Agenda• Announcements• Singin in the Rain

discussion• Break• Elements of Narrative• Elements of Genre

Announcements• First Blog Post: due Friday by Midnight• Shot List and Essay: due next Friday (4/25) by Midnight• Extra Credit (1 point final grade): – Next week, go to any event in the Cinema Pacific Festival

and blog about it to get extra credit– OR: Reflections Unheard: Black Women in Civil Rights;

Thursday, April 24th from 4:00 to 5:30 pm in the Knight Library Browsing Room

– OR: Working Filmmakers Series, Tuesday, April 29 at 12:15 pm in the Knight Library Browsing Room

• Quizzes: Wednesday of Weeks 4, 6, 8, and 10• Week 5: 8 ½?

How to Win at Blogging• Try to focus on one idea:– Show us how you

interpret films, using the tools we’ve set out in class

– Make us think about the film in a new way

– Use evidence from the movie to defend your idea

• Read the rubric• Write at least 500 words• Post before Friday at

Midnight

Shot List and Essay Assignment: Due by Midnight, Friday 4/25

• Choose a short scene or sequence (1-4 minutes, but not less than 10 shots) from any of the films we will have watched by Week 4—Sherlock Jr. (1924), Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Singin’ in the Rain (1952), or Peeping Tom (1962)—and annotate it with a shot list. I posted a sample shot list and shot list form on the assignments page.

• • Then, use your shot list to develop a short (3 pages, 750 to 1000

words) critical essay about the scene. Your argument should focus on how ONE formal element of the sequence (mise-en-scene, cinematography, etc) helps to create emotion, convey narrative, or contribute to one the film’s central themes.

Shot List

Discussion• What was your initial response to the film? What did you like

best about it?

• What did you notice about the form of the film?

• What makes Don the hero of the film? What makes Lina Lamont the villain?

• How/what do the song-and-dance sequences add to the narrative?

• What’s the ideology of this film? What does it tell you about Hollywood in 1927? About Hollywood in 1952?

What’s a Genre?

• “The categorization of narrative films by the stories they tell and the ways they tell them” (LaM 84)

• Qualities of genre:– Story formulas– Character types– Setting– Presentation– Stars– Also: Temporality

The “City Symphony”• Experimental/documentary

• No narrative, dialogue, actors, resolution

• Fast editing, sharp juxtapositions

• A “poetic” vision of reality

• Examples: Berlin (1927), Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Bronx Morning (1931)

The Musical Genre• What are the rules of the

genre?

• Types of Musical:– Revue– Backstage– Integrated– Animated

• Genre History: – Rise and fall and rise . . .

Review: Narrative

• “A cinematic structure in which content is selected and arranged in a cause-and-effect sequence of events occurring over time” (Barsam and Monahan 542)

• Questions to Ask:– What are the major events the film? – How are those events ordered in time?– What events are left out?– What are the film’s beginning and end points?

Review: Difference Between Story, Plot, and Narrative

• Story: The BIGGEST picture – What we imagine takes place in real time, and in real space (even if

it’s not depicted on screen)– Objective reality or history

• Plot: All the stuff that happens in a movie, as we imagine it in chronological sequence.

• Narrative: The way the story and plot are told:– The selection and arrangement of space and time. – Some events aren’t depicted – Some time is elided, or presented in a nonlinear way – We follow certain characters, but not others

Five Elements of Storytelling

• 1. Perspective

• 2. Characterization

• 3. Narrative Events

• 4. Narrative Structure

• 5. Narrative Time

1. Narrative Perspective• Whose perspective does the film

(esp. the camera) give us?

• Ways to describe:– First, Second, Third Person

• 1. camera identified with a particular character’s p.o.v.

• 2. Identified with the audience’s p.o.v.• 3. identified with a kind of neutral,

bystander’s p.o.v.

– Restricted v. Omniscient• What ? What spaces and people does

the camera have access to?

– Focalization

2. Characterization• Types of Characters:– Flat/Round:

• Which characters develop or change, and which do not? What traits do they have?

– Protagonist/Antagonist– Major/Minor/Marginal:

• Which characters have agency: the power to shape the world around them?

• Motivation, Goals, Obstacles

3. Kinds of Narrative Events

• Major Events: Determine the course of the story; decision-points

• Minor Events: Shape our perception of the characters, or the world they inhabit

• Non-Narrative Events: Don’t really contribute anything to plot or characterization

4. “Three Act Structure”

• Act I: Exposition, establishing the “normal world,” characterization . . .

• Act II: Rising Action, Establishing the conflict, the stakes of the conflict . . . Crisis/Climax

• Act III: Falling Action, Resolution, and Closure

5. Narrative Time• Types of Duration:– Story Duration– Plot Duration– Screen Duration

• Time Relationships:– Stretch Relationship– Real Time– Summary

Relationship

Next Week: Peeping Tom (1960)

• We’ll discuss:– The turbulent 1960s!– Soft censorship!– British-ness!– Mise-en-scene!– Narcissistic scopophilia!– Gender on screen!