CHAPTER 3 LOOKING AT MOVIES

Horror films are often characterized by a protagonist who _____________.

saves a community that rejects her. In horror films, the protagonist is often a loner, someone socially reviled who must save the community that rejects her (p. 97).

"Storytelling is storytelling no matter what your medium is. And the language of film is also the same. You're still using close ups and medium shots and long shots. You're still trying to introduce the audience to a character and get them to care." What is director Brad Bird referring to in this quote?

Animation. Brad Bird stresses that process is the only difference between animation and filmmaking that relies on conventional photography (pp. 105-6).

Which of the following persuasive documentaries chronicles the history of the U.S. prison and justice system as a systemized form of slavery?

Ava DuVernay's 2016 documentary, 13th (named after the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery) uses expert interviews, archival footage, and photographs, animation, and graphics to explain the history of the U.S. prison and justice system and to make a persuasive argument that laws and policies since the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified have systematically perpetuated a different, but still devastating, form of slavery in the United States (p. 72).

The story formula for this type of movie usually involves the origin of the protagonist's powers and/or high-stakes struggle to defeat a villainous attempt to destroy a city, country, or universe.

superhero movies. These are the elements of the story formula for superhero movies (p. 105).

The Lego Movie (2014) is an example of this, a term applied to a work of art that imitates or appropriates recognizable stylistic elements from previous work or works.

A pastiche is a work of art that imitates or appropriates recognizable stylistic elements from a previous work or works. To understand the concept, think of a pastiche as a collage in which pieces of preexisting drawings and paintings are snipped out and arranged on a new canvas into a cohesive assembly (p. 109).

What are the three basic types of animation?

Among the countless possible types and combinations of animation, three basic types are used widely today: hand-drawn (also known as traditional or cel animation), stop-motion animation, and computer animation (also known as 3-D animation) (p. 106).

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) was the work of which director, considered to be the first major American experimental filmmaker?

Concerned with the manipulation of space and time, which after all is the essence of filmmaking, Maya Deren experimented in Meshes of the Afternoon with defying continuity, erasing the line between dream and reality (p. 78).

Documentaries that explore - and sometimes critique - the documentary form itself are known as _____________ documentaries.

In a reflexive documentary, the documentary production itself becomes part of the experience in ways that may challenge viewer expectations of nonfiction filmmaking conventions (p. 73).

Which of the following distinguishes narrative films from other kinds of movies?

Narrative films are directed toward fiction. Documentary and experimental films also tell stories. Narrative films are distinguished from other kinds of films in that they are works of fiction or fictionalized accounts of actual events (pp. 64-65).

The three major types of movies are _____________.

Narrative, experimental, and documentary are the three major types of movies (p. 64). The other choices include a combination of types, techniques, and genres.

Genre refers to the categorization of narrative films by the stories they tell and the ways they tell them. Which of the following statements is NOT true of genre?

The conventions of genre films are stable and do not evolve. Genres can change over time to meet the expectations of a changing society (pp. 82-83).

Which of the following genres was not born out of any specific political or cultural moment or preexisting literary genre?

Though not born out of any specific political or cultural context, musical performance was already a well-established entertainment long before the invention of a movie camera. The long-standing traditions of religious pageants, opera, operetta, and ballet all present narrative within a musical context as do musical comedies that were popular on British and American stages throughout much of the nineteenth century (pp. 100-1).

Nanook of the North (1922), which presents people and places in a straightforward manner, is an example of _____________.

a factual documentary. A factual documentary presents people, places, or processes in a straightforward manner (pp. 69-70).

The founding purpose of the persuasive documentary was to _____________.

address social injustice. Persuasive films were originally called documentary films until the terms evolved to refer to all nonfiction films. The founding purpose of persuasive documentaries was to address social injustice, but today any documentary concerned with presenting a particular perspective on social issues or with corporate and governmental injustice of any kind could be considered persuasive. (p. 70)

Documentary filmmaking, which uses actual people, places, and events as source material, is described by John Grierson as _____________.

creative treatment of actuality. John Grierson originally coined the term documentary in 1926 to delineate cinema that observed life. Sometime after he started making documentaries himself, Grierson described the approach as the "creative treatment of actuality" (p. 69).

Which of the following describes the distinct visual style of film noir?

deep shadows; nighttime exterior scenes; elements composed diagonally in the frame. These are three visual qualities common to most film noir movies (p. 92).

Gangster films are characterized by _____________ and _____________.

exploring the American dream; an antihero. These are two common characteristics of gangster films (pp. 88-90).

Hybrid films illustrate the _____________.

flexibility of film form by blurring boundaries of film categorization

Experimental films frequently reflect the creative vision of a single artist. These films _____________.

invite individual interpretation. Although experimental films are often made by a single artist, the form of these films invites various interpretations (p. 75).

An observational documentary generally does which of the following?

limits the use of voice-over narration; eliminates as many signs of mediation as possible. Observational documentaries seek to immerse the viewer in the middle of the situation or story by relying entirely on b-roll and eliminating as many other signs of mediation as possible. (p. 72).