Film Studies: Realism, Genre, Classical Hollywood Causality, Industrial History, and Slapstick Comedy

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering media realism, film genre theory, Classical Hollywood causality and motivation, industrial modes of production, and California slapstick comedy.

Patent Pool

A strategy by the MPPC in the early film era to monopolize the industry. They patented film technology and licensed it for a fee

California Slapstick

A category proposed by Jay Leyda in 1985 to define a physical comedy style produced between 1912 and 1928 that synthesized violence, acrobatics, embarrassment, and irrationality within the material and social geography of Southern California.

Permutational Chase

A comic chase structure in slapstick film that systematically investigates and exhausts the geometric parameters, doors, windows, and structural levels of a single building or localized space.

Longitudinal Chase

An expansive slapstick chase trajectory that connects physically dispersed, topographically variegated, and socially distinct environments across continuous action.

Central Producer System

a fully structured hierarchical system, with a strict ‘scientific’ division of labour. Production-line

filmmaking was now the order of the day, all under the central control of a producer who used very

detailed shooting scripts to plan budgets before giving the go-ahead to studio projects

Exhibition in the MPPC era

First run theaters got priority and brought in the most revenue because they were owned by one of the major studios. Indie theaters had to book movies sight unseen and well in advance

Producer unit system

Head producer with producers underneath that oversaw groups of films. Allowed for producers to specialize in certain genres

Field of reference

The context that allows us to understand and identify genre in film

Iconography

The narrative and visual coding that results from the repetition of a popular film story

Genre of determinate space

Leads in these genres are often static and do not grow or change as characters through conflict. The detective returns to his office still skeptical and pessimistic about his chaotic world. Society is corrupt and characters continuously oppose it

Genres of indeterminate space

The lead changes and goes from romantic conflict to acceptance. Society is stable and civilized, characters change to acquiesce

plot structure - establishment

establishment of the generic community with its inherent dramatic conflicts;

animation

animation of those conflicts through the actions and attitudes of the genre’s

constellation of characters

intensification

intensification of the conflict by means of conventional situations and dramatic

confrontations until the conflict reaches crisis proportions;

resolution

resolution of the crisis in a fashion which eliminates the physical and/or ideolog

ical threat and thereby celebrates the (temporarily) well-ordered community.

Lightning Cartoonists

Early proto-animators that did stop motion drawings, their techniques would be modified and used by later animators

Incoherent Cinema

Spontaneous and nonlinear events that are often surreal

Synecdoche

Figure of speech where a part represents a whole

Iconic

The elements that identify a certain character depsite other things changing about the way they are represented

Reduced animation

A type of animation that adopts a less is more attitude where emotion and expression are performed by simple movements and simple geometry