Terminology

Question 1

GENERAL: Preproduction, production, and postproduction

Answer 1

Pre – Funding secured, script solid, prep for physical production, hire cast + crew, prep schedule for shooting

Production –One of three branches of film industry; process of creating film; distribution, exhibition are other 2 phases. Shooting phase, principle photography

Post – Assembly phase, editing, soundmixing, special effects. All things that start after the first footage is shot

Question 2

GENERAL: Filmic convention

Answer 2

A tradition, dominant style, a popular form
Common traits are called conventions so commonplace as to prove normative
Eg 1. first few scenes explain background of characters and action
2. Urban thrillers tend to feature car crash
3. In narrative form conclusion solves the problems that characters confront, eg Wizard of Oz

Question 3

PRINCIPLES OF FILM FORM: Function, Similarity & Repetition, Difference & Variation

Answer 3

Function: Form is a pattern of elements. Elements fulfill function, eg B&W Film in Living in Oblivion signifies Dream

Similarity & Repetition: Structure predicated on repetition, eg. Motif is a significant repeated element that contributes to form – Slate signifies new beginning in L-I-Ob. Regular pattern of repeated events

Difference & Variation: Can’t rely on repetition, changes bring variation to form may use parallelism, eg repeat of takes yet each is different

Question 4

PRINCIPLES OF FILM FORM: Development, Unity/Disunity

Answer 4

Development: Progression can be charted, eg LIOb , teach Spanish at a Girl’s school

Unity/Disunity: When all relationships we perceive in film are economically interwoven. Disunity can fulfill purpose, eg Pulp Fiction Case

Question 5

NARRATIVE: Story/Plot /Diegisis

Answer 5

Story: is a chain of events in chronological order, explicitly presented and inferred events

Plot: explicitly presented events and non-diegetic material. What viewers see based on the choices filmmakers choose to represent from the story

Viewers build story from plot
Filmakers build plot from story

Diegesis: World of the story/ Narrative film construct

Question 6

NARRATIVE: Temporal order, frequency, and duration

Answer 6

Order: In continuity editing how are events are sequenced in 1-2-3 order or chronological order.
Frequency: How often do we see or hear event. Usually a one-to-one relationship.
Duration: How long events last. Usually plot time + screen time=story time. Elided – story time > plot + screen time

Question 7

NARRATIVE: Exposition/ in media res / Closure

Answer 7

Exposition: Portion of plot that lays out the backstory and the initial situation eg Terminator plot starts with action and fighting then the protagonists explains what has caused the fighting.

In Media Res: Depiction of a story from the midpoint or conclusion rather than the start

Closure: The degree to which the ending of a narrative film reveals the effects of all the causal events and resolves(or closes off) all lines of action

Question 8

MISE EN SCENE: Shooting on location and on set

Answer 8

On location: More naturalistic setting, live locations

On Set: on staged set, more controlled environment

Question 9

MISE EN SCENE: Directional lighting (frontal, back, side, top, under) key and fill light/ high-key and low-key

Answer 9

Frontal: Eliminates shadows
Back: When used on its own, creates silhouettes. Used with frontal lights creates subtle contour. Aka edge or rim lighting
Underlighting: tends to distort features, dramatic horror effects
Top: glamorous image, eg Bette Davis, can be harder
Key: Primary source providing the brightest illumination, strong shadows
Fill: less intense illumination, often eliminates shadows cast by key light
High-key: fill + back gives low contrast between brighter and darker
Low-key: hard + fill is lessened or eliminated. Creates stronger contrasts, sharper, darker shadows

Question 10

MISE EN SCENE: Three Point lighting / hard and soft lighting

Answer 10

Part of mise-en-scene
Three Point Lighting: Backlight, keylight and fill light, often on set for each actor. Back is behind and above. Key is closer to figure or brighter than fill and comes diagonally from front. Fill light from position near camera.

