film final

zoetrope

zoetrope

• optical toy created by William George Horner

• early motion picture projector that produced illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs

The Lumiere Brothers

• invented the Cinematographe

• created "Arrival of a Train at the Station"

• shocked audiences because it looked like the train was going to come out of the screen

George Melies

• one of the first fictional narratives

• inventor of special effects in movies

• created "The Man with the Rubber Head" and "A Trip to the Moon"

Cinema of Attractions

• 1895-1906

• emphasis on performative spectacle

• aim is to show and exhibit

• direct stimulation

• incite visual curiosity

Classical Hollywood Cinema

• 1907-present

• emphasis on construction of a story; to narrate

• creation of digests

• encourage voyeurism

• action for the sake of narrative continuity

shot / counter shot

• sometimes referred to as shot / reverse shot

• prime example in the film Pulp Fiction and The Wolf of Wall Street

• when a filmmaker places a camera on a subject (usually a person looking at something) and then shows the reverse view of that subject (usually what the subject was looking at)

long take

• used in film without any cuts or reverse shots

• the camera remains stationary and follows the characters continuously without any editing or interruptions

• example: Godard's "Breathless"

Edwin Porter

• worked as a Vitascope projectionist which led him to the practice of continuity editing

• pioneered crosscutting/intercutting across simultaneous actions in different spots

• created "Life of an American Fireman", "The Great Train Robbery", and "Rescued from an Eagle's Nest"

Kinetograph

the first true motion picture camera

Diegesis

• a Greek term

• literally means the fictional world of the film

• may be a world that resembles ours

• outer space environment in Star Wars, Middle Earth from LOTR

Tom Gunning "Cinema of Attractions"

• defined attractions as "directly soliciting spectator attention, inciting visual curiosity, and supplying pleasure through an exciting spectacle"

D. W. Griffith

• established the narrative language of cinema through a combination of his own analogies with those of others (modeled the narrative we call "film")

• directed for Biograph films and innovated alternate shots of different spectacle lengths

• begins to use close ups and more cuts in "The Greaser's Gauntlet"

• Directed "The Lonely Villa", "Corner Wheat", "The Birth of a Nation", and "Way Down East"

• had a role in Edwin Porter's "Rescued from an Eagle's Nest"

interframe Narrative

• meaning is created within the shot

• multiple camera setups within the use of close ups, full shots, long shots, cross cuts, POVs, etc

• ex: "Way Down East", main character looks up and sees a beautiful chandelier. she is in awe because she comes from a low income background and has never seen anything like it

intraframe narrative

• meaning is created within the shot

• dramatic lighting and use of probs, costumes, makeup, performance, screen space

• long takes with camera movement and angle

Buster Keaton

• American film director and comedian during silent film

• known for his deadpan expression and elaborate visual comedy

• "Our Hospitality", "Cops", and "The General"

Thomas Ince

• worked with Griffith

• introduced the continuity script to the filmmaking process

• pioneered the studio system of production

Charlie Chaplin

• transformed cinema from a novelty into a living art form

• films addressed the real issues with dimensional characters

"Our Hospitality" dir. Buster Keaton and John Blystone, 1923

• silent comedy that used a specific narrative style which ranged from broad to subtle

• tells the story of a Southern family feud between the Canfields and McKays

French Film d'art Movement

• brought great stage plays and artists o the movie screen

• stunted advances in narrative techniques

UFA

• main German production company during 1920s

• became the core of the Nazi film industry

• became largest studio in the world behind Hollywood

German Expressionism

• artistic movement that seeks to express that artist's emotional state while offering a depiction of reality that is widely distorted for emotional effect

• utilizes highly stylized decor and lighting

Fritz Lang

• made films that were often Expressionist in theme

• used lighting to emphasize architectural space and line

• director of "Metropolis"

Karl Freund

• cinematographer of many silent German classics

• emigrated to Hollywood and was D. P. for "Dracula"

• developed the 3 camera setup for "I Love Lucy"

Kammerspielfilm

• German films from the 1920s that offered an intimate, cinematic portrait of lower - middle class life

Alfred Hugenberg

• bought out UFA and forced the studio to push his extreme beliefs

• began producing newsreels containing Nazi propaganda and films pushing German Nationalism

chiaroscuro lighting

• technique of arranging light and dark elements in pictorial composition

unchained camera

• continuous camera movement

subjective camera

• POV of the character allowing us into their emotional state

"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" dr Robert Wiene, 1920

• the first and most influential German Expressionist Film

• critical to the weakness of the new German Government

Moscow Film School

• created by the Cinema Committee (aka VGIK)

• Kuleshov studied editing and helped establish it as the first film school

Dziga Vertov

• co founder of Soviet cinema and newsreel editor

• experimented with more expressive editing

Kinoki

• young group of documentary filmmakers founded by Vertov

• influential on Soviet montage editing

• their filmmaking doctrine was kino-gaze (cinema eye)

"Man with a Movie Camera" 1929

• Vertov's masterpiece showing Moscow life

• used techniques such as trick photography, multiple exposure, candid camera, and montage

Kuleshov Workshop

• focused on editing

• goal was to discover the laws by which film communicates meaning to the audience

• discovered "Kuleshov effect" - a blank face interchanged with different pictures can change emotion

