t 2 {\displaystyle t_{2}} . An even weaker definition requires only that such pairs w ( t 1 ) {\displaystyle w(t_{1})} and w ( t 2 ) {\displaystyle w(t_{2})} be uncorrelated. As in

9500-494: Is a real random variable with normal distribution, zero mean, and variance ( b − a ) σ 2 {\displaystyle (b-a)\sigma ^{2}} ; and also that the covariance E ( W I ⋅ W J ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {E} (W_{I}\cdot W_{J})} of the integrals W I {\displaystyle W_{I}} , W J {\displaystyle W_{J}}

9690-472: Is also more of a push from EU National governments to fund all aspects of the arts, including film. The European Commission for Culture has an Audiovisual sector, for example, whose role is most notably to help distribute and promote films and festivals across Europe. Additionally, the Commission organizes policymaking, research, and reporting on "media literacy" and "digital distribution." As with other media,

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9880-429: Is also true if the noise is heteroskedastic  – that is, if it has different variances for different data points. Alternatively, in the subset of regression analysis known as time series analysis there are often no explanatory variables other than the past values of the variable being modeled (the dependent variable ). In this case the noise process is often modeled as a moving average process, in which

10070-419: Is effective in improving the mood and performance of workers by masking background office noise, but decreases cognitive performance in complex card sorting tasks. Similarly, an experiment was carried out on sixty-six healthy participants to observe the benefits of using white noise in a learning environment. The experiment involved the participants identifying different images whilst having different sounds in

10260-400: Is filled with piles of dirt and dead plants. That night, Henry visits Mary's home, conversing awkwardly with her mother. At the dinner table, he is asked to carve a chicken; the bird moves and writhes on the plate and gushes blood when cut. After dinner, Henry is cornered by Mary's mother, who tries to kiss him. She tells him that Mary has had his child and that the two must marry. Mary, however,

10450-515: Is non-zero. Hypothesis testing typically assumes that the noise values are mutually uncorrelated with zero mean and have the same Gaussian probability distribution – in other words, that the noise is Gaussian white (not just white). If there is non-zero correlation between the noise values underlying different observations then the estimated model parameters are still unbiased , but estimates of their uncertainties (such as confidence intervals ) will be biased (not accurate on average). This

10640-539: Is not sure if what she bore is a child. The couple move into Henry's one-room apartment and begin caring for the child, a swaddled bundle with an inhuman, snake-like face that resembles the spermatozoon creature seen earlier. The infant refuses all food, crying incessantly and intolerably. The sound drives Mary hysterical, and she leaves Henry and the child. Henry attempts to care for the child, and he learns that it struggles to breathe and has developed painful sores on its skin. Henry begins experiencing visions, again seeing

10830-544: Is rotated by 45 degrees, its two components will still be uncorrelated, but their distribution will no longer be normal. In some situations, one may relax the definition by allowing each component of a white random vector w {\displaystyle w} to have non-zero expected value μ {\displaystyle \mu } . In image processing especially, where samples are typically restricted to positive values, one often takes μ {\displaystyle \mu } to be one half of

11020-410: Is said to have observed, "The inmates are taking over the asylum." The four partners, with advice from McAdoo (son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary of then-President Woodrow Wilson ), formed their distribution company, with Hiram Abrams as its first managing director. The original terms called for Pickford, Fairbanks, Griffith, and Chaplin to independently produce five pictures each year, but by

11210-445: Is some real constant and δ {\displaystyle \delta } is the Dirac delta function . In this approach, one usually specifies that the integral W I {\displaystyle W_{I}} of w ( t ) {\displaystyle w(t)} over an interval I = [ a , b ] {\displaystyle I=[a,b]}

11400-411: Is the variance of component w i ; and the correlation matrix must be the n by n identity matrix. If, in addition to being independent, every variable in w also has a normal distribution with zero mean and the same variance σ 2 {\displaystyle \sigma ^{2}} , w is said to be a Gaussian white noise vector. In that case, the joint distribution of w

11590-407: Is the white noise measure . White noise is commonly used in the production of electronic music , usually either directly or as an input for a filter to create other types of noise signal. It is used extensively in audio synthesis , typically to recreate percussive instruments such as cymbals or snare drums which have high noise content in their frequency domain. A simple example of white noise

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11780-775: Is the natural pairing of the tempered distribution w ( ω ) {\displaystyle w(\omega )} with the Schwartz function φ {\displaystyle \varphi } , taken scenariowise for ω ∈ Ω {\displaystyle \omega \in \Omega } , and ‖ φ ‖ 2 2 = ∫ R | φ ( x ) | 2 d x {\displaystyle \|\varphi \|_{2}^{2}=\int _{\mathbb {R} }\vert \varphi (x)\vert ^{2}\,\mathrm {d} x} . In statistics and econometrics one often assumes that an observed series of data values

11970-424: Is the sum of the values generated by a deterministic linear process , depending on certain independent (explanatory) variables , and on a series of random noise values. Then regression analysis is used to infer the parameters of the model process from the observed data, e.g. by ordinary least squares , and to test the null hypothesis that each of the parameters is zero against the alternative hypothesis that it

12160-475: Is used as the basis of some random number generators . For example, Random.org uses a system of atmospheric antennas to generate random digit patterns from sources that can be well-modeled by white noise. White noise is a common synthetic noise source used for sound masking by a tinnitus masker . White noise machines and other white noise sources are sold as privacy enhancers and sleep aids (see music and sleep ) and to mask tinnitus . The Marpac Sleep-Mate

12350-538: The de facto ban on small productions; the independent filmmakers who had fled to Southern California during the enforcement of the trust had already laid the groundwork for the studio system of classical Hollywood cinema . In early 1910, director D.W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the west coast with his acting troupe, consisting of performers Blanche Sweet , Lillian Gish , Mary Pickford , Lionel Barrymore , and others. They began filming on

12540-622: The American Civil Liberties Union . Following on the heels of Easy Rider shortly afterward was the revived United Artists' Midnight Cowboy (also 1969), which, like Easy Rider , took numerous cues from Kenneth Anger and his influences in the French New Wave. It became the first and only X rated film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Midnight Cowboy also held the distinction of featuring cameo roles by many of

12730-545: The Anthology Film Archives in 1970, which would likewise prove essential to the development and preservation of independent films, even to this day. Not all low-budget films existed as non-commercial art ventures. The success of films like Little Fugitive , which had been made with low (or sometimes non-existent ) budgets encouraged a huge boom in popularity for non-studio films. Low-budget film making promised exponentially greater returns (in terms of percentages) if

