Introduction to Film Studies: A Comprehensive Overview

Posted on Aug 30, 2024 in Arts and Humanities

Unit 2: Introduction to Film Studies

Index

  • The filmic image: optical and technical aspects
  • Film production, distribution, and exhibition
  • Elements of cinematography: frame, shot, sequence.
  • Cinematographic language: Mise en scène, Cinematography, Montage / Editing, Sound

3 Perspectives on Film

  • Three approaches to film studies:
    • Economic: movies as economic commodity for consumption (film industry)
    • Technical: film as implementation of technological innovation
    • Artistic: film as personal aesthetic expression of an author
  • Film history as reconstruction of:
    • Technical developments
    • Economic changes
    • Aesthetic and artistic evolution

The Filmic Image

  • Film as one of the recording arts (photography, sound recording): use of recording technologies: Sound and Image
  • “Moving pictures”: precedents: W. Horner’s Zoetrope (1834), Reynaud’s Praxinoscope (1877) and Dickson’s Kinetoscope (1889)

Origins

  • 1888: Eastman Kodak film stock
  • 1891: Edison & Dickson, the kinetograph camera and kinetoscope viewing box
  • 1895: Lumière Brothers’ cinèmatographe: “Workers Leaving the Factory” (1895)

The Filmic Image: Optics

  • The Phi Phenomenon or persistence of vision: brain retains image for a short period after it has disappeared. Illusion of moving image.
  • Flicker: eliminated when images are projected at the rate of 24 frames per second.

Technical Aspects: What Devices are Necessary to Produce a Film?

  • Camera:
    • Lens: angle, distance, focus
    • Movement: pan, tilt, roll // tracking, hand-held, steadycam…
  • Film gauge:
    • Strip of photographic film, perforated on the sides
    • A base or transparent substrate acting as support medium for photosensitive emulsion.
  • Processing in the film lab: Filmstock
  • From the original camera negative (OCN) to release prints.
  • Grain, contrast, tone, color, aspect ratio, frame size.

Technical Aspects (2)

  • Sound recording and reproduction:
    • Optical soundtrack: sound signals, electric signals and light signals imprinted on film
    • The problem of synchronization
    • Stereophonic sound. The Dolby system.
  • Reproduction: projector + screen:
    • Pull-down mechanism
    • Projection rate: 24 frames per second, double projector system

Digital Cinematography

  • Technology introduced by Sony in the 1980s
  • Digital recording:
    • Use of digital cameras: 1920 x 1080 pixel digital video cameras based on CCD technology (sensors)
    • MiniDV camcorders: low budget digital film
  • Sound, editing, mastering processes are also done using digital devices.
  • Digital exhibition:
    • No flicker, grain or dust on image
    • Digital Cinema Initiative, 2002: creating a standard for digital projection

Elements of Filmic Language

Film, sequences, scenes, shots and frames. Example: The Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix (1999).

  1. Frame: Each of the still images which make up the complete motion picture. Standard projection rate: 24 frames / second.
  2. Shot: a continuous strip of motion picture film, created of a series of frames, that runs for an uninterrupted period of time.
  3. Scene: Dramatic unit. Action in a single location and continuous time.
  4. Sequence: a series of scenes which form a distinct narrative unit, connected either by unity of location or unity of time.

Elements for Analysis (1): Mise en Scène

  • Dramatic Elements:
    1. Lighting / illumination:
      • Intensity: sharp / soft
      • Direction: frontal, side, backlight, zenith light, low angle
      • Source: general or key light, fill light
    2. Acting / interpretation:
      • The star system / Typecasting
      • Schools: Stanislavsi / Strasberg (method acting), physical (Grotowski), Actors Studio (Meisner technique)
    3. Scenography, costume design, makeup
  • Cinematographic Elements:
    • Composition: centered or not, frontal or not (balance)
    • Depth: Suggesting profundity and multiple planes

Elements for Analysis (2): Cinematography

  • Depth of field: distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene. Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960)
  • Framing:
    • Field – out of field
    • Point of view: Distance, angle, level, height
  • Duration:
    • Length of shot, narrative rhythm
    • Long take or Sustained shot (internal montage, Deleuze). Examples: Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958); Joe Wright’s Atonement (2007)

Distance and Angle

  • Distance between camera and object filmed:
    • Long shot (establishing shot) and extreme long shot
    • Full shot
    • American shot (3/4 shot)
    • Medium shot
    • Close-up (+ Italian shot or extreme close-up)
  • Camera angle:
    • High angle: Sin City
    • Low angle: Touch of Evil
    • Bird’s eye view: Working Girl
    • Eye level

Editing or Montage

  • External montage: creating continuity and narrativity
  • Continuity editing
  • Intellectual montage or montage of attractions (Eisenstein)
  • Raccord: direction, outlook and position.
  • Transition between shots: fade-in/out, dissolve, direct cut.
  • Relationship between shots:
    • Graphic: similarity / contrast between graphic elements
    • Rhythmic: shot duration (Pudovkin)
    • Spatio-temporal

Continuity Editing

  • Diegetic sound
  • Match on action (raccord)
  • Time continuity: Ellipsis, Flashback
  • Playing with continuity: jump-cut
  • Cross-cutting

Continuity Editing: The 180º Rule

  • Spatial continuity
  • Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers (2002)
  • Theatrical convention: The fourth wall
  • Breaking the rule:
    • 360º shot
    • Speaking to audience

Sound

  • Interaction between sound and image
  • Anticipating
  • Contradicting or confirming images

Dialogue

  • Diegetic sound
  • Extradiegetic sound: voice over

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Sound Effects

Sound editing

Music

: Soundtrack

The birth of symphonic soundtrack