New Impact 1 Tests

4 The President is a very ………… man. He has
a lot of power.
5 My mother can tell you anything you want to know about the Internet. She’s very ………… .
Writing
8 Choose one of the topics and write an essay of about 100 words. (6 marks)
1 ‘Teenagers who commit serious crimes should spend time in prison.’ Do you agree?
2 Write a description of someone you would like to know better. You could choose someone in your everyday life, or a famous person. Don’t forget to explain the reasons why you would like to get to know this person better.
Total: 45 marks

5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Marilyn lives! Last month, in a small cinema in London’s West End, Marilyn Monroe made her first film appearance in more than thirty years – a computer-generated Marilyn, that is. Thanks to a team of computer scientists and special effects experts, the star briefly appeared on screen again. Many people think that computer-generated actors – or ‘cyber stars’ – are a bad idea. Some cinema-goers worry that they will look like characters from a computer game. However, cyber stars are far more sophisticated. On film, you can’t tell the difference between virtual actors and the real thing. Remember Titanic? There were probably more cyber stars than real actors in the movie. And in Mission Impossible, a virtual Tom Cruise performed stunts which the real Tom Cruise didn’t want to attempt. Cyber stars may sound like a director’s dream, but there is one slight problem – the cost. It costs more than £600,000 for a single minute of film, a price only the biggest studios can afford to pay. But despite the cost, film experts think studios will use cyber stars more and more, especially as extra actors. Real extras get wet when it rains, have to be fed, and are paid to come back if the filming goes wrong; cyber stars will eventually be cheaper and less trouble to use. Bad news for extras, then! But there’s some good news for top performers – according to computer scientists, cyber stars won’t be able to play starring roles for a long time. This is because small mistakes in their appearance and movement are obvious in close-up filming. ‘Cyber stars are useful in crowd scenes,’ explains Mark Spielmann, a Hollywood director, ‘but Hugh Grant will still be the star in romantic comedies in the near future.’