12920-590: The Coen brothers ' 1991 black comedy Barton Fink . The constant low-level noise has been perceived by James Wierzbicki in his book Music, Sound and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema as perhaps a product of Henry Spencer's imagination, and the soundtrack has been described as "ruthlessly negligent of the difference between dream and reality". The film also begins a trend within Lynch's work of relating diegetic music to dreams, as when

13110-607: The Mirisch brothers, Billy Wilder , Joseph E. Levine and others. By the late 1950s, RKO had ceased film production, and the remaining four of the big five had recognized that they did not know how to reach the youth audience. In an attempt to capture this audience, the Studios hired a host of young filmmakers (many of whom were mentored by Roger Corman ) and allowed them to make their films with relatively little studio control. Warner Brothers offered first-time producer Warren Beatty 40% of

13300-496: The Online Film Critics Society compiled a list of the 100 best directorial debuts, listing what they felt were the best first-time feature films by noted directors. Eraserhead placed second in the poll, behind Orson Welles 's 1941 Citizen Kane . Lynch collaborated with most of the cast and crew of Eraserhead again on later films. Frederick Elmes served as cinematographer on Blue Velvet , 1988's The Cowboy and

13490-461: The U.S. domestic box office revenue was from independent studios. The 1990s saw the rise and success of independent films not only through the film festival circuit but at the box office as well while established actors, such as Bruce Willis , John Travolta , and Tim Robbins , found success themselves both in independent films and Hollywood studio films. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1990 from New Line Cinema grossed over $ 100 million in

13680-594: The World War I effort. Already veterans of Hollywood, the four film stars began to talk of forming their own company to better control their own work as well as their futures. They were spurred on by the actions of established Hollywood producers and distributors, who were making moves to tighten their control over their stars' salaries and creative license. With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out before things had formalized. When he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland , head of Metro Pictures ,

13870-404: The blockbuster Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. In fact, the only two movies of the movement which can be described as uncompromisingly independent are Easy Rider at the beginning, and Peter Bogdanovich 's They All Laughed , at the end. Peter Bogdanovich bought back the rights from the studio to his 1980 film and paid for its distribution out of his own pocket, convinced that

14060-410: The n Fourier coefficients of w will be independent Gaussian variables with zero mean and the same variance σ 2 {\displaystyle \sigma ^{2}} . The power spectrum P of a random vector w can be defined as the expected value of the squared modulus of each coefficient of its Fourier transform W , that is, P i = E(| W i | ). Under that definition,

14250-597: The "prosumer" camera segment and film schools for those who are less autodidactic. Film programs in universities such as NYU in New York and USC in Los Angeles have benefited from this transitional growth. The economic side of filmmaking is also less of an obstacle than before, because the backing of a major studio is no longer needed to access necessary movie funding. Crowdfunding services like Kickstarter , Pozible , and Tubestart have helped people raise thousands of dollars; enough to fund their own, low-budget productions. As

14440-485: The $ 5 million film The Elephant Man (1980) for Paramount. Though Eraserhead was strictly an out-of-pocket, low-budget, independent film, Lynch made the transition with unprecedented grace. The film was a huge commercial success, and earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay nods for Lynch. It also established his place as a commercially viable, if somewhat dark and unconventional, Hollywood director. Seeing Lynch as

14630-423: The 1950s progressed, the new low-budget paradigm of filmmaking gained increased recognition internationally, with films such as Satyajit Ray 's critically acclaimed Apu Trilogy (1955–1959). Unlike the films made within the studio system, these new low-budget films could afford to take risks and explore new artistic territory outside the classical Hollywood narrative. Maya Deren was soon joined in New York by

14820-408: The AFI, was used for many scenes. Lynch had initially begun work on a script titled Gardenback , based on his painting of a hunched figure with vegetation growing from its back. Gardenback was a surrealist script about adultery, which featured a continually growing insect representing one man's lust for his neighbor. The script would have resulted in a roughly 45-minute-long film, which the AFI felt

15010-474: The B-grade shlock film soon fell to the level of the Z movie , a niche category of films with production values so low that they became a spectacle in their own right. The cult audiences these pictures attracted soon made them ideal candidates for midnight movie screenings revolving around audience participation and cosplay . In 1968, a young filmmaker named George A. Romero shocked audiences with Night of

15200-717: The Bochner–Minlos theorem, which goes under the name Bochner–Minlos–Sazanov theorem); analogously to the case of the multivariate normal distribution X ∼ N n ( μ , Σ ) {\displaystyle X\sim {\mathcal {N}}_{n}(\mu ,\Sigma )} , which has characteristic function the white noise w : Ω → S ′ ( R ) {\displaystyle w:\Omega \to {\mathcal {S}}'(\mathbb {R} )} must satisfy where ⟨ w , φ ⟩ {\displaystyle \langle w,\varphi \rangle }

15390-598: The Edison era of the early 1900s, many Jewish immigrants had found jobs in the U.S. film industry. Under the Edison Trust, they were able to make their mark in a brand-new business: the exhibition of films in storefront theaters called nickelodeons . Within a few years, ambitious men like Samuel Goldwyn , Carl Laemmle , Adolph Zukor , Louis B. Mayer , and the Warner Brothers (Harry, Albert, Samuel, and Jack) had switched to

15580-661: The Frenchman , and 1990's Wild at Heart . Alan Splet provided sound design for The Elephant Man , Dune , and Blue Velvet . Jack Fisk directed episodes of Lynch's 1992 television series On the Air and worked as a production designer on 1999's The Straight Story and 2001's Mulholland Drive . Coulson and Nance appeared in Twin Peaks , and made further appearances in Dune , Blue Velvet , Wild at Heart , and 1997's Lost Highway . Following

15770-618: The Hollywood movie studios to sell their theater chains and to eliminate certain anti-competitive practices. This effectively brought an end to the studio system of Hollywood's Golden Age . By 1958, many of the reasons for creating the SIMPP had been corrected and SIMPP closed its offices. The efforts of the SIMPP and the advent of inexpensive portable cameras during World War II effectively made it possible for any person in America with an interest in making films to write, produce, and direct one without

15960-518: The Lady in the Radiator sings "In Heaven" during Spencer's extended dream sequence. This is also present in "Episode 2" of Twin Peaks , in which diegetic music carries over from a character's dream to his waking thoughts; and in 1986's Blue Velvet , in which a similar focus is given to Roy Orbison 's " In Dreams ". The film has also been noted for its strong sexual themes. Opening with an image of conception,

