Here are some main points from Richard Barsam’s textbook “Looking at Movies.” The opening chapters discuss:

You already know some things about movies, but Your knowledge is mostly instinctive You probably view movies primarily as

entertainment Learning more about movies is likely to surprise

you.

From Professor Lisa Jadwin Ph.D. – St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY

These are the two key elements of any narrative form, including film.

FORM: the means through which a subject is expressed.

CONTENT: the subject of an artwork

The Wizard of OzThe Documentary, Salesman?Apocalypse Now?

What expectations do you have of the following forms? Romance Mystery Thriller Fantasy Children’s film Instructional exercise video

Patterns are elements that are repeated so that their meaning is expanded and intensified.

Movies manipulate space and time in unique ways.

Movies depend on light.

Movies create the illusion of movement.

Erwin Panofsky:“Movies give time to space and space to time”

by creating the illusion of movement and the illusion of the passage of time.

The audience remains fixed while the screen images move in a variety of directions.

Film creates the illusion of time passing faster or slower.

Literally means ‘light’ ‘writing’Began from 1800-1840; proceeded

through Camera obscura Silhouettes Glass negatives Series photography (Edweard

Muybridge)

Slow – intermediate - fast speedFilm stock “speed” or “exposure inde

x” indicates the degree to which the film is sensitive to light

“Fast” film stock is used in low-light situations or to capture rapid motion that would otherwise just be a blur

Film comes in analog and digital formats.

Traditional film is still used to shoot most movies.

Increasingly, digital film is being used in both still and motion-picture photograph

Barsam does not devote a lot of discussion to digital film technology, as it is still relatively new.

Gauge equals width of the film8 mm to IMAX (210mm) in width

Small-budget or intimate films are generally shot in smaller gauge stock (16-35 mm)

Big-budget or blockbuster films are generally shot on wider gauge stock (70 mm widescreen or IMAX 210mm)

This website provides examples of a variety of optical illusions, such as motion aftereffect.

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/mot_adapt/index.html

Persistence of vision (our eyes’ tendency to “hold over” gapped images)

Phi phenomenon (the illusion of movement between adjacent events) Critical flicker fusion helps create this

Apparent motion (our eyes’ tendency to connect disparate images into a single smooth motion)

. . .at the movies, when you watch a character use a computer monitor, and the monitor seems constantly to flicker. Yet when you look at your own computer monitor, it doesn’t seem to flicker at all.

Realism is the creation of scenarios that seem plausible

Anti-realism is the creation of scenarios that seem implausible (or defy the laws of physics)

Verisimilitude is the illusion that a one- or two-dimensional surface is three-dimensional and actually real

A. Plausible (realism)

B. Implausible (anti-realism)

C. Three-dimensional or real (verisimilar)

Their 1895 film, “Exiting the Factory,” to which sound has been added, utilizes fixed cameras and tries to capture an everyday event.

It is on our web site robfilm.org in the narrative video tutorials.

Action Biography Comedy Fantasy Film noir Gangster Horror Melodrama Musical Mystery Romance Science fiction Thriller War Western

Which genres does Citizen Kane belong to? How does it experiment with conventions of those genres?

. . .when filmmakers alter generic conventions

Often they do this to meet the expectations of a changing society

What has happened to the western genre in the past two decades?

Factual InstructionalDocumentaryPropaganda

Sometimes, as with fictional films, these sub-genres overlap or are impossible to distinguish or determine.

How can we determine what is a documentary, what is factual, and what is propaganda?

Animation is created through manipulating artificial characters – drawings, figures, etc. – to provide the illusion of movement and life.

Puppet animationClay animation (ClayMation)PixilationTraditional cartoons (like a celluloid

flip-book)

Avant-garde films: style becomes subject

These films are often designed to shock or amaze viewers

They can be deliberately anti-realistic

Stream-of-consciousness is an avant-garde technique

Films are created not by individuals, but by large teams of individuals working on special issues: photography, acting, sound, direction, editing, special effects, etc.

Traditionally the director is credited with the overall vision of a particular film. This view of film is called auteur theory (author theory).