Film Appreciation

FILM
APPRECIATION
DR. YELIZAVETA MOSS &
DR. CANDICE WILSON

1
FILM APPRECIATION IS DEDICATED TO THE REMARKABLE
F A C U LT Y A N D S T U D E N T S O F T H E C M J D E P A R T M E N T A T U N G .
T H A N K YO U F O R I N S P I R I N G U S T O TA K E O N T H I S P R OJ E C T.
Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to acknowledge and thank those film professors and students who have
reviewed the project and contributed to its content. Thank you to the faculty insert contri-
butors Michael Lucker, Dr. Tobias Wilson-Bates, Alex Lukens, and Dr. Jeff Marker. Thank
you to the students who contributed their essays as writing samples, Hope Gandy and Eric
Azotea. And thank you to the students who piloted the textbook and provided feedback:
Peyton Lee, Carly Martinez, Marissa Oda, Danna Sandoval, David Sutherland, and Elise
WIlkins.
THIS TEXTBOOK IS AN OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCE WHOSE

DEVELOPMENT WAS FUNDED BY AN AFFORDABLE LEARNING
G E O R G I A G R A N T.
2 F I L M A p p r e c ia t i o n
Contents
INTRODUCTION 4
I. FILM HISTORY 7
2. NARRATION 28
3. MISE-EN-SCÈNE 44
4. CINEMATOGRAPHY 59
5. EDITING 79
6. SOUND 91
7. GENRE 104
8. BEYOND GENRE 116
9. WRITING FILM ANALYSIS 130
CONCLUSION 139
GLOSSARY 141
3
I N T R O D U C T I O N
What is Film?
Since the early 1900s, filmmakers and theorists have argued over the question of what
differentiates film from the other arts of literature, painting, theater and photography. Film,
also known as cinema, or movies, refers not just to moving images and the telling of stories,
but also to the celluloid or film stock upon which these moving images were printed. For well
over a century, film has profoundly impacted our world and the ways in which we perceive
ourselves and others. However, we have also had an impact upon the medium. Surrounded
as we are in society by a constant barrage of images from television, cell phone and compu-
ter screens to digital ad screens in subways, department stores and airports, moving images
have become so ubiquitous that we fail to recognize how trained we already are in reading
images. We often neglect to give these images the careful, critical consideration they require
to develop an appreciation for their construction, and the different kinds of audiovisual expe-
riences in which they invite us to participate.
Film celluloid is composed of frames, still images that together make up the entirety of
a film. The practice of framing a subject or a shot within the ‘frame’ of the camera’s rectan-
gular shaped viewfinder delimits and directs our vision. For instance, a camera can move to
follow a young girl home from work late at night. This young girl can be positioned in diffe-
rent ways within the camera’s rectangular viewpoint to be ‘read’ in a framing of the shot.
As we follow film history, we see the development of our cinematic sight from an objective
stance where we are held at a distance from the screen, to a subjective one where we begin
to perceive the emotions or aura of things. Today, cinema constantly moves between these
two states of objective and subjective positioning of the spectator. But it also interacts with
a third state—the invisible. Invisible processes, such as the story world off-screen or outside
the camera frame, and the cultural, political, economic, technological and industrial events
constantly occurring in the real world off-camera, influence both the content and the appea-
rance of the films we watch and the ways in which we consume them. In this way, there is
always an inside and outside the frame, what we can visibly see and hear, and what works
outside of our vision on the image.
Imagine, for example, the aforementioned young girl who is walking home alone at night.
She seems tired, but unworried as she hurries home. The camera keeps her clearly visible
and to the front of the frame, but over her shoulder, in the background, an indistinct figure
follows. Why are we concerned? What is behind her? A harmless passerby, a serial killer, a
supernatural monster? The director deliberately prevents us from knowing for certain, which
makes the figure looming behind the young girl more threatening. Positioning the girl in
the foreground brings her closer to us, so that we try to understand what she is feeling, and
begin to align ourselves with her perspective. While her face is in focus, naturally attracting
our gaze, the blurred figure in the background takes on a more ominous cast, removed as it
is from the familiar and the human.
Through the choices the director makes, we begin to shift from a purely objective view
(the visible) where we watch a woman walk home, to a more subjective viewership where we
begin to feel uneasy as we are emotionally influenced by subject positions and the structural
elements that make up the film. Film physically moves us. When the hairs on our arms raise
or we leap from our seats in fear, when our faces contort with anguish for a character, and
our chests heave with a sudden intake of breath in shared shock over the death of a belo-
ved character, we are emotionally moved by the communal experience of cinema. But, we
also move cinema in turn by suspending our disbelief, and immersing ourselves fully into the
wonderland of film sound and image. Even as clearly and carefully constructed as a film may
be in its effort to critically direct its meaning and influence us emotionally, the film audience
ultimately makes the leaps and connections in cinema driving the film forward. We bring our
own experiences and understandings to the film, making cinema not just a communal expe-
rience but also an intensely personal one. What moves us may not move another.