16150-524: The Living Dead , a new kind of intense and unforgiving independent horror film. This film was released just after the abandonment of the production code, but before the adoption of the MPAA rating system . As such, it was the first and last film of its kind to enjoy a completely unrestricted screening, in which young children were able to witness Romero's new brand of highly realistic gore. This film would help to set

16340-487: The Man in the Planet struggles with his levers, which are now emitting sparks. Henry is embraced warmly by the Lady in the Radiator, as both white light and white noise crescendo before the screen turns black and silent. Writer and director David Lynch had previously studied for a career as a painter, and he had created several short films to animate his paintings. By 1970, however, he had switched his focus to film-making, and at

16530-456: The Man in the Planet, as well as a lady who inhabits his radiator and stomps more of the sperm creatures. After a sexual encounter with the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, he has another vision in which the Lady in the Radiator sings ("In Heaven"), and his head pops off his body while he is fidgeting, replaced by the baby's crying head. Henry's disembodied head falls from the sky, landing on a street and breaking open. A boy finds it and takes it to

16720-533: The Margin to the Mainstream , which charted the rise of the midnight movie phenomenon in the late 1960s and 1970s; Lynch took part in the documentary through a series of interviews. The production covers six films which are credited as creating and popularizing the genre; also included are Night of the Living Dead , El Topo , Pink Flamingos , The Harder They Come , and The Rocky Horror Picture Show . In 2010,

16910-515: The Pickford/Fairbanks Studio, but did not own a studio lot as such. Because of this, many of their films would be shot on location. Primarily acting as bankers, they offered money to independent producers. Thus UA did not have the overhead, the maintenance or the expensive production staff which ran up costs at other studios. UA went public in 1956, and as the other mainstream studios fell into decline, UA prospered, adding relationships with

17100-449: The United States . The Hollywood oligopoly replaced the Edison monopoly. Within this new system, a pecking order was soon established which left little room for any newcomers. By the mid-1930s, at the top were the five major studios, 20th Century Fox , Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , Paramount Pictures , RKO Pictures , and Warner Bros. Then came three smaller companies, Columbia Pictures , United Artists , and Universal Studios . Finally there

17290-404: The United States making it the most successful indie film in box-office history to that point. Miramax Films had a string of hits with Sex, Lies, and Videotape , My Left Foot , and Clerks , putting Miramax and New Line Cinema in the sights of big companies looking to cash in on the success of independent studios. In 1993, Disney bought Miramax for $ 60 million. Turner Broadcasting , in

17480-527: The age of 24 he accepted a scholarship at the American Film Institute 's Center for Advanced Film Studies. Lynch disliked the course and considered dropping out, but after being offered the chance to produce a script of his own devising, he changed his mind. He was given permission to use the school's entire campus for film sets; he converted the school's disused stables into a series of sets and lived there. In addition, Greystone Mansion , also owned by

17670-525: The aid of any major film studio . These circumstances soon resulted in a number of critically acclaimed and highly influential works, including Maya Deren 's Meshes of the Afternoon in 1943, Kenneth Anger's Fireworks in 1947, and Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin and Ray Abrashkin's Little Fugitive in 1953. Filmmakers such as Ken Jacobs , with little or no formal training, began to experiment with new ways of making and shooting films. Little Fugitive became

17860-502: The autocorrelation function R W ( n ) = E ⁡ [ W ( k + n ) W ( k ) ] {\displaystyle R_{W}(n)=\operatorname {E} [W(k+n)W(k)]} has a nonzero value only for n = 0 {\displaystyle n=0} , i.e. R W ( n ) = σ 2 δ ( n ) {\displaystyle R_{W}(n)=\sigma ^{2}\delta (n)} . In order to define

18050-411: The availability of new technologies has fueled the democratization of filmmaking and the growth of independent film. In the late forties and fifties, new inexpensive portable cameras made it easier for independent filmmakers to produce content without studio backing. The emergence of camcorders in the eighties broadened the pool of filmmakers experimenting with the newly available technology. More recently,

18240-557: The background. Overall the experiment showed that white noise does in fact have benefits in relation to learning. The experiments showed that white noise improved the participants' learning abilities and their recognition memory slightly. A random vector (that is, a random variable with values in R ) is said to be a white noise vector or white random vector if its components each have a probability distribution with zero mean and finite variance , and are statistically independent : that is, their joint probability distribution must be

18430-563: The basis for the film's themes. The film's tone was also shaped by Lynch's time living in a troubled neighborhood in Philadelphia . Lynch and his family spent five years living in an atmosphere of "violence, hate and filth". The area was described as a "crime-ridden poverty zone", which inspired the urban backdrop of Eraserhead . Describing this period of his life, Lynch said, "I saw so many things in Philadelphia I couldn't believe ... I saw

18620-464: The biggest supplier of raw film, Eastman Kodak . A number of filmmakers declined or were refused membership to the trust and came to be described as "independent". At the time of the formation of the MPPC, Thomas Edison owned most of the major patents relating to motion pictures, including that for raw film . The MPPC vigorously enforced its patents, constantly bringing suits and receiving injunctions against independent filmmakers. Because of this,

18810-416: The bottle. After being recorded, sounds were further augmented by alterations to their pitch, reverb and frequency. After a poorly received test screening , in which Lynch believes he had mixed the soundtrack at too high a volume, the director cut twenty minutes of footage from the film, bringing its length to 89 minutes. Among the cut footage is a scene featuring Coulson as the infant's midwife, another of

19000-433: The business changed, these "producing partners" drifted away. Goldwyn and Disney left for RKO , Wanger for Universal Pictures , Selznick and Korda for retirement . By the late 1940s, United Artists had virtually ceased to exist as either a producer or distributor. In 1941, Mary Pickford , Charles Chaplin , Walt Disney , Orson Welles , Samuel Goldwyn , David O. Selznick , Alexander Korda , and Walter Wanger —many of

19190-536: The climate of independent horror for decades to come, as films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Cannibal Holocaust (1980) continued to push the envelope. With the production code abandoned and violent and disturbing films like Romero's gaining popularity, Hollywood opted to placate the uneasy filmgoing public with the MPAA ratings system, which would place restrictions on ticket sales to young people. Unlike

19380-430: The context. For an audio signal , the relevant range is the band of audible sound frequencies (between 20 and 20,000 Hz ). Such a signal is heard by the human ear as a hissing sound, resembling the /h/ sound in a sustained aspiration. On the other hand, the sh sound /ʃ/ in ash is a colored noise because it has a formant structure. In music and acoustics , the term white noise may be used for any signal that has

