FMS 100

Bertolt Brecht and the Distancing Effect

-Audience members should be keenly aware of the construction of performance. -Psychological distance stresses the artificiality of theatrical performance. -Direct-address (breaking the fourth wall) and multiple roles are byproducts of distancing.

Genre Transformations

-Genres are adapted to meet the expectations of a changing society (and audience). -Genre transformations reflect audience's pleasures, fears, and doubts. Ex.: Transformation of women in sci-fi/action movies.

Reflexive Documentary Mode

Calls attention to the conventions of documentary filmmaking and sometimes of methodologies such as fieldwork or the interview.

Focalization

Degree of correspondence of narrative information with character point of view—roughly how subjective the information is.

3 Act Narrative Structure

Exposition, rising action, climatic moment, falling action, resolution.

Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep

Hoffman would use Streeps deceased husband as a way to push her into giving more emotion in a scene

Expository Documentary Mode

Speaks directly to the viewer with voice over.

Narrative

Tells a story

Genres

The categorization of narrative films by the stories they tell and the ways they tell them. They tend to spring up organically, inspired by shifts in history, politics, and society. -Not all films reflect particular genres

Flat characters

Uncomplicated characters that exhibit few distinct traits and do not change significantly as the story progresses.

Film Movements

a group a like minded filmmakers consciously conspire to create a particular approach to film style and story. Examples: French New Wave, Dogme 95, Italian Neorealism.

Surprise

an unexpected or astonishing event, fact, or thing

Direct address narration

the narrator interrupts the narrative to speak directly to the audience, breaking the fourth wall.

Voice over narration

when we hear a character's voice over the picture without actually seeing the character speak the words.

Iranian Cinema

-Between 1931-1979, Iran produced 1,100 motion pictures. -1979 Revolution: Muslim fundamentalist theocracy, censorship imposed, filmmakers flee. -1990s-present: Steady regrowth, some relaxation of depictions of social issues and taboos. -Like in postwar Italy, Iranian filmmakers tend to shoot on location with nonprofessionals telling "everyday stories." -Cultural specificity: Hejab (veiling, modesty), chador (overscarf), Sharia law. -Must walk a tightrope between artistic & social expression and the moral demands of a fundamentalist Islamic state.

House Style

-Genres are cultivated by studios. -Studios become associated with the genres they are known for.

Social Functions of Genre

-Genres satisfy audiences because they reaffirm cultural/ideological values. -Genres also exploit ambivalent social values and attitudes. -Because genre films promise something new based on something familiar, they can respond to broad social trends.

Stanislavsky System

-Konstantin Stanislavky: Founder of the Moscow Art Theater. -Stanislavsky System: "One must be the character in order to successfully play the character." -Pioneered in the 1910s and 20s -Actors must be re-taught to move, behave, speak, and inhabit in the ways of their character.

Method Acting

-Lee Strasberg credited with this. -Popularized in the U.S. in the 1950s. Encourages actors to speak, move and gesture not in a stage manner, but just as they would normally. Permits improvisation, creativity, and extremely rigorous preparation off-set. Ushers in new levels of realism (naturalism) and subtlety.

Star Studies

-Richard Dyer -Cinema's mode of production manufactures the star image. -"Stars are involved in making themselves into commodities; they are both the labor and the thing that labor produces. They do not produce themselves alone." -Stars are constructed by their films, publicity, interviews, image. -Four categories of star-audience relationship: Emotional Affinity Self-Identification Imitation Projection

Duration (Summary, Stretch, Real Time)

-Summary: screen duration is shorter than plot duration. -Sketch: screen duration is longer than plot duration. -Real Time: screen duration corresponds directly to plot duration.

Propaganda

-Systematically disseminate deceptive or distorted information. -Persuasive documentaries produced by governments which carry their messages. -Example: Triumph of the Will

Documentary Voice (Reproduction vs Representation)

-The fact that documentaries are not a reproduction of reality gives them a voice of their own. They are, instead, a representation of the world. The voice of documentary makes us aware that someone is speaking to us from his or her own perspective about the world we hold in common with that person. -The voice of documentary can make claims, propose perspectives, and evoke feelings. Documentaries seek to persuade or convince us by their strength of their point of view and the power of their voice. -Documentary draws on evidence but are not themselves documents. They possess a voice and a perspective of their own with which they communicate to us.

6 Approaches to Writing About Film

-Timothy Corrigan 1. Film History 2. National Cinema 3. Genres 4. Auteurs 5. Formalism 6. Ideology

Rashomon Effect

-same Story events re-narrated in conflicting ways. -Truth is subjective and variable; versions of the truth are relative to the self-serving intentions of the individual witnesses. -Cinema has a unique capacity to call into question "objectivity." -No character is absolutely right or wrong; instead, it is up to the audience to select the most compelling version of events.