For French philosopher Roland Barthes, one of the chief ways in which cinema separates
itself from an art like photography, is in its ability to fully immerse audiences into the screen
so that they forget they are watching a film (also called “suturing”), and to have the audience
see themselves projected onto the screen, an ability that cinema depends upon. This cine-
matic world, one imagined by a director or character, can seem very familiar to us, entwi-
ned as we are within the screen and with the character. Cinema can embody us within the
screen, where we adopt the vision and point of view of characters. Simultaneously, it can
hold us at a distance allowing us to examine the social norms in which we participate and
take for granted.
Roland Barthes speaks to the double nature of cinema, one that produces an ‘enthralled
spectator’ and forms the basis for the promise of a shared community, a community where
we all touch and are touched by images. This enthrallment by the moving image points to
a darker aspect of cinema— its insidious ability to manipulate and encourage mass audien-
ces to consume harmful images and ideologies. For example, The Birth of a Nation (Griffith,
1915) and Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1935), both instant successes on their release,
used the emotionally persuasive craft of cinema to bolster white nationalistic pride through
heroic Christ-like representations of the Ku Klux Klan and Hitler respectively. Mainstream
cinema, films geared towards wide release in theaters and marketed to wide audiences with
the aim of attaining the greatest revenue, tends to adhere to a dominant system of belief
that largely neglects stories told from marginalized perspectives and outside the Hollywood
narrative system. In this way, even ‘light’ fare, like romantic comedies, Marvel superhero
movies and Disney animations, can participate in producing narratives that privilege hetero-
sexuality, monogamy and marriage as well as certain races, religions, ethnic groups, genders
and their way of life over others. Think here, for instance, of how many films you have seen
that feature a queer character at its center? Or a practicing Muslim character as its hero?
What do they wear? In what language do they speak? What is typically represented as social
reality in the mainstream cinema of your country?
We can think of film as constantly moving between dream and disruption. The dream
machine of cinema allows the spectator to imagine that the intoxicating images on screen
are true representations of reality. The destabilizing cinema, on the other hand, shakes the
What is Film? 5
audience out of its stupor through violence and fear, stark documentations of reality or a self-
-aware camera that demands audience participation in its production of meaning. In Funny
Games (Haneke, 1997) for instance, characters on screen constantly interrupt the action
(breaking the fourth wall), and taunt the cinema audience, making the spectator complicit
not just in the torture of the family on screen, but so too in the mass production of these
grisly images. The audience is made to feel uncomfortable in their casual pleasure taking in
such violent images. The cinema spectator thus always walks a tightrope between pleasura-
ble absorption in the image and distrust of the image. By learning to appreciate film, we not
only gain new insight, but also a new ability to perceive and challenge representations of the
world. Peering through the frame of the camera, we see our own selves through the eyes of
others across the globe.
FEATURES OF THIS TEXTBOOK:
* IMA G E B O X E S I N G O L D A R E
H Y P E R LI N K S T O O N LI N E V I D E O
C LI P S .
* C HA P T E R C O N T E N TS P A G E S
LIST A N D LI N K T O S E C TI O N S .
* B O L D E D T E R MS I N C HA P T E R S
A R E S U MMA R I Z E D I N P E A C H
B O X E S AT TH E S E C TI O N ' S E N D
A N D I N TH E G L O SSA R Y AT TH E
BACK.
Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, 1924)
Celluloid: A malleable thermoplastic. Used in cinema as photographic film stock.
Frames: Still images that make up celluloid film.
Objective filmmaking: Distances the audience from the story's action and the characters's experience.
Subjective filmmaking: Involves the audience in the story action and character experience.
Suturing: A film theory term that describes the process of immersion, whereby the audience is "stitched"
into the film by becoming emotionally invested.
Fourth wall: The screen through which the audience watches film. "Breaking the fourth wall" makes it
appear as though characters are addressing the audience directly.