19570-534: The covariance E ( w ( t 1 ) ⋅ w ( t 2 ) ) {\displaystyle \mathrm {E} (w(t_{1})\cdot w(t_{2}))} between the values at two times t 1 {\displaystyle t_{1}} and t 2 {\displaystyle t_{2}} is well-defined: it is zero if the times are distinct, and σ 2 {\displaystyle \sigma ^{2}} if they are equal. However, by this definition,

19760-569: The craft. Aspiring filmmakers can range from those simply with access to a smartphone or digital camera, to those who write "spec" scripts (to pitch to studios), actively network, and use crowdsourcing and other financing to get their films professionally produced. Oftentimes, aspiring filmmakers have other day-jobs to support themselves financially while they pitch their scripts and ideas to independent film production companies, talent agents, and wealthy investors. This recent technology-fueled renaissance has helped fuel other supporting industries such as

19950-431: The current value of the dependent variable depends on current and past values of a sequential white noise process. These two ideas are crucial in applications such as channel estimation and channel equalization in communications and audio . These concepts are also used in data compression . In particular, by a suitable linear transformation (a coloring transformation ), a white random vector can be used to produce

20140-536: The defiance of the now-establishment New Hollywood, proposing that "all film schools be blown up and all boring films never be made again." In 1978, Sterling Van Wagenen and Charles Gary Allison , with Chairperson Robert Redford , (veteran of New Hollywood and star of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ) founded the Utah/US Film Festival in an effort to attract more filmmakers to Utah and showcase what

20330-511: The director's artistic talent declined as his popularity grew, and contrasted the film with Wild at Heart —Lynch's most recent feature film at that time—saying "even the most cursory comparison of Eraserhead with Wild at Heart reveals an artistic decline so precipitous that it is hard to imagine the same person making both films". John Simon of the National Review called Eraserhead "a grossout for cultists". Contemporary reception of

20520-431: The discrete case, some authors adopt the weaker definition for white noise, and use the qualifier independent to refer to either of the stronger definitions. Others use weakly white and strongly white to distinguish between them. However, a precise definition of these concepts is not trivial, because some quantities that are finite sums in the finite discrete case must be replaced by integrals that may not converge. Indeed,

20710-606: The domineering and controlling influences that beset him. Spencer's passivity has also been seen by film critics Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc as a precursor to Lynch's 1983–92 comic strip The Angriest Dog in the World . Eraserhead premiered at the Filmex film festival in Los Angeles , on March 19, 1977. On its opening night, the film was attended by twenty-five people; twenty-four viewed it

20900-489: The features released in the United States and usually cost between $ 5 and $ 10 million to produce. Hollywood was producing these three different classes of feature films by means of three different types of producers. The superior products were the large, budget blockbusters and high-cost star vehicles marketed by the six major studio producer-distributors. Budgets on the major studios' pictures averaged $ 100 million, with approximately one-third of it spent on marketing because of

21090-420: The film a rating of five stars out of five; he highlighted the disturbing sound design of the film and described it as "an open metaphor". He wrote that Eraserhead "sets up the obsessions that would follow [Lynch] through his career", adding his belief that the film's surrealism enhanced the understanding of the director's later films. In an article for The Daily Telegraph , film-maker Marc Evans praised both

21280-521: The film as "depict[ing] human reproduction as a desolate freak show, an occupation fit only for the damned". Skal also posits a different characterization of the Lady in the Radiator, casting her as "desperately eager for an unseen audience's approval". In his book David Lynch Decoded , Mark Allyn Stewart proposes that the Lady in the Radiator is in fact Spencer's subconscious , a manifestation of his own urge to kill his child, who embraces him after he does so, as if to reassure him that he has done right. As

21470-453: The film began in 1971, and Jack Nance was quickly selected for the lead role. However, the staff at the AFI had underestimated the project's scale—they had initially green-lit Eraserhead after viewing a twenty-one page screenplay, assuming that the film industry's usual ratio of one minute of film per scripted page would reduce the film to approximately twenty minutes. This misunderstanding, coupled with Lynch's own meticulous direction, caused

21660-406: The film could have a successful run in the theaters. During this time, independent producer/director Roger Corman began a sweeping body of work that would become legendary for its frugality and grueling shooting schedule. Until his so-called "retirement" as a director in 1971 (he continued to produce films even after this date), he would produce up to seven movies a year, matching and often exceeding

21850-432: The film five stars out of five. He wrote that it was "a lot more radical and enjoyable than [Lynch's] later Hollywood efforts" and highlighted its mix of surrealist body horror and black comedy . The BBC 's Almar Haflidason awarded Eraserhead three stars out of five, describing it as "an unremarkable feat by [Lynch's] later standards". Haflidason wrote that the film was a gathering of loosely related ideas, adding that it

22040-519: The film has been highly favorable. On Rotten Tomatoes , the film holds an approval rating of 89% based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "David Lynch's surreal Eraserhead uses detailed visuals and a creepy score to create a bizarre and disturbing look into a man's fear of parenthood." On Metacritic , the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Writing for Empire magazine, Steve Beard rated

22230-503: The film then portrays Henry Spencer as a character who is terrified of, but fascinated by, sex. The recurring images of sperm-like creatures, including the child, are a constant presence during the film's sex scenes; the apparent " girl next door " appeal of the Lady in the Radiator is abandoned during her musical number as she begins to violently smash Spencer's sperm creatures and aggressively meets his gaze. In his book The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror , David J. Skal describes

22420-637: The film to remain in production for a number of years. In an extreme example of this labored schedule, one scene in the film begins with Nance's character opening a door—a full year passed before he was filmed entering the room. Nance, however, was dedicated to producing the film and retained the unorthodox hairstyle his character sported for the entirety of its gestation. Buoyed with regular donations from Lynch's childhood friend Jack Fisk and Fisk's wife Sissy Spacek , production continued for five years as Lynch kept running out of money. Additional funds were provided by Nance's wife Catherine E. Coulson , who worked as

22610-563: The film's horror aspects stemmed solely from the appearance of the deformed child rather than from its script or performances. Writing in 1984, Lloyd Rose of The Atlantic wrote that Eraserhead demonstrated that Lynch was "one of the most unalloyed surrealists ever to work in the movies". Rose described the film as being intensely personal, finding that unlike previous surrealist films, such as Luis Buñuel 's 1929 work Un Chien Andalou or 1930's L'Age d'Or , Lynch's imagery "isn't reaching out to us from his films; we're sinking into them". In

