Classical Film Flashcards
textual
-self-sufficient
•understanding each type of film in terms of textual properties (what kind of stories they tell, how they use style)
Extratextual
- surround it, contribute to our expectations + meaning we take from the text
- publicity, reviews, DVD bonus materials, academic analyses, and the social reality
Publicity
-way markets itself, influence our expectations, way we understand it
Reviews
- how knowledgeable viewers view it sets the tone
- publicity will incorporate to condition your expectations
DVD bonus materials
- come to interact with the movie differently, changes the way you understand the film
- inside knowledge on the process of making it
Academic analyses
- change the way you think about it
- drawing attention to things (books, tutorial)
Social reality
- that prevails during its production, release, and/or screening
- wolf of wall street: wall street crisis
Example of Extratextual
•Documentary: contract betw. Filmmaker + viewer, forged with the film itself,
- presents itself as factual
- extratextual material which seek to establish that it is truthful
Example of Intertextual
- Avant-Garde: de facto critical cinema, critiquing dominant cinema
- Sadie benning: include film bad seed mixed with prince song, dresses up as stock character, making intertextual references to other texts
- Twelve years a slave movie adaptation
Intertextual
-relations betw. 2/more films determined by connections and/or differences they have betw. them
•Relationship betw. texts: way films relate, echo, inform one another
•Changes the way you see it depending on connections to another text
•Intertextual references: references explicitly/implicitly other texts
•Connections betw text by way of viewer/critic making the connections
Golden Age
1930s through the 1950s
classical film
-product of the Hollywood studio system
-late teens/early 20s, fully consolidated during Golden Age
•Classical model is something lots of other filmmaking nations took up
•Classical films are still being made today all over the world
Hollywood
-dominate international marketplace for film, still influential
big five studios
- paramount: high production value, European sensibility, Urbane stories, risqué jokes, low key lighting, high contrast
- rko
- mgm: moneyed studio (lots of famous stars), high production values (lavish, opulent sets), known for high key lighting
- warner bro.
- 20th century fox
Little 3
- Columbia, universal, united artists
- didn’t own their own means of exhibition
Hollywood studios
-vertically integrated: controlled different components of the industry (distribution + exhibition)
-own pool of contracted laborers: Draw its cast + crew from fixed crew
•Produced similar films, but had its own identity
-developed a distinct identity based of the kinds of films they produced and circulated (actors)
Hollywood studios: serial manufacturing
-allowed for them to make films quickly and systematically= high level of output
•Assembly line mode of production
•Varied enough to attract consumers yet familiar
•Not invested in creating a masterpiece, but creating lots of movies
Hollywood studios: producer-unit system
-depended upon + ensured the standardization of film form
•Producer chooses the cast + crew from labour pool, oversee whole process
•Employees didn’t get to choose their products
•Ppl had to learn to do their job the same way that everyone else does
•standardized fashion so they can work with a project they were not familiar with then move on to the next work so it was systematic
•Restricted range of options, lack of idiosyncrasy
Characteristics of Classical Hollywood Cinema
-bound by rules that limit individual innovation
-characterized by formal unity
-purports to be realistic
-strives to be comprehensible + unambiguous
-possesses a fundamental emotional appeal
-regards telling a story as a film’s chief concern
-conceals its artifice
Characteristics: formal unity
-entire film should be unified/harmonious, developing in prescribed way
Characteristics: Realistic
-not nearly as interested in mundane things, but still understood as realistic
-believable, generally conform to what ppl think is real, logical narratives, realistic sets/characters
-Hollywood is just one brand of realistic
•Plausibility
•Some genres allowed more suspension of disbelief: Musical/fantasy ppl knew it wasn’t realistic going into it
Characteristics: comprehensible
- Should not pose problems of comprehension for average viewer
- Intended to be legible
Characteristics: emotional appeal
•commercially viable
•do not alienate
-absorb viewer
Characteristics: telling a story chief concern
•tell story as economically as possible
- plot should move ahead briskly
- everything must serve function
Characteristics: conceals its artifice
- conceals its artifice, invisible style, art appears artless
- no evidence of labour/self conscious narration
Form
dictated by conventions that affect both the narrative system and the stylistic system.
•Relies on set of norms, guidelines on how made/narratives constructed
•To work in studio system was to understand this norm, trained to achieve them
narratives
characterized by tight causality and psychologically based characters that serve as causal agents.
•Chain of events bound together by cause & effects
narratives
•In media res (middle), usually habitual (adds to equilibrium – unified chain of causes + effects (tight causality, creating disequilibrium, series of actions sequenced) – equilibrium (order resolved, resolution, answers all questions)
narratives
•Motivation: psychologically based character that desires something, creating a goal – encounters obstacles, complication producing conflict through achieving goal - usually achieves goal, resolution of some kind
stylistic system
designed not to distract narrative, subservient
- orient the viewer in the diegetic world both spatially and temporally
- to foreground characters and reveal their psychology
- ensure comprehension of the narrative
- orient the viewer in the diegetic world both spatially and temporally
Setting background realistic, orient viewers, undistorted, consistency of scale, resemblance to space we normally
•Continuity editing in time to advance in time in consistent, derived from classical
•180 degree, mask cuts
- to foreground characters and reveal their psychology
-See + understand characters that drive the actions
•high key, legible faces/expressionistic techniques to reveal something about character,
•costuming, staging + lighting so we can see costume
•interiority of character to make visible through costume
•dialogue foreground so we can hear what they have to say, externalizing
•ambient/music limited
- ensure comprehension of the narrative
Designed to be comprehended
•tell us what to look at, what to pay attention to
•editing, camera follow action, sound + framing: tell us what to pay attention to
•style is simply help narrative