Filming Space and Time

1. Filming Space and Time HUM 3280: Narrative Film Fall 2014 Dr. Perdigao September 22-24, 2014

2. Editing D. W. Griffith and crosscutting or parallel editing—two or more strands of simultaneous action (Corrigan and White 136) Sergei Eisenstein—montage (French word for editing), breaks and contrasts between images joined by a cut (137) Hollywood montage: thematically linked sequences, sequences showing passage of time by quick sets or cuts, dissolves, wipes, superimpositions to bridge spatial and temporal discontinuities Continuity editing and new realisms (1929-1950) to modern disjunctive editing (1959-1989) (139) Fracturing illusion of realism, extension of Soviet montage editing, resulting in temporal disjunctions, or disconnections, creating ruptures in the story, condensing or expanding time, confusing relationship between past, present, and future (139) Jump cuts as technique—gaps in the action 1990s-present, nonlinear digital editing

3. Breaking Shots Cut as break between two shots, border between two pieces of film (Corrigan and White 141) Fade-ins, fade-outs, dissolves—show breaks between sequences or larger segments of a film, more definite spatial or temporal break (142) Verisimilitude—“having appearance of truth,” accepting world of fiction; in cinema, consistent spatial and temporal patterns (144) Continuity editing—uses cuts and transitions to tell stories efficiently, establish verisimilitude (144) Invisible editing—continuity Establishing shot long shot establishes setting; reestablishing shot (144) Insert brief shot, often close-up, other characters don’t see (146)

4. Shots, Shots, Shots, Shots, Shots, Shots (everybody!) Intertitles printed words inserted between the images, used in silent films (219) Diegesis world story describes: characters, places, events (Corrigan and White 186) Nondiegetic insert introduces an “object or view from outside the film’s world or makes a comparison that transcends the characters’ perspectives” (ringing phone, text) (146) Shot/reverse shot or shot/countershot (148) reverses angle of shot, showing conversation Eyeline match continuous offscreen space (148), can be used in shot/reverse-shot sequences

5. Shots, Shots, Shots, Shots, Shots, Shots (everybody!) Point-of-view shots (150) Reaction shot character’s response to something viewers have been shown (151) Flashback, flashforward (151) Duration of shots determine pace of editing (153) Long takes

6. Sequencing Sequence shot–entire scene in one take (Corrigan and White 153) Narrative segmentation—dividing film into large narrative units (159)

7. Typing 1950s and 1960s—experiments in film, Soviet films Move away from linear progression to disjunction Reflexivity self-consciousness in story Character coherence—psychological, historical, other expectations that see people as fundamentally consistent and unique (Corrigan and White 226) Values, actions, behaviors Inconsistent, contradictory, divided characters subvert one or more patterns of coherence (226) Character depth—dimensions (227) Character grouping—social arrangements of characters in relation to each other (227) Collective character—group’s action and personality (227)

8. Typing Character types—single trait or multiple traits (228) “damsel in distress,” “psychotic killer” (228) Figurative types—exaggerated or reduced, unrealistic, emblematic (228)

9. Characterization and Plotting Archetype—reflection of spiritual or abstract state or process (Corrigan and White 228) Stereotype Character development—“pattern through which characters move from one mental, physical, or social state to another” (230) Patterns of external and internal changes, progressive and regressive developments (230) Linear chronology—“selected events and actions proceed one after another through a forward movement in time” (234) Deadline structure—plot leading to specific moment (236) Parallel plots—simultaneity or connection between plots, intersection (236) Retrospective plot: The Godfather, Part II (237) Narrative duration—“length of time an event or action is presented in plot” (237) Narrative frequency— “how often those plot elements are repeatedly shown” (ex: focus on bomb mechanism in Die Hard: With a Vengeance) (237)

10. Location, Location, Location Historical location; ideological location; psychological location; symbolic space (Corrigan and White 254) Psychological location—character’s state of mind and place inhabited (Lost in Translation); symbolic space—space transformed through spiritual or abstract means (Cast Away) (254-5) Narrative frame—context or person positioned outside the story to bracket the film’s narrative and help define terms and meaning; might be voiceover (257) Omniscient narration third-person narration (257) Restricted narration limited third-person, focusing on one or two characters (258) Reflexive narration calls attention to narrative point of view (258) Unreliable narration (Fight Club) (258) Multiple narrations different perspectives for single story (258)

