Brainscape's Knowledge GenomeTM

Browse over 1 million classes created by top students, professors, publishers, and experts.


See full index

Film Studies 220 > Final > Flashcards

Final Flashcards

1
Q

what year was sound added?

A

1929

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

how many americans went to the movies every week

A

80 to 90 million

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

what are the four institutions of film?

A
  • economic
  • social
  • technological
  • psychological
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

what is an economic institution?

A

designed to make money

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

what is a social institution?

A

providing an appropriate form for social contact for members of an emerging American populace born and bred in the world of mass culture

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

what is a technological institution?

A

dependent for is success on products of the Industrial Revolution - cameras, celluloid, microphones, amplifiers, magnetic recording tape, film laboratories, electricity, projectors, speakers and screens

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

what is a psychological institution?

A

purpose is to encourage the moviegoing habit by providing the kind of entertainment that working-class and middle-class Americans want

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

when and what did George Eastman invent?

A

motion picture film

1889

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

when and what did Thomas Edison invent?

A

motion picture camera - the Kinetoscope

1891 - 1893

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

when and what did Guglielmo Marconi invent?

A

wireless telegraph

1895

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

what are Kinetoscope parlors?

A

contained only a few individual machines and permitted only one customer to view a short, 50-foot film at any one time

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

when did the first Kinetoscope parlor open?

A

1894

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

when was the advent of projection?

A

1895 - 1896

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

what films were popular in the pre 1906 cinema?

A

actualities

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

whena dn what is the nickelodeon era?

A

1905
theatres devoted exclusively to the showing of motion picture films began to spring up in virtually every city on the country

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

what are nickelodeons? (4)

A
  • price of admission was a nickel
  • 200 seats
  • quickly installed in or near shopping or entertainment districts in former stores that were converted to movie theaters
  • low cost of admission and abbreviated length attracted working class
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
17
Q

how many americans attended nickelodeons each week and how many did they attend?

A

26 million americans attended over 10,000 nickelodeons each week

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
18
Q

what did the Motion Picture Patents Company do?

A

sought to control all aspects of motion picture production, distribution and exhibition

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
19
Q

when and why did the mayor of New York City order all nickels to be closed?

A

december 1908

“threat to the city’s physical and moral well being”

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
20
Q

how did the MPPC respond to the closing of nickels?

A

responded almost immediately with a campaign to improve the content of motion pictures and conditions of theaters

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
21
Q

how did exhibitors respond to the closing of nickels? (4)

A

began to court middle class customers by becoming more “respectable”

  • provided half price matinees for women and children
  • upgraded quality of the physical structure of the theaters
  • eliminated lower-class elements such as ethnic films and foreign-language sing-alongs
  • raised prices
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
22
Q

how did producers respond to the closing of nickels? (3)

A
  • by making films that appealed to a higher class of clientele
  • engaged in self-censorship and voluntarily submitted their films to the national Board of Censorship for review
  • drew more and more on the classics
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
23
Q

what is Griffith cinema?

A

actively narrated events, shaping the audiences perception of them. commonly used parallel editing

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
24
Q

what is parallel editing/crosscutting?

A

cutting back and forth from two (or more) simultaneous events taking place in separate spaces. can be used to create suspense and contribute to psychological development of his characters

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
25
Q

why is the birth famous? (3)

A
  • ran for 44 consecutive weeks at the Library Theater in New York City
  • reserved seats sold at $2
  • racist agenda
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
26
Q

what is The Regent?

A

a 24600 seat theater that opened in 1913 in New York

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
27
Q

who is S.L. Rothapfel?

A

manager of the Regent who made it the premier motion picture theater in the world

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
28
Q

who is Sid Gauman?

A

launched a series of movie palaces that were more lavish then the other and provided a prologue to each movie

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
29
Q

what did Balaban & Katz offer in their theaters? (5)

A
  • free child care
  • attendant smoking rooms
  • paintings and sculptures
  • organ music for those waiting in line
  • air conditioning
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
30
Q

who joined forces with Balaban & Katz?

A

Paramount

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
31
Q

who are the majors? (5)

A
  • Paramount
  • Loew’s/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
  • Fox/20th Century-Fox
  • Warner Bros
  • Radio-Keith-Orpheum
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
32
Q

who are the minors? (3)

A
  • Universal
  • Columbia
  • United Artists
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
33
Q

when and why did MPPC break up?

