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Why Study Film?

Why Study Film?. Knowing how to analyze films and build thoughtful interpretations = More enjoyment. Our Goal. Identify the major elements of film art Recognize the way those elements work together to produce meaning

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Why Study Film?

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  1. Why Study Film?

  2. Knowing how to analyze films and build thoughtful interpretations = More enjoyment

  3. Our Goal • Identify the major elements of film art • Recognize the way those elements work together to produce meaning • Develop the skills necessary to interpret what we’re being told (sold?)

  4. What is a movie? • A series of still photos shown quickly to simulation motion • Frame rate • Hurt Locker Phantom footage • A type of communication • A form of popular entertainment • A narrative that tells a story • This “telling” is affected by cultural differences and the era in which it was produced.

  5. Communication & Culture

  6. Communication • SUCCESSFUL transmission of a message from a source to a receiver • Must be sharing of meaning • Response, or feedback • Two types • Interpersonal • Mass

  7. Interpersonal vs. Mass Comm So what’s the difference? • Number of audience members? • Feedback? Is it immediate feedback? • Known audience vs unknown? • Use of a technical or mechanical device? • Gatekeepers?

  8. Communication Model • Who • Says what • To whom • Though what channel • With what effect

  9. Communication Model

  10. What is Culture? • Learned behavior of a social group. • Historically transmitted pattern of meaning. • Uses symbols to communicate knowledge. • How we make sense of our lives.Communication is required for culture to exist.

  11. Functions and Effects of Culture • Provides useful guidelines for behavior. • In pluralistic society both dominant and bounded cultures exist. • Cultural values can be contested. • It’s fluid, ever changing. • Culture can unite or divide.

  12. Viewer Expectations • Expected patterns • Viewers harbor essential expectations concerning a film’s form and organization • Viewers must be alerted to these expected patterns in order to fully appreciate the significance of deviations • But where do these expectations come from? • Prior experience (we recognize conventions)

  13. Manipulating expectations (sound) • The Shining • Forrest Gump

  14. Conventions • The conventions of a genre are the elements that commonly occur in such films. • Sometimes they’re called “codes.” • They may include things like characters, situations, settings, props, themes and events. • The conventions of the science-fiction genre is that the story often includes robots, aliens, time-travel or genetic manipulation. • Trope – tends to be literary, figurative language (metaphor, simile, personification, irony, hyperbole, pun).

  15. History of Film

  16. Precursors of Film • Persistence of Vision • 100 A.D. – Ptolemy discovered that the human eye retains an image on the retina for 1/24 of a second. • Phi Phenomenon & critical flicker fusion • If light is pulsed at a certain speed (24 fps), the illusion is continuous light. So, when pictures are flashed in quick succession, we perceive them as moving. • Pinhole cameras/camera obscura • China, 390 BC & Persia, 945 AD

  17. The Beginnings • Film language (think language + culture!) • People had to become film literate. It was like being in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. • Had to understand cinematic alterations of time and space; how images and sound combine to create meaning; camera angles.

  18. The Beginnings (con’d) • Late 1800s • Industrial revolution • Immigration • Film language (think language + culture!) • People had to become film literate. It was like being in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. • Had to understand cinematic alterations of time and space; how images and sound combine to create meaning; camera angles.

  19. Precursors of Film 1800’s Europe • Phonotrope • Zoetrope

  20. The Early Years - Pioneers

  21. The Early Years - Pioneers • Eadweard Muybridge • Developed photography to reveal motion. • Wager by Ca. governor Stanford to show all 4 legs of a horse were in the air at one time. • “Bullet-time” – Matrix slo-mo technique which used the basic principals of Muybridge’s “The Horse in Motion.”

  22. The Early Years - Pioneers • Eadweard Muybridge

  23. The Early Years - Pioneers • Thomas Edison • After meeting Muybridge, he set out to invent a projector. As always with Edision, his assistant, Dickson, did. • Dickson also invented a better way to film – celluloid.

  24. The Early Years - Pioneers • Thomas Edison • Black Maria (N.J.) – motion picture studio (really just a box that could be rotated to have enough light.

  25. The Early Years - Pioneers • Thomas Edison • These completed films were shown in a kinetoscope. iPod 0.0

  26. The Early Years - Pioneers • Lumiere Brothers • They were considered the first to exhibit moving pictures – 1895 • They thought it was “an invention without any future” • Films such as Workers Leaving the Station, Arrival of a Train at the Station

  27. The Early Years - Pioneers • George Melies – the “cinemagician” • First to use the “stop trick,” multiple exposures, time lapse photography and dissolves. • Still using proscenium staging. • Trip to the Moon • And this

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