Film as Literature Final Vocab

Realistic

Attempt to reproduce the surface of reality with a minimum of distortion.  They try to preserve the illusion that their film world is unmanipulated, an objective mirror of the actual world.  Style is rarely noticeable.  The artist tends to be invisible.  They are more concerned with what’s being shown rather than how it’s manipulated.  Cameras are used conservatively, and are essentially recording devices the reproduce reality with as little commentary as possible.

Formalistic

The most extreme example of this is avant-garde cinema.

Expressionists

Are often concerned with spiritual and psychological truths, which they feel can be conveyed best by distorting the surface of the material world.

Formalistic

Deliberately stylize and distort their raw materials so that only the very naïve would mistake the manipulated image of an object or event for the real thing.  Stylistic flamboyance is part of the show.  Directors are concerned with expressing their subjective experience of reality, not how others might see it.  Are often referred to as Expressionists because their self-expression is at least as important as the subject matter itself.  The camera is used as a method of commenting on the subject matter, a way of emphasizing its essential rather than its objective nature.  These movies have a high-degree of manipulation, a stylization of reality.

Realistic

The most extreme example of this is documentary filmmaking.

Classical

An intermediate style that avoids the extremes of realism and formalism in favor of a slightly stylized presentation that has at least surface plausibility.  Most movies in the classical form do lean toward one or the other style, and most fiction films, especially those produced in America, tend to conform to this style**.**

Deep focus shot

Usually a long shot consisting of a number of focal distances and photographed in depth.  Sometimes called a __**wide-angle shot**__, this shot captures objects at close, medium, and long ranges simultaneously, all of them in sharp focus.  Generally the eye travels front to back.

Two shot

Contains two figures from the waist up.

Soft focus

Part or all of image is hazy or fuzzy.

Three shot

Contains three figures from the waist up.  More than three figures is usually a __**full shot**__, unless the other figures are in the background.

Rack focus

The focus is shifted, making part of the picture become blurred as another becomes sharp.  Used to guide the viewer’s eye to various distances, or show a cause/effect relationship.

Establishing shot

Used to establish a location in the mind of the audience (usually an Extreme Long Shot or a Long Shot).

Point-of-View

Image is projected as if seen through a character’s eyes.

High Angle

Camera looks down on subject.  Sense of audience omnipotence is not so extreme, and therefore not so disorienting.  Gives the viewer a sense of general overview.  These angles reduce the height of the objects photographed, and usually include the ground or floor as background.  Movement is slowed down.  Useful for suggesting tediousness or boredom.  The importance of setting or environment is increased.  The importance of a subject is reduced.  People seem harmless and insignificant.

Bugs-eye-view

Camera looks straight up from the ground.

Camera angle

Angle from which the camera views subject.  Can serve as an authorial commentary on the subject matter.  If the angle is slight, it can serve as a subtle from of emotional coloration.  If it is extreme, it can represent the major meaning of an image.  Angle is determined by where the camera is placed, not the subject photographed.

Low angle

Camera looks up to a subject from the ground.  They increase height and are useful for suggesting verticality.  Increase a short actor’s height, speed up motion, and in case of violence, can capture a sense of confusion.  Environment is usually minimized and often the sky or a ceiling is the only backdrop.  These angles heighten importance of a subject.  Used in propaganda films or in scenes depicting heroism.

Flat angle/eye level

Camera is on same plane as subject. Very little dramatic effect since they are the norm.

Oblique angle

Involves a lateral tilt of the camera.  When the image is projected, the horizon is skewed.  Are sometimes used for __**Point-of-View**__ shots, to suggest the imbalance of a drunk.  Psychologically, they suggest tension, transition, and impending movement.  In scenes depicting violence, they can capture a sense of visual anxiety.

Birds-eye-view

Camera looks down from directly above the subject.  Allows the viewer to hover above a scene like a god.  Subject matter might initially seem unrecognizable and abstract.

Long shot

Encompasses roughly the same amount of space as the staging area of a large theater, and corresponds to the distance between the audience and the stage in a theater.  Shows the subject at a distance and in relation to his general surroundings (ie. landscape, building, large room).

Full shot

Used to depict a full-length view of an actor or the action, but not the full set.