22800-510: The film's imagery evoked the paintings of Francis Bacon and the Georges Franju 1949 documentary Blood of the Beasts . Film Threat 's Phil Hall called Eraserhead Lynch's best film, believing that the director's subsequent output failed to live up to it. Hall highlighted the film's soundtrack and Nance's " Chaplinesque " physical comedy as the film's stand-out elements. Eraserhead

22990-490: The film's sound design as "an intergalactic seashell cocked to the ears of an acid-tripping gargantua". The Guardian 's Peter Bradshaw similarly lauded the film, also awarding it five stars out of five. Bradshaw considered it to be a beautiful film, describing its sound design as "industrial groaning, as if filmed inside some collapsing factory or gigantic dying organism". He compared it to Ridley Scott 's 1979 film Alien . Jason Ankeny, writing for AllMovie , gave

23180-428: The filmmaking business would slowly squeeze out the more idiosyncratic of these young filmmakers, while ensconcing the more malleable and commercially successful of them. Film critic Manohla Dargis described this era as the "halcyon age" of the decade's filmmaking that "was less revolution than business as usual, with rebel hype". She also pointed out in her New York Times article that enthusiasts insisted this era

23370-594: The first independent film to be nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at the American Academy Awards . It also received Silver Lion at Venice . Both Engel and Anger's films won acclaim overseas from the burgeoning French New Wave , with Fireworks inspiring praise and an invitation to study under him in Europe from Jean Cocteau , and François Truffaut citing Little Fugitive as an essential inspiration to his seminal work, The 400 Blows . As

23560-401: The five-per-year schedule that the executives at United Artists had once thought impossible. Like those of the avant-garde, the films of Roger Corman took advantage of the fact that unlike the studio system, independent films had never been bound by its self-imposed production code . Corman's example (and that of others like him) would help start a boom in independent B-movies in the 1960s,

23750-444: The following evening. However, Ben Barenholtz , head of distributor Libra Films, persuaded local theater Cinema Village to run the film as a midnight feature, where it continued for a year. After this, it ran for ninety-nine weeks at New York's Waverly Cinema , had a year-long midnight run at San Francisco 's Roxie Theater from 1978 to 1979, and achieved a three-year tenure at Los Angeles' Nuart Theatre between 1978 and 1981. During

23940-508: The following year, two New Hollywood directors had become sufficiently established for Coppola to be offered oversight of Paramount's The Godfather (1972) and Lucas had obtained studio funding for American Graffiti (1973) from Universal. In the mid-1970s, the major Hollywood studios continued to tap these new filmmakers for both ideas and personnel, producing films such as Paper Moon (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), all of which met with critical and commercial success. These successes by

24130-646: The game. Though the eventual breakup of the studio system and its restrictive chain-theater distribution network would leave independent movie houses eager for the kind of populist, seat-filling product of the Poverty Row studios, that same paradigm shift would also lead to the decline and ultimate disappearance of "Poverty Row" as a Hollywood phenomenon. While the kinds of films produced by Poverty Row studios only grew in popularity, they would eventually become increasingly available both from major production companies and from independent producers who no longer needed to rely on

24320-420: The greatest films [he had] ever seen", and said that it came closer to realizing his vision than even his own films. According to Giger, Lynch declined to collaborate with him on Dune because he felt Giger had "stolen his ideas". Independent film It is not unusual for well-known actors who are cast in independent features to take substantial pay cuts for a variety of reasons: if they truly believe in

24510-526: The gross on his film Bonnie and Clyde (1967) instead of a minimal fee. The movie had grossed over $ 70 million worldwide by 1973. These initial successes paved the way for the studio to relinquish almost complete control to the film school generation and began what the media dubbed " New Hollywood ." Dennis Hopper , the American actor, made his writing and directing debut with Easy Rider (1969). Along with his producer/co-star/co-writer Peter Fonda , Hopper

24700-469: The integral over any interval with positive width r {\displaystyle r} would be simply the width times the expectation: r μ {\displaystyle r\mu } . This property renders the concept inadequate as a model of white noise signals either in a physical or mathematical sense. Therefore, most authors define the signal w {\displaystyle w} indirectly by specifying random values for

24890-432: The integrals of w ( t ) {\displaystyle w(t)} and | w ( t ) | 2 {\displaystyle |w(t)|^{2}} over each interval [ a , a + r ] {\displaystyle [a,a+r]} . In this approach, however, the value of w ( t ) {\displaystyle w(t)} at an isolated time cannot be defined as

25080-487: The large release campaigns. Another class of Hollywood feature film included art films, specialty films, and other niche-market fare controlled by the conglomerates' indie subsidiaries. Budgets on these indie films averaged $ 40 million per release in the early 2000s, with $ 10 million to $ 15 million spent on marketing (MPA, 2006:12). The final class of film consisted of genre and specialty films whose release campaigns were administered by independent producer-distributors with only

25270-750: The largest film festival in the world. Other large events include the Toronto International Film Festival , Hong Kong International Film Festival , and the Panafrican Film and TV Festival of Ouagadougou . The European Union , specifically through the European Cinema and VOD Initiative (ECVI), has established programs that attempt to adapt the film industry to an increasing digital demand for film on video on demand services, outside of theatrical screenings. With this program, VOD offerings are paired with traditional movie screenings. There

25460-427: The leading figures in American silent cinema ( Mary Pickford , Charles Chaplin , Douglas Fairbanks , and D. W. Griffith ) formed United Artists. Each held a 20% stake, with the remaining 20% held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo . The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, and cowboy star William S. Hart a year earlier as they were traveling around the U.S. selling Liberty bonds to help

25650-406: The marketing of independent films is characterized by limited release , often at independent movie theaters , but they can also have major marketing campaigns and a wide release . Independent films are often screened at local, national, or international film festivals before distribution (theatrical or retail release). An independent film production can rival a mainstream film production if it has

25840-534: The maximum sample value. In that case, the Fourier coefficient W 0 {\displaystyle W_{0}} corresponding to the zero-frequency component (essentially, the average of the w i {\displaystyle w_{i}} ) will also have a non-zero expected value μ n {\displaystyle \mu {\sqrt {n}}} ; and the power spectrum P {\displaystyle P} will be flat only over

26030-466: The members of New Hollywood led each of them, in turn, to make more and more extravagant demands, both on the studio and eventually on the audience. While most members of the New Hollywood generation were, or started out as, independent filmmakers, a number of their projects were produced and released by major studios. The New Hollywood generation soon became firmly entrenched in a revived incarnation of

