...Introduction to Film History, Module 2 Homework taught by Directions: Using word processing software to save and submit your work, please answer the following short answer questions. All responses to questions should be one to two paragraphs, composed of five to seven sentences, in length. Your responses should include examples from the reading assignments. 1. Perhaps the most important artistic trend of the early twentieth century was labeled modernism. Summarize some of the principal tenets of modernism, and specify how these ideas influenced the development of the French Impressionism (or German Expressionist [Ch. 5] or Soviet Montage [Ch. 6]) movement in film. It signaled a major shift in cultural attitudes that arose largely as a response to modern life, the late phases of the industrial revolution, especially the new modes of transportation and communication that were swiftly transforming people’s lives. Telephones, automobiles, and airplanes were considered great advances, yet they also seemed threatening, especially in their capacity to be used in warfare. 2. What created the problems confronting French film production between 1918 and 1928? Identify the three primary factors as identified in the text, and summarize the effects of each of these causes. One of the problems that was getting in the way of French film production was all of the imported films pouring into the country, of all the films coming into the country were American films. The French...
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...In this essay, I will discuss the cinematography, montage, musical composure, and the effect it had on the movie it was used in. I recently had the pleasure of viewing Alfred Hitchcock’s movie titled “Vertigo”. It is based on the 1959 novel “D’entre les morts” that was written by Boileau Narcejac. Jimmy Stewart who was portrayed “Scottie” was stellar in this film as well as Alfred Hitchcock’s presence and directorial style; paramount. Cinematography, which is the combined art and technology of films and how it is created, was evident in this film (Cinematography). One of the features that Alfred Hitchcock is heavily noted for is the use of color to draw in feeling and emotion within a scene. For instance, in the opening scene of Vertigo, the first thing you will notice is the use of red, blue, and green. The colors shifted from one to the next with the changing of objects and certain panning techniques that were used to focus the audience on a certain point of the frame and color significance. Most importantly, Hitchcock used those colors as a lead in to the rest of the entire movie, which they are used throughout every scene and have a specific meaning and connection. For an example, the color red was used in a matter that would have the viewer assume that emotions like that of terror, fear, and horror. However, throughout the film the same color is used in flowers, wallpaper, and other scenery, which had a different meaning as in warmer emotional feelings. The color blue...
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...Classical Hollywood and Soviet Montage have laid the framework for directing and editing in the past and created a big effect on the movies being made today. The documentary film “Cutting Edge” provides a great in depth view on how these two styles have influenced movie making. Directors and editors from the film offer great insight on what style and why they use it in a particular movie. For Classical Hollywood was the first style of direction used to fully put editing into effect. Classical Hollywood first came into effect in the 1920’s by D.W. Griffith. In Hollywood Griffith was the first director to fully have an understanding of editing. In classical Hollywood continuity editing was a new technique used for editing. For example, a person...
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...All Quiet on the Western Front Like the cover of a book, we often judge a movie based on its opening scene. If it is too dull or bland, we immediately lose interest in the film and can often have difficulty regaining the focus needed to enjoy the remainder of the movie. For films that deal with such emotional and controversial ideas, such as war, it is important for the film director to create a powerful and captivating opening sequence. Lewis Milestone was faced with these problems while he was directing the 1930’s film, All Quiet on the Western Front. Through his strong sound, filming and editing techniques, along with inspiration from Sergei Eisenstein, Milestone was able to draw in the audience right from the beginning of the film. Like most films during that time period, All Quiet on the Western Front begins with a dramatic orchestral performance as the credits are shown on the screen. The use of snare drum and brass instruments give the piece a very patriotic and wartime feel. The audience does not need to recognize whether the piece is German or American, they all just feel the same sense of urgency to act upon their patriotic duties and go to war. As the march reaches its climax and falls to a close, the preface of the novel is shown as a slide on the screen. These words are used to show both the reader and the audience that this war, World War I, should not be glorified. It is a reminder that war devastates and destroys all. As the opening scene truly begins...
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...different films. The first sequence is the last scene from the movie “Apocalypse now” directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The movie depicts the story of war, not as much the war between Vietnamese but the war within us. At first, movie appears very realistic and formalist and by the end, it is appearing symbolic as during the final scene Benjamin Willard finally killed colonel Kurtz and On the other hand ceremony of slaughtering the buffalo was happening at the same time which illustrate both scenes as one symbolic event. There are few editing techniques that worked well in this film are Sergei Eisenstein’s creative editing techniques who is a famous Soviet filmmaker. Eisenstein’s discovered three types of montage that is Rhythmic montage, Tonal Montage and intellectual montage which is also called conceptual or thematic montage. Eisenstein’s philosophy of intellectual montage which explain a way of editing that could form relation and symbols to two different shots created from juxtaposition. At the end, these two images of shooting and killing of Colonel Kurtz while Villagers were performing the ritual of slaughtering the water buffalo combined to make the connection between the viewers signifying the execution of civilian was more like a vulnerable slaughter. Another editing technique that greatly worked in this film is Rhythmic montage which is editing on the basis of rhythm. The Cloud bursting and shrieking of villagers at the slaughterhouse is paired in a rhythmic montage of contradiction...
