Film Final

Film sound

expressive element, as carefully composed as image. • film sounds do not reproduce reality but provide an aesthetic experience in conjunction with images onscreen

Fade-out

gradually darkens the end of a shot to black

Iranian New Wave

• A move towards a more mature and sophisticated cinema by emerging auteurs. • Some of the young filmmakers were educated abroad and returned. • They brought influences from other "new wave movements" with them.

Types of match cut

-Graphic match cut -Movement match cut -Audio match cut

Mechanical

Avant-garde filmmakers show countdown, sprocket holes, frame lines, optical track, etc. to foreground the machinery and mechanical nature of the medium. • Mechanical anti-illusionism foregrounds the presence of the camera, the projector, and the film strip - the apparatus.

Cinéma Vérité

Began in France. With participatory approach, proponents actively participated in the film by interrogating or interviewing people when necessary. Filmmakers became subjective observers. It combined observational AND participatory filming in the same breath. (fly-in-the-soup)

Direct Cinema

Began in the US and Canada. With an observational approach, proponents had a desire to objectively observe as unobtrusive as possible, never intruding "the reality" being filmed and eschewing from using intrusive methods such as interviews. (fly-on-the-wall)

Dissolve

Briefly superimposes the end of shot A and the beginning of shot B.

Internal Diegetic Sound

Comes from inside a character's mind (subjective).

I (or we) speak about us to you.

Documentarian talks about her own community to audience

I speak about them to you

Documentarian talks about people to audience

Fade-in

Lightens a shot from black

Avant - garde

French military term meaning advance guard

ADR

Post-production recording of actors' dialogue, automatic dialogue replacement, or looping.

Montage (theory)

Juxtaposition of images to create new meaning not found in either shot by itself

Continuity Editing

Maintaining the illusion of real time/space across edits. • Invisible (seamless) editing from one shot to the next, so that audiences are not aware they are seeing assembled sequence of images. • Hollywood standard

Counterpoint/ contrapuntal

Music that is not expected and juxtaposes with time-frame or tone.

Wipe

Shot B replaces shot A by means of a boundary line moving across the screen.

Experimental, Avant-Garde Characteristics

Six (6) characteristics or criteria according to Fred Camper: 1. Films created by one person or small group collectively. 2. Rejects the production (industrial) model. 3. Doesn't have linear story. 4. Conscious use of the material of cinematic medium. 5. Oppositional characteristics to style and value of mainstream. 6. Doesn't offer clear message (ambiguous).

External Diegetic Sound

Sound has a physical source in the scene (objective).

Diegetic sound

Sound that has a source in the story world. • Dialogue, object sounds, and Music emanating from within in the film

Non-diegetic sound

Sound that its source is outside of the story world. • Musical score, some sound effects, narration or voice over.

Leitmotif

Specific pieces of music, often melodies, associated w/ specific characters and perhaps objects or ideas.

Cut

The most common form of transition.

Documentary

The term "documentary" was coined in 1920s by John Grierson who famously described documentary film as: • "the creative treatment of actualit • Bill Nichols describes documentary as: • A form of cinema that speaks to us about actual situations and events • Involves real people (social actors) who present themselves to us in stories that are plausible • The filmmaker shapes their story with a distinct point of view (voice) • Documentary films were earliest type of moving pictures made. • Most films before 1907 were short documentaries called actualitès. • Lumière brothers made actualities that recorded everyday events.

Flatness

Wants you to see the image as the two-dimensional work that is made and is unnatural. • Flatness destructs linear perspective (illusion of depth in a two-dimensional image). • Flatness creates a space that one can only imagine looking at, but cannot imagine walking through. • Hence, the audience is aware that she is seeing the image (signifier) of an apple and not the apple (signified).

The Kulishov Effect

a cognitive event in which viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots than from each single shot in isolation • Meaning comes from the juxtaposition of images, not separate images. • Idea is generated in viewer's mind. • Cutting creates the performance!

Match cut

a cut between two shots featuring a similar visual action. • Sometimes referred as matching on action.

Long Take

a shot that goes on for a long time without an edit.

