Chapter 3 Looking at movies

persuasive films

A documentary film concerned with presenting a particular perspective on social issues, or with corporate and governmental injustice.

propaganda films

A documentary film that systematically disseminates deceptive or distorted information.

factual films

A documentary film that, usually, presents people, places, or processes in a straightforward way meant to entertain and instruct without unduly influencing audiences.

stream of consciousness

A literary style that gained prominence in the 1920s in the hands of such writers as Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Dorothy Richardson and that attempted to capture the unedited flow of experience through the mind.

storyboard

A scene-by-scene (sometimes shot-by- shot) breakdown that combines sketches or photographs of how each shot is to look and written descriptions of the other elements that are to go with each shot, including dialogue, sound, and music.

rough draft screenplay

Also known as scenario. The next step after a treatment, the rough-draft screenplay results from discussions, development, and transformation of an outline in sessions known as story conferences.

treatment / synopsis

Also known as synopsis. An outline of the action that briefly describes the essential ideas and structure for a film.

direct cinema

An approach to documentary film making that employs an unobtrusive style in an attempt to give viewers as truthful and "direct" an experience of events as possible.

digital animation

Animation that employs computer software to create the images used in the animation process (as opposed to analog techniques that rely on stop-motion photography, hand-drawn cels, etc.).

story conferences

One of any number of sessions during which the treatment is discussed, developed, and transformed from an outline into a rough-draft screenplay.

genre

The categorization of narrative films by form, content, or both. Examples of genres are musical, comedy, biography, Western, and so on.

generic transformation

The process by which a particular genre is adapted to meet the expectations of a changing society.

scenario

aka rough-draft screenplay. The next step after a treatment, the rough-draft screenplay results from discussions, development, and transformation of an outline in sessions known as story conferences.