Chapter 7 Flashcards
Narrative
A story with a particular plot and point of view told by a narrator or conveyed by a narrational point of view.
Screenwriter
A writer of a film’s screenplay. The screenwriter may begin with an original treatment and develop the plot structure and dialogue over the span of several versions.
Screenplay
The text from which a movie is made, including dialogue and information about action, settings, shots, and transitions; developed from a treatment; also known as a script.
Story
The raw material of a narrative
Character
An individual who motivates the events and performs the actions of the story
Plot
The narrative ordering of the events of the story as they appear in the actual work, selected and arranged according to particular temporal, spatial, generic, casual, or other patterns.
Classical Film Narrative
A style of narrative filmmaking centred on one or more central characters who propel the plot with a cause-and-effect logic. Normally plots are developed with linear chronologies directed at definite goals, and the film employs an omniscient or a restricted third-person narration that suggests some degree of verisimilitude
Character Coherence
The consistency and coherence of a character
Character Depth
The pattern of psychological and social features that distinguish characters as rounded and complex in a way that approximates realistic human personalities
Protagonist
A character identified as the positive force in a film
Antagonist
A character who opposes the protagonist as a negative force in a film
Minor Character
A character who surrounds, contrasts with, and supports a film’s protagonists and antagonists and who usually is associated with specific character groups.
Archetype
A spiritual, psychological, or cultural model expressing certain virtues, values, or timeless realities.
Stereotype
A character type that simplifies and standardizes perceptions that one group holds about another, often less numerous, powerful, or privileged group.
Character Development
The patterns through which characters in a film move from one mental, physical, or social state to another.
Diegesis
The world of the film’s story (its characters, places, and events), including what is shown and what is implied to have taken place
Nondiegetic Insert
An insert that depicts an action, an object, or a title originating outside the space and time of the narrative world.
Credits
A list of all the personnel involved in film production, including cast, crew, and executives.
Linear Chronology
The arrangement of plot events and actions that follow one another in time.
Flashback
A sequence that follows an image set in the present with an image set in the past
Flashforward
A sequence that connects an image set in the present with one or more future images.
Deadline Structure
A narrative structured around a central event or action that must be accomplished by a certain time
Narrative Duration
The length of time used to present an event or action in a plot
Narrative Frequency
The number of times a plot element is repeated throughout a narrative
Symbolic Space
A space transformed through spiritual or other abstract means related to the narrative
Narration
The telling of a story or description of a situation; the emotional, physical, or intellectual perspective through which the characters, events, and action of the plot are conveyed. In film, narration is most explicit when provided as asynchronous verbal commentary on the action or images, but it can also designate the storytelling function of the camera, the editing, and verbal and other soundtracks.
Narrator
A character or other person whose voice and perspective describes the action of the film, either in voiceover or through a particular point of view.
First-Person Narration
Narration that is identified with a single individual, usually a character in the film.
Narrative Frame
A context or person positioned outside the principal narrative of a film, such as bracketing scenes in which a character in the story’s present begins to relate events of the past and later concludes their tale.
Third-Person Narration
A narration that assumes an objective and detached stance toward the plot and characters by describing events from outside the story
Omniscient Narration
Narration that presents all elements of the plot, exceeding the perspective of any one character
Restricted Narration
A narration in which our knowledge is limited to that of a particular character
Reflexive Narration
A mode of narration that calls attention to the narrative point of view of the story in order to complicate or subvert its own narrative authority as an objective perspective on the world
Unreliable Narration
A type of narration that raises questions about the truth of the story being told
Multiple Narrations
Several different narrative perspectives for a single story or for different stories in a movie that loosely fit together
Anthology Film
Films comprised of segments by different directors
Classical Hollywood Narrative
The dominant form of classical film narrative associated with the Hollywood studio system from the end of the 1910s to the end of the 1950s.
Postclassical Narrative
The form and content of films after the decline of the Hollywood studio system around 1960, including formerly taboo subject matter and narratives and formal techniques influenced by European cinema.
Alternative Film Narrative
Film narratives that deviate from or challenge the linearity of classical film narrative, often undermining the centrality of the main character, the continuity of the plot, or the verisimilitude of the narration.
