Looking at Movies Overview Cinematic Language The visual

Looking at Movies Overview

Cinematic Language • The visual vocabulary of film • Composed of myriad integrated techniques and concepts • Connects the viewer to the story while deliberately concealing the means by which it does so

Active Viewing of Movies • Recognize the many tools and principles that filmmakers employ to tell stories, convey information and meaning, and influence emotions and ideas. • Understand movies as narrative, as artistic expression, and as a reflection of the cultures that produce and consume them.

Sweeney Todd - the play

Sweeney Todd - the Movie

Film Analysis • Analysis – the act of taking something complicated apart to figure out what it is made of and how it all fits together. • Step 1 – Identify the tools and techniques within a scene, sequence, or movie • Step 2 – Investigate the function and potential effect of that combination

Film Meaning • No matter how many different layers of meaning are in a movie, each layer is either implicit or explicit. • Implicit – lies below the surface of a movie’s story and presentation, more interpretive than explicit meaning • Explicit – available on the surface of the movie, obvious

Film Construction • Shots – unbroken span of action captured by an uninterrupted run of a motion-picture camera • Editing – the joining together of discrete shots • With each transition from one shot to another, a movie is able to move the viewer through time and space

How Movies Work • Persistence of vision – the process by which the human brain retains an image for a fraction of a second longer than the eye records it (Apparent motion) • Phi phenomenon – the illusion of movement created by events that succeed each other rapidly • Critical flicker fusion – occurs when a single light flickers on and off with such speed that the individual pulses of light fuse together to give the illusion of continuous light

Film Form • Movies are highly organized, and deliberately assembled and sculpted by filmmakers. • The synthesis of elemental systems – mise-en-scène, sound, narrative, editing, and others – constitutes a movie’s overall form. • Form – means by which the subject is expressed • Content – the subject of an artwork • They are interrelated, interdependent, and interactive

Movie Types • • Narrative Experimental Documentary Animation

Narrative • Narrative – a cinematic structure in which the filmmakers arrange story events in a cause-andeffect sequence • Narrative film – a movie devoted to conveying fictional or fictionalized stories

Narrative • • Tell a story Directed towards fiction Based on screenplays Primary purpose is entertainment with commercial intent

Realism vs Abstraction • Realism – a tendency to view or represent things as they really are • Abstraction – an interest in or concern for the nonrealistic, speculative, or fantastic • Movies can be both realistic and abstract

Employees Leaving the Factory - 1895

A Trip to the Moon - 1902