film exam 1 Flashcards
Vertical Integration
Ownership of all phases o pre-production, production, and exhibition
economies of Scales
- 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)
The Financial-Creative tension and balance
- 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
The Golden Age of the Studio System
- 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
1939: The year of Genius within the system
- the year when artistic excellence occured
ex: Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Of Mice and Men, etc..
The Big Five Studios
- Paramount
- RKO
- MGM
- Warners
- 20th Century Fox
The Little Three Studios
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
Limitations of the Studio System
- 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
Adolf Zukor
- head of Paramount Pictures
- credited for the star system, block booking, and a higher artistic and cultural aspiration than box office alone
Block Booking
- 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
The Contemporary Big Six Studios
- Paramount
- Time Warner
- Disney
- Sony
- Universal
- Twentieth Century Fox
Studio Identity and artistic brand
- 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
The Star System
- Creation and Development
- Promotion
- Exploitation
The Importance of a Star
For the audience, a major star insured the film would be predictably entertaining and have the highest production values
The Star System (Cont.)
- 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
The System of Genre
- films identifiable through their use of conventions included: -narrative formulas -characters -setting -iconography
Role of Genres
- 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
Major Genres
- Drama
- Historical Epics
- Westerns
- Crime films
- Musicals
- Comedies
- Adventures
- War
- Horror
- Science Fiction
The artistic attractions of genre
- Directorial training and growth
- exploration of plot, character, and theme
- technical and stylistic challenges
Stages of Genre
- Primitive
- Classical
- Revisionist
- Parodic
Stages of Westerns
- Primitive: (The Great Train Robbery)
- Classic: (Stagecoach)
- Revisionist: (High Noon)
- Parodic: (Blazing Saddles)
Reasons for collapse of the Studio System
- 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)
Achievements of the Studio System
- 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
What to look for in Studio Era Screenings
- Genre
- Realism - Classicism - Formalism
- Mood
- Setting
- Actors
The Legacy of the Studio System
- Systemized industrial model of production
- continuing importance of stars and genres
- continuing influence on distribution
- continuing world-wide influence on international cinemas
The Production Code
- 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
The Great Train Robbery (Edwin Porter)
- 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
A Trip to the Moon (Georges Melies)
- 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
Goals of Artist
- 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
The three arts of film art
- Narrative
- Drama
- Cinematography (photography)
Great Art
- includes a singular experience unlike any other
- includes an other worldly strangeness
Kinds of films
- narrative features
- television
- shorts
- documentaries
- animated films
- experimental films
- instructional films
Elements of Film
- Screenplay
- Direction
- Cinematography
- production design
- editing
- sound
- performance
Shot
- a single uninterrupted film event
Scene
- action that takes place in a single location
Sequence
- 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
Take
- a shot defined by its length , long or short.
Shot size
- long shot
- medium shot
- close-up
Camera angles
- level angle
- low angle
- high angle
- angle + angle
- dutch tilt
Camera movement
- pan
- tilt
- dolly-track and crab
- crane or boom up and down
Historical tendencies of film art
- Realism - Classicism - Formalism
- Montage vs Mis en scene
- Invisibility vs Self Reflexivity
Realism
- emphasizes documentary truth with minimal manipulation
- illusion of objective photographic world is maintained
ex. The Edison and Lumiere films
Formalism
-
- emphasizes abstract truth through image manipulation
- filmmaker expresses spiritual, intellectual, and psychological truths
ex. Geoges Melies “A trip to the moon”
Classicism
- style that merges realism and formalism
- dominant style in Hollywood films
Montage
- places importance on the way the shots are cut together to create meaning
- creation through editing
- more suited for formalism
Mise-en-scene
- 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
Invisibility
- the goal here is to hide from the audience the techniques of filmmaking process
- the illusion is maintained
Self-Reflexivity
- wants to emphasize the artificiality of the filmmaking process to create distance between film and audience
Important early films and filmmakers
- 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.