CINE 21 Introduction to Film Studies

hybrid film

A film that has characteristics of two or all three film categories: narrative, documentary, or experimental

screen test

A filming undertaken by an actor to audition for a particular role.

direct address narration

A form of narration in which an on-screen character looks and speaks directly to the audience.

mediation

An agent, structure, or other formal element, whether human or technological, that transfers something, such as information in the case of movies, from one place to another.

Suspense vs. Surprise

Suspense is the anxiety brought on by partial uncertainty. The end is certain but not the means. While surprise is momentary shock from an unexpected event.

implied proximity

Refers to the implied distance between the subject and the camera(the viewer).

screen acting

Screen acting of this kind is an art in which an actor uses imagination, intelligence, psychology, memory, vocal technique, facial expressions, body language, and an overall knowledge of the filmmaking process to realize, under the director's guidance, the character created by the screenwriter.

The 180-Degree Rule & Screen Direction

Screen direction applies to both the movement of subjects in the frame and to the direction each subject faces in relation to other characters. If either is inconsistent from shot to shot, the scene risks losing its spatial coherence. For example, if we are watching two different characters interact across different shots, as long as character A is facing left and character B is facing right, we intuitively understand that characters A and B are facing each other, even if we don't see them together in the same frame. But if character A is suddenly facing right in her shots, just like character B, it now appears as if they are both looking in the same direction, rather than speaking face to face. To help editors avoid this spatial disjunction, cinematographers devised the 180-degree rule. This system uses an imaginary line (called "the line," or the axis of action) drawn between the interacting characters being photographed. Once the line is determined, the camera remains on the same side of the line as it moves from position to position to capture different shots. As long as the camera stays within the 180-degree half-circle defined by that line, the characters on-screen will remain in the same relative spatial orientation regardless of which shots the editor chooses to use when cutting the scene. Cinematographers and directors are careful to follow the 180-degree rule on set, so that editors can maintain spatial continuity when constructing sequences involving multiple shots with multiple characters. Keeping the camera in the half-circle defined by the imaginary line (the axis of action) drawn between the characters ensures that each subject will remain on the same side of the frame in every shot. But sometimes, the filmmakers intentionally "jump the line" and shoot from the opposite side of the axis of action to provide the editor an opportunity to punctuate a key moment.

screen acting today

Today, actors struggle to get parts and to create convincing performances, and, like their earlier counterparts, they seldom have the chance to prove themselves across a range of roles. Once typecast—chosen for particular kinds of roles because of their looks or "type" rather than for their acting talent or experience—they continue to be awarded such parts as long they bring in good box-office receipts. No star system exists to sustain careers and images, but now, as in earlier periods of movie history, some individuals use films to promote themselves. Think of the music stars, sports stars, or other celebrities who sometimes appear in a movie or two but leave no mark on the history of film acting.

extreme long shot (XLS or ELS)

Typically photographed at a great distance, the subject is often a wide view of a broad locale surrounding more specific locations where the action takes place. Extreme long shots typically present general background information, rather than a particular featured subject.

black & white film/photography, tonality

Used in documentaries, newspaper, and magazines before color photography was made. Associated with a stronger sense of unidealized realism than that provided by color film stock. Depending on the context in which it is used, black-and-white's distinct contrasts and hard edges can look stark, somber, elegant, abstract, or simply different than our regular way of seeing things, which is why it is often used to convey dreams, memories, flashbacks, and historical events. Movies shot in black and white can also have moral or ethical connotations. -Tonality: In cinematography, the range of tones from pure white to darkest black.

Alice Guy Blaché

Among early filmmakers, Alice Guy Blaché stands out as the first female director in film history. Born in France, where she worked with the Gaumont Film Company, she came to the United States shortly after 1907, founded her own studio, and made dozens of narrative films, most of which are lost. Making an American Citizen (1912; 16 min.) is unremarkable in its theatrical staging and acting but is well photographed and edited. What's most important is its outspoken feminist message. It tells the story of Ivan and his wife, new Russian emigrants. Ivan believes in the Old World custom of wife abuse. In this shot, a well-dressed New Yorker threatens Ivan when he catches him beating his wife (note the Statue of Liberty in the background). This and other encounters with liberated American males (including a judge who sentences him to prison) convince him to love and respect his wife. With the happy ending, he is, as the title card proclaims, "Completely Americanized." Guy Blaché was not only ahead of her time as a film director but also highly optimistic in her views about American male-female relationships. The social impact of the silent movies during this period established trends that continue today. They appealed to all socioeconomic levels and stimulated the popular imagination through their establishment and codification of narrative genres and character stereotypes, particularly those that reinforced prejudices against Native Americans, African Americans, and foreigners in general. Their depiction of certain types of behavior considered immoral provoked calls for censorship, which would become an even bigger problem in the next decade and on into today and raised issues of movie content and violence. Although most jobs in the film industry remained male-dominated for the next 50 years, at least acting jobs for women were plentiful from the beginning. Two female directors were at work—Lois Weber and Alice Guy Blaché—and the African American actor Bert Williams starred in his first movie in 1915.

content, form

-The subject of an artwork.(what's being shown) - The means by which a subject is expressed.(how its shown)

cinematographer's responsibilities for each shot and setup, as well as for each take

1. cinematographic properties of the shot (film stock, lighting, lenses) 2. framing of the shot (proximity to the camera, depth, camera angle and height, scale, camera movement) 3. speed and length of the shot 4. special effects

narrative, causality, backstory

1.A narrative is a story. 2.Narrative is a type of movie. 3.Narrative is a way of structuring fictional or fictionalized stories presented in narrative films. 4.Narrative is a cinematic structure in which the filmmakers have selected and arranged events in a cause-and-effect sequence occurring over time. -The relationship between cause and effect. -A fictional history behind the cinematic narrative that is presented on screen. Elements of the backstory can be hinted at in a movie, presented through narration, or not revealed at all.

Oberhausen Manifesto (1962)

A 1962 document (known as the Oberhausen Manifesto) fused economic, aesthetic, and political goals. It sought to create a new cinema free from historical antecedents, one that could criticize bourgeois German society and expose viewers to new modes of looking at movies. Ultimately, the movement sparked a renaissance in German filmmaking by encouraging the production of quality films that created considerable excitement in the international cinema community. Its bold treatments of such contemporary issues as sexuality, immigration, and national identity have significantly influenced filmmakers worldwide.

Sergei Eisenstein

A Russian Orthodox Christian, was also a Marxist intellectual whose propaganda movies were financed by the Soviet government. He studied to be an engineer but after the 1917 revolution joined an avant-garde theater group, where he was shaped by many powerful influences, including the theory and practice of world-famous directors Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold, by Marx and Freud, and by contemporary German, Russian, and American movies, including those of Griffith. From these varied sources, he developed his own theories of how an aesthetic experience can influence a viewer's psychological and emotional reactions. Unlike Griffith, Eisenstein was a modernist with a commitment to making cinema an art independent from the other forms of creative expression.

1965-1995: The New American Cinema

A New American Cinema emerged in the mid-1960s. The "new" Hollywood encompasses too many transitions from the "old" Hollywood to be simply called a movement. In describing the changes that affected the American film industry—and the resulting ripples that spread throughout the international film community—the term phenomenon is both more accurate and appropriate. These changes were hastened by the collapse of the old studio system, which was replaced by scattered enterprises known as "independent filmmakers." This event had both negative and positive implications. The negative factors included declining audiences, caused in part by competition from television; the escalating costs of producing films independently rather than in the studios, where the permanent physical and human support structure was very cost-effective; and the forced retirement or relocation of studio personnel. However, these were outweighed by the positive factors. The new Hollywood adapted conventions of classical genres to conform to new modes of expression and meet audience expectations, abandoned the code for a new rating system, and did more shooting on location; the result was a more authentic look for the movies. Furthermore, though the studios retained their names and kept their production facilities open to ensure the smoothness of the established preproduction/production/postproduction matrix, they have changed ownership frequently over the years. Movies are now made in complex deals involving the studios and independent production companies headed by individual producers, many of whom invested capital in their own work. The "star machine" collapsed as well, ushering in decades of new talent whose careers, which once would have been meticulously planned and monitored, were now subject to market forces. Marketing of movies remained a precise tool, carefully adapted to meet the needs of new audiences. Unlike the French New Wave, the New American Cinema was not born in theory but rather out of the more practical need to adapt to the values of its time. However, like the French New Wave, the prevailing spirit was innovation. But with so many auteurs, some from the old Hollywood and some from film schools, no single defining style emerged. Indeed, there was a range of styles, resulting in personal, highly self-reflexive films; edgy, experimental, low-budget movies; movies that paid homage to great European directors; and, of course, those that still adhered to the conventions of the golden age. Thus diversity and quality are the only links among such directors as Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Tim Burton, John Cassavetes, Joel and Ethan Coen, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Clint Eastwood, George Roy Hill, Jim Jarmusch, Diane Keaton, Stanley Kubrick, Spike Lee, Sidney Lumet, David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Gordon Parks, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, John Sayles, Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Gus Van Sant. Typical of Hollywood, males outnumber females. But that ratio is changing. In a reversal of the Hollywood tradition, female as well as African American, Hispanic, and Asian directors have begun to write and direct movies.

crane shot

A crane shot is made from a camera mounted on an elevating arm, making it capable of moving freely and smoothly through vertical space. When a camera crane is attached to a dolly or other vehicle, the crane may move freely and smoothly both vertically and horizontally.

biopic

A film about the life of a real person and can by stylized and interpreted differently from the film maker.

Argentina

A historical pattern emerges in Argentina that is applicable to filmmaking in almost every Latin American country: a pre-sound era consisting of experiments with cinematic technique and subject matter, followed by a golden age of popular filmmaking that lapses into the state-funded production of sociopolitical films. In Argentina, that's not saying much in aesthetic terms, because the two major influences on the industry were the Catholic Church and the dictator Juan Perón and his wife Evita. The Argentine film industry made conventional crime dramas, comedies, and adaptations of literary classics, all still under the watchful eye of the church and state. The turmoil of the Perón years yielded little of cinematic quality, and the international community did not begin to pay attention until The Hour of the Furnaces (1968), a film by Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas about the country's struggle for freedom from neocolonialism and violence. Along with Patricio Guzmán's The Battle of Chile (1975-79), Getino's movie established a template for future radical, revolutionary filmmaking across Latin America.

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.

restricted narration

A narrative in which our knowledge is limited to that of a particular character. This approach encourages the audience to identify with the character's singular perspective on perplexing and scary events to invites us to unlock the narrative's secrets.

eye level camera angle/neutral viewpoint

A neutral camera angle that creates the effect of the audience being on the same level as the subject.

theme

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

establishing shot

A shot whose purpose is to briefly establish the viewer's sense of the setting of a scene--the relationship of figures in that scene to the environment around them; this shot is often, but not always, an extreme long shot

composition

A shot's composition is the organization, distribution, balance, and general relationship of objects and figures, as well as of light, shade, line, color, and movement within the frame.

slow disclosure

A technique that uses camera movement to allow new information into the frame that expands or changes the viewer's initial interpretation of the subject or situation.

pastiche

A term applied to a work of art that imitates or appropriates recognizable stylistic elements from a previous work or works. To help understand the concept, think of a pastiche as a collage in which pieces of preexisting drawings and paintings are snipped out and arranged on a new canvas into a cohesive assembly.

lead role actor/ major role actor

Actors who play major roles (also called main, featured, or leading roles) become principal agents in helping to move the plot forward. Whether stars or newcomers, they appear in many scenes and ordinarily, but not always, receive screen credit above the title.

Naturalistic and Nonnaturalistic Styles

Actors who strive for appropriate, expressive, coherent, and unified characterizations can render their performances naturalistically as well as nonnaturalistically. Screen acting appears naturalistic when actors re-create recognizable or plausible human behavior for the camera. The actors not only look like the characters should (in their costume, makeup, and hairstyle) but also think, speak, and move the way people would offscreen. By contrast, nonnaturalistic performances seem excessive, exaggerated, even overacted; they may employ strange or outlandish costumes, makeup, or hairstyles; they might aim for effects beyond the normal range of human experience; and they often intend to distance or estrange audiences from characters. Frequently, they are found in horror, fantasy, and action films.

iris shot(iris in, iris out shot)

An iris shot appears on the screen in two ways. The iris-out begins with the image shown as a large circle, which shrinks and closes in around the subject, leaving the rest of the surrounding screen in black. The iris-in works in the opposite direction. The image begins as just a small circle in a field of black, and then expands. These terms can be confusing, since the circle of an iris-in is actually expanding outward. In this case, the "in" refers to the shot image, which is expanding into the frame and into the edit. Likewise, the shot in an iris-out is being moved out of the sequence to be replaced by another image. Like the wipe, the iris-in and iris-out are associated with early cinema and thus are rarely used in modern films.

acting and editing

Because a screen actor's performance is fragmented, the editor has considerable power in shaping it. We've already emphasized that the actor is responsible for maintaining the emotional continuity of a performance, but even the most consistent actor delivers slightly different performances on each take. Editors can patch up mistakes by selecting, arranging, or juxtaposing shots to cover these differences. They control the duration of an actor's appearance on the screen and how that time is used. When aspects of an actor's performance that originally were deemed acceptable appear in the editing stage to interrupt the flow of the narrative, the development of the character, or the tone of the movie, the editor, in consultation with the director, can dispense with it completely by leaving that footage on the cutting-room floor. In short, the editor has the power to mold a performance with more control than most directors or even the actors themselves.

high angle camera shot

Camera is looking down on a subject to signify weakness and vulnerability.

design

Design is the process by which the look of the settings, objects, and actors is determined. Set design, decor, costuming, makeup, and hairstyle design all play a role in shaping the overall design.

Marketing and Distribution

Determine the release date (essential for planning and carrying out the advertising and other publicity necessary to build an audience) and the number of screens on which the film will make its debut. At the same time, they finalize domestic and foreign distribution rights and ancillary rights, contract with firms who make DVDs, schedule screenings on airlines and cruise ships, and, for certain kinds of films, arrange marketing tie-ins with fast-food chains, toy manufacturers, and so on. The model for distributing and exhibiting a movie depends on the product itself. For example, there are exclusive and limited releases (a first-run showing in major cities, often used to gauge public response before a wider release), key-city releases (a second-tier release that further measures public response), and wide and saturated releases on hundreds or thousands of screens in the major markets as good reviews and word of mouth build public awareness and demand. In addition, based on the mode of release, there are complex formulas for establishing the rental cost of a print (or digital download), ticket prices, length of run, up-front guarantees, and box office grosses. The latter do not reflect what a theater or studio earns, but rather what the public spends to see a film. What part of a movie's gross goes to the producers, investors, and those (directors, writers, actors, etc.) who have a share of the gross included in their contracts remains one of Hollywood's most mysterious dealings. In a further attempt to create new revenue streams for studios and new viewing options for consumers, Hollywood is planning to bring movies to homes at the same time (or close to it) that they are released in theaters. Such distribution practices are not yet proven to be economically or technically feasible and, in any event, are likely to throw the current method of theatrical distribution into turmoil. For example, on-demand streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have already begun to change when, how, and where we look at movies.

camera crew

Divided into one group of technicians concerned with the camera and another concerned with electricity and lighting.

Alexander Nevsky (Sergei Eisenstein, 1938)

Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938) stands out among Eisenstein's other movies, concerned chiefly with the class wars, for its emphasis on nationalism and patriotism. Focusing on Alexander Nevsky, a Russian prince who defended Russia's northwest territories against invading Teutonic hordes in the thirteenth century, the movie's parallels to contemporary events (i.e., the threat of invasion of Russia by Nazi Germany) were unmistakable. But the movie is far more than a political parable. The movie's set piece—the "Battle on the Ice" sequence, choreographed to Sergei Prokofiev's stirring score—has influenced many other movie battle scenes (e.g., battles in the Star Wars saga), particularly in its massing of forces, brutal warfare, and defining costumes. Noteworthy is Eisenstein's reversal of traditional iconography: throughout, as in this image, the bad guys (the Teutons) are in white while the Russian forces are in black.

poetic documentary

Expressive nonfiction films that provide a subjective and often impressionistic interpretation of a subject, with an emphasis on conveying mood and generating ideas, rather than providing a realistic observational experience or communicating an information-driven explanation.

The Decline of the Studio System

Federal government actions signaled a change in studio business Studios reorganized producer-unit systems Shift in the relations between top management and creative personnel World War II The rise of television

fidelity

Fidelity is a sound's faithfulness or unfaithfulness to its source.

extreme close-up (XCU or ECU)

Fills the frame with a part of a subject's face or, oftentimes, with an object revealed in great physical detail. When the XCU enlarges a normally small object to monumental proportions, it may anticipate the use of the object.

experimental film

Films that try to defy the traditional boundaries of what are movies and films.

Dogme 95 movement

Founded in 1995 by three directors, including Lars von Trier, the one best known outside Denmark. The movement was based on the Dogme 95 manifesto of ten rules (known as "The Vow of Chastity"), with which participating directors were required to affirm their compliance. These are: 1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found). 2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot.) 3. The camera must be handheld. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place.) 4. The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera.) 5. Optical work and filters are forbidden. 6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.) 7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.) 8. Genre movies are not acceptable. 9. The film format must be Academy 35mm. 10. The director must not be credited. The Dogme rules are rigid, but Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves (1996) demonstrates that a director can subvert them to facilitate production. Although the cinematographer used the requisite handheld camera, many of the scenes were shot not in real locations, but in studio settings. The story takes place in the past, not the here and now; and contrary to Dogme rules, the movie contains nondiegetic music. Furthermore, von Trier takes full credit for his role as director. Nonetheless, a major reason for seeing it is the astonishing performance by Emily Watson as Bess, a simple, childlike woman. When her husband, seriously injured in an oil-rig accident, fears that their sex life has ended, he encourages her to have sexual relations with other men. However, she believes, from voices that she hears, that what she is doing is God's wish. These voices—if indeed she hears them—often come to her in a deserted church.

Brazil

Here, the cinema developed to the point where its most unique actress, Carmen Miranda, appeared in Hollywood movies to great acclaim. Its success continued into the 1960s, when Cinema Novo ("New Cinema") was born in the spirit of Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave. The movement was deeply influenced by the political and aesthetic theories of director Glauber Rocha, whose most important movie is Black God, White Devil (1964). Its advocates included directors such as Carlos Diegues (Bye Bye Brazil, 1979) and Nelson Pereira dos Santos (Memoirs of Prison, 1984). Production of documentaries and experimental films flourished, as did the importance of female directors such as Carla Camurati, whose Carlota Joaquina, Princess of Brazil (1995), an offbeat look at Brazilian history, was a great success there and abroad.

high key lighting

Illumination that creates low contrast and ratio between the light and dark areas of the shot. Shadows are fairly transparent and brightened by fill light.

Das Neue Kino (the New German Cinema)

In 1962 a movement called Das Neue Kino (the New German Cinema) was born, and it flourished until the 1980s. Its founders, a group of young writers and filmmakers, recognized that any attempt to revive the German cinema must deal with two large issues: the Nazi period and the brutal break that it made in the German cultural tradition; and the reemergence of postwar Germany as a divided country whose western part was known, like Japan at the same time, as an "economic miracle." This group also knew the Italian, French, and British New Cinemas that preceded them and had a genuine affection for established genres in Hollywood, particularly melodrama.

Italian Neorealism

Italian Neorealism stands as one of the most vital movements in the history of world cinema. Developed during World War II, neorealism rose to prominence after the war and then flourished for a relatively short period before ending abruptly. In 1942, Cesare Zavattini, a prolific Marxist screenwriter, launched what came to be known as the neorealist movement, influenced its style and ideology, and led a group of young filmmakers to make film history. The group was also influenced by French poetic realism, a movement that consisted of filmmakers seeking freedom in the increasingly repressive French society of the 1930s, and by two contemporary Italian films: Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1943) and Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945). Rossellini's film most clearly exhibits every characteristic of neorealism and became the standard for the films that followed. Neorealist filmmakers placed the highest value on the lives of ordinary working people; decried such postwar conditions as widespread unemployment, poverty, child labor, government corruption, and inadequate housing (the results of Fascist rule); and focused on the struggle for a decent life in the postwar world. Politically, neorealism is antiauthoritarian, skeptical of the Catholic Church, antibureaucratic, and socialist. But overall, because it has no inherent political purpose, it is traditionally regarded more as a style than an ideology. Stylistically, the characteristics of neorealism are specific. Despite the lavish production facilities available at the large studios that Mussolini built (or perhaps because of them), the neorealists sought simplicity in their working methods. They used actual locations rather than studio sites and hired nonprofessional actors. Their films had a documentary visual style that included shooting in the streets with natural light and lightweight cameras, using long takes to preserve real time, and employing deep-space cinematography to maintain the look of the actual spaces where shooting occurred. All of these characteristics broke with the prevailing cinematic conventions in Italy.

medium long shot (MLS)

Is neither a medium shot nor a long shot, but one in between. It is used to photograph one or more characters, usually from the knees up. In this shot type, background is reduced, and the subject or subjects begin to predominate. Because the human body is shown in full, or at least nearly so, the MLS is often used for moments of physical action. Because the MLS is widely used in Hollywood movies, the French call this shot the plan Américain ("American shot").

sound mixing

Mixing is the process of combining all of the different individual edited tracks of dialogue, sound effects, music, and so forth, into one composite sound track to play in synchronization with the edited picture. The number of sound tracks used in a movie depends on the kind and amount of sound needed to tell each part of the story; thus, filmmakers have an unlimited resource at their disposal. No matter how many tracks are used, they are usually combined and compressed during the final mixing. Working with their crew, sound mixers adjust the relative loudness and various aspects of sound quality; filter out unwanted sounds; and create, according to the needs of the screenplay, the right balance of dialogue, music, and sound effects. The result is a sort of "audio mise-en-scène" that emphasizes significant sound elements in the mix, just as a visual composition uses placement and size in frame to feature significant subject matter in a shot.

narrative film

Narrative film, fictional film or fiction film is a motion picture that tells a fictional or fictionalized story, event or narrative.

compositional stress

Occurs when the filmmaker intentionally breaks the rule of thirds, which then denies the viewer their expectation of balance. Depending on context of use it can be used to signify a tense or foreboding scene.