A

1915

US courts declared the MPPC to be in violation of the Sherman Artitrust Act

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
34
Q

what is the Famous Players Company and when was it formed?

A

1912 by Adolph Zukor

boasted motion pictures with “famous players from famous plays”

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
35
Q

what is vertical integration and when did it begin?

A

1910
the structure of a marketplace that is integrated at a variety of crucial levels. in the motion picture industry, the studios are owners of their production facilities, distribution outlets and theaters

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
36
Q

how many pictures did major studios produce a year?

A

40 - 60

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
37
Q

what are the three distribution practices?

A
  • block booking
  • blind bidding
  • runs, zones and clearances
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
38
Q

what is block booking?

A

a distribution system in which exhibitors are forced to contract for the rental of groups of (two or more) films to secure the permission to exhibit any one film distributed by a particular studio

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
39
Q

what is blind bidding?

A

a distribution system in which exhibitors are forced to contract for the rental of films prior to seeing them

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
40
Q

what are runs?

A

a film that opened in the first-run movie palace in early September would not get to play in the cheaper neighborhood theaters until later October or early November

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
41
Q

what are zones?

A

only one theater in any particular area was permitted to exhibit a new picture.this tended to favour studio-owned theaters

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
42
Q

what are clearances?

A

smaller second-run and sub-run theaters were forced to wait until a picture had completed its run in the larger houses before they could obtain it

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
43
Q

what are the characteristics of M-G-M? (4)

A
  • “more stars than there are in heaven”
  • polish and gloss
  • middle class family values
  • seriousness of prestige melodramas
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
44
Q

what are the characteristics of Paramount? (3)

A
  • sexual savoir-faire
  • tongue-in-cheek wit
  • european stylishness
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
45
Q

what are the characteristics of Warner Bros? (3)

A
  • working man’s studio
  • hasty, rough, conveyed a gritty realism
  • gangster films
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
46
Q

what are the characteristics of 20th Century Fox? (4)

A
  • period and costume pictures
  • rural audience
  • only studio neither owned or operated by Jews
  • films with a certain social consciousness
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
47
Q

what are the characteristics of RKO? (1)

A
  • unlikely combination of films
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
48
Q

what are the characteristics of Columbia Pictures? (2)

A
  • witty and urbane screenwriting

- skrewball comedy talent

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
49
Q

who are the poverty row studios? (4)

A
  • Grand National
  • Producers Releasing Corporation
  • Eagle-Lion
  • Allied Artists
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
50
Q

what is poverty row?

A

a number of smaller studios that sprouted up in the early 1930s to make B pictures to accompany the A picture on the bottom half of a double bill

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
51
Q

what is the Paramount case?

A

the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division filed suit against the majors for using monopolistic practices and in 1948, the majors were forced to separate production and distribution from exhibition

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
52
Q

what were the other factors that led to the demise of the studio system? (4)

A
  • lengthy postwar strikes against studios by labour unions
  • changing patterns in leisure-time entertainment
  • competition with television
  • rise of independent production
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
53
Q

what is segmentation?

A

the process of dividing works into their constituent parts to study them in greater detail

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
54
Q

what are dramatic unities?

A

unities of action, time and space

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
55
Q

what do establishing shots do?

A

to present the spatial parameters within which the subsequent action of a scene takes place

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
56
Q

what is mise-en-scene?

A

staging of the scene, relation of everything in the shot to everything else in the shot

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
57
Q

what are the three types of camera angles?

A
  • low angle
  • eye-level
  • high-angle
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
58
Q

what are the seven types of camera distances

A
  • extreme close-up
  • close-up
  • medium close-up
  • medium shot
  • medium long shot
  • long shots
  • extreme long shots
59
Q

what is a medium close-up?

A

give a chest-up view of individuals

60
Q

what is a medium shot?

A

show the body from the waist up

61
Q

what is a medium long shot?

A

frame from the knees up

62
Q

what is a long shot?

A

range from full figure images of characters as well as a bit of the surrounding space immediately above and below them, to shots in which the human figure is only a small part of the overall scene

63
Q

what are what are extreme long shots?

A

the human body is overwhelmed by the setting in which it is placed

64
Q

what are the five types of camera movement?