26220-589: The message of the film, they feel indebted to a filmmaker for a career break; their career is otherwise stalled, or they feel unable to manage a more significant commitment to a studio film; the film offers an opportunity to showcase a talent that has not gained traction in the studio system; or simply because they want to work with a particular director they admire. Examples of the latter include John Travolta and Bruce Willis taking less than their usual pay to work with Quentin Tarantino on Pulp Fiction . Generally,

26410-492: The necessary funding and distribution. In 1908, the Motion Picture Patents Company or "Edison Trust" was formed as a trust . The Trust was a cartel that held a monopoly on film production and distribution comprising all the major film companies of the time ( Edison , Biograph , Vitagraph , Essanay , Selig , Lubin , Kalem , American Star , American Pathé ), the leading distributor ( George Kleine ) and

26600-575: The non-zero frequencies. A discrete-time stochastic process W ( n ) {\displaystyle W(n)} is a generalization of a random vector with a finite number of components to infinitely many components. A discrete-time stochastic process W ( n ) {\displaystyle W(n)} is called white noise if its mean is equal to zero for all n {\displaystyle n} , i.e. E ⁡ [ W ( n ) ] = 0 {\displaystyle \operatorname {E} [W(n)]=0} and if

26790-519: The notion of white noise in the theory of continuous-time signals, one must replace the concept of a random vector by a continuous-time random signal; that is, a random process that generates a function w {\displaystyle w} of a real-valued parameter t {\displaystyle t} . Such a process is said to be white noise in the strongest sense if the value w ( t ) {\displaystyle w(t)} for any time t {\displaystyle t}

26980-536: The old studios from financial ruin by providing them with a new formula for success. Indeed, it was during this period that the very definition of an independent film became blurred. Though Midnight Cowboy was financed by United Artists, the company was certainly a studio. Likewise, Zoetrope was another "independent studio" which worked within the system to make a space for independent directors who needed funding. George Lucas would leave Zoetrope in 1971 to create his own independent studio, Lucasfilm , which would produce

27170-466: The options in which movies can be independently produced/released. White noise In signal processing , white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies , giving it a constant power spectral density . The term is used with this or similar meanings in many scientific and technical disciplines, including physics , acoustical engineering , telecommunications , and statistical forecasting . White noise refers to

27360-628: The picture was better than what the studio believed — he eventually went bankrupt because of this. In retrospect, it can be seen that Steven Spielberg 's Jaws (1975) and George Lucas 's Star Wars (1977) marked the beginning of the end for the New Hollywood. With their unprecedented box-office successes, these movies jump-started Hollywood's blockbuster mentality, giving studios a new paradigm as to how to make money in this changing commercial landscape. The focus on high-concept premises, with greater concentration on tie-in merchandise (such as toys), spin-offs into other media (such as soundtracks), and

27550-431: The potential of independent film could be. At the time, the main focus of the event was to present a series of retrospective films and filmmaker panel discussions; however it also included a small program of new independent films. The jury of the 1978 festival was headed by Gary Allison , and included Verna Fields , Linwood Gale Dunn , Katherine Ross , Charles E. Sellier Jr. , Mark Rydell , and Anthea Sylbert . In 1981,

27740-485: The principal aim of which was to bring in the youth market which the major studios had lost touch with. By promising sex , wanton violence , drug use , and nudity , these films hoped to draw audiences to independent theaters by offering to show them what the major studios could not. Horror and science fiction films experienced a period of tremendous growth during this time. As these tiny producers, theaters, and distributors continued to attempt to undercut one another,

27930-538: The probability distribution with respect to the value, in this context the probability of the signal falling within any particular range of amplitudes, while the term 'white' refers to the way the signal power is distributed (i.e., independently) over time or among frequencies. One form of white noise is the generalized mean-square derivative of the Wiener process or Brownian motion . A generalization to random elements on infinite dimensional spaces, such as random fields ,

28120-433: The product of the distributions of the individual components. A necessary (but, in general, not sufficient ) condition for statistical independence of two variables is that they be statistically uncorrelated ; that is, their covariance is zero. Therefore, the covariance matrix R of the components of a white noise vector w with n elements must be an n by n diagonal matrix , where each diagonal element R ii

28310-638: The production code, this rating system posed a threat to independent films in that it would affect the number of tickets they could sell and cut into the grindhouse theaters' share of the youth market. This change would further widen the divide between commercial and non-commercial films. However, having a film audience-classified is strictly voluntary for independents and there is no legal impediment to releasing movies on an unrated basis. However, unrated movies face obstacles in marketing because media outlets, such as TV channels, newspapers and websites, often place their own restrictions on movies that do not come with

28500-434: The production side of the business. After hearing about Biograph's success in Hollywood, in 1913 many such would-be movie-makers headed west to avoid the fees imposed by Edison. Soon they were the heads of a new kind of enterprise: the movie studio . By establishing a new system of production, distribution, and exhibition which was independent of The Edison Trust in New York, these studios opened up new horizons for cinema in

28690-575: The production, distribution, and exhibition of films. In 1942, the SIMPP filed an antitrust suit against Paramount's United Detroit Theatres. The complaint accused Paramount of conspiracy to control first-run and subsequent-run theaters in Detroit. It was the first antitrust suit brought by producers against exhibitors alleging monopoly and restraint of trade. In 1948, the United States Supreme Court Paramount Decision ordered

28880-424: The prop may have been constructed from a skinned rabbit or a lamb fetus. The child has been seen as a precursor to elements of other Lynch films, such as John Merrick 's make-up in 1980's The Elephant Man and the sandworms of 1984's Dune . During production, Lynch began experimenting with a technique of recording dialogue that had been spoken phonetically backwards and reversing the resulting audio. Although

29070-411: The release of Eraserhead , Lynch attempted to find funding for his next project, Ronnie Rocket , a film "about electricity and a three-foot guy with red hair". Lynch met film producer Stuart Cornfeld during this time. Cornfeld had enjoyed Eraserhead and was interested in producing Ronnie Rocket ; he worked for Mel Brooks and Brooksfilms at the time, and when the two realized that Ronnie Rocket

29260-461: The same people who were members of United Artists—founded the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers . Later members included William Cagney , Sol Lesser , and Hal Roach . The Society aimed to preserve the rights of independent producers in an industry overwhelmingly controlled by the studio system. SIMPP fought to end monopolistic practices by the five major Hollywood studios which controlled