Extreme long shot

Taken from a distance, sometimes as much as a quarter mile away.  Almost always an exterior shot, it shows much of the locale.  Serves as spatial frames of reference for the closer shots used to depict vast areas and to orient the viewer.  People found in these shots are very small.  Most effective use of these shots is in epic films where locale plays an important role: westerns, war films, samurai films, historical movies.

Extreme close-up

Instead of showing the head, this shot shows only a person’s eyes or mouth.

Medium shot

Used to depict an actor from above the knees to the head, and in relation to some immediate surroundings.  Used to shoot exposition scenes, for carrying movement, and for dialogue.  There are three variations of this shot.

Close shot/close up

Shot taken close to a subject, showing an actor from just below the shoulders to above the head, and revealing detail (ie. face, hands, shoes).  Shows very little locale.  Because this shot magnifies the size of an object, it tends to elevate the importance of things, often suggesting a symbolic significance.

Over-the-shoulder shot

Usually contains two figures, one with part of his or her back to the camera, the other facing the camera.

Fisheye

**Most extreme wide-angle lens with a highly curved front that produces a distorted image that covers an angle of 180 degrees.**

Wide angle

**Focal length is 1-17mm. Large angle of view with exaggerated perspective. Used in deep-focus shots because they preserve a sharpness of focus on virtually all distance planes. The wider the angle, the more lines and shapes tend to warp, especially at the edges. Movement toward or away from the camera is exaggerated. Two or three ordinary steps can seem like inhumanly lengthy strides, which can be effective when a director wants to emphasize a character’s strength, dominance, or ruthlessness. Distances between depth planes are also exaggerated: two people standing a foot away from each other can appear yards apart.**

Filters

**Intensify qualities and suppress others. Different shapes, colors, and lighting intensities can be radically altered through the use of specific optical modifiers. Can be used for cosmetic purposes: make an actor taller, slimmer, younger, older, eliminate wrinkles and blemishes, etc. Some trap light and produce a diamond-like sparkle, some suppress or heighten certain colors.**

Telephoto

**Focal length is 31mm and up. Used to get close-ups of objects from extreme distances. Allows a photographer to film things from a safe distance away or to film discreetly. Most long lenses are in sharp focus on one distance plane only, and everything else before or after that plane is out of focus. Anything moving toward or away from the camera doesn’t seem to be moving at all. Flattens images, decreasing the sense of distance between depth planes: two people standing yards apart might look inches away from each other.**

Zoom

**Lens with changeable focal length, able to change from wide to telephoto in one movement. The image is brought closer at the same rate or is magnified equally so that there is no change in perspective.**

Normal

**Focal length is 18-30mm. The perspective is as the human eye regularly sees, with foreground, middle ground and background all shown with equal clarity.**

Three point lighting

**Uses Key Lighting, Fill Lighting, and backlighting to fill a scene with light.**

Bright lighting

**Usually suggests security, virtue, truth, and joy.**

Fill light

**Part of the Three-Point Lighting system, softens the harshness of the main light source, revealing subsidiary details that would otherwise be hidden by shadow.**

Low key

**Underexposed. Not enough light produces a dark, effect with diffused shadows and atmospheric pools of light.**

Backlighting

**A kind of semi-silhouetting, is soft and ethereal in love scenes, or more frightening in horror movies, since we don’t know what the faceless horror may bring.**

Formalists

**Are guided by light’s symbolic implications and will often stress these qualities by deliberately distorting natural light patterns.**

High contrast

**Harsh shafts of light and dramatic streaks of darkness.**

Realists

**Tend to favor available lighting.**

Key light

**Part of the Three-Point Lighting system, Is the primary source of illumination, this light creates the dominant of an image—that area that first attracts our eye because it contains the most compelling contrast, usually of light and shadow. Generally it is also the area of greatest dramatic interest, the shot’s focal point of attention.**

Dark lighting

**Typically suggests fear, evil, and the unknown.**

Overexposure

**Deliberately permitting too much light to enter the aperture of the camera, producing a blanching flood of light over the whole surface of the picture.**

Backlights

**Separate the foreground figures from their setting, heightening the illusion of three-dimensional depth in the image.**

