LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of week 2, you should be able to:
Discuss the “invisibility" of the cinematic language. *
Describe how a viewer's expectations are informed by cinematic language and a knowledge genre, an actor's or director's style . *
Define terms such as explicit and implicit meaning and discuss said meanings in regards to a film. *
Explain how a film includes cultural invisibility and note some of the shared belief systems presented.*
Begin to apply formal analysis and understand what other types of filmic analysis are utilized. *
To demonstrate your learning, you completed the following activities and assessments:
Further Resources:
1)Jimmie Fails & Joe Talbot Speaks on 'The Last Black Man in San Francisco'
| Sway's Universe Click Here for the interview. (I only liked the part they talked about
San Francisco...lots of dumb questions.
2)Hunters Point Shipyard Contamination, Cleanup and Development
Once home to the US Navy's largest applied nuclear testing lab, Hunters Point Shipyard inches
toward a radical transformation. But radioactive contamination, false data and a $27 billion class-
action lawsuit loom Click Here for Article
3)NYT
Environmentalism’s Racist History
By Jedediah Purdy - August 13, 2015
Click Here Not so great except last two paragraphs
Last two paragraphs:
Still, the major environmental statutes, such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, were written with no attention to the unequal vulnerability of poor and minority groups. The priorities of the old environmental movement limit the effective legal strategies for activists today. And activists acknowledge that persistent mistrust goes beyond immediate conflicts, such as the split over California’s climate-change law, but can make them more difficult to resolve. Bernard attributes some of the misgivings to environmentalism’s history as an élite, white movement. A 2014 study found that whites occupied eighty-nine per cent of leadership positions in environmental organizations.
Some of the awkwardness of environmental politics since the seventies, now even more acute in the age of climate change, is that it lays claim to worldwide problems, but brings to them some of the cultural habits of a much more parochial, and sometimes nastier, movement. Ironically enough, Madison Grant, writing about extinction, was right: the natural world that future generations live in will be the one we create for them. It can only help to acknowledge just how many environmentalist priorities and patterns of thought came from an argument among white people, some of them bigots and racial engineers, about the character and future of a country that they were sure was theirs and expected to keep.
Complete the reading assignment from Chapter 1.
Complete a short quiz.
View this week's film.
Participate in the Discussion and Responses.
Next up: Module 3
Chapter 2 will delve deeper into cinematic language and the interplay of form and content. Further, larger styles of Realism and Antirealism will be discussed in terms of verisimilitude. These terms may, at this point, be unfamiliar, but are key concepts in film studies.
Here's my expanded notes for this chapter - I went through her presentation and then wrote notes from the text. 9/15/2021
1)Continue
our discussion of form and content
(basically chapter 2) the idea of
2) Discuss how film creates the illusion of motion
and
then we're going to skip a little bit to Chapter 6 because it is so dense,
we're going to introduce some topics about
3)Define
and describe the shot and perceived:
* Camera proxemics
or perceived camera proxemics how far we believe the subject is from the
camera.
and then we're going to talk about
*4) Understand how movies manipulate
time and space
5)Describe
the differences between realism/anti-realism and what lies between
* idea of realism anti realism formalism
Form
and Content
we've been talking about already you may remember that
Content is what the stories about what's happening in front of you
Form is how that story is presented
what cinematic techniques
when editing
what camera angles
what shot types
what lighting are used to tell that story
Fundamentals
of Film Form
1)movies
depend on light you have to have like to get exposure and you have to
have the light in your
projector in order to protect the film right
2) They depend on the illusion of movement it's not actual movement
but it is an illusion of the event
*3) Then it's really interesting how films manipulate both time and space and
will begin that discussion now and continue
it in future chapters.
OK so we were talking about form from
the text you may note that these are various sculptures or the human figure and
the artist chose to have to depict them in various different forms and they
look significantly different although they are all the human figure.
In cinema when you translate FORM into CINEMA
we talk about
*Cinematic
Language
1)The
techniques, methods, or conventions by which a film communicates meaning, tone
and mood.
