Film Art Textbook notes

Storytelling

The narative frameworks that engage viewers and propel the film’s plot

Emotional expression

The mechanisms through which visual storytelling resonates on an emotional level with audiences

Idea conveyance

The artistic techniques that effectively relay complex concepts and themes through cinematic language

Emotional experience

The importance of filmmaker’s design decisions in shaping the audience's emotional response and connection to the film.

Filmmaker Perspective

The unique viewpoint and creative vision in a project, influencing the narrative style, thematic focus, and overall aesthetic of the film.

Mise-en-scène

The arrangement of everything that appears in the framing of a shot

Cinematography

Art and practice of capturing the film’s visuals through effective camera techniques

Editing

Process of assembling footage to create a cohesive narrative flow

Sound Design

The integration of sound elements that complement the visuals, enhancing the overall narrative.

Is film art or entertainment/business?

Film can be seen as both an art form and a business, as it combines creative expression with commercial considerations. Film may be art that conveys emotions and messages, while also being a product designed for audience consumption and profit.

What is technicolour?

A colour film process that enhances the visual richness and vibrancy of movies, using a three-colour dye transfer system. No longer used, but is replicated.

What is a Steadicam?

A harness and support that allows the camera operator to walk or run with the characters.

What is a Oculus Remote Camera Mount?

It rests inside a circular frame and attached to a crane arm that could swing it and pivot it rapidly in any direction. Allows for lengthy scenes to be in one single shot.

What is coverage?

A method of shooting individual scenes several times from different angles, often using several cameras for each take. It generates a great deal of footage and many editing options, which may result in scenes looking choppy.

Usual FPS for films?

24 frames per second

What is Apparent Motion?

The perception of motion created by displaying a series of still images in rapid succession, leading the viewer to interpret movement where none exists.

What is photographic film?

A medium used to capture images through chemical processes, consisting of a flexible strip coated with light-sensitive emulsion.

35mm

A standard film format that refers to the width of the film stock. Film goes through the projector at 90 feet per minute.

8mm

A film format that is 8 millimeters wide, commonly used for home movies and amateur filmmaking.

16mm

A film format that is 16 millimeters wide, often used for documentaries and educational films. Example films = Moonrise Kingdom, Carol, The Souvenir.

65mm

A film format that is 65 millimeters wide, primarily used for high-quality large-format films and IMAX presentations. Film examples = The Hateful Eight, Dunkirk, Nope, Oppenheimer

How to make a photographic film positive?

A printer duplicates or modifies the footage. The printer also focuses light to form an image.

How is a soundtrack placed on film strip?

Soundtracks run alongside of the film strip, using an optical soundtrack which encodes sonic information in the form of patches of light and dark running along the frames. Electrical impulses from a microphone are translated into pulsations of light in production, which are photographically inscribed on the moving film strip.

Monophonic on film

A sound format where a single channel of audio is recorded on the film strip, meaning all sound is mixed together and played back through one speaker. Used on 16mm and the first 35mm film strip

Stereophonic on film

A sound format that uses multiple audio channels to create a sense of space and directionality in sound playback. This allows for a more immersive listening experience compared to monophonic sound, with audio recorded on separate tracks. Registered as a pair of squiggles running down the left side.

Digital Filmmaking

Uses sensors instead of film reels and digital cameras store footage on hard drives rather than psychical reels. Resolutions range from HD (1080p) to 4k, 6k, etc

Three phases of the film industry

Production, distribution, exhibition

Four stages of Production

Scriptwriting & funding, pre-production (casting, storyboarding, set design), shooting, post-production (editing, cgi, colour grading, marketing)

How to engage audiences effectively from the start?

Hard and soft openings. Both are effective but set different expectations for the viewer, influencing how the audience engages with the film’s themes and structure.

Hard Openings

Begins with an intense or dramatic moment to immediately capture attention

Soft Opening

Gradually immerses the story, allowing them to absorb the world and characters at a slower pace.

