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LECTURE 3—strategies of narration

· Causality, space, time (the narration is in accordance with causality, space and time)

· Causality

--based on general laws and principal

--characters generate cause and effects (trigger events and react to them)////OR in disaster films, the triggers might be an earthquake, pandemic……

--the traits of characters play causal roles (skills, goals, personalities, psychological drives……)

--hiding causes/hiding effects

· Withhold causes—curious

· Withhold effects—suspense

· Time/temporary (the distinct of story and plot helps us to understand how filmmakers use narration to manipulate time)

--chronological order

· In order

· Flashbacks or flash-forwards (skip a bit, reorder, disorder in time)

--duration (how long events take)

· We don’t see every part or detail in the narration

· Story duration

--the total time of the story—the totality

--the narration chooses certain pieces of the story duration to show us in the plot

· Narration/plot duration

--covers the story we see on screen

--Select pieces of the story

· Screen duration

--the actual run time of the film

--select pieces of the ploy/narration duration

--can be equivalent, a reduction, or an expansion of the story duration

--frequency

· Repetition can give additional or conflicting information and also reinforce the significance of an event

· Space/spatiality (some are real screened, but some are needed to be imagined)

· Story space—everything referenced in the story

· Narration/plot space—everything we are shown by the narration

· Screen space—the space we see in the frame of the shot (chooses portions of the plot/narration space to show)

· Narrational strategies

· Range of knowledge

--how much do we vs. characters know (restricted or godeyes)

--1. Unrestricted (omniscient)

—viewers know more than the characters (but not everything)

--helps to build suspense

2. restricted (character)

—limits the viewer to what the character knows

--generates more curiosity, and surprises (“jump scare”)

--Hitchcock’s bomb

-- Gaps (what the narration included or leaves out creating gaps)

· Temporary gaps(temporal, causal, spatial)

· Temporal gaps

--skip in time (tell some pertinent events of the story but leave out others)

--point us forward and build surprise

· Causal gaps

--something is unexplained (unexplained in terms of its causal logic)

· Spatial gaps

--not knowing where someone/something is (withholds a character’s whereabouts or a location; where something or someone is in terms of spatial logic)

· Permanent gaps

--gaps in story information and we are never given that information

--leave wondering

--scan backward through what we have seen

· Focused gap

--a clear-cut question that demands a specific answer

--lead us to hypothesize about a clear question

· Diffused gap

--A question is generated but is unspecified, it is a general one

--allow more open-ended inferential work

· Flaunted gap

--you know you don’t know something you need to know

--warn us to pay attention

· Suppressed gap

--the viewer doesn't know that there is missing information but later you realize that there is a gap

--repetition/redundancy & delays

· Delays

--the narration delays the reveal of certain story information, this can generate anticipation, curiosity, suspense, and surprise

· Redundancy/repetition

--repeat story information

--reinforce assumptions, inferences, and hypotheses about story information

· Depth of knowledge

--how deep do we go into the characters’ activity (the degree of subjectivity)

-- 1. Objective

--film that confines us only to knowledge of characters’ external behavior

2. Subjectivity

--mental subjectivity: deeper still into the character’s mind (the thoughts or dream sequences); can generate sympathy for characters; access to inner thoughts can help set up later behavior/create expectations

--perceptual subjectivity: techniques can be used to showcase this, making viewers see and hear what a specific character does

· Communicativeness

--providing a lot of story information (or vice versa--uncommunicative)

--different from genres

-- self-consciousness (is the narration aware of the fact that it is seen or viewed; connection with the audience)

LECTURE 4:

--settings

· Costumes: play a causal role in the narration; can become motifs, enhancing characterization and changes in attitudes; construct the characteristics beyond the settings

· Makeup

· Lighting: creates shot composition and guides viewers’ attention to objects and actions. It hides things, accentuates textures, and sculps the appearance of worlds.

· Highlights (a patch of relative brightness on a surface; provide cues to the texture of the surface) and shadows

· Hard lighting: creates clearly defined shadow, crisp, sharp edges

· Soft lighting: diffused illumination, blurs contours and textures, contrasts between light and shade

· Frontal lighting: the path of light from its sources to the object lit, eliminating the shadows and flats the object

· Side lighting: sculps a character’s features and generates shadows and depth

· Backlighting: comes from behind the object but can be positioned at many angles, it creates silhouettes (sometimes creates edge lighting or rim lighting); and enhances drama and suspense

· Under lights: distorts features, often used for horror effects, can also indicate a realistic light source

· Top lights: shine from above

· Colored light: unrealistic, used to convey emotion or convey the codes of fantasy space

· Source

· Key light(primary source, directional, main light in the setup) and fill light(intense and fills in shadows, softens or eliminates shadows from key light); backlights（三点打光）

· Staging:

· Movement: charted through blocking; the actual physical relationship among figures and settings

· Performance: individualized(based on the personalities of the character) and stylized(be located on a continuum of stylization, between flat and flamboyant)

· Mise-en-scene: What is put in the scene, but not just what is put in a frame; push its meaning beyond the narrative, creates emotions in excess; embodied experience; as a site of intensity, not just look at, but inhabit it.