The techniques that are used to create that
form. to communicate meaning tone and mood
because
2)
The viewer identifies with the camera lens
much of what we talk about is
how the camera depicts the action (but
not always we talked about editing too)
Cinematic Language – Examples
1) Cinematography and Mise-en-scene
a)Shot type and Camera Proxemics
b) Lighting
c)Camera Angle
d) Lens type/focal length
2)Camera
movement and movement within the frame (the illusion of movement)
a)Editing
b)Sound
Explanations:
Cinematic Language
1)Cinematography and Mise-en-scenes:
includes the shot types and the perceived distance from the camera the camera
proxemics
the lighting, the camera angle, What lens type you're using at in other
words what focal length is it fixed focal length or variable focal
length which we'll talk about next week for some extent
2)How the camera moves ? If the camera moves
and then editing and sound
Components
of a film: Shots are built to scenes and sequences
Frame
– the frame is considered the basic unit of filmmaking
Shot – a continuous series of frames – a single uninterrupted recording
Take – a series of frames which may designate different recording of the same
material (shot, or shot 1 take 2).
Scene – a series of shots edited together which occur at the same time and in
the same location.
1)Frame:
in an actual celluloid you can see a
frame in video weather digital video recorded with a video
camera or through a DSLR either digital or analog video you can't actually
physically see the form but it's designated through various
parameters for instance in analog video it's how fast the
tape moves.
2)Shot was basically anyway with frames are compiled to make what's
called the shot is a series of frames and basically it's
an uninterrupted beginning and end of the camera running so that is often
also edited to a smaller shot because you don't want the slate at the
beginning and many shots begin in the middle of the action,
3)although the Take what's next is probably begins at the center
beginning of the action not always for the camp so a take is a series of
frames it's iteration of shot so when you're actually making a
film you have shot of the dog running across the street and it may
take three or four times and so that's a take to get the perfect rendition of
the dog running across the street.
4)A scene is a series of shots edited together that the occur
at the same time and place so think about if we're talking about morning scene
one might be in the bedroom beside waking up and scene two might be in the
bathroom scene three could be in the kitchen as I'm eating etc etc
Movies provide the illusion of movement
and I mentioned somewhere and it was in the module itself that
various versions of the book addresses shoot differently
Persistence
of Vision
“A series of images (drawing/photographs) of an object in motion are viewed in
rapid succession, each image is briefly retained in the retina and the brain
blends the images together to create the illusion of motion.”
THIS IS PERSISTENCE OF VISION
BirdCage
Thaumatrope:
Early 19th Century Persistence of Vision Toy (Square with circle. In
circle a bird on one side, on the other a bird cage)
But what was
realized early on as people were trying to figure out how to
make films you know once still photography
was
developed immediately people tried to figure out how do we make these
images both we can do it we can do it at early toy which is based on
that idea is the bird in the cage and is as we can see a 2 sided
basically a coin like thing with the bird on one side
and a cage on the other and if you spin it fast enough it
looks as if the bird is in the cage because your brain blends the two images
together to make the illusion of motion and the idea that the bird is in the
cage this is known as persistence a vision.
Short
Phi Phenomenon:
“If one image is slightly different from the
previous image the viewer perceives the sequence with the illusion of motion.”
Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated this in the 1870s.
and then OK this is where the 6th edition says
science has evolved and we are reconsidering this idea but it's so good to know
I'm not gonna ask it on the quiz but the idea of the short phi phenomena is
that if images are slightly different from each other we perceive the illusion
of motion an Edward Moybridge demonstrated this in 1870s with still
photography what he did was he set up a number of cameras
and photographed the same a event overtime and so here we have the video this
is actually still images and then he put them together like in a flip book and
we can see the horses moving and that that at some points the horse actually
has all four of its feet off the ground he did this with human figures he
particularly he likes nude women but what he would do if he was in the studio
was actually place a grid behind the characters and then set up you know 16
cameras that all tripped one after another so that he could get the
entire motion.