Hard and Soft: Intensity of illumination. Hard provides high-contrast image with shadows and hard edges. Soft has less strong images and more of a diffused effect

Question 11

MISE EN SCENE: Stylization and individualization in acting

Answer 11

Stylization is how unrealistic the acting is. Or how much it draws attention to itself. Certain accentuated mannerisms or inflections in the actor’s portrayal of a role.

Individualization is how unique it is or how different it is from other similar roles. Eg. Character of Don Corleone, as played by Marlon Brando, in the Godfather, is significantly different or individuated/unique from the way a similar mob boss may take on the role in some other Gangster film.

Question 12

MISE EN SCENE: Shallow-space and deep-space composition frontality

Answer 12

Part of Continuity editing
Shallow: Staging the action in few planes of depth
Deep: arrangement of mise-en-scene elements so that there is distance between the plane closest to the camera and the one farthest away. Any or all may be in focus.
Frontality: In staging the positioning of figures so that they can face the viewer

Question 13

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shot

Answer 13

In shooting - one uninterrupted run of the camera to expose a series of frames, also called a take.
In finished film – one uninterrupted image, mobile frame or not

Question 14

CINEMATOGRAPHY: High-contrast and low-contrast cinematography / chiaroscuro

Answer 14

Interplay of light and dark to bring more dimension to the picture. Used particularly in black and white films to work with shadows in the mise-en-scene

Question 15

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Saturated and desaturated colours

Answer 15

Vivid and clean colours vs removal of spectrum colours toward more grey, black and white

Question 16

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Fast-motion and slow-motion

Answer 16

Fast: slower speed/fps, experience what character feels when drugged, Requiem for a Dream (Damien Aronofsky, 2000)
Slow: faster speed/fps, used as motif - In The Mood for Love

Question 17

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Wide-angle, normal, telephoto, and zoom lens

Answer 17

Wide-angle: Lens of short focal length affects scene’s perspective by distorting straight lines near edge of frame and exaggerating distance between foreground and background planes. In 35mm film, lens < 35mm eg Brazil - file cabinet scene
Telephoto: Lens of long focal length that affects scene’s perspective by enlarging distance planes and making them seem close to the foreground planes. In 35mm film, lens of > 75mm eg Play Time character walking down hallway
Zoom: Lens with a focal length that can be change during a shot. Shift towards the telephoto lens range enlarges the image and flattens its planes give an impression of magnifying the scene’s space, shift towards wide-angle does opposite eg. Touch of Evil , couple kissing then the car explodes.

Question 18

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Depth of field (related terms: selective focus and deep focus cinematography)

Answer 18

Measurement of closest and farthest planes in front of camera lens between which everything will be in focus. D of F of 5-16 ft would mean everything closer than 5 and farther than 16 would out of focus.

Question 19

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Rack focus / Mask/ Superimposition

Answer 19

Rack Focus: Shifting the area of focus from one plane to another during a shot. Eg. Let the Right One In
Mask: an opaque screen placed in the camera or printer that blocks part of the frame off an changes the shape of the photographed image, eg Iris. Most masks are black, eg The Mothering Heart - DW Griffiths
Superimposition: exposure of more than one image on the same film strip or the same shot

Question 20

CINEMATOGRAPHY:Low-angle and high-angle shot

Answer 20

The position of the camera in relation to the subject it shows. Below it looking up - low angle. Above it looking down – high angle. Straight-on – horizontal on the same leve, eg from How They Get There

Question 21

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shot scale (extreme close-up, close-up, medium close-up, medium shot, medium long shot, long shot) pan

Answer 21

Framing in which the scale of the object shown is
Extreme Close-up: very large, a small object or part of the body typically
Close-up: relatively large, person’s head seen from the neck up or object of comparable size the fills the screen
Medium Close-up: fairly large, a human figure seen from the chest up
Medium Shot: moderate size, human figure from the waist up
Medium Long Shot: an object of 4 or 5 feet that fills the screen
Long Shot: small, a standing human figure would appear nearly the height of the screen
Pan: camera movement with the camera turning right or left, scans space horizontally