--broaden the focus beyond the principal photography, focusing on the engagement of the environment

LECTURE 5: --Constructivism vs perspectivism:

· Constructivism stresses the dynamic, mental activity of the spectator

· Perspectivism holds that the “perceiver’s understanding of a visual field is uniquely determined…by the laws of geometrical optics.”

· Linear perspective (Albertian Perspective)

· Create an illusion of depth, or three-dimensional objects, on a flat, two-dimensional surface, such as a painter’s canvas

· Three key elements in linear perspective:

1. All parallel lines

2. Converge to a singer, central vanishing point

3. There is also a horizon line

· Objects are depicted as smaller the closer they get to the vanishing point, to give the illusion of distance

· Offers a mathematically measurable scenic space based in a theory of the behavior of light and very strong and internally consistent depth cues, especially ones involving the behavior of parallel lines in depth

· It was based on ideology

· Bordwell notes that perspectivism has its uses but that there are additional mental processes than just the laws of geometry

· The Bordwell’s idea of constructing a scenographic space is constructivist:

1. The viewers are part of the process of interpreting cues using dynamic, mental activity

2. continually working to construct the story

--scenographic space

· shot space

· special relations and depth

--depth cues

· allow us to understand the action is taking place in a realistic space

· space has VOLUME (an object is solid and occupies a three-dimensional area) and distinct PLANES (the layer of space occupied by persons or objects, this is according to how close to or far away from the camera they are: foreground, middle ground, background)

· overlap : suggest represented depth in the film image by placing objects partly in front of more distant ones (through overlap, a great plane can be created)--- color and texture can also create overlapping planes

· atmospheric perspective : a depth cue that works by making objects in the distance more blurry than objects in the foreground clearer (using aperture depth of field, lens focus, and things like gauze/smoke to generate atmospheric perspective)

· familiar size : we base hypotheses on what we know of the class of objects represented////regular schemata for the normal size of people, animals etc help us decide what is nearer or further away

· size diminution: relies on our natural understanding that objects further away from us seem smaller than objects close to us

· light, shadow, and darkness : suggest planes, also can model the object’s form/round-off planes to create volumes

1. highlights suggest the surface texture/direction of the light

2. shadows suggest texture, form, and relief

3. attached shadows are caused by portions of the objects casting shadows on the object itself

4. cast shadows may define the object’s form, often in distorted ways, or cue us to infer spatial relations within the milieu

· linear perspective : where parallel lines converge at a distant vanishing point (Albertian’s idea)

· movement : having figures moving in the frame creates a continuous flow of overlapping contours, strengthening figure/ground hypotheses; it makes a space feel more concrete because it reinforces our hypotheses about where things about each other

1. monocular movement parallax

--ability of the camera itself to move, maintaining distance and depth cues while changing position

--tracking or craning the camera in any direction can yield even more information about the field

--zoom shots which simply magnify or demagnify the field do not supply motion parallax

--things create depth:

· shallow-space composition

· deep-space compositions: there is a considerable distance between the plane closet to the camera and the one farthest away

· moderately deep space composition : falling between the extremes

LECTURE 7:

· editing space

· continuity editing: overview

--the dominant way of creating space using editing is via continuity

--the key purpose:

1. allow the viewer to understand easily

2. give us more information

--ultimately seeks for clarity; then 180 system achieved this

--A scene’s space is built around the axis of action; the axis of action determines a half circle or 180 area; the axis of action is identified with an establishing shot (usually a long shot); establish and preserve the audience’s understanding of space and spatial relations within a scene

-- cross the line (not within a 180)

--maintaining an axis of action:

1. ensures consistent eyelines by keeping the characters facing in consistent directions

2. ensures consistent screen direction

--the key purpose of the 180 system is to delineate space clearly

· establishing shot (rely on the audience to remember where the other characters are not in the scene)

· analytical editing:

-- eyeline match: where shot A presents something offscreen and shot B shows us what is being looked at, this allows the later cutting shot that does not need to include all the actors; this can only occur when one character is featured in a scene

--s hot/reverse shot: a shot of the opposite end of the axis of action; a movement within 180 degrees acre; reserve shots are often Over-The-Shoulder shots---the most recognizable product of the 180 system

--establishment, breakdown, reestablishment

-- re-establishing shots: usually identical to the original establishing shot so as to communicate how the space of the scene has changed; re-establishes the overall space that was analyzed in a closer shot

