FILM222

FILM THE HUMANITIES THROUGH THE ARTS F. DAVID MARTIN & LEE A. JACOBUS

Evaluative Judgments of Film  The basis on which we make evaluative judgments of films is, to a large extent, also the subject of this chapter.  Our concerns are to point to cinematic excellence in several areas:   cinematography, the care with which a film is photographed;  structure, the completeness and excellence of the script or story line;

Evaluative Judgments of Film…  acting and character development; editing, the care with which separate “shots” are joined together to achieve a satisfying form for the film;  music, the way in which sound evokes emotion or establishes mood.

Evaluative Judgments of Film… When we evaluate a film, all of these elements come into play. It is also true that the qualities discussed in drama apply to most films, since most feature films are forms of dramatic literature.

The Subject Matter Of Film  ...the subject matter of most great films is very difficult to isolate and restate in words.  You might say that crime is the subject matter of The Godfather (1972), or perhaps power, or perhaps even loyalty and honor.  All these are part of the subject matter of the film, and we can see that the complexity of subject matter in film rivals that any art except literature.  It may be that the very popularity of film and the ease with which we can access it has led to ignoring the form that may be creating insights about the subject matter.

Directing and Editing  are probably the most crucial phases of filmmaking.  Today most directors control the acting and supervise the photography, carried out by skilled technicians who work with such problems as lighting, camera angles, and focusing, as well as the motion of the camera itself ( some sequences use a highly mobile camera, while others use a fixed camera).

Continued Some of the resources of the director when making choices about the use of the camera involve the kinds of shots that may eventually be edited together. A shot is a continuous length of film exposed sequentially in the camera without a break.

Some of the most important kinds of shots are:  Establishing shot: usually a distant shot establishes important locations or figures in the action.  The close-up: The face of a character or an important object fills the screen.

Some of the most important kinds of shots are: The long shot: the camera is very far distant from the most important character or object in the shot. Medium shot: neither up close nor far distant shot. There can be medium closeups and medium long shots too.

Some of the most important kinds of shots cont’d:  Following shot: camera keeps a moving figure in the frame, usually keeping pace with the figure.  Point-of-view shot: the camera records what the character must be seeing; when the camera moves, it implies the character’s gaze moves.  Tracking shot: a shot in which the camera moves forward, backward, or sidewise.

Some of the most important kinds of shots cont’d:

Crane shot: the camera is on a crane or movable platform and moves upward or downward through the shot. Hand-held shot: the camera is carried, sometimes on a special harness, by the camera operator.

Some of the most important kinds of shots cont’d:

If you have been watching television or seeing films, you have seen all these shots hundreds of times.

Some of the most important kinds of shots cont’d:

Add to these specific kinds of shots the variables of camera angles, types of camera lenses, variations in lighting, variations in approach to sound, and you can see that the technical resources of the director are enormous.

The Editor’s Job The editor, usually assisted by the director, puts the shots in order after the filming is finished. ... It helps to know the resources of the editor, who “cuts” the film to create certain relationships between takes.  These relationships, or cuts, are often at the core of the director’s distinctive style.

Some of the most familiar or the editor’s choices are:  Continuity cut: editing so as to produce a sense of narrative continuity, following the action stage by stage with different shots. The editor can also use a discontinuity cut to break up the narrative continuity for effect.

 Cheat cut: using the technique of the continuity cut, but showing the characters or physical properties in different relationships to one another.

Some of the most familiar or the editor’s choices are: Jump cut: sometimes just called a cut, the jump cut moves abruptly from one shot to the next, with no preparation, and often with a shock. Cut -in: an immediate move from a wide shot to a very close shot of the same scene; the editor may cu-out, as well.

Some of the most familiar or the editor’s choices cont’d:  Cross-cutting: alternating shots of two or more distinct actions occurring in different places (but often at the same dramatic time).  Dissolve: one scene disappears slowly while the next scene appears as if beneath it.  Fade: fade-in shows a dark screen growing brighter to reveal the shot; fade-out darkens the screen, effectively ending the shot.  Wipe: transition between shots, with a line moving across or through the screen separating one shot from the next.

Some of the most familiar or the editor’s choices cont’d:  Graphic match: joining two shots that have similar composition, color, or scene.  Montage sequence: a sequence of rapidly edited images designed to build tension and reveal a passage of time.  Shot, reverse shot: first shot shows a character looking at something; reverse shot shows what the character sees.  Our responses to film depend largely on the choices that directors and editors make regarding shots and editing almost as much as they do on the nature of the narrative and the appeal of the actors.

