RTF 317 Midterm Review

The Components of Mise en Scene (Bordwell & Thompson)

-- Refers to arrangement within a shot. Composition of the frame. --There are FOUR elements to mise en scene: Setting --what location has been chosen, where action has been taking place), --Sets may be real or constructed. They can overwhelm actors, shape the story, and emphasize authenticity. Lighting -- Cinematographers are in charge of light, director of photography), --Lighting shows us the action, creates the overall composition, guides our attention, and articulates tension. --Four aspects of lighting: quality, direction, source, color --High-key lighting aims for low contrast, while low-key lighting aims for higher contrast. o Costume and makeup, --Costumes can play a causal role or they can help with characterization. --EX: Grease, Ace Ventura o Staging and performance --Performance may be naturalists or anti- naturalistic. Naturalist performance aims for realistic, natural behavior. Anti-naturalist is exaggerated, heightened, unrealistic. --EX: Robin Williams as Genie is anti-naturalist, Meryl Streep makes us believe she's every character she portrays.

Agency and Immersion (Murray)

--"A stirring narrative in any medium can be experienced as a virtual reality because our brains are programmed to tune into stories with an intensity that can obliterate the world around us." (p. 98, my emphasis) -Losing yourself in the story -Being trapped in the narrative -Keeping audience challenged, but not shut out --Immersion as swimming in "the new environment [a participatory medium] makes possible." (p. 99) -Entering into a space where you want to be --The function of the avatar. "When we enter the enchanted world as our actual selves, we risk draining of it of its delicious otherness." (p. 101) -Being who you want to be in virtual world, not yourself --We aim to do more than travel through the world; we wish to act in it, and in doing so, "we actively create belief." (p. 110) -Believing that you are the character you're playing --Participation maintains or attention and "length[s] the immersive experience." (p. 112) --"Agency is the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices." (p. 126) -To what extent do players have the ability to play as they wish? --Games mimic our relationship to the world. The most satisfying puzzles - and therefore games - apply real-world thinking to virtual environments. (pp. 143, 139) --Games should avail themselves to logic. The information we need to make the decision is somehow available to us. This defines good design versus bad design. (p. 141) --One may find pleasure in spatial navigation through orientation, mapping, and admiration. -Orientation: figuring out where you are in the world, putting yourself in the best position -Mapping: how the entire space works -Admiration: how the space pleases the player, "this is cool!" --The maze falters to please by virtue of its singular outcome, while the rhizome allows endless possibilities while frustrating us with its indeterminacy. --Journey games allow us to solve problems and navigate the world. (p. 139) --The interactor may author her performance ("play"), but she is not the originating author. Therefore, interactors have agency, but no rightful claim to authorship. (p. 153) --Procedural authorship means writing the rules by which the texts appear as well as writing the texts themselves. [...] One creates not just scenes, but narrative possibilities. (p. 153)

Serial vs. Series Storytelling (Butler)

--A series is episodic (EX: I Love Lucy, Seinfeld, Gilligan's Island) --A serial is ongoing (EX: Charles Dickens' Books, All My Children) --Butler identifies three distinct modes for television narrative: theatrical film, television series, television serials --Qualities of Series Storytelling (EX: Rick and Morty) -Self-contained plots (coming back to where it started) -Multiple protagonists (EX: How I Met Your Mother, Seinfeld - one may get a bigger arc on an episode) -Brief exposition (getting to conflict quick) -Vague backstories (EX: Friends - no deep exploration into a character's life story) -Consistent characters and locations -Recurring narrative problematic -Disrupted cause-effect chain (commercials) -Commercials at climax -No final resolution -Return to original stasis --Qualities of Serial Storytelling (EX: Game of Thrones) -Requires connections between episodes -Large cast of characters -Intersecting storylines of equal importance -Being in medias res (in the middle of the action) -Redundant narrative information -Multiple narrative enigmas -climaxes/resolutions lead to new enigmas -No final resolution --Both Series and Serial EX: Arrested Development

Genres of Order and Genres of Integration (Schatz)