C H A P T E R O N E
FILM HISTORY
SILENT CINEMA 8
PRE-CINEMATIC TECHNOLOGIES 8
EDISON, THE KINETOSCOPE, LUMIERE BROS 10
THE ACTUALITIES 13
GEORGES MELIES 14
CLASSICAL STORYTELLING 15
WWI & INTERNATIONAL AVANT-GARDE CINEMA 23

FRENCH IMPRESSIONISM 21
DADA & SURREALISM 23
GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM 25
** CONCLUSION
** GLOSSARY
F ILM HIST O R Y 7
SILENT CINEMA: The Beginning of Film Form (1895-1928)
Film history begins well before the invention of the motion picture camera. To understand
how and why the film industry has grown to become the primary mode of artistic expres-
sion in the world, we must first carefully trace the path of early cinema, which developed
the movie standards that we use today. Cinema storytelling became standardized remarka-
bly quickly – within the first two decades of its existence. The rules by which we make film
today are more or less these same rules, which were developed out of industry competition,
global wars, audience reception, and incorporation of radical art movements. These histori-
cal influences on the film industry in its early stages developed a sturdy film form.
The first element in this film form is the technical aspect of watching moving images.
Cinema does not literally show us movement, but it does show us a fast succession of still
images. The origin of cinema lies in our need for this illusion of motion and the subsequent
industry race to create a movie camera capable of recording and projecting images for the
viewing pleasure of its audience. This movie camera would have a light source to capture a
series of images composed of ‘frames’ onto a flexible, and reproducible celluloid. The cinema
apparatus would also need a projecting medium to create the illusion of motion by playing
these frames back at a specified speed or frame rate (the number of frames per second).
In this way, cinema can be thought of as still images set into motion, and thus the story of
cinema also becomes the story of animation, of photography, and the development of other
technologies. While the movie screen appears as a seamless flow of images, it is in fact dark
part of the time. The optical phenomenon known as ‘persistence of vision’ and its counter-
part, the phi phenomenon — the mental act of suturing the gaps between frames or images
– aids in the appearance of a constantly lit screen and the continuity of the image. Before
the advent of photography, many early optical devices exploited the specialized way in which
humans process light to trick the eye into conceiving motion.
Pre-cinematic technologies (6th c – 1890)

There were many different pre-cinematic devices using light sources to project images
that paved the way for cinema— from the camera obscura as early as the 6th century to
the magic lantern in the 18th century. The camera obscura, also often known as a pinhole
camera, was basically a box with a hole on its side that reproduced a naturally occurring opti-
cal illusion. Light from an image set in front of the camera obscura passes through the hole,
reproducing and inverting the image within the opposite surface inside the pinhole camera.
The magic lantern, on the other hand, was one of the earliest projectors of images onto a
‘screen’ or wall. It used a concave mirror to project light from a light source through a rectan-
Camera obscura Magic lantern Phantasmagoria
gular sheet of glass or paper containing the image to be screened. A lens at the front of the
lantern would then focus the image.
The 18th century also saw the appearance of phantasmagoria: a type of horror exhibi-
tion chiefly produced through the magic lantern that projected images of demons and skele-
tons onto walls, smoke, and transparent curtains to frighten its audiences. From its inception
the pre-cinematic device operated as a medium of light and film, introducing ideas of phan-
tasms or ghosts embedded within the very structure of the medium. The idea of ghosts in
film introduces a defining way in which cinema began to be imagined as a tool to represent
or re-imagine and interpret reality. In light of the phantasmagoria, we see one of the earliest
aims of the cinematic device as entertainment. The first films of cinema, though, would
provide a document or archive of the ghosts of the past, from the people, places and events
that were recorded onto celluloid.
The invention of photography (1820s -1880s) and other pre-cinema-
tic effects such as the zoetrope (1834) in the 19th century brought about a
seismic shift in the possibilities of the cinematic apparatus. Photography in
particular brought the celluloid technology to make images not only repro-
ducible but also more accessible to the masses. During the mid-1800s to
the 1880s two men, English professional photographer Eadweard Muybri-
dge (1830-1904) and French physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-
1904), were using photography to study the locomotion (movement) of
humans and animals. Both men aided in the evolution of motion photo-
Zoopraxiscope graphy by developing breakthrough camera techniques that set indivi-
dual images into motion. Muybridge used dozens of cameras to capture
motion across separate negatives placed in sequence to each other. In
1879 Muybridge projected these still images in rapid succession onto a
screen for the first time from an invention he called the zoopraxiscope, an
important predecessor of modern cinema. Muybridge can thus be credited
with creating some of the first moving pictures. His contemporary Marey
used chronophotography to depict movement through multiple exposu-
res onto a single photographic plate. Marey designed a camera called
the fusil photographique or “photographic gun”, which allowed the user
to take individual shots rapidly. As one of the earliest camera devices to
record sequential movements, Marey’s photographic gun was one of the
many important steps towards a fully functioning movie camera. Muybri-
dge and Marey’s experiments into chronophotography— still photogra-
phs that recorded movement—are understood as laying the foundation of
Chronophotography
cinematography.
