General Review Distinguish between miseenscne cinematography montage What
General Review • Distinguish between: – mise-en-scène – cinematography – montage • What are some terms or techniques associated with each of these?
Mise-en-scène • costume • lighting • composition of the frame
Cinematography • • • depth of field distance (shot length) angle and height canting pan, tilt, tracking take
Montage/Editing • • • cuts axis of action shot/reverse shot eyeline match on action
Continuity • What is the continuity system of editing?
MLA Assignment • Using library databases and indices or other reference-type search materials. • Create a list of five critical sources related to a specific topic closely related to our course content.
Guidelines 1. The sources should be secondary sources— do NOT give me primary or tertiary sources. 2. The sources should be in English, and I urge that you choose relatively recent sources. 3. Of the five sources, at least two must be nonprint and taken from a reference database. I will show you how to access the databases.
Secondary Sources • Critical sources by named scholars • Published in academic journals • Published by presses with some standing • Do not use anonymous Internet sources.
Print and Non-Print • Print sources will likely be books—that is what I recommend. • Non-print sources should be obtained from the reference databases in our library. • I will now show you how to use these. • Academic Search Premier will likely give the best results.
Guidelines 4. The sources should be displayed in proper MLA form, including alphabetization and other conventions. Use the sample below as a model.
Book Example Andrew, Dudley. What Cinema Is!: Bazin’s Quest and Its Charge. Chichester: Wiley. Blackwell, 2010. Print.
Database Example Knowles, Kim. “Travels with a Camera: Speed and Embodiment in Early French Avant. Garde Film. ” Studies in French Cinema 13. 1 (2012): 17 -31. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 Apr. 2017.
Guidelines 5. These assignments are to be done individually —not collaboratively. 6. Do not cut and paste from the Internet to produce the copy that you hand in. Retype the entries. 7. Do not record an entry without considering its relation to this course and your topic. If I can see no clear relation, you will not get credit for these entries.
Modernism • General term related to fine and performing arts which coincides with the rise of Realism in the midto late- 19 th century and which lasts until the post WWII era. • The corresponding economic, industrial, political, and general social developments of the same time period • Painting and fine arts (examples): Impressionism and Post-impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Nosferatu
Dadaism • An anti-art, anti-war movement • Some political content (like Expressionism but unlike Surrealism) • Lasted roughly from 1916 to the early 1920 s • Centered first in Zurich in Switzerland, later associated with Paris and other large continental Western European cities
Hugo Ball
Dada Questions • • How does one recognize art? What is the basis of the art work? Who or what in fact decides? How do we resolve the objective/subjective divide in judgments of taste?
Determining the Art Object • Tradition: genre/form, durability, materials • Physical qualities of the object: uniqueness, skill of execution, reproduction of reality • Abstract qualities: beauty, symbolism • Value: monetary or cultural value • Consensus: of the public, of critics, of scholars • Institutions: the museum; academic departments • Associations: patronage • Function or use: uselessness • Subjective judgments of taste: Kant
Surrealism • A major art movement touching upon poetry, philosophy, painting, sculpture, to some degree performance • Linked to theories of mind which emphasize an unconscious (therefore, for many, Freudian psychoanalysis) • Hard to date, but after 1920, and lasting through WWII • International but largely confined to the avant-garde
Problems in Surrealism • traditional themes (religion, sexuality, and mythology, for instance) • new themes (a particular philosophy, the selfconsciousness of art observing itself)
Problems of Film Form 1. Is the film narrative or non-narrative? 2. What kind of timeline does the film have? 3. Is there exposition or character development? Is there a pre-history (back story) to the film? 4. Do the characters have goals (or motives)? Do the goals change over time? 5. Which characters are in conflict? Is the conflict symbolic?
Problems of Film Form 6. Is there rising action based on complication and resolution? 7. Is there repetition of action in the film? 8. Whose point of view do we get? Is it a consistent point of view? 9. Is there some chief goal which is reached? Where is the climax (if there is one)? 10. Do we have a feeling of closure at the end?
Ballet méchanique • Directors: Ferdnand Léger and Dudley Murphy • Release date: 1924
Dudley Murphy
Title • What is suggested by the titles of today’s films? • How do they live up to or work against the titles?