Question 22

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Canted Framing / Tracking Shot / Crane Shot /Reframing/Tilt

Answer 22

Canted Framing: a view in which the frame is not level, either the right or the left side is lower than the other, causing objects in the scene to appear slanted out of an upright position eg Do the Right Thing characters sitting on the staircase
Tracking Shot: a mobile framing that travels through space forward, backward or laterally
Crane Shot: a shot with a change in framing accomplished by placing the camera above the subject and moving through the air in any direction
Reframing: short panning or tilting movements to adjust for the figures movements, keeping them onscreen or centred.
Tilt: camera tilts on horizontal axis, scans vertically, eg The Magnificent Ambersons Orson Wells, 1942.

Question 23

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Hand-held Camera/Split-screen imagery / Straight Cut / Fade-out and Fade-in

Answer 23

Transitions
Hand-held Camera: use of the camera operator’s body as a camera support, either hold by hand or harness.
Split-screen imagery: visible division of the screen, traditionally in half, but also in several simultaneous images, rupturing the illusion that the screen’s frame is a seamless view of reality, similar to that of the human eye. There may or may not be an explicit borderline.
Straight Cut: A join between two shots, the end of one shot to the beginning of another
Fade-out: a shot that gradually disappears as the screen darkens, occasionally brighten to pure white or a colour
Fade-in: a drack screen that gradually brightens as a shot appears

Question 24

CONTINUITY EDITING: Wipe/ iris-out and iris-in

Answer 24

Wipe: transition between shots in which a line passes across the screen eliminating one shot as it goes and replacing it with the next one.
Iris-out: a round moving mask that can close down to end a scene or that can open (Iris-in) to reveal more space around a detail

Question 25

CONTINUITY EDITING: Flashback/ flash-forward

Answer 25

Flashback: An alteration in the story order in which the plot moves back to show events that have taken place earlier than the ones already shown
Flashforward: an alteration of the story order in which the plot presentation moves forward to future events and then returns to the present

Question 26

CONTINUITY EDITING: Overlapping editing/ Continuity Editing

Answer 26

Ovelapping: Cuts that repeat part or all of an action thus expanding its viewing time and plot duration eg Do the Right Thing, main char talking to his girlfriend

Continuity: a system of cutting to maintain continuous and clear narrative action and maintain spatial relations. Relies on matching screen direction, position and temporal relations from shot to shot. Includes axis of action, crosscutting, cut-in, establishing shot, eyeline match, match on action, reestablishing shot, screen direction, shot/reverse shot.

Question 27

CONTINUITY EDITING: 180 degree rule (related terms: 180 degree line/axis of action) establishing shot/ re-establishing shot

Answer 27

180 Degree Rule: Continuity approach to editing dictates that camera should stay on one side of the action to ensure consistent left-right special relations between elements from shot to shot. The 180 line is the same as the axis of action
Axis of Action: in continuity editing system, the imaginary line that passes through the main actors or principle movement. Defines the spatial relations of all the elements of the scene as being to the right or left. Camera is not supposed to cross the axis at a cut and thus reverse those spatial relations.
Establishing Shot: a shot, usually involving a distant framing that shows the spatial relations among the important figures, objects and setting in scene
Re-establishing shot: a return to a view of an entire space after a series of closer shots following the establishing shot

Question 28

CONTINUITY EDITING: Eyeline match / Match on action

Answer 28

Eyeline Match: cut obeying the axis of action principle in which the first shot shows a person looking off in one direction and second shows a nearby space containing what he or she sees. If the person looks left the following shot should imply that the looks offscreen right
Match on action: continuity cut that splices two different views of the same action together at the same moment of movement, making it seem to continue uninterrupted

Question 29

CONTINUITY EDITING: Crosscutting (Parallel editing)/Accelerated editing /Jump Cut