A
  • zoom
  • pans
  • tracks
  • dolly shots
  • crane shots
65
Q

what is a zoom shot?

A

involves the use manipulation of the lens produces the impression of movement toward or away from objects by shifting from wide angle to telephoto focal lengths or vice versa. these shifts simply enlarge or decrease the apparent size of the image

66
Q

what is a pan shot?

A

the camera rotates horizontally and/or vertically on its axis

67
Q

what is a tracking shot?

A

the camera moves bodily through space in any of a variety of directions parallel to the floor

68
Q

what is motivated lighting?

A

their source and direction are determined by the location or setting specified in the script

69
Q

what is three point lighting?

A

the standard lighting setup employed in Hollywood films. they are staged to suggest three basic sources or lights, key light, fill light and back light

70
Q

what is key light?

A

chief directional light sources

71
Q

what is fill light?

A

weaker light sources that fill in the shadows cast by the key light

72
Q

what is back light?

A

the minor lights that are used to light the space between the back of the set and the characters to separate or distinguish them from the background

73
Q

what are clothes lights?

A

a number of back lights deployed to create the illusion of depth by lighting the shoulder of the characters

74
Q

what is high key lighting?

A

the ratio of fill light to key light is high, there is a high amount of fill light which washes out shadows cast by the key light. this produces a more or less brightly lit scene in which light is evenly distributed throughout the set. associated with upbeat genres, such as comedies and musicals

75
Q

what is low key lighting?

A

the ratio of fill light to key light is low, shadows cast by the key light are not fully filled in, producing a shadowy effect and an uneven distribution of light. this style is used with downbeat genres such as mysteries, thrillers, horror films and film noir

76
Q

what is laid star lighting?

A

highlights or conceals certain features of the major performers and marks the expressions on their faces readable

77
Q

what is star miking?

A

specially placed microphones ensure that the words of major performers and crucial lines of dialogue will be heard and sound mixing practices lift them out of the general hubbub of sounds in the scene

78
Q

three different categories of film sound

A
  • dialogue
  • sound effects
  • music
79
Q

what is a shot?

A

an unbroken strip of film made by an uninterrupted rubbing of the camera

80
Q

what is a scene?

A

the films smallest dramatic unit, it consists of one or more shots that present an action that is spatially and temporally continuous - an action taking place in a single space at a single time

81
Q

what are the five basic transitional devices?

A
  • the cut
  • the fade
  • the dissolve
  • the iris
  • the wipe
82
Q

what is the cut?

A

a simple break where two shots are joined together

83
Q

what is the fade?

A

involves the gradual darkening of the image until it becomes black or gradual brightening of a darkened image until it becomes visible and achieves its proper brightness

84
Q

what is the dissolve?

A

achieved by simultaneously fading out on one shot while fading in on the next so that the first shot gradually disappears as the second gradually becomes visible, during the middle of the dissolve, the two shots will briefly be superimposed

85
Q

what is the iris?

A

an adjustable diaphragm or iris in the camera or a movable mask placed over the camera lens will gradually open to reveal more and more image within an expanding, geometrically shaped frame or it will gradually close down

86
Q

what is the wipe?

A

transition in which the second shot appears to wipe the first shot off the screen

87
Q

what are the five transitions for editing within scenes?

A
  • graphic matches
  • matches on action
  • eyeline matches
  • point of view editing
  • the 180-degree rule
88
Q

what is a graphic match?

A

major features of the composition in one shot will be duplicated in the next shot, providing a graphic continuity that serves to bridge the edit

89
Q

what is a match on action?

A

use the carryover of physical movement from one shot to the next to conceal cuts

90
Q

what is eyeline matching?

A

involves two shots in which a character in the first shot looks off screen at another character or object. the next shot shows what that character sees from a position that reflects the character’s position and the direction in which he or she looks, but remains more or less objective in nature. it does not duplicate the character’s actual perspective

91
Q

what is point of view editing?

A

a subset of the eyeline match that involves a series if three separate shots - a shot of a character looking offscreen, a point of view shot of what the character sees and a reaction shot of the character as he or she reacts to the thing seen. the point of view shot duplicates what the character sees

92
Q

what period did Hollywood produce more Westerns than any other kind of film?

A

1926 - 1967

93
Q

what is film noir?

