1 - Film Form Flashcards
-Film Form
the way parts work together to create an overall effect. Because the artist has created a pattern. Artists design their works—they give them form—so that we can have a structured experience. For this reason, form is of central importance in fi lm.
-Form vs. Content
Very often people think of “form” as the opposite of something called “content.” This implies that a poem or a musical piece or a film is like a jug. An external shape, the jug, contains a liquid that could just as easily be held in a cup or a pail. Under this assumption, form becomes less important than whatever it’s presumed to contain. We don’t accept this assumption
-Convention
A tradition, a dominant style, a popular form—elements like these will be common to several different artworks.
-Referential Meaning
Referential meaning. During the Depression, a tornado takes a girl from her family’s Kansas farm to the mythical land of Oz. After a series of adventures, she returns home
-Explicit Meaning
Referential meaning. During the Depression, a tornado takes a girl from her family’s Kansas farm to the mythical land of Oz. After a series of adventures, she returns home
-Implicit Meaning
Implicit meaning. An adolescent who must soon face the adult world yearns for a return to the simplicity of childhood, but she eventually accepts the demands of growing up.
-Symptomatic Meaning
Symptomatic meaning. In a society in which human worth is measured by money, the home and the family may seem to be the last refuge of human values. This belief is especially strong in times of economic crisis, such as that in the United States in the 1930s.
-Ideology
the set of values that get revealed can be considered a social ideology
-Motivation
the word “motivation” applies the purposes of a character’s actions. But the term doesn’t apply only to performance matters. When we speak of motivation more generally, we’re asking about what justifi es anything being in the movie or taking the shape it does
-Motif
A motif is any signifi cant repeated element that contributes to the overall form.
-Parallels
a person or thing that is similar or analogous to another.
-Unity vs. Disunity
We often call a unifi ed fi lm “tight,” because there seem to be no gaps in its overall form
More striking is a dangling element at the fi lm’s end: we never fi nd out what happens to Miss Gulch. Presumably, she still has her legal order to take Toto away, but no one refers to this in the last scene. The viewer may be inclined to overlook this disunity,
-Function
If form is a pattern of elements, we would expect that those elements fulfill functions. They do something in the larger whole. Of any element in a film we can ask, What are its functions?