USELESS STUFF ABOVE
Shot
Type and Subject Size – Basic Shot Types
The following slides are a preview of chapter 6, seen here to aid in our
discussion of manipulation of time and space.
The
distance of the camera from*** the subject or the size of a figure in the
frame**** = perceived CAMERA PROXEMICS.
The subject may be perceived as near to, or far from, the camera due to:
a)Actual distance
b)Lens used – we will discuss this in chapter 6
Now on to chapter 6 for a second
because shots themselves are divided and described in regards to shot
types
so we're going to have a little bit
of introduction to this because it does pertain chapter one is already talked about
close-ups and about camera angles so we're going to start to get into it and
then chapter 6 is so dense that we'll leave the lighting and the camera
angles for that chapter
**Shot
types it can be described as the size of the subject in the frame**
really simplistically when we describe what we talked about
***** 1 subject matter usually the human figure within the frame and
what is perceived is that the camera itself as physically closer or farther
away from the subject whether that's true or not ****
*****there are two things that can actually determine shot types*****
1)Whether you physically move your camera closer to the subject matter
or
2)What lens you're using
So
there's six basic shot types
Shot
Type and Image Size – Basic Shot Types
The distance of the camera from the subject or the size of a figure in the
frame=
CAMERA PROXEMICS – MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPT ABOUT SHOT TYPES – THE SIZE OF THE
HUMAN IN FRAME****
1)Extreme
Long Shot (ELS)
2)Long Shot (LS)
3)Medium long shot (MLS)
4)Medium shot (MS)
5)Medium close-up shot (MCU)
6)Close-up (CU)
7)Extreme close-up (ECU)
****THE
CAMERA ACTS AS THE EYES OF THE AUDIENCE MEMBERS***
So there's six basic shot types
our book has a few extras so will look at them all so there's the
extreme long shot and each one has a purpose within a film in a filmmaker
actually chooses which shot type to use based on the emotional
content and the dramatic content of a scene and how the filmmaker wants that
scene to be understood by the audience because the camera is access – the eyes
of audience members.
Shots:
the extreme long shot, the long shot, the medium long shot, the medium shot,
medium close up, the close up, and the extreme close up.
So what we can see is there
Three basic shots
The close up
The
medium shot and
The long shot
and then there's variations between and past ANY OF THOSE.
1)Extreme Long Shot (ELS)
(In
this picture we ask, hey what is the subject matter? What’s happening here? And
you don’t even necessarily recognize that there is a human figure up in the
cherry picker up here because the bus down there caught on fire the night
before and took out the telephone lines and cable lines. So, he is up there
fixing our communications.
But we don’t know how important this shot is to the entire story because it is
an extreme long shot.)
1)ELS taken from a great distance.
2)Most ELS are taken outside because in the studio or in a confined space it’s
hard to
get away from many, many things.
3)So
an extreme long shot gives you context as to the location you know where you
are hopefully or an idea this urban
setting.
4) extreme long shots can be favored by some genres over others so for instance
in martial arts film or a war film where
you have lots of characters
interacting with each other you probably have more extreme longshots. westerns
as well.
2)Longshot
(LS)
This is a long shot this
is Gordon the cat up he was young and a little chunkier back then but
basically
1) you see the character is in their
environment.
2)the character you see enough
of the surrounding to kind of know where they are
3)it places the character where they
are and establishes the environmental pulse.
the Full Shot:
which is also a kind of longshot but it's basically full body from head to toe
so it's a little bit closer than a long shot but it is the entire body and you
see all of that in the frame.
