Film Studies Notes

Cinematography

  • Capturing the moving image.

  • Subversive and demoralizing message: “unpatriotic, frivolous, and incomprehensible”.

  • Reception: banned in France in October; restored in 1950s and recognized as a masterpiece. Cinematography is one part of how cinema works and requires a sophisticated mise-en-scéne and a narrative to follow. The cinematographer, also known as the director of photography (DP), translates the director's vision into usable footage.

  • Technical aspects include the camera department and its various roles, such as the camera operator, 1st and 2nd assistant camera, focus puller, and Digital Imaging Technician (DIT).

  • Lighting and grip departments: Emphasizing on-set safety.

  • Key terms: "shot," "take," and "set-up".

  • Cinematographic decisions: film or digital, black and white or color, lighting, lenses, framing, and movement.

  • Roles: cinematographer/director of photography, camera operator, gaffer, grip.

  • Basics: shot, take, set-up, analog/digital, film stock, film gauge, exposure, resolution, color.

  • Lighting: artificial or natural, available, motivated, hard or soft, color temperature.

  • Lens: focal length, angles (focal length: wide, telephoto), zoom, prime, depth of field, rack focus.

  • Framing: aspect ratio (16:9, Academy 4:3, wide frame), subject distance (e.g. close-up, long shot), angle (low/high).

  • Movement: pan, tilt, handheld, dolly/tracking, crane, Steadicam.

  • Long take.

Photographic Image: Tonality

  • Exposure

  • Underexposed.

  • Balanced.

  • Overexposed.

Exposure Rate

  • Standard: 24fps24fps.

  • Lower rate for fast-motion effect (e.g. Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey REGGIO, 1982).

  • Higher rate for slow-motion effect (e.g. In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai, 2000).

Focal Length

  • Distance between sensor and optical center where light passes through glass.

  • Wide-angle lens: <35mm, straight lines on edges appear to bow, exaggerates size and distance, see more of the environment.

  • Normal lens: 35−70mm35-70mm (50mm50mm in digital), standard, avoids perspective distortion.

  • Telephoto lens: 100mm+100mm+, telescope effect, magnifies, reduces depth cues and perception of distance between planes.

Focus and Depth of Field

  • Depth of field: range of distances within which objects can be photographed in sharp focus (narrow to wide/deep).

  • Selective focus.

  • Racking focus.

Framing: Aspect Ratio

  • 1:11:1

  • 1.33:11.33:1 (4:34:3): early cinema, Academy.

  • 1.85:11.85:1 : common today.

Camera Angles

  • Canted/Dutch angle: camera is tilted so that the horizon line is not level, creating a slanted or off-balance look, evokes feelings of tension, unease, disorientation, or psychological instability.

  • Camera height

  • Point of view (POV shot)

Camera Distance

  • Extreme long (landscape, bird’s-eye view).

  • Long (figures prominent but landscape dominates).

  • Medium long (knee up).

  • Medium (waist up).

  • Medium close-up (chest up).

  • Close-up (just head, hands, or feet, etc.).

  • Extreme close-up (detail)

Camera Movement

  • Can be used to reveal information in a dramatic fashion, establish character’s perspective, convey a sense of space, suggest mood, and emphasize continuity in time and space

  • Pan.

  • Tilt.

  • Tracking/dolly shot.

  • Crane shot.

  • Handheld/Steadicam.

Zoom

  • Camera remains stationary while zoom lens magnifies or demagnifies the objects filmed.

  • Resizes the image and changes the perspective.

  • Can deform sense of depth and scale, warp or flatten image

Shot Length

  • Long take creates tension, continuity, awareness of offscreen space

  • In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai, 2000

  • Context: Middle part of 1960s trilogy (Days of Being Wild and 2046), loose adaptation of Liu Yichang’s novella Intersection (1972).

  • Shanghai community in 1960s Hong Kong, little contact with local Cantonese (different food, cinema, language).

  • Production: 15 months, started shooting in old hospital for British soldiers to be torn down after 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China. Also shot in Bangkok and Angkor Wat.

  • Mostly improvised and didn’t work from complete script.

Wong Kar-wai (1958-)

  • Shanghai migrant, relocated 1960s to British-ruled Hong Kong

  • Studied graphic arts

  • Works with same production designer William Chang on all films and with cinematographer Christopher Doyle on several films, notably In the Mood for Love. Mark Lee Ping-bing took over as cinematographer.

  • Style and themes: mood and atmosphere, “erotics of disappointment”: it’s always too early or too late in love, fragmented and nonlinear narrative, interconnected stories, improvisation, pop music

  • Select filmography: As Tears Go By (1988), Days of Being Wild (1990) Chungking Express (1994), In the Mood for Love (2000), 2046 (2004)

  • Cinematography of In The Mood for Love

  • Color: intrinsic to meaning and affect of film

  • Searching camera seems to have its own subjectivity

  • Offscreen space: desire developing from what is not visible

  • Close-ups and framing obscure more than they reveal

Editing

  • Selecting, arranging, and assembling shots.

  • A crucial part of filmmaking, shapes the viewer's experience and understanding of the story.

  • Editor works with the director to create the final cut.

  • Transitions: Cut, fade, dissolve, wipe.

  • Editing styles: Continuity editing, montage editing.

  • Key terms: "shot," "take," "scene," and "sequence".

  • Editing decisions: Order of shots, length of shots, use of special effects.

