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36 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Everything is in focus. This compositional style is associated with realism and with genres like the social problem film and is thought to provide for a “democracy of perception.”
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Deep Focus:
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This set of conventions works in the classical Hollywood cinema to create a smooth sense of flow, establish a coherent sense of space, and create clear cause and effect relations between events happening onscreen.
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Continuity Editing: (invisible style)
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used in film editing. Segment of time drops out without change in camera position
Breaks the rules of continuity editing and the “180 degree rule".This technique was popularized during the French New Wave period offilmmaking. |
Jump Cut
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the distance of the camera in comparison to the objects on screen if it be characters or setting. Wide angle (establishing shot), medium shot, close up, extreme close up (what is being shown on screen takes up all on the mise-en-scene)
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Camera Distance:
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the orientation of the camera in relation to what is being shown on screen, characters or objects. Extreme low angle, extreme high angle, distorted tilted angle.
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Camera Angle:
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attitude or outlook of the film or a character in film(usually main). An example is taxi driver, where we see his and hear his POV on the city. there are also POV shots (subjective shots) which assist the audience into the POV of the character. The position from which something is seen. Point of view determines what you see. Objective point of view is when the viewer is entirely removed from the film/ movie. When a shot is from an objective point of view, the viewer is not biased from one character’s perspective. Subjective point of view refers to a shot in which the camera takes a particular character’s perspective. The viewers are seeing the film from the character’s viewpoint.
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Point of View-
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used in film editing. A technique where a series of short shots
are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. They are often used in American cinema to show the passing of time or the progress of a character. |
Montage:
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•Pre-narrative cinema
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Emphasis on showing rather than telling
•an exhibitionist rather than voyeuristic mode •addresses spectator in a direct, often aggressive fashion |
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dominant genre of film production from pee-peep-hole kinetoscopes through 1903/04
•broad category focused around scenes of everyday life: domestic scenes, military parades, athletic events, street scenes, etc. •included documentary-style images as well as images staged for the camera |
Actualities:
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•emphasis on storytelling and character development
•elements of film style function in the service of these •film style develops through an explicit concern with notions of morality |
the cinema of narrative integration
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•storefront theaters dedicated to the screening of moving pictures, 1905-1908
•concentrated in urban working-class neighborhoods •five cents for a 10 to 30 minute program •programs repeat throughout the day •new programs daily drive film production •affordable (and same price for everyone) •programs run continuously throughout the day and late into the night •films don’t require English language skills to follow along or enjoy •theaters function as social centers for ethnic communities comprised mainly of recent immigrants |
Nickelodeon
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The chase film
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From early film it was a style in which one would chase another or a
group would chase another. The style was very repetitive, and only contained fixed camera shots of the people going by. Very popular films to see at the time. |
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•intercutting victims in peril with rescuers
•increasing tempo of sequence (decreasing shot length) to build suspense •relationship of intimate/domestic space to large-scale spectacles of action/violence |
“race to the rescue”
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Production Code Administration (PCA):
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An administration created by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributers of America in 1934. The PCA required all filmmakers to submit their films for approval before release. Joseph Breen was head of the PCA from 1934-1954. It was he who decided if films were okay or not.
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•film studios enter the business of making stars in addition to making films
•stars become an important way for film producers to promote and differentiate their products •empowers stars (at least some of them, and at least for a while) Production Code Administration 1934 A system of creating, promoting, and exploiting movie stars in classical Hollywood cinema. Studios would pick out young actors and actresses and glamorize and create personas for them such as changing their names or giving them new personas. |
star system
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•industrialized organization of film production designed to maximize efficiency and minimize risk; “factory system”
•contract labor at every level of film production, including “stable” of stars •tight control of film industry through vertical integration: studios own means of production, distribution, and exhibition •studios promote their different “brands” associated with particular stars, styles, genres ideology •a shared set of values, assumptions, and beliefs that exist within a given society; often taken as “common sense,” as natural and inevitable, “just the way things are” |
Studio System
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•from the French word meaning ‘type,’ ‘kind’ or ‘class’
•a way of grouping together films with similar attributes: shared narrative, thematic, and stylistic conventions •a combination of convention and invention, the familiar and the unexpected •fluid not fixed features of the musical •abundance (elimination of poverty for self and others; equal distribution of wealth) •energy (work and play synonymous) •intensity (excitement, drama, affect) •transparency (open, spontaneous, honest communications/relationships) •community (communal interests/collective activity) |
GENRE
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•low key/high contrast lighting; conspicuous presence of shadows; fields of darkness within frame; light cuts across frame at oblique angles
•night-for-night shooting •extreme low and high angle shots •deep focus cinematography •wide angle lens distorts foreground objects, exaggerates foreground/background distance •urban underworld settings: nightclubs, cheap hotels, alleyways, waterfronts Femme fetale •location shooting |
Film Noir
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generally the main female role in a Film Noir. She is sexualized and wanted by the male protagonist. Always has her own agenda while she is luring a man in with her feminine wiles. Always leads to the destruction of the male protagonist.