What is Form?

Form refers to how different elements within a film work together to create meaning and emotional responses. Integral to storytelling and stylistic elements.

Form as a pattern

Form as a pattern refers to the structured arrangement of various elements in a film, which helps to convey themes and enhance the viewer's emotional experience.

Patterns in Film

Narrative Structure (how events unfold and relate to each other) and Stylistic Elements (camera movements, colour schemes, music, editing techniques)

Form Versus Content

People often think of form as separate from content (i.e., form is just a container for content). However, form actively shapes content and audience perception.

What are Formal Expectations in Film?

Film form generates expectations by setting up patterns that guide audience anticipation, and filmmakers manipulate expectations by either fulfilling, delaying, or subverting them. Advertisements, titles, and trailers also establish expectations.

Conventions and Experience

Filmmakers rely on conventions to meet audience expectations but also innovate within or break these conventions to create fresh experiences.

Audience Expectations and Artistic Form

Audiences rely on their prior life and artistic experiences to engage with films.

Evolution of Conventions

Conventions can change over time. For instance, flashbacks were once considered rare but have become commonplace in contemporary films.

Form and Feeling

The form of a film shapes how the audience responds emotionally. Form also creates expectation and emotion. Filmmakers create films to convey meaning, which the audience interprets based on the formal elements of the film.

Referential Meaning

Concrete meanings that relate to real-world references.

Explicit Meaning

Clear, openly stated messages in the film.

Implicit Meaning

More abstract meanings that suggest a deeper theme.

Evaluations

People frequently evaluate films, offering judgments about their quality. Can be made using specific criteria or on personal taste.

Type of Evaluation Criteria 1: Realistic Criteria

Some people assess films based on how realistic they are, however realism isn’t always an applicable criterion as many films break the rules of reality

Type of Evaluation Criteria 2: Moral Criteria

Films can be evaluated based on moral considerations, such as their depiction of nudity, profanity, or violence. Moral criteria can also judge a film's overall significance, including its view on life, emotional range, or ability to show different perspectives.

Type of Evaluation Criteria 3: Artistic Criteria

Artistist evaluation focuses on assessing films as cohesive, emotionally engaging works. This includes coherence (maintain unity in their form) and intensity of effect (vivid and emotionally engaging)

Type of Evaluation Criteria 4: Complexity

Complexity in films can indicate quality. Complex films engage audiences on multiple levels and offer layered meanings.

Type of Evaluation Criteria 5: Originality

A significant criterion when evaluating films, although it should not be valued for its own sake. A film that takes familiar conventions and uses them innovatively can be considered good aesthetically.

Weighing Criteria Involves: Degree and Balance

Evaluation criteria are matters of degree. One film may be more complex than another but other criteria like coherence or intensity might be lacking.

Purpose of Evaluation 1: Personal taste vs Objective Evaluation

A deep, objective evaluation often helps uncover overlooked aspects of a film or offers new perspectives on widely accepted classics. Personal taste is fun to share.

Purpose of Evaluation 2: Close Examination of the Film

Points to a specific aspect of the film, such as its coherence or symbolic connections, to explain its value.

Purpose of Evaluation 3: Evaluation and Formal Analysis

Evaluation is most effective when it’s backed by formal analysis. Helps us understand the connections and qualities we may have missed.

Principles of Film Form

Form in film does not equal formula. Filmmakers create within cultural conventions, and while no two films must follow the same rules, certain broad principles of form are often utilised. Some Principles are: function, similarity and repetition, difference and variation, development, unity and disunity.

Function

Elements fulfil purposes: very element in a film serves a function in the larger narrative. The key questions are “what is this element doing there” and “how does it guide the audience’s response”.

Motivation: asking why something is in the film and justifying the presence of any element. Can be applied to characters, actions or settings. Directors make decisions to motivate camera movements, lighting choices, and other elements based on character actions/plot needs.

Similarity and Repetition

Repetition as a structural tool: vital to creating formal patterns in a film. These principles help establish expectations and build a cohesive structure.