The
Medium long shot
At here on the left is the long shot so
the medium long shot is basically from the knees or caps up
it's not the entire body of it's a little bit closer
you can see a little bit more of the characters expression
but you know you're not really that close
A
medium shot is kind of the workhorse of the film industry
1)what we tend to see is two people
so a two shot a
medium two shot or mediums three shot which may or may not be over
the shoulder as various
characters are actually speaking with each
other
3)so it's used in dialogue scenes
4)it may show action that the great
thing about
A
Medium Shot is that if you have a medium shot and something passes in
front of the camera it looks like it's moving quickly because it moves across
the frame really quickly
so if you're if you have car chases or people chases or whatever
medium center shots are quite
handy in that respect
It is from the waist up
see his waist up
OK and then we have here is a medium close-up shot
We
haes a medium shot to reference we have the medium close up so the difference
is the medium shot is from the waist up
and the medium close-up is somewhere between the waist and the neck and the
shoulders basically
so it's closer than a medium shot but it's further away than a close up.
Mid-waist they like to say or midriff shot
So
the close-up is shoulders up we the cat’s shoulder there
and the close-up is really important for emotional impact if you really want to
know what your characters are feeling
then you use close up
Several students noted in our live discussion this afternoon that both
The Last Black Man in San Francisco and The Middle of Nowhere
used number a large number of close-ups so think about why is that?
and How did it help you connect with the characters?
OK
so this is an extreme closeup and I admit I cut the previous shot to make this
and I zoomed in so we can see the pixels here.
an extreme close up is --- if a close up is the shoulders up --- and extreme close-up is
anything closer
than that.
so here's an actual extreme close up and we see her little nose and her eyes. But
that’s all we see.
It could be her eye and
I could be raised eyebrow it could be an object that has
dramatic importance that we want the audience to see and understand.
Here is a rendition I made of a
human figure with all the different shot types
without you know they're not the proper
aspect ratio
1) But we can see that an extreme close up is just the eyes - in this case -
the eyes and the nose.
2)he closeup is the shoulders up
3)The medium closeup is somewhere between the waist so it's the folded arms up
4)The medium shot this waist up.
5)The medium long shot is the knees up and
6) the long, in this case it's a Full shot, and a long shot is the entire
figure.
7) there is one more shot that has become popular to talk about these days
which is called the Cowboy Shot if
the person were wearing a holster it would be
the shot where it's between a medium long shot and a M
shot and as if
the figure was ready to draw their pistol and
you know it's a western/
In
reality what happens is shot types can be very complicated and you need to
describe them in multiple manners
so
this is from Curie? which we're going to see later this semester and we can see
what Nabi is basically a close up
he's maybe a medium close up but we can see just a little bit more than his
shoulders and his face
he's so he's represented in that manner because he's physically closer to the
camera.
And the second character is well I would say actually that's a cowboy, because
he's further away but what we see is a lot of the room too so you
could almost say that this this is a - medium wide shot - in which the
characters are closer one character is closer to the camera the camera
proxemics for this character are much closer than this character
In
another example of a complicated shot is from the film we're going to
see next week but this character is definitely in closeup
it's almost extreme closeup we see his little shoulder there and yet this
other character is in full shot.
I mean this is a long shot in
which this character1 here is in close up,
because he's physically closer to the
camera
and this character2 is a medium shot to have all three in one
shot
because of physical distance of the characters from the camera even though
overall it's a long shot
so think about that when you have multiple characters
You have to take into account both camera that physical distance from the
character
and what else is in the shot.
Fundamentals
of Film Form: Manipulation of Space and Time:
*Movies are a spatial and temporal art form.
*On the movie screen, space and time are relative to each other, and we can’t
separate them or perceive one without the other.
*Time is spatialized (spatialization of time) because we can move about
it as in space.
*And Space is temporalized (dynamization of space) by cinema’s dynamic elements
(moving camera, slow/fast motion,
extreme lenses, etc).
*Editing and mise-en-scene hold the key
Film form
and how that some form fundamentally manipulates both space at time
and if
you think about it we're trying to arrange a 3D space in the 2D world
the film itself doesn't have depth and so how do you arrange full
time and space to make a seamless narrative that makes sense that covers both
time and space.
