Film Form Film Production and Appreciation Todays Agenda

Film Form Film Production and Appreciation

Today’s Agenda • Review of Last Time – Semiotics • Formalist Media Theory – Film Form – Narrative Form – Narration – Introduction to Editing • Discussion • Action Items for Next Time

Today’s Agenda • Review of Last Time – Semiotics • Formalist Media Theory – Film Form – Narrative Form – Narration – Introduction to Editing • Discussion • Action Items for Next Time

Linguistic Sign • Sign, Signified, Signifier – The linguistic sign is the unity of the signifier (a sound-image) and the signified (a concept) Concept Sound-Image

Linguistic Signs and Language • The sign is arbitrary • A multiplicity of signs is necessary to form any language • The system of signs in language is overcomplex • Language exhibits a collective inertia toward innovation

Linguistic Values • Values are composed of – A dissimilar thing that can be exchanged for the thing of which the value is to be determined – Similar things that can be compared with the thing of which the value is to be determined Signified Signifier

Differences • “Everything that has been said up to this point boils down to this: in language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. ” (p. 120). • “In reality the idea evokes not a form but a whole latent system that makes possible the oppositions necessary for the formation of the sign. By itself the sign would have no signification. ” (p. 130).

Syntagmatic and Associative Relations

Today’s Agenda • Review of Last Time – Semiotics • Formalist Media Theory – Film Form – Narrative Form – Narration – Introduction to Editing • Discussion • Action Items for Next Time

Why Study Formalist Film Theory? • To provide a theoretical foundation for understanding the forms and functions of time-based media • Unlike “Film Studies” per se, we use that understanding not to interpret films, but to analyze and design multimedia information systems – Video capture – Video analysis – Video retrieval – Video assembly – Video reuse – Video summarization (e. g. , meeting recording) – User interfaces to audio-visual content and that use audio-visual content

Today’s Agenda • Review of Last Time – Semiotics • Formalist Media Theory – Film Form – Narrative Form – Narration – Introduction to Editing • Discussion • Action Items for Next Time

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Expectations • Suspense – Delay in fulfilling an established expectation • Surprise – Result of an expectation that is revealed to be incorrect • Curiosity – Construct hypotheses about prior events

Perceiving Artistic Form • Form – “The overall system of relations that we can perceive among the elements in the whole film” • In perceiving form, the spectator draws on – Cues within the work – Prior experiences • Derived from everyday life • From other artworks – Conventions and norms

Principles of Film Form • Function – What is this element doing there? – How does it cue us to respond? – Motivation (justification for the presence of an element) • Similarity and repetition – Motif (any significant repeated element in a film) – Parallelism (cues to compare two or more distinct elements by highlighting some similarity) • Difference and variation • Development – Progression moving from beginning to middle to end • Unity/Disunity

Viewer’s Activity • “The constant interplay between similarity and difference, repetition and variation, leads the viewer to an active developing awareness of the film’s formal system. ” (p. 56)

Today’s Agenda • Review of Last Time – Semiotics • Formalist Media Theory – Film Form – Narrative Form – Narration – Introduction to Editing • Discussion • Action Items for Next Time

Narrative Form • Narrative – A chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space • Story and Plot – Story • Set of all events in a narrative, both the ones explicitly represented and those the viewer infers – Plot • Everything visibly and audibly present in the film • All the story events that are directly depicted

Story and Plot Story Presumed and inferred events Explicitly presented events Added nondiegetic material Plot

Teeth Brushing Example • Brushing Teeth – Protagonist stands in front of bathroom mirror – Protagonist opens medicine cabinet to remove toothbrush and toothpaste tube – Protagonist squeezes out toothpaste on toothbrush – Protagonist brushes teeth – Protagonist drinks water from glass – Protagonist spits out water and toothpaste residue

Time • Temporal order – Flashback – Flashforward • Temporal duration – Story duration – Plot duration – Screen duration • Temporal frequency – Repetition of events

Temporal Duration • Story Duration – Example: Brushing teeth in story world (5 minutes) • Plot Duration – Example: Brushing teeth in plot world (1 minute: 6 steps of ~10 seconds each) • Screen Duration – Example: Brushing teeth (12 seconds: 3 shots of ~4 seconds each)

Space • Story space • Plot space • Screen space and offscreen space

Today’s Agenda • Review of Last Time – Semiotics • Formalist Media Theory – Film Form – Narrative Form – Narration – Introduction to Editing • Discussion • Action Items for Next Time

Narration • Plot’s way of distributing story information in order to achieve specific effects • Moment-by-moment process that guides us in building the story out of the plot • Involves range and depth of story information

Range of Story Information • Spectrum of knowledge of the story world that viewers and characters have – Unrestricted (omniscient) narration – Restricted narration • Creates “hierarchy of knowledge” among viewer and characters • “Who knows what when? ”

Depth of Story Information • How “deeply” the plot plunges into a character’s psychological states • Continuum between objectivity and subjectivity • Subjectivity – Perceptual subjectivity (hear and see what character perceives) • Point-of-view shot • Sound perspective – Mental subjectivity (hear and see what character thinks) • Internal voices • Internal images • “How deeply do I know the character’s perceptions, feelings, and thoughts? ” • Range and depth of knowledge are independent variables

“Classical Hollywood Cinema” • Action primarily arises from individual characters as causal agents • The process of achieving goals desired by one or more characters drives the narrative’s development • The protagonists’ goals come into conflict with other characters’ goals (antagonists) to create conflict

“Classical Hollywood Cinema” • The cause-effect chain drives narrative events • Plot time tends to depend on the story’s causeeffect chain – “Dead time” is rarely shown – Appointments bring characters together at a specific time and usually place – Deadlines makes plot duration dependent on the cause-effect chain • Narration tends to be “objective” and unrestricted • Narrative usually has strong closure at the end (cause-effect chain ends with final effect)

Today’s Agenda • Review of Last Time – Semiotics • Formalist Media Theory – Film Form – Narrative Form – Narration – Introduction to Editing • Discussion • Action Items for Next Time

Kuleshov and Isenhour • Kuelshov: role of montage in cinema – Kuleshov-Pudovkin experiment and the “Kuleshov Effect” • Isenhour: context and order in film editing – The meaning of a shot will vary with its context – By changing the order of shots, the meaning is changed

Today’s Agenda • Review of Last Time – Semiotics • Formalist Media Theory – Film Form – Narrative Form – Narration – Introduction to Editing • Discussion • Action Items for Next Time

Discussion Questions • How can the “story/plot” distinction be leveraged in designing video summarization systems? • How can the mode of “Classical Hollywood Cinema” be applied to non-fictional uses of video? • What implications does the “Kuleshov Effect” have for designing metadata for multimedia and multimedia databases?

Today’s Agenda • Review of Last Time – Semiotics • Formal Media Theory – Film Form – Narrative Form – Narration – Introduction to Editing • Discussion • Action Items for Next Time

Readings for Next Time • Wednesday 02/05 – Textbook • David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson: Film Art: An Introduction. Pages: 155 -326 • Priority of focus – – Ch. 8 The Relation of Shot to Shot: Editing Ch. 7 The Shot: Cinematographic Properties Ch. 6 The Shot: Mise-en-scene Ch. 9 Sound in the Cinema