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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