Answer 29

Crosscutting: Editing that alternates shots of two or more lines of action occurring in different places, usually simultaneously.
Accelerated editing: A type of editing that is used to distort time and space eg Written on the Wind forms causal relationship between daughter’s bad behaviour and father’s heart attack.
Jump Cut: an elliptical cut that appears to be an interruption of a single shot. Either the figures seem to change instantly against a constant background or the background changes instantly while the figure remains constant

Question 30

SOUND: Loudness / Pitch / Rhythm /Fidelity

Answer 30

Acoustic Perceptual Properties of sound: Loudness; Pitch;
Dimensions of sound: Rhythm: beat, pace, accent, speech patterns, dialogue
Fidelity: How faithful sound is to perceived source

Question 31

SOUND: External and internal sound / onscreen and offscreen sound

Answer 31

External: sound represented as coming for a physical source within the story space that assume characters in the scene can also hear if diegetic.
Internal: sound represented as coming from the mind of a character within a story space. We and character can hear it, other characters can not
`: Simultaneous sound from source assumed to be the space of the screen but outside what is visible

Question 32

SOUND: Synchronous and asynchronous sound / Sound Bridge

Answer 32

Synchronous: matched temporally with the movements occurring in the images, as when dialogue corresponds to lip movement
Asynchronous: not matched temporally with the movements occurring in the image as when dialogue is out of synch with lip movement
Sound Bridge: at the beginning of one scene the sound from the previous sound carries over briefly before the sound of the new scene begins. At the end of one scene , the sound from the next scene is heard leading into the next scene

Question 33

SOUND: Voice-Over / Narration

Answer 33

Voice-Over: voice of an unseen narrator, or of an onscreen character not seen speaking
Narration: Process by which the plot conveys or withholds the story information. The narration can be more or less restricted to character knowledge and more or less deep in presenting characters’ perceptions and thoughts.

Question 34

NARRATION: Subjective and objective narration communicative and uncommunicative narration self-conscious narration

Answer 34

Subjective and Objective Narration: Interiority of character’s vantage/ exteriority or disembodied perspective
Communicative and Uncommunicative: degree that narration willingly supplies info when it can be made available, or uncommunicative when info is withheld Eg. Marnie - no frontality see back of women walking away from camera
Self-conscious: extent to which film announces through narration its recognition of the audience, eg Fantastic Mr. Fox explaining how to pay game.

Question 35

DOCUMENTARY: Expository, observational, participatory, and reflexive documentary/ evidentiary editing

Answer 35

Expository: Verbal commentary and presentational mode
Observational: invisible camera and a world that speaks itself
Participatory: filmmaker present on camera and frank acknowledgement of filmmaking process
Reflexive: Reenactment, Dramatization of actual events
Evidentiary Editing: Not like continuity editing, allows for creation of rhetoric to make it more persuasive. Shots create arguments and support themselves.

Question 36

ANIMATION: Drawn, cut-out, clay, and model/puppet animation

Answer 36

Drawn: draw and photograph long series of cartoon images, 1st paper then celluloid/cels. Stacks of cels show characters and objects in slightly different positions, then place over background create illusion of movement.
Cut-out: Flat puppets with moveable joints, manipulate cutout images frame by frame to create collage. Eg South Park mimics this form
Clay: Sculptors create objects or characters out of Plasticine and animators bends, twists and stretches them slightly between exposures.
Model/Puppet Animation: similar to clay animation. Employs figures with bendable wires or joints. Eg King Kong

Question 37

ANIMATION: Pixillation

Answer 37

Form of single frame animation in which three-dimensional objects, often people are made to move in staccato bursts through the use of stop-action cinematography

Question 38

CLASSICAL FILM

Answer 38

The classical film is a product of the Hollywood studio system, which began to take shape in the late teens/early 20s, but was fully consolidated during Hollywood’s Golden Age, the 1930s through the 1950s.
Characteristics of Classical Hollywood Cinema
-bound by rules that limit individual innovation
- is characterized by formal unity
-purports to be realistic
-strives to be comprehensible and unambiguous
-possesses a fundamental emotional appeal
-regards telling a story as a film’s chief concern
- conceals its artifice