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...The fact that the music of films often has powerful effects on its audience is undisputed. Careful examination of the reasons behind these effects, however, has been largely ignored. We tend to compare previously unassociated dramatic pieces we hear to film music - but what piece cannot be compared to film music nowadays? Every pre-composed piece or spontaneous melodic fragment is potential fodder for a cinematic soundtrack. The real questions lie in how and why people have been compelled to combine drama with music throughout history. This essay attempts to clarify some of music's manifold roles in cinema and the reasons behind them by using as an example composer Bernard Herrmann's Citizen Kane soundtrack. In order to address these issues, a brief overview of the history of music in cinema is required. The root of music in film harks back to the Greek melodrams (the precursor in both literal language and event to the melodramas of today), a cross between a play and fledgling opera in which spoken word is accompanied by music.[1] As time passed, melodrams developed into opera, giving rise to types of performances known as number opera (those composed of a collection of closed pieces) and continuous opera (those including nonstop music), divisions that film soundtracks would later echo. Wagner's full-fledged support of program music at this time, as opposed to the absolute music that had previously reigned supreme, resulted in his novel invention of leitmotifs (first used...
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...aspects Students are helped to "write" with the media by being given the possibility and the opportunity to express themselves through their own productions Chapter 3: Good News is No News Inverted pyramid- a good hard news story Boyd keys to success believes that one must believe in himself, has a passion for what he does and have a balance in order to succeed. Chapter 4: Journalism Censorship refers to the violation of media content Chapter 5: Printing Processes Printing process: pre-press, printing, print finishing Three professional programs: Microsoft publisher, adobe indesign, photoshop Chapter 6: Presentational Techniques 3 important qualities a speaker must have: Persuasion, thrust and learning of issues Chapter 7: Film Lumieres improved Edison’s Kinetograph...
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...Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane has been consistently ranked as one of the best films ever made. A masterpiece of technique and storytelling, the film helped to change Hollywood film-making and still exerts considerable influence today. However, at the time of its premiere in 1941, it was a commercial failure that spelled disaster for Welles' Hollywood career. Within the maze of its own aesthetic, Citizen Kane develops two interesting themes. The first concerns the debasement of the private personality of the public figure, and the second deals with the crushing weight of materialism. Taken together, these two themes comprise the bitter irony of an American success story that ends in futile nostalgia, loneliness, and death. The fact that the personal theme is developed verbally through the characters while the materialistic theme is developed visually, creating a distinctive stylistic counterpoint. It is against the counterpoint that the themes unfold within the structure of a mystery story. Its theme is told from several perspectives by several different characters and is thought provoking. Techniques such as single source lighting, creative use of shadows, montage, obscure camera angles, and deep focus photography make the film more enthralling visually, but also contributed to the narrative and many of the themes. The most defining stylistic element of Citizen Kane is the lighting. Welles meant for it to be a dark picture, unlike anything that had been filmed up to that...
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...Kubrick’s “Jupiter Room” in 2001: A Space Odyssey, reflects films ability to reconstruct the narrative form of time. The audience follows as David Bowman surrealistically jumps from one moment of his life to the next, and eventually to his death. Kubrick does not rely on conventional methods of film technique to construct this scene. He instead manipulates sound, montage, and a paradoxical version of the shot/reverse shot to convey the progression through Bowman’s timeline. The audience enters this scene and experiences an awakening: Bowman has witnessed the birth and death of the universe by going through a black hole. A close-up of Bowman’s eye, blinking, as if woken up from a nightmare is the opening shot. The color of his eyes have changed to normal blue, and he gapes, with a mixture of confusion and terror, at the sterile, white room. The camera then turns to a point-of-view shot of Bowman looking through the pod’s window. The interior of the pod is a series of rectangular lights leading to a perspective vanishing point that mimics the arrangement of the black hole. Next is a close-up of Bowman’s face, almost seizure-like, with the reflection of...
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...on audience for decades. Prince stated, “Penn was the first American filmmaker to conjoin multicamera filming, montage editing and slow motion systematically in the visualization of screen violence.” Though Penn was the first American filmmaker to use such a technique to depict violence, he was greatly influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. Bonnie and Clyde, was to American cinema as The Seven Samurai, was to Arthur Penn. The intercutting of shots and the slow/normal motion effects through a montage sequence was mastered by Kurosawa and used my many filmmakers after that. The usage of this technique shows the passage of time and creates a more moving and intense scene. The acceleration and deceleration of the death sequence makes the audience tremble and uncomfortable. Without the use this montage sequence, the death scene would be like any other “boring” and “mediocre” death. Many cinematic and theme similarities can be drawn from rescuing scene from The Seven Samurai, and the death scene from Bonnie and Clyde. The Seven Samurai is about a poor town that is held hostage by bandits, and is liberated by seven samurais. The shot, which uses such techniques, can be seen in the sequence where one of the samurai rescues a kidnapped child from a thief. Kurosawa intercut shots at normal speed with slow-motion sequences to change the rhythmic balance of the film. The entire footage consisted of three slow motion shots of the thieves along with reactions of the witnesses...