Jean-Luc Godard

Noteworthy is that Truffaut wrote the original treatment of Breathless and, after his great success with The 400 Blows, made a gift of it to Godard, suggesting that he submit it as the idea for his own first film. If one movie symbolizes the fresh, innovative spirit of the New Wave, it is Godard's Breathless (1960). This work offers a comprehensive catalog of the movement's stylistic 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. It is not any one of these techniques that defines the filmmaker's style, but rather the imagination and energy with which he uses them. Breathless, a movie that asserts Godard's personality and ideology, virtually defines what is meant by an auteur film. It tells a conventional crime story in an unconventional manner, rejecting the traditional cinematic values of unity and continuity in favor of discontinuity and contrast. Godard called his work a cinema of "reinvention," meaning that he generally kept all kinds of cinematic language in mind as he created his own. Consequently, by employing the iris-out, Godard not only offers homage to D. W. Griffith but also reminds modern audiences of a seldom-used visual device. Dedicating the film to Monogram Pictures (one of Hollywood's "B" or "Poverty Row" studios), Godard evokes the Hollywood film noir through allusions, direct and indirect, to tough films with tough leading men. He also pays homage to French film director Jean-Pierre Melville, a major influence on the New Wave, by casting him in the movie and patterning the role of his leading male character on the model in Melville's Bob le Flambeur (1956). Finally, Godard includes allusions to writers, composers, and painters. Through this broad range of intertextual reference, or pastiche (making one artwork by mixing elements from others), Godard audaciously links his low-budget film noir with the works of some of the greatest artists of all time. Most important, though, is Godard's editing, which is central to the telling of this narrative. Here, working in the radical tradition started by Eisenstein and his contemporaries—collision between and among images—Godard consciously and deliberately manipulates the images with such editing techniques as jump cuts and nondiegetic inserts. Thus he deliberately avoids such devices as crosscutting, which traditional directors would have used in cutting between the good guys and bad guys in the film's chase scenes, as well as the familiar sequence used to set up a scene—an establishing shot, long shot, medium shot, and close-up, generally in that order. The restless rhythm of the editing is perfectly suited to the restless mood of the story and the indecisiveness of the movie's two major characters.

associate producer or assistant producer

Person charged with carrying out specific responsibilities assigned by the producer, executive producer, or line producer.

soft light

Projecting diffused light to hit the subject at many angles to create softer details and edges, blurs the border between illumination and shadow. Depending on ratio can lower the contrast between shadow and illumination to provide more subtle shades of gray. Often used on glamourous stars, romantic moments, and lighter moments.

production manager

Responsible for all preproduction and postproduction work, key liaison among the general manager, studio manager, and individual production supervisors.

executive manager

Responsible for the studios financial and legal affairs as well as daily operations.

nondiegetic elements

Something that we see and hear on the screen that comes from outside the world of the story (including score music, titles and credits, and third person voice-over narration).

asynchronous sound

Sound that comes from a source apparent in the image but that is not precisely matched temporally with the actions occurring in that image.

general manager: Irving Thalberg

Thalberg supervised the overall production of some fifty films each year: his responsibilities included selecting the property, developing the script (either by himself or in collaboration with writers), selecting the actors and key production people, editing the film, and supervising marketing. Thus, without ever leaving his office to visit the set, he could be intimately involved in every phase of every production at the studio. He generally received screen credit as "producer". Also Called Central Producer. Theater Manager, Managing Director. The general manager oversees the budget and timeline for a theatrical production, and hires many members of the core production team.

Free Cinema Movement(England)

The British Free Cinema movement developed between 1956 and 1959. Like Dziga Vertov and the Italian Neorealists, these British directors rejected prevailing cinematic conventions; in so doing, they also rejected an obstinately class-bound society, turned their cameras on ordinary people and everyday life, and proclaimed their freedom to make films without worrying about the demands of producers and distributors or other commercial considerations. Because the films of the Free Cinema movement were entirely the expression of the people who made them, they serve as another manifestation of the growing postwar movement in Europe toward a new cinema of social realism. Its primary effect was a small but impressive body of documentary films, including Lindsay Anderson's Every Day Except Christmas (1957), an affectionate look at the people who make the Covent Garden market such a tradition; Karel Reisz's We Are the Lambeth Boys (1958), an attempt to understand working-class youth; and Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz's Momma Don't Allow (1955), an admiring view of the emerging British pop culture in the mid-1950s. The British Free Cinema dealt courageously with controversial issues of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation. Basil Dearden's Victim (1961) was the first commercial British film to show that queer identity existed at every level of contemporary society. At the time, sex between consenting LGBTQ couples was illegal in Great Britain, and the gay community suffered widespread discrimination and blackmail. In Victim, Dirk Bogarde gave a moving performance as Melville Farr, a distinguished lawyer who is exposed by a blackmailing ring for having had an emotional, but nonsexual, gay affair before he married. In this image, he sees the photograph that triggered the blackmail. Outraged by the widespread injustices against queer people, he agrees to help the police by giving evidence in court, knowing that sensational newspaper publicity could ruin his career. Bogarde, then one of England's major stars, was lauded for his personal courage in helping to break a social barrier, and Victim was instrumental in changing the social and legal climate. In 1967, Great Britain legalized sex acts between all consenting adults.

Steadicam

The Steadicam is a patented harness device worn by the operator and uses a sophisticated system of counterweights and hydraulics to combine the mobility of the handheld camera with the smoothness of a tracking shot. The camera operator can walk or run up stairs, over uneven surfaces, and through tight spaces where dollies cannot fit. This flexibility has made the Steadicam the method of choice for moving camera shots that extend a narrative over time and through space.

aperture & shutter & pull down claw

The aperture (or gate) is essentially the window through which each frame of film is exposed. The shutter a mechanism that shields the film from light while each frame is moved into place is synchronized with the motion of the pull down claw, a mechanism used in both cameras and projectors to advance the film frame by frame. The pull down claw holds each frame still for the fraction of a second that the shutter allows the aperture to be open so that the film can be exposed.

costume

The clothing worn by an actor in a movie also known as wardrobe. Selected and designed by the filmmakers to provide a sense of authenticity regarding the story's time period and setting and also to help communicate the character's social station, self-image, state of mind, and the public image that the character is trying to project.

décor

The color and textures of the interior decoration, furniture, draperies, and curtains.

lead room

The distance between the subject and the edge of the frame toward which it is moving with the tracking shot. Open compositional space on the opposite side of the frame from that of a character whose lateral screen movement is tracked by a moving camera. This method is necessary to balance the composition because the implied lateral movement of a character carries compositional weight.

Satyajit Ray

The dominating figure in Indian cinema as it is known in the West. He was always unique among Indian filmmakers and, to the moviegoing public in the West, the only Indian director whose name they recognize. In that respect, he very much resembles Akira Kurosawa; both were instinctive filmmakers who made powerful and personal films with recurring themes. Ray and Kurosawa, two of the most individually unique filmmakers the world has ever produced, greatly admired each other's work. Of Ray, Kurosawa said, "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the Sun or the Moon.". Ray's most formative influence was Italian Neorealism, Bicycle Thieves (1949) in particular. It convinced him to make a film about everyday Indian life exactly as De Sica had made his; the characteristics of this approach are discussed earlier in this chapter. The result was not one but three films, a trilogy known as the Apu trilogy for the name of its central character: Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road, 1955), Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956), and Apar Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959). As a chronicle of a family, and in particular Apu's growth from a boy to a man, they are unparalleled in their humanistic insight and wonder at the natural world. (Note: Both Indian and English titles are given because they are cited in variant ways.) For these reasons, as well as for their cinematography and acting, the three films were recognized worldwide as landmarks of modern cinema. Ray, a true auteur, wrote, produced, and directed all three; he even scored the music. Ray is known for his attention to detail in the lives of ordinary people and for the subtle, detached angle at which he views them in his movies. His Apu trilogy, of which Pather Panchali is the first, recounts a series of small but significant episodes in the life of Apu, who lives with his impoverished family in a Bengali village. The trilogy spans the years from his childhood through his early twenties, but here he is a boy of six or seven. Near the beginning of the movie, Apu's sister Durga tries to awaken him so that he can get ready for school. She shakes him, but he does not budge. But then, poking her fingers through a hole in his blanket, she tenderly pries open a closed eye. We would be wrong to think that Ray will henceforth see things from Apu's point of view, for we are seeing the opening of Apu's consciousness of the world around him. He is a curious boy, delighted by everything he sees and hears—traveling entertainers, a freight train, a pond—and he also learns about life and death when realizing that his father is incapable of supporting the family and by witnessing the death of his aged aunt. Careful, connected observation characterizes both Apu and his creator.

plot duration

The elapsed time of the events within a story that a film chooses to tell.

viewfinder

The frame of the camera's viewfinder (the little window you look into or through when taking a picture) indicates the limited boundaries of the camera's framed perspective on the world.

feed spool

The motion picture camera moves unexposed film from one storage area, called the feed spool (or, in professional cameras today, the portion of the magazine that stores unexposed film), along the sprocketed rollers.

inciting incident/catalyst

The narrative event that presents the protagonist with a goal that sets the rest of the narrative in motion.

cinematic time

The passage of time within a movie, as conveyed and manipulated by editing.

line producer

The person, usually involved from preproduction through postproduction, who is responsible for the day-to-day management of the production operation.

Iran

There was a brief New Wave in Iran in the early 1970s. Sohrab Shahid Saless's Still Life (1974) is one notable example that influenced the emerging Iranian filmmakers of the mid 1980s. In 1984, Iran set the goal of producing at least 50 films of superior quality a year by making low-budget grants available for films that would be visible on the international market. There were restrictions to obtain these grants: 1.) because women had to be covered when they left the house and when shooting indoor scenes, many Iranian films were shot outdoors or inside cars. Neorealism heavily influenced these 1980s films and many of them revolve around children. Many feature nonprofessional actors. Abbas Kiarostami began to write and direct films in the 1970s. He came to international attention in the mid 1980s with the first part of a trilogy called Where is the Friend's Home? (1987) about a boy returning his friend's homework. In the second part of the trilogy, Life, and Nothing More (1992), a man (resembling Kiarostami) drives with his son to where Where is the Friend's Home? was shot to see if the children he filmed are OK after an earthquake. In the third film of the Koker trilogy, Through the Olive Trees (1994), Kiarostami revisits an episode involving shooting a scene from Life, and Nothing More. Kiarostami's films are Neorealist in spirit and method, but are never violent or sentimental. Mohsen Makhmalbaf has worked in a variety of styles including neorealism and Expressionism. He is the subject of the Abbas Kiarostami film Close-Up (1990) in which a man who in real life impersonated Makhmalbaf reenacts how he duped a family who takes him in. In Salaam Cinema (1995), Makhmalbaf shoots in a documentary style and shows the audition process of a film he is casting. He puts an ad in the paper and thousands of people show up. They think they are auditioning for his next film and are unaware that the film is the "audition." In the following scene, Makhmalbaf asks a group of men auditioning for a role to replicate an action scene. One man explains his preference for melodramas over action films.

The Independent System

Through the 1930s and 1940s, the independent system of production—sometimes called the package-unit system—coexisted with the studio system, as it continues to do with a much different set of studios. The package-unit system, controlled by a producer unaffiliated with a studio (independents such as Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Walt Disney, and others), is a personalized concept of film production that differs significantly from the industrial model of the studio system. Based outside the studios but heavily dependent on them for human and technical resources, the package-unit system governs the creation, distribution, and exhibition of a movie (known as the package). The independent producer does what a movie producer has always done: chooses the right stories, directors, and actors to produce quality films. The producer's team may include an executive producer, line producer, and associate or assistant producers. These variations on the overall title of producer reflect the changes that have occurred since the studio system collapsed and, in different ways, reinvented itself. By the nature of film production, titles must be flexible enough to indicate greater or fewer responsibilities than those listed here. Unlike the members of the craft unions—cinematographers or editors, for example—whose obligations are clearly defined by collective bargaining agreements, producers tend to create responsibilities for themselves that match their individual strengths and experiences. At the same time, the comparative freedom of independent filmmaking brings new benefits. Creative innovation is both encouraged and rewarded; actors, writers, and directors determine for themselves not only the amounts of compensation but also the ways in which they receive it; and though the overall number of movies produced each year has decreased, the quality of independently produced films has increased considerably from year to year. Whereas the producer helps transform an idea into a finished motion picture, the director visualizes the script and guides all members of the production team, as well as the actors, in bringing that vision to the screen. A quick snapshot of a few differences between the studio and independent systems will give you an idea of how moviemaking has changed. At first, each studio's facilities and personnel were permanent and capable of producing any kind of picture, and the studio owned its own theaters, guaranteeing a market for its product. Now, by contrast, an independent producer makes one film at a time, relying on rented facilities and equipment and a creative staff assembled for that one film. Even figuring for those cost-saving elements, the expenses can be staggering. Moviemaking entails various kinds of "costs." In both the old and the new American film industry, the total cost of a film is what it takes to complete the postproduction work and produce the release negative as well as one or two positive prints for advance screening purposes. But this "total cost" does not include the cost of marketing or of additional prints for distribution, so it is useful only for the special purposes of industry accounting practices. You will generally see this figure referred to as the negative cost of a movie, where negative refers to the

silence

When the filmmaker deliberately suppresses the vocal, environmental, or musical sounds that we expect in a movie. When so used, silence frustrates our normal perceptions. It can make a scene seem profound or even prophetic. Furthermore, with careful interplay between sound and silence, a filmmaker can produce a new rhythm for the film—one that calls attention to the characters' perceptions.

screen duration

the movie's running time on screen

Screen Actors Guild (SAG)

the union that represents film and television actors

cut, cutting

-1. the act of an editor selecting an in and out point of a shot during editing. 2. a direct change from one shot to another as a result of cutting. The precise point at which shot A ends and shot B begins. 3. an edited version of a scene or film, as in a "rough cut" -In a process that preceded digital editing, editors used scissors or a devise known as a splicer to cut shots out of a roll of film to rejoin them together with glue to form a continuous whole. A general term for editing.

scene, sequence

-A complete unit of plot action taking place in a continuous time frame in a single location. -A series of edited shots characterized by inherent unity of theme and purpose.

codec & pixels

-A computer program that encodes and decodes data captured by a digital camera. Codecs compress information into manageably sized files for editing and viewing. -The smallest unit of visual information in a digital image.

acting in the classical studio era

-A movie star is two people: the actor and the character(s) he or she plays. In addition, the star embodies an image created by the studio to coincide with the kinds of roles associated with the actor. That the star also reflects the social and cultural history of the period when that image was created helps explain the often rapid rise and fall of stars' careers. The golden age of Hollywood, roughly from the 1930s until the 1950s, was the age of the movie star. Acting in American movies then generally meant "star acting." During this period, the major studios gave basic lessons in acting, speaking, and movement, but because screen appearance was of paramount importance, they were more concerned with enhancing actors' screen images than with improving their acting. -During the golden age, the studio system and the star system went hand in hand, and the studios had almost complete control of their actors. Every 6 months, the studio reviewed an actor's standard 7-year option contract: if the actor had made progress in being assigned roles and demonstrating box-office appeal, the studio picked up the option to employ that actor for the next 6 months and gave him or her a raise; if not, the studio dropped the option, and the actor was out of work. The decision was the studio's, not the actor's. Furthermore, the contract did not allow the actor to move to another studio, stop work, or renegotiate for a higher salary. In addition to those unbreakable terms, the contract had restrictive clauses that gave the studio total control over the star's image and services. -Materialistic as it was, the star system dominated the movie industry until the studio system collapsed. It was replaced by a similar industrial enterprise powered essentially by the same motivation of making profits for its investors. However, because every studio had its own system, creating different goals and images for different stars, there was no typical star.

Fade/Dissolve

-A transitional devise in which the first shot fades out(gets progressively darker) until the screen is entirely black. The next succeeding shot fades in (becomes increasingly exposed). Fades imply a passage of time. -Also known as lap dissolve. A transitional device in which shot B, superimposed(placed over each other in frame), gradually appears over shot A and begins to replace it at midpoint in the transition. Dissolves sometimes imply a passage of time, or a relationship between the people, object, or events depicted in the scenes connected by the transition.

mechanical effects, optical effects, and visual effect

-Also known as practical effect. A special effect created mechanically by an object or event on the set and in front of the camera. -An effect created manipulating an image captured on celluloid in the camera during production and or during film stock processing after the negative has been exposed. -An effect created and integrated using computers in postproduction.

D.W. Griffith and Lillian Gish

-American film pioneer in 1913, Griffith recruited a group of some of the most important actors: Mary Pickford, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Mae Marsh, Blanche Sweet, Lionel Barrymore, Harry Carey, Henry B. Walthall, and Donald Crisp. Some had stage experience, some did not. -Because the cinema was silent during this period, Griffith worked out more naturalistic movements and gestures for his actors rather than training their voices. The longer stories of such feature-length films as Broken Blossoms (1919) gave the actors more screen time and therefore more screen space in which to develop their characters. Close-ups required them to be more aware of the effect that their facial expressions would have on the audience, and actors' faces increasingly became more important than their bodies (although, in the silent comedies of the 1920s, the full presence of the human body was virtually essential for conveying humor). -Under Griffith's guidance, Lillian Gish invented the art of screen acting. Griffith encouraged her to study the movements of ordinary people on the street or in restaurants, to develop her physical skills with regular exercise, and to tell stories through her face and body. Gish's performance in Broken Blossoms (1919) was among the first great film performances by an actor. Gish was twenty-three when she played the young girl Lucy Burrows in Broken Blossoms. It was, incredibly, her sixty-fourth movie, and she gave one of her long career's most emotionally wrenching performances. The interaction of narrative, acting, extremely confined cinematic space, and exploitation of the audience's fears gives the following scene its beauty, power, and repulsiveness. Seen from various angles within the closet, which fills the screen, Lucy clearly cannot escape. Hysterical with fear, she finally curls up as her father breaks through the door. At the end, she dies in her bed, forcing the smile that has characterized her throughout the film. Terror and pity produce the cathartic realization within the viewer that Lucy's death, under these wretched circumstances, is truly a release.

actor's performance analysis criteria

-Appropriateness: Does the actor look and act naturally like the character he or she portrays, as expressed in physical appearance, facial expression, speech, movement, and gesture? If the performance is nonnaturalistic, does the actor look, walk, and talk the way that character might or should? Paradoxically, we expect an actor to behave as if he or she were not acting but were simply living the illusion of a character we can accept within the context of the movie's narrative. Such appropriateness in acting is also called transparency, meaning that the character is so clearly recognizable—in speech, movement, and gesture—for what he or she is supposed to be that the actor becomes, in a sense, invisible. Most actors agree that the more successfully they create characters, the more we will see those characters and not them. -Inherent Thoughtfulness or Emotionality: Does the actor convey the character's thought process or feelings behind the character's actions or reactions? In addition to a credible appearance, does the character have a credible inner life? An actor can find the motivations behind a character's actions and reactions at any time before or during a movie's production. They may come to light in the script (as well as in any source on which it is based, such as a novel or play), in discussions with the director or with other cast members, and in spontaneous elements of inspiration and improvisation that the actor discovers while the camera is rolling. No matter which of these aspects or combinations of them reveal the character's motivation, we expect to see the actor reflect them within the character's consciousness or as part of the illusion-making process by which the character appears. To put it another way, the characters must seem vulnerable to forces in the narrative. They must be able to think about them and, if necessary, change their mind or feelings about them. -Expressive Coherence: Has the actor used these first two qualities (appropriateness and inherent thoughtfulness/emotionality) to create a characterization that holds together? Whatever behavior an actor uses to convey character, it must be intrinsic, not extraneous to the character, "maintaining not only a coherence of manner, but also a fit between setting, costume, and behavior." When an actor achieves such a fit, he or she is playing in character. Maintaining expressive coherence enables the actor to create a complex characterization and performance, to express thoughts and reveal emotions of a recognizable individual without veering off into mere quirks or distracting details. -Wholeness and Unity: Despite the challenges inherent in most film productions, has the actor maintained the illusion of a seamless character, even if that character is purposely riddled with contradictions? Whereas expressive coherence relies on the logic inherent in an actor's performance, wholeness and unity are achieved through the actor's ability to achieve aesthetic consistency while working with the director, crew, and other cast members; enduring multiple takes; and projecting to the camera rather than to an audience. However, wholeness and unity need not mean uniformity. The point is this: as audience members we want to feel we're in good hands; when we're confused or asked to make sense of seemingly incoherent elements, we want to know that the apparent incoherence happened intentionally, for an aesthetic reason, as part of the filmmakers' overall vision. For example, if a given character suddenly breaks down or reveals himself to be pretending to be somebody he isn't, the actor must sufficiently prepare for this change in the preceding scenes, however he chooses, so that we can accept it.

shot/reverse shot

-Conversations between characters are often captured and edited using the shot/reverse shot method. The entire interaction is filmed with the camera first framed on one character (the camera usually positioned just behind the second character's shoulder), then the camera is moved to a reverse position facing the second character from a corresponding position just behind the first character's shoulder. Even coverage as simple as a shot/reverse shot gives the editor a great deal of creative freedom.

match cutting(match on action cut, eyeline match cut, graphic match cut)

-Cutting during a physical action helps hide the instantaneous and potentially jarring shift from one camera viewpoint to another. When connecting one shot to the next, a film editor often ends the first shot in the middle of a continuing action and starts the connecting shot at the same point in the same action. As a result, the action flows so continuously over the cut between different moving images that most viewers fail to register the switch. -When looking at others, we humans are naturally drawn to the eyes. Filmmakers use this tendency to create spatial continuity between sequenced shots depicting interacting characters. On set, camera positions are calculated so that if one actor's gaze is aimed in a particular direction offscreen in one shot, the direction of the other actor's eyes is mirrored in the corresponding shot. The direction in which an actor looks is known as his or her eyeline. When the editor cuts between two such corresponding shots, the resulting eyeline match cut creates a logical and spatial connection between the juxtaposed images. -By repeating a similar shape, color, or other compositional element from one shot to the next, the graphic match cut implies a direct link between the events and content presented in the two different shots. For this reason, graphic match cuts are often used to bridge scenes taking place in the present to sequences depicting past events or memories.

cross cutting/parallel editing & split screen

-Editing that cuts between two or more lines of action, often implied to be occurring at the same time but in different location. -Editing can also break the screen into multiple frames and images, a technique known as split screen. Like parallel editing, split screen typically depicts one or more simultaneous actions, but since those actions are uninterrupted and adjacent (rather than crosscut), the comparisons they evoke and the relationships they imply are even more conspicuous.

F. W. Murnau

-Famous German expressionist film director. Known for the expressionist film: Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922), the first of many film adaptations of the Dracula story, and The Last Laugh (1924), a charming fable about social justice. Their narratives could not be more different, yet these films are linked by their reliance on expressionist design. In contrast to Dr. Caligari, where the expressionism relies mostly on graphic effects, those in Nosferatu rely primarily on cinematic effects: low camera angles, makeup and costume design, lighting, and editing create an eerie mise-en-scène. And even though the vampire figure is truly scary (Nosferatu is played by the memorable Max Schreck, who, pictured here with Gustav von Wangenheim as the real-estate agent, looks like a rat), the movie also manages to make him a sympathetic human being. Far more sympathetic—and far more realistic—is the principal character of The Last Laugh, an unnamed hotel porter played equally memorably by Emil Jannings. Here, expressionism can be seen in the mise-en-scène and actor's movements as well as in the composition, play of light and shadow, and exaggerated costume, all of which are subtler than what we see in either Dr. Caligari or Nosferatu. The Last Laugh is also important for its impressive use of the moving camera and the camera's subjective point of view.