Question 39

CLASSICAL FILM: Hollywood Studio System

Answer 39

The classical film is a product of the Hollywood studio system, which began to take shape in the late teens/early 20s, but was fully consolidated during Hollywood’s Golden Age, the 1930s through the 1950s.
• Hollywood studios were vertically integrated companies that drew on their own pool of contracted laborers and developed a distinct identity based of the kind of films they produced and circulated.
• The studios engaged in a variety of serial manufacturing that allowed for them to make films quickly and systematically.
• The producer-unit system both depended upon and ensured the standardization of film form.

Question 40

ART FILM: The Relationship between Art Cinema and Modernism

Answer 40

Just as classical cinema shares attributes with a broader body of artistic works that are representative of classicism, art cinema can be understood as an example of modernism.
• While art cinema is a film-specific term, modernism is a general term describing broad tendencies within art practice that encompasses many movements that prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century.
• Historically, modernism constituted a break with two nineteenth century art movements: realism and romanticism.
• Modernism questions art’s capacity to capture truth and abandons the goal of mimetic representation. The result is increased self-reflexivity and formal complexity. When in doubt read for maximum ambiguity

Question 41

ART FILM: Episodic Structure

Answer 41

loosen causality, episodic dead time, meander, ramble or drift no advancement of time. Conclude with refusal of closure.

Question 42

RADICAL FILM

Answer 42

Dominant Films and Radical Films
• Influenced by Althusser, Comolli and Narboni conclude that what we think of as reality is actually an expression of prevailing ideology and that when a filmmaker captures the “real,” s/he is actually producing the world dominant ideology has produced.
• Films that are conventional in both content and form (the vast majority of films produced and put in circulation) replicate the ideology that produces them.
• While most films perpetuate dominant ideology, some resist it.
• Those which are most effective at resistance are those that Comolli and Narboni describe in their “category B”: “films that attack ideological assimilation on two fronts,” the fronts of form and content. This type of film has come to be known as the radical film.
• One distinguishing formal component of the radical film is its tendency to employ the kind of “alienation effects” that playwright Bertold Brecht is famous for so as to encourage intellectual (rather than emotional) engagement on the part of the spectator.

Question 43

POSTMODERN FILM

Answer 43

A key difference between them: postmodernism is characterized by skepticism about the possibility of creating anything new or original; as a result it claims that we must resign ourselves to citing and reciting past forms, past iconography, past traditions.
Defining Attributes of Postmodernism
• Pastiche. One of the most noteworthy theorists of the postmodern, Fredric Jameson explains the logic of postmodern pastiche when he writes, “in a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum” (115).
• Intertextual references. Postmodern texts cite other texts by making explicit or implicit reference to them.
• Intermixture of “high art” and “low culture.” This practice serves to question prevailing distinctions between “high” and “low” and to generate works characterized by accessibility and reproducibility.
• A spirit of irreverence and irony. Artists working in a postmodern vein are typically willing to borrow anything so as to repackage it as something else or to recontextualize it within something else. In so doing, they may change or even annul the significance of the borrowed item.
• Self-reflexivity. While the fact of self-reflexivity does not distinguish postmodernism from modernism, its frequency and the functions it typically serves do. Respectively, the art film and the radical film often use self- reflexive techniques to draw attention to the film’s creator and to force spectators to engage with a film intellectually rather than emotionally. In the case of the postmodern film, however, self-reflexivity is commonplace and often serves to locate the text within a larger mediascape with which the viewer is assumed to have extensive familiarity.