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Femme Fatale:
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•take up contemporary social issues as their explicit content (racism, anti-Semitism, alcoholism, readjustment of returning vets)
•didactic: seek to teach, morally instruct •central conflicts revolve around interactions of individuals with social institutions (business, government, etc.) •stylistic features include deep focus cinematography/composition in depth, long takes, location shooting |
social problem films
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Emphasis on social issues, moral lesson, avoids special effects or stylistic camera angles, long takes, documentary style, “democracy of perception”
Ex. in Movie: The Best Years of Our Lives • Photographed simply as what happens to really be there without any “tricks”. • The camera catches the exact appearance of the metropolitan background: middle class apartment, hard surfaces of a bank, the ugly and cheap profusion of a drug store, and plain facts of a street. |
Realism-
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virtue
victims
violence
•combination of action and pathos: excitement of “in the nick of time” and the pathos of “too late” •thematic emphasis on suffering and innocence •viewpoint of the victim •representing broad social conflicts in individual or familial terms •producing a moral explanatory framework (e.g. Good and Evil) Domestic-melodrama is a sub-genre of melodrama dealing with issues within a domestic space. Larger social issues dealing with gender roles, home, race and social expectations are often addressed (but not always resolved). Some melodramas we covered were: Rambo, Imitation of Life, Falling Down, American Beauty, Taxidriver, Thelma & Louise |
Melodrama
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•rebellion from social norms, including nuclear family
•linking mobility with rebellion •journey as mode of cultural critique The Road Movie: This is a category in film in which the road and travel upon it is a major factor in driving the narrative forward. A vast amount of films use this in their structure, as it is an effective way for audiences to use film as a means of travel. The car itself often becomes an integral part of the plot, setting and framing. Movies we watched were: Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma and Louise, Taxi Driver |
Road movie
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Tragedy of the gangster male in the context of the disintegration of the Depression era. The gangster is self-made, no fear of pain and death, behaves amorally, oblivious of his mortality until society’s weight is crushing down on them. These films also have film noir characteristics like: pessimism and fatalism - characters doomed from the start,
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THE GANGSTER FILM:
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blurring of good and evil, alienation: protagonists as cynical, paranoid, socially marginal misfits, and even misogyny: distrust of women, femininity associated with duplicity, danger, and deception. Films like The Public Enemy and Double Indemnity are gangster films
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moral ambiguity -
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it has color, melody, rhythm, movement, cause and effect relationship, repetition and variations. There is usually an "invisible style" feature like The Best Years of Our Lives with the "democracy of perception", a linear narrative progression and casual agents with well-defined psychological traits. With similarity or repetition, there is a motif in the film, like in Wizard of Oz where the yellow brick road they are on and the term home is constantly repeated by Dorthy.
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THE MUSICAL:
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A theme of American cinema where society redeems themselves through the use of violence.
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Regeneration Through Violence:
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Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis on American expansion of the west. Represents manifest destiny, white supremacy and colonization of Indian land. Exemplified in Westerns.
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The Frontier Thesis:
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•Supreme Court rules against studio monopolies
•end of vertical integration •studios forced to sell off exhibition venues (primary source of profits and collateral) •studios move away from production to focus on distribution In 1947 the Paramount decision was a supreme court ruling in 1948 against the major film studios in Hollywood. It ultimately ended the monopoly Paramount and the other "big 5" had owning the rights to movies and theatres. |
Paramount decision of 1948
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•asserts director’s unique artistic vision and creative control of production
•emphasizes director as “author” of the film •in the context of the studio system, asserts individual genius over the “genius of the system” someone who brings their own unique sense of style to a film and is associated with a certain technique or style of film. Most of the time this is usually associated with the director of a movie. One example is Martin Scorsese or Spike Lee. |
Auteurism
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1960s. A generation when new filmmakers came to the foreground and influenced the types of films produced, their production and marketing, and changed the way studios approached filmmaking. Challenged classical Hollywood conventions. Examples include Bonnie and Clyde, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even Jaws.
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Hollywood Renaissance:
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refers to the group of directors that went to universities and took film/media courses. These directors started making a name for themselves in the late sixties and onto the seventies. The directors in this generation went on to make films in many other decades, but this time period is when they first emerged and created a major impact on the film world and Hollywood. Directors in the film school generation include George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg. The director as the star
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Film School Generation
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In the 1970s a lot of things were going on for the film
industry. New executives came about and the importance of marketing (national publicity campaigns), saturation booking and the movie as one “ big spectacle” appeared in film production. They started nation wide openings on hundreds of big screens all across of America. The downfall was that the films had to appeal to everyone because it was shown nationwide. Only a few movies made a lot of money during this persiod of time during the period. Movies like The Godfather (1972), Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) were the films that started the blockbuster period. |
“blockbuster syndrome” of the 1970s
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Independent cinema: films associated - Juno, Sideways, Do the Right Thing
3 aspects of independent cinema |
• industrial - how it is funded and distributed
• formal/stylistic - disrupting the "flow" of Hollywood films • thematic/ideological issues - challenging dominant and social belief |
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•integral elements of a fiction dispersed across multiple delivery channels
•based not on individual characters and conventional closure-based narratives but on complex fictional worlds •expand potential market by creating different points of entry for different audience segments |
transmedia storytelling
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•horizontal integration/synergy
•interlinking of computing with other information technologies; digitization of content across media (text/audio/video) •shared formal conventions operating across media (e.g. subjective POV organizing war representation in film, tv, videogames) |
convergence
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