French New Wave

1959-1964 -After WWII: everywhere calls for change were coming from students, artists, intellectuals, and philosophers, particularly the existentialists. -The originators were influenced by several movements: French cinema including the 1930s cinematic style known as poetic realism; the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre who believed that contemporary artists should rebel against the constraints of society, traditional morality, and religious faith; critic and director Alexandre Astruc who inspired the idea of the movie director as auteur (author); Italian Neorealism; British Free Cinema; contemporary developments in the French documentary film. -Stylistically, the films had a rough, intimate look that often reflected the informality of the filmmaking process. -Father of the New Wave: Andre Bazin. -Traits: rapid action, use of handheld cameras, unusual camera angles, elliptical editing, direct address to the camera, acting that borders on the improvisational, anarchic politics, and emphasis on the importance of sound, especially words.

Blaxpoitation

A U.S. film movement from 1971 to 1976 consisting of low-budget movies usually made by African American filmmakers, with black characters, for black audiences.

Maya Deren

Actress/Director in experimental flim Meshes of the Afternoon

Bechdel Test

At least two women (with names) in it Who talk to each other, about Something other than a man

Round Characters

Complex characters; possess numerous, subtle, repressed, or even contradictory traits that can change over the course of the story. More life-like

Preproduction Phase

Consists of planning and preparation. It takes as long as necessary to get the job done, on average a year or two. Initially, filmmakers develop an idea or obtain a script they wish to produce.

Digital Film

Digital uses a sensor, which transfers light as data onto a memory chip;

Performative Documentary Mode

Emphasizes the expressive quality of the filmmaker's engagement with the film's subject; addresses the audience in a vivid way.

Analog Film

Film uses silver nitrate particles embedded on celluloid.

Poetic Documentary Mode

Focus on visual and acoustic rhythms, patterns, and the overall form of the film. This mode stresses mood, tone, and affect much more than displays of factual knowledge.

6 Major American Genres

Gangster, Film Noir, Science Fiction, Horror, The Western, and The Musical.

Revisionism (Genre Transformations)

Generic transformation which questions the ideals and style of a genre. May include the same major visual icons, motifs, settings. Tends to be more realistic than romantic, drawing attention to moral ambiguity and complexity rather than absolute truth. Draws attention to the underrepresented.

Subgenre/Hybrid (Genre Transformations)

Horror Teen Slasher Zombie Exploitation Revisionist Horror Camp Mystery Fantasy Supernatural Erotic Thriller Psychological Thriller

Italian Neorealism (Historical Roots and Audiences)

Italy After WWI: -Rise of totalitarianism/Fascism (Benito Mussolini). -Relatively few attempts to commandeer and propagandize media (unlike Soviet Union and Germany). -Government invests in film culture, but global economic depression hinters growth. -"Cinema of distraction" Italy During WWII: -Cinecitta bombarded in 1943; did not reopen until 1946. -Mussolini executed in 1945. -Axis powers fall; Italy, Germany, and Japan left in shambles. -Sparse and hostile conditions forge the beginning of postwar Neorealism. Key Factors of Neorealism: -On-location shooting. -Nonprofessional actors. -Story takes place in contemporary setting. -The drama is the everyday dilemmas of real people. -Reality is upheld at all costs, both in form and content, but not necessarily interpreted.

Observational Documentary Mode

Looks on as social actors go about their lives as if the camera were not present.

Syntactic

Narrative structure (plot), Conflicts, Relationships, Meanings (explicit and implicit).

Technological Film Approach

Of all of the arts, cinema seems to rely the most heavily on technology. Historians examine the circumstances as well as the subsequent improvements surrounding the development of each technological advance.

Narrator

Person telling the story

3 Phases of Movie Making

Preproduction, production and postproduction

Marketing

Preview screenings, focus groups, final changes to the film, media coverage, festival screenings and awards, and audience word of mouth. Determination of the release date, number of theaters, etc.

White Telephone Films

Romantic melodramas. -Glossy, modern décor, with aristocratic characters. -Half of all Italian films between 1930-1945. -Launched the careers of many future filmmakers (De Sica, Fellini). -Distracted audiences during anxieties leading up to WWII.

Semantic

Setting (history and place), Character types, Actors and directors, Iconography, Formal elements (camera, music, mise-en-scene).