Motif: a repeated significant element that contributes to the film’s form.

Parallels: involve comparing elements across the narrative to highlight similarities

Difference and Variation

Variation: is key to sustaining interest and engagement. Can be shown through filming in different styles, character conflict, use of settings, costumes, colours, voice quality, musical motifs

Repetition and variation work together to create the film’s form. Noticing one element leads to noticing the other and understanding both is key to understanding film’s structure.

Development

Refers to how a film progresses by alternating between repetition and differences. Creates a pattern that moves the narrative forward and provides structure.

Types: journeys, searching for something, psycholigcal development.

A segmentation is a written outline that divides a film into its major and minor sections, helping to illustrate its overall progression. This process helps viewers understand how the parts contribute to the whole.

Unity and Disunity

A film achieves unity when its elements are seamlessly interwoven to create a cohesive, complete narrative. Every part has a function.

This is rare. Disunities are not necessarily a flaw; they can enhance the themes. Moments of disunity add complexity, leaving space for interpretation and emphasisng key narrative elements.

Audience Expectations

Audiences go into films with expectations based on familiarity with the story, such as trailers, adaptations or sequels.

Common expectations for a narrative film include: characters involved in action and relationships, a connected sequence of events, problems or conflicts that are re-examined

Active Engagement

Audiences interpret a film through cues, anticipate developments, and contribute to understanding the narrative structure.

The ending may resolve or manipulate expectations.

What is Narrative?

Refers to a sequence of events linked by cause and effect, unfolding over time and space.

Narrative Structure

Begins with an initial situation, follows a sequence of cause-effect events, and end with a resolution or change.

Example: conflict, development, resolution.

A random sequence is not a story because it lacks clear causality and connections.

Narrative Techniques in Film 1: Cause, Time, and Space

A coherent narrative requires causality, time, and space to connect events logically.

Even though a narrative depends on these principles, films can also incorporate other formal techniques to enrich the narrative.

Narrative Techniques in Film 2:

Parallelism refers to the use of similar story elements (characters, situations, etc.) to create connections or contrasts.

While the events may not be causally linked, parallelism adds complexity and depth to the film’s narrative structure, inviting the audience to compare themes and characters.

Deeper Engagement with Narrative

Filmmaker’s role: create engagement by shaping how the viewer processes the narrative

Complex narratives: More complex stories use parallelism and other narrative techniques to enrich the audience’s understanding and engagement.

Story

Chain of events in chronological order.

Presentation of the story may differ depending on how the plot is structured

Plot

The way the filmmakers present the story.

Can differ from story through decisions like non-linear storytelling, emphasis on certain characters or narrative style

Viewers understand the story through the plot but have to infer unshown events based on the plot’s presentation.

Diegesis

The world of the story, including both what is shown and what is inferred by viewers.

The world of the story can be built from the plot and anything outside of the story world is considered nondiegetic

Nondiegetic Elements

Components not part of the story world.

Examples: credits, musical scores, and intertitles in silent films.

These elements affect the viewers experience but are not experienced by the characters in the film.

Cause and Effects 1: Characters as Causes

Most films use characters to trigger events and respond to them, driving the narrative forward.

Cause and Effects 2: Complex Characters

Characters are considered complex if they have multiple, sometimes conflicting traits. These traits influence narrative outcomes.

Cause and Effects 3: Protagonists and Antagonists

Protagonists are central to the plot, engaging more often with the action and typically undergoing the most change.

Antagonists oppose protagonists, creating conflict.

Some films may not have a single antagonist but several minor ones or none at all.

Cause and Effects 4: External causes

Events like natural disasters can serve as external forces that propel the narrative. While the external forces set the stage, characters’ actions usually continue the narrative development.

Hiding Cause and Effects 1: Curiosity and Speculation

Viewers actively seek causal connections between events. Sometimes, films withhold certain causes or effects to build suspense and curiosity, as well as intrigue.

