Week 3 Flashcards
Appeal of cinema
- The power to enchant
- Movies are fun
- Sense of belonging
- Emotional, intellectual and ideological impact
- Identification and empathy
- Sensation, desire, bodily response
- Make the invisible visible
Ideology
- The ways in which a certain image of one’s place in the world becomes internalized and then functions as a guide to proper conduct in a given social context.
Dominant Ideologies
- Ideologies told to us repeatedly by important social institutions such as the church, the law, education and the media
- Ex. Consumerism, gender, childhood.
Metaphor
Ex. Big baby, guardian angel.
Allegory
Sustained narrative in which the characters and situations stand for more general qualities or states.
The Formal Context:
Medium-specific qualities, such as technology, editing, sound, genre conventions, actors, narrative, aesthetics (tangible surface of the film)
Formal Response and Interpretation
- Does the film alter, subvert or transform existing conventions in innovation ways?
- Are conventions used effectively?
Social Response and Interpretation
- Does the film present an unexpected, new perspective?
- Does it reinforce pre existing points of view?
- Does it challenge social realities?
- Does the film support status quo or does it call for change?
Flashdance 1983
- Second-wave feminism
- Exotic dancer/welder pursuing ballet (high/low)
Conventions
- A customary way of doing things, rather than ‘rules’
- Guidelines for selecting certain types of images
- Arranging images into scenes
- Vary over time and context
Continuity
- Includes all the ways of organizing shots to ease transitions
- Sound and images
- Draws on preview experience
Semtiotics: The Sign
Meaning is not in the image but in the beholder
Referent
- What the sign refers to outside the language in which it appears
- Most signifiers possess a referent
- Applies to photography as well
Style
Particular way a filmmaker makes use of cinematic signifiers
Editing
- Primary means of building a chain of shots and scenes into one complete film
- Creates relationships across time and space.
Continuity Editing
- Standard
- Viewers do not notice most of the edits
- Focuses on narrative
Discontinuity and Montage Editing
- Avant-garde, experimental
- Used often in music videos.
- Often used to condense time or to draw attention to the editing
Cinematography
Making choices between types of shot, types of lenses and camera movement.
Lighting
Variation has effect on tone and emotional impact
Mise-en-scene Composition
Arrangement of what appears in front of the camera
Diagetic Sound
Appears to originate from the story world
Apparent Motion
When the eye perceives movement from one frame to the next
Presence-in-Absence
Phenomenon where the image realistically represents a referent (subject or person) that is no longer physically present, but appears to be
Identification
Emotional and psychological attachment. Different effect with performing arts.
Worldview
- A system of values, attitudes and beliefs which an individual group or society holds to be true or important. - - These are shared by a culture or society about how that society should function.
Social Context
- Social and historical problems, conflicts, issues that provide a thematic focus
- Turns attention beyond aesthetics towards characteristics of the time.
Filmakers Perspective
Social attitude, political perspective and aesthetic sensibility of the worlds maker will filter the audience’s experience.
Semiotics: Signifier
What is materially presented?
Semiotics: Signified
What meaning is attached?
Extra Diagetic Sound
Belongs to the narration rather than the narrative. Comments on the story world
Subjective Sound
Renders sounds as the character hears it
Open-frame Composition
Gives the sense that it is part of a much wider field of action
Closed-frame Composition
Sense that everything is contained within the shot
Off-screen Composition
Includes visual and aural cues outside the frame
High-key lighting
Everything is uniformly lit
Low-key lighting
Dramatic shadows and vivid contrasts
Paris Is Burning, Jenny Livingstone, 1990
Themes
- Aspiration: in class, sense of belonging, balls
- Community: Drag house ‘mothers’, safe spaces
Paris Is Burning, Jenny Livingstone, 1990
Formal Elements
- Intimacy: close-up shots, nighttime lighting, candid interviews
- Continuity: snapshots, low production value, DIY feeling
Paris Is Burning, Jenny Livingstone, 1990
Constraints in filmmaking:
- Low budget
- Access: real people, sense of authenticity
- Broader social context:
- Balls had to happen underground, at nighttime
- Gender stereotype performance/expression awards: how these people passed in the world in a safe way without being targeted or attacked.
Discussion: movies and TV that don’t age well?
Comedy
What is topical at the time often changes and can become problematic
Discussion: movies and TV that don’t age well?
Legacy
What came out of this movie didn’t credit or protect the people in it
Discussion: movies and TV that don’t age well?
Fashion
- Transformational tool
- Using materials of everyday life to safely get through the world day to day, but also to be subversive
- Highly political, matter of life or death in contrast to what drag culture is today. Must keep in mind that bravery backs the fashion in this film, not entertainment or beauty.
Bohemian Myth Defintion
Transgression, excess sexual outrage, eccentric behavior, nostalgia, outgoingness, poverty (although wealth could contribute to their past)
Bohemian Myth Examples
- Cats as an editorial trope to represent quirkiness and age
- References to women and mental illness very casually (Ex. Vogue Italia, Steven Miesel, 1999)
Bohemian Myth Characteristics
Repurposing spaces and clothing constantly: anti capitalist exercise, deconstruction, reappropriation
Bohemian Myth Characteristics
Making do with what one has when times are tough (make do and mend)
Bohemian Myth Characteristics
Characters in charge of their own representation and gaze at camera
Grey Gardens 1975, Albert and David Maysles
Key Theme
Key Theme: Body and the Senses
Many reviewers projected the ravaged and decaying characteristics of the house onto the women’s bodies.
Grey Gardens 1975, Albert and David Maysles
Senses
Senses: eating on screen, bickering about sex, covering up for the camera.
Grey Gardens 1975, Albert and David Maysles
Sound
Sound: yelling, arguing, singing, running around.
Grey Gardens HBO, 2009, Michael Sucsy
Positions Edie as a legitimate fashion insider
Enforces that Edie wasn’t always a totally wacky dresser
Image-driven, linear narrative
