Introduction to Film Studies Miseenscne Emphasizing the horizontal

Introduction to Film Studies Mise-en-scène

• Emphasizing the horizontal expanse, widescreens were initially associated with spectacle genres – Westerns, travelogues, musicals, historical epics. • David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Attack

• Widescreen can be used for intimate drama as well. Kurosawa’s Read Beard creates a deep space photography with foreground, middle ground and background images.

Framing (Sizes and Shapes) • The frame is normally rectangular. Filmmakers can change its shape by attaching masks over either the camera’s lens to block the passage of light. A circular mask is called iris, frequently used in silent cinema. A binoculars scene in Jean Renoir’s Boudou saved from downing 16. 00

Masks in various sizes and shapes

Mask reveals and hides: Buster Keaton’s Neighbors A girl for wedding but her wedding is not luxurious. Neighbors 12. 00

The stone entrance frames a character in Michelangelo Antonioni, L’Eclipse

• Split-screen creates different frame shapes. Two or more different images, each with its own frame size and shape appear within the larger frame. Telephone conversation in Philips Smalley’s Suspense (1913) 4. 00 from Suspense

• The moment before guided missiles are launched is made more tense by splitting the frame into several images and giving the audience a good knowledge about what is going on. Robert Aldrich’s Twilight’s Last Gleaming Nuclear Weapon

Framing (On and Off-Screen Space) • 6 zones of off-screen spaces • The space beyond each of the four edges of the frame – left, right, top and bottom • The space behind the set • The space behind the camera • By using these unseen space, the director can create surprise, suspense and other effects

Framing (Off. Screen Space) Woody Allen notice somebody whom he knows and talks to her off screen. (Off-screen) space exists beyond the right end of the frame. Manhattan (1980)

• Many characters appear and diverse actions take place in Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Good Bye South, Good Bye (1997). The camera captures a group of people on-screen and move on to another group and action leaving behind people and actions offscreen. Quarrel 24. 00

Framing by Camera Movement • Camera height, distance, angle and level can be changed within the shot – mobile framing – a unique aspect of film • The change of framing is achieved by moving the camera during filming. • Several kinds of camera movement • Pan, Tilt, Tracking, and Crane

Framing • The pan turns the camera horizontally on a vertical axis - horizontal scanning of space pscycho • The tilt moves the camera vertically up and down on a horizontal axis Rear Window • Tilt up and tilt down

Framing • In the tracking (dolly or trucking or traveling) shot, the camera as a whole change position • Day for Night

• Example of tracking shots Martin Scorsese’s Age of Innocence (1993) • Behind the Scene 1. 09

• Tracking shot can be taken by using a hand-held camera.

• Fluid movements achieved by a hand-held camera in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) 20 dollar tips

• Crane shot – a shot taken by a camera mounted on a moving crane or jib.

Dynamic crane shot in Luc Besson’s Leon 5. 50

Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) 0. 58 Jill’s arrival in

Crane shot in Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Tales of the Taira Clan (1955) 3. 50

• Describe the camera movements in the opening of Orson Welles’s A Touch of Evil Opening shot

• The shot size can be changed without moving the camera – zoom shot • The zoom lens with adjustable focal length permits the photographer to change the shot size • Impression of perspectival depth changes • The Shining

• Tracking shot – the camera moves – not a zoom shot. Why the depth of field remains more or less the same. Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Legend of 1900 1. 57

• Dolly-zoom (Vertigo shot) - Dolly and zoom shots employed together. When zooming in, the depth of field become shallower and the perspective narrower, when zooming out, the depth deepens and the perspectives widens. • Dolly zoom; or vertigo shot – zoom in and track out at the same time Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) • Vertigo shot

Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas uses a dolly-zoom. • The Goodfellas

One more example of dolly zoom in Jaws Raft scene