Flat/Round Characters

-Flat character: A relatively uncomplicated character exhibiting few distinct traits. Flat characters don't change significantly as the story progresses. -Round character: A complex character possessing numerous, subtle, repressed, or contradictory traits. Round characters often develop over the course of the story.

framing, frame, freeze-frame

-Framing is the process by which the cinematographer or camera operator uses the boundaries and dimensions of the moving image to determine what we see on the screen. -A still photograph that when recorded in rapid succession with other still photographs create a motion picture. The borders of a motion picture, within which formal elements are composed. -Also known as stop-frame or hold-frame. A still image within a movie created by repetitive printing in the laboratory of the same frame, so that it can be seen without movement for whatever length of time the filmmaker desires. Editing can even suspend the viewer in a single instant. The freeze-frame suddenly stops a shot to hold on a single "frozen" image of the arrested action. The editor accomplishes this by simply repeating the same frame for whatever length of time is required for the desired effect.

color grading(color correction) & color temperature

-In postproduction, the process of altering and enhancing the color of motion picture(or video or still image) using electronic, photochemical, or digital techniques. -The variation of light wavelengths emitted by different light sources. These wavelengths register as different colors when captured on film or digital video.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

-Most famous German expressionist film, and the one traditionally cited as the epitome of the style directed by Robert Wiene . - Disturbing, complicated story of fantasy and horror told by a madman. Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) operates a carnival attraction featuring a somnambulist (sleepwalker) named Cesare (Conrad Veidt); the "cabinet" in the title refers to the type of early freak show called a "cabinet of curiosities" as well as to the coffin-like box in which Cesare "sleeps" until Caligari awakens him and orders him to commit murders. The title card, written in exaggerated letters, speaks in a folksy tone while echoing the graphics of the movie's painted settings. The power of these settings is evident when we see Dr. Caligari attempting to rouse Cesare, who is presumably "asleep" while standing upright in Caligari's cabinet. -Known for its design. The floors, walls, and ceilings of the interior sets are sharply angled; windows admit no natural light, though shafts of illusionistic light and shadow are painted on the walls and floors of the sets; dim staircases seem to lead nowhere; the calligraphy of the titles is bizarre, as is the color tinting—blue, sepia, rose, and green. All this differentiates night from day and underscores the different moods. The exterior sets are equally artificial; buildings, piled on top of one another, jut upward at strange angles.

pan & tilt shot

-Pan shot pivots the camera horizontally on a stationary axis (side to side).The pan shot offers us a larger, more panoramic view than a shot taken from a fixed camera; guides our attention to characters or actions that are important; makes us aware of relationships between subjects that are too far apart to be shown together in the frame; allows us to follow people or objects; and attempts to replicate what we see when we turn our heads to survey a scene or follow a character. -For a tilt shot, the camera pivots vertically; in other words, it "looks" (up and down). The tilt shot can do anything a pan does—only vertically. Because our world and our movements are mostly oriented along the horizontal axis, pan shots are the most common of the two. Pan and tilt shots are shot from a stationary tripod.

continuity editing & discontinuity editing

-Seeks to keep viewers oriented in space and time, to ensure a smooth and subtle (preferably invisible) flow between shots, and to maintain a logical connection between adjacent shots and scenes. Because commerce and coherence are still vital elements of mainstream movies, continuity editing remains predominant in most of the movies and television produced today. When film makers combine a series of shots into a sequence to show some sort of consistency in space and time in the story. -Emphasizes dynamic, often discontinuous relationships between shots, including contrasts in movement, camera angle, and shot type. This approach deliberately incorporates abrupt spatial and temporal shifts between shots, especially if doing so conveys meaning or provokes reaction. Instead of seeking to make viewers forget they are watching a movie, discontinuity editing calls attention to itself as an element of cinematic form. Discontinuous editing techniques include associative editing, the freeze-frame, split screen, the jump cut, and the ellipsis.

slow motion & fast motion

-Slow motion is achieved by filming at a higher frame rate. For example, to create a shot where the action happens at half of normal speed, the camera frame rate must be doubled to 48 fps, so that when the shot is played back at 24 fps, it will take up twice the screen time. Slow motion tends to make movement appear more graceful, which makes it useful for a number of applications. It can suggest a character's heightened awareness, impart significance to an action that might otherwise be interpreted as mundane, lend an ironic elegance to violence, or suspend viewers in a moment that would normally be fleeting, such as a kiss . . . or an explosion. -Fast motion is achieved by filming at a lower frame rate. To make action on-screen appear twice as fast as it actually occurred, the cinematographer would shoot it at 12 fps so that when it is projected at 24 fps, that same action will take only half as much screen time as it took in real time. Speeding up the way we humans move can make our actions look ridiculous, and so fast motion is often used for comic effect.

basic approaches to studying film history (the aesthetic, technological, economic, and social)

-Sometimes called the masterpiece approach, the aesthetic approach seeks to evaluate individual movies and/or directors using criteria that assess their artistic significance and influence. Ordinarily, historians who take this approach will first define their criteria of artistic excellence and then ask the following questions: What are the significant works of the cinematic art? Who are the significant directors? Why are these movies and these directors important? Historians who take the aesthetic perspective do not necessarily ignore the economic, technological, and cultural aspects of film history—indeed, it would be impossible to discuss many great movies without considering these factors—but they are primarily interested in movies that are not only works of art but also widely acknowledged masterpieces. -Historians who chart the history of cinema technology examine the circumstances surrounding the development of each technological advance as well as subsequent improvements. They pose questions such as: When was each invention made? Under what circumstances, including aesthetic, economic, and social, was it made? Was it a totally new idea or one linked to the existing state of technology? What were the consequences for directors, studios, distributors, exhibitors, and audiences? By studying how the major developments (including the introduction of sound, the moving camera, deep-focus cinematography, color film stock, and digital cinematography, processing, and projection) occurred, historians show us how the production of movies has changed and can also evaluate whether that change was significant (like widescreen processes) or transitory (like Smell-O-Vision). This approach cuts across artists, studios, movements, and genres to focus on the interaction of technology with aesthetics, modes of production, and economic factors. -The motion-picture industry is a major part of the global economy. Every movie released has an economic history of its own as well as a place in the economic history of its studio ( policies of production, distribution, and exhibition) and the historical period and country in which it was produced. Historians interested in this subject help us to understand how and why the studio system was founded, how it adapted to changing conditions (economic, technological, social, historical), and how and why different studios took different approaches to producing different movies, how these movies have been distributed and exhibited, and what effect this had on film history. They study how and why the independent system of production superseded the studio system and what effect this has had on production, distribution, and exhibition. They are also concerned with such related issues as management and organization, accounting and marketing practices, and censorship and the rating system. Finally, they try to place significant movies within the nation's economy as well as within the output of the industry in general and the producing studio in particular. -Because society and culture influence the movies, and vice versa, the movies serve as primary sources for studying society. Writing about movies as social history continues to be a major preoccupation of journalists, scholars, and students alike. Philosopher Ian Jarvie suggests that, in undertaking these studies, we ask the following basic questions: Who made the movies, and why? Who saw the films, how, and why? What was seen, how, and why? How were the movies evaluated, by whom, and why? In addition, those interested in social history consider such factors as religion, politics, and cultural trends and taboos. They ask to what extent, if any, a particular movie was produced to sway public opinion or effect social change. They are also interested in audience composition, marketing, and critical writing and reviewing in the media, from gossip magazines to scholarly books. Overall, they study the complex interaction between the movies—as a social institution—and other social institutions, including government, religion, and labor.

audience awareness and expectation

-Sound can define sections of the screen, guide our attention to or between them, and influence our interpretation. -Sounds create expectations. For example, in a scene between a man and a woman in which you hear quiet music, the sounds of their movements, and a subtle sound of moving clothes, you might expect intimacy between the characters. However, in a similar scene in which the characters are not moving and you cannot hear their clothes—and instead you hear the harsh sound of traffic outside or a fan in the room—you might expect something other than intimacy. Sound also requires precise timing and coordination with the image.

sound design

-Sound design is the art of creating the sound for a film. Sound design combines the crafts of editing and mixing and, like them, involves matters both theoretical and practical. -Although many filmmakers continue to understand and manipulate sound in conventional ways, sound design has produced major advances in how movies are conceived, made, viewed, and interpreted. Until the 1970s, the vast majority of producers and directors thought about sound only after the picture was shot. They did not design films with sound in mind and frequently did not fully recognize that decisions about art direction, composition, lighting, cinematography, and acting would ultimately influence how sound tracks would be created and mixed. They considered sound satisfactory if it could distract from or cover up mistakes in shooting and create the illusion that the audience was hearing what it was seeing. -By contrast, the contemporary concept of sound design rests on the following basic assumptions: -Sound should be integral to all three phases of film production (preproduction, production, and postproduction), not an afterthought to be added in postproduction only. -A film's sound is potentially as expressive as its images. -Image and sound can create different worlds. -Image and sound are co-expressible.

computer-generated imagery(CGI), motion capture

-The application of computer graphics to create images, backgrounds, animated characters, and special effects. -Also known as mocap, motion tracking, or performance capture. A process in which the movements of objects or actors dressed in special suits are recorded as data that computers subsequently use to render the motion of CGI characters on screen.

aperture, focal length, and depth of field

-The basic properties shared by all lenses -The aperture of a lens is an adjustable iris (or diaphragm) that controls the amount of light passing through the lens. The greater the size of the aperture, the more light it admits through the lens. -The focal length of the lens is the distance (measured in millimeters) from the optical center of the lens to the focal point on the film stock or other sensor when the image is sharp and clear (in focus). Focal length affects how we perceive perspective—the appearance of depth—in a shot, and it also influences our perception of the size, scale, and movement of the subject being shot. -The depth of field refers to the distance in front of a camera (and its lens) in which the subjects are in apparent sharp focus.

resolution

-The concluding narrative event that follow the climax. -The capacity of the camera lens, film stock, and digital sensors to provide fine detail in an image.

Flashback/Flashforward

-The interruption of chronological plot time with a shot or series of shots depicting an event that has has happened earlier in the story. -A device for presenting the anticipation of the camera, a character, the audience, or all three. In a flash forward, the action curs from the narrative present to a future time, when for example the omniscient camera either reveals directly or a character imagines from their point of view what is going to happen.

point of view & point of view shot

-The position from which a film presents the action of the story; not only the relationship of the narrators to the story but also the camera's act of seeing and hearing. Two fundamental types of cinematic point of view are omniscient and restricted. - A shot that represents what a character is looking at.

Protagonist/Antagonist

-The primary character whose pursuit of the goal provides the structural foundation of a movie's story. -The character, creature, or force that obstructs or resists the protagonist's pursuit of their goal.

editing

-The process by which the editor combines and coordinates individual shots into a cinematic whole. The basic creative force of cinema. -The basic building block of film editing is the shot, and its most fundamental tool is the cut. The cut can be thought of in several ways. The first is as part of the editor's process. The best directors and cinematographers plan and capture action in ways that facilitate the creative editing process. Many scenes are recorded using coverage—multiple angles and shot types covering the same action—in order to provide the editor the freedom to select the best possible viewpoint for each dramatic moment. Camera positions, framing, and blocking of different shots for a single scene are planned and executed in ways that ensure the editor will be able to preserve spatial and temporal continuity when constructing the scene. Multiple takes of the same shot may be captured to provide editors a variety of different approaches to performance or camera movement. -Editing relies on fragmentation, the breaking up of stories, scenes, events, and actions into multiple shots that provide a diversity of compositions and combinations with which to convey meaning. This aspect of film form draws upon a sort of cinematic gestalt: the idea that our minds can intuitively organize a continuous stream of incomplete pieces into a coherent whole.

Animated Films (Hand-Drawn Animation, Stop-Motion Animation, Computer Animation)

-Three basic types of animation that are used widely today: -Hand drawn animation: Also known as traditional or cel animation. To create hand drawn animation, animators draw or paint images that are the incorporated into a motion picture one drawing at a time. 24 frames equal 1 second of animation. -Stop-motion animation: Stop-motion records the movement of objects(toys, puppets, clay figures, or cutouts) with a motion-picture camera; the animators moves the objects slightly each recorded frame. -Computer animation: Also known as 3-D animation. Computer animation uses the virtual world of 3-D computer-modeling software to generate the animation. Digitally constructs virtual characters, objects, and backgrounds in all three dimensions.

Stanislavsky system and method acting

-What Americans call method acting was based on the theory and practice of Konstantin Stanislavsky, who cofounded the Moscow Art Theater in 1897 and spent his entire career there. In developing what became known as the Stanislavsky system of acting, he trained students to start by conducting an exhaustive inquiry into their characters' background and psychology. With an understanding of those aspects, they could then work from the inside out. In other words, they had to be the character before successfully playing the character. -The naturalistic style that they popularized (and called method acting, more popularly known as the Method) encourages actors to speak, move, and gesture not in a traditional stage manner but just as they would in their own lives. Thus it is an ideal technique for representing convincing human behavior on the stage and on the screen. The Method has led to a new level of realism and subtlety.

editor

-Works closely with the director. During the preproduction phase, they may discuss storyboards and other previsualization materials. During production, an editor may cut together rough versions of completed scenes to assist the director in determining if additional footage is needed. Before the edit begins, the director and editor discuss each scene's story, tone, and narrative function. After reviewing the footage provided, the editor communicates observations regarding performance, emphasis, important dramatic moments, event structure and order, and other potential expressive opportunities. The editor shares each draft version of every scene with the director so they can discuss what works and what doesn't. The editor takes notes and continues working on progressive versions, getting and applying feedback until the project is completed. Although the director has the final say on all decisions, editors are known to feel very strongly about particular cuts. In addition to the director, the editor works closely with a number of other collaborators during postproduction. Assistant editors function as media managers: importing, labeling, organizing, and archiving terabytes of digital video and sound files. Coeditors help draft scenes and sequences. The postproduction supervisor shepherds the project through picture editing, and the concurrent and subsequent steps required before the final digital export: scoring, sound design, sound mixing, visual effects, and color grading and correction. Once the footage is prepared by the assistant editors, the editor begins work on a first-draft edit known as the rough cut. As part of this process, she may create multiple versions of the same scene or sequence for purposes of comparison. Over the course of postproduction, the edit moves through successive versions working toward the fine cut. Throughout this process, the editor edits the footage (or picture), as well as the dialogue, which is typically the only sound recorded on set during production. Ultimately, the editor submits the picture lock version, the final edit of the film footage.

Hollywood Studios and Independent Production Companies Today

1. Major Studio: 20th Century Fox Owner: 21st Century Fox Independent Production Companies Owned by Studio: Blue Sky Studios, Fox Searchlight Pictures 2. Major Studio: Columbia Pictures Owner: Sony Independent Production Companies Owned by Studio: Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Animation, Sony Pictures Classics 3. Major Studio: Paramount Pictures Owner: Viacom 4. Major Studio: Universal Pictures Owner: Comcast Independent Production Companies Owned by Studio: DreamWorks Animation, Focus Features, Illumination Entertainment, Working Title Films 5. Walt Disney Pictures The Walt Disney Company Disneynature, DisneyToon Studios, Lucasfilm, marvel Studios, Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios 6. Warner Bros Pictures Time Warner New Line Cinema, Warner Bros Animation Mini-Major Production Companies: 1. Lionsgate Films Lionsgate Summit Entertainment 2. Open Road Films Tang Media Partners 3. STXfilms STX Entertainment 4. The Weinstein Company Bob Weinstein Dimension Films

major studio systems (until 1950)

1. Paramount 2. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 3. Warner Bros 4. 20th Century Fox 5. RKO Controlling film production through their studios and, equally important, film distribution (the marketing and promotion of a film) and exhibition (the actual showing of a motion picture in a commercial theater) through their ownership of film exchanges and theater chains, the majors produced "A" pictures, meaning those featured at the top of the double bill (ordinarily, for the price of a single admission, moviegoers enjoyed almost 4 hours of entertainment: two feature films, a cartoon, a short subject, and a newsreel).

most significant "B" (Poverty Row) studios

1. Republic Pictures 2. Monogram Productions 3. Grand National Films 4. Producers Releasing Corporation 5. Eagle-Lion Films The five B studios (sometimes called the poverty row studios because of their relatively small budgets) were Republic Pictures, Monogram Productions, Grand National Films, Producers Releasing Corporation, and Eagle-Lion Films. Their B movies filled in the bottom half of double bills.

most significant independent producers

1. Samuel Goldwyn Productions 2. David O. Selznick 3. Walt Disney Studios

minor studios systems (until 1950)

1. Universal Studios 2. Columbia Pictures 3. United Artists The three minor studios—Universal, Columbia, and United Artists—also produced "A" pictures, but they were less similar than the majors. Universal and Columbia owned their own production facilities but no theaters, and thus depended on the majors to show their films.

four key types of actors

1.Actors who take their personae from role to role (personality actors) those personae are their appearance and mannerisms of moving and delivering dialogue—unique creations that are relatively consistent from role to role and from performance to performance. Actors' personae are usually (but not always) rooted in their natural behavior, personality, and physicality. 2. Actors who deliberately play against our expectations of their personae Sometimes an actor with a familiar, popular persona takes on a role that goes against what we expect. A major factor affecting our enjoyment of actors in such roles is not just the role, but the strange sensation of seeing an actor whose persona we have come to know well play a totally different sort of role. 3. Actors who seem to be different in every role (chameleon actors) On the other side of the acting scale is the chameleon actor, named for the lizard that can make quick, frequent changes in its appearance in response to the environment. Chameleon actors adapt their look, mannerisms, and delivery to suit the role. 4. Actors who are often nonprofessionals or people who are cast to bring verisimilitude to a part Real-life people who take roles in feature films (not documentaries) to play characters whose lives are much like their own. The earliest movies were cast with only nonprofessionals, and the tradition has remained in movies that call for such casting.

standard frame rate for film

24 fps is the standard frame rate for film.

bird eye view

A bird's-eye view shot (or an overhead or aerial-view shot) is taken from directly over the subjects, often from an elevated view. Cranes, drones, or aircraft are principally used to capture this extreme perspective. As most of us don't encounter this viewpoint in our regular lives, the bird's-eye view can be used to impart a sense of disorientation or strangeness to the action on-screen. In a different context, the view from on high can be used to convey omniscience in terms of narration or point of view.

camera lens(Focal Length: Short, Middle, Long, Zoom, Prime)

A camera lens is a piece of curved, polished glass or other transparent material. As the "eye" of the camera, its primary function is to bring the light that reflects off the subjects in front of the camera (actors, objects, and settings) into a focused image on the film or sensor inside the camera. -Short focal length lens (also known as the wide angle lens, starting as low as 12.5mm) produces wide angle views and stretches the appearance of depth. Exaggerates spatial perspective and stretches depth. -Middle focal length lens(also known as the normal lens; from 35mm to 50mm). Lenses in this range create images that correspond to our day to day experience of depth and perspective. -Long focal length lens(also known as the telephoto lens; focal lengths ranging from 85mm to as high as 500mm)compresses the appearance of depth, which makes distant subjects look closer. Spatial flattening effect making subject from the background moving towards the camera appear very slow. -Zoom lens, also called the variable focal length lens, permits the assistant cameraperson to reduce or increase the focal length of the lens between takes or setups without changing the lens. Zoom in and out towards subject. -Prime lens: Fixed focal length lens. Short, Middle, and High focal length lens are all prime lens.

dolly shot/tracking shot

A dolly shot (also known as a tracking shot) is one taken from a camera mounted on a wheeled platform called a dolly, which can be equipped with either large rubber wheels for smooth soundstage floors or grooved wheels that run on tracks over uneven surfaces. Because it moves smoothly and freely along the ground, the dolly shot is one of the most effective (and consequently most common) uses of the moving camera. Dolly shots can follow characters moving through settings or simulate the point of view of a moving character. A camera narrator shot with a dolly can guide the frame through unfolding situations and convey spatial relationships between one scene element and another. One of the most common dolly shots is the dolly in, which moves the camera toward a stationary subject, causing the subject's size in frame to gradually increase. This visible shift in implied proximity intensifies the significance of a moment, making the technique useful for depicting a character at a moment of realization or decision. A dolly-out movement (moving backwards) can be used for a technique called slow disclosure where the camera movement allows new information into the frame that expands or changes the viewer's initial interpretation of the subject or situation.

handheld camera shot

A handheld camera is exactly what it sounds like: the camera operator holds the camera, usually with the help of a mount that allows the bulk of the camera weight to rest on her shoulder. Not even the most skilled operator can completely eliminate the shaking and wobbling associated with a handheld camera. Because news and documentary filmmakers rely on the flexibility of the handheld camera to cover unpredictable ongoing events, its unstable look is often associated with documentary realism.

montage sequence

A montage sequence is an integrated series of shots that rapidly depicts multiple related events occurring over time. Music or other sound often accompanies the sequence to further unify the presented events. Although all aspects of editing are related, the montage sequence should not be confused with montage editing. Montage—from the French verb monter, "to assemble or put together"—is French for "editing." Because French scholars and filmmakers were the among the first to take cinema seriously as an art form, their broad term wound up applied to more than one specific editing approach. Montage sequences are usually used to condense time when an accumulation of actions is necessary to the narrative, but developing each individual action would consume too much of the movie's duration. Common multi-event narrative progressions (such as a character falling in love, undergoing a makeover or similar transformation or training for some sort of occasion or competition) are so often represented using a montage sequence that the technique is sometimes the object of parody. But the montage sequence can be both useful and effective, and its application is not limited to these time-condensing tropes. While many montage sequences have been used to portray characters falling in love or falling out of love.

sound designer

A sound designer treats the sound track of a film the way a painter treats a canvas. For each shot, the designer first identifies all the sounds necessary to the story and plot. The next step is laying in all the background tones (different tones equal different colors) to create the support necessary for adding the specific sounds that help the scene to function. Before sound design was widely accepted, the responsibilities for sound were divided among recording, rerecording, editing, mixing, and sound-effects crews; these crews sometimes overlapped but often did not. In the industry's attempt to integrate all aspects of sound in a movie, from planning to postproduction, the sound designer began to supervise all these responsibilities—a development initially resented by many traditional sound specialists, who felt their autonomy was being compromised. It is now conventional for sound designers (or supervising sound editors) to oversee the creation and control of the sounds (and silences) we hear in movies. They are, in a sense, advocates for sound.

minor role/ supporting role actor

Actors who play minor roles (or supporting roles) rank second in the hierarchy. They also help move the plot forward (and thus may be as important as actors in major roles), but they generally do not appear in as many scenes as the featured players. Bit players hold small speaking parts, and extras usually appear in nonspeaking or crowd roles and receive no screen credit. Cameos are small but significant roles often taken by famous actors. Walk-ons are even smaller roles, reserved for highly recognizable actors or personalities.

Claude Chabrol

Alfred Hitchcock's movies were greatly admired by New Wave directors. Claude Chabrol, who carefully studied the movies of the master of suspense and surprise, is noted also for movies that combine romance with gory murders. In The Butcher (1970), thought by many to be his masterpiece, a group of schoolchildren accompany Hélène (Stéphane Audran), their teacher, to see a magnificent cave that contains prehistoric drawings. Afterward—in the image here—as they enjoy their picnic lunch, blood drips onto one girl's bread from a fresh corpse on a cliff above. When Hélène sees the body, she suspects that it is yet another woman who has been victimized by the local butcher, a man with whom the teacher has a platonic relationship. After that, the suspense—whose effect Chabrol learned well from Hitchcock—becomes almost unbearable.

sound characterization

All types of sound—dialogue, sound effects, music—can function as part of characterization. Musical themes are frequently associated with a character's thoughts. Musical themes can also help us to understand the setting in which characters live. Musical themes often identify characters, occurring and recurring on the sound track as the characters make their entrances and exits on the screen. But music can also underscore characters' insights.

overlapping sound

Also known as a sound bridge. Sound that carries over from one shot to the next before the sound of the second shot begins.

Alienation Effect

Also known as distancing effect. A psychological distance between audience and stage for which, according to German playwright Bertolt Brecht, every aspect of a theatrical production should strive by limiting the audience's identification with characters and events.