Question 44

GENRE:

Answer 44

A genre is a grouping of films that filmmakers and film viewers, film financiers and film critics assume to possess some common set of characteristics.
• Andrew Tudor: “Genre is what we collectively believe it to be.”
• Thomas Schatz: “Whereas the genre exists as a sort of tacit ‘contract’ between filmmakers and audience, the genre film is an actual event that honors such a contract” (691).
Identifying Common Characteristics
• Types of recurring conventions: visual, aural, and technical / narrative / thematic. • The Western can easily be identified by way of those conventions.
Various Ways of Characterizing Genres
• While “genres of determinate space,” such as the Western and the gangster film, may be easy to identify due to their distinctive and stable iconography, other aspects come to the fore in understandings of “genres of indeterminate space.” One such genre is the musical, which is distinguished by the kinds of stories typically told, the structure those stories take, and prevalent themes therein.
• Some genres may also be understood in terms of the emotional and physical responses they elicit in their spectators. Examples include horror, melodrama, and comedy.

Question 45

GENRE: Genre Transformation

Answer 45

Typically genres undergo transformation in response to changes within the film industry, be they technical or industrial in nature, or changes within the sociocultural sphere at large.
• In the case of the Western, salient factors that have led to developments in the genre include the introduction of color cinematography and widescreen technologies, the partial dismantling of the studio system, and ideological shifts in response to various historical events, social movements, demographic changes, and identity politics
• Since sociocultural changes tend to inspire the most large-scale generic transformation, a critical model that can conceptualize the relationship between film genres and the society that produces them is helpful. The most influential model of that sort in cinema studies understands film genres in terms of myth.

Question 46

AUTEURISM

Answer 46

An auteurist mode of analysis entails understanding a film by way of its relationship (stylistically, narratively, and thematically) to other films by the same director.
• As a concept, auteurism has been tied to and enabled by art cinema.
• The influence of auteurism has been extremely profound: it informs the way we think about film history and film culture to this day. Truffault, Sarris, Wollen - Flesh and blood vs textual author

Question 47

STAR PERSONA

Answer 47

Understanding Stars in Economic Terms
• Stars are commodities insofar as it is the promise of their image that attracts many viewers to their films.
• In the classical era, the Hollywood studios ensured that the stars they had under contract were perceived as moral, coherent, and glamorous.
• With the dissolution of the studio system a new type of star emerged due to a variety of factors: the use of independent publicists, the lessening of constraints on actors, the rise of Method acting, and the popularity of social realism.
Understanding Stars in Cultural Terms
• Stars function as distinct social types that characterize or respond to the historical moment and geographic site of their emergence.
• Thus they typically speak to the ambiguities, contradictions, and instabilities that characterize a culture (Dyer’s argument) and/or embody the values of a culture (be it the dominant culture or some counter- culture).
• As John Ellis contends, stars are both ordinary and exceptional; as such, they inspire acts of both introjection and projection.
Understanding Stars in Textual Terms
• In order to understand how a star functions textually, we must think about how they function intertextually and extratextually; that is, we must think about the persona they bring to a role.
• Actors can be typecast and, alternately, they can be cast against type. These two options play with viewer expectations in different ways.