--once the character has stopped moving, the new axis of action joining the two characters becomes clear and the analytical breakdown of the scene can continue based on this new axis

-- match on action:

· a directional match: keeps the screen direction consistent (when an object is seen moving left-to-right across the scene in one shot, the next shot of their action should also present them moving left-to-right)

--c onstructive editing: spaces are cut together in a way that prompts the spectator to assume a spatial whole that is not shown onscreen; this does not use an establishing shot but composes the space from closer shots only; construct more in our imagination---what happens between shots takes place in your head

· sonic space—determine the distance and position of sound in a normative way

· non-diegetic sound and diegetic sound: are governed by conventions of film viewing

-- sound perspective: the way a film suggests the placement of the sound in the story world

· stereophonic sound: helps to suggest regions of surround within the frame

· offscreen space

1. the space beyond the four frame lines

2. the space behind the camera

3. the space beyond the horizon

--sound has a strong potential to cue us about offscreen space; this can also suggest the size of the space

LECTURE 8: --narration and time (how a series of events take place in a period of time; infer and construct the story timeline)

· the order of eventit can present plot events in the order they happened in the story or flashbacks and flash-forwards, this can be out of order

· simultaneously (at the same time)

1. simultaneously story events and simultaneously presentation in the narration

example: when Frances talks to Sophie on the phone, she and Sophie are simultaneously talking to each other.

2. Simultaneously story events are presented successively in the narration

--common in classical narrative cinema through crosscutting

--generate suspense

· successively (at different times)

1. successive story events presented simultaneously in the narration

--the imposition of the past onto the present is rare in a story, but it happens typically when characters are watching TV/listening to the radio that recounts past story events.

--allow the future to impede upon the present: split screen and offscreen sound

2. successive story events presented successively in the narration

--most common

--it is possible for temporal gaps between successive events to be masked by. mise-en-scene to form an extended form of montage

--the narration can still take liberties: the story consists of a chronological (linear) series of events; it can keep to this (1,2,3) or reorder (non-linear) the events (2,1,3)

-- reorder: flashbacks (a prior story event is positioned later in the narration; but it depends on what one deems the central narrative storyline of a film to be) and flash-forwards

· recounting: the narration presents characters “communicating information about prior events by any means like writing, speeching, pantomime, etc; then we have recounting

· enacted: the narration presents prior events as if they were occurring at the moment, in direct representation

· enacted recounting: a mixed case where a character tells us about past events, and the narration presents the events in a flashback (enacts them)

· effects of reordering: offers obvious narrational possibilities; creates suspense’ also encourages the “primary effect” (the likelihood that the first item or few items in a series tend to form a benchmark for what will follow) since each action can be measured as a change from the first one we see; can create delays, contributing to a sense of surprise; tends to generate mental subjectivity

-- internal and external flashbacks

· external flashbacks: enacts events that occurred prior to the first events represented in the narration

· internal flashbacks: the flashbacks enact events that occur within the temporal bounds of the narration proper after the initial event presented

-- flash-forwards—the last story event necessarily set one boundary of the narration’s time span

· the duration of eventsrefers to how long events take

· story duration

· narration duration

· plot duration: the bits of the story we see on the screen; we choose pieces of the story duration and put them into plot duration

· screen duration (narration duration): the actual length of the film; chooses pieces of the plot duration to show on screen; the sum of these pieces of plot duration is the screen duration

--durational relationships

1. equivalence

--story duration equals narration and screen duration—equivalent

2. reduction

--story duration is narrated in abridged or abbreviated fashion—reduced

--two key techniques can achieve reduction: ellipsis and compression

--ellipsis: a discontinuity in the narration marks an omitted portion of the story duration. Omitting periods of time (temporal gap)

--example: cuts

--the extent to which the elided story time is determinable

--ellipses create gaps, which can be permanent or temporary, focused or diffuse, flaunted or suppressed

--it tends to work against delays

--compression: there is no discontinuity in the narration, but screen duration condenses the story and narration duration; using camera moves to compress time

3. expansion

--story duration is expanded

--insertion

--dilation: no discontinuity in the narration, but screen duration stretches out both story and narration duration; the most common way to do this is slow-motion cinematography

--slow-motion; overlapping editing; intercuts to the others; repetition of one plot; competing temporal schemes

--rate

--the screen duration controls the rate of our viewing, either by expanding or reducing

--rhythm

--the rate at which the narration demands us to view; by forcing the spectator to make inferences at a certain rate, the narration governs what and how we infer

--fast-paced rhythm: ambiguity and unreliability

--slow-paced rhythm: give viewers more time to observe details, which may prompt the viewer to reassess an initial hypothesis

· the frequency of eventsrepetition

--types of frequency

· recounting

· enacted