Film as Drama, Part 2 -- Films

for to speak film is partly to invent it!

"In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director." -- Alfred Hitchcock FILM -- Etymology: Middle English filme, from Old English filmen; akin to Greek pelma sole of the foot, Old English fell skin -- more at FELL Date: before 12th century (use webster dictionary at the bootom)

Script Analysis Directory & DramLit

Links

Featured Pages: Film Directing Part II: Film (Language)

Summary

The three main chapters 3, 4, 5 (somehow chapter 2 is under "technology"). BTW, "montage" is a technology too, IT (information technology, how we format and process information).

We need to define the difference between the hardware and software technology in film.

Questions

The difference between film and movies: visual poetry and use of language

Terms:

Monaco on Narrative (Mentz): The syntagma of a film or sequence shows its linear narrative structure. It is concerened with 'what follows what.' The paradigm of a film is vertical: it concerns choice -- 'what goes with what.'" [ bold - AA ]

Modification of space = mise-en-scene
Modification of time = montage

Homework

Give your example of 1. psychological, 2. ethnographical and 3. physiological reading of images. [ fragments for analysis in class ]

Notes

"motion picture" (Amer.)
Date: 1896
1 : a series of pictures projected on a screen in rapid succession with objects shown in successive positions slightly changed so as to produce the optical effect of a continuous picture in which the objects move
2 : a representation (as of a story) by means of motion pictures : MOVIE Sight, Sound, Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics Developed at San Francisco State University, this textbook isolates the five fundamental image elements of television and film -- light and color, 2D space, 3D space, time/motion, and sound -- examines their aesthetic characteristics and potentials, and structures them in their respective aesthetic fields. The fourth edition adds sections on inductive shot sequences, electronic cinema, and alternative storytelling techniques. *** "There are film theories, and then there is Deleuze." Deleuzian Film Analysis: The Skin of the Film: "What makes Deleuzian scholarship different from the earlier schools of theory that dominated film academia (present and past), and also a precarious film paradigm, is that Deleuze's project was about concept building and thinking. Cinema was a means of doing philosophy. And the quest was not to come up with a totalizing film theory, or to reveal what cinema is saying, but what cinema is doing. Deleuze is not a thinker with a singular 'theory' that can be lifted and used as a critical/hermeneutical template (like Freud, Lacan, Metz, etc.). One must always keep in mind that when a philosopher writes about cinema it has always been to suit their own philosophical end. A classic case is Henri Bergson, Deleuze’s principal philosophical mentor, who used the analogy of how cinema takes static images and gives ‘false’ movement to them, to demonstrate how the modern mind ‘fragments’ reality into pieces and can only render a “false” spatialized account of reality (movement, change, time). With the case of Deleuze, his Cinema books suggest that cinema runs parallel with philosophy and responds to the history of philosophy. Though one must be leery of taking concepts intended for philosophical discourse into the field of cinema, the merits of such transplantation is that it can force completely new ways of thinking about cinema, or seeing connections between hitherto uncoupled terrain."

Vertov. "Man with a Movie Camera" (in class) before we start talking about FILM.

Two "transitions": from Movies to Films and from Films to Theory (Philosophy).

TERMS introduced:

Sign > Signifier > Signified

Saccadic * Semiotic * Cultural (Readings)

Denotation (Diegesis) vs. Connotation (Expression)

Paradigmatic (choice) & Syntagmatic (construction)

Icon - Symbol - Metonymy - Trope and Index (samples)

Film Analysis:

2007 -- google.com/group/filmstudy

...