Automatic Dialogue Replacement (ADR)

Also known as looping. A postproduction process that is used to replace dialogue compromised by intrusive sounds or other on-set recording problems. Actors perform new dialogue in a recording studio while watching looped (repeating) footage of the moment in question.

Technology and Acting

Although digital technology is now affecting all aspects of filmmaking, we don't have to worry about it replacing actors entirely. Audiences say they choose movies that include their favorite actors. But alongside real actors, computer-generated imagery (CGI) can create convincing characters such as the avatars digitally created to interact with the Na'vi, the blue-skinned humanoids in James Cameron's Avatar (2009) and its sequels. Let's also note the distinction between whole characters created entirely by digital technology and real actors transformed by digital makeup, Director David Fincher used both procedures when faced with the challenge of casting actors to play the real-life, identical Winkelvoss twins in The Social Network (2010). Since Aaron Sorkin's screenplay is a fictional account of a true incident, it would have been acceptable to alter the story and cast actors as fraternal rather than identical twins. Instead, Fincher cast Armie Hammer and Josh Pence, respectively, in the roles of the identical Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. Throughout their scenes, Hammer acted alongside Pence, and through the postproduction use of motion-capture technology and digital grafting of Hammer's face onto Pence's, they appear on the screen as identical twins. Using two different actors in these roles allows the actors to develop characters with different personalities; using digital grafting ensures the facial similarity necessary for depicting identical twins. While the result is totally convincing in this specific situation, there aren't many movies about identical twins.

Cuba

Although the Cuban cinema was a significant industry, producing its own movies but relying heavily on Hollywood imports, it changed profoundly with the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro. Consistent with its Marxist principles—and adhering to Lenin's familiar remark, "cinema, for us, is the most important of the arts"—the Cuban government, in one of its first moves, established the Cuban Institute for Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) to encourage, improve, and support filmmaking at all levels. The 1959 revolution created a vast diaspora of disaffected Cubans (including many filmmakers) who emigrated to the United States and Latin American countries. There, they were free to make films critical of the Castro regime, and while these efforts did not have much impact in Cuba, some are well-known worldwide. Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's first major work in America, Memories of Underdevelopment (1968), is a portrayal of a bourgeois man, Sergio (Sergio Corrieri) who remains in Cuba after the fall of Batista. The film condemns the man's spiritual emptiness and ironically sympathizes with his isolation. Author Joshua Jelly-Schapiro describes the historical significance of Gutiérrez Alea's Memories: "Gutiérrez Alea was thirty-eight when he decided to adapt a short novel by the Cuban writer Edmundo Desnoes into a film—the same age as the story's protagonist. That's not all they shared: Sergio is, as Gutiérrez Alea was, a bourgeois intellectual and a light-skinned member of Havana's elite. We watch him, in the film's opening scene, say goodbye to friends and family and to his wife, whom he can't wait to put on a plane to Miami. His story unfolds in 1961 and 1962, over the pregnant months between the Bay of Pigs invasion and the scary days of what Cubans call the Crisis de Octubre, when their leaders' confrontation with Washington nearly became a nuclear war. Memories of Underdevelopment is an exercise in narrating, in cinematic terms, a history that was still ongoing. It examined events from a half decade before: momentous days and images that continued, in 1968, to shape the story of a revolution that had left its heady youth behind and was just beginning to deal with the contradictions of adulthood.

middle focal length

Although the short and long extremes are used occasionally to achieve certain visual effects, most shots in feature films are made with a middle-focal-length lens—from 35mm to 50mm—often called the normal lens. Lenses in this range create images that correspond to our day-to-day experience of depth and perspective.

environmental sounds (ambient sound, sound effects, and Foley sounds)

Ambient sound, which emanates from the ambience (or background) of the setting or environment being filmed, is either recorded during production or added during postproduction. Although it may incorporate other types of film sound—dialogue, narration, sound effects, Foley sounds, and music—ambient sound should not include any unintentionally recorded noise made during production, such as the sounds of cameras, static from sound-recording equipment, car horns, sirens, footsteps, or voices from outside the production. Filmmakers regard these sounds as an inevitable nuisance and generally remove them electronically during postproduction. Ambient sound helps set the mood and atmosphere of scenes, and it may also contribute to the meaning of a scene. Sound effects include all sounds artificially created for the sound track that have a definite function in telling the story. All sound effects, except those made on electronic equipment to deliberately create electronic sounds, come from "wild" recordings of real things, and it is the responsibility of the sound designer and the sound crew to pick and combine these sounds to create the hyperreality of the film's sound track. In the 1930s, Jack Foley, a sound technician at Universal Studios, invented a special category of sound effects: Foley sounds. There are two significant differences between Foleys and the sound effects just described. The first is that traditional sound effects are created or recorded "wild" and then edited into the film, whereas Foleys are created and recorded in sync with the picture. To do this, the technicians known as Foley artists have a studio equipped with recording equipment and a screen for viewing the movie as they create sounds in sync with it. The second difference is that traditional sound effects can be taken directly from a library of prerecorded effects (e.g., church bells, traffic noises, jungle sounds) or created specifically for the movie.

ensemble acting

An approach to acting that emphasizes the interaction of actors, not the individual actor. In ensemble acting, a group of actors work together continuously in a single shot. Typically experienced in the theater, ensemble acting is used less in the movies because it requires the provision of rehearsal time that is usually denied to screen actors.

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.

Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)

An association of major Hollywood studios designed to set industry standards and give filmmakers artistic freedom.

François Truffaut

An influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave; Among the first New Wave movies were François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) and Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960). Truffaut's protagonist, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), is a boy in his early teens who, as we see him here, has just escaped from a juvenile detention center.

internal sound vs. external sound

An internal sound occurs whenever we hear what we assume are the thoughts of a character within a scene. The character might be expressing random thoughts or a sustained monologue. External sound comes from a place within the world of the story, and we assume that it is heard by the characters in that world. The source of an external sound can be either on-screen or offscreen.

Edwin S. Porter

Another early pioneer, Edwin S. Porter, was a director working with Edison and by 1903 had established a relatively sophisticated approach to narrative filmmaking in such pioneering films as The Great Train Robbery (1903; 12 min.), which used multiple camera positions, interior and exterior settings, and crosscutting (intercutting) that made it possible to depict parallel actions occurring simultaneously. He also established the concept that the shot was the basic structural unit of a movie and pioneered the idea of continuity editing. The Great Train Robbery was the first major milestone in the development of the American narrative film as well as the first "Western." The Great Train Robbery (1903), Porter broke away from the prevailing step-by-step, one-shot-one-scene editing of Méliès and invented an early form of continuity editing in which he built a scene made up of shots that seemed chronologically continuous from one shot to the next. We make sense of this, as well as create meaning, by mentally connecting the shots into a logical narrative. Porter also cuts back and forth in time, showing simultaneous events taking place in different locations. For example, in The Great Train Robbery, the robbers begin their heist by shooting and tying up a telegraph operator at a train station; then they board the next train, rob the passengers, uncouple the engine, and head off. As they reach what they think is safety, Porter cuts back to the telegraph office, where (as shown here) a little girl, presumably the operator's daughter, discovers her father and revives him. Porter then cuts directly to a barn dance, where the operator and the little girl report what has happened. Porter then jumps ahead to the outlaws and the final shoot-out, continuing to use ellipsis when necessary to keep the action moving to the conclusion.

Conventions of Continuity Editing

As with many conventions of film production, the conventions of continuity editing remain open to variation, but in general, continuity editing ensures that: -What happens on the screen makes as much narrative sense as possible. -Screen direction is consistent from shot to shot. -Graphic, spatial, and temporal relations are maintained from shot to shot. Maintaining a coherent sense of space in a medium that comprises constantly shifting viewpoints is one of continuity editing's primary functions. Filmmakers have developed a number of different techniques to help viewers maintain their bearings from shot to shot.

associative editing

Associative editing, also known as intellectual editing, uses juxtaposition to impart meaning in a way that we usually can't help but notice. This approach pairs contrasting or incongruent images in a manner that implies a thematic relationship.

Auguste and Louis Lumière

At first glance, Auguste and Louis Lumière's Children Digging for Clams (1896) may seem similar to Edison's Seminary Girls as a simple record of an ordinary activity. But the differences between them show that the Lumières were artists with a natural sense of style. Not only was it longer (44 seconds) and shot outdoors (with a stationary camera), but it also employs a deep composition. Across the foreground, in a diagonal line, we see the clam-digging children; in the middle ground, we see adults, probably their parents, keeping an eye on them; and in the background, we see other people, the shoreline, and the horizon. As far as composition goes, nothing could be simpler; but by shooting it outdoors in a natural landscape, the Lumières provide an aesthetically pleasing interpretation of an actual event rather than just a documentary record.

separation

Because viewers identify with the lens (the viewpoint of the camera), a single-character point-of-view shot can generate a sort of intensified identification with the character whose viewpoint we have assumed. When we experience a series of shots representing the alternating points of view of two interacting characters, we may experience a sort of participatory cycle that theorist and filmmaker Stefan Sharff called separation. It is something of a cinematic role-playing game. On some level, when we're looking at character B through character A's point of view, we assume the perspective of character A. In other words, we literally and figuratively see character B through character A's eyes. When the sequence shifts to character B's point of view of character A, our identification shifts to that of character B. An extended back-and-forth sequence can dramatically intensify our experience of the interaction, which is why filmmakers typically reserve the technique for dramatically significant exchanges. Separation: A framing and editing technique that uses eyelines and juxtaposition to draw viewers into a participatory cycle that creates intensified relationships between alternating subjects seen separately on screen.

producer unit system

Before 1931, typical Hollywood studios were dominated by central producers such as Irving Thalberg at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Adolph Zukor at Paramount, and Harry and Jack Warner at Warner Bros. By the late 1920s, the film industry had come to see that the central-producer system encouraged quantity over quality and that less-than-stellar movies did not draw audiences into theaters. As a result, the industry sought a new system, one that would value both profits and aesthetic value. In 1931, the film industry adopted the producer-unit system, an organizational structure that typically included a general manager, executive manager, production manager, studio manager, and individual production supervisors. The system produced movies that had a predictable technical quality, often at the cost of stylistic sameness, or what we call the studio "look." It resulted in an overall output that inevitably—since hundreds of films were produced each year—valued profitability above all else. Yet although it could be stifling, standardization allowed for creative innovation, usually under carefully controlled circumstances. To help ensure such creativity, unit producers received varied assignments.

Bette Davis/Nicole Kidman (Stardom: Then and Now)

Bette Davis, an actress who became a legend for playing strong-willed and often neurotic female characters, was in top form as Leslie Crosbie in The Letter (1940). In the movie's electric opening scene, she pumps five bullets into her lover, then pleads self-defense in court. Nicole Kidman, like Davis, is famous for her professionalism and versatility. Unlike Davis, however, she has almost totally controlled her career. Thus she has been far more adventurous in the roles she chooses to play, and the result is a filmography of considerable depth and range. She is well known for her willingness to take risks in highly individual movies, such as the Civil War drama The Beguiled (2017; director Sophia Coppola), in which she plays the emotionally mysterious headmistress of an isolated girls school who takes in, nurses, and eventually poisons a wounded Union soldier.

professional organization

Beyond the labor unions, other organizations are devoted to workers in the motion-picture industry. These organizations engage in the activities of a traditional professional organization: conducting research related to equipment and production procedures; standardizing that equipment and those procedures; meeting, publishing, and consulting with manufacturers in the development of new technologies; promulgating professional codes of conduct; and recognizing outstanding achievement with awards. Although they do not represent their membership in collective bargaining, as do labor unions, they voice opinions on matters relevant to the workplace.

film history

Broadly defined, film history traces the development of moving images from early experiments with image reproduction and photography through the invention of the movies in the early 1890s and subsequent stylistic, financial, technological, and social developments in cinema that have occurred up to now. Film history includes the history of technologies, the people and industrial organizations that produce the movies, the national cinemas that distinguish one country's movies from another's, the attempts to suppress and censor the movies, and the meanings and pleasure that we derive from them.

Taiwan

By following European models, particularly the Italian Neorealism movement, postwar Taiwanese cinema developed independently of Hong Kong and the People's Republic. In contrast to the action movies of earlier decades, it was concerned with realistic depictions of ordinary people. Excellent examples are Hsiao-hsien Hou's A City of Sadness (1989) and Flight of the Red Balloon (2007), Edward Yang's Taipei Story (1985), Tsai Ming-liang's Vive l'amour (1994), and Stan Lai's The Peach Blossom Land (1992). The first films of Ang Lee, the most familiar Taiwanese director—The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)—were so successful in the West that Lee went to Hollywood. Lee's films are known for their diversity (comedies, melodramas, traditional Chinese martial action), their ability to provoke discussion (e.g., Brokeback Mountain [2005]), and their almost universal acclaim. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) has it all: a traditional intrigue-filled story about a legendary sword, magnificent exterior and interior settings, beautiful costumes, a love story, and astonishing swordplay. It is a fantastic feat of movie magic, distinguished by the exquisite choreography and special effects that give the illusion of its principal characters in flight. In this scene, two female principals, Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei) and Jen (Zhang Ziyi), engage in a deadly battle.

low angle camera shot

Camera is looking upwards on a subject to signify power and superiority. A subject may be viewed as heroic and noble or imposing and threatening depending on context of use.

casting actors

Casting is the process of choosing and hiring actors for both leading and supporting roles. In the studio system of Hollywood's golden years, casting was done in several ways, but the overall process was supervised by a central casting office. Often a director, producer, writer, or studio head already had his or her own idea of an actor for a particular role. That choice could be solely based on the actor's looks, screen presence, or overall charisma. Today, casting has moved into the front office and become more professional. Independent casting directors (CDs) work under contract to independent producers or directors on a film-by-film basis. Actors learn about casting through direct contact by CDs, producers, directors, or screenwriters, as well as through online audition listings posted by casting services and industry publications such as Backstage. After initial interviews, they may be asked to read for parts, either alone or with other actors, or to take screen tests. If they are chosen for the part, negotiations in most cases are handled by their agents. But if they belong to one of the actors' unions—the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) or the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)—the conditions of their participation are governed by union contract.

30-degree rule

Cinematographers also vary the angle of their camera position in relation to the subject when shooting coverage so that when the editor does cut from, say, a medium shot to a close-up of the same character, there is enough variation in framing to avoid a jarring effect that makes the subject appear to "jump" forward or backward. This so-called 30-degree rule states that the camera should shift at least 30 degrees between different shot types of the same subject. Filmmakers sometimes intentionally break this rule to intentionally "jump" in at (or away from) a character or object multiple times in quick succession, an effect called the three-shot salvo. three shot salvo: An intentional disregard of the 30 degree rule that uses multiple (typically three) increasingly closer or wider framings of the same subject, shot from the same camera position or angle, which are then edited together in rapid succession.

India

Despite the worldwide success of Slumdog Millionaire (2008), an Anglo-Indian production, and the fact that the Indian film industry—producing more than 1,200 feature movies and an even larger number of documentaries every year—is the world's largest, Indian films are little known in the United States except in cities with a large Indian population. Indeed, India ranks first in annual film production, followed by Hollywood and China. India, a vast country with some sixteen official languages, has a regional cinema that speaks to its many different audiences in social, political, cinematic, and linguistic terms it can understand. Thus a social protest film made in Chennai, in the South, might never be seen by those who live in Mumbai. These audiences not only speak a different dialect but seemingly prefer the lavish musicals made by Bollywood, as the Mumbai film industry is known. When Indian films are screened theatrically in the United States, the audiences are typically Indians, who understand the culture in which the movie was made and the language spoken in it. For others who want to learn more about this vast, diverse body of filmmaking, there are annual Indian (and South Asian) film festivals in such U.S. cities as New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. In these settings, the films are likely to be dubbed into English or have English subtitles.

vocal sounds (dialogue and narration)

Dialogue, recorded during production or rerecorded during postproduction, is the speech of characters who are either visible on-screen or speaking offscreen—say, from an unseen part of the room or from an adjacent room. Dialogue is a function of plot because it develops out of situations, conflict, and character development. Narration, the commentary spoken by either offscreen or on-screen voices, is frequently used in narrative films, where it may emanate from a third-person narrator (thus not one of the characters) or from a character in the movie.

diegetic sound

Diegetic sounds come from a source within a film's world; they are the sounds heard by both the movie's audience and characters. Most diegetic sound gives us an awareness of both the spatial and the temporal dimensions of the shot from which the sound emanates. Diegetic sound can be either internal or external, on-screen or offscreen, and recorded during production or constructed during postproduction. The most familiar kind of movie sound is diegetic, on-screen sound that occurs simultaneously with the image.

digital technology

Digital technology involves an electronic process that creates its images through a numbered system of pixels (which we can think of as the binary numbers 0 and 1). Unlike the analog images, digital images do not have a physical relationship to the original. Indeed, they are not exactly images but rather thousands of digits stored on a memory card. These digits are reconstructed into visual images each time the movie is edited or shown and, unlike film stock, can be manipulated endlessly. For example, filmmakers can make many alternate versions of any scene in searching for the perfect arrangement or timing of shots. They can also adjust and manipulate the light, color, and quality of the image. Digital technology, like film technology, is used in all three stages of filmmaking: preproduction, production, and postproduction. And there are many significant similarities between the film and digital processes. When making conventional theatrical motion pictures, both systems shoot single, discrete images at a standard 24 frames per second. Every camera uses a lens, an aperture, shutter speed, frame rate, and so on—whether it shoots film or digital. The essential difference comes down to how the light is captured as an image. Digital uses a sensor, which transfers light as data onto a memory chip; film uses silver nitrate particles embedded on celluloid. In shooting a movie, digital cameras have different sizes of sensors recording the image and transferring it into electronic signals. Instead of using different sizes of film gauges to determine the resolution and other visual performance/quality factors (such as depth of field, color retention, etc.), a digital camera uses the sensor for this work. In both film and digital processes, it all boils down to the size of the little square that the camera is focusing light onto. The bigger the gauge or sensor, the more information can be recorded with each frame.

formal analysis

Film analysis that examines how a scene or sequence uses formal elements-narrative, mise-en-scene, and editing to convey story, mood, and meaning.

script supervisor

Film production is complicated by the cost-effective, standard practice of shooting movies out of chronological order. This means that the production crew shoots the film not in the order of what we see on the screen, but in an order that allows the most efficient use of human and financial resources. During production, a script supervisor stays as close to the director as possible, for this person is an invaluable source of information about the shooting. The script supervisor records all details of continuity from shot to shot; he or she ascertains that costumes, positioning and orientation of objects, and placement and movement of actors are consistent in each successive shot and, indeed, in all parts of the film.

Film vs. Digital Technology

Film stock is a physical thing; digital is virtual representation. Film stock runs through a mechanical device and is subjected to a chemical reaction when light from the lens strikes silver-nitrate crystals on the stock, which must be kept locked away from light and must be processed by a lab and edited on a work print (which allows the editor to see only one version of any scene or sequence at any one time). Digital takes that same light from the lens and processes it through a sensor chip into pixels, which were traditionally put on various types of tape but increasingly are now recorded directly onto a memory card or a computer hard drive. It doesn't have to go through a laboratory for processing and can be manipulated with complete freedom on the computer. These advantages have led to a nearly complete film-to-digital conversion in every stage of the commercial movie industry. In 2015, almost 90 percent of the top 100 U.S.-grossing films were shot digitally; 100 percent of those films are edited and otherwise prepared for release digitally. Another strength of digital technology is that it uses less light than film technology and involves no processing. Overall, digital is much more versatile, easier, and (beyond the initial investment in new equipment) cheaper to work with than film. Film is fragile and disintegrates over time; digital copies are easily duplicated and virtually indestructible under normal conditions. Archival copies of both film and digital movies are costly. Digital distribution and projection represents major cost savings for both distributors and theaters. Prior to digital distribution, hundreds—sometimes thousands—of new film prints, each costing around $1200, had to be made to even begin a theatrical release. Because a print deteriorates as it runs through a projector, additional prints would be needed as the film worked its way to smaller cities and second-tier markets. Print costs for a movie distributed to 25,000 screens (out of the 40,000 total in the United States) would cost the distributor $30 million, a price that does not include the cost of shipping the bulky, heavy cans that contain the prints. By contrast, securely downloading a digital copy of a film to a theater's computer system costs virtually nothing.

onscreen and offscreen space

Film theorist Noël Burch first suggested, the entire visual composition of a shot depends on the existence of on-screen as well as offscreen spaces; both spaces are equally important to the composition and to the viewer's experience of it. Burch divides offscreen space into six segments: the four infinite spaces that lie beyond the four borders of the frame; the spaces beyond the movie settings; and the space behind the camera. The borders of the frame, and the offscreen spaces beyond them, may be used in a number of ways. Characters may enter or exit the frame from any of the previously listed spaces. Characters on-screen may look offscreen. The image on-screen may represent what a character offscreen is looking at. The filmmaker may use sound, shadow, a character's gaze, or narrative context to hint at the presence of someone (or something) in the space offscreen. Suspecting that something may be hidden outside of the frame can increase our participation in the unfolding narrative as we try to figure out who or what it is: knowing that something is just beyond our view can increase suspense as we predict and anticipate its eventual appearance. Alternatively, the filmmaker can surprise us by moving the frame to suddenly reveal previously hidden information. Offscreen space: Cinematic space that exists outside the frame. Onscreen space: Cinematic space that exists inside the frame.

Kurt Maetzig

Following World War II and until 1990 (when it was reunified as the Federal Republic of Germany), Germany was split into western and eastern parts. In West Germany, the Federal Republic reestablished independent film production, even though German audiences preferred Hollywood movies. In East Germany, film production remained under Soviet control, and little of significance was produced, except in the work of Kurt Maetzig, whose films helped Germans on both sides of the Berlin Wall to understand the Nazi past. In many feature films and documentaries, he dealt with Fascism, anti-Semitism, and the complicity of German corporations with the Nazi government. He founded East Germany's main film studio, which operated under the ideological dictates of the Communist Party, and he made films about life under that regime.

medium shot (MS)

Frames subjects from somewhere around the waist and up, making them large enough in the frame to reduce background to the point of insignificance. The MS is the most frequently used type of shot because it replicates our human experience of proximity without intimacy. We can read increasingly subtle psychological and physical information on the increasingly dominant—and thus significant—subject. Medium shots are often used to convey interaction between multiple subjects: medium shots featuring two subjects are called two-shots, a three-shot has three subjects, and group shots have more than three people.

group point of view

Group point of view works much like single-character point of view, but instead of one character seeing something, it is many characters.

Improvisational Acting

Improvisation can mean extemporizing—delivering lines based only loosely on the written script or without the preparation that comes with studying a script before rehearsing it. It can also mean playing through a moment, making up lines to keep scenes going when actors forget their written lines, stumble on lines, or have some other mishap. Of these two senses, the former is most important in movie acting, particularly in the poststudio world; the latter is an example of professional grace under pressure. Improvisation can be seen as an extension of Stanislavsky's emphasis that the actor striving for a naturalistic performance should avoid any mannerisms that call attention to technique. For years, improvisation has played a major part in actors' training. But it was anathema in the studio system, where practically everything was preprogrammed, and it remains comparatively rare in narrative moviemaking. Actors commonly confer with directors about altering or omitting written lines, but this form of improvisation is so limited in scope that we can better understand it as the sort of fertile suggestion making that is intrinsic to collaboration.

