The Film Experience Final

What are the fundamental building blocks of continuity editing?

Master shots and the 180-degree system.

Which of the following is NOT a way in which sound volume shapes an audience's interpretation of a scene?

Medium loudness may suggest something important.

Which of the following is an element that the film editor does NOT manipulate?

Mise-en-scène.

According to the textbook, what is the approximate average total cost to produce and market a Hollywood film today?

$100 million.

What is direct address narration?

First-person narration delivered directly to the audience, breaking the "fourth wall"

What is the largest format of film stock?

IMAX

Which of the following is NOT a function of silence?

It may help an audience anticipate what might happen next in the plot.

How does a film editor typically fulfill his or her responsibilities for the spatial relationships between shots?

By placing shots together so that the sense of the overall space suggested on screen shifts and expands.

Which of the following are excluded from a film's soundtrack?

a director's rehearsal notes.

Narrative cannot exist without the protagonist possessing:

a goal

An extra is:

a nonspeaking or crowd role that receives no screen credit

One camera position and everything associated with it is called _____.

a setup

What is narration?

The act of telling the story

In traditional film production, the cinematographer controls the photographic image by advising on all of the following EXCEPT:

actors' performances.

A central theme of the gangster genre is:

anyone, regardless of how humble his origins, can obtain the American dream; nevertheless, the criminal will be punished.

The planning of the placement and movement of figures and camera is a process known as _____.

blocking

The Stanislavsky system of acting trained students to:

bring their own experiences and feelings to their roles.

The organization, distribution, balance, and general relationship of actors and objects within the space of each shot is called _____.

composition

The manner in which movies from various countries and societies present their narratives is often profoundly affected by

cultural tradition.

_____ is the process by which the look of settings, props, lighting and actors is determined.

design

During the production phase, the principal activities of a director include all of the following EXCEPT:

developing a marketing strategy.

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of great screen acting?

disunity

Most film sounds are constructed _____.

during postproduction

The three phases of postproduction include:

editing, preparing the final print, bringing the film to the public.

When an extreme long shot shows a wide view of a location and provides some background information, it is also known as a(n) ________.

establishing shot

A central concern of horror films is:

fear of death and insanity

Two key aspects of composition are ____.

framing and kinesis

In order to possess validity, interpretation of a movie needs to be:

grounded in the explicitly presented details of the surface story

Usually, each of the systems that become the "complex synthesis" of a movie is:

highly organized and deliberately assembled.

Although the director's vision shapes a movie's mise-en-scène, the cinematographer must make decisions about:

how to photograph the movie.

Phi phenomenon:

illusion of movement by successive events

The main source of illumination used in three-point lighting is the _____.

key light

Persistence of vision:

mind retains image a fraction longer than it sees the image.

As opposed to "film" or "cinema", the term "movies" is applied to:

motion pictures that entertain the masses at the multiplex.

The essential quality that separates movies from all other two-dimensional pictorial art forms...

movement

Kinesis refers to:

movement of figures within the frame and the apparent movement of the frame

All ubiquitous commercial, feature-length movies share the same basic and important element of:

narrative

A film in which the action is captured by a camera unbound by the constraints of time, space

omniscient narration

The video image consists of pixels, which is short for:

picture elements.

Because most movies seek to engage viewers' emotions and transport them inside the world presented onscreen, the visual vocabulary of film is designed to:

play upon those same instincts that we use to navigate and interpret the visual and aural information of our "real life."

When a character in a movie handles a tennis racket, a glass of beer, or a shovel, the object is known as a _____.

prop.

Which of the following is NOT a phase of sound production?

scoring

A film stock's speed refers to its _____.

sensitivity to light

The preproduction phase may include all of the following EXCEPT:

shooting footage.

A _____ is the basic building block of a movie.

shot

Unlike photography and painting, films are constructed from individual:

shots.

A central concern of science fiction is:

technology versus humanity or science versus soul

A central concern of the musical is:

telling the story through song and dance

During production, the crew most closely associated with the camera consists of ______.

the camera operator, and the first and second AC

The compositional principle that divides the frame horizontally and vertically in order to visualize the height, width, and depth of cinematic space is called ______.

the rule of thirds

What is the basic building block of film editing?

the shot.

The Method (or Method acting) did not make a major impact on Hollywood until the 1950s because:

the studios were reliant on the star system and were not interested in the process of acting.

When actors are repeatedly given particular kinds of roles based on their looks rather than their talent or experience, they are _____.

typecast

What is a crisis in a movie?