--Genres of Order -Western, gangster and detective -Individual hero, often male dominated -Contested space -Violent, external conflict -Elimination as resolution -Mediation, redemption -Macho code -Isolated self-reliance -Utopia-as-promise --Genres of Integration -Musical, screwball comedy and family melodrama (defined by the music) -Couple or collective heroes, often female dominated -Civilized space -Emotional, internal conflict -Embrace as resolution -Integration, domestication -Maternal code -Community cooperation -Utopia-as-reality

Lighting (Bordwell & Thompson)

--High Key vs. Low Key -High key lighting: is bright and even, with little to no shadows. It is often used in comedies and musicals. -Low key lighting: uses diffused shadows and pools of lights. Such as style is found in mysteries, thrillers, and gangster films. -High-key lighting aims for low contrast, while low-key lighting aims for higher contrast. --Three-point Lighting -Key light: This is the primary light, positioned behind the interviewer's shoulder opposite the camera, to illuminate the subject's face. -Back/hair light: This illuminates the space behind the subject's head so he or she stands out from the background. -Side/fill light: This fills in the shadows created by the key light so the light is even across the subject's face --Lighting is also important to understanding film. --High contrast lighting: has harsh shafts of light and bold streaks of blackness. Such a style is found in tragedies and melodramas.

Art-Cinema Narration (Bordwell-in lecture, not reading!)

--Loose causality --Fragmented narrative --Episodic --"Real life" structures the fabula --Character study-character-driven, not plot-driven --Inconsistent characterization --Passive protagonist-no goal, unclear goal --Existential crisis-character faces a boundary situation --Representation of dreams, fantasies, memories, hallucinations --Subjective reality-perceived rather than unmediated --Self-conscious angles, cutting, camera movement, lighting, soundtrack --Role of the author --Truth is relative-truths, not Truth

Games as Narratives (Jenkins)

--Ludology calls for a focus on mechanics, gameplay --Narratology considers (video) games a storytelling medium in the same lineage as film and television --Hypertext: a design or organizational method focused on establishing connections or "links" between like things --Interactivity: a program's ability to respond to a user's input --Mechanics: the rules of the game; what the code of the game allows or affords the player --Open-world game: a description of a game world or spatial design affording "free roam" and less restrictions on play --Sandbox game: a description of game mechanics, sometimes used instead of open-world, referring to the player's ability to create their own play, fewer restrictions and determinants. --Open world vs. Sandbox: open-world allows free realm, EX: Grand Theft Auto, Skyrim; sandbox is more about what you can do IN that space, EX: Minecraft, Sims; A game can be BOTH, EX: Grand Theft Auto. --Jenkins finds shortcomings to both ludology and narratology as approaches to studying games and game design, and suggests video games as a medium of spatial and environmental storytelling. --Evocative spaces - familiar spaces where we make our stories and play our games, EX: Star Wars --Enacting stories - games wherein the space instructs the play on how to play and tells the story, EX: Journey, Legends of Zelda --Embedded narratives - the story the game tells. Cutscenes, dialogue, placement, and world building. These narratives can be hidden, making the player seek them out. Anything the developers included and put into a story, EX: World of Pokemon, Dark Souls. --Emergent narratives - the story the player tells. Any additional narrative qualities, not explicitly part of the code or "hard-wiring" of the game. --Embedded Narrative = Creator --Emergent Narrative = Player

The Critique of Contemporary Storytelling (Newman & Levine)

--Newman and Levine are cultural studies scholars. They are interested in how power, agency, and ideology manifest itself through popular culture. A central question for such scholars is, "How does culture reinforce and perpetuate the status quo?" --Newman and Levine's project explores the rhetorical and discursive strategies by which television became legitimate. -"Golden age" discourse -Showrunner-as-auteur -Adapting cinematic aesthetics and techniques --Contemporary television is dominated by prime-time serials --How is the value of television related to the gendering of its programming? (HBO) --Though prime-time serials are closely connected to the soap opera in how the stories unfold, both daytime and primetime varieties have been culturally devalued. --Despite their similarities, prime-time serials are appreciated on their distinction from soap operas. -The essential ending - there needs to be a sense in the last episode that you have wrapped up the series, solved all loose ends, and given the audience a satisfying experience. -Managing seriality - wrapping up the episode to satisfy the temporary viewer, but the episode has to maintain narrative enigma to keep the ongoing viewer intrigued. -The rejection of the feminine - focusing on male characters, often unlikable male characters.

