Film Art Flashcards
How does ‘‘form’’ and ‘‘pattern’’ affect the viewer’s experience?
It gives the viewer a structured experience and engages ones senses, feelings and minds through artwork
What is ‘‘suspense’’?
A delay in fulfilling expectations
What is a ‘‘surprise’’?
A result of an expectation that turns out to be incorrect
What is ‘‘curiosity’’?
A trigger that makes one wonder about earlier or future events
What is ‘‘prior experience’’?
Information that is assumed that the viewer already knows so it doesn’t have to be explained in the movie
What are ‘‘coventions’’?
Elements that are common to several artworks such as traditions, a dominant style, or popular form. For example, a fantasy film commonly involves magic, sci-fi often involves robots
What is ‘‘referential meaning’’?
The most basic story line of the film
What is ‘‘Explicit meaning’’?
The point of the film/what the film is trying to teach or tell the audience
What is ‘‘Implicit meaning’’?
The more abstract underlying meaning of a film/the symbolic meaning constructed by the audience
What is ‘‘Symptomatic meaning’’?
A meaning of a film that has its roots in social values or ideologies. For example capitalism, racism, environmentalism
What is ‘‘Motif’’?
A significant, repeated element that contributes to the overall form. It can be an item, sound, lines of dialogue, music etc. The rose that means love in Rome and Juliet
What are ‘‘parallels’’?
When two or more scenes are happening at the same time but in different locations. They usually meet and have some sort of connecting action at some point in the film
What is ‘‘Segmentation’’?
Segmentation in the film refers to the method of analyzing a film’s narrative by creating a detailed outline of the story. This outline divides the story into significant parts in order to understand its narrative system.
What is ‘‘Unity’’?
When all relationships we perceive are clear, it’s called that a film has unity
What is ‘‘Disunity’’?
When the relationships in a film are not clear and there isn’t a clear connection between things
What is ‘‘narrative’’?
A story that is told
What is the ‘‘story’’?
A chain of events in chronological order, from beginning to end
What is the ‘‘plot’’?
The storyline of the film. Describes the order and sequence of events
What is ‘‘diegesis’’?
The total world of the story action including characters, what is presumed has happened, etc.
What are ‘‘diegetic elements’’?
Elements that the characters of the film are aware of and experience themselves
What are non-diegetic elements?
Everything that happens outside of the diegesis such as credits and soundtracks
What is meant by ‘‘Cause and Effect’’?
The way the spectator actively seeks to connect events by means
What is ‘‘Temporal Order’’?
How events are sequenced. This can be through flashbacks, flash-forwards
What is ‘‘Temporal Duration’’?
The overall duration of the plot
What is ‘‘story duration’’?
The amount of time that passes during the story duration
What is ‘‘plot duration’’?
The actual time that passes from the beginning of the narration to the end
What is ‘‘screen duration’’?
The length of the film itself
What is the difference between story and plot?
The story is the timeline: the sequence of events in the narrative. The plot supports the story and makes it come to life
What is ‘’ temporal frequency’’?
When the same event is repeated and told by multiple narrators
What is a ‘‘setup’’?
The first quarter of the film
What is ‘‘Opening in media res’’?
When a film begins in the middle of a series of actions that have already started
What is ‘‘backstory’’?
Actions that already took place
What is ‘‘exposition’’?
The portion of the plot that lays out the backstory and the initial situation
What is ‘‘change of knowledge’’?
When a character learns more in the course of the action
What is a ‘‘goal-oriented plot’’?
When a character takes steps to achieve an object or condition. For example an investigation
What is a ‘‘deadline’’?
When a plot has a specific duration for the action. For example a bomb
What is a ‘‘climax’’?
When the plot resolves its issues by bringing the development to the highpoint
What is a ‘‘unrestricted narration/omnicent narration’’?
When we know, hear and see more than the characters
Restricted narration?
We don’t know, hear or see anything that the character can
Objective narration?
When the plot fully confides us information about what the characters say and do
Perceptual subjectivity?
The audience is shown what the character sees and hears from the POV of the character
Mental subjectivity?
When the audience is shown what is going on in the mind of the character
Narration?
The process by which the plot presents story information to the spectator
Narrator?
The teller of the story
Mise-en-scene?
'’Putting into scene’’. Used to signify the directors control about what appears in the film frame (setting, lightning, costume and make-up, staging and performance)
The power of mise-en-scene?
To achieve realism or create an imaginary world - whatever the director wants to achieve
Shading?
Allowing objects to have portions of darkness
What does lighting do?
Controls our sense of scene space
What are the four major aspects of lighting?
Quality, direction, source and color
Quality?
Refers to the relative intension of the illumination
Hard lighting?
Creates clearly defined shadows, crisp textures and sharp edges
Soft lighting?
Creates non-clear illumination
Direction?
Refers to the path of light from its sources or sources to the lit object
Sidelight/crosslight?
Sculpts the characters features
Backlighting/edge lighting/rim lighting?
Comes from behind the subject and creates silhouettes, contours
Frontal lighting?
Eliminates shadows
Under lighting?
From below the subject and creates distort features
Top lighting?
Comes from above the subject and creates a glamourous image
What is source in regards to light?
Where the light comes from
Key light?
The primary source, brightest illuminations and strongest shadows
Fill light?
An intense illumination that ‘‘fills in’’ softening or eliminating shadows
Three-point lighting?
The light that comes from different angles
High-key lighting?
A lighting design that uses fill light and backlight to create a relatively low contrast between brighter and darker areas
Low-key lighting?
Creates stronger contrasts and sharper, darker shadows.
Color?
Refers to the color of the light
What is typecasting?
When someone is cast because of specific features that have been seen before
CGI?
Computer-generated imagery
Bilateral symmetry?
Balancing the left and right halves of the film frame
Monochromatic color design?
Emphasizing a single color
Shallow-space composition?
When the mise-en-scene suggests little depth
Deep-space composition?
When the mise-en-scene suggests much depth
Focal length?
The distance from the center of the lens to the point where light rays converge to a point of focus of the film
Short-focal-length (wide-angle) lens
The lens takes in a wide field of view and exaggerated depth
Middle-focal-length (medium) lens
Seeks to avoid perspective distortion. Horizontal and vertical lines are rendered as straight
Long-focal-length (telephoto) lens
Flattens the space along the camera axis. Cues for depth and volume are reduced
Zoom lens
Resizes what’s shown and changes the image’s perspective
Depth of field
A range of distances within which objects can be photographed in sharp focus
Selective focus
Choosing to focus on only one plane and letting the other planes blur
Deep focus
Yielding a greater depth of a field
Racking focus
Making one plane blurred and another sharp in order to switch our attention between foreground and background
Mobile framing
Allows the filmmaker to change the camera angle, level, height or distance during the shot
Pan movement
The camera swivels on a vertical axis as if it is turning its head right or left
Tilt movement
Camera swivels on a vertical axis as if the camera is turning its head up or down
Tracking shot/ dolly shot
The camera changes position along the ground
Crane shot
The camera rises or descends
Take
One run of the camera that records a single shot
Sequence shot
When an entire scene is rendered in only one shot
Editing
Lets the filmmaker decide which shots to include and how they will be arranged
Cut
Instant change from one shot to another
Fade-out
Gradually darkens the end of a shot to black
Fade-in
Lightens a shot from black
Dissolve
Gradually mixes the end of shot A and beginning of shot B
Wipe
Shot B replaces shot A by means of a boundary line moving across the screen
