Final Exam Flashcards
There are various ways to think about and analyze movies such as:
Interracial couples
Anti-Asian prejudice
The power of presentation
Entertainment as a pleasure able smokescreen …
Disturbing issues can be reinforced or contemplated
We can also learn a great deal not only from what we see in a film but…
Also from what they DO NOT see
Name as many Critical lenses as possible
Formal structure
- Cinematography, sound and editing
Narrative structure
Authorship
Genre
Series, sequels and remakes
Stars v.s actors
Reception
Gender, race and class
- Class Myths
Changes in how films are made and viewedNever stop questioning — you run the danger of accepting easy/obvious truths and blind yourself to very important issues…
Intersectionality
Gender roles
Marginalization
People respond differently to films depending on their….
Gender Race Class Sexual orientation Etc..
What is film about?
- Narrative -
Narrative is the way in which the story event of a movie are organized
Feature films -
Narrative 1st, everything else is secondary
The Classical Hollywood Style -
Moving from one important event to another
Classic Hollywood Narrative Style
Film’s plot should have a clear forward direction.
Everything in movie must contribute toward the resolution of goals
Private v.s Public goals…
Private - frequently a heterosexual romance
Public - accomplishment of an important deed or the attainment of something valuable
Hollywood movies don’t need happy endings. They just need to clearly resolve their goals…. one way or another!
Plots v.s Subplots
Example: Main - dramatic plot
Subplots - comic and romantic
—-Not all films conform to this pattern
Story and Plot
Story — events that must be Narrated (chronological order)
Plot — the arrangement of those events as they were told
- (Occur in the order the filmmakers choose to present them)
- (These choices often reveal a great deal about the meaning of
the film).
Flashback (structure)
Creates a plot with added suspense.
Since the 1940s, flashbacks have been common devices used to structure plots
Plot structure -
Presenting story events out of temporal order and from the perspective of various characters show not only what we learn, but also when we learn it and from whom
Free Motifs
Free Motif - aren’t essential to the retelling or explaining of a Narrative. Not to say that they aren’t important, but the chronological make up of the narrative wouldn’t be altered by inclusion or exclusion of a free motif.
Fatal attraction - images of slaughtered animals (typically gives aesthetic complexity and thematic meaning to a film).
Psycho - birds and mirrors = taxidermy and duality
(Norman and Marion (literal and figurative)
Bound Motif
Cannot be removed from the narrative without radically changing the chronological essence of the story. It’s absolutely necessary for telling the story.
Fatal Attraction - the pet rabbit
Motifs
result from the repetition of visual images or sounds in a manner that forms a perceptible pattern.
Narrative Truth
Understanding narratives thru how they reveal their “TRUTH”
Delays…
Snares…
Answers…
Delays… to sustain spectator interest, answering questions @ different rates…
Snares…being mislead
ANSWERS are simply just answers
Flashbacks normally reveal …
What “really” happened but they can be duplicitous
Classical Narrative films -
Operate on the assumption that there is a truth to every story and that revealing that the truth is the goal of storytelling
Narratives employ various references to the “real” world; Connections between the “truth” of life and the truth we learn at the end of the movie …
The effects of (changing) cultural assumptions
Aliens throughout cinema
Formal properties…
- visual-
- aural elements of a film
Repeat viewings
Ex: Star Wars Pre-Release
(Spectacle and visual effects
Visual Images
Scenes that can be so vivid that we remember these equally as well as the story, sometimes even more so.
Also, how the story is told is inseparable from, and as important as, the story itself.
Departures from the stylistic Norm
Stylistic features that are unusual for the time of their release.
Ex: Schindler’s list, Bonnie and Clyde, Carrie
B/W, slo-mo, image and sound, simultaneous split-screen
Visual style and narrative effect
The story and the manner in which it’s told is inseparable.
