Final

Question 1

What are the elements of narrative film?

Answer 1

Story, plot, characters, diegetic and nondiegetic elements, temporal and spatial organizations, and narrative perspective or narration

Question 2

What is classical narrative?

Answer 2

 A style of narrative filmmaking centered on one or more central characters who propel the plot with a cause-and-effect logic. Normally plots are developed with linear chronologies directed at definite goals, and the film employs an omniscient or a restricted third-person narration that suggests some degree of verisimilitude.

Question 3

Explain characters in depth

Answer 3

o Are either central or minor figures who anchor the events in a film. They propel the plot by fulfilling a particular character function, such as, protagonist, antagonist, or helper – roles that recur across many plots.
o Thus, the actions, behaviours, and desires of characters create the causal logic favored in classical film narrative.

Question 4

Explain character coherence

Answer 4

 Consistency and coherence in a characters behaviors, emotions, and thoughts
 It is evaluated on one or more of the following 3 assumptions

Values
o The character coheres in terms of one or more abstract values, such as when a character becomes defined through his or her overwhelming determination or treachery

Actions
o The character acts out a logical relation between his or her implied inner or mental life and visible actions, as when a sensitive character acts in a remarkably generous way.

Behaviors
o The character reflects social and historical assumptions about normal or abnormal behavior, as when a fifteenth-century Chinese peasant woman acts submissively before a man with social power

Question 5

What is progressive and regressive development?

Answer 5

• Progressive character development occurs with an improvement or advancement in some quality of the character.
• Regressive character development indicated a loss of or return to some previous state or deterioration from the present state.

Question 6

Explain narrative space

Answer 6

Narrative Space
o Along with narrative patterns of time, plot constructions also involve a variety of spatial schemes through the course of the narrative.
o The cultural and social resonances of narrative spaces may be developed in 4 different ways
 Historically
 Ideologically
 Psychologically
 Symbolically

Question 7

What are the narrative perspectives, explain in depth

Answer 7

Narrative perspectives
o Narration
 The telling of a story or description of a situation
 The emotional, physical, or intellectual perspective through which the characters, events, and action of the plot are conveyed.

Narrator
 Is a character or other person whose voice and perspective describe the action of a film, either in voiceover or through a particular point of view.
 Most commonly, first person, omniscient, and restricted.

First person narrative and narrative frames
 First person narration
* May be attributed to a single character using voiceover commentary or to camera techniques and optical effects that mark an individual’s perspective.

Narrative frame
* Designates a context or person positioned outside the principal narrative of a film, such as bracketing scenes in which a character in the story’s present begins to relate events of the past and later concludes her or his tale.

Third-person narrative: Omniscient and Restricted

Third-person narration
* A narration that assumes an objective and detached stance toward the plot and characters by describing events from outside the story

Omniscient narration
* Narration that presents all elements of the plot, exceeding the perspective of any one character (a version of third-person narration).

Restricted narration
* A narrative in which our knowledge is limited to that of a particular character – organizes stories by focusing on one or two characters.
 Reflexive, unreliable, and multiple narration

Reflexive narration
o Is a mode of narration that calls attention to the narrative point of view of the story in order to complicate or subvert the movie’s narrative authority as an objective perspective on the world

Unreliable narration
o A type of narration that raises questions about the truth of the story being told (it is sometimes called manipulative narration)

Multiple narrations
o Found in films that use several different narrative perspectives for a single story or for different stories in a movie that loosely fits these perspectives together.

Question 8

What are the 3 classical film narratives

Answer 8

Classical film narrative
3 primary features characterize the classical film narrative
o It centers on one or more central characters who propel the plot with a cause-and-effect logic, whereby an action generates a reaction
o Its plots develop with linear chronologies directed at certain goals, even when flashbacks are integrated into that linearity
o It employs an omniscient or a restricted narration that suggests some degree of realism

Question 9

What is the difference between nonfiction and non-narrative films?

Answer 9

Nonfiction films
 Films presenting factual descriptions of actual events, persons, or places rather than their fictional or invented re-creation.

Non-narrative films
 Films organized in a variety of ways besides storytelling – eschew or deemphasize stories and narratives and instead employ other forms (like lists, repetition, or contrasts) as their organizational structure.

These approaches suggest distinctive ways of seeing the world.

Question 10

What are documentary organizations

Answer 10

Documentary organizations
 These organizations show or describe experiences in a way that differs from narrative films – that is without temporal logic of narrative and without a presiding focus on how a central character motives and moves events forward.