Jump cut

an abrupt cut between shots that calls attention to itself because it does not match the shots seamlessly.

Maintaining screen direction ("180° rule")

once camera starts filming on one side of action, continues filming on that same side of action for rest of scene. • Establishing Shot • Eyelines (looking at each other) • Shot/reverse shot Casablanca

Foley Artists

produce many of a film's sound effects by creatively manipulating various materials. • Real sounds may not be real enough—Walking, punching a person, ocean waves. • Verisimilitude: degree to which a sound effect is "true to life."

Sound Bridge (audio match cut)

the dominant sound at the end of one scene will carry over into the next scene, forming the aural equivalent of a dissolve, or Some scenes end with the gradual emergence of the next scene's dominant sound.

Mixing

the process of combining the three components of film sound into one soundtrack, which is added to the image track in post-production.

Editing

the process of joining two or more shots. • Shot: a single piece of uninterrupted film. • Take: the number of times a shot is recorded on set. • Set up: strategic positionings of camera to capture action from different angles and distances. • The sequencing of individual pieces of pictures and sounds into a cinematic whole, communicating a concept, an emotion, or a narrative. • Of course, only rarely can we use a shot in its entirety, so editing usually requires the selection of pieces.

direct Sound

when a sound is recorded on set. • But even direct sounds are often remixed and remastered to achieve the desired results

Freeze frame

when the movement of the film image appears to stop so that it appears like a photographic still

Majid Majidi

• "Main-body" filmmaker. • Influenced by Iranian mysticism and spirituality. • His works depicts characters from rural and impoverished regions achieving peace and joy in life despite their hardships. • Also uses non-professional actors, children, and on-location shootings.

Participatory Mode

• "The encounter between filmmaker and subject is recorded and the filmmaker actively engages with the situation they are documenting." • It emphasizes immediacy - the interaction between the filmmaker and subject. • 'Man in the street' interviews and ambush grilling of officials are common in this mode. • Participatory documentaries believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaki

Poetic Mode

• "moves away from the 'objective' reality of a given situation or people, to grasp at an 'inner truth' that can only be grasped by poetical manipulation" • It emphasizes visual associations, tonal or rhythmic qualities. Sometimes called experimental documentary. • "Subjective interpretation of the subject" • Early filmmakers belonging to the Soviet Montage and the French Impressionist movements appropriated this mode.

Cross-cutting

• A type of editing that alternates between two or more distinctly separate spaces, suggesting that the events shown are separate but simultaneous. • Also known as parallel editing. • Cross-cutting is used to build suspense, to show the relationship between the different sets of action, or comments by contrasting them.

Post-Revolutionary Cinema

• Accepting cinema as a viable mass medium as long as there were no references to illicit relationships, no sexual gestures, etc. • Filmmakers must abide by regulations to avoid ban and censorship. • Using characters of children to avoid censorship and political controversy. • The children are stand-ins for adults, depicting their hardships and concerns. • Focus on rural settings and lifestyle, which tend to be more conservative and modest.

Bahram Beyzaie

• Acclaimed playwright, filmmaker, and scholar of global performance traditions, cinema and mythology. • Among the pioneers of the Iranian New Wave. • He is an intellectual figure whose works explore themes of history and identity crisis. • works that depict the hidden realities of people's lives in the past and present.

Maya Deren

• American experimental filmmaker and choreographer. • Her films can be described as surrealist (dream-like). • She used editing techniques like jump cuts, multiple exposures, slow motion, etc. • Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) • At Land (1944

Kenneth Anger

• An American underground filmmaker. • Transgressive works with homoerotic themes. • Called "Godfather of Music Video" • Influenced Martin Scorsese and David Lynch. • Fireworks (1947) • Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) • Scorpio Rising (1963) • Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965)

Discontinuity Editing

• An editing style in film that is antithetical to that of standard or continuous editing. • The filmmaker will deliberately use an arrangement of shots that appears to be disjointed, out of place or confusing. • It demands a high level of active participation from the audience to engage with the film. • In other words, the editing is foregrounded and visible.