  • Key terms: editor, post-production, shooting ratio

  • Soviet montage, Kuleshov effect

  • Space and time: ellipsis, flashback, flashforward, rhythm

  • Continuity: (re-)establishing shot, match on action, graphic match, 180 rule

  • Transitions, joins: cut, fade, dissolve, wipe, iris

  • Strategies: screen direction, master shot and coverage, shot/reverse shot, crosscutting

  • Discontinuity: 360 space, jump cut, nondiegetic insert, nonlinear editing

Soviet Montage

  • 1920s Soviet directors: Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov

  • Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

  • Film as language, editing as most important technique in cinema

  • Montage = monter, to assemble, put together

  • Eisenstein:

  • Conflict as fundamental principle of work of art

  • Every shot has energy

  • Colliding energies produce meaning

  • Battleship Potemkin (1925): Odessa Steps sequence

180 Rule

  • The 180 degree rule defines an axis of action, an imaginary line that runs though the characters in a scene, that the camera cannot cross.

  • Shot/reverse shot

  • Crosscutting

  • Overlapping editing

  • Montage sequence

Transitions

  • Fade-out/-in

  • Dissolves

  • Wipe

  • Iris

  • Freeze frame

Discontinuity

  • Techniques that break with continuity of space and time:

  • 360 space (breaking 180)

  • Jump cut (30 degree rule)

  • Nondiegetic insert

  • Constructive editing (Kuleshov effect) suggests a scene’s space by providing only portions of it, without an establishing shot.

  • Analytical editing (master shot and coverage) breaks an establishing shot into closer views

Dasies by Vera Chytilova, 1966

  • Věra CHYTILOVÁ (1929-2014)

  • Strict Catholic upbringing; studied philosophy, architecture

  • Only woman in FAMU directors section

  • Associated with the Czechoslovak New Wave:

  • Misguided youths

  • Dark and absurd humor, surreal

  • Political dimension of films

  • Anarchic absurdist farce

  • Aesthetically and politically subversive

  • Theme of destruction

  • Discontinuity

Sound

  • Co-expressive relationship with cinematography.

  • Shapes how we perceive visuals and creates an immersive experience.

  • Sound recording during production and sound editing in post-production.

  • Sound design: A detailed plan for the film's soundscape.

  • Sound recording: Capturing sound during production, involving roles like the location sound recordist and boom operators.

  • Microphones: Specialized equipment used for sound recording.

  • Dual-system recording: A method used in sound recording.

  • Sound editing: Creating and layering sounds in post-production.

  • ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement): Replacing unusable actor dialogue.

Michel Chion: “The Acousmetre”

  • A voice heard without its source being seen. This voice can have a powerful and unsettling effect on the viewer.

  • Acousmatic Sound: Sound heard without its cause or source being seen.

  • De-acousmatization: The act of revealing the source of the acousmatic voice, which usually diminishes its power.

  • Powers of the Acousmêtre: Ubiquity, panopticism (seeing all), omniscience (knowing all), and omnipotence.

  • Difference from Radio and Theater: The cinematic acousmêtre is distinct from disembodied voices in radio because in film, there's always the possibility of the voice's source being revealed. It's also different from offstage voices in theater, which are clearly located in a separate space from the stage.

  • Human vision, like that of cinema, is partial and directional. Hearing, though, is omnidirectional. We cannot see what is behind us, but we can hear all around - Michel Chion.

  • The eyes see better when the sound is great - Steven Spielberg.

  • Key terms

  • Diegetic/nondiegetic sound.

  • Dual-system recording.

  • Roles: sound recordist, sound mixer, benshi, Foley artist.

  • Functions: sound bridge, (leit)motif, continuity.

  • Describing sound: dialogue, ADR, room tone, volume, pitch, timbre.

  • Acousmêtre

History of Sound in Cinema

  1. The “Silent” Era: Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope as complement to phonograph. cinema organs, orchestral accompaniment. Benshi in Japanese cinema.

  2. Classical cinema sound

    • Don Juan (1926)

    • The Jazz Singer (1927)

    • The Lights of New York (1928)

    • Shift to sound dramatized in Sunset Boulevard (1950) Singin’ in the Rain (1952) The Artist (2011). Singing in the Rain.

  3. The Age of Blockbusters: competition from television (1950s), rock concerts (1960s). technological developments (Dolby, Surround Sound, THX). mobile sound devices, Sony Walkman (1979).

Functions of Sound

  • Defines space.

  • Created mood.

  • Signals action or character (motif/letimotif).

  • Creates continuity.

  • Shapes meaning.

Describing Sound

  • Vical.

  • Environmental.

  • Music.

  • Silence.

Aspects

  • Volume.

  • Pitch.

  • Quality (timbre, color).

Film Theory and Sound

  • Michele Chion: the acousmetre

  • French theorist, composer

  • Inverts traditional hierarchy in sound-image relations

  • acousmêtre: acousmatic (sound with no visible source) + être (being)

  • 4 powers: ubiquitous, panoptic, omniscient, omnipotent

  • De-acousmatization

Spike Lee (1957-)

  • Shelton Jackson Lee

  • Atlanta, Brooklyn

  • 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks (est. 1979)

  • New York University

  • Select filmography: She’s Gotta Have It (1986) School Daze (1988) Do the Right Thing (1989) Malcolm X (1992) BlacKkKlansman (2018) Highest 2 Lowest (2025)

Songs in Musicals

  • Singin’ in the Rain:

  • Are film-musical numbers (e.g. scene featuring performance of “Singin’ in the Rain”) diegetic or nondiegetic?

  • “Diegesis” as narration (Plato) v. story world (Souriau, Genette)

  • Is the diegetic/nondiegetic distinction the right “tool” to help us understand sound in this film?

  • the “diegetic number” v. “nondiegetic number” in a musical • scholarly disagreement