So, there's two terms that come into play here because time and space are
interrelated the time is spatialized in other words because people move
around within the space of the frame and in time, time is spatialized
versus space is being dynamic the dynamization of space is the fact that with
the moving camera slow motion, fast motion, extreme lenses where you can zoom
in etc space itself is reorganized throughout the frame and it
becomes you know you can change the way time moves so it's
reorganized and in time is reorganized as well
Different
lenses will talk about this next week give the perception that characters are
further away from each other or closer two each other than
they actually are
So using that lens you change how time is represented within that space
because two characters might be able to reach each other more quickly
The two manners in which space and time really interact are the idea of mise-en-scene
what's in the frame in the competition in the frame in the
how it's photographed and editing really does change time
within a film
I mean if you think about my day it's 24
hours long and I'm probably sleeping a lot of that
but in the film you might only show 30
seconds you know that most dramatic 30 seconds
so editing really changes how you
understand time
RECAP
OK so film manipulates space to how it's represented
1)so how the camera defines it how the lens defines it but shot types
2)to use web camera angles you use whether
3)how much focus you're allowing you know is so that shallow focus shot or deep
focus shot and let's see space and
a long southern extreme is it
long shutter in an extreme close up so how much of the subject and
its environment do
you understand let's
see is the camera moving and therefore redefining it or the character
moving closer or farther
away from the camera in thus redefining the
space at how you understand it ?
4)and then editing you know
editing create seamless editing compresses time and it can make if
you don't have any edits, you know then then you have something that appears to
be real time and then if you throw slow motion into that you know it takes
maybe twice as much time or even more or if its fast motion asked you know you
can do 500 feet per second and we can hardly recognize what happened at that
point pp 49-54 give you in the sixth edition give you excellent examples,
Picture
of the Gold Rush (1925) by Charlie Chaplin – House hanging off the cliff
So this is an example of how space is
manipulated, you know here in the example is Charlie Chaplin in this
cabin that supposedly on the edge of the Cliff.
NON-NARRATIVE
PATTERNS
1)Convey
a character’s state of mind
a)Create relationships
2) Communicate narrative meaning
a)Patterns with in the shot
b)Repetition of images, or parallel
editing
c)Repetition through sound motifs
OK another thing to think about chapter notes
is the idea of non-narrative patterns and I think chapter one talks about
them too is like how what reoccurs within a series of shots
that that gives you context.
So, is it a repetition of parallel editing having say person A
leaving their house person B leaving their house and meeting you know at the
cafe or some outdoor space properly spaced.
Or is it sound, does sound reoccur, Does a shot reoccur. , I think Juno used
the reoccurrence of her like flicking her nails or twiddling her thumbs or
whatever up to show anxiety right.
So
what’s reoccurring and what information does it communicate?
and
all of those play into the idea of film styles
THE
STYLES
(Absolutes
in style are the exception rather than the rule)
*Very
few films are entirely Realist,
Formalist/Anti-realist, or Classicist.
*Filmmakers
may use techniques from two or more styles within any given film.
and
all of those play into the idea of film styles
and
the three major styles
1) documentary filmmaking
2) experimental filmmaking and
3) classicism or Hollywood filmmaking in between
If
we're talking about dramatic narrative, you can still subdivide that story as
either a realist story of our formalist/anti realist story or something in
between a classicist story
film makers can also combine techniques especially in
formalist and I realized filmmaking you have
diaristic films that are very abstract and yet are
very document an event and it's as if they are a documentary.
REALISM
AND ANTI-REALISM
REALISM
So,
here's a lovely timeline or whatever you want to call it so REALISM the Extreme
of REALISM is documentary films. Then within fiction film you can
have films that lean more towards the realist side so you can say that Middle
of nowhere is more realist than what we would
what our expectations of and I would say just like The Last
Black Man In San Francisco is also more realist than what our expectations
of the typical Hollywood film are - you know those films are basically
open-ended they are shown location etc etc the other side of it is
ANTI-REALISM
Anti-realism/formalism
our book talks a lot about Donnie Darko soon and how even though it's fiction
it has some unexpected characters and the furthest example of anti-realism/formalism
is the idea of Avant-Garde or Experimental films and Allures is abstract
animation is what it is so you know at non representational so there's no
characters in this film at all.