While Muybridge and Marey set the template for moving pictures, the need for a cine-
matic device capable of recording movement instantaneously grew. This early movie camera
also had to be portable, allowing budding filmmakers and film exhibitors ease of travel,
Marey photographs
F ILM HIST O R Y 9
access, and exhibition. In 1889, American entrepreneur George Eastman engineered cellu-
loid ‘roll film’ which became the industry standard. Prior to Eastman’s more durable and flexi-
ble emulsion-based celluloid, paper sensitive film and glass plates were the norm for expe-
riments in photography and movement. The crucial invention of celluloid technology would
allow for the filming of longer subjects, and the easy transfer and exchange of films. All that
remained to achieve cinema, as we know it, was the rapid development of the movie camera
apparatus. The rise of the technology, which lead to the creation of the first movie came-
ras, occurred akin to an arms race, where the desire to create a recording and projecting
medium, which set images to motion, was also tied up in the financial possibilities of cinema.
An interesting figure during this time in film history is Frenchman Louis Le Prince, who
lies at the center of an enduring mystery that has never been solved. Le Prince worked in
England and is credited with shooting what may have been the first moving picture sequen-
ces as early as 1888. In 1890, at the eve of his first public demonstration, he mysteriously
disappeared with all his patent applications allowing other inventors to outpace him and be
attributed with the invention of cinema. While Le Prince’s work arguably did not influence
the commercial development of cinema due to the secrecy around it, his presence sets up
an argument for the first films emerging in England, Leeds, rather than that long held thou-
ght the cinema began in America and France.
Persistence of vision: The effect of an afterimage on the retina persisting after an image has been shown.
This allows for sequential images, as in optical toys or in film, to blend together to appear to be in motion.
Photography: The creation of permanent images with light on a light-sensitive material, often an emul-
sion on paper or celluloid.
Chronophotography: Photography that captures a quick succession of movements in several images.

Originally used for scientific study of body movement.
Edison, Kinetoscope, and Lumière Brothers (1891 – 1895)

Cinema technologies were invented in different countries at different times, but the
earliest date has been set at 1891, with the American inventor Thomas Edison’s Kineto-
graph camera and Kinetoscope viewing box: a type of peep show device, activated by
putting a coin in the slot. Edison’s assistant, W. K. L. Dickson is credited with much of the
work patented by Edison and was key to the formation of the first machines capable of
recording and screening moving images. But it would be Dickson’s four-hole-perforation of
35mm Eastman roll film that would change the course of film history. These perforations on
either side of a film frame permitted the film to be pulled by gears through both the camera
and viewing apparatus and would become the standard in the industry. Edison built a studio
called the Black Maria (pronounced ‘Mar-iah’) in New Jersey, named after its resemblance
to the cramped black police wagons that transported criminals, to create numerous shorts
Black Maria
such as Fred Ott’s Sneeze (1894), the first movie
to be copyrighted in the United States, Annette
Dances (1894), The Boxing Cats (1894), one of the
earliest forms of the cat video now popularized on
the internet today, and The Kiss (1896). The stage
was set for the film industry in the United States to
be born on the East Coast, and more specifically in
New Jersey.
Many of Edison’s earliest films were filmed by
William Heise and Dickson, two of the most proli-
fic filmmakers marking the beginnings of cinema.
These early films produced within the Black Maria were characterized by black backgrou-
nds and sunlight from the studio’s roof, which opened to allow for natural lighting. Because
recording these films required a bright light source, Edison had the revolutionary studio built
on a revolving track to follow the movement of the sun for optimal lighting throughout the
day. These continuous one-shot films were often short, no more than around 20 seconds in
length, with a fixed frame that kept the audience at a distance, as observers of life. Edison’s
films ran the gamut from comedic to intimate snapshots of life, often featuring notorious
figures like Annie Oakley and other people and places of note. In seeking to document
reality these first films eventually began to introduce the idea of cinema as more than just
pictures that move, but rather moving pictures that told a story.
