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art and technique of filmmaking > film exam 1 > Flashcards

film exam 1 Flashcards

1
Q

Vertical Integration

A

Ownership of all phases o pre-production, production, and exhibition

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2
Q

economies of Scales

A
  • making the most out of the facilities, methods, and personnel in order to produce high volume of cost effective films
  • resulted in high level of professionalism
  • in house training and development
  • long term contract employment
  • studio owned theater houses (opulent)
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3
Q

The Financial-Creative tension and balance

A
  • many of the movies were financed in New York and filmed in Hollywood
  • there was some creative freedom because of this. However, there was always an effort to find a balance
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4
Q

The Golden Age of the Studio System

A
  • 1927-1948 until Paramount Decision and TV expansion ended it.
  • unique era when cultural, economic, and technological currents coalesced.
  • profitability: studio produced 60% of all films and collected 95% of revenues
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5
Q

1939: The year of Genius within the system

A
  • the year when artistic excellence occured

ex: Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Of Mice and Men, etc..

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6
Q

The Big Five Studios

A
  • Paramount
  • RKO
  • MGM
  • Warners
  • 20th Century Fox
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7
Q

The Little Three Studios

A

Little because they didn’t own many or any theaters

  • United Artist (essentially a distribution company)
  • Columbia (didn’t own theaters, so continued to be profitable even in the slow years)
  • Universal
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8
Q

Limitations of the Studio System

A
  • not able to produce large expensive movies, because they would place too much demand on resources of tightly scheduled studios
  • also, not able to do really low budget movies, because they were not worth the effort considering the return on investment
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9
Q

Adolf Zukor

A
  • head of Paramount Pictures

- credited for the star system, block booking, and a higher artistic and cultural aspiration than box office alone

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10
Q

Block Booking

A
  • When selling films to independent and other studio theaters, Zukor sold the rights to A level films with stars along with B level films in order to ensure that all movies were seen
  • this began to cause resentment within the theaters and independent community
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11
Q

The Contemporary Big Six Studios

A
  • Paramount
  • Time Warner
  • Disney
  • Sony
  • Universal
  • Twentieth Century Fox
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12
Q

Studio Identity and artistic brand

A
  • Paramount: Glamour-European-exotic. (comedies, epics, musicals)
  • RKO: Musicals, women’s films (literary adaptations, horror, series)
  • MGM: Glamour-Taste-European (comedies, musicals, adventure, literary classics)
  • Warners: stories from headlines (gangster, women’s films, adventures, musicals)
  • 20th Century Fox: biographies, novel adaptations (westerns, film noires), introduced widescreen cinemascope and was quite innovative
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13
Q

The Star System

A
  • Creation and Development
  • Promotion
  • Exploitation
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14
Q

The Importance of a Star

A

For the audience, a major star insured the film would be predictably entertaining and have the highest production values

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15
Q

The Star System (Cont.)

A
  • Actors typically signed 5-7 year contracts with a 6 month option should it not work out
  • they would be trained, developed, and assigned to pictures for the best exploitation
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16
Q

The System of Genre

A 
- films identifiable through their use of conventions
included:
-narrative formulas
-characters
-setting
-iconography
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17
Q

Role of Genres

A
  • to formulate a model for future production
  • to build audiences for particular genres
  • to produce minor variations on the model and thereby retain audiences who expect similar but slightly different movies
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18
Q

Major Genres

A
  • Drama
  • Historical Epics
  • Westerns
  • Crime films
  • Musicals
  • Comedies
  • Adventures
  • War
  • Horror
  • Science Fiction
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19
Q

The artistic attractions of genre

A
  • Directorial training and growth
  • exploration of plot, character, and theme
  • technical and stylistic challenges
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20
Q

Stages of Genre

A
  • Primitive
  • Classical
  • Revisionist
  • Parodic
21
Q

Stages of Westerns

A
  • Primitive: (The Great Train Robbery)
  • Classic: (Stagecoach)
  • Revisionist: (High Noon)
  • Parodic: (Blazing Saddles)
22
Q

Reasons for collapse of the Studio System

A
  • The Paramount Decision of 1948
  • Television
  • Family life and free time after WWII
  • Growing independence of stars like Jimmy Stewart
  • Studio Overhead costs (real estate was worth more than the value of yearly product)
23
Q

Achievements of the Studio System

A
  • established the essential technical and creative methods for filmmaking
  • refined the jobs and various craft personnel for guilds
  • developed system through which films were released, distributed, and exhibited
  • produced films that had global influence
24
Q

What to look for in Studio Era Screenings

A
  • Genre
  • Realism - Classicism - Formalism
  • Mood
  • Setting
  • Actors
25
Q

