Film notes PDF

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Film notes ● Mise-en-scene ○ Putting into scene ● Components of mise-en-scene ○ Setting ■ Prop: an object in the setting has a function within the ongoing action. ■ It can become a motif ■ Decorative pattern or design ■ A distinctive feature or dominant idea in an artistic or literary composition ○ Costume and makeup ■ Costume can have a great variety on specific functions in the films over all form ■ Costumes may reinforce narrative and thematic patterns ■ Make up has evolved a lot ○ Lighting ■ Lighting creates highlights and shadows ■ Highlight: a patch of relative brightness on a surface ■ Shading: Shadows/portion of darkness. Lighting quality refers to the relative intensity of the illumination ■ Hard lighting : creates clearly defined, shadows, crisp textures, sharp edges ■ Soft lighting: diffused illumination ● Noon day= hard light ● Over cast= soft light ■ Direction of lighting in a shot refers to the path of light from its source or sources to object lit ■ Lighting types: front, side, back, under, top ■ Front lighting: eliminates shadows ■ Hard sidelight: sculptus characters features ■ Backlighting: comes from behind the subject (no other sources of light; creates silhouettes) (combined with frontal: contour) ■ Under lighting: comes from below the subject.Tends to distort features ■ Top lighting: from straight above. Creates a glamorous image ■ Key and fill light: Key light is the primary sources, brightest illumination and casting strongest shadows, most directional. Fill light is less intense that fills in, softening or eliminating shadows cast by key lights ■ Three point lighting: (back, key, fill) Backlight typically comes from behind and above the figure, the key light comes diagonally from the front and a fill comes from a position near the camera. Key will usually be closer to the figure or brighter than the fill ■ High key lighting: overall lighting design that uses fill light and back light to create relatively low contrast between brighter and darker areas ■ Low key lighitng: creates stronger contrast and sharper, dark shadows ○ Staging and performing

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Director controls what we see on screen. Acting is what makes the movie good. Acting performances ● Individualized and stylized Type casting: select the actors/ directed to conform to what audiences expected Motion capture: where the whole body is filmed Performance capture: concentrates on the face ● Actor may have to adjust body depending on how far from the camera they are

Find characters face in upper half of frame Balance left and right halves: bilateral symmetry Color gains viewer attention Monochromatic color design: emphasizes a single color, varying it only in purity or lightness ■ Depth cues: shapes on screen 3D/ a space has volume and distinct planes ■ Planes: layers of space occupied by persons or objects; foreground, middle and back ■ Aerial perspective: hazing of move distant planes ● Movement one of the most important because it strongly suggests both planes and volumes ■ Size Diminution: figures and objects farther away from us are seen to get proportionally smaller ● All these depth cues are monocular, which means that the illusion of depth requires input from only one eye ● Stereopsis is a binocular depth cue ■ Shallow-space composition: little depth and the closest and most distant depth and the closest and most distant planes seem only separated ■ Deep-space composition: significant distance seems to separate planes Cinematography ■ Cinematography: Depends to a large extent on photography ■ Contrast: refers to the comparative difference between the darkest and lightest areas of a frame ■ Exposure: regulates how much light npasses through the camera lens ■ Filters: slices of glass or gelatin put in front of the lens of the lens of the camera or printer to reduce certain frequencies of light reaching the film ■ Tinting: dip film stockin bath of dye ■ Toning: Dye added during the developing on the positive print ■ Rates: frames per second ● 8&64 fps or 24, 25, 30 fps ■ Ramping: varying the frame rate during shooting ■ Focal length: distance from the center of the lens to the point where light

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rays converge to a point of focus on the film ● Wide-lens: less than 35 mm ● Normal: 35mm-50mm ● Telephoto (long): 100mm or greater ■ Zoom lens: enlarge a picture ■ Depth of field: a range of distances within which objects can be photographed in sharp focus, given a certain exposure setting ■ Racking focus=pulling focus: switch between foreground and background ■ Super imposition: images laid over one another creating multiple perspectives in one frame ■ Rear projection: people in cars ■ Matte work: part of the film that use to be a painting Framing ■ Size and shape of frame matter ■ Frame defines onscreen and offscreen space ■ Framing also creates a vantage point and that has a certain distance, angle and height Frame Dimensions and shape ■ Film makers have a rectangle to work with ● Decide the width and change shape of image inside rectangle ○ Aspect ratio ■ Aspect ratio: ratio of frame width to frame height ● Widescreen began early ■ Synchronized sound technology in the late 1920s demanded more standardized aspect ratios ■ Early 1930s academy ration ■ The simplest way to create a widescreen image is by masking it at some stage in production or exhibition ● Hard matte ■ Another way to create a wide screen image by using an anamorphie process ● A special lens squeezes the image horizontally, either during filming or in printing ○ Masks and multiple images ■ Other images on an image is done by a mask ● A mask goes over either the cameras or the printers lens to block the passage of light ■ Iris: a moving circular mask that opens to reveal or closes to conceal a scene ■ Multiple frame/ split screen: two or more images each with its own frame dimension and shape, appear with the larger frame