By 1894 Edison had Kinetoscope parlors across the U.S. and Europe. Each machine,
though, could serve only one audience member at a time, since it could only fit one set of
eyes in the peephole, and was limited to exhibiting a single
short film. Although popular, the Kinetoscope’s days were
numbered by the continued race by inventors to discover
a commercially viable way to project films to large groups
of spectators. Germans Max and Emil Skladanowsky, for
example, developed the Bioscop movie camera and projec-
tor in 1895, which utilized two strips of film rather than
the standard 35mm single strip film. They are credited
with projecting a program of their own films to a paying
audience in Berlin almost two months before the Lumière
Brothers’ famous first film-projection for a public audience Kinetoscope
at the Grand Café in December 1895 Paris. In 1895, Dickson also
left the employment of Edison to partner with inventor Herman
Casler, Henry Norton Marvin and Elias Koopman in the American
Mutoscope Company, which by 1908 would become the Biograph
Company. Dickson and Casler would invent the Mutoscope, a type
of flip-card peep show device that would provide direct competition
as a cheaper alternative to Edison’s Kinetoscope. By 1896, Dick-
son and his partners would launch their own Biograph camera and
projector in their continued attempt to wrest control of the American
film market from Edison’s monopoly.
Although the Edison camera was patented as the first motion
picture camera, the official birth of cinema is often considered to
Mutoscope
F ILM HIST O R Y 11
be 1895 with the Lumière Brothers who successfully were both able to record a series of
images on a flexible, transparent medium (35 mm nitrate-based celluloid film) as well as
project the sequence in a system accessible to the commercial growth of cinema domesti-
cally and internationally.
Inspired by the Kinetoscope, in 1895 Frenchmen Louis and Auguste Lumière debuted
the groundbreaking Cinématographe. The Cinématographe operated as a recording camera,
printer or developer of the filmed images, and projector, while also being small and portable,
making it the first all-in-one commercially viable film camera. Importantly, the machine used
a slower exposure rate of 16 frames per second, a rate that would become the standard
international film speed, as compared to Edison’s application of 46 frames per second to his
cinema apparatus. Using the Cinématographe, the Lumières filmed their factory workers
leaving at the end of the day. The resultant film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory
(1895) is considered to be the very first motion picture made with this innovative machi-
nery. By the time of the Lumières’ celebrated first film screenings for a paying audience at
a café in Paris, the Lumières had a program of ten films that met with wide public acclaim
and economic success. These films allowed a glimpse into early documenting of everyday
life from August Lumière and his wife feeding their baby, to the arrival of a train, and men
playing cards. Others showed early comedic skits like a young boy tricking a gardener into
spraying himself with a hose by stepping on it.
Like Edison’s first films, the Lumière Brothers’ first films were single moving scenarios
taken in one shot, composed like a photograph or painting, and short in length, usually
under a minute long. The Lumière films, though, were marked by their ability to easily take
their camera to the streets, resulting in on-location shooting, and films composed of simple
settings and narratives that often focused on nature or everyday people. By 1896 trained
cameramen and projectionists were sent across the globe with the Cinématographe to find
new subject matter to shoot, and to show their films to new, appreciative audiences, thus
launching the beginning of film history in many other nations.
Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (Lumières, 1895) The Arrival of a Train in La Ciotat Station (Lumières, 1896)
The Actualities: Cinema as realism
These earliest films created in the 1890s revealed an awareness of an audience and
sought to create something amusing or actual for their entertainment. In this way, most of
the films were non-fiction or actualities, what might be considered an early antecedent of
the documentary, that presented real settings and events for audience viewership. Some
actualities, such as the traveling actualities where the camera is attached to a vehicle, provi-
ded the first examples of camera movement in cinema. For instance, Canadian James H.
White’s Panoramic View of the Champs Elysees (1900), made for the Edison company,
presents its mobile view from what appears to be a horse-drawn carriage. Films of foreign
lands and news reels also constitute actuality films. The fiction film, especially the simple
comedy, was also an important genre for these early films.
Early films had no introductory titles, credits or intertitles, which contributed to the
loss of many of these films in the annals of film history. Many films consisted of a variety
of shorts from different directors spliced together in a reel without individual identification,
and maybe stored in someone’s home, office or studio. Although most early films of the
1890s consisted of a single continuous shot, some filmmakers filmed different shots of the
same subject which could then be screened separately, spliced into other shorts, or run all
together creating a type of multiple shot film dependent on the needs of the exhibitor. The
exhibitors of these early films were the first editors because they often had the sole power
to decide which shorts would be shown in a reel to audiences and in which order.
By the end of the 1890s, films were becoming longer and exhibiting multiple shots,
requiring producers and directors to begin exploring new ways of telling stories through
early forays into editing. Though these early films are now called “silent films”, they were
not silent at all. In fact, these first films were typically accompanied by some type of live
or recorded music. Pianists, musicians, and sometimes whole orchestras would play sheet
music or improvise for movie audiences. Many also used phonographs to provide music for
their film shorts, especially Edison in his Kinetoscope parlors.