The Legacy of the Studio System

A
  • Systemized industrial model of production
  • continuing importance of stars and genres
  • continuing influence on distribution
  • continuing world-wide influence on international cinemas
26
Q

The Production Code

A
  • first introduced by the motion picture producers and distributors association
  • regulated the moral content of films
  • self-regulation was an attempt to discourage government imposing legal restrictions to film content
  • formally institutionalized in 1930
27
Q

The Great Train Robbery (Edwin Porter)

A
  • realized shot was fundamental unit of film, not scene
  • 14 shots, 12 min film
  • dealt with spatial and temporal issues
  • crosscutting between actions in different places
  • overlapping shots
  • pans and tilts
  • close up at end
  • in-camera compositing
  • frame by frame color tinting
  • camera on moving train
  • depth and space utilization for exterior shots
  • stage bound acting on painted interior sets
  • realistic acting on most of the exteriors
28
Q

A Trip to the Moon (Georges Melies)

A
  • made theatrical techniques cinematic through editing, optical tricks, and set design
  • utilized the concept of screen vs. real time
  • 30 scenes (did not make distinction between shots and scenes)
  • dissolve used to indicate passing of time
  • superimposition
  • time-lapse photography
  • filmic art direction
  • lighting effects
  • stage bound acting and depended on 2 dimensional prscenium
29
Q

Goals of Artist

A
  • taking elements of the quotidian world and rearrange them in a form that creates new meaning
  • to create unity among disparate objects
  • to create an expressive work greater than the sum of its parts
  • to constantly question the assumptions of the first three. challenging conformity and assumptions in the world
30
Q

The three arts of film art

A
  • Narrative
  • Drama
  • Cinematography (photography)
31
Q

Great Art

A
  • includes a singular experience unlike any other

- includes an other worldly strangeness

32
Q

Kinds of films

A
  • narrative features
  • television
  • shorts
  • documentaries
  • animated films
  • experimental films
  • instructional films
33
Q

Elements of Film

A
  • Screenplay
  • Direction
  • Cinematography
  • production design
  • editing
  • sound
  • performance
34
Q

Shot

A
  • a single uninterrupted film event
35
Q

Scene

A
  • action that takes place in a single location
36
Q

Sequence

A
  • a series of scenes connected by a unity of time or place. Unlike a shot, which can stand on its own, scenes and sequences can be edited
37
Q

Take

A
  • a shot defined by its length , long or short.
38
Q

Shot size

A
  • long shot
  • medium shot
  • close-up
39
Q

Camera angles

A
  • level angle
  • low angle
  • high angle
  • angle + angle
  • dutch tilt
40
Q

Camera movement

A
  • pan
  • tilt
  • dolly-track and crab
  • crane or boom up and down
41
Q

Historical tendencies of film art

A
  • Realism - Classicism - Formalism
  • Montage vs Mis en scene
  • Invisibility vs Self Reflexivity
42
Q

Realism

A
  • emphasizes documentary truth with minimal manipulation
  • illusion of objective photographic world is maintained
    ex. The Edison and Lumiere films
43
Q

Formalism

-

A
  • emphasizes abstract truth through image manipulation
  • filmmaker expresses spiritual, intellectual, and psychological truths
    ex. Geoges Melies “A trip to the moon”
44
Q

Classicism

A
  • style that merges realism and formalism

- dominant style in Hollywood films

45
Q

Montage

A
  • places importance on the way the shots are cut together to create meaning
  • creation through editing
  • more suited for formalism
46
Q

Mise-en-scene

A
  • french for “putting on the scene”
  • meaning created through elements in the scene rather than editing
  • usually emphasizes long takes, careful blocking of actors, performance, costumes, production design, and elaborate camera movements.
  • more suited for realism
47
Q

Invisibility

A
  • the goal here is to hide from the audience the techniques of filmmaking process
  • the illusion is maintained
48
Q

Self-Reflexivity

A
  • wants to emphasize the artificiality of the filmmaking process to create distance between film and audience
49
Q

Important early films and filmmakers

A
  • Le Prince: Roundhay Garden Scene
  • William Dickson: Fred Ott’s Sneeze, earliest complete film
  • August and Louis Lumiere: Arrival of a train at La Ciotat, straight documentation, simple technique
  • Alice Guy Blache: La Fee au Choux (the cabbage fairy) probably the first narrative fiction
  • Edwin Porter: The Great Train Robbery, parallel editing between two events, camera pans, copositing, real locations, camera on train, close up
  • Georges Melies: Trip to the Moon, first sci-fi film, special effects, animation, stop motion, real time effects onto set design, no camera movement, theatrical staging and acting.

art and technique of filmmaking (3 decks)

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