Fast Stock

**Speed of film typically used by Realists.**

Digital Composting

**The process of using a computer to assemble multiple images to make a final image, typically for print, motion pictures, or screen display.**

Warm colors

**Suggest aggressiveness, violence, and stimulation, and tend to come forward in most images.**

Slow stock

**Relatively insensitive to light and requires as much as ten times more illumination than the other stock. Traditionally able to capture colors precisely, without washing them out.**

Multiple exposures

**The superimposition of many images simultaneously. Useful for suggesting mood, time lapses, and any sense of mixture—of time, places, objects, or events.**

Color

**Tends to be a subconscious element in film. It’s strongly emotional in its appeal, expressive and atmospheric rather than intellectual. Psychologists have discovered that most people actively attempt to interpret the lines of a composition, but tend to accept this passively, permitting it to suggest moods rather than symbolic purposes.**

Slow stock

**Speed of film typically used by Formalists.**

Black and white

**Sometimes used for symbolic purposes, but can be too obviously “significant” in an arty sense. A close variation is simply not to use too much color.**

Cool colors

**Tend to suggest tranquility, aloofness, & serenity, & tend to recede in an image.**

Fast stock

**Highly sensitive to light, and in some cases, can register images with no illumination except what’s available on location, even at night. Commonly associated with documentaries, for these stocks can reproduce images of events while they’re actually occurring.**

Camera Angle

**Angle from which the camera views the subject.  Viewers tend to identify with the camera’s lens.  Angles can be likened to a writer’s use of adjectives: they reflect a director’s attitude toward his subject.  If the angle is slight, it can serve as a subtle form of emotional coloration.  If it is extreme, it can represent the major meaning of an image.  Angle is determined by** __**where the camera is placed**__**, not the subject photographed.**

Normal Lense

**focal length is 18-30mm.  The perspective is as the human eye normally sees, with foreground, middle ground, and back ground all shown with equal clarity.**

Lighting

1. __**Useful in guiding a viewer’s eyes to specific things.  Light and Dark have symbolic connotations as well.  Dark Lighting typically suggests fear, evil, misery, and the unknown.  Bright Lighting: suggests security, virtue, truth, and joy.  Night suggests romance, mystery, and self-deception.  Daylight suggests harsh reality, disillusionment, and clarity.**__

\n

High key

1. **Bright, even illumination and few obvious shadows.  Used for comedies and musicals.**

Backlighting

All we see is a black outline, a kind of semi-silhouetting that is soft and ethereal in love scenes, or more frightening in horror movies, since we don’t know what the faceless horror may bring.

Fill lights

1. **less intense than the key and soften the harshness of the main light source, revealing subsidiary details that would otherwise be hidden by shadow.**

Back lights

1. **separate the foreground figures from their setting, heightening the illusion of three-dimensional depth in the image.**

Digital composting

1.  **the process of digitally assembling multiple images to make a final image, typically for print, motion pictures, or screen display.**

Synchronous Recording

1.  Simultaneous recording of sound and image.  Camera was restricted to one position, actors couldn’t move far from the microphone, and editing was restricted to minimal functions.  The major source of meaning was dialogue.

Boom/Mic boom

1. An overhead telescoping pole that carries a microphone, permitting the **synchronous recording** of sound without restricting the movement of the actors.

Non-synchronous sound

1. : Sound and image that are not recorded simultaneously, or sound that is detached from its source in the film image.  Music is usually non-synchronous.

\n

Dubbing

1.  The addition of sound to visuals after the visuals have been filmed.

\n

Acting styles

1. Sound brought on increased realism which forced acting styles to become more natural.  Actors realized that the subtlest of nuances could be conveyed through the voice.

Sound Montage

1. Technique perfected by Orson Welles where the dialogue of one character or conversation overlaps with that of another or several others.

\n

__**Diagetic Sound**__

1. Any sound that can be logically heard by a character within the world of the film.

\n

Non-diagetic sound

1. Any sound that is intended only for the audience.

Sound Effects

1. Their function is primarily atmospheric, but can also be precise sources of meaning in a film.  Pitch, volume, and tempo can strongly affect our responses to any given noise.

\n

High-pitched sounds

1. generally strident and produce a sense of tension.  Usually used in suspense sequences, especially just before and during the climax.