With the demand for film as entertainment, many other film studios rose to provide
competition with new cameras and movies to take hold of the budding industry within their
respective countries. In France, for example, Pathé Frères was founded in 1896 and by the
early 1900s became the largest vertically integrated film company in the world. They would
create the lightweight Pathé camera, based on the patented Lumière design in the early
1900s, which would dominate the global industry well into the end of the 1910s. Gaumont
Film Company, founded by inventor Léon Gaumont, produced their first films in 1897 and
quickly became the chief rivals of Pathé Frères. Alice Guy-Blaché, the industry’s first female
director, quickly rose through the ranks in Gaumont’s company to become the Head of
Production from 1897 to 1907 directing the host of the company’s popular actualities.
Between 1910 and 1914, Guy-Blaché was the first woman to own her own studio plant,
The Solax Company Studios — the largest pre-Hollywood studio in America — in Flushing,
New York from where she directed and produced hundreds more shorts and eventually
feature length films. From Italy, to Denmark and Japan, film industries and cultures thrived,
opening the door to new ways of understanding cinema as a product not just of realism but
of fantasy and storytelling.
In 1896, the Lumière Brothers screened the now infamous fifty-second film L'Arrivée
d'un train en gare de la Ciotat (Arrival of the Train at La Ciotat Station) to Parisian audiences.
F ILM HIST O R Y 13
The film showed the everyday scene of a train pulling into a station and passengers boarding
and disembarking. Despite the familiarity of these actions, audiences reacted with fear and
delight at seeing this mundane scene captured on film. One founding myth of cinema is that
audiences ducked their heads when the train approached the screen’s limits, as though it
would burst out of the wall to hit them. This famous anecdote of spectators running, screa-
ming from the sight of an approaching train has taken on the status of urban legend and has
been undermined by many critical film scholars.
It is easy to hear this urban legend and assume that early spectators had a childlike rela-
tionship with the screen, where they were unaware of the artificiality of movies and took
the images too literally. But film scholars disagree with this assessment of early cinema
READ TOM goers. Tom Gunning sets forth a concept of a ‘cinema of attractions’. It can be difficult as
GUNNING'S
E SSA Y
students of cinema to see where the attraction lies in these first black and white early film
shorts containing little plot, movement or stylistic development. The idea of early cinema
as a ‘cinema of attractions’ considers how new experiences of space and time in moder-
nity (technological revolution, railway developments, electrical and communication systems,
the new automobile, the increase of a global society) and the shock of an emerging modern
visual culture affects the way in which these early spectators perceived the screen.
Rather than laughing at the naiveté of these first spectators who ‘believed’ what they
saw on screen, as students of cinema we can think about why might the spectator have
been affected by the technology of this new medium. For Gunning, the basic aesthetic of
early cinema was the visual shock rather than narrative. The early cinema spectator were
thrill seekers, standing their ground in the face of a rapidly approaching train, not helpless
naïve children. They delighted in the imaginary threat of the train. Of early cinema, one of
the most popular genres were films of approaching vehicles, suggesting that spectators
were attracted to the visual shock of cinema, rather than a blind terror.
There is an awareness of the audience in these films that actively attempt to visually
startle. In L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de la Ciotat, for example, even though the camera
itself does not move for the length of the film, it is deliberately positioned so that the tracks
approach it at a diagonal. This framing causes shifts in shot size based on the train’s move-
ment alone — from long shot, to medium to close-up. The camera angle creates dynamic
shot that increases the tension of the everyday train pulling into a station and creates the
thrilling sensation of a train racing towards its audience. These early films posit an unders-
tanding of cinema as astonishing spectacle that holds the ability to fascinate audiences.
Actualities: Early non-fiction short films that were often composed as static one-shots. The first films in
cinema history were actualities.
Cinema of attractions: Concept developed by theorist Tom Gunning to describe how early moviegoers
were attracted to cinema primarily as a shocking and exciting new technology.
Georges Méliès: Cinema and the magic tradition
Georges Méliès is considered by many to be one of the most important filmmakers in the
early years of cinema because he shifted away from the moving photographs of Edison and
the actualities of the Lumières towards story and narrative expression. He was exceedin-
gly successful both in France and internationally during his career, and he was often imita-
ted or illegally pirated by filmmakers like Thomas Edison who was resentful at the competi-
tion in the market. Because he controlled all aspects of his film production – screenwriting,
directing, acting, producing, and distribution – many today consider Méliès to be the first
auteur of cinema.