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On screen and off screen space ■ Up to the audience to determine what happens off-screen Camera position: angle, level, height and distance of framing ■ Angle ● The frame positions us at some angle on the subject ○ Straight on/ high/ low ■ Level ● Frame is tipped to one side or the other-> canted ■ Height ● Height is related to camera angle ● Rotate and position camera angles are different ■ Distance ● Extreme long shot: human figure is tiny or lost ○ Framing for landscapes, birds-eye views or cities and other vistas ● Long shot: figures are more prominent about background still dominates ● Medium long shot: human figure is framed from about knees up ● Medium shot: frames the human body from the waist up ● Medium close up: frames the body from the chest up ● Close-up: shot showing just the head, hands, feet, or a small object ● Extreme close-up: singles out a portion of the face or isolates and magnifies and object The mobile frame ■ Mobile framing allows the filmmaker to change the angle, level, height during the shot ● Types of mobile framing ○ Pan (panorama): movement swirls the camera on a vertical axis, on screen pan scans spans horizontally ○ Tilt: rotates the camera on a horizontal axis, up and down ○ Tracking/ dolly shot: camera as a white changes position, traveling in any direction along the ground ○ Crane shot: camera moves above ground level. May move vertically like an elevator ● Movement and machinery ○ dolly=tracking= crane ○ Body camera ○ Handheld camera (on shoulder) ● The zoom and the mobile frame ○ The zoom lens reduces or blows up some portion of the image ○ Zoom enlargement doesn’t alter the aspects or positions of the objects we see; our vantage point is the same at the

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end of the shot as at the beginning ○ zoom= steadily magnified or demagnified ● Framing mobility and space ○ Reframing: camera adjust for the frame ● Functions of the long take ○ Long takes: unusually lengthy shots ● What is editing ○ Cut: one scene to another/ join ○ Fade-out: gradually darkens the end of a shot to black ○ Fade-in: lightens a shot from black ○ Dissolve: end of shot a to start of shot b ○ Wipe: replacement Dimensions of film editing ■ Editing offers the filmmaker four basic areas of choice and control ● Graphic relations between shot a & b ● Rhythmic relations between shot a & b ● Spatial relations between shot a & b ● Temporal relations between shot a & b ■ Graphic editing: matches and clashes ● Graphic match: graphics may be edited to achieve smooth continuity or abrupt contrast ■ Editing shapes chronology ● Flashforwards: present-future-present ■ Editing condenses or expands duration ● Elliptical editing: presents an action in such a way that in consuming less time on screen than it does in the story ● Overlapping editing: prolongs time, makes it longer on screen Spacial continuity: the 180 system ■ Axis of action: builds scene around/ 180 line ■ 180 system: can be imaged as the birds eye view ■ The 180 system ensures that relaxitive positions in the frame remain consistent ■ The 180 system ensures consistent eyelines/ screen direction Whos there? Where are they? ■ Establishing shot: where everything is ■ shot/reverse shot: once the 180 line has been established, we can show first one end point of the line, then the other ■ Eyeline match: people in shot a and b looking at one another and it shows The clients case: developing the spatial layout ■ Reestablishing shot: reestablishes the overall space ■ Common pattern in continuity/ style editing: establishment/ breakdown/ reestablishment ■ Match on action: carrying a single movement across a cut Cheating with cuts

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■ Cheat cut: slightly mismatch the positions of characters or objects Crosscutting ■ Cross-cutting: one place to another, alternating Montage sequence ■ Lengthy shots into a few moments Sound: ■ Rhytmn: beat or pulse; tempo or pace ● Pattern or accents (or stronger and weaker beats) ■ Fidelity refers to the extent to which the sound is faithful to the source as we conceive it ■ Sound has a spatial dimension because it comes from a source ■ Diegetic sound is sound that has a source in the story world ■ Nondiegetic sound- coming from a source outside the story world ■ Sound also permits the filmmaker to represent time in various ways ■ Synchronous sound- hear the sound the same as we see what makes it ■ Asynchronous- out of sync sound ■ Simultaneous sound- sound take place at the same time as the image ■ Nonsimultaneous sound- hearing previous sound Diegetic sound ■ Sound simultaneous in story with image ● Can either be external (objective) or internal (subjective) ■ Sound earlier in story than image ● Sonic flashbacl Table 7.2: temporal relations of sound in cinema Space of sources Time

Diegetic (story space)

Nondiegeic (nonstory)

Sound flashback, image forward with sound con’t in present; sound bridge

Sound marked as past but over images. Sound of john kennedy speech put over images of us

2. Sound simultaneous in story with image

External: dialogue, effects, music Internal: thoughts of characters heald

Sound marked as simultaneous with images

3. Nonsimultaneous; sound from later in story than image

Sound of flashward; image flashback with sound cont’ in present; character narrates earlier events; sound bridge

Sound marked as later put ole images

1. Nonsimultaneous ; sound from earlier in story than image

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Sound bridge- sound from one scene to the other ○ Sound later in story than image

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Flashforward: sounds with scenes 2 and 5 Summary: style and film form ○ Style: distinctive patterns of technique we find in a film constitute The classical hollywood cinema ○ Be powerful Film Criticism: Sample Analyses ○ The classical Narrative cinema ■ Dialogue creates a speed ■ How film controls the viewers knowledge; point of view Narrative form ○ A narrative is a chain of events linked by cause and effect and occurring in time and space ○ storytelling=narration ■ Disrupting the story and telling the events ■ Plot and story ● Start to end is the story ○ Chain of events in chronological order ● Plot is the over all ● Order and duration ● Frequency of an event ● POV SHOT Documentary and experimental films ○ Film might be designed to convey categorized info- categorial form ○ Argument that will convince the spectator of something-rhetorical form ■ Type of rhetorical argument ● from source ● Subject centered ● Viewer centred Associational form: introduction ○ Associational form suggests ideas and emotions to the viewer by assembling images and sounds that may not have any logical connection...