A

literally meaning “black film,” film noir refers to a style or and mode of film making, which flourished between 1941 and 1958, that presents narratives involving crime or criminal actions in a manner that disturbs, disorients, or otherwise induces anxiety in the viewer

94
Q

what are three characteristics of a genre?

A
  • iconography
  • conventions
  • syntax
95
Q

what is neo-noir?

A

a revival of an older body of films

96
Q

what are film noir’s aesthetics? (10)

A
  • relied heavily on shadowy, low key lighting
  • deep focus cinematography
  • distorting, wide angle lenses
  • sequence shots
  • disorienting mise-en-scene
  • tension inducing, oblique and vertical compositional lines
  • jarring juxtapositions between shots involving extreme changes in camera angle or screen size
  • claustrophobic framing
  • romantic voiceover narration
  • a complex narrative structure, characterized by flashbacks and/or convoluted temporal sequencing of events
97
Q

what are film noir’s themes? (5)

A
  • futility of individual action
  • the alienation, loneliness and isolation of the individual in industrialized, mass society
  • problematic choice between being and nothingness
  • the absurdity, meaninglessness and purposelessness of life
  • arbitrariness of social justice which results in individual despair, leading to chaos, violence and paranoia
98
Q

who are the typical noir heros?

A

antisocial loners or amnesiacs

99
Q

what is the production code?

A

rules and regulations, established at various periods during the history of the studio system, that indicated particular subjects, ranging from nudity, white slavery, drug addiction, and other criminal acts to miscegenation, that were not permitted to be represented on the screen

100
Q

what was different about hard-boiled detective novels?

A

features a proletarian tough guy who lived on the fringe of the criminal world

101
Q

what is fetishization of women?

A

the image of the women is overvalued, often through the use of lingering close-ups, glamorous costumes or other techniques that transformed her into a spectacle

102
Q

what is the process of devaluation of women?

A

women was seen as guilty object, her “castration” serving as the symbol of her punishment

103
Q

western vs civilization (3)

A

the individual vs the community
nature vs culture
the west vs the east

104
Q

what is steam punk?

A

a subgenre of science fiction in which radical technological advances take place early in. the industrial era

105
Q

who were some of the anticommunist groups?

A
  • house un-American activities committee
  • dies committee
  • motion picture alliance for the preservation of American ideals
106
Q

what is “the Waldorf statement?”

A

the studio heads agreed to suspend the Hollywood Ten without pay, to deny employment to anyone who did not cooperate with HUAC’s investigations and to refuse to hire communists

107
Q

what happened to movie attendance between 1948 and 1968?

A

Hollywood had lost three quarters of its audience and the nature of moviegoing in America had evolved from the status of ingrained habit to infrequent diversion

108
Q

what percent of box office receipts were from first run theatres?

A

70 to 80 perfect

109
Q

how many drive ins were there in 1947 and 1948

A

554 and 4700

110
Q

when did This is Cinerama open and why was it revolutionary?

A

September 30, 1952 and introduced wide screen

111
Q

when did Bwana Devil open and what feature did it introduce?

A

in 1952 and introduced 3D pictures

112
Q

how is Cinerama created?

A

used three cameras mounted alongside of and set 48 degree angles to one another to film panoramic vistas. it was projected by three synchronized projectors into a deeply curved screen that extended across the full width of most movie palaces

113
Q

what is Todd-AO?

A

it produced a widescreen image by projecting 70mm film into a deeply curved screen

114
Q

how many households owned one or more VCRs?

A

79 percent

115
Q

how much did revenue from DVD sales drop from 2004 to 2010?

A

12.1 billion to 45 billion

116
Q

by the mid 1960s, how many movie goers were under the age of 30 and how many had gone to college?

A

76 percent and 64 percent of this

117
Q

what is a blaxploitation film?

A

a term coined by Variety to describe a series of Hollywood genre films made in the early 1970s, featuring black performers, that were produced for a black audience

118
Q

what is the new wave and when did it start?

A

the explosion of films made by young, first time French directors that started in 1958

119
Q

what does Frederic Jameson believe?

A

American cinema of the 1970s was a postmodern phenomenon that reflected the sense of alienation and fragmentation brought about by late communism. contemporary consumer society possesses a culture that is postmodern, postmodernism not only comes from modernism but arises in reaction to it

120
Q

what is pastiche?