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...including music, dance and poetry, and which helped her to create six films that are well-known in the world of Avant-Garde cinema. She produced her first work, Meshes of the Afternoon in 1943 together with her husband Alexander Hammid, and a year later she completed her second work At Land. These two films placed the beginning of her career as a filmmaker and classified her as a pioneer of the modern and aesthetic American film. As a graduate student in English literature and Symbolist poetry from Smith College, she was able to transform her verbal knowledge about the emblematic value of objects and rituals to a visual format. Therefore, many of her ideas were influenced by studying T.S. Eliot’s poetry and his intention for objective mutual relationship. However, after the release of her first film, she began to work more precisely and be very careful in her choice of images and places in order for her works, starting with At Land to look original and abstract. She wanted to isolate her work from the idea of obvious symbolism and therefore, make the spectator more deeply involved in the process of decoding the scenes. As Millsapps states, “Deren knew the difference between images and symbols, and discusses this in her thesis: ‘…For the Symbolist, the image is a point of departure for mysterious distances, whereas the Imagist departure is limited to the vision behind the word or image” (25). Maya Deren’s second film - At Land, is an example of art work which is concerned with the...
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...Film Glossary Bird's eye view. A shot in which the camera photographs a scene from directly overhead. Close-up, Close shot. A detailed view of a person or object, usually without much context provided. Continuity. The kind of logic implied in the association of ideas between edited shots. "Cutting to continuity" emphasizes smooth transitions between shots, in which space and time are unobtrusively condensed. "Classical cutting" emphasizes dramatic or emotional logic between shots rather than one based strictly on considerations of time and space. In "thematic montage" the continuity is based entirely on ideas, irrespective of literal time and space. In some instances, "continuity" refers to the space-time continuum of reality before it is photographed. Crane shot. A shot taken from a special device called a crane, which resembles a huge mechanical arm. The crane carries the camera and cameraman, and can move in virtually any direction. Cross cutting. The alternating of shots from two sequences, often in different locales, to suggest the sequences are taking place simultaneously. Deep focus. A technique of photography which permits all distance planes to remain clearly in focus, from close-up range to infinity. Dissolve, lap dissolve. These terms refer to the slow fading out of one shot and the gradual fading in of its successor, with a superimposition of images, usually at the midpoint. Dolly shot, tracking shot, trucking shot. A shot taken from a moving vehicle. Originally...
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...The sequence “Married Life” from the film Up (2009), directed by Pete Docter is able to pack in the theme of love and aging through a short montage. Early on in the movie, we are presented with a quick timeline of Ellie and Carl’s life together, along with the many ups and downs they face. The montage begins from their marriage and early life together before transitioning into a miscarriage. Subsequently, their dreams of moving to Paradise Falls is revived, however their dreams are cut short Ellie’s failing health and her eventual death. In this sequence, mise-en-scène and editing are the dominant features of the film, enhanced by a musical score to establish the themes of love and growing old to create a connection between the audience and...
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...The Graduate Scene Analysis/Review Like literature, film is full of areas which can have deeper meaning than the actions occurring at the moment in the story. The magic of film however is that these actions can be visibly seen and can do this not only with the script but with camera angles, music, sounds, lighting and many other factors that would have to be imagined in a novel. One film that clearly uses this to its advantage is Mike Nichols “The Graduate” which is centered on Benjamin, a young man who finds himself in a love-based dilemma with a woman and her daughter. The film nearly abuses these techniques to create a masterpiece with both a meaningful and enthralling story. One scene that stands out from the rest in the movie is in a montage where Benjamin finds himself drifting in water and making the beast with two backs with the older woman. However, this montage comes to an abrupt stop when Benjamin hears his father’s voice calling to him in a rather upset tone. There is then a cut to a close up on the fathers face, blocking out the sun and giving him a darker more authoritative appearance. This creates the illusion that Benjamin’s father represents the strictness of reality compared to Benjamin’s drifting. And as the upset father talks to Benjamin about the life that he is wasting it becomes apparent that Benjamin’s laid back appearance lacks control when compared to that his father. Another noteworthy scene is after Benjamin buys gifts for Elaine, whose family...
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...exclusive killings by the Abu Sayyaf because of the thought that some hostages would give them no value. With this horror, the hostages still try to believe that one day, they will be saved. ‘Captive’ is a French-Filipino-German-British co-production directed by Brillante Ma. Mendoza. It is freely drawn from Gracia Burnham’s 2003 book, “In the Presence of My Enemies,” which details her and her husband Martin’s 377-day ordeal at the hands of the Abu Sayyaf. Mendoza weaves a fictional account of the infamous abduction that has actually, the tug and horror of the real thing. And as a result, it was considered as the most realistic cinematic treatment yet of Muslim terrorism. ‘Captive’ is every bit a cinema vérité. Brillante Mendoza shot this film on the natural setting, mixing his actors with everyday people, and with little artificial lighting. It is effective in such a way that it conveys candid realism. The scenes in the movie are not over-dramatized and every moment on the screen, whether it reflects cruelty or compassion, it feels unnervingly real. The fact that it is a literal recreation of the 2001 hostage incident gives its...
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