Méliès was present that historic day in 1985 when the Lumière Brothers stunned
audiences in Paris with their Cinématographe and its program of films. Inspired, but unable
to purchase the machine from the brothers, Méliès procured his own camera-projector
from British inventor Robert W. Paul, and small film studio called the Star Film Company. In
SEE CH4
1896, Méliès soon began screening his own films to audiences. Initially one-shot reel films F O R
of no longer than a minute, Méliès’ early films quickly became marked by his use of special M O R E O N
S P E C IAL
effects or magic tricks, which popularized multiple exposures, dissolves, stop motion and E F F E C TS
split screen photography among other techniques in cinema.
InUn Homme de tete (The Four Troublesome Heads, 1898) Méliès enters the frame
and proceeds to remove his head placing it on a table. Every time a new head appears on
his shoulders, the director removes it until four identical Méliès heads interact with each
other—three on the table, and one on his shoulders in a technically impressive early use of
multiple exposures. Méliès’ take on Cinderella, Cendrillon (1899), similarly provided one of
the earliest uses of dissolves, and was the director’s first use of lavishly designed multiple
scenes to tell a story in cinema. Méliès’ cinema was distinct
and influential in its ornate stage design, which drew the spec-
tacle of the theatre into motion pictures. The magical illusion
of his camera presented elaborate stories in ways that were
impossible in live theatre and startlingly new to the medium
of the screen. Méliès would often appear in his films and use
direct address with his audiences, creating a self-reflexivity
that encouraged audience awareness of the camera and artifi-
ciality of the screen. Audiences were part of the magic trick or
adventure on screen in this way.
A Trip to the Moon (Melies, 1902)
A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage
(1904) remain two of the most influential early films of science
fiction. The respective scenes of the space shuttle flying into
the moon’s eye in A Trip to the Moon and the sun swallowing
a flying train in The Impossible Voyage are still two of the
most iconic images in film history. Méliès used his camera to
embrace the air of scientific discovery and exploratory hope
for the future that marked the time period. A Trip to the Moon
was the first example of science fiction on film in its imagining
of not just the journey from the earth to the moon, but the
perspective of the earth from the moon. Important also to
The Impossible Voyage (Melies, 1904)
F ILM HIST O R Y 15
Méliès’ storytelling innovations was his use of linear editing to establish continuity between
his shots to tell simple stories. Filmmakers across the globe were still figuring out how to tell
a story through rudimentary editing that kept narrative clarity for audiences across space
and time. Melies’ 11-minute A Trip to the Moon successfully kept its spatial and temporal
logic from scene to scene, using editing to sequentially follow its characters on their jour-
ney to and from the moon.
For all his cinematic innovation, movement in Méliès’ films happened not through the
camera, but through set design. His cinema of tricks mandated a very steady or fixed
camera through which he could swap in other objects to create jump cuts, so his camera
never moved, preventing him from experimenting with shot sizes and camera movement
the way in which other filmmakers would. Early British films, especially, continued the
Méliès magic tradition and were known for their special effects cinematography, for exam-
ple, James Williamson’s The Big Swallow (1900) and Cecil Hepworth’s Explosion of a Motor
Car (1900). Through these films you can begin to trace the begins of the editing tradition in
early cinema. In The Big Swallow a man walks angrily towards the screen until his open mouth
fills the camera view. Williamson invisibly cuts on the black interior of the character’s mouth
to a black back drop into which a cinematographer and his camera falls, then back again to
the now laughing and chewing face of the man to suggest that the angry man his swallowed
the cameraman.
As the name suggests, Explosion of a Motor Car presents the spectacle of an exploding
car that slowly scatters the body parts of the car’s passengers in a comedic and playful way.
Hepworth’s film features one of the earliest uses of Méliès’ popularized stop motion effect
to negotiate the shock of the modern experience with the presence of the rapidly develo-
ping technology of the automobile. By 1912, Méliès was considered old-fashioned due to
changing film practices, and he became outpaced by his peers. Despite the global popularity
and imitation of Méliès’ films and their special effects, the dominant form of cinema today
is not one filled with tricks and fantasy, but rather of a narrative embedded in realism. The
Pennsylvanian director, Edwin S. Porter, would be a key figure in encouraging this direction
of modern storytelling. From the one-shot films of the Lumières to the tricks of Méliès to
Edwin S. Porter, we see a steady development of cinema from dependency on technology
to aesthetic play and towards greater realism.
