midterm

Film Terms

The “Auteur” Directors

· Terry Gilliam

· First known for the bizarre animation sequences in “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” (1969), using cutout pictures and photographs.

· If you’re searching for weird films, then look no further than Terry Gilliam films

· Often begins and ends his films with the same shot

· Heavy use of wide angle lenses

His breakthrough picture, Time Bandits, 1974

· Finding that his bedroom contains a hole in time, a boy ventures through it and emerges in different historical periods, teaming up with a band of diminutive time-traveling outlaws on the lookout for loot.

The Zero Theorem (2013)

· A computer hacker's goal to discover the reason for human existence continually finds his work interrupted thanks to the Management; this time, they send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

· unfinished film project directed and co-written by Gilliam - began shooting 2000, Jean Rochefort as Quixote and Depp as Toby Grisoni

· never finished thanks to bad luck - weather, health issues, and insurance problems

· in 2010, Gilliam finally announced that the funding had collapsed.

· In January 2014, Gilliam said filming has begun again.

Tideland (2005)

· Schizofantasy about a heroin addict, his emotionally troubled daughter, a dilapidated farmhouse, and some very weird neighbors - Jeff Bridges stars

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

· It’s hard to beat for sheer spectacle, whether the eighteenth-century hero is surfing the sky on a cannonball or matching wits with the King of the Moon.

Jabberwocky (1977)

· The title comes from Lewis Carroll, the characters have names like Griselda Fishfinger and King Bruno the Questionable, and the style is Monty Python gone medieval. Michael Palin, one of the best Python performers, is at the top of his game.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

· Christopher Plummer and Tom Waits are terrific - Heath Ledger’s death during production forced Gilliam to reinvent his character as a protean figure who morphs into Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell - Creative, but ultimately more frantic than fulfilling.

The Fisher King (1991)

· Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges - When it isn't bogged down in romantic subplots, this pitch-dark comedy has great energy and visual imagination

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

· In a future society driven underground by a deadly epidemic, a convict travels to the bygone year of 1996, looking for a bizarre animal-rights group that may have that may have unleashed the illness. Bruce Willis is excellent as the film’s hero, and Brad Pitt is downright unhinged as the activist.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974)

· Codirected by Gilliam and Terry Jones — Terry G. focused on visuals while Terry J. supervised the acting.

· the film doesn’t quite equal Life of Brian, directed by Jones five years later, but both films are excellent and deservedly revered.

Time Bandits (1981)

· Finding that his bedroom contains a hole in time, a boy ventures through it and emerges in different historical periods, teaming up with a band of diminutive time-traveling outlaws on the lookout for loot.

· a unique, intelligent, freewheeling, and terrific film, complete with a switcheroo ending that few children’s films would dare to present.

Brazil (1985)

· A savagely satirical sci-fi noir that uses a miniscule computer glitch to launch a juggernaut of uproarious calamity. Brazil is the tale of a mild-mannered bureaucrat who dares to buck the system in a future society where conformity reigns.

· film’s history as strange as its plot: worried that the stunningly dark ending would alienate U.S. audiences, Universal shelved it ‘til unauthorized screenings and a major critics’ award forced them to release a somewhat altered edition to American theaters.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

· Hunter S. Thompson’s notorious book bounced around Hollywood for ages. The resulting film captures the energy and essence of Thompson’s deadpan pseudobiography and drug-soaked view of America during Watergate and Vietnam years.

· Gilliam has never made a darker, crazier, more passionate movie.

· Hunter Thompson with Depp and Del Toro

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

· Awards: nominated Cannes Film Festival Official Selection, Palme d’Or; awarded Golden Aries, Russian Guild of Film Critics, Johnny Depp, foreign actor.

The Brothers Grimm

· Matt Damon and Heath Ledger - eponymous fairy-tale collectors, portrayed as con artists whose phony demon-slaying racket turns perilous when they enter a forest that’s actually haunted.

· Award: Venice Film Festival Official Selection

What to look for when watching films?

· Cinematography

· EDITING

Note: 2001, A Space Odyssey example

· Acting quality

About Lenses

WIDE ANGLE

· Broad view

· Smaller image

· Good for close shooting

· Deep depth of field

· Increase object speed towards camera

· Minimizes camera shake

· Wide Shot (WS)

· Wide Angle and Deep Frame

TELEPHOTO

· Narrow view

· Larger image

· Good for close shooting

· Shallow depth of field

· Decrease object speed to camera

· Maximizes camera shake

· “long” shot (LS)

Examples:

Telephoto – Empire of the Sun

Telephoto – Close Encounters

Depth of Field – Catch-22

Depth of Field – Citizen Kane

Subjective Camera – The Graduate

Other Terms

· Shot. A single run of the camera or resulting piece of film.