The Participative Experience And Film  Our participation with the film is often virtually involuntary.  There are two kinds of participative experiences with film.  One is not principally filmic in nature and is represented by a kind of self-indulgence that depends upon selfjustifying fantasies.  We imagine ourselves as James Bond, for example, and ignore the interrelationship of the major elements of the film.  The other kind of participation evolves from an awareness of all the parts and their interrelationships. This second kind of participative experience means much more to us ultimately because it is significantly informative: we “get” the content by means of the form.

The Participative Experience And Film continued

The fact that film may cause such an intense sense of participation of the wrong kind prevents our perception of the content of the film. We can see a film and know nothing about the finer points of its from and meaning the nuances that make a film worth experiencing and the pondering over because of its impact on us.

The Film Image  The starting point of film is the image.  Just as still photographs and paintings can move us profoundly by their organization of visual experience, so can such images when they are set to motion.  Many experts insist that no artistic medium ever created has the power to move us as deeply as the medium of moving images.  They base their claim not just on the mass audiences who have been profoundly stirred but also on the fact that the moving images of the film; are similar to the moving images we perceive in life.

Film Image cont’d  Many early filmmakers composed their films by adding single photographs to each other, frame by frame.  Movement in motion pictures is caused by the physiological limitations of the eye.  It cannot perceive the black line between frames when the film strip is moved rapidly.  All it sees is the succession of frames minus the lines that divide them, for the eye cannot perceive separate images or frames that move faster than one-thirtieth of a second.  The still frame and the individual shot are the building blocks of film. Controlling the techniques that produce and interrelate these blocks is the first job of the film artist.

Camera Point Of View  Obviously the motion in the motion picture can come from numerous sources. The actors can move toward, away from, or across the field of camera vision.  A final basic way film can achieve motion is by means of the camera lens.  Even when the camera is fixed in place, a lens that affords a much wider narrower, larger, or smaller field of vision than the eye normally supplies will give the illusion of motion, since we instinctively feel the urge to be in the physical position that would supply that field of vision.  Sometimes technique can “take over” a film by becoming the most interesting aspect of the cinematic experience.

Sound  Al Jolson’s Jazz Singer (1927) introduced sound, although it was not welcomed by everyone.  Some feared that sound might kill the artistic integrity of film. And that with sound no one would work with the images that create a film language and that film would become subservient to drama.  Film is images in motion. Great filmmakers may exploit sound and other elements, but they will never make them the basic ingredients of the film.  On the other hand, some filmmakers will rely on the dialogue of the film almost exclusively, using the camera to do little more than visually record people talking to one another. Sound in film may involve much more than the addition of dialogue to the visual track.

Sound cont’d  Sound may intensify our experience of film.  Not only do we expect to hear dialogue, but we also expect to hear the sounds we associate with the action on screen, whether it is the quiet chirping of crickets in a country scene in Sounder(1972) or the dropping of bombs from a low-flying Japanese Zero in Empire of the Sun (1987).  Subtle uses of sound sometimes prepare us for action that is yet to come, such as when in Rain Man (1989) we see Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise walking toward a convertible, but we hear the dialogue and road sounds from the next shot, when they are driving down the highway.

Content We cannot completely translate filmic meaning into language, any more than we can completely translate any artistic meaning into language. We can only approximate a “translation” by describing the connections emotional, narrative, or whatever - implied by the sequence of images.

The Context of Film History  All meanings, linguistic or nonlinguistic, are within some kind of context.  Most first-rate films exist in many contexts simultaneously, and it is our job as sensitive viewers to be able to decide which are the most important.  Film like every art, has a history, and this history is one of the more significant contexts in which every film takes place.  In order to make that historical context fruitful in our filmic experiences, we must do more than just read about that history.  We must accumulate a historical sense of film by seeing films that have been important in the development of the medium.

Experimentation  Because of the complex technical problems involved in filmmaking, much experimentation has occurred.  Today the experimental work is less technical, perhaps and more a trying out of the technical advances.  Some more extreme experimenters remove the narrative entirely and simply present successions of images, almost in the manner of a nightmare or a drug experience.  Sometimes the images are abstract, nothing more than visual patterns, as with abstract painting. Some use familiar images, but modify them with unexpected time-lapse photography and distortions of color and sound. 

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