Documentary
A nonfiction film that presents real objects, people, and events
Actuality
Nonfiction films introduced in the 1890s depicting real people and events through continuous footage. Ex. Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory
Scenic
Early nonfiction films that offered exotic or remarkable images of nature and foreign lands
Topical
Early films that captured or sometimes re-created historical or newsworthy events
Optical Sound Recording
The process that converts sound waves into electrical impulses that enables a soundtrack to be recorded alongside the image for simultaneous projection
Propaganda Film
Political documentaries that visibly support and intend to sway viewers toward a particular social or political issue or group
Cinema Verite
French term meaning “cinema truth”; a style of documentary filmmaking in 50s/60s that used unobtrusive, lightweight cameras and sound equipment to capture real-life situations
Direct Cinema
Documentary style from the USA in 60s that aims to observe an unfolding situation as unobtrusively as possible
Activist Video
A confrontational political documentary that uses low-cost video equipment
Shooting Ratio
The relationship between the overall amount or length of film shot and the amount used in the finished project
Nonfiction Film
Films presenting factual descriptions of actual events, persons, or places, rather than their fictional or invented re-creation
Non-Narrative Film
Films organized in a variety of ways besides storytelling
Social Documentary
Documentaries that examine issues, peoples, and cultures in a social context
Historical Documentary
A type of documentary that concentrates largely on recovering and representing events or figures in history
Ethnographic Film
Films that record the practices, rituals, and people of a culture
Personal Documentary
Resemble autobiographies or diaries
Reenactment
A recreation of presumably real events within the context of a documentary
Mockumentary
A film that uses a documentary style and structure to present and stage fictional (sometimes ludicrous) subjects
Animation
The use of cinema technology to give the illusion of movement to individual drawings, paintings, figures, or CGI
Experimental Media
Media that makes expressive use of media affordances
Avant-garde Films
Aesthetically challenging, noncommercial films that experiment with film forms
Video Art
Artists use of the medium of video in installations and gallery exhibitions, beginning in the late 1960s.
New Media
Technologies that include the internet, digital technologies, video game consoles, cell phones, and wireless devices and the software applications and imaginative creations they support.
Modernity
A term designating the period of history stretching from the end of the medieval era to the present, as well as the period’s attitude of confidence in progress and science centred on the human capacity to shape history
Absolute Film
A film movement that focused on abstraction in motion in Germany in the 1920s.
Live-action Movie
A film that used photographic images
Anime
Japanese animation, first launched following WWII
Underground Film
Non mainstream film, associated particularly with the experimental film culture of the 60s/70s in New York and San Francisco
Structural Film
An experimental film movement that emerged in North America in the 1960s, in which films followed a predetermined structure
Third Cinema
Opposed commercial and auteurist cinemas with a political, populist aesthetic and united films from a number of countries and contexts
Found Footage
Audiovisual material used outside its original context
Computer-generated imagery (CGI)
Still or animated images created through digital computer technology. First introduced in the 1970s, CGI was used to create feature-length films by the mid-90s and is widely used for visual effects.
Machinima
A new media form that modifies video game engines to create computer animation
Expanded Cinema
Installation or performance-based experimental film practices
Augmented Reality (AR)
An experience or environment that combines real objects with fabricated design elements, often computer-generated. AR experiences can include video and audio as well as touch and smell.
Traditional Animation
Moving images drawn or painted on transparent sheets or celluloid known as cels, which are then photographed into single frames of film.
Cels
A transparent sheet of celluloid on which individual images are drawn or painted in traditional animation. These drawings are then photographed onto single frames of film
2-D Animation
Animation that renders a moving image or object with variation in height and width
Multiplane Camera
In traditional animation, a camera that moves multiple images in front of the lens at different speeds and depths
Stop-motion photography
A process that records inanimate objects or actual human figures in different positions in separate frames and then synthesizes them on film to create the illusion of motion and action
Claymation
A process that uses stop-motion photography with clay figures to create the illusion of movement
Pixilation
A type of animation that employs stop-motion photography to transform movement into rapid jerky gestures; the disintegration of the electronic image
Computer animation
A digital version of traditional animation
3-D Animation
Computer animation that renders variations in height, width, and depth of a moving image
Keyframe
In animation, the images or points on a time line that mark the beginning or end of a transition
Photorealism
In animation, the attempt to replicate the look of live-action footage
Rotoscoping
A technique using recorded real figures and action on video as a basis for painting individual animation frames digitally
Documentary Animation
Animation that tells true stories with enhanced moving images
Surrealist Cinema
An influential avant-garde movement of the 1920s that manipulated time, space, and material objects according to a dreamlike logic
Counter Cinema
Films made in opposition to mainstream cinema, especially in the 60s & 70s
Genre
A category or classification of films that share similar subject matter, settings, iconography, and narrative and stylistic patterns
Film Noir
French term for “black film”; a style of Hollywood films of the 40s & 50s, generally shot using stylized black and white cinematography in nighttime urban settings and featuring morally ambiguous protagonists, corrupt institutions, dangerous women, and convoluted plots.