Eadweard Muybridge

In 1877, Muybridge, an English photographer working in California, used a group of electrically operated cameras (first twelve, then twenty-four) to produce the first series of photographs of continuous motion. Magic Lantern: On May 4, 1880, using an early projector known as the magic lantern and his zoopraxiscope (a version of the magic lantern, with a revolving disk that had his photographs arranged around the center), Muybridge gave the first public demonstration of photographic images in motion—a cumbersome process, but a breakthrough. Muybridge's famous series of photographs documenting a horse in motion were made possible by a number of cameras placed side by side. The cameras were tied to individual trip wires. As the horse broke each wire, a camera's shutter would be set off. The result of this experiment—a series of sixteen exposures—proved that a trotting horse momentarily has all four feet off the ground at once. Series photography has been revived as a strategy for creating special effects in contemporary movies.

Thomas Edison

In 1891, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, working with associates in Thomas Edison's research laboratory, invented the Kinetograph (the first motion-picture camera) and the Kinetoscope (a peephole viewer). The first motion picture made with the Kinetograph, and the earliest complete film on record at the Library of Congress, was Dickson's Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894), popularly known as Fred Ott's Sneeze, which represents, on Edison and Dickson's part, a brilliant choice of a single, self-contained action for a single, self-contained film of very limited length. Edison's staff made their movies, including Fred Ott's Sneeze, inside a crude, hot, and cramped shack known as the Black Maria. The Black Maria was really the first movie studio, for it contained the camera, technicians, and actors. The camera, fixed on a trolley, was limited in its motion, able only to move closer to or away from the subject. Light was provided by the Sun, which entered through an aperture in the roof, and the entire "studio" could be rotated to catch the light. Before narrative or editing, Thomas Edison's first movies (about 30 seconds in length) were simple records of ordinary people and events: a man and woman kissing, a young woman dancing, a man getting a shave and haircut in a barber shop, and a woman and child feeding doves in a barnyard.

The Production Code

In 1922, in response to the pressures of censorship from state governments and religious groups , Hollywood producers formed a regulatory agency called the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA, later the Motion Picture Association of America, or MPAA), headed by Will Hays. Originally conceived of as a public-relations entity to offset bad publicity and deflect negative attention away from Hollywood, the Hays Office (as the agency was commonly known) in 1930 adopted the Motion Picture Production Code, a detailed set of guidelines concerning acceptable and unacceptable subject matter. Nudity, adultery, homosexuality, gratuitous or unpunished violence, and religious blasphemy were among the many types of content that the code strongly discouraged. Perhaps even more significant, the code explicitly stated that art can influence, for the worse, the morality of those who consume it (an idea that Hollywood has been reconsidering ever since). Adherence to the Motion Picture Production Code remained fundamentally voluntary until the summer of 1934, when Joseph Breen, a prominent Catholic layman, was appointed head of the Production Code Administration (PCA), the enforcement arm of the MPPDA. After July 1, 1934, all films would have to receive an MPPDA seal of approval before being released. For at least 20 years, the Breen Office rigidly controlled the general character and the particular details of Hollywood storytelling. After a period of practical irrelevance, the code was officially replaced in 1968, when the MPAA adopted the rating system that remains in use today.

digital camera

In a digital camera, the light that makes the image is captured by an electronic sensor. The size and configuration of the sensor and its associated electronics determine the resolution, depth of field, and tonal color values possible in the film.

Grey Gardens (Albert Maysles and David Maysles, 1975)

In addition to these new directions in the narrative film, important advances took place in documentary film—notably in direct cinema, essentially an American adaptation of cinéma vérité (by such filmmakers as Robert Drew, Albert and David Maysles, and D. A. Pennebaker)—and in experimental films by such artists as Andy Warhol, Ken Jacobs, Bruce Baillie, Carolee Schneemann, Stan Brakhage, and Hollis Frampton. Of late, feature-length animated films have thrived as never before. All of these efforts have had a liberating influence on mainstream filmmaking. Both Albert and David Maysles's Grey Gardens (1975) and Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man (1962-64) stand out in their respective fields—documentary and experimental films—as superb examples of cinematic form. Grey Gardens is a candid, intimate, and often funny look into the lives of two extraordinary women who live together: Mrs. Edith Beale ("Big Edie") and her unmarried daughter, Edith ("Little Edie"). The filmmakers (directors-as-editors) let the film's content shape its form. The women constantly bicker and disagree with one another, so the editing pattern, which juxtaposes the women with each other—the younger woman with the older—creates a line between them and their views of the past and the present. The audience is left to put the pieces together and decide the nature of this power struggle.

preparing for roles

In creating characters, screen actors begin by synthesizing basic sources, including the script, their own experiences and observations, and the influences of other actors. They also shape their understanding of a role by working closely with their director. This collaboration can be mutually agreeable and highly productive or it can involve constant, even tempestuous arguments that may or may not produce what either artist wants. Ideally, both director and actor should understand each other's concept of the role and, where differences exist, try to agree on an approach that is acceptable to both. Different roles have different demands, and all actors have their own approaches, whether they get inside their characters, get inside themselves, or do further research.

Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

In filmmaking practice, one shot (thesis) collides with another shot of opposing content (antithesis) to produce a new idea (synthesis). The result emphasizes a dynamic juxtaposition of individual shots that calls attention to each of these shots while forcing the viewer to reach conclusions about the interplay between them. This "montage of attractions," as Eisenstein called it, presents arbitrarily chosen images (some of them independent of the action) to create the maximum psychological impact. Thus conditioned, viewers would have in their consciousness the elements that would lead them to the overall concept that the director wanted to communicate. Artfully handled, of course, this is manipulation of the highest order, propaganda created to serve the Soviet state. The purest, most powerful example of this approach to filmmaking is Battleship Potemkin (1925). Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin is one of the fundamental landmarks of cinema. Indeed, it has become so popular from screenings in film-studies courses that, over the years, its ability to surprise has diminished. Nevertheless, it is essential to know why this movie is important to film history. It depicts two events—the 1905 workers' mutiny on the Potemkin and the subsequent slaughter of ordinary citizens on the Odessa Steps. Through its dramatic reenactment of those events, the movie presents a successful example of revolution against oppression. Overall, the film's classic five-part structure emphasizes the need for unity in such struggles. But most people remember the "Odessa Steps" sequence, even though its impact may lessen when seen out of context, as it so often is. The sequence, set in Odessa on the wide steps leading from the town to the harbor, depicts czarist troops brutally killing ordinary citizens who are celebrating the successful mutiny on the Potemkin. Indeed, although the mass is the protagonist, it is the individual faces that we remember. The movie's brutal form (jump cuts and montage editing) perfectly matches the brutality of the massacre. Many directors have been influenced by Eisenstein's theory of montage; some pay homage to the "Odessa Steps" sequence, and others spoof it.

found footage film

In narrative films, the classification found footage refers to movie in which everything is presented as if were preexisting nonfiction footage captured by participants in the events we see on screen, only to be discovered and revealed later to a public audience. Associated with horror films.

1918-1930: French Avant-Garde Filmmaking

In the 1920s, Paris was the world's center of avant-garde experimentation in painting, literature, drama, music, and film. It was a time when the philosophical approaches of surrealism, cubism, dadaism, and expressionism led to an explosion of artistic styles and movements. The French Avant-Garde film movement included both intellectuals and artists who took their inspiration not only from Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud but also from the experimental French filmmakers who preceded them in the earliest years of the movies. The French movies that we will discuss tend to fit into one of three different types: (1) short dadaist and surrealist films of an anticonventional, absurdist nature; (2) short naturalistic psychological studies; or (3) feature-length films that also emphasize pure visual form. -Dada and surrealism were two European movements in the arts that sought, provocatively and irreverently, to shock the viewer with surprises and unexpected juxtapositions. Specifically, they attempted to re-create the free play of the mind in its perceptions, dreams, or hallucinations. Dadaist and surrealist cinema attacks normal narrative conventions by eliminating causality, emphasizing chance and unexpected occurrences, and creating strange and shocking relationships among images. The result is a visual world that appears to be neurotic, unnatural, and illogical, resisting analysis and conclusion by the viewer. The second type of French Avant-Garde filmmaking in the 1920s consists of psychological studies that emphasize naturalism, the idea that an individual's fate is determined by heredity and environment, not free will. All of the films discussed so far in this section in one way or another emphasize visual form for its own sake, have a comparatively short duration, and for the most part were made independently of the French film industry. There was, however, another type of French Avant-Garde filmmaking of the 1920s—narrative, often feature-length movies far more ambitious in their scope, length, and overall visual effect. These include Abel Gance's The Wheel (1923), which embodies naturalistic philosophy and reflects Griffith's editing style, and Napoléon (1927), an almost 6-hour epic of astonishing cinematic beauty and power. The movies have always been fascinated by trains, but Abel Gance's The Wheel (1923) is obsessed with them. Its extraordinary mise-en-scène is a world surrounded by locomotives, tracks, smoke, and railroad workers. This highly melodramatic story contains elements that remind us of classical tragedy, and its sweeping vision of life is matched by a vividly avant-garde style, creating an unforgettable milestone in French cinema.

The Classical Hollywood Style

In the realm of cinematic style, narrative and editing conventions adapted to the challenges of sound production. Significant innovations were made in design, cinematography, lighting, acting, and editing, some related to sound, others not. Black-and-white film remained the industry standard through the early 1950s despite some interesting feature movies in Technicolor, which would become the new industry standard. Other technological advancements during the golden age included improvements in lighting, makeup, and film stock. While the predominant cinematographic style of the 1930s was soft-focus, the new lighting and film stock made it easier to achieve greater depth of focus, which created the illusion of perspective.

traditional film production

In traditional film production, cinematographers control the photographic image in many ways: with their choice of stock; the amount and color of the lighting of each shot, the exposure (the length of time that the film is exposed to light), and the opening of the lens aperture (this regulates the amount of light that passes through the lens onto the surface of the film); the resolution (the capacity of the camera lens, film stock, and processing to provide fine detail in an image); the instructions provided to the processing laboratory, including special effects; and in the postproduction effort, through possible involvement in the editing process.

Influence of Sound on Acting

Instead of instantly revolutionizing film style, the coming of sound in 1927 began a period of several years in which the industry gradually converted to this new form of production. Filmmakers made dialogue more comprehensible by developing better microphones; finding the best placements for the camera, microphones, and other sound equipment; and encouraging changes in actors' vocal performances. At first they encased the camera, whose overall size has changed relatively little since the 1920s, in either a bulky soundproof booth or the later development known as a blimp—a soundproofed enclosure, somewhat larger than a camera, in which the camera may be mounted so that its sounds do not reach the microphone. Such measures prevented the sounds of the camera from being recorded, but they also restricted how freely the camera—and the actors—could move. Actors accustomed to moving around the set without worrying about speaking now had to limit their movements to the circumscribed sphere where recording took place. Eventually, technicians were able to free the camera for all kinds of movement and find ways of recording sound that allowed the equipment and actors alike more mobility. Although sound enabled screen actors to use all their powers of human expression, it also created a need for screenplays with dialogue, dialogue coaches to help the actors "find" their voices, and other coaches to help them master foreign accents. The more actors and the more speaking a film included, the more complex the narrative could become. Directors had to make changes, too. Before sound, a director could call out instructions to the actors during filming; once the microphone could pick up every word uttered on the set, directors were forced to rehearse more extensively with their actors, thus adopting a technique from the stage to deal with screen technology. Though many actors and directors could not make the transition from silent to sound films, others emerged from silent films ready to see the addition of sound less as an obstacle than as the means to a more complete screen verisimilitude.

The Copa Shot

It's one of the few shots in the history of cinema readily identifiable by name, instantly conjuring the image of Goodfellas gangster Ray Liotta leading Lorraine Bracco - and by extension the audience - through the back entrance of New York's legendary Copacabana nightclub, as Steadicam operator Larry McConkey glides along behind them.

medium close-up (MCU)

Shows a character from approximately the middle of the chest to the top of the head. The character's face, gestures, and posture can begin to provide the kind of physical and psychological detail and implied proximity we associate with the close-up.

Akira Kurosawa

Japanese film director who was most familiar with the conventions of Hollywood filmmaking, especially the work of John Ford. However, aside from familiar cinematic technique, his films are thoroughly Japanese in their fatalistic attitude toward life and death. He initiated the postwar rebirth of Japanese cinema with Rashomon (1950), which tells a single story—the rape of a woman—from four different points of view. Kurosawa shows us that we all remember and perceive differently and that truth is relative to those telling their stories. With this profound statement on the power of cinema, he produced a body of work that is notable for its interest in Japanese tradition, especially the samurai culture of medieval Japan, and for its spectacle, action, and sumptuous design.

montage editing

Juxtaposition refers to placing two shots together in sequence. The creation and communication of meaning through juxtaposition, a concept known as montage editing, is an essential aspect of editing that affects nearly every cut in every film. Montage editing can be as simple as showing the exterior of a building, then cutting to a shot of people in a room. Neither shot by itself conveys that the room is inside the building, yet when we watch the shots put together (or juxtaposed), that is exactly what we assume. Likewise, when we see a shot of someone looking, followed by a shot of a tree, we intuitively understand that the person is looking at the tree. One shot tells us "that person is looking"; the other shot tells us "here is a tree." Only the juxtaposition of those shots provides a third and new meaning: "that person is looking at a tree."

Kenji Mizoguchi

Kenji Mizoguchi, a sublime artist, is the master of mise-en-scène, pictorial values, the long shot, and the moving camera. His stories are about place as much as anything else, and his films, no less than Kurosawa's, have had worldwide influence. Although they are much less known in the United States than they deserve to be, that may be so because they were less influenced by Western filmmaking conventions than Kurosawa's were. Unlike Kurosawa, he had a flourishing career before the war. Mizoguchi's films are highly regarded for their treatment of women. Indeed, his major concerns are women's social, psychological, and economic positions (or lack of them), the differences between women and men, male-female relations, and the idea that a man can be saved by a woman's love.

King Vidor

King Vidor was one of several important directors working in the early 1920s who learned his art from D. W. Griffith. In The Crowd (1928), Vidor dared—in the Roaring Twenties, a period of relative prosperity before the stock-market crash of 1929—to make a social critique of the American dream of opportunity and getting ahead. It tells the tragic story of a man who refuses to conform in the New York business world, suggested by the office environment pictured here, which reduces him and other employees to nonentities. The story seems to end with the promise of future happiness for the man and his wife, but it's really ambiguous, leaving us to use our own values and experiences to come to grips with the characters' fate. In the silent-movie period, exhibitors were sometimes offered the choice of alternate endings, particularly for movies with a controversial conclusion.

Mexico

Like other Latin American countries, Mexico had an early cinema as well as a golden age. It was dominated by film stars, such as Cantinflas and Dolores del Rio, who were also popular in the United States, and was brought to the world's attention when the great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein began to make Que Viva Mexico there in 1931. He attempted an epic account of Mexico's history, but for various reasons it remained unfinished. Equally important, this film left a large Marxist influence on subsequent Mexican cinema. The country's films dominated the Latin American market during the 1940s, bringing attention to the early work of directors Emilio Fernández and Luis Buñuel, but this presence weakened in the 1960s and 1970s. Mexican directors had not yet found a voice for their national cinema, and audiences were distracted by popular American movies. But as we have seen, there was a fresh burst of innovative filmmaking after World War II in countries across the globe. In Mexico, the New Mexican Cinema was founded with the help of government support. The success of this movement is seen in Arturo Ripstein's No One Writes to the Colonel (1999), based on a novel by Gabriel García Márquez; Alfonso Arau's Like Water for Chocolate (1992); Alfonso Cuarón's Y Tu Mamá También (2001); Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (2001) and Pan's Labyrinth (2006); and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Amores Perros (2000), which not only introduced the popular actor Gael García Bernal but was also nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film.

artifact

Like other historians, film historians use artifacts to study the past. These artifacts include the various machines and other technology—cameras, projectors, sound recording devices, and so on—without which there would be no movies. Artifacts might include notes from story conferences, screenplays, production logs, drawings, outtakes, and other objects relevant to the production of a particular movie. Of course, they might also include first-person accounts by people involved with the movie, newspaper and magazine articles, and books about the production and the people involved in it. Obviously, the most important artifacts to the film historian are the movies themselves.

Wipe

Like the dissolve and the fade, the wipe is a transitional device—often indicating a change of time, place, or location—in which shot B wipes across shot A vertically, horizontally, or diagonally to replace it. A line between the two shots suggests something like a windshield wiper. A soft-edge wipe is indicated by a blurry line; a hard-edge wipe by a sharp line. A jagged line suggests a more violent transition. Unlike the subtler cut, fade, and dissolve transitions, the ostentatious and old-fashioned wipe is rarely used in contemporary films. On those rare occasions when filmmakers do employ the wipe, they usually do so to evoke a previous era.

Ossessione (Luchino Visconti, 1943)

Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1943) represents a transition between the lackluster Italian cinema of the pre-World War II period and the brief but significant flowering of neorealism. It reflects the older traditions in several ways: it uses professional actors, is based on an American novel, and is known mainly for its torrid love story. Soon after the two lovers—Giovanna (Clara Calamai), an unhappily married woman, and Gino (Massimo Girotti), a drifter—first meet, they become obsessively involved with one another. Ossessione foreshadows neorealism in its depiction of the daily routines of ordinary people, its focus on rural Italy, and its consistent use of long shots to preserve real time and emphasize how the setting constrains the characters from becoming independent. Mostly, though, its austere realism, in form and content, influenced the neorealist filmmakers. The film was remade in the United States twice, both times as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946, director Tay Garnett; 1981, director Bob Rafelson).

Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)

Many people think of Gone with the Wind (1939; director Victor Fleming) as the enduring symbol of the golden age of Hollywood. Its romantic story is told against the sweep of the Civil War, its cast is formidable, its mise-en-scène and music are memorable, and it was the first movie to dominate the Oscars. Furthermore, it has won every award imaginable, and while it isn't a great movie in purely cinematic terms, it is a great crowd-pleaser, as attested to by its periodic theatrical revivals and television screenings. It also reflects the highest possible production values for its time—the studio system at its best—a tribute to the extraordinary commitment of its producer, David O. Selznick, who maintained tight, demoralizing control over every aspect of production. For example, the process of casting Scarlett O'Hara, which was not typical of Hollywood at the time (or at any time), involved a 2-year process in which Selznick tested nearly twenty-five major Hollywood and Broadway actors. Ironically, this quintessentially American role went to Vivien Leigh, a British actress virtually unknown in the American film industry.

coverage/master scene technique

Many scenes are shot using coverage, or master scene technique, meaning that the action is photographed multiple times with a variety of different shot types and angles so that the editor will be able to construct the scene using the particular viewpoint that is best suited for each dramatic moment—a practice known as classical cutting. Often, directors begin shooting a single scene with a long shot that covers the characters, setting, and action in one continuous take. With this master shot as a general foundation, the scene's action is captured repeatedly using more specific framing, so that a single character's dialogue and blocking may be captured multiple times using a variety of shot types. In the editing room, the editor can begin the scene with the master shot, then cut closer as the story dictates: full shots during physical action, medium two-shots for interactions, close-ups for reactions, extreme close-ups for details, and so forth. The master shot can be integrated whenever setting or spatial relationships need to be reestablished. Typically, coverage is captured in spatial increments (long shot, medium long shot, medium shot, medium close-up, close-up, etc.) so that the editor can move gradually between different implied proximities and thus avoid jarring leaps in spatial perspective. -Master shot: A wide angle shot that covers the actions of a scene in one continuous take. The master shot is a long shot covering most or all of the scene's action. The editor uses the master shot to provide the viewer with a kind of reference map: whenever the location, background detail, and spatial relationship of the characters need to be established (or reestablished), she can simply cut to the master shot before proceeding with the rest of the scene.

outtakes

Material that is not used in either the rough cut or the final cut, but is cataloged and saved.

music

Music can be classical or popular in style, written specifically for the film or taken from music previously composed for another purpose, written by composers known for other kinds of music. It also can be music played by characters in the film or by offscreen musicians (i.e., diegetic or nondiegetic). Some of Hollywood's most prolific contemporary composers were formerly rock musicians. Like other types of sound, music can be intrinsic, helping to tell the story, whether it pertains to plot, action, character, or mood; indeed, music plays an indispensable role in many movies. Perhaps the most familiar form of movie music is the large symphonic score used to set a mood or manipulate our emotions Irony often results from the juxtaposition of music and image because the associations we bring when we hear a piece of music greatly affect our interpretation of a scene. In some cases, connections between the songs and the narrative are explicit. Finally, film music may emanate from sources within the story—a television, a radio or stereo set, a person singing or playing a guitar, an orchestra playing at a dance. Although a movie's characters and its viewers hear diegetic music, which can be as simple as sound drifting in through an open window, only viewers hear nondiegetic music, which usually consists of an original score composed for the movie, selections chosen from music libraries, or both. Nondiegetic music is recorded at the very end of the editing process, so that it can be matched accurately to the images. In recording an original score, the conductor and musicians work on a specially equipped recording stage that enables them to screen the film and tailor every aspect of the music's tempo and quality to each scene that has music (similar to the way that Foley sounds are created).

Financing in the Industry

No rule governs the arranging of financing. Money may come from the studio, the producer, the investment community, or (most probably) a combination of these. Nor does one timetable exist for securing money. By studying the production credits of films ( known as the billing block), you can see just how many organizations may back a project. Some producers will have enough start-up financing to ensure that the preproduction phase can proceed with key people on the payroll; others will not be able to secure the necessary funds until they present investors with a detailed account of anticipated audiences and projected profits. Whether a movie is produced independently (in which case it is usually established as an independent corporation) or by one of the studios (in which case it is a distinct project among many), financial and logistic control is essential to making progress and ultimately completing the actual work of production as well as to holding down costs. Initial budgets are subject to constant modification, so budgeting, accounting, and auditing are as important as they would be in any costly industrial undertaking. In the old studio system, the general manager, in consultation with the director and key members of the production team, determined the budget for a film, which consisted of two basic categories: direct costs and indirect costs. Direct costs included everything from art direction and cinematography to insurance. Indirect costs, usually 20 percent of the direct costs, covered the studio's overall contribution to "overhead" (such items as making release prints from the negative, marketing, advertising, and distribution). Today, in the independent system, budgeting is done differently. Usually the producer or a member of the producer's team prepares the budget with the assistant director. The total cost of producing the completed movie generally breaks down into a ratio of 30 percent to 70 percent between above-the-line costs (the costs of the preproduction stage, producer, director, cast, screenwriter, and literary property from which the script was developed) and below-the-line costs (the costs of the production and postproduction stages and the crew). Categorizing costs according to where they are incurred in the three stages of production is a change from the studio-system method.

nondiegetic sound

Nondiegetic sounds, which come from a source outside that world, are heard only by the audience. Most nondiegetic sound has no relevant spatial or temporal dimensions. Nondiegetic sound is offscreen and recorded during postproduction, and it is assumed to be inaudible to the characters on-screen. The most familiar forms of nondiegetic sound are musical scores and narration spoken by a voice that does not originate from the same place and time as the characters on the screen.