The Fundamentals of Sound Design (Barsam & Monahan)

--Sound is integral to each stage of the production process -EX: Harold and Maude using Cat Stevens to set the mood --Image and sound can create different worlds --Image and sound are co-expressible --Types of sound -Diegetic (characters who are singing, talking, etc. in scene) vs. non diegetic (sound outside of scene) -On-screen (do we see the source of the sound?) vs. off-screen (or is it coming from off screen?) -Internal (interior monologue) vs. external (monologue coming from outside scene)

The Classical Design (McKee)

-Active Protagonist -Struggles with External Factors in pursuit of his/her desire (something forcing a character to take action, any villain) -Continuous Time -Consistent and Causally connected fictional reality -Absolute Ending with Irreversible Change -Miniplot: minimalist, simple economical -Antiplot: anti structure, reflexive, obscure

The Components of Story Design (McKee)

-Causality: one thing causes the next thing Storytelling in any medium boils down to selection and emphasis. -Structure: selection of events from the characters' life stories that is composed in a strategic sequence to arouse specific emotions and to express a specific view of life. -Story event: creates meaningful change in the life situation of a character that is expressed and experienced in terms of a value and achieved through conflict. -Scenes: story events. Each scene is made of beats: exchanges of behavior in action/reaction. -Beats make a scene, scenes make a sequence, sequences make an act, acts make a story.

Modernist Strategies (Schatz)

ALL THAT JAZZ --Thomas Schatz's Modernist Strategies -Focus on process over product (EX: Movie about a director making a film, All That Jazz, 8 ½) -Innovative technique (EX: All That Jazz/Fosse playing with camera techniques) -Ironic (The audience doing something that the character doesn't know, the character says something they don't mean, EX: Joe Gideon saying "i'll be back" in the morgue) -Director acknowledges presence -artificial and stylized -Active, self-conscious viewer (actively engaged in making the meaning, meaning exists between the viewer and film/text) -Open text: unstructured and open-ended -Plotless and associative -Vague characterization -Ambiguous conflicts -Unacknowledged, unreconciled conflict --Thomas Schatz's Modernist Strategies in Annie Hall -Direct address - disruption of the fourth wall -Ironic, ambiguous relationship between author, narrator, and character (EX: Joe Gideon based on Bob Fosse) -Blurring of reality and fiction -Associative plot structure -Self-reflexivity -Authorial intervention -Generally ambivalent tone -Governing logic of a stand-up routine --Thomas Schatz's Modernist Strategies, explained through All that Jazz -Focus on process over product - aware of filmmaking as a process. Reflexivity. -In All that Jazz: See the process of directing happening, Michelle's singing (not great) serving process of the film. -Innovative technique - introducing new aspects of filmmaking. -In All that Jazz: We're watching a film within a film. He's inner monologue on a deathbed - in his fantasy realm. A lot of layers - in the foreground performance of three important women in his life. Multiple versions of Joe. -Shows the entire set - and allow that to be the entire focus. Playing with film angles/audio of "broadway" performance. -Ironic -In All that Jazz: he's directing his own death. Traditionally sad subject matter, but not typical reaction - lavish musical numbers. Not life affirming. -Director acknowledges presence - acknowledgement of filmmaking. -In All that Jazz: Gideon is the director. Ode to director himself. Self-awareness of his terrible habits/actions. -Artificial and stylized - Manufactured, excessiveness, makes sense within the world of the film. -In All that Jazz: The makeup - costumes. Costumes are bright - vibrant. Period costuming. Jazz choreography. Women purveyors of the women Fosse had been with. -Active, self-conscious viewer - viewer has to work for the meaning of the film. No definitive truth, open to interpretation. -In All that Jazz: you can't appreciate it for its art form. We are watching it because each of them has a significant place in his life. Reflecting on all his life decisions, can't just watch the singing and dancing. -Open text: unstructured and open-ended - open to interpretation. -In All that Jazz: cross cutting, who Angelique is. What the flashbacks mean. Was it all a hallucination? Still making connections to the stand up throughout the film. Is he going to be redeemed, or not? -Plotless and associative - not a linear plotline; can you summarize the film. -In All that Jazz: plotless in the way that we are getting a slice of life story. Jumps back and forth between reality and alternative reality. Timeline is played with. -Vague characterization -In All that Jazz: Joe is characterized. The women aren't very strong. Tend to follow his will, rather than his own. The whole movie is through the lens of Joe. His ex wife - you never know if he loves him or hates him. If the women were characterized well, we wouldn't like Joe as much. Angel of Death is vague - role is never explained. She just entertains him. -Ambiguous conflicts -In All that Jazz: internal conflict caused by external conflicts. His work is overrunning his life. External conflicts causing internal strife. Does we want to die or not? Exhibits self destructive behavior, abusing himself and those around him. He wants to make a great show. Does all of these things until he just burns out. Is he ready to die? Is his legacy good enough? -Unacknowledged, unreconciled conflict -In All that Jazz: Conflict acknowledged, but up to the viewer to decide. Through the lens of Joe, we don't get anyone else's reaction to his death. If you die, you are not going to know how they react.