Soviet Montage

• cutting film as an expressive or symbolic process by where logically or empirically dissimilar images can be linked together synthetically to produce metaphors

Sergei Eisenstein

• student of Kuleshov

• filmmaker and film theorist

• directed "Battleship Potemkin"

• main focus was "attraction"

Montage of Attractions

• structuring films around "attractions" to implant emotions and ideas in working class viewers

• "units of impression combined into one whole" that could be used to produce "a new level of tension"

dialectical montage (theory)

• human experience is a personal conflict where one force (thesis) collides with another force (antithesis) to produce a new phenomenon (synthesis)

5 types of montage

• metric

• rhythmic

• tonal

• overtonal / associational

• intellectual

"Battleship Potemkin" dir Sergei Eisenstein

• one of the most important and influential films in the history of cinema

• chronicles the revolt of Potemkin during the failed Bolshevik revolution

• famed Odessa step massacre: one of the most influential in the history of cinema

• Eisenstein uses emphasis on montage (rhythmic) along with stress of intellectual contact

Thomas Edison

• invented Phonograph

• his Cinephongraph and Kinetophone did achieve sound on disc synchronization

Eugene Augustin Lauste

• first achieved adding sound directly onto the filmstrip (1910)

• converted sound into light beams to be recorded on the film strip photographically

Tri-Ergon

• system invented by 3 Germans that converted sound waves into light waves

• recorded photographically on film strip

The Audin

• vacuum tube invented by Lee de Forest that allowed for amplification of radio signals and later for the amplification of sound in movie theaters

Vitaphone

• sound-on-disc system developed by the Western Electric and Bell Telephone laboratories (under AT&T)

"The Jazz Singer"

• first feature length film with running dialogue

• end of silent film era

Fox Movietone

• sound-on-film method of recording sound for motion pictures which guarantees synchronization between the sound and picture

Talkies

• nickname for early sound films due to their inclusion of dialogue

The "Big Five"

• Mero-Goldwyn-Mayer

• Warner Bros

• Paramount

• Fox

• RKO

"A Man Escaped" dir Robert Bresson, 1956

• a French Resistance fighter being held by the Nazis

• film follows his plan to break out.

• Bresson’s use of sound is symbolic - sound gets louder as they near an escape route

Orson Welles

• began in theater and moved to Hollywood

• directed “Citizen Kane” and signed 2 productions with RKO

• used deep focus photography, long takes, and complex sound montage

The War of Worlds

• 1938 broadcast that seemed real

• narrated by Orson Welles

Gregg Tolan

• Welles' most important collaborator on Citizen Kane

"Touch of Evil"

• Welles's last attempt to work in Hollywood

• use of long takes and crane shots

• financial failure

"Citizen Kane" dir Orson Welles, 1941

• starts with his death, follows his life from childhood till death again

• intercuts narration of people in his life being interviewed to find meaning of “Rosebud”

• cinematography: long take, deep focus, deep space composition

• Welles shows connections through long takes and intraframe movement

• deep focus: staging of important narrative

• expressive lighting: expresses thematic issues

• editing “lightning mix”: use of continuity on the soundtrack to link together images, often over long periods of time

• use of montage to compress large amounts of story information

Cesare Zavattini

• theoretical founder of neorealism

• argued that films should “embrace the dignity and sacredness of the everyday life of normal people”

• sought a cinema that would find the drama in ordinary events

Roberto Rossellini

• a founder of neorealism

• brought documentary-like authenticity to filmmaking: “Rome: Open City”

Neorealism

• cost: saving measures, increased the sense of spontaneity and realism

• stylistic: shot on actual locations, innovative storytelling, nonprofessional actors, natural lighting

• political/Ideological: often dealt with contemporary social/political issues, focus on a culture of poverty, gave significance to individual personal problems

"Ossessione"

• precursor to neorealism

• unauthorized adaptation of James M. Caine’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice”

• one of the first Italian films to take the camera out of the studio and look at the lives of ordinary people

Impact of Neorealism on Third Cinema

• opposite of Hollywood: for profit, sought to make films that dealt with social/political realities

Realism as a Theory

• art as an expression of the real world

• cinema and photography constitute index of reality

• encouraged the limitation of artistic choice

"Bicycle Thieves" dir Vittoria de Sica, 1948

• shows how institutions are indifferent to the flight of individuals

• created sense of honesty and conveyed emotions

• viewers could see how Italy was affected by the war with their own eyes

Influences of the French New Wave

• production style

• small crews location shooting

• largely unknown actors

Camera-stylo

• permit the cinema “to become a means of expression as supple and subtle as that of writing language”

Jean-Pierre Melville

• founded his own production company in 1945

• production style: small crews/location, shooting largely unknown actors

George Franju

• started as a documentary filmmaker (realism)

• made movies with a horror tone which shifted the genre

Characteristics of the French New Wave

• aesthetic: discontinuity editing, shooting on location, hand held mobile cameras, improvised dialogue and plotting, direct sound recording, long takes

• thematic: characters are usually young, marginalized anti-heros; general sense of existentialism

Alain Resnais

• first new wave director

• first documentary filmmaker

Francois Truffault

• most commercially successful of the New Wave filmmakers

• influences were American B-movies, film noir, and the work of Alfred Hitchcock

Dziga-Vertov Group

• founded by Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin

• films were openly agitational in the spirit of the 1920s Soviet Cinema