DRA 202 Flashcards
Ways to analyze movies
Interracial couple
Anti-Asian prejudice
The power of presentation
Understanding movies by understanding
The complex ways they relate to society
Critical lenses
Narrative structure Authorship Genre Series, prequels, sequels Realism Gender, race and class
Narrative
Way in which the story of events are organized
Feature films =
Narrative 1st
Everything else 2nd
Classical Hollywood style
Moving from one important event to another
Classical Hollywood narrative style
Plot should have clear forward direction, contributing to the resolution of goals
Private goals
Heterosexual romance
Public goals
Accomplishment of an important deed
Plots and subplots
Main - dramatic
Plot - comic
Subplots - romantic
Story
Events must be narrated in chronological order
Plot
The arrangement of those events as they’re told
Flashback (structure)
Creates plot w/ added suspense
Free motif
Aren’t essential to retelling or explaining the narrative
Can be removed from the film w/o changing the narrative structure
Name a free motif
Images of slaughtered animals
Typically give aesthetic complexity and thematic meaning to a film
Bound motifs
Cannot be removed from the narrative w/o changing the chronological essence of the story. It’s what’s necessary for telling the story
Delays
Sustain spectator interest, answering questions at different rates
Snares
Being mislead
Answers
Are answers
Flashbacks
Reveal the “truth”
Formal properties
Refer to the elements of the medium that shape what we see and hear when we watch a film
2 elements of a film
Visual
Aural
Visual images
How the story is told is inseparable from and as important as the story itself
Stylistic features
B/W
SLO-mo
Image and sound
Simultaneous split-screen
Visual style and narrative effect
The story and manner in which its told is inseparable
Common stylistic techniques
- Invisible style
- Shot/reverse-shot editing
- Cutting on action/reaction
- establishing shots
- the 180-degree rule
- comic use of space
Shot/reverse-shot editing
A pattern whereby 1st a shot shows one character and then there is a cut to a reverse shot that shows us a nearly opposite view.
Cutting on action/reaction
- Action replaces dialogue
- Reaction replaces the responsive line dialogue
Establishing shots
AKA master shots
Extreme long shots that shows (or establishes) the entire space in which the ensuing scene will take place
The 180-degree rule
A filmmaking guideline for spatial relations between 2 characters on screen.
Sets an imaginary axis between 2 characters or between a character and an object.
How filmmakers compose
Shots
Color
Shape
Light
=
Important part of our experience of their works
Offscreen space
6 potential areas
Spaces at left, right, top and bottom of the image
Behind camera
Beyond the horizon
Frame line
The sides of an image
Color and sound
Can be structured to create formal complexity
Free motifs
Become part of character and/or thematic development
Invisible style of editing
If a film is so well made that you don’t realize you’re watching a film
Private goals
You resolve something
2 departures of stylistic norm
B/W
Split screen
Long takes
Moving camera etc
A pattern whereby 1st a shot shows one character and then there’s a cut to a reverse shot is a
Shot reverse shot
Characters and motifs are represented within a system of formal elements into…
Plot composed of free and bound visual and aural motifs
Characters and motifs are represented within a system of formal elements…
Camera position/movement
Cutting patterns
Spatial relationships
-on/off screen space
Ahistorical author
Concepts of an author as a genius who possesses profound, universal insight outdated, dangerous
Establishing shots
set-up where the scene is going to take place
The director ultimately
Maintains the creative control.
They assemble everything
Public personas
Directors create a public persona thru public appearances
Genres like directors go thru developmental periods…
When films become more reflective, introspective or referential
What is an author?
Usually refers to someone responsible for creating a work of art
Directors style
Early
Middle
Late
Early
Introduces preoccupations in a simple manner
Middle
Develops them in a complex manner
Late
either extends them to an elaborate extreme or reduces them to a sparse simplicity that refers back to the previous work
Structural
all films are considered to be part of a group wherein any film can be fully understood only in relation to the entire structure or oeuvre
Linear and structural analysis is the…
study of the films themselves not the person who made them
Linear
study of the films themselves not the person who made them
Films that conform to a specific set of expectations are called…
Genre films
Genre means
Type
Series
Series - a number of movies that usually employ the same basic characters, situations, and style as the original movie. Each episode is self-contained; no knowledge of the events of an earlier film is necessary to an understanding of any other one.
Sequel
Starts where the prior film left off
Prequel
Prequel - a film whose story begins before that of the well-known film. The principle is similar.
Why remake a film
technical, make right a failure, translation, relaxation of censorship
Allusionism
New generation of filmmakers who learned their craft not within the industry but in film school
Why are stars important
-Most visible people involved in the movie
●Audiences pay to see them
●Major component of advertising
●Personal lives enhance a film’s popularity
Stage actors vs movie actors
- Stage actor creates full performance in one space and time before a live audience. Responsible for the timing, continuity, modulation, and the shaping of the whole performance. Can very performance from night to night.
- Movie actor seldom performs for more than a few minutes at a time. Acts in front of a camera in short bits over a roughly three-month period. Entire work is shot and pieced together by other people.
Actors vs stars
?
Language in cinema
Small part of what contributes the creation of that world
Dialogue
Primary means of maintaining a fictional world in theater
Screen plays
Read for enjoyment or taught separately for films
Reception study
Reception Study explores the variety of ways in which historically specific audiences have responded to films and other works of art as well as the reasons for those responses.
Plays
Written in spoken words
Films
Are performed words. Things that carry images and sound
Theater is a
Writers medium
Film is a …
Directors medium
Reception includes…
Reception includes what kind of theater the film is screened in, how the film is advertised, and how it relates to current events
Unanticipated responses
Reactions of professional film critics
Language in cinema
Language in cinema is a (small) part of a fictional world created by image and sound
Screenplays
Screenplays are seldom read for enjoyment or taught separately from the films that were made using them.
Aesthetic identity of a play is contained in the…
Dialogue
Literature language..
With literature, language plays not only the dominant role but also the only role.
Literature is not _____, it is ______
Performed
Read
Novels are
Pages with words
Difference b/t novels and films
differences in parallel narratives not variations on the same one.
Narratives are constructed around
Narratives are constructed around a set of questions that get resolved.
Feature films place strong emphasis on
resolving narrative questions
Differences in reception contexts
Movies - focused attention
■Image AND sound
○TV - assumed to be distracted
■Listening as opposed to listening AND watching; less likely to receive important info exclusively in visual terms
Narrative patterns in movies..
filmmakers assume that once you are in the theater they have your undivided attention. Plot builds towards a climax and resolution.
Tv vs film narratives
TV narratives are more segmented than film narratives and contain mini-climaxes that occur before a commercial
Film…
greatest creative control lies with the…
Director
Film…
Executive producers …
Executive producers invest money in productions
Film…
Producers oversee the …
Logistics of a production