Question 48

WOMEN’S COUNTER CINEMA

Answer 48

Women and Conventions of Visual Representation
• According to cultural critic John Berger, the division of labor that has prevailed throughout the history of Western art can be summarized in the following way: “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”
• Just as this statement applies to the fine arts tradition in which Berger is interested (one defined in large part by the prevalence of the female nude), so does it apply to the popular art and mass entertainment medium of film. More often than not it has been men that function as protagonist, setting the narrative action in motion and serving as the locus of spectatorial identification, while women have existed to be looked at and/or to play a supporting role.
• While this division of labor is still evident in cinema, it far less pervasive than it used to be. Counter examples can be found throughout film history, but they have been especially pointed since the 1970s when both film critics and filmmakers turned their attention to issues pertaining to the cinematic representation of women.
The Call for “Positive Images”
• Some of the earliest feminist film critics and filmmakers argued the following: in most films women are portrayed in a stereotypical fashion and negative light.
• They responded to this problem by calling for and creating more “positive images” of women.
• While productive in some ways, this emphasis on positive images was also flawed, for it raised the question of what constitutes a positive image and it assumed that film reflects (rather than constructs) reality.
The Emergence of Another Approach to the Topic of Women & Film
• As opposed to that which emphasizes “positive images,” the work, both critical and filmic, that has established the tradition of a feminist counter-cinema foregrounds questions of form over those of content.
• Claire Johnston’s landmark essay “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema” is typical of such work. In it she employs language that resonates with that in Comolli and Narboni’s “Cinema./Ideology/Criticism”: “[I]t is not enough to discuss the oppression of women within the text of the film; the language of the cinema/the depiction of reality must also be interrogated so that a break between ideology and text is effected” (140).
• The feminist counter-cinema for which Johnston’s essay creates a blueprint is one that includes radical films, such as Riddles of the Sphinx (Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, 1977) and Orlando (Sally Potter, 2003), as well as films that are more conventionally narrative and illusionistic, but tell their story from a woman’s perspective, such as Working Girls (Lizzie Bordon, 1986). What all these films have in common is an imperative and a capacity to challenge patriarchal norms.

Question 49

COLONIALISM

Answer 49

Film and Colonialism: A Case of Historical Entanglement
• Like psychoanalysis, the “age of empire” coincided with the birth of cinema: by 1895 well over half the world’s land mass was under the control of a handful of European powers.
• As a result the history of cinema is bound up with the history of colonialism.
• The two types of early films in which these entangled histories are most evident are travelogues and ethnographic films.
The Effects of Colonialist Representation
• One effect of early colonialist films was the institutionalization of certain looking relations that continue to endure. Just as we identified looking relations along the lines of gender difference last week (men look and women are looked at), it is also possible to identify them along the lines of cultural and racial difference: white people look and non-white people are looked at.
• Another effect was the shoring up of certain assumptions about racial difference that were already in circulation by the time cinema was invented. Specifically, film was quickly pressed in the service of confirming white, Western assumptions about white supremacy as well as the rationale by which colonizing cultures often justified their actions: “the white man’s burden.”
• The only type of film to regularly feature colonized or Aboriginal peoples prominently during the colonial era was ethnographic cinema. In commercial features, they were either relegated to supporting roles (usually as either sidekick or villain) or to the “colorful” backdrop against which the main action unfolds.
• In recent years, the native has become an object of romanticization more than derision, but nonetheless persistent stereotypes that equate him/her with nature, the past, the body, and childlike innocence endure.
Defining the Postcolonial
• Postcolonialism is both a break from and a continuation of colonialism.
• On the one hand, it denotes the historical era characterized by the dissolution of European empires.
• On the other, it bears the traces of colonialism since many former colonies are still economically dependent on “First World” nations (a condition that has only been aggravated by globalization).
Film and Postcolonialism
• In recent decades more and more people from formerly or currently colonized nations have started making films in order to creatively confront the past, ponder the present, and imagine a future.
• Noteworthy examples of this diverse and widespread counter-cinematic tradition include The Battle of Algiers
(Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) and Camp de Thiaroye (Ousmane Sembène and Thierno Faty Sow, 1987).