· Scene. A dramatic unit composed of a single or several shots—usually a continuous time period, in same setting, and involves same characters.

· Sequence. A dramatic unit composed of several scenes, all linked by emotional and narrative momentum.

Types of Shots

· Establishing shot. Opening shot or sequence, frequently an exterior 'General View' as an Extreme Long Shot (XLS, ELS). Used to set the scene.

Establishing Shot, “Woodstock”

· Extreme Long Shot (XLS, ELS): shot taken from a sufficient distance; even further away that a LS

· Long Shot (LS): shot taken from a sufficient distance to show a landscape, a building, or a large crowd

· Wide Shot (WS)

· Medium Shot (MS): shot between a long shot and a close-up that shows people from the waist up Example: Close-up – Lord of the Rings

· Close-up Example: Close-up – Lord of the Rings

·

· Extreme Close-up (ECU, XCU): shot of a small object or part of a face that fills the

· Cut-Aways

· Inserts

· Reverse Angle Shot. a camera angle composed of a shot photographed from the opposite side of a subject to provide a different perspective; in dialogue, a shot of the second participant is commonly composed as an over-the-shoulder shot; sometimes known as an 180 degree angle shot or change in perspective; the alternating pattern between two characters' points of view is known as shot/reverse shot motion (or reverse action).

· Over the Shoulder Shot.

Over the Shoulder Shot – The Graduate

Over the Shoulder Shot – North by Northwest

Camera Movement

· Pan: camera moves horizontally on a fixed base.

· (Examples: the call to roundup in Red River (1948) ; in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) a panning shot reveals the presence of Indians just as the stagecoach seems to be heading to safety.

· Tilt: camera points up or down from a fixed base

· Tracking (Dolly) Shot: camera moves through space on a wheeled truck (or dolly), but stays in the same plane

Examples: the first eight minutes of Robert Altman's The Player (1992) was filmed with a sustained dolly shot, similar to the this opening of Touch of Evil (1958).

Other well know tracking shots:

· Club intro of Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990).

· Tracking down to her ring of Hitchcock’s Notorious (1945).

· The pool part scene of Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1998).

· tracking shot that ends the film in Truffaut’s 400 Blows.

· Opening shot tracks backward from a close-up of Alexander de Large in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

· uninterrupted 20-some minute tracking shot virtuoso filmmaking in Snake Eyes.

Camera Angle

· High-angle shot. a shot in which the subject is filmed from above and camera points down on action, often to make the subject small, weak and vulnerable; contrast to low-angle shot.

Low Angle – Blues Brothers

High Angle – Lord of the Rings

· point-of-view (POV). the perspective from which the film story is told; also refers to a shot that depicts the outlook or position of a character; also see omniscient and subjective point of view, and POV shot

example: Being John Malkovich

Lighting

· the main or primary light on a subject, often angled and off-center (or from above) that selectively illuminates various prominent features of the image; high-key lighting (with everything evenly and brightly lit, with a minimum of shadows) is termed realistic (and often used in musicals and comedies), while low-key lighting (with less illumination, more shadows, and many grayish, dark areas) is termed expressionistic (and often used in film noir); three-point lighting uses: (1) a fill (or filler) light - an auxiliary light to soften shadows and areas not covered by the key light, (2) a back light behind to add depth to a subject, and (3) a bright key light;

Low Key – Mulholland Drive

“Hable con ella Talktoher”

Low Key – Casablanca

Low Light – Wyatt Earp

· Silhouette – Seventh Seal and Manhattan

· Boom: camera moves up or down through space

· Zoom: not a camera movement, but a shift in the focal length of the camera lens to give the impression that the camera is getting closer to or farther from an object

Example: Zoom Out – The Graduate

Film Techniques

Camera Work and Editing

D. W. Griffith

Started at Biograph and was not all that different from other filmmakers.

However, one of his

strengths was the actors Griffith chose, like Mary Pickford, Dorothy Gish and Lionel Barrymore.

D. W. Griffith

· Ultimately he has been recognized throughout the world as the single most important individual in

the development of film as an art.

D. W. Griffith

· As Griffith's experience grew, so did his ambition.

· Complex stories

· Larger casts

· Larger budgets

· one-reelers, straying occasionally into two reels despite producer opposition

· Later far grander projects.

father of film grammar

· D. W. Griffith has been called the father of film grammar.

· Griffith was a key figure in establishing the set of codes that have become the universal film language.