The Jazz Singer(Alan Crosland, 1927)

None of this could have been achieved without the efficiency of the studio system, which standardized the way movies were produced. It provided a top-down organization with management controlling everything, especially the employees, who regardless of their status were treated as employees, not artists, and whose careers were subject to the strict terms of their contracts. The transition to sound began in 1926 with the production of some short as well as feature films with recorded sound, and earlier experimental "talkies" were well known back to 1900. But once audiences saw Al Jolson—who in his prime was known as "the world's greatest entertainer"—in Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer (1927), with its synchronized music score and a few sequences of synchronized sound, they wanted more. Its appeal was probably due less to the few moments of sound than to Jolson's exciting screen persona and his unexpected vocal ad-libbing. "Wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!" While these are not the first words we hear Jack Robin (Al Jolson) speak in The Jazz Singer (1927; director Alan Crosland), they are the most memorable. Imagine the excitement of the 1927 audience hearing—for the first time—actors speaking in a movie. This is the melodramatic story of a young Jewish boy, Jakie Rabinowitz, who does not want to follow in his father's footsteps and become a cantor; instead, he becomes Jack Robin, a famous "jazz singer" in Broadway shows. It's a classic show-business movie, and Jolson, the country's biggest star in the 1920s, gracefully sings, whistles, and dances his way through it.

ellipsis

Oftentimes, editing is used to jump from one moment to another in ways that are more evident—and more expressive. This temporal leap between shots is called an ellipsis. These cuts often interrupt the action of a scene unexpectedly, usually in the middle of a continuing action, and involve significant leaps of time. The direct connection of images and actions that would normally be temporally and spatially distant empowers the filmmaker to create meaning with juxtaposition that otherwise would have been impossible. The ellipsis also makes viewers fill in the gap in the story for themselves, a participatory experience that can be more rewarding than watching those missing events unfold on-screen. In filmmaking, generally an omission of time-the time that separates one shot from another to create dramatic or comedic impact.

omniscient point of view

Omniscient point of view shows us what the camera/narrator sees. Typically, we think of omniscient point of view as being fairly neutral, with the camera more or less objectively recording the action of the story. But while omniscient means all-knowing, it does not necessarily mean objective. As we've seen in all of the preceding pages, the camera—as determined by the director and her creative collaborators—uses framing, movement, angles, and all the elements of mise-en-scène to present characters and situations in specific ways that deliberately shape our perception and interpretation.

on screen sound vs. off screen sound

On-screen sound emanates from a source that we can see. Offscreen sound, which can be either diegetic or nondiegetic, derives from a source that we do not see. When offscreen sound is diegetic, it consists of sound effects, music, or vocals that emanate from the world of the story. When nondiegetic, it takes the form of a musical score or narration by someone who is not a character in the story. Note that on-screen and offscreen sound are also referred to, respectively, as simultaneous and nonsimultaneous sound. Simultaneous sound is diegetic and on-screen; nonsimultaneous sound occurs familiarly when a character has a mental flashback to an earlier voice that recalls a conversation or an earlier sound that identifies a place. Somewhere between on-screen and offscreen sound is asynchronous sound. We are aware of it when we sense a discrepancy between the things heard and the things seen on the screen. It is either a sound that is closely related to the action but not precisely synchronized with it or a sound that either anticipates or follows the action to which it belongs. Because we cannot see its source, asynchronous sound seems mysterious and raises our curiosity and expectations. Thus it offers creative opportunities for building tension and surprise in a scene.

Agnès Varda

One of the few women in the New Wave movement, was a unique force in shaping it. Her experiments in the handling of cinematic time influenced such contemporaries as Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais. And her concern with the cinematic perception of women is beautifully realized in Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962). It follows 2 hours in the life of Cléo (Corinne Marchand), a pop singer who wanders aimlessly around Paris while waiting for the results of a biopsy. Her story is told in near-real time, as she grapples with such issues as the meaning of friendship, her work, and mortality. Just before going to the hospital to meet her doctor—fearing that she has cancer—Cléo drops her purse; picking up the pieces, she interprets her broken mirror as an omen of death. To call attention to Cléo's ordeal of killing time, Varda titles each episode and indicates its precise running time (here, translated into English): "Chapter 11—CLÉO from 6:04 to 6:12."

duration of shot in editing

Our perception of the duration of any shot is affected by the content that shot presents. A shot with relatively straightforward content, such as a close-up of a coffee cup, can be on-screen for a relatively short amount of time because the viewer only needs a moment to understand and absorb that content before she is instinctively ready for the next image. Holding on that simple coffee cup for anything longer than a few seconds, past the point where the audience has absorbed all of its available information, may even make the viewer uneasy. In contrast, a shot containing a great deal of information, such as an establishing shot with background detail and multiple interacting characters, typically takes longer for the viewer to process and thus may be held on-screen for significantly more time before the audience is ready to move on to another viewpoint. This interplay between duration and information is known as the content curve because it can be visualized as a bell curve, with the peak representing that point of optimum duration where a cut will typically occur. Editors often use the concept when deciding—or sometimes just sensing—how long to make each individual shot. Editors can also deviate from standard practice for expressive purposes. If the editor cuts before the peak—that is, before the viewer has had time to fully comprehend the content and prepare for the next shot—the technique can disorient the audience or create a sense of excitement as viewers attempt to keep up with the accelerated pace. A series of shots cut at this point amplifies the effect. Music videos, commercials, and action movies take full advantage of the phenomenon, but often run the risk of visually exhausting their audiences and thus diminishing the intended experience.

Georges Méliès

Paramount among the early innovators of film form was a Frenchman, Georges Méliès. In the late 1890s he began to make short narrative movies based on the theatrical model of short, sequential scenes shot from a fixed point of view. The only editing within these self-contained scenes was for cuts or in-camera dissolves. Rudimentary as these movies were, according to film historian David A. Cook, Méliès was "the cinema's first narrative artist," famous for innovating many technical and narrative devices. He is best known for his use of special effects—still captivating today—in such landmark films as A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). Méliès quickly understood that he could make the camera stop and start (what we now call stop-motion photography) and, with this technique, make things vanish and reappear (sometimes in a new form). Like all magicians, he reveled in fooling the public. In Long Distance Wireless Photography (1908), Méliès plays the inventor of a process for transmitting photographs from one place to another and dupes his clients. When a man and woman ask for a demonstration, he photographs them and, behind them, projects unflattering images of them. Annoyed at this deception, they try to destroy the studio, but are chased away in a scene of slapstick comedy. Here, Méliès shows a prophetic but comic insight into two events that were decades away: the electronic transmission of photographs and television. The action is staged for the camera as if it were happening on a theater stage, and the movie, which is nearly 6 minutes in length, tells a complete story.

Executive Producer

Person responsible for supervising one or more producers, who in turn are responsible for individual movies.

precinema

Photography In one sense, movies are simply a natural progression in the history of photography. The word photography means, literally, "writing with light" and technically, "the static representation or reproduction of light." The concept has its beginnings in ancient Greece. In the fourth century bce, the Greek philosopher Aristotle theorized about a device that later would be known as the camera obscura (Latin for "dark chamber"). In the late fifteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci's drawings gave tangible form to the idea. Camera Obscura: Both simple and ingenious, the camera obscura may be a box or it may be a room large enough for a viewer to stand inside. Light entering through a tiny hole (later a lens) on one side of the box or room projects an image from the outside onto the opposite side or wall. An artist might then trace the image onto a piece of paper. Photography was developed during the first four decades of the nineteenth century by Thomas Wedgwood, William Henry Fox Talbot, and Sir John Herschel in England; Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in France; and George Eastman in the United States. Series photography records the phases of an action. In a series of still photographs, we see, for example, a man or a horse in changing positions that suggest movement, though the images themselves are static. Within a few years, three men—Pierre-Jules-César Janssen, Eadweard Muybridge, and Étienne-Jules Marey—contributed to its development.

point of view editing

Point-of-view editing also uses a character's eyeline to create connections between subjects in separate shots, but instead of simply imparting a spatial relationship between interacting characters, the point-of-view edit seeks to convey the viewpoint and perspective of a character's offscreen gaze. Most frequently, a point-of-view edit juxtaposes an objective shot of a character looking offscreen with a shot of an object, person, or action. The juxtaposition causes the viewer to interpret the second shot as the object of the looking character's gaze. This framing of this point-of-view shot often reflects a spatial relationship between the looking character and the looked-at object.

The People's Republic(Mainland China)

Postwar government-subsidized filmmaking here has reflected the shifting ideological climate that developed after the 1949 Communist Revolution. Since 1976, with the death of Party Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai, filmmakers have focused less on party doctrines and become more concerned with individuals, and the Chinese film industry has become more oriented to the Western market. The most important directors are Chen Kaige, Yimou Zhang, and Tian Zhuangzhuang, each of whom has managed, within a repressive society, to make films about traditionally taboo subjects. Among their best-known movies is Chen's Farewell My Concubine (1993), about an extramarital love triangle. The Beijing Opera, one of China's major cultural treasures, forms the backdrop for Farewell My Concubine. The film tells the lengthy, complicated story of two of the opera's male actors, whose happiness together onstage and off is threatened by a prostitute. The turbulence of this personal story is mirrored by the political upheavals of the period from the 1920s to Mao's Cultural Revolution. The movie was banned in China not because of its treatment of politics, but because of its homosexual subject matter. The Beijing Opera is known for its lavish productions, exotic costumes, and stylized makeup as well as for its ancient tradition of using males to play the female roles.

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.

long shot (LS)

Presents background and subject information in equal measure and is as much about setting and situation as any particular character. Long shots are often used as establishing shots at the beginning of a scene to indicate where the scene is taking place, who is involved, and what they are doing. The full bodies of characters can be seen, often with enough physical detail to allow us to recognize them, but psychological information (what characters are thinking or feeling) is limited to what can be conveyed through action or gesture.

functions of sound

Primarily, sound helps the filmmaker tell a movie's story by reproducing and intensifying the world that has been partially created by the film's visual elements. A good sound track can make the audience aware of the spatial and temporal dimensions of the screen, raise expectations, create rhythm, and develop characters. Either directly or indirectly, these functions give the viewer clues to interpretation and meaning. Sounds that work directly include dialogue, narration, and sound effects (often Foley sounds) that call attention (the characters' or ours) to on-screen or offscreen events. Sounds that function indirectly help create mood and thus may help the audience interpret scenes subconsciously. Tomlinson Holman, a sound expert, points out that viewers differentiate visual elements in a movie far more easily and analytically than they do sound elements. The reason is that they tend to hear sound as a whole, not as individual elements. Filmmakers can take advantage of viewers' inability to separate sounds into constituent parts and use sound to manipulate emotions, often via the musical score. Whether direct or indirect, sound functions according to conventions, means of conveying information that are easy to perceive and understand. In this section, we look at some of these conventions. Sound can add rhythm to a scene, whether it's accompanying or juxtaposed against movement on the screen. Sound Montage: A montage of sounds is a mix that ideally includes multiple sources of diverse quality, levels, and placement and usually moves as rapidly as a montage of images. Such a montage can also be orchestrated to create rhythm. Sound can link one shot to the next, indicating that the scene has not changed in either time or space. Overlapping sound carries the sound from a first shot over to the next before the sound of the second shot begins. A sound can create emphasis in any scene: it can function as a punctuation mark when it accentuates and strengthens the visual image. Although some movies treat emphasis as if it were a sledgehammer, others handle it more subtly.

production

Production, the actual shooting, can last 6 weeks to several months or more. Although the producer and director continue to work closely together, the director ordinarily takes charge during the shooting. The director's principal activities during this period are conducting blocking and lighting rehearsals on the set with stand-ins, followed by rehearsals with the cast; supervising the compilation of the records that indicate what is being shot each day and informing cast and crew members of their assignments; placing and, for each subsequent shot, replacing cameras, lights, microphones, and other equipment; shooting each shot as many times as necessary until the director is satisfied and calls "print"; reviewing the results of each day's shooting (called rushes or dailies) with key creative personnel and cast; and reshooting as necessary. Every director works differently. Ordinarily, however, the director further breaks down the shooting script into manageable sections and then sets a goal of shooting a specified number of pages a day (typically, three pages is a full day's work). This process depends on the number of setups involved. Most directors try to shoot between fifteen and twenty setups a day when they're in the studio, where everything can be controlled; for exterior shooting, the number of setups varies. During production, the number of people required to film a particular shot depends on the needs of that shot or, more precisely, on the overall scene in which the shot occurs. Many factors determine the size of the crew for any shot or scene, including the use of studio or exterior locations, day or night shooting, shooting on an uncrowded exterior location or a crowded city street, camera and lighting setups, and the extent of movement by the camera and the actors. For example, a scene that involves two people in a simple interior setting, with a basic camera and lighting setup, may require a minimal crew, while a scene involving many people in an exterior setting, with several camera positions and carefully choreographed movement, normally requires a large crew. The creation of artificial weather (rain, wind, or snow) and the use of animals or crowds are all expensive efforts that require additional personnel. Shooting on exterior locations is usually more expensive than shooting in a studio because it involves transportation and food, sometimes requires hotel accommodations, and depends largely on the weather.

properties

Props and set dressing.

studio manager

Responsible for the support departments (research, writing, design, casting, cinematography, marketing research, etc.) representing almost 300 different professions and trades.

single character point of view

Single-character point of view is when framing and editing shows us what a single character is seeing. Typically, a single-character point of view is indicated by a preceding shot showing a character looking offscreen. With the character's gaze established, viewers instinctively understand that the following shot depicts what that character is looking at. The single-character point-of-view shot is almost always followed by a shot of the character reacting to what he or she has just seen. The point-of-view shot itself may be framed to represent the looking character's spatial relationship with the object of his or her gaze or it may be framed in a way that conveys not just what the character is looking at, but how he or she feels about it. Single-character point of view shots should not be confused with over-the-shoulder shots, which also indicate what a character is looking at, but do so by shooting over the character's shoulder, and thus do not directly convey that character's viewpoint.

overlapping action

Sometimes the temporal relationship between shots doesn't condense or propel time. Editors can juxtapose shots in sequence in a way that extends an action across time. The repetition of parts or all of an action using multiple shots. This repetition holds viewers momentarily in a single instant of time, which assigns emphasis and significance to the extended action. The repetition of parts or all of an action using multiple shots.

loudness

Sound moves through the air in a wave that is acted upon by factors in the physical environment. Think of this as analogous to the wave that ripples outward when you throw a rock into a pond—a wave that is acted upon by the depth and width of the pond. The loudness (or volume or intensity) of a sound depends on its amplitude, the degree of motion of the air (or other medium) within the sound wave. The greater the amplitude of the sound wave, the harder it strikes the eardrum and thus the louder the sound. The volume or intensity of sound, which is defined by its amplitude. Loudness is described as either soft or loud.

sound production

Sound production consists of four phases: design, recording, editing, and mixing. Although we might suppose that most of the sounds in a movie are the result of recording during filming (such sounds are called production sounds), the reality is that most film sounds are constructed during the postproduction phase (and thus are called postproduction sounds). But before any sounds are recorded or constructed, the overall plan for a movie's sound must be made. That planning process is called sound design.

special effects

Special effects is a general term reserved for technology used to create images that would be too dangerous, too expensive, or simply impossible to achieve with traditional cinematographic approaches. For audiences, a major attraction of movies has always been their ability to create illusion. As is often the case with movie terminology, the names used to categorize special effects are somewhat convoluted. In this case, we can blame the vagaries on the evolution from film to digital capabilities. During the celluloid era, mechanical effects were those created and photographed on set; optical effects were created by manipulating the image and/or film negative "in-camera" during production and/or during the film-stock processing after the negative had been exposed.

stage actors vs. movie actors/ screen actor

Stage actors convey their interpretations of the characters they play directly to the audience through voice, gesture, and movement. By contrast, movie actors, using gesture and movement—and voice since the coming of sound—convey their characters directly to the camera. In turn, that camera is what makes the movie actor's performance so different from the stage actor's. Stage actors play to a large audience and must project their voices so they can be heard throughout the theater. They must avoid the soft speech, subtle facial expressions, or small gestures that are fundamental tools of the movie actor. Stage actors, who must memorize their lines, have the advantage of speaking them in the order in which they were written. This in turn makes it much easier to maintain psychological, emotional, and physical continuity in a performance as the play proceeds. By contrast, movie actors are subject to the shooting schedule. For budgetary and logistical reasons, most shots are not made in the sequence indicated in the screenplay, so movie actors learn only those lines that they need for the moment. Therefore, movie actors bear the additional burden, particularly on their memory, of creating continuity between related shots, even though the shots may have been made days, weeks, or even months apart.

stand in actors

Stars may be so valuable to productions that they have stand-ins, actors who look reasonably like them in height, weight, coloring, and so on and who substitute for them during the tedious process of preparing setups or taking light readings. Because actors in major roles are ordinarily not hired for their physical or athletic prowess, stunt-persons double for them in scenes requiring special skills or involving hazardous actions, such as crashing cars, jumping from high places, swimming, and riding (or falling off) horses.

Dutch angle camera shot/ Oblique angle camera shot

Subject is shot on a tilt or (canted) angle. Creates diagonal lines on the frame of the set. Signifies chaotic and unnatural scenes.

individual unit production supervisors

Ten men each responsible for planning and producing six to eight films per year. Films were assigned by the general manager and production manager. These ten were often called associate or assistant producers and sometimes given screen credit as such. Each producer was sufficiently flexible to be able to handle various types of movies.

1908-1927: Origins of the Classical Hollywood Style - The Silent Period

The "silent era" of film history is distinguished by Edwin S. Porter's and D. W. Griffith's developments in narrative form, the crystallization of the classical Hollywood style, the ascendance of Hollywood as the center of the world's motion-picture industry, the development of movie genres, and early experiments with color and animation. The "classical Hollywood cinema" refers here to the traditional studio-based style of making motion pictures in both the silent and sound periods. Although the rudiments of the classical style can be seen in the work of Edwin S. Porter, it began its ascendancy with the release of D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) and continues, with various modifications, to identify the cinematic conventions used by most filmmakers today. The classical Hollywood style is built on the principle of "invisibility" that we discussed in Module 2. This principle generally includes two parts. The first is that the movie's form (narrative, cinematography, editing, sound, acting, and so forth) should not call attention to itself. That is, the narrative should be as economical and seamless as possible, and the presentation of the narrative should occur in a cinematic language with which the audience is familiar. The second part is the studio system itself, a mode of production that standardized the way movies were produced. Management was vertically organized, meaning that a strong executive office controlled production, distribution, and exhibition; hired all employees, including directors and actors; and assigned work to them according to the terms of their contracts, thus ensuring a certain uniform style for each studio. While we know that such principles were sometimes ignored in practice, they nonetheless serve a purpose in helping us chart the course of stylistic history.

Hong Kong

The Hong Kong martial-arts action movies stem from a venerable tradition in Chinese film history that, from the 1920s to the 1970s, shifted between two basic styles: wuxia (or wushu) and kung fu. Both of them combine, to varying degrees, these disparate elements: an intricate, sometimes incomprehensible, melodramatic plot; philosophical codes of honor based on mystical beliefs; spectacular violence; brilliantly choreographed fight sequences; the conflict between cops and gangsters; speeding vehicles; and lavish production values. Their formal characteristics include spectacular studio settings and natural locations, saturated colors, moody lighting, constant motion (slow and fast), disjointed editing techniques, and extensive computer manipulation of images and motion. A Better Tomorrow (1986), directed by John Woo, is considered a classic example of Hong Kong cinema: violent action depicted in brilliantly choreographed scenes. The image here, from the movie's spectacular conclusion, exemplifies Woo's style: bright colors, gymnastic feats, dozens of blazing guns, exploding firestorms, blood galore, overwrought male bonding, and a certain sly humor that suggests a surreal world. Woo was influenced by such action directors as Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah (see The Wild Bunch) and in turn had wide influence on both Chinese and American directors, including Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and the Wachowskis.

1924-1930: Soviet Montage Movement

The Soviet Montage movement represents one of the twin high points of cinematic experimentation, innovation, and achievement in the years between the end of World War I in 1918 and the coming of sound in 1927. After the Bolshevik (Communist) Revolution of October 1917, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the challenge was to reunify a shattered nation. Lenin famously proclaimed that cinema would be the most important of the arts in this effort and valued the movies' power to both attract and indoctrinate audiences. He nationalized the film industry and established a national film school to train filmmakers to make propaganda films in a documentary style. Between 1917 and 1929, the Soviet government supported the kind of artistic experimentation and expression that is most effectively seen in the work of four directors: Dziga Vertov, Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Vsevolod I. Pudovkin. What they all share in varying degrees is a belief in the power of montage (they adopted the French word for "editing") to fragment and reassemble footage so as to manipulate the viewer's perception and understanding.

story duration

The amount of time that the implied story takes to occur.

actors relationship to the camera and close up

The camera creates a greater naturalism and intimacy between actors and audience than would ever be possible on the stage, and thus it serves as screen actors' most important collaborator. Nowhere is the camera's effect on the actor's role more evident than in a close-up. The true close-up isolates an actor, concentrating on the face; it can be active (commenting on something just said or done, reminding us who is the focus of a scene) or passive (revealing an actor's beauty). Thus actors' most basic skill is understanding how to reveal themselves to the camera during the close-up. All great movie actors understand, instinctively or from experience, what to do and not do with their faces when the camera moves in. They must temporarily forget their bodies' expressive possibilities, stand as close to the camera as they would to a person in real life, smoothly balance their voices because the microphone is so close, and focus on the communicative power of even the slightest facial gesture. Close-ups can shift interpretation to the viewer, or they can leave little room for independent interpretation.

Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933)

The censors would have found plenty to dislike in Alfred E. Green's Baby Face (1933). It's the story of Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck), a Depression-era gold digger who sleeps her way to the top, both figuratively and literally, of a Manhattan skyscraper where she works. At each new floor, she finds a powerful new lover and, as a result, gets a better job. Eventually, she's in deeper than she thinks when one of her lovers murders another. Because the Motion Picture Production Code was not yet fully in power, the studio tried to get away with this version, but the New York State Censorship Board rejected it, so it trimmed some scenes and added a new ending that conformed with the code's principle that movies should endorse morality, not exploit it for entertainment purposes.

The Kuleshov Experiment

The early Russian film theorists and filmmakers placed meaning through juxtaposition at the center of their approach to filmmaking. These pioneers, including Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Lev Kuleshov, were the first filmmakers to systematically explore the expressive capacity of editing. In the 1920s, Kuleshov conducted an experiment in which he juxtaposed a shot of an actor wearing a neutral expression with a number of other shots and then screened them in sequence for a test audience. When viewers saw the man paired with a shot of a bowl of soup, they not only assumed he was looking at the soup but also interpreted his expression as one of hunger. When shown the same shot of the expressionless actor, but juxtaposed instead with the image of a girl in a coffin, viewers assumed a relationship between the character and the corpse and felt the actor was expressing grief or remorse. Another juxtaposition, this time with an attractive woman reclined on a couch, caused viewers to read his expression as lustful. With this simple experiment, Kuleshov demonstrated a creative capacity of film editing that editors still use: the juxtaposition of images to create new meaning not present in any single shot by itself.

sound editing

The editor is responsible for the overall process of editing and for the sound crew, which consists of a supervising sound editor, sound editors (who usually concentrate on their specialties: dialogue, music, or sound effects), sound mixers, rerecording mixers, sound-effects personnel, and Foley artists. The editor also works closely with the musical composer or those responsible for selecting music from other sources. In the editing room, the editor is in charge; but the director and the sound designer may also take part in the process. Filmmakers first screen the dailies (or rushes), which are synchronized picture/sound work prints of a day's shooting. From these they select the usable individual shots from among the multiple takes, sort out the outtakes (any footage that will not be used), log the usable footage so it is easy to follow through the rest of the process, and decide which dialogue needs rerecording and which sound effects are necessary. If ambient or other noises have marred the quality of the dialogue recorded during photography, the actors are asked to come back, view the faulty scene, and perform the dialogue again while watching a looped (repeating) recording of the moment in question, a process known as automatic dialogue replacement (ADR), or looping. It's very much like selective lip-synching; when an acceptable rerecording that matches the take has been made, an ADR editor inserts it into the movie. Finally, the sound-editing team synchronizes the sound and visual tracks.

