Final Flashcards
What are the elements of narrative film?
Story, plot, characters, diegetic and nondiegetic elements, temporal and spatial organizations, and narrative perspective or narration
What is classical narrative?
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.
Explain characters in depth
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.
Explain character coherence
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
What is progressive and regressive development?
- 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.
Explain narrative space
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
What are the narrative perspectives, explain in depth
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.
What are the 3 classical film narratives
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
What is the difference between nonfiction and non-narrative films?
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.
What are documentary organizations
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.
What are the 3 types of documentary organizations?
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.
Documentary films generally articulate their attitudes and positions according to what?
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
What are the primary documentary traditions?
social documentary
historical documentary
ethnographic film
personal documentary.
Explain rockumentaries and re-enactments
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.
What is animation?
The use of cinema technology to give the illusion of movement to successive drawings, paintings, figures, or computer-generated images
What is experimental media?
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.
Explain the Principles of experimental media and Animation
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.
What are the experimental organizations?
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.
What is traditional animation?
(also called 2-D animation) involves layering images on transparent sheets called cels.
Explain stop-motion photography. What are 2 examples of this?
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.
What is 3D-animation?
3-D animation
Computer animation that renders variations in height, width, and depth of a moving image.
What are the Experimental film styles and approaches?
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.
What is a genre?
A genre is a set of conventions and formulas that organize and categorize films according to repeated subjects, icons, and styles.
What are generic conventions?
Generic conventions
Properties or features that identify a genre, such as character types, settings, props, or events that are repeated from film to film.
What is Iconography?
Iconography
* Images or image patterns with specific connotations or meanings.
Explain the formulas and myths in film genre
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
What are the 6 movie genres in depth?
Comedies
westerns
melodramas
musicals
horror films
crime films.
What are hybrid and subgenres?
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.
What are the defining characteristics for each genre?
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
What are the 2 approaches to thinking about film genres?
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
What is generic reflexivity?
Films may demonstrate generic reflexivity
o Unusual self-consciousness about genre identity
What is classical film theory?
Classical film theory
o Writing on the fundamental question’s cinema produced in the first half of the twentieth century
What are the classical film theories?
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
Explain formalist theories
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
What is the auteur theory?
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.
What is structuralism and semiotics?
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.
What is poststructuralism? What does it involve?
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.
What are cultural studies?
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”.
What is reception theory?
- 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.
In regard to film and philosophy what is cognitivism and Phenomenology?
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.
What is Postmodernism?
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.