29450-551: The same time that the maverick film students of the American New Wave were developing the skills they would use to take over Hollywood, many of their peers had begun to develop their style of filmmaking in a different direction. Influenced by foreign and art house directors such as Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini , exploitation shockers (i.e. Joseph P. Mawra , Michael Findlay , and Henri Pachard ) and avant-garde cinema, ( Kenneth Anger , Maya Deren and Bruce Conner )

29640-545: The same year that United Artists, bought out by MGM after the financial failure of Michael Cimino 's Heaven's Gate (1980), ceased to exist as a venue for independent filmmakers, Sterling Van Wagenen left the film festival to help found the Sundance Institute with Robert Redford. In 1985, the now well-established Sundance Institute, headed by Sterling Van Wagenen, took over management of the US Film Festival, which

29830-400: The scissors. The wounds gush a thick liquid, covering the child. The power in the room overloads, causing the lights to flicker; as they flick on and off the child grows to huge proportions. As the lights burn out completely, the child's head is replaced by the planet seen at the beginning. Henry appears amidst a billowing cloud of eraser shavings. The side of the planet bursts apart, and inside,

30020-483: The scripts were based on studio pitches and subsequently paid for by the studios, the production financing was from the studio, and the marketing and distribution of the films were designed and controlled by the studio's advertising agency. Though Coppola made considerable efforts to resist the influence of the studios, opting to finance his risky 1979 film Apocalypse Now himself rather than compromise with skeptical studio executives, he, and filmmakers like him, had saved

30210-425: The set of all possible instances of a signal w {\displaystyle w} is no longer a finite-dimensional space R n {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{n}} , but an infinite-dimensional function space . Moreover, by any definition a white noise signal w {\displaystyle w} would have to be essentially discontinuous at every point; therefore even

30400-473: The simplest operations on w {\displaystyle w} , like integration over a finite interval, require advanced mathematical machinery. Some authors require each value w ( t ) {\displaystyle w(t)} to be a real-valued random variable with expectation μ {\displaystyle \mu } and some finite variance σ 2 {\displaystyle \sigma ^{2}} . Then

30590-434: The sound design and Lynch's ability "to make the ordinary seem so odd", considering the film an inspiration for his own work. A review of the film in the same newspaper compared Eraserhead to the works of Irish playwright Samuel Beckett , describing it as a chaotic parody of family life. Manohla Dargis , writing for The New York Times , called the film "less a straight story than a surrealistic assemblage". Dargis wrote that

30780-426: The sprawling industrial setting—these are matched by their accompanying sounds, as the "incessant mewling" and "evocative aural landscape" are paired with these respectively. The film features several constant industrial sounds, providing low-level background noise in every scene. This fosters a "threatening" and "unnerving" atmosphere, which has been imitated in works such as David Fincher 's 1995 thriller Seven and

30970-466: The story of a man (Nance) who is left to care for his grossly deformed child in a desolate industrial landscape. Eraserhead was produced with the assistance of the American Film Institute (AFI) during Lynch's time studying there. It nonetheless spent several years in principal photography because of funding difficulties; donations from Fisk and his wife Sissy Spacek as well as Nance's wife and crew member Catherine Coulson kept production afloat. It

31160-409: The studio system, which financed the development, production and distribution of their films. Very few of these filmmakers ever independently financed or independently released a film of their own, or ever worked on an independently financed production during the height of the generation's influence. Seemingly independent films such as Taxi Driver , The Last Picture Show and others were studio films:

31350-411: The studios. Meanwhile, in 1951, lawyers-turned-producers Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin had made a deal with the remaining stockholders of United Artists which would allow them to make an attempt to revive the company and, if the attempt was successful, buy it after five years. The attempt was a success, and in 1955 United Artists became the first "studio" without an actual studio. UA leased space at

31540-408: The switch from film to digital cameras, inexpensive non-linear editing and the move to distribution via the internet have led to more people being able to make and exhibit movies of their own, including young people and individuals from marginalized communities. These people may have little to no formal technical or academic training, but instead are autodidactic filmmakers, using online sources to learn

31730-467: The technique was not used in the film, Lynch returned to it for " Episode 2 ", the third episode of his 1990 television series Twin Peaks . Lynch also began his interest in transcendental meditation during the film's production, adopting a vegetarian diet and giving up smoking and alcohol. Lynch worked with Alan Splet to design the film's sound. The pair arranged and fabricated soundproof blanketing to insulate their studio, where they spent almost

31920-407: The time the company got underway in 1920–1921, feature films were becoming more expensive and more polished, and running times had settled at around ninety minutes (or eight reels). It was believed that no one, no matter how popular, could produce and star in five quality feature films a year. By 1924, Griffith had dropped out and the company was facing a crisis: either bring in others to help support

32110-609: The top Warhol superstars , who had already become symbols of the militantly anti-Hollywood climate of NYC's independent film community. Within a month, another young Corman trainee, Francis Ford Coppola , made his debut in Spain at the Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival with The Rain People (1969), a film he had produced through his own company, American Zoetrope . Though The Rain People

32300-444: The use of sequels (which had been made more respectable by Coppola's The Godfather Part II ), all showed the studios how to make money in the new environment. On realizing how much money could potentially be made in films, major corporations started buying up the remaining Hollywood studios, saving them from the oblivion which befell RKO in the 50s. Eventually, even RKO was revived, the corporate mentality these companies brought to

32490-427: The values 1 or -1 will be white if the sequence is statistically uncorrelated. Noise having a continuous distribution, such as a normal distribution , can of course be white. It is often incorrectly assumed that Gaussian noise (i.e., noise with a Gaussian amplitude distribution – see normal distribution ) necessarily refers to white noise, yet neither property implies the other. Gaussianity refers to

32680-532: The verse was from the Old Testament or the New Testament . In 2007, Lynch said "Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film." The script is also thought to have been inspired by Lynch's fear of fatherhood; his daughter Jennifer had been born with "severely clubbed feet ", requiring extensive corrective surgery as a child. Jennifer has said that her own unexpected conception and birth defects were

32870-456: The vicinity of the receiving antenna causing interference, or even atmospheric events such as solar flares and especially lightning. The effects of white noise upon cognitive function are mixed. Recently, a small study found that white noise background stimulation improves cognitive functioning among secondary students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), while decreasing performance of non-ADHD students. Other work indicates it

33060-447: The weaker condition statistically uncorrelated is used in the definition of white noise, instead of statistically independent. However, some of the commonly expected properties of white noise (such as flat power spectrum) may not hold for this weaker version. Under this assumption, the stricter version can be referred to explicitly as independent white noise vector. Other authors use strongly white and weakly white instead. An example of

