film as representation lecture one. reflecting life one of the ways in which reality may be...
TRANSCRIPT
Film as RepresentationLecture one
Reflecting life
• One of the ways in which reality may be represented
• But - something very distinct about film and cinema
Cultural phenomenon
• Important cultural institution – has shaped fashions and ideals for more
than a century.
• First truly massive form of entertainment.
Art and technology
• Dependent on technology and technological sophistication
• Special form of experiencing film:– communal experience– immobile, in darkness, among other
people – connection with dreaming (collective
dream)
Dimensions of film
• Technology• Art (creativity of individuals and
teams) – the most collective of art forms.
• Market (economy)
Film as art
• Started as a technical invention
• Lumiere brothers: thought that the interest with film will die down after a few years
• Georges Melies: film can create illusion, can create fantastic, magical reality, impossible to find in real life
Lumiere brothers and Melies
• They epitomise the two general aesthetic paths for the development of the cinema
Reconstruction - recording of reality, documenting it…
Stylisation - creation of fantastic worlds, impressionism.
Reality: documenting the world
Saving Private Ryan
Artifice
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton
Avatar – J. Cameron
Cinema as art
• Illusion: not art but lived experience.
• Films come very close to representing real people.
Realism and artifice
• As theorist Christian Metz has suggested, the representation of movement makes film seem more real to us than any other art
• Cinema the most realistic of the arts;
• at the same time the most artificial of them (an elaborate technical process)
Why we see movement?
• Accident of biology – the persistence of vision
• When light flashes fast enough we no longer see it as flashes but continuous light (24 frames per second).
Basic film vocabulary
• film, motion picture, movie (moving picture), flick (→ to flicker)
• cinema – building and institution• movie theater, screen, movie /
film show• fiction film, feature (length) film
(vs. trick / story film), documentary
Cinematography
• The art of photography and camerawork in film-making
• misé-en-scene – everything the camera records inside the frame, a variety of choices that create specific meaning.
• editing / montage • script• sound: soundtrack, – voice-over (narration), – diegetic / extradiegetic sound
• Cut • Take• Shot
Camera Movement
• Pan: Camera moves from side to side from a stationary position
• Tilt: Movement up or down from a stationary position
• Tracking: The camera moves to follow a moving object or person
Photography and camera
• camera lens: wide angle / telephoto / zoom lens
• focus – in focus ≠ out of focus (soft focus)• to shoot (a film, scene), a shot, a take • the film stock: (celluloid + photosensitive
emulsion)• film frame: film gauge (16mm, 35 mm, 70
mm, I-MAX)• aspect ratios (standard: 1.33:1 or 4:3)• speed of motion: normal (24 fps), fast,
slow, time-lapse
Sources for the course• Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An
Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill.• Monaco, James. How to Read a Film. Oxford: OUP.• Nelmes, Jill (ed.). An Introduction to Film Studies. London:
Routeledge.
Handouts
• http://www.uni.opole.pl/~stann
• • http://www.uni.opole.pl/~stann/
materialy/
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