Question 50

NATIONAL CINEMA

Answer 50

The study of national cinemas lies at the intersection of cinema studies and area studies (i.e., those disciplines that take a particular geographical location as their object of study, such as Canadian Studies).
• As opposed to an object of study, a national cinema can better be understood as a field of inquiry that facilitates the formulation of questions relation to a wide array of topics, including identity, community, language, artistic expression, politics, and the relationship between the local and the global.
Two Challenges Posed by the Study of a National Cinema
• First, deciding which nation (or nations) a film “belongs to” can be a tricky affair since a number of factors need to be taken into consideration, including a film’s financing, setting and subject matter, personnel, and reception.
• Second, identifying a diverse array of films as part of a single national tradition may result in emphasizing their commonalities at the expense of their differences and, conversely, deflecting attention from the various transnational trends in which those films partake.
• In light of these two challenges, it is important to approach the study of a national cinema with a interest in the many global flows (of films, capital, personnel, images and ideas) in which it partakes.
One Issue the Study of a National Cinema Can Illuminate: the way a nation “imagines” itself
• According to Benedict Anderson, among others, nations are best understood as “imagined communities.” What he underscores with this term is the fact that states produces a sense of unity among disparate populations by constructing a sense of shared origins and common purpose.
• The culture industries in a given state, be they related to print culture or visual culture, play a central role in this process of “imagining” the nation.
Another Issue the Study of a National Cinema Can Illuminate:the way a nation resists Hollywood
• Given its domination of global markets, Hollywood cinema is the closest thing we have to a worldwide lingua franca.
• National cinemas (a term typically reserved for all industries other than the American one) must position themselves vis-a-vis Hollywood in one of three ways. They can try to compete with Hollywood by engaging in genre filmmaking; they can opt out of the commercial sector altogether; or they can forge a middle path between these two possibilities, complementing Hollywood with a commercial cinema that is markedly different due to its quirkiness or its kinship to art cinema.

Question 51

STAR PERSONA - Photo Effect

Answer 51

Photo effect - absence becoming presence, paradox of photoimage

• bring into image an absence that wouldn’t normally be seen
• star is ordinary extraordinary
• projection of what we want
• unattainable despite appearance of being attainable

Question 52

NARRATIVE: Narrative

Answer 52

Narrative: “a chain of events linked by cause and effect and occurring in time and space” (Bordwell and Thompson, 73 )

Question 53

NARRATIVE: Three act Structure

Answer 53

Beginning (equilibrium), middle (disquilibrium, depiction of journey, crises or goal; end (equilibrium - closure, diff equilibrium then initial)

Question 54

FILM STYLE

Answer 54

Use of cinematic techniques incorporating the following elements:

1. mise en scene (arrangement of people, places and objects to be filmed)
2. cinematography (use of cameras and other machines to record images and sounds
3. editing (piece together images recorded)
4. sound (voices, effects and music blended on film’s audio track)

Question 55

AVANT GARDE AND EXPERIMENTAL: Abstract and Associational form

Answer 55

Abstract Form: non-conventional film that emphasizes shapes, colours and other abstract components of objects and sounds as emphasis and put them together in unusual ways. eg Ballet Mecanique

Associational: develop some relationship between components of film by eg breaking it into part; using repeat motifs; creating variations from part to part eg Clocks

Question 56

CLASSICAL FILM: Classicism

Answer 56

Aesthetic qualities display elegance, unity, rule-governed craftsmanship

Question 57

GENRE: Determinate and Indeterminate space

Answer 57

Determinate: seeks social order, individual static male into a standard milieu to examine opposing forces vying for control.

Indeterminate: seeks social integration. Attitudnally unstable couple or family in a microcosm of American society so that emotional/romantic coupling reflects integration into stable environment.

Question 58

CONTINUITY EDITING: Long take

Answer 58

A shot that takes longer than usual before it transitions to the next shot

Question 59

CONTINUITY EDITING: Montage Sequence

Answer 59

A segment of film that summarizes a topic or compresses passage of time into brief symbolic or typical images. Frequently dissolves, fades, superimpositions and wipes are used to link the images in a montage sequence.

Question 60

SYLE: Style

Answer 60

The repeated and salient uses of film techniques characteristic of a single film or group of films (a filmmaker’s work or a national movement)

Question 60

Comolli and Narboni

Answer 60

Cahier du Cinema - Althusser and dominant ideology. Resistant film - radical both form and content

Question 61

Schatz

Answer 61

Genre of determinate and indeterminate space

Question 62

Ellis

Answer 62

Photo effect - ordinary extraordinary. Paradox of photo image

Question 63

Johnston

Answer 63

Positive image - women’s counter cinem

Question 64

Stam & spence

Answer 64

Positive image representational strategy used Battle of Algiers