Film Form

Question 1

Form

Answer 1

The thing that holds the content

Question 2

Content

Answer 2

Things that are governed by the film’s formal context

Question 3

Formal expectation

Answer 3

Viewers expect the film to follow a certain form - ABC, ABAB etc

Question 4

Emotions represented

Answer 4

The emotions the onscreen actor portrays

Question 5

Emotional response

Answer 5

The response the audience has to the represented emotions

Question 6

What are the four main types of meaning?

Answer 6

• Referential meaning
• Explicit meaning
• Implicit meaning
• Symptomatic meaning

Question 7

Referential meaning

Answer 7

When the film refers to things or places already significant irl

Question 8

Explicit meaning

Answer 8

Function within the film’s overall form and are controlled by context

Question 9

Implicit meaning

Answer 9

The individual interpretations of a scene or film

Question 10

Symptomatic meaning

Answer 10

Understanding a film’s explicit or implicit meanings as bearing traces of a particular set of social values. The revered values are known as social ideology.

Question 11

What are the four different criteria used to judge films?

Answer 11

• Realistic criteria
• Moral criteria
• Complexity criteria
• Originality criteria

Question 12

Realistic criteria

Answer 12

Are the events realistic?

Question 13

Moral criteria

Answer 13

Are there bad morals in the film, does the film itself support bad morals (glorifying drugs etc)?

Question 14

Complexity criteria

Answer 14

Is the film too simple or too complicated?

Question 15

Originality criteria

Answer 15

How different or similar is the film to other films - is it repetitive or out of the box. (being original does not mean that it is good)

Question 16

Principle of progression

Answer 16

When the filmmaker places similar and different elements within a pattern of change

Question 17

Segmentation

Answer 17

A written outline of the film that breaks it into its major and minor parts

Question 18

Unity

Answer 18

When all the relationships within a film are clear and economically interwoven

Question 19

Conventions

Answer 19

Common aspects of the world - a tradition, dominant style, popular form etc

Question 20

Motif

Answer 20

Any significant repeated element that contributes to the overall form