When a protagonist must face a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

A shot is best defined as:

an unbroken span of action captured by an uninterrupted run of a motion-picture camera

Open framing:

characters move freely within an open, recognizable environment

If you are a cinematographer and the director asks you to photograph just the lips of an actor, what type of shot is she asking for?

extreme close-up

a personality actor:

takes his or her personae from role to role

Mise-en-scène:

the sum of everything the audience sees, hears and experiences

The "invisibility" of meaning in movies is largely due to:

their rapidly and constantly changing images not giving the viewer time to contemplate them.

Why have genre films been prevalent since the advent of cinema?

they appeal to audiences' desire for predictability over novelty.

A central concern of the Western is:

wilderness versus civilization.

Which of the following does NOT demonstrate the movie principle of "dynamization of space" and/or "spatialization of time"?

A live, theatrical drama is presented in which scenes play out a single set meant to depict a city police station.

What is the difference between diegetic and nondiegetic sound?

Diegetic sound originates from a source within a film's world; nondiegetic sound comes from outside that world.

All of the following statements about digital technology are correct EXCEPT:

Digital pixels bear a physical relationship to the original input.

Which of the following cannot be evoked from the manipulation of light on film?

Editing.

Depth of field refers to the distances in front of the camera and its lens in which the subjects are_____.

In apparent sharp focus

Which of the following is one of the challenges movie actors confront?

Interruptions by camera, lighting, and sound adjustments.

What does the first act accomplish in a typical narrative movie?

Introduces the setting and character and established what and who they are.

In the abortion clinic scene from Juno, the content is ____, while the form is _____.

Juno in the waiting room; décor, patterns, implied proximity, point of view, moving camera, sound.

Why is light the essential ingredient for movies?

Movie images are made when a camera lens focuses light onto film stock.

When used in continuity editing, shots in a shot/reverse shot sequence are often framed in what way?

Over the characters' shoulders.

Why are movies worthy of serious study, as opposed to being merely an outlet for escape or entertainment?

Seriously studying movies allows people to understand how movies shape the way we view the world.

Content is defined as _____, and form is defined as _____.

The subject of an artwork; the means by which that subject is expressed and experienced.

What does the setting of a film consist of?

The time and place in which the story occurs.

How do environmental sounds typically function in a film?

They provide information about a film's setting and action.

Why did the first screen actors use exaggerated gestures, emphatic expressions, and the mouthing of words to bring their characters to life?

They were adapting the acting style of 19th-century theater.

Which of the following is NOT an effect of editing?

To communicate information about a character merely by facial reactions.

What is the primary function of a script supervisor?

To record details of continuity from shot to shot.

Why is ADR used?

To rerecord sound originally recorded on the set.

Which of the following is most likely to draw an audience to a movie?

A famous actor.

Which of the following does NOT describe what happens during the process of sound mixing?

Dialogue is recorded.

What is the definition of genre?

***The categorization of narrative films by the stories they tell and the ways they tell them

How is "narrative" used in a broad conceptual context?

***To denote any cinematic structure in which content is selected and arranged linearly

Why can categorizing movies into strict classifications be problematic?

***because many movies defy exact classification by any standard.

What is generic transformation?

***the process by which a particular genre splits off into multiple sub genres.

The modern film is projected at:

24 frames/second

What is the meaning of verisimilitude?

A convincing appearance of truth.

Which of the following constitutes a cinematic ellipsis?

A cut between a shot of woman contemplating diving off the high-dive board and a shot of her emerging from the water.

What is "montage" in the Hollywood sense of the word?

A sequence of shots, often with superimpositions and optical effects, that shows a condensed series of events.

With regard to sound, what is the crucial difference between sound and silent films?

A sound film can emphasize silence, but a silent film has no option.

What is an example of a first-person narrator?

A voice-over from a private investigator, who talks about the past events of his life as the movie images show what he is speaking of.

How does an editor control the rhythm of a film?

By varying the duration of the shots in relation to one another and thus controlling their speed and accents.

What are the three machines that bring images to the screen in three distinct stages?

Camera, processor, projector.

Although each thing that is seen within a shot may not have a meaning in and of itself, it is the ____ of these things that provide overall meaning.

Combination

Which of the following best characterizes a naturalistic style performance?

The behavior is believable and recognizable.

What is the primary narrator in every movie?

The camera

Which of the following falls under the supervision of a movie's production designer?

The costumes, set construction, and hairstyling.

What is parallel editing?

The cutting together of two or more lines of action that occur simultaneously at different locations.

What is a backstory?

The experiences or events that occur before the start of a movie's narrative.