Blaxploitation
Genre of low budget films made in the early 1970s targeting urban, African-American audiences and featuring streetwise African-American protagonists. Several black directors made a creative mark in a genre that was primarily intended to make money for its producers.
Iconography
Images or image patterns with specific connotations or meanings
Archetype
A spiritual, psychological, or cultural model expressing certain virtues, values, or timeless realities.
Hybrid genre
Mixed forms created through the interaction of different genres to produce fusions, such as musical horror films
Subgenre
A specific version of a genre denoted by an adjective, such as the spaghetti western or the slapstick comedy
Comedy
A film genre that celebrates the harmony and resiliency of social life, typically with a narrative that ends happily and an emphasis on episodes of “gags” over plot continuity
Slapstick comedy
Films known for physical humour and stunts
Screwball comedy
A comic subgenre of the 30s & 40s known for fast talking and unpredictable action
Romantic comedy
A subgenre of comedy in which honour takes second place to the happy ending, typically focusing on the emotional attraction of a couple in a lighthearted way.
Western
A film genre set in the American West, typically featuring rugged, independent male characters on a quest of dramatizing frontier life.
Epic western
A subgenre of the western concentrating on action and movement and developing a heroic character whose quests and battles serve to define the nation and its origins
Existential western
A sub genre of the western whose introspective hero is troubled by his changing social status and his self-doubts, often as the frontier becomes more populated and civilized
Revisionist western
Films that call into question the underlying values and conventions of the western genre
Melodrama
A sensational narrative mode with clearly identifiable moral types, coincidences, and reversals of fortune, and music (melos) that underscores the action
Physical melodrama
A sub genre of the melodrama that focuses on the material conditions that control the protagonists desires and emotions
Family melodrama
A subgenre of melodrama that focuses on the psychological and gendered forces restricting individuals within the family
Social melodrama
A subgenre of melodrama that extends the crises of the family to include larger historical, community, and economic issues
Musical
A genre popular since that introduction of synchronous sound that features characters who act out and express their emotions through song and dance
Theatrical musical
A sub genre of the musical that is set in a theatrical milieu
Integrated musical
A sub genre of the musical that integrates musical numbers into the films narrative, rather than setting them off as performances
Animated musical
A subgenre of the musical that uses cartoon figures and stories to present songs and music
Horror film
A film genre with origins in Gothic literature that seeks to frighten the viewer through supernatural or predator characters
Supernatural horror film
A sub genre of the horror film in which a spiritual evil erupts in the human realm to avenge a wrong or for no explainable reason
Psychological horror film
A sub genre of the horror film that locate the dangers that threatened on the life in the minds of bizarre and deranged individuals
Physical horror film
A sub genre of the horror film in which the psychology of the characters takes second place to the depiction of graphic violence
Slasher film
A sub genre of the horror film depicting serial killers, often considered to have originated with Psycho (1960)
Crime film
A film genre that typically features criminals and individuals dedicated to crime detection and plots that involve criminal acts
gangster film
A genre of the crime film about the world of organized crime and its violent criminals
Detective film
Genre of the crime film focussing on the protagonist who represents the law or an ambiguous version of it, such as a private investigator
Generic reflexivity
The quality of movies displaying unusual self-consciousness about generic identity
Jidai-geki film
Period films or costume dramas set before 1868, when feudal Japan entered the modern Meiji period
Heimat film
Films set in idyllic countryside locales of Germany and Austria that depict a world of traditional folk values
Film theory
Sustained reflection on the form, function, value, or significance of film as medium, institution, or social practice
Verisimilitude
The quality of fictional representation that allows readers or viewers to accept a constructed world - its events, its characters, and their actions - as plausible (having the appearance of truth)
Ontology
The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of being
Medium specificity
A theory that says that a successful artwork fulfills the promise of its mediums unique physical properties
Classical film theory
Writings on the fundamental questions of cinema produced in the first half of the 20th century. Important classical film theorists include Sergei Eisenstein, Rudolf Arnheim, Andre Bazin, and Siegfried Kracauer
French Impressionist cinema
A 1920s avant-garde film movement that aimed to destabilize familiar or objective ways of seeing and to revitalize the dynamics of human perception
Photogenie
A term, coined by Louis Deeluc, referring to a particular quality that distinguishes the filmed object from its everyday reality