FICTION
FILM FORM AND CONTENT
(Picture of a sweet vampire girl drinking the blood from an old man’s neck)
Create
an illusion of a plausible reality or VERISIMILITUDE
OK
so fiction film, we've seen this before up in in the dead center
of the three types of film help
the typical Hollywood film classicism is fiction
and it isn't trying to be reality but it creates the illusion of a plausible
reality
It's credible within the parameters of the story you're willing to believe it.
so
if you know that you're watching a vampire story you're willing to believe that
the young woman is having dinner right now the idea of the illusion of reality
creating a plausible incredible believable illusion of reality within the
parameters of the story is called verisimilitude
and it's actually spelled exactly like it sounds
so think about similar and veracity or truthfulness verifying.
REALISM
*Attempts
to capture the spontaneity of events as objective reality
*Stresses content over form
*Avoids extreme technical manipulation
*Uses available lighting, hand-held cameras, long shots, and lengthy takes
*Frequently shoots on location
Whatever
so realism as a film form and style what we tend to see is that
there's often very long
very many long takes and
handheld camera
and lengthy takes and long shots because the idea is that you were there
with him in real time
and so it's handheld you're part of it part of the
group
it's a long shot so you can see more than one person
and you can see interaction within the frame you don't have to make a cut
because all the action is happening in front of you
and therefore it's also lengthy takes
you don't notice the beauty of the technique the camera work
the amazing lighting that creates geometric shadows on the wall etc
it's all about the content of the story the contents of the stories.
The stories tend to be stories of everyday life not super heroes
or you know rich people who everything
goes right for them
they
can be very open-ended you know so it doesn't necessarily wrap up neatly at the
end
they tend to shoot on locations to give a greater sense of realism and they
tend to try to represent actual real places and people you know so a lot of
times the actors won't be super stars they’ll look like everyday people and
sometimes they're actually non-professional actors
ANTI-REALISM/FORMALISM
*Anti-Realism
– An approach to content.
*Melies practiced considered the viewer’s
perceptions of reality as a starting
point to
expand upon or even purposely subvert.
*Formalism
– an approach to style.
*
Intentionally stylizes and distorts reality via distinctive camera work,
editing, and lighting.
*May contain a high degree of technical manipulation (i.e. special effects.)
The
opposite of that within the context of dramatic narrative is the idea of anti-realism
and formalism and( I put this I put a page from the 6th addition
in the module because the 5th edition and previous distance previous to that
are somewhat different they don't talk about formalism but in the sixth edition
they define anti-realism as an approach to content ) so the example one of
the examples I believe they give us the idea of Donnie Darko or for instance
the vampire movie or the zombie movie where the content isn’t objective
realism it's not you're not trying to portray something exactly as it would be
in real life but instead for instance you're doing you
have characters and
costumes - you have Godzilla for instance you know Godzilla we haven't seen
Godzilla as a real creature yet but he's there represented as such in the films.
ANTI-REALISM
– an approach to content
Melies
was very early filmmaker if you've seen Hugo you're familiar with Melies and
our text notes that he considered the viewer's perception of reality
as a starting point to expand upon he was a magician and so he would do the
magical tricks that he did on the stage with the camera and it was a lot easier
you could make someone disappear by turning the camera off and having them
leave this frame and then turning the camera back on and hey they were gone
it's amazing you could have an item multiplying in front of your very eyes just
to stop motion basically.
Up
the idea of formalism is the form side of it so anti realism is a content
formalism is how you approach this you know is it through the
lighting is it through basic camera work, is it through the
editing are you actually using effects, slow motion, fast motion you
know CG etc etc and it can be very manipulated.
In
in the early 20s you could have films about had in-camera
manipulation so double exposure plus mirrors and all kinds of you
know rear screen projection etc etc so if you've ever seen Metropolis, you’ll
know what I'm talking about.
Then we'll
see some of that in the future OK so and that was that so hopefully that's a
better understanding of the chapter or you know some examples thereof
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