The Functions of Film Sound (Barsam & Monahan)

BARSAM & MONAHAN --7 Aspects of Sound Design, by Monahan -Audience awareness -Audience expectations (EX: Jaws score leading up to seeing shark) -Point-of-view -Rhythm (fluidity of sound) -Continuity (fluidity of sound) -Characterization (how sound can give us expectations about a character, EX: Shark from Jaws) -Themes KUNZE --4 Aspects of Sound Design -Vocal sounds -Environmental sounds (ambient sound, sound effects, foley sounds) -Music (score or soundtrack, score is music that was written for the film, soundtrack is already existing music) -Silence (can create suspense; audiences may be forced to listen more carefully)

Narrative as a Formal System (Bordwell vs. Thompson)

CASABLANCA --Story vs. Plot -The story is the chain of events in chronological order. The plot is how we organize the events. --Screen, Plot and Story Duration -Story duration: the entire world that you're drawing from the plot. EX: North by Northwest -Plot duration: what is emphasized, components that are shown on screen, how long it transpires. EX: Titanic, Citizen Kane, 500 Days of Summer -Screen duration: running time of the film. EX: Long movies (Harry Potter, Star Wars) --Narrative is a chain of events linked by cause and effect and occurring in time and space. --Narrative can be greater than the story being told. EX: Pulp Fiction --The total world of the story action is the diegesis. Might hear in terms of sound, dialogue is diegetic. EX: Dead Poet's Society --A film does not start, it begins. It does not stop, it ends. --Omniscient Narration: the all knowing narrator --Restricted Narration: you know what the character knows, finding out when the character finds out --Narrator in Film: EX: Shawshank Redemption, Moonrise Kingdom, Goodfellas, Deadpool --Narrator Outside of Film: EX: The Book Thief, The Royal Tannenbaum, Elf, The Grinch --"Non-verbal" Narrator: EX: Casablanca, Disney films, Shrek --Classical Hollywood Tradition -Individual characters make things happen -One or two characters want something -Actively pursue a self-determined goal -Adjust time to fit cause-effect progress -Some kind of timekeeping mechanism. EX: Rose in Beauty and the Beast -Use of unrestricted narration -Wrap up loose ends -Strong degree of closure --Casablanca and Classical Hollywood -Propaganda film -We don't meet Rick until 10 minutes in because the film wants to establish the setting of Casablanca. And politically what's going on in the space. It begins and ends the same.