Influence of sound on acting

Singin in the Rain -The coming of sound in 1927 began a period of several years in which the industry gradually converted to this new form of production. -Development of better microphones and the blimp. -Encouraged changes in actors' vocal performances. -Actors now had to limit their movements to the circumscribed sphere where recording took place. Eventually, technicians were able to eliminate this obstacle. -Ruined many acting careers while creating others.

Story vs Plot (Fabula vs Syuzhet)

Story vs. Plot (Fabula vs. Syuzhet) -Story: the story. Capital S Story (Fabula). Sum total of events plus character backstories and relevant events in the storyworld. Ex. In any post-apocalyptic narrative, the apocalypse and its causes are part of the story, even if they are not depicted in the film. -Plot: how it is told= Syuzhet = Roughly, "plot"; The order and manner in which the Story events occur. May be linear or shuffled by flashbacks or flash forwards. Cross-cutting- shows Story events that occur simultaneously but reorders them in plot sequence.

Difference between Analog and Digital film

The essential difference comes down to how the light is captured as an image.

Participatory Documentary Mode

The filmmaker interacts with his or her social actors, participates in shaping what happens before the camera; interviews are a prime example.

Social Film Approach

The movies serve as primary sources for studying society. Historians ask to what extent, if any, a particular movie was produced to sway public opinion or effect social change.

Independent System

The package unit system, controlled by a producer unaffiliated with a studio is a personalized concept of film production that differs significantly from the industrial model of the studio system. It governs the creation, distribution, and exhibition of a movie. An independent producer makes one film at a time, relying on rented facilities and equipment and a creative staff assembled for that one film.

Decline of the Studio System

The studios were victims of their own success -Several actions taken by the federal government signaled that the studio's old ways of doing business would have to change (labor unions, 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act). -The studios began to reorganize their management into the producer unit system. -A shift in relations between top management and creative personnel that loosened the studio's hold on the system. -WWII: severely restricted the studios' regular, for profit operations. -The rise of television.

Genre Films

The study of genre reveals patterns, attitudes, and ideologies influencing how films were/are made.

Nondiegetic

The things we see and hear on the screen that come from outside the world of the story, such as musical score and voice over comments from a third person voice over narrator.

Diegetic vs Nondiegetic

The total world of the story- the events, characters, objects, settings, and sounds that form the world in which the story occurs.

Parody (Genre Transformations)

When the recognizable manifestations of genre have been copied or imitated. Can be done for the purposes of mocking, satire, or self-conscious invoking.

Focalizers

a character on whose point of view the narrative is focalized. We know or perceive what they know or perceive—roughly corresponds to restricted narration in your book. A text can switch among multiple focalizers—often but not always signalled by shifts in visual POV or lone presence of character in scene.

Suspense

a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen.

Nonprofessional Actors

actors who are often nonprofessional or people who are cast to bring verisimilitude to a part.

Anti-Persona Actors

actors who deliberately play against our expectations of their personae.

Chameleon Actors

actors who seem to be different in every role.

Persona Actors

actors who take their personae from role to role.

Studio System

an organizational structure that included a general manager, executive manager, production manager, studio manager, and individual production supervisors. Each studio had its own configuration. This system valued profitability above all else. The studio system established an industrial model of production through which american filmmaking became one of the most prolific enterprises in the world

Postproduction Phase

editing, preparing the final print, and bringing the film to the public (marketing and distribution)

Distribution

exclusive and limited releases, key-city releases, and wide and saturated releases. Hollywood is planning to bring movies to homes at the same time, or close to it, that they are released in theaters.

Omniscient narration

knows all and can tell us whatever it wants us to know.

Restricted narration

limits the info it provides the audience to things known only to a single character.

Financing

no rules govern the arranging of financing. Money can come from the studio, the producer, the investment community, or a combination of these. In the old studio system, the general manager determined the budget. Today, usually the producer or a member of the producer's team prepares the budget with the assistant director.

Aesthetic Film Approach

sometimes called the masterpiece approach or great man approach. Seeks to evaluate individual movies and or directors using criteria that assess their artistic significance and influence. Historians who take this approach do not necessarily ignore the economic, technological, and cultural aspects of film history, but their primary interest = movies that are not only works of art but also widely acknowledged masterpieces. Other studies on the auteur theory.

Narration

the action or process of narrating a story

Production Phase

the actual shooting, can last up to six weeks to several months or more

Economic Film Approach

the motion picture industry is a major part of the global economy. Historians help us understand how and why the studio system was founded, how it adapted to changing conditions, and how and why different studios took different approaches to producing different movies, how these movies were distributed and exhibited, and what effect this had on film history.