Film Studies: Formal and Cultural Analysis Concepts

Vocabulary flashcards covering core terms, techniques, and narrative concepts in formal and cultural film analysis.

What is film form? → The means by which a movie expresses its subject and communicates meaning.

What is film content? → The subject matter of a movie—what the movie is about.

What is the basic difference between form and content? → Content is what a movie communicates; form is how the movie communicates it.

What is film grammar? → The system of cinematic techniques filmmakers use to communicate meaning, mood, and information.

What is formal analysis? → Analyzing how film form and cinematic techniques create and communicate meaning.

What does formal analysis focus on? → Cinematography, sound, composition, design, movement, performance, and editing.

What kinds of meaning can film form communicate? → Narrative information, mood, tone, significance, and a character’s thoughts or feelings.

What should an analyst consider before interpreting formal elements? → The narrative intent of the moment, scene, or sequence.

Why should you avoid overanalyzing individual film elements? → You can assign meanings to elements that the filmmakers or overall scene do not actually support.

What is juxtaposition? → Placing shots or images next to each other so their relationship creates meaning.

How can editing reveal a character’s state of mind? → The sequence and juxtaposition of shots can show what a character sees, thinks, or feels without dialogue.

What is cultural analysis? → Analyzing movies as cultural artifacts to uncover meanings about society and culture.

What is the main difference between formal and cultural analysis? → Formal analysis examines how a film creates meaning; cultural analysis examines its relationship with culture.

What can cultural analysis examine? → Social conditions, attitudes, race, gender, class, power, history, religion, genre, and other cultural ideas.

Why can the same movie have many different analyses? → A movie can be examined through multiple frameworks depending on the questions being asked.

What is genre? → A category of films that share recognizable conventions.

What are genre conventions? → Recurring character types, settings, themes, story formulas, and other recognizable patterns.

Why do audiences enjoy genre conventions? → They provide familiar expectations while still allowing filmmakers to introduce surprises.

Can a movie belong to or borrow from multiple genres? → Yes. Films can combine conventions from several genres.

What is the monomyth? → A recurring story structure found across myths, folktales, religions, and other narratives.

What is another name for the monomyth? → The hero’s journey.

Who is associated with the concept of the monomyth or hero’s journey? → Mythologist Joseph Campbell.

What book is associated with Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey? → The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

What usually begins the hero’s journey? → An ordinary person receives a call to adventure, which they may initially resist.

What commonly happens during the hero’s journey? → The hero enters an unknown world, meets mentors and allies, faces trials, develops, and confronts major challenges.

What is a talisman in a hero’s journey? → A special or meaningful object given to or used by the hero during the quest.

How can cultural sources influence movies? → Filmmakers can borrow from religions, philosophies, history, myths, traditions, and earlier films.

What is a cultural collage? → A work that combines elements and influences from multiple cultures, traditions, or historical sources.

How can familiar stories remain interesting to audiences? → They can combine recognizable conventions with unexpected variations.

What is familiarity and progression? → Audiences recognize familiar characters and patterns while watching them develop and change over time.

How can a long-running film series affect audience attachment? → Viewers can follow characters’ physical and emotional development over an extended period.

What kinds of questions can a cultural analysis of race ask? → Who is represented, what roles they receive, and how important or active they are in the story.

What kinds of questions can a cultural analysis of gender ask? → How genders are represented, what roles they occupy, and how much agency or power they have.

What kinds of questions can a cultural analysis of class ask? → How social and economic status relates to opportunity, power, identity, and who becomes a hero.

Why is representation more than simply including diverse characters? → Analysis also considers their importance, agency, development, and function in the story.

What is the Bechdel test? → A test used to evaluate female representation through conversations between women.

What are the three requirements of the Bechdel test? → At least two women talk to each other about something other than a man.

Does passing the Bechdel test automatically make a film feminist? → No. It is one evaluative tool and does not measure every aspect of gender representation.

Why can cultural analysis produce many different interpretations? → Culture and cinema have many relationships, so analysts can investigate many different social and historical questions.

What must we understand before effectively interpreting a movie as a cultural artifact? → We must first understand how the movie functions through film form.

Why is formal analysis fundamental to studying cinema? → Understanding cinematic language helps explain how movies construct and communicate meaning.

What is the key question of formal analysis? → How does the film use cinematic techniques to communicate meaning?

What is the key question of cultural analysis? → What does the film reveal about or draw from its culture and society?

Why does the textbook argue movies are worth studying? → Movies shape how we see the world and can reveal information about the artists, cultures, societies, and industries that created them.

What is cinematic language? → The visual and auditory techniques and conventions movies use to communicate story, emotion, information, and meaning.

Are “movie,” “film,” and “cinema” fundamentally different terms? → No. The textbook treats them as essentially interchangeable.

Where does “cinema” come from? → Greek kinesis, meaning “movement.”

Where does “film” come from? → The celluloid strip traditionally used to capture, cut, and project motion pictures.

What is a movie fundamentally? → A series of still images shown rapidly enough to create the perception of continuous movement.

What typical frame rate does the textbook identify? → 24 images per second.

What is narrative in its broadest sense? → Selecting and arranging subject matter into a cause-and-effect sequence of events.