33250-401: Was " Poverty Row ", a catch-all term used to encompass any other smaller studio that managed to fight their way up into the increasingly exclusive movie business. While the small studios that made up Poverty Row could be characterized as existing "independently" of any major studio, they utilized the same kind of vertically and horizontally integrated systems of business as the larger players in

33440-636: Was "when American movies grew up (or at least starred underdressed actresses); when directors did what they wanted (or at least were transformed into brands); when creativity ruled (or at least ran gloriously amok, albeit often on the studio's dime)." During the 1970s, shifts in thematic depictions of sexuality and violence occurred in American cinema, prominently featuring heightened depictions of realistic sex and violence. Directors who wished to reach mainstream audiences of Old Hollywood quickly learned to stylize these themes to make their films appealing and attractive rather than repulsive or obscene. However, at

33630-522: Was a plan in part to take over the independent film industry and at the same time start "independent" studios of their own. The following are all "indie" studios owned by conglomerate Hollywood: By the early 2000s, Hollywood was producing three different classes of films: 1) big-budget blockbusters , 2) art films , specialty films and niche-market films produced by the conglomerate-owned "indies" and 3) genre and specialty films coming from true indie studios and producers. The third category comprised over half

33820-452: Was blindfolded by Lynch to avoid revealing the prop's nature, and he has refused to discuss the effects in subsequent interviews. The prop—which Nance nicknamed "Spike"—featured several working parts; its neck, eyes and mouth were capable of independent operation. Lynch has offered cryptic comments on the prop, at times stating that "it was born nearby" or "maybe it was found". It has been speculated by The Guardian 's John Patterson that

34010-473: Was experiencing financial difficulties. Gary Beer and Sterling Van Wagenen spearheaded production of the inaugural Sundance Film Festival which included Program Director Tony Safford and Administrative Director Jenny Walz Selby. In 1991, the festival was officially renamed the Sundance Film Festival, after Redford's famous role as The Sundance Kid . Through this festival the Independent Cinema movement

34200-491: Was his favorite film. Eraserhead also served as an influence on Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining ; Kubrick reportedly screened the film for the cast and crew to "put them in the mood" that he wanted the film to achieve. Eraserhead is also credited with influencing the 1989 Japanese cyberpunk film Tetsuo: The Iron Man , the experimental 1989 horror film Begotten , and Darren Aronofsky 's 1998 directorial debut Pi . Swiss artist H. R. Giger cited Eraserhead as "one of

34390-399: Was influenced by his reading as a film student; Franz Kafka 's 1915 novella The Metamorphosis and Nikolai Gogol 's 1836 short story " The Nose " were strong influences on the screenplay. Lynch also confirmed in an interview with Metro Silicon Valley that the film "came together" when he opened up a Bible , read one verse from it, and shut it; in retrospect, Lynch could not remember if

34580-645: Was largely overlooked by American audiences, Zoetrope would become a powerful force in New Hollywood. Through Zoetrope, Coppola formed a distribution agreement with studio giant Warner Bros., which he would exploit to achieve wide releases for his films without making himself subject to their control. These three films provided the major Hollywood studios with both an example to follow and a new crop of talent to draw from. Zoetrope co-founder George Lucas made his feature film debut with THX 1138 (1971), also released by Zoetrope through their deal with Warner Bros., announcing himself as another major talent of New Hollywood. By

34770-558: Was launched. Such notable figures as Kevin Smith , Robert Rodriguez , Quentin Tarantino , David O. Russell , Paul Thomas Anderson , Steven Soderbergh , James Wan , Hal Hartley , Joel and Ethan Coen and Jim Jarmusch garnered resounding critical acclaim and unprecedented box office sales. The significance of the Sundance Film Festival is documented in the work of Professor Emanuel Levy Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film, (NYU Press, 1999; 2001). In 2005, about 15% of

34960-529: Was released on VHS on August 7, 1982, by Columbia Pictures . The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by Umbrella Entertainment in Australia; the former was released on August 1, 2009, and the latter on May 9, 2012. The Umbrella Entertainment releases include an 85-minute feature on the making of the film. Other home media releases of the film include DVD releases by Universal Pictures in 2001, Subversive Entertainment in 2006, Scanbox Entertainment in 2008, and

35150-408: Was responsible for one of the first completely independent films of New Hollywood. Easy Rider debuted at Cannes and garnered the "First Film Award" ( French : Prix de la premiere oeuvre ) after which it received two Oscar nominations, one for best original screenplay and one for Corman-alum Jack Nicholson 's breakthrough performance in the supporting role of George Hanson, an alcoholic lawyer for

35340-584: Was shot on several locations owned by the AFI in California, Greystone Mansion , and a set of disused stables in which Lynch lived. Lynch and sound designer Alan Splet spent a year working on the film's audio after their studio was soundproofed. The soundtrack features organ music by Fats Waller and includes the song " In Heaven ", written and performed for the film by Peter Ivers , with lyrics by Lynch. Initially opening to small audiences and little interest, Eraserhead gained popularity over several long runs as

35530-507: Was the first domestic use white noise machine built in 1962 by traveling salesman Jim Buckwalter. Alternatively, the use of an AM radio tuned to unused frequencies ("static") is a simpler and more cost-effective source of white noise. However, white noise generated from a common commercial radio receiver tuned to an unused frequency is extremely vulnerable to being contaminated with spurious signals, such as adjacent radio stations, harmonics from non-adjacent radio stations, electrical equipment in

35720-415: Was too long for such a figurative, nonlinear script. In its place, Lynch presented Eraserhead , which he had developed based on a daydream of a man's head being taken to a pencil factory by a small boy. Several board members at the AFI were still opposed to producing such a surrealist work, but they acquiesced when Dean Frank Daniel threatened to resign if it were to be vetoed. Lynch's script for Eraserhead

35910-405: Was unlikely to find sufficient financing, Lynch asked to see some already-written scripts to consider for his next project. Cornfeld found four scripts that he felt would interest Lynch; on hearing the title of The Elephant Man , the director decided to make it his second film. While working on The Elephant Man , Lynch met American director Stanley Kubrick , who revealed to Lynch that Eraserhead

36100-417: Was very small, composed of Lynch; sound designer Alan Splet ; cinematographer Herb Cardwell, who left the production for financial reasons and was replaced with Frederick Elmes ; production manager and prop technician Doreen Small; and Coulson, who worked in a variety of roles. The physical effects used to create the deformed child have been kept secret. The projectionist who worked on the film's dailies

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