Question 11

What are the 3 types of documentary organizations?

Answer 11

Cumulative
* Presents a catalog of images or sounds throughout the course of the film

Contrastive organizations
* Present a series of contrasts or oppositions that indicate different points of view on its subject

Developmental organizations
* With developmental organizations, places, objects, individuals, or experiences are presented through a pattern that has non-narrative logic or structure but still follows a logic of change or progression.

Question 12

Documentary films generally articulate their attitudes and positions according to what?

Answer 12

4 principal frameworks
 To explore the world and its peoples
 To interrogate or analyze an event or a problem
 To persuade the audience of a certain truth or point of view
 To reflect the presence and activity of the filmmaking process or the filmmaker

Question 13

What are the primary documentary traditions?

Answer 13

social documentary
historical documentary
ethnographic film
personal documentary.

Question 14

Explain rockumentaries and re-enactments

Answer 14

Documentary reenactments
* Re-creates presumably real events within the context of a documentary

Mockumentaries
* Films that use a documentary style and structure to present and stage fictional (sometimes ludicrous) subjects – take a humorous approach to the question of truth and fact.

Question 15

What is animation?

Answer 15

The use of cinema technology to give the illusion of movement to successive drawings, paintings, figures, or computer-generated images

Question 16

What is experimental media?

Answer 16

Includes non-commercial, often non-narrative films, analog and digital video, installations, and computer-based media that use elements of form and structure for aesthetic expression.

Question 17

Explain the Principles of experimental media and Animation

Answer 17

Abstraction
 Abstract films are formal experiments that are also nonrepresentational – that is, human or other figures are not recognizable in them
 Use color, shape, and line to create patterns, rhythms, and impressions in the viewer, and animation figures prominently as an approach.

Figuration
 Most photographically based (rather than animated) film is automatically figurative – that is, it features recognizable aspects of the real world, including the human form.

Question 18

What are the experimental organizations?

Answer 18

Associative organizations
 Create psychological or formal resonances, giving these films a dreamlike quality that engages viewers’ emotions and curiosity.
 Can be abstract and representational

Structural organizations
 Engage the audience through a formal principle rather than a narrative or chain of associations.
 Focuses on the material of the film itself, such as its grain, sprockets, and passage through a projector.

Participatory experiences
 The centrality of the viewer and the time and place of exhibition to the media phenomenon.

Question 19

What is traditional animation?

Answer 19

(also called 2-D animation) involves layering images on transparent sheets called cels.

Question 20

Explain stop-motion photography. What are 2 examples of this?

Answer 20

Stop-motion photography
 Recording figures in different positions in separate frames, creating the illusion of motion when projected. Claymation and pixilation are two types of stop-motion photography.

Question 21

What is 3D-animation?

Answer 21

3-D animation
 Computer animation that renders variations in height, width, and depth of a moving image.

Question 22

What are the Experimental film styles and approaches?

Answer 22

o The ways in which experimental and animated works engage and challenge their viewers can be categorized into 2 distinct traditions:
 Expressive
 Confrontational

Expressive
 Emphasize personal expression and communication with an audience and are tied to long-standing notions of artistic originality, authenticity, and interiority.
 Generally rooted in lyrical and poetic traditions.
 Surrealist cinema
* Manipulates time, space, and material objects according to a dreamlike logic

Confrontational
 The shock of the modern – beautiful machines capable of brutal destruction, juxtapositions of commerce and art, time sped up, and distances eliminated – manifested in a confrontational modernist impulse across the arts.
 Associated with political or theoretical positions that dismantle the assumed relationship between a word or an image and the thing it represents, encouraging audiences to participate in the experiments at hand.

Question 23

What is a genre?

Answer 23

A genre is a set of conventions and formulas that organize and categorize films according to repeated subjects, icons, and styles.

Question 24

What are generic conventions?

Answer 24

Generic conventions
 Properties or features that identify a genre, such as character types, settings, props, or events that are repeated from film to film.

Question 25

What is Iconography?

Answer 25

Iconography
* Images or image patterns with specific connotations or meanings.

Question 26

Explain the formulas and myths in film genre

Answer 26

Generic formulas
 The patterns for developing stories in a particular genre.
 Are arranged in a standard way or in a variation on the standard

Myths
 Spiritual and cultural stories that describe a defining action or event for a group of people or an entire community

Question 27

What are the 6 movie genres in depth?

Answer 27

Comedies
westerns
melodramas
musicals
horror films
crime films.