Editing

• Anti-illusionist editing brings attention to the process of editing. • Discontinuity: Gives the impression of collision of disconnected images. • Discontinuity fragments screen time/space, breaks the image as a whole. • Meant to be jarring and disorienting to the audience. • What's disorienting for the audience is the sense that the audience is not situated in a comfortable state in time/space. • In one word, fragmentation.

Some of the ways avant-garde filmmakers foreground flatness:

• Blurring the image by out of focus • Superimposition • Physically attaching objects on the film strip • Scratching the film strip • Bleaching and painting on the film strip

Collage Film

• Collage films are made by "found footage". Found footage is when a filmmaker takes images that are preexisting and made by someone else. • The artist then appropriates it. • Collage films juxtapose different films, made in different times, with different styles. • Often appropriates mass produced images and when it does that, it's extracting those images from its original context. • Suggests a new meaning that the original pieces didn't have.

Dynamic Editing

• Constantly changing: • a) from one image to another • b) camera perspective

Multi-Dynamic Image Technique

• Created and named by Christopher Chapman • First used in Oscar winning short documentary, A Place to Stand (1967) • a film innovation which shows several images shifting simultaneously on panes, with some panes containing a single image and others forming part of an image completed by other panes.

Rakhshān Bani Etemad

• Critically acclaimed director and documentary filmmaker. • Incorporates both fiction and documentary style in her films. • She sheds light on the issues of working class women and socio-political inequality. • Occasionally runs into issues with the government for depicting a "dark image" of Iran.

Dialogue

• Dialogue plays important role in establishing character. Not just what but also how something is said: their accent and tone. • Dialogue forwards the narrative by: • giving voice to characters' aspirations, thoughts, and emotions, often making conflicts among characters evident in the process. • Typically dialogue takes precedence in a scene, however, sometimes there are alternative motives to drowning out dialogue. • Overlapping Dialogue: Robert Altman's films. • Voice-Over (Narration) is included in dialogue. • Volume generally reflects distance

Asghar Farhadi

• Director and screenwriter, who has established himself as an auteur. • Presents issues of modern urban life of Iran and focuses on the middle class. • His films are nuanced and built around secrets and uncertainties of his characters. • The only Iranian director to win two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film.

Rapid inter-cutting

• Editing in a quick and restless fashion • Difficult to focus on one thing as the viewer • Note: Such editing could produce flickering (strobe) effect.

Stan Brakhage

• Experimented with the physical nature of film. • Use of film celluloid as a canvas. • Hand-painting, bleaching, scratching, chemical baking, ironing, etc. directly onto the film emulsion. • Window Water Baby Moving (1959) • Mothlight (1963)

Feeling Sound

• Filmmakers have ability to select and manipulate dialogue, sound effects, and music. • In addition to selecting what sounds an audience will hear, filmmakers also consider how sounds will correspond to imagery. • Audiences should be attentive to what they hear and see and consider how it contributes to the overall aesthetic and emotional impact of the film.

Duration

• Films that emphasize the passage of time. Duration makes the viewer aware of experiencing the passage of time. • Duration is an uninterrupted time or a series of blocks of uninterrupted time. • Duration films often have: • minimal action • stationary camera • fixed frame • Andy Warhol was a prominent artist who embraced duration. • It is a radical embracing of functional boredom.

Light Play

• Instead of light being at the service of cinematography, Light Play places the medium at the service of light. • In other words, light is NOT functional (as in classical aesthetics). It doesn't serve a purpose for cinematography. • Light Play is when light is an aesthetic property in its own right and serves as the principal subject of the film. • Simply put, the film is about light.

Abbas Kiarostami

• Internationally renowned as master of working with non-professional actors • His style can be called poetic and philosophical • His films have a degree of ambiguity while presenting a simple plot of everyday life. • He often mixes fictional and documentary elements together.

IRANIAN CINEMA

• Iranian cinema began in 1900. • Mozafaredin Shah witnessed Lumiere brothers' cinematograph during his trip to Europe. • He ordered his photographer, Mirza Ibrahim Khan, to purchase the film equipment and record his travelogues. • First Iranian film, Haji Agha Aktor-e Cinema (1932) - silent. • First Iranian talkie, Dokhtar-e Lor (1933) - sound. • Prior to 1950s, there was a lack of funding for Iranian films, which allowed for American, European, Egyptian, and Indian films to saturate the market. •

It speaks about them (or it) to us.