Formalism
A critical approach to cinema that emphasizes formal properties of the text or medium over content or context
realism
An artwork’s quality of conveying a truthful picture of a society, person, or some other dimension of everyday life; an artistic movement that aims to achieve verisimilitude
Mimesis
Imitation of reality in the arts
Auteur theory
An approach to cinema first proposed in the French film journal Cahiers du cinema that emphasizes the director as the expressive force behind a film and sees a director’s body of work as united by common themes or formal strategies
Metteur-en-scene
French term for “director”; in auteur theory, a director who conveys technical competence without a strong streak of individual vision, in contrast to an auteur
Cinephilia
A love of cinema
Genre criticism
An analytical approach that considers a film in relation to the properties or effects of particular genres or classifications
Structuralism
An approach to linguistics and anthropology that, when extended to literary and filmic narratives, looks for common structures rather than originality
Semiotics
The study of signs and signification - semiotics posits that meaning is constructed and communicated through the selection, ordering, and interpretation of signs and sign systems, including words, gestures, images, symbols, or virtually anything that can be meaningfully coded.
Sign
A term used in semiotics for something that signifies something else, whether the connection is causal, conventional, or based on resemblance.
Signifier
A spoken or written word, picture, or gesture
Signified
The mental concept evoked by a signifier
Referent
In semiotics, the object to which a sign refers
Code
A term used in linguistics and semiotics for conventions governing a communication act. Senders and receivers must share a code for the message to be understood.
Message
In semiotics, that which is communicated between sender and receiver according to a shared code.
Denotation
The literal meaning of a word.
Connotation
The association connected with a word or a sign
Symbol
In semiotics, a sign whose relation to its referent is purely based on convention, as in spoken or written language
Icon
In semiotics, a sign that refers to its referent through resemblances, an image.
Index
A sign that refers to its referent through a direct casual relationship, like a fingerprint
Narratology
The study of narrative forms. Russian narratology introduced the distinction between the story and all the events in the story (the plot)
Ideology
A systematic set of beliefs that are not necessarily conscious or acknowledged
Poststructuralism
An intellectual development that challenged the methodology and fixed definitions of structuralism by emphasizing the place of subjectivity, the unreliability of language, and the construction of social power.
Apparatus Theory
Jean-Louis Baudry’s theory that ideological assumptions are reproduced through the impression of reality conveyed by film technology and the viewing situation itself
Spectatorship
The process of film viewing, the conscious and unconscious interaction of viewers and films as a topic of interest to film theorists
Cultural Studies
A set of approaches drawn from the humanities and social sciences that considers cultural phenomena like film in conjunction with processes of production and consumption and aspects of everyday life
Reception Theory
A theoretical approach to the ways different kinds of audiences regard different kinds of films
Interpretive community
Members of an audience who share particular knowledge, or cultural competence, through which a film is experienced and interpreted
Oppositional gaze
Bell hooks concept of a perspective on dominant media formed from a viewers experience of social marginalization
Analytic philosophy
A branch of philosophy that emphasizes logical argument
Cognitivism
An approach to film that draws on psychology and neuroscience to understand how the mind responds to narrative and aesthetic information
Phenomenology
A theory that any act of perception involves a mutuality of the viewer and what is viewed
Affect
The feelings, emotions, and sensations that arise in the viewer engaging with the film
Disability studies
The academic discipline focusing on the meaning, nature and consequence of disability in society
Movement image
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s term for filmmaking that reflects a cause-and-effect view of time
Time image
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s term for filmmaking that represents the open-endedness of time without giving clear signals of spatial connection or logical sequence
Postmodernism
An artistic style in architecture, art, literature, music, and film that incorporates fragments of or references to other styles; or the cultural period in which political, cultural, and economic shifts engendered challenges to the tenets of modernism, including its belief in the possibility of critiquing the world through art, the division of high and low culture, and the genius and independent identity of the artist
Simulacrum
An imitation; in the work of Jean Baudrillard, a copy without an original or sign without a referent, like a digital image
Slow cinema
Movies, often contemporary international art films, where shots are sustained for a lengthy time, reinforcing the durational aspect of the medium