Yasujirô Ozu

The films of Yasujirô Ozu are considered by the international film community as the most Japanese in their modes of expression and values. Like Mizoguchi, he began his career long before World War II. His best films are concerned not with the traditional world of the samurai but with contemporary family life; indeed, the values of the lower-middle-class families who are the staple of his movies represent a microcosm of postwar society. And since most of them take place within the family home, their look is influenced by Japanese domestic customs and architecture. Because the Japanese often sit on the floor and thus make eye contact with others at that level, Ozu placed his camera similarly, pulling Western audiences immediately into a different world. His compositions are very formal, and his camera seldom moved; his editing consisted primarily of cuts rather than, say, fades or dissolves. Unlike Kurosawa, he did not seek to create Western-style continuity. Furthermore, his distinctive style included the use of offscreen space, meaning that his compositions force our eyes to consider the world outside the frame and, as a result, heighten our sense of a movie's reality. Like Kurosawa, he was an auteur, infusing his movies with a distinct style unlike any other. While that style might at first seem austere or rigid, the subject of his films is anything but.

preproduction

The first stage, preproduction, 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. They may secure from a publisher the rights to a successful novel or buy a writer's "pitch" for a story. Once the rights to producing a story have been contracted and purchased, the producers can spend months arranging the financing for a production. How easily they accomplish this, and the funds that they secure, depends largely on the film they offer to their backers and its projected financial returns. Throughout the preproduction period, the producers continually estimate and reestimate the budget. The final budget, which should cover all foreseeable expenses, also reflects their marketing strategy. During this process of previsualization, before the cameras start to roll, the director and the chief collaborators decide how they want the film to look, sound, and move. At least 2 to 3 weeks more can be devoted to organizational issues and details such as scheduling studio space and scouting locations, obtaining permissions to use those locations, and arranging for the design and construction of sets, costumes, and properties. Just before shooting begins, another 2 weeks will probably be devoted to rehearsals with the cast and crew.

Screwball Comedy

The genre of screwball comedy was popular during the Great Depression in the 1930s because it offered an escape from reality. It continues to exist today (in movies such as Peter Bogdanovich's She's Funny That Way (2014) and Joel and Ethan Coen's Hail Caesar! (2016), but without the wit or sting of the original. Its principal characteristics include stories of mistaken identity, often involving a person of the working class who accidentally (or not so accidentally) meets with someone from the upper class and, contrary to all expectations, becomes romantically involved; rapid, witty dialogue; and farcical, even fantastic, rags-to-riches plot situations. Mitchell Leisen's Easy Living (1937) easily fits the bill. Its script by Preston Sturges, a master of the genre, begins when tycoon John Ball (Edward Arnold), who resents his wife's buying a new sable coat, throws it from his penthouse roof. It lands on Mary Smith (Jean Arthur), an office worker who is riding on the top of a Fifth Avenue double-decker bus (behind her, the man in the turban is a classic bit of screwball incongruity). Seeing the coat, people assume she is rich, and she quickly learns to enjoy that illusion as she is enticed into a world of glamour and falls improbably in love with John Ball Jr. (Ray Milland).

1927-1947: Classical Hollywood Style in Hollywood's Golden Age

The golden age of Hollywood was the most powerful and prolific period of film history yet. It is notable for the transition from silent to sound production, consolidation of the studio system, exploitation of familiar genres, imposition of the Motion Picture Production Code, changes in the look of movies, and the economic success of feature-length narrative films. Yet it was less a movement than a force, for in this period, the movies became inextricably linked with the development of American culture and society. From this point forward, the movies defined America, and America defined itself through the movies. For example, Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and Meet John Doe (1941) are often described as a populist trilogy. Indeed, they are emblematic of populism in their belief that ordinary people have the right and power to struggle against the privileged elite. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington offers a sentimental vision of America, filled with stereotypes. Yet it was very successful with the American public, which was dissatisfied with Washington at the end of the Great Depression. In the following scene, Smith (James Stewart) finishes his filibuster before the U.S. Senate by pleading with his fellow senators to stand up and fight the corruption that is preventing the realization of his dream to finance a national camp for boys. Considering the national situation, this is a small issue indeed. And while it is almost impossible to imagine a similar incident paralyzing Washington today, it gives hope that the common man still has a voice in the direction of our country. Once the conversion to sound was completed in 1930, weekly attendance at the movies and box-office receipts had increased by 50 percent, again proving the Hollywood principle that profits derive from giving the public what it wants. Between 1927 and 1941 (when film production was reduced sharply due to wartime considerations), Hollywood produced more than 10,000 movies, an average of 744 each year (compared to 349 produced in 2013). The genres dominated production: screwball comedies, musicals, gangster movies, historical epics, melodramas, horror movies, Westerns, and biographies. Many of these movies were forgettable, but others are some of Hollywood's most important, influential, and memorable creations.

sound crew

The group responsible for the sound in movies, the sound crew, generates and controls the sound physically, manipulating its properties to produce the effects that the director desires.

Austrian cinema

The history of Austrian cinema includes a rich legacy from various film artists, such as Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, who emigrated during the 1930s and enriched the cinemas of Great Britain, France, and the United States. In the twenty-first century, a young generation of filmmakers has begun to create its own legacy with films that are uniquely Austrian in subject and style. These include Michael Haneke, arguably the best-known and most important Austrian filmmaker.

intercutting

The insertion of shots into a scene in a way that interrupts the narrative. Examples of intercutting include flashbacks, flash-forwards, shots depicting a character's thoughts, shots depicting events from earlier or later in the plot, and associative editing that inserts shots to create symbolic or thematic meaning through juxtaposition.

length of the shot

The length, or duration, of a shot is determined by a combination of factors: the kind of story being told, the dramatic demands of particular scenes within that story, and the approach to cinematic language the director and his creative collaborators (filmmakers) bring to that story. Ultimately, of course, the duration of most shots as we see them on-screen is determined by the editor, but it is important to know that directors design their shots with editing in mind. Shot length is another expressive tool that must be considered before production begins.

long take, mobile framing, sequence shot

The long take is a shot that lasts significantly longer than a conventional shot. There are two basic approaches to the long take: (1) those that exploit the mobile frame, and (2) those that hold the viewer in a state of relative stasis. Mobile framing uses a moving camera and blocking to present multiple viewpoints, compositions, and actions within a single unified shot. Ordinarily, we refer to a sequence as a series of edited shots characterized by inherent unity of theme and purpose. This kind of long take is sometimes referred to as a sequence shot because it enables filmmakers to present a unified pattern of events—usually with a structured dramatic trajectory—within a single period of time in one shot.

long focal length

The long-focal-length lens (also known as the telephoto lens; focal lengths ranging from 85mm to as high as 500mm) compresses the appearance of depth, which makes distant subjects look closer and makes objects and subjects on different planes of depth appear to be closer together than they would appear in real life. Because of this spatial flattening effect, subjects moving from the background toward the camera can appear to be making very slow progress through space—almost as if they were walking in place.

aspect ratio

The relationship between the frame's two dimensions is known as its aspect ratio, the ratio of the width of the image to its height. Almost all movies are made to be shown in one aspect ratio from beginning to end. The most common aspect ratios are: (1.375:1) Academy (35mm flat) (1.66:1) European widescreen (35mm flat) (1.85:1) American widescreen (35mm flat) (2.2:1) Super Panavision and Todd-AO (70mm flat) (2.35:1) Panavision and CinemaScope (35mm anamorphic) (2.75:1) Ultra Panavision (70mm anamorphic)

sprocketed rollers

The rollers control the speed of the film as it moves through the camera and toward the lens, which focuses the image on the film as it is exposed.

D. W. Griffith

The movie director was central to developing the art of the motion picture in these early years. D. W. Griffith would soon emerge as the most important of these figures, and The Birth of a Nation would become known as one of the most important and controversial movies ever made. While its racist content is repugnant, its form is technically brilliant. Griffith, who borrowed freely from other early filmmakers, was an intuitive and innovative artist. In this legendary movie we see him perfecting and regularizing (if not inventing) a style that included a dazzling set of technical achievements: the 180-degree system; cutting between familiar types of shots (close-up, medium shot, long shot, extreme long shot, and soft-focus shot); multiple camera setups, accelerated montage, and panning and tilting; and the exploitation of camera angles, in-camera dissolves and fades, the flashback, the iris shot, the mask, and the split screen. He also highly valued using a full symphonic score and, more important, developing screen acting by training actors for the special demands of the silent cinema. The turning point in D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) comes in the middle of the movie, as the title card says: "And then, when the terrible days were over and a healing time of peace was at hand . . . came the fated night of April 14, 1865." The scene is Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., where a gala performance is being held to celebrate General Robert E. Lee's surrender. In this scene, President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln enter and greet the enthusiastic audience. Moments later, Lincoln is assassinated, ending Part I, "War," and opening Part II, "Reconstruction," a saga of Southern white racism that is the most controversial part of the movie.

Musical

The musical tells its story using characters that express themselves with song and dance. The actors sing every line of dialogue in a few musicals. But for the most part, musicals feature a combination of music, singing, dancing, and spoken dialogue. Backstage-musical stories typically revolved around a promising young performer searching for her big show-business break, or a talented singer/dancer protagonist pressured by a love interest or family member to leave show business, or a struggling company of singers and dancers determined to mount a big show. Many backstage narratives managed to combine two or more of these standard storylines. These musicals had their own set of character types, including the hard-bitten producer, the gifted ingenue, the insecure (i.e., less talented) star, and the faltering veteran with a heart of gold. Early Hollywood musicals like Harry Beaumont's The Broadway Melody (1929) constructed their narratives around the rehearsal and performance of a musical stage show, a setting that provided an intriguing backdrop, narrative conflict, and a context that allowed the characters to sing and dance without testing verisimilitude.

open and closed framing

The open frame is designed to depict a world where characters move freely within an open, recognizable environment, and the closed frame is designed to imply that other forces (such as fate; social, educational, or economic background; or a repressive government) have robbed characters of their ability to move and act freely. The open frame is generally employed in realistic (verisimilar) films, the closed frame in formalist films. In the realistic film, the frame is a "window" on the world—one that provides many views. Because the "reality" being depicted changes continually, the movie's framing changes with it. In the formalist film, the frame is similar to the frame of a painting or photograph, enclosing or limiting the world by closing it down and providing only one view. Because only that one view exists, everything within the frame has its particular place. As with all such distinctions in film analysis, these differences between open and closed frames are not absolute; they are a matter of degree and emphasis.

1959-1964: French New Wave

The originators of the New Wave were influenced by several movements. The first was the French cinema itself, including the 1930s cinematic style known as poetic realism. The term applied to movies that treated everyday life with a moody sensitivity to mise-en-scène and to the more contemporary films of Jean-Pierre Melville. The second influence was the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, the leading figure in French philosophy in the postwar period. Sartre believed that contemporary artists should rebel against the constraints of society, traditional morality, and religious faith; should accept personal responsibility for their actions; and should thus be free to create their own world. His existentialist views helped shape the new French cinema's depiction of modern human beings, while his Marxist views helped form its interpretations of society and history. Finally, the movement learned much from film critic and director Alexandre Astruc. He declared that a filmmaker should use the camera as personally as the novelist uses a pen, thus inspiring the idea of the movie director as auteur. Film theorist André Bazin, known as the father of the New Wave, synthesized these concepts into the coherent model on which the New Wave was established. This interaction of intellect and creativity recalls the origins of several movements: the German, Soviet, and French film movements of the 1920s. Bazin cofounded Cahiers du Cinéma, which became the leading French film journal of the time, and in his capacity as editor, he became the intellectual and spiritual mentor of the New Wave. His followers included Cahiers' contributors, many of whom would become directors: Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, and Eric Rohmer. Others went directly into filmmaking: Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, and Louis Malle. (There were other major directors in postwar France who were not directly involved in the New Wave movement, including Jean Cocteau, Robert Bresson, Jean Renoir, Jacques Tati, Jacques Becker, and Max Ophüls.)

Early Screen Acting Styles

The people on the screen in the very first movies were not actors but ordinary people playing themselves. The early films caught natural, everyday actions—feeding a baby, leaving work, yawning, walking up and down stairs, swinging a baseball bat, sneezing—in a simple, realistic manner. "Acting" was simply a matter of trying to ignore the presence of the camera as it recorded the action. In the early 1900s, filmmakers started to tell stories with their films and thus needed professional actors. Most stage actors at the time scorned film acting, however, and refused to take work in the fledgling industry. Therefore, the first screen actors were usually rejects from the stage or fresh-faced amateurs eager to break into the emerging film industry. Lack of experience (or talent) wasn't the only hurdle they faced. Because no standard language of cinematic expression or any accepted tradition of film direction existed at the time, these first actors had little choice but to adopt the acting style favored in the nineteenth-century theater and try to adapt it to their screen roles. The resulting quaint, unintentionally comical style consists of exaggerated gestures, overly emphatic facial expressions, and bombastic mouthing of words (which could not yet be recorded on film) that characterized the stage melodramas popular at the turn of the twentieth century.

pitch

The pitch (or level) of a sound can be high (like the screech of tires on pavement), low (like the rumble of a boulder barreling downhill), or somewhere between these extremes. Pitch is defined by the frequency (or speed) with which it is produced (the number of sound waves produced per second). Most sounds fall somewhere in the middle of the scale. But the extremes of high and low, as well as the distinctions between high pitch and low pitch, are often exploited by filmmakers to influence our experience and interpretation of a movie.

recording

The process of recording sound is very similar to the process of hearing. Just as the human ear converts sounds into nerve impulses that the brain identifies, so the microphone converts sound waves into electrical signals that are then recorded and stored. The history of recording movie sound has evolved from optical and magnetic systems to the digital systems used in today's professional productions. Of the various types of film sound (which will be described later in the chapter), dialogue is the only type typically recorded during production. Everything else is added in the editing and mixing stages of postproduction. The recording of production sound is the responsibility of the production sound mixer and a team of assistants, which includes, on the set, a sound recordist, a sound mixer, a microphone boom operator, and wranglers (in charge of the power supply, electrical connections, and cables). On set, the motion-picture camera is responsible only for recording the image; the dialogue sound is recorded using a separate sound recorder, an approach known as double system recording. Before any dialogue shot is captured on set, an assistant "claps" the hinged pieces of a simple device called the slate (also known as a clapboard or sticks) to create a simultaneous image and sound "mark" that are used to line up (or synchronize) the separate image and sound recordings in postproduction, a process referred to as synching.

Production in Hollywood Today

The production system in Hollywood today is an amalgam of (1) a studio system that differs radically from that of the golden age described earlier and (2) independent production companies, many of which are "small picture" or "prestige" (non-genre) divisions of the larger studios. The term studio system no longer means what it once did: a group of vertically integrated, meticulously organized factories that employ large numbers of contract employees in the creative arts and crafts. Today there is no "system," and the studios exist to make and release movies, one at a time. In addition, now that almost every studio has its own prestige "indie" division, very few producers are truly independent.

prop master

The prop master works with the production designer to find and select props, then maintains each object and ensures it is ready when the actor needs it for shooting.

sound quality

The quality (also known as timbre, texture, or color) of a sound includes those characteristics that enable us to distinguish sounds that have the same pitch and loudness. In music, the same note played at the same volume on three different instruments (say, a piano, violin, and oboe) will produce tones that are identical in frequency and amplitude but very different in quality. The sound produced by each of these instruments has its own harmonic content, which can be measured as wavelengths.

short focal length

The short-focal-length lens (also known as the wide-angle lens, starting as low as 12.5mm) produces wide-angle views and stretches the appearance of depth. It makes the subjects on the screen appear farther and further apart than they actually are. Because this lens exaggerates spatial perspective, subjects moving at normal speeds toward or away from the camera can seem to be moving through space faster than they actually are.

double system recording

The standard technique of recording film sound on a medium separate from the picture. This technique allows for both maximum quality control of the medium and the many aspects of manipulating sound during postproduction editing, mixing, and synchronization.

close-up (CU)

The subject's face fills the frame, so the camera (and, by extension, the viewer) is up close and personal with the subject. The character's face is close enough to communicate maximum physical and psychological detail—even the subtlest shift in expression can feel monumental. This intimate proximity imparts a heightened sense of significance.

take up spool

The take up spool(or again the portion of the magazine that stores exposed film) winds the film after it has been exposed.

jump cut

The term jump cut is often generally (and incorrectly) applied to any noticeably discontinuous edit, but this particular editing technique defies our expectations of continuity in a very specific way. A jump cut is created when two shots of the same subject taken from the same camera position are edited together so that the action on-screen seems to jump forward in time. This jump usually amounts to a matter of moments; the effect is often created using a single shot of an ongoing action. The editor simply removes a portion of the shot and then relinks the remaining footage.

zoom focal length/variable focal length

The zoom lens, also called the variable-focal-length lens, permits the assistant cameraperson to reduce or increase the focal length of the lens between takes or setups without having to change lenses. Changing the focal length in a continuous motion during a shot can make the image "zoom" in or out, thus simulating the effect of movement of the camera toward or away from the subject. Difference between zoom in and dolly in shot is the magnification to move in on a subject in a shot.

Hollywood Studios and Indie Production Companies Today (cont.)

There are currently six major studios in the United States, as well as four independent producers that are referred to in Hollywood as mini-majors. The best known of these mini-majors are Lionsgate and Lantern Entertainment (formerly The Weinstein Company). There are, in addition, many other independent producers too numerous to list. In terms of numbers of films and earning power, the mini-majors and other independents have become more important than the major studios. Because they dominate the international market, the major studios continue to define movie production in the United States. When one of the smaller studios has a larger corporate owner, the parent firm is usually the distributor. In addition, countless independent producers must distribute their movies through the "big six" studios if they want the largest possible audience and the maximum profits on their investments.

Dziga Vertov

Vertov was the first great theorist and practitioner of the cinema of propaganda in documentary form. In 1922, the year of Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North, Vertov launched kino-pravda (literally, "film truth"). He was influenced by the spirit of Flaherty and the Lumières, which focused on everyday experiences, as well as by the avant-garde pursuit of innovation. Vertov is best known today for The Man with the Movie Camera (1929). Dziga Vertov's The Man with the Movie Camera (1929) is about how the Russians live and how movies are made. On first viewing, it does not seem to distinguish between the two. As a record of human life, it is the prototypical movie. Vertov shows us how to frame reality and movement: through the human eye and the camera eye, or through windows and shutters. But to confound us, he also shows us—through such devices as the freeze-frame, split screen, stop-action, slow motion, and fast motion—how the cinematographer and editor can transform the movements of life into something that is unpredictable. He proves that the camera has a life of its own while also reminding us of the editor, who is putting all of this footage together. Reality may be in the control of the artist, his camera, and its tricks, but it is also defined by the editor's presentation and ultimately the viewer's perception.

MPAA movie rating system

Voluntary movie rating system administered by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the trade association of the industry. Because the rating helps determine the marketing of a film and thus the potential size of its audience, it is very important. But ratings should also tell parents all they need to know to make wise choices about what their children see, and that's where they fall short, especially with the PG-13 ratings. Such films have increasing amounts of violence, profanity, and nudity, factors that are often played down by the rating system. Since movies rated PG-13 appeal to a teenage audience—especially boys, whose attendance is vital to their success at the box office—the rating language has become less useful. Rating Category: G: General Audience/ Nothing that would offend parents for viewing by children. PG: Parental Guidance Suggested/ Parents urged to give parental guidance. May contain some material parents might not like for their young children. PG-13: Parents Strongly Cautioned/ Parents are urged to be cautious. Some material may be inappropriate for preteenagers. R: Restricted/ Contains some adult material. parents are urged to learn more about the film before taking their young children with them. NC-17: No one 17 and under Admitted/ Clearly adult. Children are not admitted.

Nagisa Oshima

When Nagisa Oshima's most provocative movie, In the Realm of the Senses (1976), was released, it was banned (or cut) in many parts of the world. It explores various sexual activities, including the power dynamics between a man and a woman obsessed with one another, and ends in one of the most disturbingly violent incidents in movie history. This scene, a comparatively tame moment, depicts eroticism in eating, where actor Tatsuya Fuji is playfully fed a rare mushroom by his lover. The overall movie is based on a true story involving death-obsessed eroticism and is widely thought to be pornography.

masking

When a filmmaker wants to depict a subject or situation using a frame size and shape other than the one imposed by the chosen aspect ratio, she can also use setting, objects, or even characters to block off, or mask, portions of the frame, thus creating a new frame or frames within the standard rectangle.

zoom in and dolly in shot

When dollying, a camera actually moves through space; in the process, spatial relationships between the camera and the objects in its frame shift, causing relative changes in position between on-screen figures or objects. By contrast, because a zoom lens does not move through space, its depiction of spatial relationships between the camera and its subjects does not change. All a zoom shot does is magnify the image. Because it depicts movement through space differently than we experience it in our own lives with our own eyes, the movement of a zoom shot can feel artificial. For this reason (and the fact that viewers naturally associate the zoom effect with its use in amateur home videos), zoom shots are rarely used in narrative feature films. When combined with the perspective shift of a dolly shot, the magnifying effect of a zoom can create a striking and unsettling distortion of perspective. This so-called "zolly" maintains the size of the subject in frame while the background magnifies or retreats behind them, or vice versa: the background stays the same while the subject enlarges or grows smaller.

pace and rhythm

When the editor employs patterns of duration over time, she is using pace and rhythm. Those two terms are often used interchangeably, but there are important differences. Pace is the speed at which a shot sequence flows. The pace of a scene or sequence is accomplished by using shots of the same general duration. An action sequence using a series of short-duration shots could be described as fast paced. A slow-paced sequence made up of shots of a similarly long duration might be found in a serious dialogue-driven drama. Rhythm in editing applies to the practice of changing the pace, either gradually or suddenly, during a scene or sequence.

postproduction

When the shooting on a film has been completed, postproduction begins. Postproduction consists of three phases: editing, finishing, and bringing the film to the public (marketing and distribution). In brief, editing consists of assembling the visual images and sound recordings, adding the musical score and sound effects, integrating the special effects, assembling the sound tracks, and doing any necessary dubbing. Finishing consists of mixing the many tracks of sound into one unified composite sound track and color grading the edited images to create the visual look of the film and maintain consistency of brightness and color from shot to shot. Bringing the film to the public consists of determining the marketing and advertising strategies and budgets, setting the release date and number of theaters, finalizing distribution rights and ancillary rights, and finally exhibiting the film.

film technology

When we refer to film technology, we mean that film stock is the medium on which the image is recorded. Film is an analog medium in which the camera (1) creates an image by recording through a camera lens the original light given off by the subject, and (2) stores this image on a roll of negative film stock. That stock, coated with an emulsion containing silver crystals, yields an image that closely resembles what the human eye sees. We call it analog because the image is analogous, or proportional, to the input. Put another way, once the film is processed (or "developed"), the negative image (on the negative stock) becomes a positive image (on positive stock); the first image is analogous to the second. In the first stage, shooting, the camera exposes film to light, allowing that radiant energy to burn a negative image onto each frame. These single, discrete images are shot at a standard (for theatrical movies, anyway) 24 frames per second. In the second stage, processing, the negative is developed into a positive "work print" that the film editor can cut. When the edit is completed, the edited work print is then used as a guide to create a matching edited version of the original negative, a process called "conforming the negative." This conformed negative is used to create a final positive film print for screening. In the third stage, projecting, the final print is run through a projector, which shoots through the film a beam of light intense enough to project a large image on the movie screen. (This account greatly condenses the entire process to emphasize, at this point, only the cycle of light is common to all three stages.) Projecting a strip of exposed frames at the same speed—traditionally 16 frames per second (fps) for silent film, 24 fps for sound—creates the illusion of movement. Silent cameras and projectors were often hand-cranked, and so the actual speed of the camera, which then had to be matched by the projectionist, might vary from 12 to 24 fps.