11. The Classics Classical film narrative: centers on one or more central characters that propel plot with cause-and-effect logic; develops with linear chronologies directed at certain goals; employs omniscient or restricted narration that suggests realism (Corrigan and White 263) Classical Hollywood narrative visible and dominant form since 1910s Classical European narrative—made in Europe since 1910 and flourishing in 1930s and 1940s Postclassical narrative—in decades after WWII that strain and maintain classical formula for coherent characters and plots (263) Alternative film narrative: deviates from or challenges linearity of narrative; undermines centrality of character; questions objective realism of classical narration (264)

12. I’ve got a theory Formalism: film’s form or structure as focus; cinematography, close readings (Corrigan and White 462-463) Authorship and Genre theories Auteur theory: individual imprint, director’s influence (464-469); Orson Welles and Citizen Kane; Hitchcock’s cameos; Griffith’s intertitles with initials Idea of film as collective and collaborative production versus work of single individual Identity politics—identity of director Genre Intertextuality: dependence upon other texts for meaning (471) Film noir—dark lighting style, dark sensibility, 1940s and 1950s (471) Melodrama (472) Westerns and gangster films (472) Woman’s picture (472)

13. I’ve got a theory Soviet film theory—montage: 1920s (Corrigan and White 477) Spectators’ experience through organization of fragments, making meaning through juxtaposition or chain of shots (477) Classical Film Theories: Formalism and Realism (478-480) WWII—two periods for filmmaking and film theory Film journals, influence from 1910-present

14. I’ve got a theory Semiotics—1970s, Ferdinand de Saussure Sign, signifier, signified; signifier as spoken or written word, picture, gesture; signified as mental concept (Corrigan and White 486) Comparison between film and language (487) Structuralism Narratology as study of narrative; plot and story Marxism (488-489) History and society in terms of class relations (488) Ideology—systematic set of beliefs (489) Poststructuralism: Psychoanalysis, Apparatus Theory, Spectatorship

15. I’ve got a theory Soviet Montage Theory—after the 1917 Russian Revolution, defining artistic practice that could “participate in revolutionary change” (405) Classical Film Theories: formalism and realism (406) Formalism, foundations of film theory in early twentieth century Film as new “formal language” breaking from language of theatre (407) Realism: imitation of reality Experiences in everyday life Realism in post-World War II period Postwar period and development of film theory Film journals in 1950s Auteur theory—imprint of individual on the film; focus on filmmaker (410)

16. I’ve got a theory Genre theory, focus on genres like westerns, crime films, film noir Contemporary film theory—1970s and beyond Specialized discipline Semiotics and structuralism—ideas about language, film language (413) A visual language, conjuring meaning Influence of linguistic theory Syuzhet (plot) and fabula (story) Syuzhet as the way events “are arranged in the actual tale or film” and fabula as the “chronologically ordered sequence of events as we rationally reconstruct it” (417) Model of detective story—syuzhet follows detective’s progress; fabula as circumstances leading to the crime (417)

17. I’ve got a theory Modernism—fractured human subjectivity, foregrounding of style, open-ended narrative Structuralism + subjectivity=poststructuralism; questions truths and hierarchies, tying up of loose ends; questions closure (Corrigan and White 419) Psychoanalysis—Jacques Lacan and the imaginary (419) “Mirror stage” Apparatus Theory—cinema as ideological mechanism, Plato’s allegory of the cave; values built into technology in historical moment (420) Spectatorship—how subjects interact with films (420) Screen theory and gaze theory—Christian Metz Feminist Film Theory—Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975); ideas of the “Other” subjected to the gaze (421)

18. I’ve got a theory Lesbian and Gay Film Studies—questioning heteronormative ways of viewing film, filmmaking (Corrigan and White 422) Cultural Studies—text analyzed in relation to processes of production and consumption (423) Reception Theory—viewers’ responses to film; work’s meaning derived from reception (423) (The Rocky Horror Picture Show!) Ethnographic Reception Studies—ethnography; dominant, negotiated, and oppositional reading (424) Historical Reception Studies—historical context; New Historicism; extratextual details (424) Star Studies—auteur theory, focus on individual, “types” (424-425) Race and Representation (426-428) Phenomenology—perception involving mutuality of viewer and viewed; Lacan and Metz (428)

19. Layers: It’s like Inception! Postmodernism Pastiche; questions about critiquing the world through art, division of high and low culture, genius and independent identity of the artist (Corrigan and White 429) Jean Baudrillard’s simulacrum (432) Breakdown of singular identity, recognition of “otherness” (432)