Cinema Midterm
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- Lumière films
- ...
- A Trip to the Moon
- Méliès; 1902 - melodramatic - shifting from the everyday - first sci-fi film - multiple takes to form a narrative - chronology of sequences - colonial narrative
- Anémic Cinéma
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- A nous la liberté
- René Clair; 1931 - ex-con movie emphasizing freedom, populism and the aestheticism of cinematic movement - "the most striking thing in the writings of M. Pagnol and most of his colleagues who have joined this debate is their cockiness and their astonishing ignorance of the cinema." - successful transition to sound
- Marius
- Maurice Pagnol; 1931 - credit sequence use of sound (diegetic sound - "percolator" or coffee-maker sequence early on - regional accents/particularities of the human voice (this isn't possible without sound!) - sound vs. gesture - 3 kinds of music: mute trumpet (rustic, local flavor of Marseilles, laid-back); orchestral - sense of character, locale, adventure, departure - Sound FX: much more of a presence; horns-low pitch; coffee-shrill; convey psychic reality for Marius - Speech: closer to Mediterranean; more hand gestures; very theatrical - voice modulating creates emotion - Marius wants: freedom; leaves through the window to escape his father; Oedipus - either run away or kill the father - french natural pride - sound becomes structural to the story
- Pépé le Moko
- Julien Duvivier; 1937 - poetic realism: not a movement nor an absolute aesthetic style, but a mood, tendency or view on the world - working class interest - JEAN GABIN. - crime in a big city; working class and underworld; haunts: the "zone," quartiers populaires - precursor to Film Noir - light scheme -Pépé: still has humanity; doesn't shoot cops above the leg; playing the game; not a brute criminal; really nice clothing; artistic; sleek; iconography in the making -Gaby: from Paris; working class family; not in love with her rich husband; place blanche; coded as fine, elegant; associated with jewelry; soft focus - Casbah: "the underworld;" associated with criminality, lower social classes; women defined by body type (prostitutes); men defined by nationality
- Grand Illusion
- Jean Renoir; 1937 - visual/creative upbringing: son of Auguste Renoir, the impressionist painter - social consciousness of 1930s France: economic depression, with financial and political scandals, lead to strikes; popular front - liked the idea of people working together - very open-minded; willing to try - films are deeply humanistic -"realism:" mobile fram, long takes, deep-focus photog., complex mise-en-scène
- Rome Open City
- Roberto Rossellini; 1945 - based on a "true" story: a Roman parish priest shot by the Germans - scandalizing critical stance against the flaws of Italian life - differences with 1945-1950 films (testimonies of war, resistance stories) - related films in France/England use voice-over narration to explain the image, with an emotional distance from war and providing happy endings - Rome not narrated but involves the viewers more actively; affords us space in the narration by simple, effective tricks - characters side by side (not face to face) - background closed, open foreground for spectator (as addressee) - no suspense (shadows, plot structure), yet terrifying noises - humor makes it real life; documentary-esque - irony - Rossellini and Christian Humanist - torture scene: cross life; priest begging for his life
- Bicycle Thieves
- Vittorio De Sica; 1948 - neorealism - using non professional actors - presenting the real - the "everyman" - very roman accents - there's no distracting star power - domestic tensions in Ricci's apartment - Ricci's wife a much stronger character; doesn't complain; takes charge of things - crowds in Rome vs. individual
- La Strada
- Frederico Fellini; 1954 - anti-linear plot; breaks with convention - psychological progression: follow Gelsomina and Zampanò - thus: if lacking in verisimilitude or "realism" at the narrative level, still profound sense of realism at a symbolic level, because the "journey" is spiritual, not physical - a man who discovers himself in the last 30 seconds of the movie - his film put italian cinema back on the map - begins and ends at the beach; circulo
- mise-en-scène
- "putting into scene" or staging an event. The director controls what appears in the frame with: setting, lighting, costume, acting. Each functions within the unity of the film.
- setting
- think about décor and locus, etc. (home, studio, nature, etc.) - an already existing locale or a studio
- props
- sometimes they become motifs (camera/lenses/flashes in Rear Window)
- costume and makeup
- sometimes with conventions/genres, coordinated with setting
- lighting
- shapes objects by highlights and shadows
- light quality
- the relative intensity of illumination (hard=close, soft=diffuse)
- light direction
- the path of light form its source to the illuminated object, e.g. a body: frontal, side - back- (edged or rim lighting), top (to emphasize cheekbones, forehead)
- light source
- actual surroundings or other; directors normally use two light sources - key light and fill light (classical Hollywood filmmaking used three point lighting: key, fill, back)
- highlights
- patches of relative brightness
- attached shading
- when light conforms to the object's shape or surface features
- cast shadows
- light and shadows are projected
- figure expression and movement
- acting (person, animal,, object, pure shape, etc.). Sometimes a character's expression is generalized and becomes a type
- time
- rhythm: beat, pace, tempo, patterns of stronger and weaker accents
- space
- viewpoint, the image's composition of the world
- color
- monochromatic, filtered, etc.
- compositional balance
- how figures, color and light control what eyes are drawn to
- depth
- representation of phenomenal space
- volume
- shading, shape, movement
- planes
- overlap of edges
- Photography
- writing in movement: how the shot is filmed
- photographic
- aspects: lens effect (i.e. masks, zoom-in, -out; iris-in/ -out, etc.
- framing
- position of the camera in relation to the object
- angle
- straight-on, high- and low-angle
- level
- level, canted, etc
- height
- one can film on object at a straight-on angle yet still be at a high or low position
- distance
- they're relative terms, so consider each shot as an individual function
- extreme long shot
- vistas; it includes area within the image that corresponds roughly to the audience's view of an area within the proscenium in the theater
- FS/long shot
- full shot, shows the whole human figure
- Medium shot
- relatively close, reveals the body from knees or waist up
- Close up
- detailed view of person/object; usually includes only the head
- extreme close up
- detailed view of part of a face or of an object
- POV=point of view
- (not a shot strictly speaking, but a subjective function of a shot) - Camera movement, mobile framing; changes of angle, height, distance, or level within the shot - when the camera's position (base) remains stationary but the view (lens) rotates
- pan
- rotation on a vertical axis, swiveling left or right
- tilt
- rotation on a horizontal axis, swiveling up or down - when the camera's position moves horizontally or vertically
- tracking or dolly shot
- movement forward, backward, circularly, diagonally, side-to-side
- crane shot
- movement high/low, forward/backward, side-to-side (helicopter/airplane shot)
- editing
- articulation between one shot and the next - the nature of the relation between two shots
- optical effects
- can produce a gradual displacement from shot A to shot B
- fade-out
- the shot gradually darkens to black before the subsequent scene
- fade-in
- the shot gradually lightens from black
- dissolve
- brief superimposition of the end of shot A & beginning of shot B (A "bleeds" into B)
- wipe
- shot B displaces shot A by means of a line moving across the screen (vert or horiz)
- cut
- instantaneous change (e.g., "match (on action)" cuts maintain continuity; jump cut
- graphic (match)
- purely pictorial qualities (mise-en-scène, cinematography) are composed on similar, continuous, or discontinuous shapes, colors, overall composition or movement
- rhythmic
- accelerating, decelerating, patterns or beats, etc
- spatial
- relates any two shots through similarity, difference, or the development of spatial aspects; cut from a spatial whole to one of its parts or vice-versa
- tempral
- ...