D. W. Griffith

· Griffith's heavy workload - opportunity to experiment

· flashbacks, parallel events and emotions in purely cinematic terms.

· used domestic props to create angles and shape and deepen the frame.

D. W. Griffith

· developed Bitzer’s tilts, pans, and "tracks" into forms of expression, even cross-cutting between tracking shots

· used artificial lighting to suggest firelight in and what came to be called "Rembrandt lighting" as a narrative and characterization device.

Night Watch and Self Portrait

D. W. Griffith

· Graphic techniques, such as the dissolve, fade, iris and mask, were designated narrative purposes

· split screens and soft focus were sparingly used for additional impact.

D. W. Griffith

· also transformed the art of screen acting, down to rehearsals.

· Aware that the camera could magnify even the slightest gesture or expression

D. W. Griffith

· He invariably cast to suit particular physical types

· and assembled a company that comprised some of the leading names of the silent era.

Iris shot from Intolerance.

Iris in Birth of a Nation

Breakers Roar – a closeup without editing

Birth of a Nation (1915)

· Griffith’s portrayal of the Reconstruction era in which Southern whites were rescued by the Ku Klux Klan from vengeful carpetbaggers and unruly blacks

· revoked condemnation led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Birth of a Nation (1915)

· Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera and narrative techniques

· its immense popularity set the stage for the dominance of the feature length film.

Birth of a Nation (1915)

· many scenes filmed from many different and multiple angles to vary the shot for impact

· the technique of the camera "iris" effect

· circular masks to either reveal and open up a scene, or close down and conceal a part of an image

Birth of a Nation (1915)

· the use of parallel action and editing

· use of total-screen close-ups to reveal intimate expressions

· use of flashbacks

· seamless editing (masking one cut to the next matching frame)

· the use of vignettes seen in "balloons" or "iris-shots" in one portion of a darkened screen

Birth of a Nation (1915)

· use of lap dissolves to blend or switch from one image to another

· high-angle shots

· abundant use of panoramic long shots

· battle scenes with hundreds of extras

· cross-cutting between two scenes for excitement and suspense

Birth of a Nation (1915)

· Director: D.W. Griffith

· Producers: D.W. Griffith & Harry Aitken

· Stars: Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks

· Film Editor: D.W. Griffith, Joseph Henabery, James Smith, Rose Smith, Raoul Walsh

· Writer: Thomas F. Dixon, Jr. Griffith co-wrote the screenplay with Frank E. Woods

· Camera: G. W. Bitzer

Intolerance (1916)

· Studio: Wark Producing Corporation

· Director: D.W. Griffith

· First Assistant Director: Tod Browning, Eric Von Strohelm

· Producers: D.W. Griffith

· Stars: Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Mae Marsh, Bessie Love

· Film Editor: James E. Smith, Rose Smith

· Screenwriter: Tod Browning

· Camera: G. W. Bitzer

Intolerance (1916)

· Griffith’s next

· surpassed The Birth of a Nation in its scale and sweep in Intolerance (1916).

· devised a revolutionary new narrative structure while further perfecting his use of dramatic close-ups, camera movement, and parallel editing to create what is perhaps the cinema’s foremost masterpiece and most ambitious film done before the 1920s.

Intolerance (1916)

· Griffith decided to expand his narrative to encompass four stories from different periods of history, illustrating the persistence of intolerance and inhumanity

· Instead of telling them sequentially, Griffith intercut his Modern Story

· Modern story, Judean Story portraying Crucifixion of Christ; French Story and, the Babylonian Story.

Intolerance (1916)

· Intolerance enjoyed a sustained success in countries like Russia and Japan.

· The film ran for ten years in the USSR and became the single most important influence on the Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s.

Intolerance (1916)

· His final film, The Struggle (1931)

· a grim and obviously heartfelt warning of the perils of alcoholism, was a crushing commercial disaster

· In the remaining 17 years of his life he made nothing further.

· avoided by the studios for whom he had almost single-handedly created the film industry, and he was forgotten by the public.