\n

Low-frequency sounds

heavy, full, and less tense.  Often used to emphasize the dignity or solemnity of a scene.  Can also suggest anxiety and mystery.  Frequently a suspense sequence begins with **low-frequency sounds**, and gradually increases in frequency.

Loud Sounds

1. tend to forceful, intense, and threatening.

\n

Quiet sounds

1.  are delicate, hesitant, and often weak.

\n

Fast tempo sounds

1. produce greater tension.

Slow tempo sounds

relax us more.

Off-screen sounds

bring off-screen space into play.  The sound expands the image beyond the confines of the frame.

Subconscious Level

1. because images tend to dominate sounds, sound effects can remind us of things that have already happened (i.e. rain and shower in *Psycho*).

Symbolic Function

1.  sound effects represent other things: heartbeats symbolize fear, the end of life, heightened awareness.  Can express internal emotions: garbage disposal noise embodies internal agitation.

\n

Absolute silence

1. calls attention to itself.  Any long stretch of silence creates an eerie vacuum—a sense of something impending, about to burst.  Can also symbolize death, since we tend to associate sound with the presence of ongoing life.

\n

Subtext

those implicit meanings behind the language of a film.  Often the **subtext** concerns ideas and emotions that are totally independent of the language of a text.

Dialect

1. can be a rich source of meaning in movies.  Because dialects are usually spoken by people outside “The Establishment”, they tend to convey a subversive ideology.

Monologue

1. __often associated with documentaries, in which an off-screen narrator provides the audience with factual information accompanying the visuals.  The cardinal rule in the use of this technique is to avoid duplicating the information given in the image itself.  The commentary should provide what’s not apparent on the screen.  This technique is especially useful in condensing events and time.__

Off-screen narration

1. __tends to give a movie a sense of objectivity and often an air of predestination.__

Interior monologue

1.  __used to convey what a character is thinking, and frequently used in adaptations of plays and novels.  Lines are not “spoken” but “thought” via a__ __**voice-over**__ __soundtrack.__

\n

Voice over

1. __a__ __**non-synchronous**__ __spoken commentary, often used to convey a character’s thoughts or memories via__ __**interior monologue**____.__

Dialogue

1. __: normal, natural speech between two or more people.__

Kinetics

1.  Like images, motion can be literal and concrete or highly stylized and lyrical.

\n

Stationary camera

*  tends to convey a sense of stability and order, unless there is a great deal of movement in the frame.

Moving camera

* by its very instability—can create ideas of vitality, flux, and sometimes disorder.  

\n

Vertical movements

1. an upward motion that seems soaring and free because it conforms to the eye’s natural tendency to move upward over a composition.  Movements in this direction often suggest aspiration, joy, power, and authority—those ideas associated with the superior portions of the frame.

\n

Downward movements

1. suggest: grief, death, insignificance, depression, and weakness.

Left to right movement

seems psychologically natural. 

Right to left movement

1. often seems inexplicably tense and uncomfortable.

\n

Movement toward the camera

1.  If the character is a villain, walking toward the camera can seem aggressive, hostile, and threatening.  If the character is attractive, movement seems friendly, inviting, sometimes seductive.  In either case, movement toward the audience is generally strong and assertive, suggesting confidence on the part of the moving character.

Movement away from the camera

1. **Intensity is decreased and the character seems to grow remote as he or she withdraws from us.  Audiences feel safer when villains move away in this manner, for they increase the protective distance between us and them.  In some contexts, such movements can seem weak, fearful, and suspicious.  Most movies end with a withdrawal of some sort, either of the camera from the locale, or of the characters from the camera.**

\n

Lateral movements

 the actor will seem determined and efficient, a person of action.  Tend to emphasize speed and efficiency, so they are often used in action movies.  Typically, these movements are shot in brief takes.

\n

Depth movements

 Unless the camera is at close range, movements toward or away from the camera take longer to photograph than **lateral movements**.  When **depth movement** is photographed in an uninterrupted lengthy take, the audience tends to anticipate the conclusion of the movement, thus intensifying the sense of boredom while we wait for the character to arrive at his/her destination. The boredom is increased when a character’s physical goal is apparent (i.e. the end of a long corridor), as audiences grow restless if they are forced to view the entire movement.