A

a form of imitation of the unique style or content or earlier works that lacks any trace of the satire or parody that characterizes traditional forms of imitation

121
Q

what was Motion Picture Story Magazine and when and by who was it published?

A

the first film magazine designed for a general readership, which publicized Vitagraphs players and recent releases. Vitagraphs head of production, J. Stewart Blackton did in 1911

122
Q

who formed United stars and when?

A
  • Mary Pickford
  • Douglas Fairbanks
  • Charles Chaplin
  • D. W. Griffith
    1919
123
Q

who formed First Artists Production Company and when?

A
  • Barbara Streisand
  • Sidney Poitier
  • Paul Newman
    1969
124
Q

what and when is the studio era?

A

mid 1920s to late 1950s

males producers revealed their obsessions certain actresses by trying to make them stars

125
Q

who was the first movie star?

A

Edison’s Kinetoscope Exhibition Co. signed Jim Corbett in 1894

126
Q

who was the first star to be created by film?

A

Florence Lawrence whose stardom was created from fans

127
Q

what are B films?

A

quickly made motion pictures, usually produced to fill the second half of a double bill that also features and A film. B films generally have a budget ( and a running time) that is significantly less than that of A films

128
Q

what is backlight?

A

light used to illuminate the space between characters and their backgrounds to separate characters from their backgrounds

129
Q

a widescreen process that relies on an anamorphic camera lens to squeeze a panoramic view into standard 35mm film and an anamorphic projection lens to display the original view on a theater screen, producing an image with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. the system was initially accompanied by four track magnetic stereo sound

A

CinemaScope

130
Q

a widescreen process that employed three interlocked cameras to record a panoramic view on three separate strips of 35mm motion picture film. in the theater, three interlocked projectors projected the three film strips side by side on a deeply curved screen. a separate strip of film carried the stereo magnetic sound, which consisted of six tracks that supplied sound to five speakers behind the screen and additional surround speakers, and a seventh track that was used to control the other six

A

Cinerama

131
Q

a mode of production associated with American Cinema that involves certain narrative and stylistic practices. narratives are structured around characters who have specific, clearly defined goals and deal with their triumph over various obstacles that stand in the way of the attainment of those goals. these narratives are presented in a manner that is both as efficient and as invisible as possible

A

classical Hollywood cinema

132
Q

what is an extreme close-up?

A

presents only a portion of the face

133
Q

what is a close-up?

A

frames the entire head, hand, foot or other object

134
Q

what is a crane shot?

A

a moving shot of which the camera, mounted on a crane, rises or descends as it views the action

135
Q

what is a dolly shot?

A

a shot in which the camera, mounted on a mobile platform or camera support with wheels, moves in any of a variety of different directions parallel to the floor

136
Q

what is genre?

A

a category of film making that recognized as a type possessing familiar narrative and stylistic conventions. standard genres are the melodrama, Western, war film, musical and comedy

137
Q

what is a movie palace?

A

an enormous motion picture theater with lavish, often exotic, decor. located in a large urban area, a movie palace typically had enough seats for several thousand spectators at once

138
Q

what is populism?

A

a dominant myth that celebrates a certain kind of american identity based on preindustrial, agrarian ideals, such as that of Jefferson;s yeoman farmer, the small businessperson, the opponent of big government, the anti-intellectual and the good neighbor

139
Q

what are the seven classical style principles?

A
  • individual talents tightly controlled
  • storytelling is the primary concern
  • based in unity - macro and micro unity
  • realistic int he sense of mimesis
  • immediately comprehensible and unambiguous
  • basic emotional appeal
  • technique never revealed - “invisible style”
140
Q

what are five Hitchcock motifs?

A
  • the ambiguity of guilt and innocence
  • the transference of guilt from one individual to another
  • the fascination with a guilty women
  • the therapeutic function of obsession and vulnerability
  • the equation of knowledge and danger
141
Q

who is Mary Pickford?

A

retained screen image as “Americas Sweetheart” while offscreen image was a working a working woman

142
Q

who is Douglas Fairbanks?

A

often played hard working young businessman but offscreen engaged in sports, athletic exercise and other physical adventures

143
Q

why was Valentino so loved?

A

his image as a menacing and brutal but romantic lived

Film Studies 220 (3 decks)

Brainscape helps you reach your goals faster, through stronger study habits.
© 2025 Bold Learning Solutions. Terms and Conditions