· many scenes innovatively filmed from many different and multiple angles

· the technique of the camera "iris" effect (expanding or contracting circular masks to either reveal and open up a scene, or close down and conceal a part of an image)

· the use of parallel action and editing in a sequence (Gus' attempted rape of Flora, and the KKK rescues of Elsie from Lynch and of Ben's sister Margaret)

· extensive use of color tinting for dramatic or psychological effect in sequences

· moving, traveling or "panning" camera tracking shots

· the effective use of total-screen close-ups to reveal intimate expressions

· beautifully crafted, intimate family exchanges

· the use of vignettes seen in "balloons" or "iris-shots" in one portion of a darkened screen

· the use of fade-outs and cameo-profiles (a medium closeup in front of a blurry background)

· the use of lap dissolves to blend or switch from one image to another

· high-angle shots and the abundant use of panoramic long shots

· the dramatization of history in a moving story - an example of an early spectacle or epic film with historical costuming and many historical references (e.g., Mathew Brady's Civil War photographs)

· impressive, splendidly-staged battle scenes with hundreds of extras (made to appear as thousands)

· extensive cross-cutting between two scenes to create a montage-effect and generate excitement and suspense (e.g., the scene of the gathering of the Klan)

· expert story-telling, with the cumulative building of the film to a dramatic climax

Parallel editing at end;

the rescue

· His rhythmic editing style in chase films created a sense of excitement by intercutting between chaser and the pursued

· employing shorter and shorter shots to add to the suspense as in Down East.

Way Down East (1920)

Shooting down at (Gone with the Wind)

Double Exposure - The Silence of the Lambs

Woodstock (1970)

· use of Split screen

Carrie (1976) d. Brian De Palma

Iris shots in Straight Shooting (1917); Ford’s his 1st feature

Parallel Editing – The Godfather

Eisenstein & montage

· Montage--juxtaposing images by editing--is unique to film

· During the 1920s, pioneering Russian film directors demonstrated the technical, aesthetic, and ideological potentials of montage.

Eisenstein

· Soviet Russian film director, scholar, and theorist, Sergei Eisenstein, cites the revolution as catalyst for making him an artist. Otherwise he would have followed his father into architecture and engineering except for his interest in joining the Red Army, where he learned Japanese and elements of Kabuki theater, which became instrumental in developing his film style.

Eisenstein - “father of montage”

· he pioneered the idea of unleashing a “collision” of shots in order to play with the audience’s emotions and create metaphors through the juxtaposition of similar images.

Eisenstein - “father of montage”

· The way he communicated visually was extra key since most of his films—including Strike (1924), The Battleship Potemkin (1925), and October (1927)—were silent.

Eisenstein - “father of montage”

· Eisenstein believed that film montage could create ideas or have an impact beyond the individual images. Two or more images edited together create a "tertium quid" (third thing) that makes the whole greater than the sum of its individual parts.

A + B = AB

A + B = C

Eisenstein - “father of montage”

· Eisenstein's greatest demonstration of the power of montage comes in the "Odessa Steps" se- quence of his 1925 film Battleship Potemkin. several times longer than it would take in real time:

Eisenstein - “father of montage”

· On the simplest level, montage allows Eisenstein to manipulate the audience's perception of time by stretching out the crowd's flight down the steps for seven minutes, several times longer than it would take in real time:

Referenced by Francis Ford Coppola

· Referencing the Odessa step scene, Neri shoots Barzini at the top of the steps reference the Odessa step scene.

· the Odessa steps scene - The rapid progression and alternation of images gives a sensational event even greater visceral impact

montage

famous sequence involving a runaway baby carriage shows Eisenstein using montage to arouse both emotion and ideological consciousness among the film's viewers

conclusion of the Odessa Steps sequence

· At the conclusion of the Odessa Steps sequence, two sequences of images illustrate the notion of the 'tertium quid' as well as the ideological potential of montage.

the rapid montage of the three cherubs makes the small angel seem to be throwing a punch.

three shots of stone lions, shown rapidly in succession, indicate awakening militancy

both montages represent a call to the people to rise up against oppression

Editing

· Cut: most common type of transition in which one scene ends and a new one immediately begins

· Fade-out/Fade-in: one scene gradually goes dark and the new one gradually emerges from the darkness

· Dissolve: a gradual transition in which the end of one scene is superimposed over the beginning of the a new one

Editing

Editing

· Wipe: an optical effect in which one shot appears to "wipe" the preceding one from the screen. Special wipes include flip wipes, iris wipes, star wipes, etc. For example, George Lucas is famous for the sweeping use of Wipes in his Star Wars films, which help evoke a kinship to old serialized pulp sci-fi novels and serials

· Crane: The camera leaves the ground and can travel not only forward and backward, in and out, but also up and down. Variations of the crane shot are aerial shots

Editing

· Jump Cut - The classic way of making things vanish is to film the actor/prop, stop the tape/film (or cut the gap when editing), remove the actor/prop from the shot and start the tape again. The camera should be locked off (not moving) otherwise the background will move between the cuts.

· Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (A Bout de Souffle)

· As the following lines are heard, we see a series of shots of Seberg in the passenger seat of the stolen convertible Belmondo is driving through the street of Paris. Discontinuities from one shot to the next with respect to (a) the position of the actress's head, (b) the degree of direct sunlight or shade, and (c) the streets and parked or moving cars seen in the background, make this one of the best examples in the film of Godard's jump cuts, seven of which turn up here in rapid succession.

Breathless

· Double Exposure - This was one of the first special effects ever created. All you do is film one shot on your camera, rewind the film and film your second shot. What you should get is two separate images mixed together. This can be done on video, but only in editing or mixing live between two cameras. The best way to get this effect is for the actor/model to be in front of a black cloth (i.e., curtain or wall) and to be standing on one side of the screen so the images do not overlap around the head of an actor, or a ghost walking through furniture.

· Match on action -- A cut that shifts the framing of an action within a scene by continuing the movement within the first shot seamlessly in the second shot.

· Importance of shots with camera movement

· Match on Form

· Split Screen.

· Rear Projection. a special effects technique to create backgrounds, in which actors are filmed in front of a screen on which a background scene is projected; commonly used in early films to produce the effect of motion in a vehicle. Also see process shot, process photography, or back projection.

· Key—similar to superimposition except the foreground image blocks out the background image (like text over a background)

·

· Chroma Key

· Use of a specific color, like blue or green, as a background for the foreground object

· Later, the specific color is removed and replaced with another video source.

· Example is a meteorologist standing in front of a weather map on a TV news program.

· What about ET and the flying bicycles, or Star Wars where Luke flew his X-wing fighter down the trench of the Death Star with Twin Ion Engine fighters in close pursuit (The X-wing fighter, TIE fighters and the trench were all models)? How about Return of the Jedi where Leia and Luke were flying at 100 mph on their speeder bike through the forest, or Back to the Future when the DeLorean began flying down a suburban street? How about in A Beautiful Mind where we see Russell Crowe sitting at a desk working on his thesis research. The camera pulls back and we see seasons changing with Crowe still there in the window. Only Crowe and the window are actually there. The walls, tree and changing seasons were all done with special effects and blue screen. 

· Blue Screen was originally invented as a film technique to separate actors and composite them over another background. Blue was originally chosen because it is the one color that does not exist in skin tone. Skin tone is made of a combination of red and green. Almost every film today will use blue screen to create some effect—driving a car, looking out a window on a set—and blue screen create the effect to they want in the film.

· Matte.

· the optical process of combining (or compositing) separately-photographed shots (usually actors in the foreground and the setting in the background) onto one print through a double exposure that does not meld two images on top of each other, but masks off (or makes opaque) part of the frame area for one exposure and the opposite area for another exposure; it is a photographic technique whereby artwork from a matte artist - usually painted on glass - is combined with live action; also sometimes known as split-screen.

Mise-en-scène

· Mise-en-scène. (Contrast montage). 'Realistic' technique whereby meaning is conveyed through the relationship of things visible within a single shot (rather than, as with montage, the relationship between shots). An attempt is preserve space and time as much as possible; editing or fragmenting of scenes is minimized. Composition is therefore extremely important and atmosphere is created by the way in which objects, scenery and the location are presented cinematically. The way people stand and move in relation to each other is important. Long shots and long takes are characteristic. Other characteristics used are light and dark, pattern, color, camera position and angle, and movement within the frame. Mise-en-scène is said to express the inner life of characters by depicting their settings in various ways.

Mise-en-scène

· Montage/montage editing. In its broadest meaning, the process of cutting up film and editing it into the screened sequence. However, it may also be used to mean intellectual montage - the juxtaposition of short shots to represent action or ideas - or (especially in Hollywood), simply cutting between shots to condense a series of events. Intellectual montage is used to consciously convey subjective messages through the juxtaposition of shots which are related in composition or movement, through repetition of images, through cutting rhythm, detail or metaphor. Montage editing, unlike invisible editing, uses conspicuous techniques which may include: use of close- ups, relatively frequent cuts, dissolves, superimposition, fades and jump cuts. Such editing should suggest a particular meaning.

Film Finances

Films need to take in 2 ½ to 3 times the negative costs just to break even

Negative costs – production plus some advertising

Difference between director and producer

Exhibitor or theater owner

Property -Story/book being considered in development of a screenplay/movie; an option – when you have put money down so you may try to pull together a package to make the movie. Typically you have an option for one year.

Distributor

Studio

Above the line and below the line costs – the budget

Below line costs are fixed

Above the line budget is for the stars

Deferred payments

Front money people (investors)

Difference between production of TV programs versus movies