Ch3 - Types of Movies

Studying types of films requires distinguishing between types and genres.

Film Genres: thriller, biopic, war Film Types: narrative, documentary, experimental

Genre films offer familiar story formulas, conventions, themes, and conflicts. Strict adherence to genre convention often yields derivative and formulaic results. Which of the following are and which of the following are not reasons why filmmakers continue to make genre films?

Reasons: Movie viewers like predictability. They make sense to us culturally. They may want to challenge the limitations of the genre. Not Reasons: Studios require all filmmakers to make genre films. It is difficult to make a film without the guidelines of a genre.

Which of the following statements about experimental film are true, and which are false?

True: Most experimental films do not tell a story. Experimental films often critique culture and media. Experimental films invite interpretation. False: Experimental films are commercial. Experimental films are impossible to fully understand.

According to Chapter 3, which of the following are and which of the following are not three different ways of looking at narrative in the world of movies?

Ways of Looking at Narrative in Film: A narrative tells a story. Narrative is a type of movie. Narrative is a way of structuring stories in films. Not Ways of Looking at Narrative in Film: Narrative is experimental. Narrative is self-reflexive.

The basic organizing structure of most movie narratives is _________

cause and effect

To create Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Walt Disney Productions, 1937), an artist painted each individual frame; the film needed 24 frames per second. What is this process called?

cel animation

Most _______ films try to break from the formulas and conventions of mainstream films.

experimental

All commercial movies can be categorized by genre.

false

Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922) was the first documentary film.

false

What do we call a set of films made by like-minded filmmakers attempting to create a particular style and approach?

film movements

________ movies often focus on organized crime.

gangster

Horror films in the 1950s often reflected a fear of communism; Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956), for example, focused on the idea that one's neighbors could be replaced with exact replicas that cannot be trusted. In the 1980s, horror films like The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) examined the deterioration of the American family as the divorce rate began to climb. What is the term for this sort of change?

generic transformation

Blood: The Last Vampire (Kitakubo, 2000) follows Saya as she hunts monstrous shapeshifters that feed on humans. Based on this description and the still, what genre is this film?

horror

__________ movies combine different elements of film form to blur the borders among the three primary _______ catgories

hybrid, film-type

What kind of film is Slacker (Linklater, 1991)? (no central character, no sustained conflict, tells no single story)

narrative

We often think of __________ films as fiction and ___________ films as nonfiction.

narrative, documentary

The Lego Movie (Lord and Miller, 2014) samples many cultural sources, such as fantasy films, Henrik Ibsen, Joseph Campbell, and classical Hollywood musicals. What is the term for this sort of artistic appropriation?

pastiche

If we examine a film's lighting, use of mise-en-scène, and editing, which of its genre conventions are we analyzing?

presentation

Most experimental films do not tell a story.

true

When an object or animation becomes too humanlike, we tend to feel revulsion instead of empathy, and it falls into the ___________

uncanny valley