The Dimensions of Film Editing (Bordwell & Thompson)

Dimensions of Film Editing -Graphic relations: the comparison of purely pictorial qualities from shot to shot independent of space and time. -Rhythmic relations: when the relations between shots function to control film pace. -Spatial relations: when the relations between shots function to construct film space. -Temporal relations: when the relations between shots function to control time. --Mobile Framing -Panning versus tilting -Tracking versus zooming -Editing is the coordination of one shot to another --Editing Basics -Fade in versus fade out -Dissolve versus wipe --Forms of Film Editing -Crosscutting -Elliptical editing -Overlapping editing -Continuity editing --The 180 System -Scene's action takes place on a vector, shoot and edit along this line, maintains consistent eyelines and screen direction

The Three-Act Structure (Seger)

HAROLD AND MAUDE --Three-Act Structure (refer to Harold and -Maude plot structure on Canvas) --"Story Spine" -Setup (p. 1-15) -First turning point (p. 25-35) -Second turning point (p. 75-85) -Climax (p. 110-120) -Resolution (1-5 pages from end) --Set-Up -The set-up must establish the vital information: the main characters, the story, the setting, the genre, the direction -EX: Casablanca has 9-10 minute set-up -EX: Harold and Maude is set in San Francisco, -Dark Comedy/Romantic Comedy --"Begin with an image, a feeling, a sense of where we are, a sense of pacing, a sense of the style of the film." -Shot length -70s film has slow shot length (8-12 seconds) --The catalyst begins the action: something happens, someone makes a decision, and the main character is in motion. The catalyst can be action, a piece of information, or a series of incidents. -EX: Harold's mother telling him to get married. --The central questions end the Set-up and begins the Act One. The story can begin. -EX: Is Harold an active protagonist? No, it takes Maude and his mother to get him to change. He's wrestling with both external and internal factors. --Turning Points -Turn the action in a new direction -raise the central question again -often a moment of decision for the protagonist, raises the stakes -pushes the story into the next act -takes us into a new arena -EX: first turning point in Harold and Maude: when Maude tells Harold not to get attached when he visits her home --The Midpoint Scene -Also known as the midpoint reversal, changes the direction while keeping focus from first turning point --The Big Finish -Climax and Resolution (Denouncement) -EX: Harold and Maude ending: Harold ending the suicide attempt story by driving the hurst off the cliff

Film Genres and Genre Films (Schatz)

SCHATZ --Genres come from studios and audiences, not scholars --Stories are varied. If they work, they develop to meet demand and generate profit --Over time, genres become systematized. They have impact and become familiar --Are genres static or dynamic? BOTH --There are film genres and genre films. --Film genres are contracts; genre films deliver on that contract --Films genres are grammars. --They have rules, conventions, iconography. --But an utterance can change the game. --We understand genre films through their similarities. We appreciate them through their differences. --Genres speak to social problems, tensions, and anxieties --A problem in one genre is not an issue in other genres --All film genres treat some form of threat - violent or otherwise - to the social order. How the characters and actions respond to these threats impact the genre's definition. --Genres are filmmakers and audiences taming the beasts of society. The pleasure comes in the temporary resolution. KUNZE --Derived from French, genre means "kind" or "type." --Genres are: unstable, communal, and historically situated --Genre is useful for description and analysis-but not evaluation --Genres defined by: subject matter, theme, manner of presentation, emotional effect --Films may not completely fit genre definitions; they might also satisfy two genres simultaneously --Genres help categorize films and inform industrial decisions --Our understanding of genre is often underscored through advertising --Genres become a way to organize one's fandom. It speaks to one's taste. --We can analyze genre through conventions of story and style or genre iconography --Genres are often dependent on technology to develop and thrive --Within genre, we can also speak of film cycles, which are often popular, influential, and widely reproduced for a brief period --Genres speak to ritual. Gangster films discuss law and order, while musicals often focus on courtship and marriage --Interest in certain genres may reflect a historically specific anxiety or attitude, thereby explaining their momentary surge in popularity