Human and Machine • Bordwell and Thompson suggest that B. M. aims to conflate our understanding of “natural” and “unnatural. ” • It emphasizes the machine-like qualities of objects that are in fact not machines • It draws attention to the rhythmic regularity of our machine-filled environment.
Theme and Variation • What does this phrase usually refer to? • How do Bordwell and Thompson adapt it for film purposes (357)? • How does it apply to today’s films and for what purpose?
Methods • • juxtaposition perspective repetition rhythm
Two Segments • 1. 10 -2. 10 • 9. 15 -10. 15
Themes/Subjects • Amusements: the swing, amusement park rides, a children’s slide • Time/energy elements: pendulums, pistons • Socially conditioned responses: hats, diet, smiling, sexual behavior (suggested) • Knowledge: media • Shapes: circles, triangles • Signals: alarms, sirens, bells
Juxtapositions • Given this list of themes, discuss how their juxtaposition underlines the mechanical aspects of life. • You can go further to question the implied moral, political, or social meanings if you wish, but you need not do this.
Questions or Agree/Disagree • Is modern life a reduction of human activity to machine activity? Consider, for instance, your class schedule. • Do we behave like machines in a sort of “unnatural” regularity, as opposed, perhaps, to a more natural one in the past?
Charlie Chaplin
Chaplin in Modern Times
Self-referentiality • Agree/disagree: • Is the mechanical nature of modern life a product of technological integration, of which, ironically, film is a component? • Are the technological processes of production replicated in the content of experience?
Critical Content • Is there a class criticism, an institutional criticism, an aesthetic criticism implied in the film? • Or, is the film praiseful of its society and of its mechanical aspects?
Interest Level • Are Ballet méchanique and Entr’acte boring? • Are they still relevant or just made for a specific audience at a certain time (a period piece)?
Turvey*** • Revisionist piece about the radical or revolutionary programs or intentions of A-G Modernism • Challenges claim that the film is about the function of technology in radical social change
Standard Reading • “it is concerned with a distinct type of radical social transformation in modernity: the putative change in human perceptual experience of reality brought about by the increased pace of life attendant upon technical progress, industrialization, and other forces of modernization” (42).
Remaking Ballet méchanique • Could this film being made today? • If one were made on the same “non. Hollywood” principles, what would it be like? It might be very different, for instance, but what would the emphasis on rhythm and abstraction be like in the contemporary world?
Entr’acte • Director: René Clair • Release Date: 1924
Segmentation (!) 1. A canon moves around with the Paris skyline in the background. Francis Picabia and Erik Satie enter (hopping) the scene and fire the canon. 2. Segments showing chimneys from various angles interspersed with balloon-headed dolls 3. Boxing gloves interspersed with traffic scenes 4. Architectural images, columns, other ordered patterns (Duchamp and Man Ray playing chess) 5. Ballet dancer with interspersed images
Segmentation 6. Man with gun and “target” 7. Picabia with gun; beginning of funeral sequence (includes Tristan Tzara) 8. Turning into the funeral chase 9. The coffin comes to rest, with consequences 10. André Breton breaks through a barrier marked “The End”
Title • The title in English means intermission. • What is an intermission, and why would the film be titled thus?
Narrative Subtext • Is there any evidence of narrative form in Entr’acte?
Speed and Death • The two themes are related in that the pace of the film increases greatly as we get closer to the end while chasing the coffin. • If the coffin represents death, it seems ironic that everyone would chase it so fervently. • Or, how should we read this image? • segment: 10 passim
Knowles** • “Traditional forms of physical displacement such as walking, running and cycling, therefore give way to more mechanized forms of travel as a metaphor for the building pace, and tension, of the action” (20). • Distinction between the two “parts” of the film (21)
O’Leary* • Historical information about the origins of Entr’acte, especially Picabia’s and Satie’s involvement (32 -33)
Sandro*** • “The first part of Entr'acte is for the most part non-narrative. Like Leger's Ballet mecanique, also made in 1924, it could be seen as an exercise in visual rhythm” (45).
Eccentricity • Is there any place for such eccentricity in our own time and society? • Or is this a stereotype of the artist? • What might be comparable today?
For Next Meeting • Watch: Stagecoach and The Searchers
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