• Lacks individuality - more narration, authoritative, impersonal. • Institutional discourse or framework • Convey information, assign values, and urge action to a generic, abstract "us

FilmFarsiGenre (1950s)

• Name was coined by film critic, Hushang Kavusi. • Heavily influenced by Egyptian and Indian films. • Mixture of romance and action-packed films. • Brought "Main Street" Iranian audiences, although some high-art cinemas refused to screen them. • Poor quality productions and plots. • The archetypes and themes in Jaheli or "thuggish" cinema.

Observational Mode

• Observational docs strive for cinematic realism by taking advantage of technological advances in making smaller, light-weight camers and sound recorders. It is the most studied and analyzed mode of documentary. • It emphasizes unobtrusive look on everyday life, 'fly-on-the-wall' • It uses long takes and few cuts, and avoids voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue, non-diegetic music, or re-enactments.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf

• Once a radical Islamist filmmaker to a transgressive filmmaker, whose works became banned in Iran. • His works often explores the relationship between the individual and a larger social and political environment. • He has made films in various genres from realist to fantasy and surrealism

Performative Mode

• Performative docs aims to evoke and affect by giving the audience the taste of "what's it like to be there" in a world, a culture or an event in history. It stresses subjective aspects of a classically objective discourse. • It emphasizes the filmmaker's own involvement with the subject. • Often mistaken with participatory mode. • Well-suited for docs on marginalized social groups, offering the chance to air unique perspectives without having to argue the validity of their experiences.

Reflexive Mode

• Reflexive docs "question the authenticity of documentary in general" by foregrounding the process of its making. The least common mode of documentary until now. • It emphasizes the construction process of the film itself. • It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us, in order to 'defamiliarize' what we are seeing and how we are seeing it. • 'Mocumentaries' and 'fake documentaries' stem from this mode.

Sound Effect

• Sound effects play important role shaping audience's understanding of space. • Sound effects define location, lend mood to environment, suggest environment's impact on characters.

Sound Space

• Sound has a spatial dimension because it comes from a source

Music

• Systematic use of film music may accomplish the following: • establish historical context • depict geographical space • define characters • shape emotional tenor of a scene • provide distanced or ironic commentary

Silent Cinema

• Term "silent film" is misnomer. Most early films were accompanied by live orchestras playing music, sound effects machines, or live narration. • In late 1920s, American film industry undertook expensive conversion to sound on film technology that allowed for synchronized music and dialogue. • This development severely restricted camera mobility and consequently curtailed visual experimentation in cinema.

Expository Mode

• The expository docs construct a specific argument or a point of view for the audience. The most common mode of documentary. • It emphasizes verbal commentary with argumentative logic. • Voice-over narration is a distinct innovation of expositional documentary. • It presents footage that functions to strengthen the spoken narrative. In other words, visuals are at the service of the verbal commentary.

Tension between Representation and Reality

• This tension remains between an ideal—that documentaries capture unmediated reality—and the practical fact that making a film will influence the behavior of subjects and the outcome of events. • Documentary filmmakers may be primarily concerned with presenting the real world, but they also lure the audience into an absorbing emotional and aesthetic experience. • Visual choices in a documentary can be carefully staged for expressive effect

Jafar Panahi

• Was assistant director for Abbas Kiarostami • His feature debut, The White Baloon (1995), earned him many awards and recognition. • His films were mostly banned in Iran, but they were received with praise around the world. • "Panahi does not do as he is told — in fact he has made a successful career in not doing as he is told." Hamid Naficy • Humanistic perspective, focusing on the hardships of children, the impoverished, and women

Cinema as an Illusion

• What makes cinema an illusion? • "99.9% of people who say they like movies, actually have no interest in them; what they like are stories"—Jonas Mekas • Classical aesthetics works to hide the mechanics of filmmaking. • Modernist aesthetics foregrounds the mechanics of filmmaking. • Therefore, modernist aesthetics is anti-Illusionist