Psycho - shots and editing
- How the subject is represented is “primary”
- The subject matter is “secondary”
How filmmakers compose shots, use color, shape and light =
Important part of our experience of their work(s)
Film criticism can increase our awareness of the awareness of the stylistic features of movies…
Awareness of technique and how it affects (repeated) viewings of the film
Common Stylistic Techniques…
- Invisible Style
- shot/reverse-shot editing
- cutting on action/reaction
- establishing shots
- the 180-degree rule
Shot/reverse-shot editing…
A pattern whereby first a shot shows 1 character and then there is a cut to a reverse shot that shows us a nearly opposite view, typically another character who is talking to or interacting with the 1st
Determined by dialogue
Cutting on action/reaction
Action replaces dialogue, reaction replaces the responsive line of dialogue.
One character draws their arm back, we cut to another character getting hit and staggering backward
Establishing shots
AKA Master Shots
Extreme long shots that shows (or establishes) the entire space in which the ensuing scene will take place
Most Hollywood scene begin/end w/ establishing shots
More Departures from Stylistic Norms
Comic use of Space
Variations of shot/reaction-shot patterns
Long takes, moving camera, the deep focus cinematography
Structuring Screen Space
- Offscreen space
- frame (line)
- spatial aspects of film form are simple enough but can be used in sophisticated and complex ways.
Offscreen space (6 potential areas)
Spaces at the left, right, top and bottom of the image
The space behind the camera
The space beyond the horizon
Frame (line)
The sides of an image
We presume that space extends beyond the frame of a scene
Color and Sound
Can be structured to create formal complexity
Free motifs
+ Become part of character and/or thematic development
To become attentive film viewers, we have to sharpen both our looking and listening skills
What is Globalization?
We inhibit a world that connects all countries politically, economically and culturally
It used to be a conglomeration …
Everything is connected to and impacts one another
Interdisciplinary means…
Between 2 people..
Between 2 fields of discourse
Interpersonal, interrelations etc.
Multidisciplinary means
Anything more than 2 fields of discourse
Transdisciplinary
ALL forms of discourse coming together
What does globalization have to do with film?
Films used to be categorized primarily by nationality
What’re the characteristics of Global films?
Many films now simply call for an urban, futuristic, or desert setting.
There’s no longer a “if it does well in America” presumption
Long term “foreign market” is now outdated
The Cultural Impact of digital technology
“Generation Gap”
Every aspect of how films are made, viewed and thought about has been affected by digital technology
Digital video and independent film production
Reduced costs - placing the means of feature film production in the hands of those previously excluded from
Enables low budget films that are boldly experimental digital construction of virtual environments
Blue/green screen
Post-production
Digital Technology and Big-Budget Hollywood films
Digital technology is synonymous with special effects.
Special effects - those can be accomplished on the set.
- visual effects cannot
The changing status of the pro-filmic event
Movies had been thought of as a filmic record of something that actually occurred in front of the camera
+ this is called a pro-filmic event
Painted backdrops/rear-projected photographic image to represent a long cation that is not “really” there
What is a pro-filmic event?
Movies that had been thought of as a filmic record of something that actually occurred in front of the camera
Filmmakers use painted backdrops for various reasons, the most common being to
Save Money
Blue/green screen - usually perceived as “fake” because of differences in
Contrast
Depth
Or the presence of lines around the composite area
Digital technology and realism
Digital effects embellish the pro.filmic event — the others, they constitute much or even all of the setting.
Digital effects are frequently employed within the realist tradition of filmmaking, therefore…
If virtual worlds are represented using perceptual cues like those in our real world and if the characters behave in a manner consistent with our expectations based upon lived experience, we can find those worlds believable and realistic.
Digital tech and Film Distribution Exhibition
Film is now digitally encoded and sent to theaters in a number of ways, including via satellite signal
Aesthetic advantage of digital video =
No print deterioration
Narrative films are shaped by…
Complex developments of story elements into a plot composed of free and bound visual and aural motifs.
Characters and motifs are represented within a system of formal elements…
Camera position/movement
Cutting patterns
Spatial relationships
-on/off screen space
No critical approach can tell us everything about a film…
Different approaches can teach us different things.
- formal - authorial - genre
The Ahistorical Author…
Concept of an author as a genius who possesses profound, universal insight is outdated, dangerous.
The Great Mann Theory of history….
Select few influence/control events
If we can understand the author (auteur) we can figure out what films mean
**reductionist view - simplistically fixes meaning instead of opening/exploring
What is an Author?
