Review for Film Appreciation

c. hand-drawn, stop-motion, and computer animation

(Q015) What are the three basic types of animation?

a. narrative, experimental, and documentary

(Q001) The three major types of movies are _____________.

b. Narrative films are directed toward fiction.

(Q002) Which of the following distinguishes narrative films from other kinds of movies?

b. flexibility of film form by blurring boundaries of film categorization

(Q003) Hybrid films illustrate the _____________.

a. a creative treatment of actuality

(Q004) Documentary filmmaking, which uses actual people, places, and events as source material, is described by John Grierson as _____________.

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

(Q005) Nanook of the North (1922), which presents people and places in a straightforward manner, is an example of _____________.

c. address social injustice

(Q006) The founding purpose of the persuasive documentary was to _____________.

b. limits the use of voice-over narration; eliminates as many signs of mediation as possible

(Q007) An observational documentary generally does which of the following?

c. invite individual interpretation

(Q008) Experimental films frequently reflect the creative vision of a single artist. These films _____________.

d. The conventions of genre films are stable and do not evolve.

(Q009) 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?

b. exploring the American dream; an antihero

(Q010) Gangster films are characterized by _____________ and _____________.

c. superhero movies

(Q011) 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.

b. deep shadows; nighttime exterior scenes; elements composed diagonally in the frame

(Q012) Which of the following describes the distinct visual style of film noir?

b. saves a community that rejects her

(Q013) Horror films are often characterized by a protagonist who _____________.

c. pastiche

(Q014) 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 a previous work or works.

b. 13th (2016) FEEDBACK: 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).

(Q016) Which of the following persuasive documentaries chronicles the history of the U.S. prison and justice system as a systemized form of slavery?

a. reflexive

(Q017) Documentaries that explore - and sometimes critique - the documentary form itself are known as _____________ documentaries.

d. Maya Deren

(Q018) Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) was the work of which director, considered to be the first major American experimental filmmaker?

b. the musical

(Q019) Which of the following genres was not born out of any specific political or cultural moment or preexisting literary genre?

d. animation

(Q020) "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?

interview

A component of documentary filmmaking, traditionally shot with the person being interviewed speaking to an off-camera interviewer. (page 71)

persuasive documentary

A documentary film concerned with presenting a particular perspective on social issues or with corporate and governmental injustice. (page 70)

instructional documentary

A documentary film that seeks to educate viewers about common interests, rather than persuade them with particular ideas. (page 70)

propaganda documentary

A documentary film that systematically disseminates deceptive or distorted information. (page 71)

factual documentary

A documentary film that usually presents people, places, or processes in a straightforward way meant to entertain and instruct without unduly influencing audiences. (page 69)

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 which attempted to capture the unedited flow of experience through the mind. (page 78)

theme

A shared, public idea, such as a metaphor, an adage, a myth, a familiar conflict, or personality type. (page 85)

reenactment

A staged re-creation of actions and events used in a nonfiction film when authentic documentary footage is unavailable or impossible to obtain. Reenactments are typically filmed and presented in ways that make clear their status as fabricated representations of real events. (page 72)

reflexive documentary

An approach to documentary filmmaking that explores and sometimes critiques the documentary form itself. The documentary production process becomes part of the experience in ways that may challenge viewer expectations of nonfiction filmmaking conventions. (page 73)

observational documentary

An approach to documentary filmmaking that seeks to immerse viewers in an experience as close as is cinematically possible to witnessing events as an invisible observer. Observational documentaries typically rely entirely on b-roll and eliminate as many other signs of mediation as possible. (page 72)

expository documentary

An approach to documentary filmmaking that uses formal elements, a script prepared in advance, and an authoritative narrator to explain subject matter to the viewer. (page 72)

participatory documentary

An approach to nonfiction filmmaking in which the filmmaker interacts with the subjects and situations being recorded and thus becomes part of the film. (page 73)

performative documentary

An approach to nonfiction filmmaking related to the participatory documentary. The filmmaker's interaction with the subject matter is deeply personal and often emotional. In a performative documentary, the filmmaker's experience is central to the way viewers engage and understand the subject matter. (page 73)

text and graphics

An element of documentary filmmaking that includes statistics, graphs, maps and text. Text is commonly used to identify interview subjects, dates, and locations presented on screen. (page 72)

poetic documentary

An expressive approach to nonfiction filmmaking that provides a subjective and often impressionistic interpretation of a subject by an emphasis on conveying mood and generating ideas, rather than developing a realistic observational experience or communicating an information-driven explanation. (page 72)

b-roll

Documentary footage of subjects in action and events as they unfold. (page 71)

animated film

Drawings or other graphical images placed in a series photographyÐlike sequence to portray movement. Before computer graphics technology, the basic type of animated film was created through drawing. (page 105)

voice-over narration

Narration heard concurrently and over a scene but not synchronized to any character who may be talking on-screen. It can come from many sources, including a third person, who is not a character, to bring us up to date; a first-person narrator commenting on the action; or in a nonfiction film, a commentator. (page 71)

archival material

Preexisting images or sound that is incorporated into a documentary film. This material can be any media captured previously and by different sources, including radio broadcasts, news footage, historical photographs, official documents, and home movies. (page 71)

computer-generated imagery (CGI)

The application of computer graphics to create images, backgrounds, animated characters, and special effects. (page 108)

genre

The categorization of narrative films by form, content, or both. Examples of genres include musical, science fiction, horror, and western. (page 82)

generic transformation

The process by which a particular genre is adapted to meet the expectations of a changing society. (page 103)

setting

The time and space in which a story takes place. (page 86)

narrator

Who or what that tells the story of a film. The primary narrator in cinema is the camera, which narrates the film by showing us events in the movie's narrative. When referring to the more specific action of voice narration, the narrator may be either a character in the movie (first-person narrator) or a person who is not a character (omniscient narrator). (page 71)