Chapter 3: Types of Movies

Persuasive films

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

Instructional films

A documentary film that seeks to educate viewers about common interests, rather than persuading them with particular ideas.

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.

Documentary

A film that purports to be nonfictional. Documentary films take many forms, including instructional, persuasive, and propaganda.

Theme

A shared, public idea, such as a metaphor, an adage, a myth, a familiar conflict, or personality type.

Experimental movies

Aka avant-garde film, a term implying a position in the vanguard, out in front of traditional films. Experimental films are usually about unfamiliar, unorthodox, or obscure subject matte, and ordinarily made by independent film-makers (not studios) often with innovative techniques that call attention to, question, and even challenge their own artifice.

Animated films

Aka cartoon. Drawings or other graphical images placed in a series photography-like sequence to portray movement. Before CGI most animation was done through drawing.

Narrative film

Also known as a fiction film. A movie that tells a story - with characters, places, and events - that is conceived in the mind of the film's creator. Can be entirely imaginary or based on true events, could be realistic, unrealistic or both.

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. aka cine'ma ve'rite'.

Character types

Can be flat or round; major, minor, or marginal; protagonists and antagonists.

The 4 basic documentary approaches.

Factual, instructional, persuasive, and propaganda.

The six major American Genres

Gangster, Film Noir, Science Fiction, Horror, the Western, the Musical.

3 Major Types of movies

Narrative, documentary, & experimental.

Computer-generated imagery (CGI)

The application of computer graphics to create special effects.

Genre

The categorization of narrative films by from, content, or both. Examples include 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.

Setting

The time and space in which the story takes place.