Usually refers to someone responsible for creating works of art
Screenwriters might provide the script but….
The complex process of organizing the aesthetic is overseen by the director
Director’s worldview and filmmaking style =
Starting point for questioning cultural issues.
- preoccupation with certain themes - ideas - narrative situations - characters
How do you classify the director’s style
- Early
- Middle
- Late periods…
These are distinct periods within a director’s oeuvre (the entire body of work of an individual director)
Early period…
Introduces preoccupations in a simple manner
Middle period…
Develops them in a complex manner (energetic, exuberant tone)
Late period…
Either extends them to an elaborate extreme or reduces them to a sparse simplicity that refers back to the previous work
-referentiality, reflective (sometimes even brooding and static) tone
Structural V.S Linear Analysis
Linear analysis charts shifts, progressions, and changes in both the world of the films and their style.
Structural Approach - all films are considered to be part of a group wherein any film can be fully understood only in relation to the entire structure or oeuvre.
What is linear and structural analysis…
Structural and linear analysis is the study of films themselves not the person who made them
The notion of the “textual author” -
The assumption that meanings that we can derive from studying their oeuvre are not entirely the conscious creation of the living filmmakers but rather that they emerge from the critical analysis of the works
- psychoanalytical theory - unconscious patterns within a single director’s films
A Director’s Public Persona…
Persona circulates thru society in a manner that affects the reception of the director’s films.
»_space;Ex: Image can be a smokescreen
that disarms rather than
encourages criticism
The Biographical Author…
Current form of authorship study focusing on the living, biographical figure who made the films.
Think of directors as authors of their films as long as you think of authorship as a shaping force within a collaborative, industrial process rather than analogues to the single author of a novel.
Genres (like directors) go thru developmental periods…
Genre cycle typically ends with a reflective, introspective late period or with one that is highly referential
What is a series?
A number of movies that usually employ the basic characters, original situations, and style as the original movie.
-each episode is self-contained; no knowledge of the events of an earlier film is necessary to understanding of any other one.
What is a Sequel?
Starts where the prior film left off
What is a Prequel?
A film whose story begins before that of the well-known film.
How do remakes differ from the original?
Some sequels explore areas that the original did not attempt
Why are stars important?
- Most visible people involved in the movie
- audiences pay to see them
- major component of advertising
- personal lives enhance a film’s popularity
What is Reception study?
Explores the variety of ways in which historically specific audiences have responded to films and other works of art as well as the reasons for those responses.
Reception study is not based on a film’s…
Self-contained, formal meanings, nor on what the filmmakers wanted to say, nor on what some reviewers have said — it’s based on what the film has actually meant to different audiences
How can meaning change?
Films do not change, we do. As does the context in which we see films. These changes give films different meanings.
How is our impression of a film formed?
Filmmakers often hold preview screenings at which audiences are asked to record their responses.
-changes made based upon these screenings.
A film’s reputation over time…
- Racist
- capitalist
- masterfully crafted
- or Historically accurate?
Language in cinema is…
A small part of a fictional world created by image and sound.
Dialogue is primary means of…
Creating and maintaining the fictional world of theater
Screenplays are seldom read for….
Enjoyment or taught from the films that were made using them.
Language creates the fictional world (western theater)…
Now what plays are about just by reading the script
Identity of the work lies in the words spoken by the actors.
Theater is a…
Writer’s medium
Film is a…
Director’s medium
Aesthetic identity of a play…
Is contained in the dialogue (attributed to the writer, not the director)
Analyze works of a ________________, but not those of a __________________.
Director…
Screenwriter…
With Literature, Language plays not only…
The dominant role but also the ONLY role.
Why do production companies pay millions for the rights to novels?
Economics (ensured success)
-avoid being sued for plagiarism
Differences between Novels and Films…
Differences in parallel narratives not variations on the same one.
Novels are pages with words. Written by one person.
Movies are reels of celluloid with image and sound overlay. Created by many writers, actors, technicians and director.
Narratives are constructed around a set of questions that get resolved
True or false
True
Feature films place a strong…
Emphasis on resolving narrative questions
While TV characters retain virtually identical….
Relationships from week to week