Question 28

What are hybrid and subgenres?

Answer 28

Hybrid genres
 Mixed forms created through the interaction of different genres to produce fusions, such as musical horror films.

Subgenres
 Specific versions of a genre denoted by an adjective.

Question 29

What are the defining characteristics for each genre?

Answer 29

 The distinguishing features of the characters, narrative, and visual style
 The reflection of social rituals in the genre
 The production of certain historical hybrids or subgenres out of the generic paradigm

Question 30

What are the 2 approaches to thinking about film genres?

Answer 30

Prescriptive
 Assumes a pre-existing model for any particular film in the same category
 Related is classical generic traditions establish relatively fixed sets of genre formulas and conventions

Descriptive
 Assumes a genre changes over time by building on older films and developing in new ways.
 Related are revisionist generic traditions see films as functions of changing historical and cultural contexts that modify genre conventions

Question 31

What is generic reflexivity?

Answer 31

Films may demonstrate generic reflexivity
o Unusual self-consciousness about genre identity

Question 32

What is classical film theory?

Answer 32

Classical film theory
o Writing on the fundamental question’s cinema produced in the first half of the twentieth century

Question 33

What are the classical film theories?

Answer 33

Formalism
 A critical approach to cinema that emphasizes formal properties of the text or medium over content or context

Realism
 Emphasizes the connection or quality of resembles to the natural world

Question 34

Explain formalist theories

Answer 34

Formalists looked to unique capabilities of cinema – such as camera movement and distance and shot duration and rhythm – to find meaning in the work itself
 Soviet montage theory
 Film aesthetics
 Film and modernity
 Realism
* Mimesis
o Realism serves the aim of mimesis, or imitation of reality in the arts

Question 35

What is the auteur theory?

Answer 35

Auteur theory
 An approach to cinema first proposed in the Cahiers du cinema that emphasizes the director as the expressive force behind a film and sees a director’s body of work as united by common themes or formal strategies

Metteur-en-scène
* The French term for director that here denotes a mere “stager” or stylist whose technical competence is not marked by the strong individual vision of the auteur.

Question 36

What is structuralism and semiotics?

Answer 36

Structuralism and Semiotics
 Structuralism
* An approach to linguistics and anthropology that, when extended to literary and filmic narratives, looks for common structures rather than artistic originality
 Semiotics (Semiology)
* The study of signs and signification.

Question 37

What is poststructuralism? What does it involve?

Answer 37

 An intellectual development that challenged the methodology and fixed definitions of structuralism.
 Includes psychoanalytic, postcolonial, and feminist theory

Psychoanalysis
* Psychoanalytic theory comes into play in describing the psychic process we undergo when experiencing the film illusion.

Apparatus Theory
* Argues that the very mechanics on which film is based – including cameras, projectors, and screens – were developed according to certain ideologies that then are reproduced in the viewing experience.

Feminist Film Theory
 Queer Theory
* Challenges Mulvey’s assumption that the desiring position is male and the desired one is female, which essentially equates gender difference with sexual desire.

Question 38

What are cultural studies?

Answer 38

 A set of approaches drawn from the humanities and social sciences that considers cultural phenomena in conjunction with processes of production and consumption.
 Defines the term anthropologically as “a way of life, including social structures and habits”.

Question 39

What is reception theory?

Answer 39

• Studies the ways different kinds of audiences regard different kinds of films, focusing on how a film is received by audiences rather than on who made a film of what its thematic content or formal features are.
• Implies a theory of audiences as active rather than passive
• Interpretive community
  o Group members who share particular knowledge or cultural competence through which a film could be experienced and interpreted.

Question 40

In regard to film and philosophy what is cognitivism and Phenomenology?

Answer 40

Cognitivism
 Draws on psychology and neuroscience to understand how the mind responds to narrative and aesthetic information in film.
 Claims that we respond to the moving image with the same perceptual processes we use to respond to visual stimuli in the world – by adjusting film images for lack of depth and perceiving the identity of objects that are moving and changing in time.

Phenomenology
 Postulates that any act of perception involves a mutuality of the viewer and what is viewed.

Question 41

What is Postmodernism?

Answer 41

o An artistic style in architecture, art, literature, music, and film that incorporates fragments of or references to other styles; or the cultural period in which political, cultural, and economic shifts engendered challenges to the tenets of modernism, including its belief in the possibility of critiquing the world through art, the division of high and low culture, and the genius and independent identity of the artist.