How Filmmaking Affects Acting

With some exceptions, most production budgets and schedules do not have the funds or the time to give movie actors much in the way of rehearsal. Thus actors almost always perform a character's progression entirely out of sequence, and this out-of-continuity shooting can also force those who are being filmed in isolation to perform their parts as though they were interacting with other people. When these shots are edited together, the illusion of togetherness is there, but the actors must make it convincing. Actors must time their movements and precisely hit predetermined marks on the floor so that a moving camera and a focus puller know where they will be at every moment; they must often direct their gaze and position their body and/or face in unnatural-feeling poses to allow for lighting, camera position, and composition. These postures usually appear natural on-screen but don't feel natural to the actors performing them on the set. Movie actors must repeat the same action/line/emotion more than once, not just for multiple takes from a single setup but also for multiple setups. This means that they may perform the close-up of a particular scene an hour after they performed the same moment for a different camera position. Everything about their performance is fragmented, and thus they must struggle to stay in character. Finally, actors are sometimes required to work with acting and dialogue coaches, physical trainers, and stunt personnel. For all the reasons listed here, delivering a convincing screen performance is very challenging.

labor and unions

Workers in the industry formed labor unions for the standard reasons: they sought worker representation, equity in pay and working conditions, safety standards, and job security. In Hollywood, the activities in the three phases of making a movie—preproduction, production, and postproduction—are carried out by two major forces: management and labor. Management selects the property, develops the script, chooses the actors, and assigns the key production people; but the actual work of making the film is the responsibility of labor (artists, craftspeople, and technicians belonging to labor unions). Members of management receive the highest salaries; the salaries of labor depend on the kind and level of skills necessary for each job. Such a division of labor across the broad, collaborative effort in creating a film shapes the unavoidable interaction between the work rules set by union contracts and the standards set by professional organizations.

boom operator

Works under the supervision of the sound mixer in the recording of production sound, holding mic booms, placing mics, holding cables, and operating various recording devices.

cutting-on-action

The most common editing technique designed to hide the instantaneous and potentially jarring shift from one camera viewpoint to another. Also known as match-on-action cut.

makeup artist, hairstyle

-The makeup artist works closely with the production designer and the cinematographer, as well as with actors themselves, usually accompanying them to the set and performing whatever touch-ups are necessary. Applies facial and body cosmetics and prosthetics on actors. -The appearance of actors' hair is used to create the look appropriate to each character's role in the story. An actor's existing hair may be styled or the actor may be fitted with wigs and other hairpieces. Once designed, a wig never changes, eliminating the possibility that an actor's hair could be the source of a continuity error.

implicit meaning & explicit meaning

-The meaning that lies below the surface of a film's story and presentation. -Everything the film presents on the surface. The meaning that presents itself on the surface of a film.

first person narration & omniscient narration

-The voiceover is told from the point of view of a single character in the story. Diegetic element because it is what the character is thinking so it part of the story's world. -Unlimited perspective not belonging to any character. Most common point of view allowing the camera to freely roam within the film's world.

plot and screen duration relationship

(1) in a summary relationship, screen duration is shorter than plot duration; (2) in real time, screen duration corresponds directly to plot duration; and (3) in a stretch relationship, screen duration is longer than plot duration.

event hierarchy

(1) the events that seem crucial to the plot (and thus to the underlying story) and (2) the events that play a less crucial or even subordinate role. When filmmakers make decisions about which scenes to cut from a film during the editing phase, they generally look for minor events that, for one reason or another, don't contribute enough to the overall movie.

verisimilitude & realism

-A film has verisimilitude if it seems realistic and the story has details, subjects, and characters that seem similar or true to real life, or mime convincing aspects of life in important or fundamental ways. - Unobtrusive framing with a storyline that portray the everyday lives of ordinary people. A cinematic approach to narrative filmmaking that employs naturalistic performances and umembelished setting.

shot, take, setup

-A shot is a series of frames that runs for an uninterrupted period of time -The term take refers to each time that planned shot is captured. -A setup is one camera position and everything associated with it.

artificial light

-Artificial lights (sometimes called instruments to distinguish them from the light they produce) are designed to address a range of cinematic applications and needs. -To calculate exposure and determine lighting ratios, cinematographers use a handheld light meter to measure how much light is falling on any given surface. Gaffers can adjust the intensity of each instrument in a number of ways: focusing or dispersing the beam, using dimmers, placing heat-resistant screens (called scrims) in front of the bulb, or simply moving the instrument closer to or farther from the subject. Lighting instruments are designed to cast direct (hard) light, diffused (soft) light, or both.

horror film

-Confronting something frightening that can't be fully understood. -Full loss of control and order. -Protagonists are often the only ones who recognizes the horrors. Being ignored when they try to warn people and then targeted by the threat first. -Monsters, demons, zombies, and vampires

film noir

-Cynical in tone being more realistic and bleaker. -Protagonist is doomed at the start. -Antihero protagonist who's an outsider. Rarely seek power like the gangster protagonist. -Dark lighting and deep shadows. -Emphasis on corruption and despair demoting the American character.

natural light/day light

-Daylight is the most convenient and economical source -Even when movies are shot outdoors on clear, sunny days, however, filmmakers often use devices to manipulate that natural light. -Daylight can be redirected with reflectors and bounce boards, diffused with panels of white called silks, and shaped with black panels called flags.

deep space composition, deep focus composition

-Deep-space composition emphasizes depth by placing significant visual and narrative information on two or more of the three planes of depth—foreground, middle ground, and background—in such a way that not only emphasizes depth but also conveys information, mood, and meaning. -Deep focus composition is the process of rendering the figures of all planes in deep space composition in focus.

science fiction film

-Explores our dread of technology and change. -Focuses on human's relationship with science and technologies created. -Technology vs humanity or science vs soul. -Aliens invaders. -Down-to-earth human protagonist representing humanity. -High tech visual effects to show spectacle.

genre & generic transformation

-Genre refers to the categorization of narrative films by the stories they tell (content)and the ways they tell them(form). Commonly recognized movie genres include the Western, horror, science fiction, musical, and gangster films. -The process by which a particular genre is adapted to meet the expectations of a changing society.

third person narration & voice over narration

-Narration delivered from outside of the diegesis by a narrator who is not a character in the movie. A disembodied voiceover from an outsider. -Narration heard concurrently and over a scene but no 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 to date; a first person narrator commenting on the actions; or in nonfiction film, a commentator.

western film

-Offers narrative representations of Americans as rugged, self-sufficient individuals taming a savage wilderness with common sense and direct action. A new slate and new opportunities in the frontier. Ideal renewal. -Wilderness vs civilization -Protagonist are sometimes outlaws but not villains. -Favors law and order themes

cinema invisibility & cinematic language

-Techniques and strategies film makers use that are hidden from the audience prioritizing the film's immersive feeling rather than using revealing editing techniques. -The techniques, systems, or conventions by which the movies communicate with the viewer.

rack focus

A change of the point of focus from one subject to another within the same shot. Rack focus guides our attention to a new, clearly focused point of interest while blurring the previous subject in the shot.

edge or rim light

A combination of key light, fill light, and back lighting to illuminate the subject with the addition of the subject's edges being more brightly lit. Used to trace the subject in light to make them stand out more.

documentary film

A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality". Not always reflecting the objective truth.

persuasive film

A documentary film that address social injustice, but today any documentary concerned with presenting a particular perspective on social issues or with corporate and governmental injustice of any kind could be considered persuasive.

instructional film

A documentary film that seek to educate viewers about common interests, rather than persuade them to accept particular ideas. Today these movies are most likely to teach the viewer basic skills such as cooking, yoga, or golf swings. They are not generally considered worthy of study or analysis.

propaganda film

A documentary film that systematically disseminates deceptive or distorted information.

factual film

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

Mise-en-scène

A film's mise-en-scène is everything we see in every shot: every object, every person, everything about their surroundings, costumes, and how each of these components is arranged, illuminated, and moved around. And very little of this is left to chance—virtually everything on-screen was carefully chosen and placed there by the filmmakers for a reason. Mise-en- scène is made of four primary components: design, lighting, composition, and movement (also known as kinesis).

Storyboard

A shot-by-shot breakdown that combines sketches or photographs of how each shot is to look and written descriptions of the other elements that are to go with each shot, including dialogue, sound, and music.

set decorator

A sort of cinematic interior decorator who is in charge of set dressing, supervises a variety of specialists.

German Expressionism

Among the most influential and enduring of these expressive approaches to mise-en-scène originated in Germany after World War I. German expressionism was not interested in verisimilitude: design was used instead to give objective expression to subjective (and usually disturbed) human feelings and emotions. Usually from the film's protagonist. Settings and décor were abstracted and exaggerated by twisting the normally horizontal and vertical world of right angles into jagged, pointed diagonals. Lighting was deliberately artificial, emphasizing sharp contrasts, and deep shadows were often cast in the same distorted shapes found in the set design. Highly stylized acting. Subjective camera; unnatural costumes, hairstyles, and makeup -By the end of the war, Germany had suffered a humiliating defeat. But a new democratic government emerged, known unofficially as the Weimar Republic. Seeking to revitalize the film industry and create a new image for the country, the government subsidized the film conglomerate known as UFA (Universum-Film AG). Its magnificent studios, the largest and best equipped in Europe, enabled the German film industry to compete with those of other countries as well as attract filmmakers from around the world. This organization led to Germany's golden age of cinema, which lasted from 1919 to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Its most important artistic component was the German Expressionist film, which flourished from 1919 to 1931. German film artists entered the postwar period determined to reject the cinematic past and enthusiastically embrace the avant-garde. Expressionism had flourished in Germany since the early twentieth century in painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, and theater. After the war, it reflected the general atmosphere in postwar Germany of cynicism, alienation, and disillusionment.

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.

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.

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.

nondiegetic insert

An image inserted into a scene that comes from outside the world of the story.

negative space

An imbalance in the composition to make it lopsided to the watchers creating an expectation that something will restore the empty space in the scene creating suspense. Intentional empty space to create expectation.

shot

An unbroken span of action captured by an uninterrupted run of a motion-picture camera. It lasts until it is replaced by another shot by means of a cut or other transition.

gangster film

Antihero: An outwardly unsympathetic protagonist pursuing a morally objectionable or undesirable goal. -Promotes the American dream of humble beginning to riches.(rags to riches to destruction) -Organized crime anti heroes(self destructive protagonist). Becomes paranoid from rise of power. -Antagonists usually police or fellow gangsters.

plot vs story

But remember that story also incorporates those events implied by what we see (and hear) on-screen. But the plot supplies more than simply this particular arrangement of these specific events. Plot also includes nondiegetic elements: those things we see and hear on the screen that come from outside the world of the story, such as score music (music not originating from the world of the story), titles and credits (words superimposed on the images on-screen), and voice-over comments from a third-person voice-over narrator.

head room

By framing a character's eyes at the level of the upper line, cinematographers can quickly and efficiently establish a practical and aesthetically pleasing amount of space, or headroom, above the subject. The amount of space above the top of the subject's head in the composition of a frame.

cinematography

Cinematography is the process of capturing moving images on film or a digital storage device. The word comes to us from three Greek roots—kinesis, meaning "movement"; photo, meaning "light"; and graphia, meaning "writing"—but the word was coined only after motion pictures themselves were invented.

how is composition important?

Composition is important for a number of reasons. A consistent approach to composition over the course of the movie helps ensure that the movie's overall style will have aesthetic unity. How elements are arranged helps guide the viewer's eye through the frame and makes us aware of what elements are most significant at any given moment. Composition can minimize or enhance the appearance of depth in a shot. And, perhaps most important, the way elements are organized on-screen can help viewers understand a character's state of mind and interpret different characters' physical, emotional, and psychological relationships to one another.

cinematographer

Film's cinematographer (also known as the director of photography) plays an important role in this visual design process—which makes sense, as he or she will be responsible for lighting and shooting everything the production designer creates and collects. Uses the camera as an expressive instrument.

film stock & formats

Film stock is a physical analog medium used for recording images made from celluloid and coated with light-sensitive gelatin emulsion. Light is used to capture an image onto the film; it is later developed under a specific chemical process and produces the images. Film stock is available in several standard formats (also called gauges; widths measured in millimeters): 8mm, Super 8mm, 16mm, Super 16mm, 35mm, 65mm, and 70mm as well as special-use formats such as IMAX, which is 10 times bigger than a 35mm frame. Before the advent of camcorders, 8mm and Super 8mm were popular gauges for amateur home movies. The format chosen depends on the type of film being made, the financing available to support the project, and the overall visual look that the filmmaker wants to achieve. The film-stock length is the number of feet (or meters) or the number of reels being used in a particular film. The film-stock speed (or exposure index) indicates the degree to which the film is light-sensitive. This speed ranges from very fast, at which the film requires little light, to very slow, at which it requires a lot of light. Film is also categorized into black-and-white and color stock.

low key lighting

Illumination that creates high contrast and high ratio between light and shadows of the shot, with deep shadows and little fill light. Associated with crime dramas, horror films, darker and more dramatic themed films.

fill light

Illumination used to fill in shadows on a subject can create low key lighting or high key lighting depending on strength of the fill light. Diming the fill light creates low key lighting while increasing it creates high key lighting.

under lighting or Halloween lighting

Lighting is placed in the most unnatural direction from underneath the subject and shining the subject from below it reverses the normal order of illumination and shadows. Distorts a subject's feature to make them more frightening. Perfect for scary characters and situations.

electrician group

The group concerned with electricity and lighting consists of the gaffer (chief electrician), best boy (first assistant electrician), other electricians, and grips (all-around handypersons who work with both the camera crew and the electrical crew to get the camera and lighting ready for shooting).

Digital vs Film Format

Just like traditional film cameras, digital cameras use lenses, apertures, and shutters. The differences begin when the light hits the recording medium. Instead of film stock, the digital camera uses an electronic sensor that captures fragments of image information not as exposed silver halide crystals but as digital pixels. The large amount of resulting data is stored on a hard drive or a solid-state drive (SSD—a memory card similar to a flash drive) in the form of a codec: a specialized digital format that compresses all that pixel information into manageably sized files for editing and viewing.

hard light

Light coming directly from the source. Picks up every detail and creates a clear defined line between shadow and illumination.

frontal light

Light source is facing the subject from the same angle as the camera and removes all the shadows making the subject features more flat.

order in film plot

Most narrative film plots are structured in chronological order. But, unlike story order, which necessarily flows chronologically (as does life), plot order can be manipulated so that events are presented in nonchronological sequences that emphasize importance or meaning or that establish desired expectations in audiences.

blocking

Predetermined movement of actors that is planned according to the needs of the story. Blocking is usually decided on during a rehearsal process in which the director and actors establish how characters in a given situation might move in relationship to their surroundings and one another.

previsualization & overheads

Previsualization can include drawings of planned compositions called storyboards, diagrams of sets seen from above that include actor and camera positions called overheads, and software that creates three-dimensional models of sets and scenarios. It ensures that each shot's composition serves the narrative style and tone to stays unified.

lighting ratio

Refers to the relative relationship between illumination and shadow of a given shot or an object within that shot. The level of illumination on a subject, as compared with the depth of the corresponding shadow.

film stock gauge

Refers to the width of the film which is measured in millimeters. All of these film-stock gauges are coated with thousands of microscopic silver halide crystals that each react to light to form a tiny piece of the total recorded image on each successive frame. The larger the gauge, the more space there is for crystals. Film formats that capture and hold more fragments of visual information have higher resolution: a more detailed, thus sharper, image. Another variable aspect of film stock is its speed (or exposure index)—how sensitive it is to light. "Fast" film stocks have larger crystals that need less light to record an image, whereas "slow" film stocks are fine grained and require more light for a proper exposure. The larger crystals make images shot with fast film stock look grainy, especially compared to the sharper, smoother look of slow film stock.

reflexive documentary

Reflexive documentaries examine more than their chosen subject; they explore—and sometimes critique—the documentary form itself. The documentary production process becomes part of the experience in ways that may challenge viewer expectations of nonfiction filmmaking conventions.

set dressing

Set dressing is anything used to create the look of the environment in which the action takes place. Set dressing may include curtains, paint, carpets, and any object visible in the area, such as furniture, books, knickknacks, and other objects or decorations.

Genre convention(Story Formulas, Theme, Character Types, Setting, Presentation, Stars)

Sets of conventions—aspects of storytelling such as recurring themes and situations, setting, character types, and story formula, as well as aspects of presentation and visual style such as décor, lighting, and sound that are found in specific genres. Pg. 85-87 -Story formulas: The way a movie's story is structured -its plot-also helps viewers determine what genre it belongs to. -Theme: A movie's theme is a unifying idea that the film expresses through its narrative or imagery. Not every genre is united by a single, cleat-cut thematic idea. -Character Types: Genre films are often populated by specific character "types". Common archetypes used in certain genres. -Setting: Where a movie's action is located and how that environment is portrayed is a common convention. -Presentation: Many genres feature certain cinematic language elements that communicate tone and atmosphere such as lighting, shadows, and special effects. -Stars: Specific actors who star in genre movies factor into how a genre is classified. Certain actors are "typecast" and identified with a particular genre.

back lighting

The light is behind the subject and facing the camera. Removes all details of the subject except their silhouettes making their subject abstract to the viewer. Used to create a threatening character or differentiating noble or superior characters.

prosthetics

Synthetic materials attached to an actor's face or body. Prosthetics can include artificial skin for aging effects; fabricated noses, ears, teeth, and chins to help make an actor look more like a known figure; or the kind of grotesque (or whimsical) appendages and the gory wounds we associate with fantasy and horror films. Actors' bodies may be fitted with prosthetics to increase the illusion of a character's weight, height, or build.

key light

The lighting instrument that provides the main source of illumination on the person or object in a shot. Typically the biggest and brightest light that illuminate one part of a subject and casts shadow on another part of the subject.

cinematographer and director relationship

The collaborative relationship between the cinematographer and the director varies from movie to movie, but typically, these two positions form one of the most vital partnerships on the creative crew. The cinematographer's expertise can help shape and advise nearly every aspect of the director's preparation, including set designs, location selection, and especially previsualization storyboards. On set, the DP and director are usually in constant communication as the DP translates the director's vision into specific decisions about how each shot will be photographed. And every choice the DP makes—the lighting, lenses, exposure, focus, camera positions and movements, even the camera model and media format—is largely driven by the needs of the story.

camera group

The camera group consists of the camera operator, who controls the camera during the shot, and the assistant camerapersons (ACs). The first AC oversees everything having to do with the camera and lenses, including adjusting focus before and during each shot. The second AC prepares the slate that is used to identify each shot and take as the camera rolls, notes the lens, exposure, and other information for each shot, and is responsible for moving the camera to each new setup. When film stock is being used, the loader feeds that stock into magazines that are then loaded onto the camera. If the production is using digital cameras, the loader's responsibilities are handled by a digital imaging technician (DIT), who archives and manages the digital data being captured.

three point lighting/system

The most conventional method is the three-point system. Used extensively since the Hollywood studio era (1927-47), the three-point system casts a flattering and natural-looking light on actors. Uses the combination of key light, fill light, and back light.

Bicycle Thieves(Vittorio De Sica, 1948)

The most indispensable neorealist films are Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine (1946), Bicycle Thieves (1948; also known as The Bicycle Thief ), and Umberto D. (1952), which marks the end of the movement; Cesare Zavattini wrote the screenplays for all of these. Bicycle Thieves, the movement's masterpiece, is set in Rome two years after the end of the war. It recounts three consecutive days in the life of Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani), a laborer, Maria (Lianella Carell), his wife, and Bruno (Enzo Staiola), his son, who looks about eight years old but nonetheless works twelve hours a day at a gas station. The story is simple but powerful. Antonio is out of work but, at the beginning of the movie, is offered a job (hanging movie posters) on the condition that he has a bicycle. Because his bicycle is in a pawnshop, his wife takes the family linen to the pawnshop so that he can reclaim his bicycle and take the job. A 3-day chronicle comprises the plot of Bicycle Thieves. Bruno (Enzo Staiola), his son, is the one person who stands by Antonion. Through hardship after hardship, their shared bond of love and faith is challenged but never broken. Bruno gives his father the courage to survive one heartbreaking moment after another, and although the movie ends ambiguously, there is no question that father and son will remain friends. In this scene, we see Bruno waving good-bye to his father as they both begin their workday. When director De Sica cast Staiola, an unknown boy from the streets, in this part, he found a natural actor who gave the world an unforgettable performance.

deep focus composition

The process of rendering the figures on all planes (background, middle-ground, and foreground) of a deep-space composition in focus. Difference between deep space and deep focus is that deep space not all planes need to be focused for narrative significance.

production designer

The production designer is both an artist and an executive and is responsible for the overall design concept (for the look of the movie—its individual sets, locations, furnishings, properties, and costumes) and for supervising the heads of the many departments involved in creating that look.(art, costume design and construction, hairstyling, makeup, wardrobe, location, and so on)

rule of thirds

The rule of thirds breaks the frame into three vertical sections and three horizontal sections, resulting in a grid. This grid acts as a guide that filmmakers use to balance visual elements in the frame. It is not an exact science; art is never that simple. The basic idea is that composition is built in basic units of three: top, middle, bottom; left, center, right; foreground, middle ground, and background. Creates compositional balance and symmetry.

diegesis

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

figures/figure movement

The word figure applies to anything concrete and potentially mobile within the frame. Usually the moving figure is an actor playing a character, but moving figures may also include animals and objects, such as vehicles and props.

top lighting

Top lighting (light cast on a character from above) usually looks comparatively normal, as the Sun, our most natural light source, is usually in an overhead position. Overhead lighting can be glamorous when it highlights the subject's hair and cheekbones. But if the angle of overhead light is taken to the extreme, the resulting shadows can obscure an actor's eyes, causing the character to appear threatening or mysterious.

looking room (eye room)

When a character is looking across the screen, she is typically placed on one end of the frame so that her gaze is balanced with what is called eye room (or looking room) on the opposite side of the composition.

kinesis

When people and things move around within the frame, and when the camera moves, the frame itself can move through space. The aspect of composition that takes into account everything that moves on the screen.