Film & Movies, Part II -- Films

Fall 2005

So, is it Movies or Films first, Anatoly? Yes, I'm tempted to start with the movies, because most of them you already saw. You know the movie-stars... and do not know directors. In our mass culture we call it "Tom Cruse" movie, not Bergman's film. Some of the them (movies) are very good (proper use of film language). Well, some people are educated, but not poets. Films = poetry of filmmaking. Movies = "film chat"...
[ see listing of (film) titles for class ]
Structuralism: forms = meanings (Marxism)
Postmodernism: film as philosophy.
From required (definitions) to recommended. Example: "movie" -- a representation (as of a story) by means of motion pictures , Synonyms -- cine, ||cinema, film, flick, motion picture, moving picture, photoplay, picture, picture show, show; Related Word -- cinematics, cinematography.
[ review again the first part: film and other arts ]
Read Part IV (textbook "How to Read a Film"): History (7 Ages of Film)
* Movies = economics
* Cinema = esthetics
* Film = politics (ideology)
Audience-intensive (novel) and technology-intensive (film)
Systems of Oppositions
Structure, Infrastucture (economics) , Superstructure (art)
1. Film is plural rather than unique = 2. that it is infinitely reproducible
A. the form of film is revolutionary.
B. the content is most often conservative of traditional values.
[ the dialectic between film realism and film expressionism: between film's power to mimic reality and its power to change it ]
National v. Global and Universal
the established myths of culture > national identity; male fantasy (from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna)
Sex = Violence * Taboos of the new folktales
* the end of the century (end of cinema): "one dead, the other powerless to be born." 282
"Genre v. Auteur": entertainment (dream and nightmare) v. dialectical film (dialogical).
the phenomenon of selebrity (star cinema): Iraqi War 2003 -- national v. international.

"In the age of mechanical reproduction fiction has a force it never had before." 266
... the content is most often conservative of traditional values, the form of film is revolutionary.
262 "the dialectic between film realism and film expressionism: between film's power to mimic reality and its power to change it." Epic Theatre traditions (including episodic structure)
* dichotomy between realism and expressionism: dialectic of mimesis/expression.
Citizen Kane
Spring 2003: Make it into a showcase. 1. Storyline (dramatic composition with the reversed chronology). 2. Character-oriented (American Cinema = Realism = Drama). 3. Cinematography (subjective camera, angles, deep focus, lighting, cuts?)
Docudrama (how Welles is using it).
... Must be careful with aesthetics in film: we better get used to human physiology in film!

Well, kids, it will take some time for me to resolve my problems with the textbook (Esthetics vs. Aesthetics, "The Postmodern Sequel" and etc.) Since I am not teaching this course for a while, I can allow myself to mess up my film analysis webpages with my side-talking.

I regret that I cannot cross the line, when I speak of film as philosophy... It's established (Film-Philosophy online mag), but, NTL, as a parallel (or new, alternative) way of intellectual discourse. All I can do is go back to my POV non-fiction and continue write over there. Anatoly 2005

CODES: Reading the Image and Understanding the Image (Monaco 176-177)
* The image is experinced as both an optical and a mental phenomenon.
* We understand an image not only for itself, but in context: in relation to categories of choice (paradigmatic) and in relation to categories of construction (syntagmatic). [ new terms = right table + dictionary ]
Second Diagram: Space (Synchronic) > Frame and Time (Diachronic) > Shot
Montage and/or Mise-en-scene

Next: Part 3 Media (including Internet)

Theory pages are @ film semio

@2002-2003 film-north * Jung and Film: Post-Jungian Takes on the Moving Image

Jung and Film brings together some of the best new writing from both sides of the Atlantic, introducing the use of Jungian ideas in film analysis. Illustrated with examinations of seminal films including Pulp Fiction, Blade Runner, and 2001 - A Space Odyssey, Chris Hauke and Ian Alister, along with an excellent array of contributors, look at how Jungian ideas can help us understand films and the genres to which they belong. The book also includes a glossary to help readers with Jungian terminology. Taking a fresh look at an everchanging medium, Jung and Film is essential reading for academics and students of Analytical Psychology, as well as Film, Media and Cultural Studies. Teaching Scriptwriting, Screenplays and Storyboards for Film and TV Production (Bfi Teaching Film and Media Studies)

This practical guide provides everything you need to introduce scriptwriting to your students, and establishes the basis for a high standard of coursework for Film or Media Studies. The guide demonstrates how scriptwriting, screenplays and storyboarding can be valuable both in the production context and as a way of engaging with key aspects of the media or film studies curriculum, with accessible reference to key critical and theoretical writing. The Film Studies Dictionary (Arnold Student Reference)

Use the known commercials to demostrate the samples of ICON, SYMBOL, METONOMY, TROPE and Index...

The brands -- Coca-Cola, Mac, cars...

metanomy -- associate details invote an abstract idea.

synecdoche --

The trope --

... and "Kuleshov Effect" phenomena againg?