Hiding Cause and Effects 2: Mysteries in Film

In mystery films, the plot may start with an effect but withhold the causes until the end.

Horror and science fiction films also often suppress story causes to maintain suspense.

Casual Motivation

Planting Information: Filmmakers often plant details in advance to create casual motivation. These planted details may seem minor at first but later play a significant role in the story.

Withholding Causes and Effects: Films may withhold certain causes to invite the viewer’s imagination in constructing the full narrative.

General Concept of Time in Narrative

Causes and effects in narrative are grounded in time.

Story and plot distinctions help understand filmmakers’ manipulation of time.

Viewers build story time based on the plot’s presentation of events.

Manipulating Chronological Order

Plot may present events out of chronological order.

Not every detail of the story is shown in chronological order; irrelevant periods like sleeping are skipped.

Repetition of events can occur.

Temporal Order

Filmmakers may present events out of story order to create narrative impact.

These include: flashbacks, flash forwards, reordering scenes

Temporal Duration

Duration = how long events take in the story.

Screen duration can stretch or condense story duration, emphasising specific moments

Temporal Frequency

Events can be presented once or multiple times in the plot.

Repetition of Events: increases frequency and provides new perspective or information. Used to remind viewers of events or to reveal new layers of information

Viewer’s Role in Constructing Story Time

Viewers are active participants in constructing the timeline of the film.

Filmmakers design the plot to guide the viewer’s understanding of chronological sequence, time span, and event frequency.

Space

Events typically occur in specific locations.

Usually, the story’s location aligns with the plot, but sometimes the plot leads to imagined locations.

Film Openings

Integral to setting up expectations.

The opening part of the plot is called the set up.

Development Sections 1: Why is change central to narrative?

Involves characters learning/discovering new information

Development Sections 2: Goal-Orientated Plot

Characters strive to achieve a specific object or condition.

Development Sections 3: Time Based Patterns

Flashbacks or specific timeframes

Development Sections 4: spatial Patterns

The Plot may occur within a single, confined space, and action progresses through this space

Pattern Development 1: Expectation Creation

Patterns of development lead viewers to expect certain outcomes, which may be delayed, cheated or gratified

Pattern Development 2: Delays and Surprises

The middle of the film may delay the expected outcome, creating suspense

Pattern Development 3: Cheating Expectations

Films sometimes create a twist that defies viewer expectations

Climaxes and Closings 1: Climaxes

The climax resolves the film’s causal issues, with a narrow range of possible outcomes.

Emotionally, the climax heightens viewer tension and provides satisfaction upon resolution.

Climaxes and Closings 2: Anticlimactic Endings

Some films subvert expectations by avoiding a clear resolution

Open ended—the absence of a clear-cut climax can leave viewers imagining what happens next, offering reflective space for the narrative.

Narration’s Role in Film

Determines how story information is presented to the audience.

Affects the viewer’s experience through decisions about plot structure & character perspective

Involves whether to reveal information to the audience that the character does not know

Point of View and Perspective Choices

Can choose to focus on one character’s perspective or multiple characters.

Deciding between objective and subjective scenes: objective only showers what characters do, subjective reveals thoughts, dreams, and inner experiences (voice overs, pov shots, etc)

Range of Story Information: Restricted

Limited to the knowledge and experience of a character

Suited for mystery genres to keep information hidden and engage viewer curiosity

Range of Story Information 2: Unrestricted Narration

Omniscient narration

The audience knows more than the characters

Creates a broader sense of interconnected events and multiple fates, enriching the narrative

Analysing Range of Narration: “Who knows what when?”

Helps understand the audience’s knowledge compared to the characters

Techniques like POV shots and subjective camera work highlight the differences in what characters and viewers know

Analysing Range of Narration: Effect on Viewer Experience

Restricted Narration: Increases curiosity and suspense

Unrestricted Narration: Builds dramatic irony and tension, as viewers anticipate what characters don’t yet know