Exam 2 - Short Response

Question 1

Describe what is typical about Soviet Montage films. Describe one thing each about genre, narrative, and camerawork, and five things about editing.

Answer 1

Genre - historical moments of revolution, drawing from the past
Narrative - characters represent social classes, less about character emotion
Camerawork - canted or decentered framing
5 Editing:
- greater number of shots, wanted audience to notice cuts and built tension
- overlapping editing, repeated action from previous shot
- rapid, rhythmic editing
- removing temporal relationships
- nondiegetic inserts, including footage not directly related to storyworld or what is happening in space and time

Question 2

What are three ways that the people or events in Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North were staged or differed from reality?

Answer 2

• “Nanook” was not the cheif nor the best hunter Nanook wasn’t even his real name
• phonograph scene staged
• by this time Inuits hunted mostly with rifles not spears and used motorized boats

Question 3

Explain the three main technological problems that filmmaker faced when shooting early sound films. Describe how these technological problems affected the style of early sound films (think of a film like Chips of the Old Block). Then explain how these problems were overcome in the short term and the long term.

Answer 3

Tech problems:
- synchronization
- playback volume
- acoustic recording (low fidelity)

Forcing static camera positions, restricted movement, and an emphasis on close-up shots to capture clear dialogue, often at the expense of dynamic visuals and complex staging.

Short Term:
- Boom Microphones
- sound-proof booths
- multiple cameras to solve single audio tracks

Long Term:
- unidirectional microphones
- quieter cameras (camera blimps)
- multiple track recordings

Question 4

Describe an innovative use of sound in Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail. Use an example from the film.

Answer 4

Subjective sound

The word knife as the woman speaks being louder than anything else to express Alice’s guilt and develop her character

Question 5

Describe two innovative uses of sound in Fritz Lang’s M. Use examples from the film.

Answer 5

1. sound bridges
   ex: crowd reading the poster but the choice we hear is actually the man reading it to his table of friends
2. sound is key to the discovery of the murder, important to plot
   ex: blind man recognizing the whistling, criminal hearing the murderer in the attic
   point of audition, sound POV

Question 6

Explain in full sentences three key factors the led to the adoption and/or enforcement of the Production Code.

Answer 6

1. Payne Fund Studies –> studies on the effects of motion pictures on children and adolescents conducted between 1929 and 1933
2. Deepening of the Great Depression - many saw it as a result of the laxness of the roaring 20s
3. Creation of the production code administration, Joseph Breen headed, enforcement mechanisms: $25,000 fine and film banned from member theatres

Question 7

What were three specific things banned by the Production Code?

Answer 7

• adultery
• methods of crime
• murder