Classical storytelling and Classical Hollywood cinema

Originally a film projectionist and equipment expert, Edwin S. Porter quickly rose in the
ranks of the Edison Manufacturing Company. Working with his future collaborator George
S. Fleming, Edison would become a prolific cameraman and director for the majority of
Edison films. In 1903 he directed two seminal American films, Life of an American Fire-
man and The Great Train Robbery, providing important forays into the use of continuity
editing to deepen narrative in early cinema. A major problem for early filmmakers was the
establishment of temporal continuity from one shot to the next. The films of Georges
Méliès were especially influential to Porter in their lessons on storytelling through conti-
nuity across narrative time and space. A Trip to the Moon held a particular familiarity to
Porter as he had illegally duplicated it for distribution by Edison in October 1902, allowing
him a closer understanding of the mechanics of editing together a story for narrative clarity.
The 6-minute film The Life of an American Fireman (produced in late 1902 and released in
January 1903) grew out of this experiment with continuity.
James Williamson’s 5-minute British film, Fire! (1901), was one of the very first films
to edit multiple shots together chronologically to create a cohesive narrative sequence.
Although Fire! skillfully used editing to heighten the emotional tension of firefighters racing
to rescue a family with a baby from a burning house fire, it struggled in its narrative clarity.
The spectator is often confused about the proximity or distance of spaces from each other.
The opening scene, for example, shows a police officer who has noticed a home on fire
running off-screen for help and immediately arriving at a fire station. Subsequent shots,
though, highlight the horse-drawn fire engines sprinting to the scene of the fire which now
appears to be a distance away.
Fire! (Williamson, 1901) Life of an American Fireman (Porter, 1903) The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903)
Inspired by Fire!’s technical skill and narrative, Porter created Life of an American Fire-
man (1903), a dramatized nine-shot narrative that combined multiple staged scenes of fire-
men coming to the rescue with actuality film of a real fire brigade. Porter’s film begins with
a fireman thinking about his wife and daughter, one of the first films to feature a charac-
ter’s inner thoughts and thereby humanize the figure of the fireman. Porter further deepens
the audience investment in his film through one of the first uses of the close shot in early
cinema. Fading in and out between images of the fireman thinking of his family to a close
shot of someone pulling an alarm, and firemen reacting to the alarm, Porter displays an
advanced use of continuity between shots that maintains a sense of temporal and narra-
tive pacing and meaning across shots. His sophisticated attempts at continuity extend to
sequenced shots of horse-drawn fire engines all going in one direction. Despite depending
on wide, fixed shots to tell its story, Life of an American Fireman exploded into audience’s
consciousness, taking what had been done before by disparate filmmakers to another level
that made the popular genre of the firefighting film even more in demand. It would be with
Porter’s next film, The Great Train Robbery, that the direction of cinema would firmly turn
towards the realist narrative as its dominant form compared to the fantasy-driven narrati-
ves of Georges Méliès.
The Great Train Robbery remains Porter’s most famous and influential film to the deve-
lopment of classical storytelling in cinema. A story about a gang of bandits who hold up a
train, Porter’s film is arguably the most popular film of the pre-1905 period and prompted
F ILM HIST O R Y 17
many imitations. The Great Train Robbery tells its story in eleven shots, moving back and
forth between scenes of a tied up telegraph operator, his discovery by town folk who mount
a posse to apprehend the bandits, the anticipated train robbery, and shoot-out that leads
to the bandits’ death in the end. Porter makes the device of editing central to his storyte-
lling, with a film language focused on creating a sense of time passing between shots, while
simultaneously stimulating audiences by cutting between different locations in the building
of tension and drama. While there were other fiction films composed of multiple shots being
created during the time period, The Great Train Robbery challenged the expectations of the
frontally composed and theatrical films still being made by most filmmakers at the time. It
displayed an unparalleled level of continuity of action, on-location shooting, and narrative
clarity across shots that served to increase the realism of Porter’s
film.
The Great Train Robbery ends on a shocking final insert of
a bandit shooting his gun directly into the camera, in a breaking
of the fourth wall, which shows its awareness of the spectating
audience. This famous ending reverberates in modern cinema
today in homages placed in films like Martin Scorsese’s Good-
fellas (1990), the gun barrel sequence in the James Bond movies,
and George P. Cosmatos’ Tombstone (1993) where charac-
ters fire their guns at the camera. Porter was one of several
filmmakers across the globe whose work pushed forward the The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903)
development of classical storytelling and editing during the era.
The 1905-1912 Nickelodeon boom created the moviegoer who now went to the movies
as a habit. This explosion of permanent indoor exhibition spaces across the United States
that were dedicated to screening motion pictures made huge profits from charging just a
nickel for admission. With the demand for more films to screen to these habitual audien-
ces, by 1906 early cinema began to be dominated by narrative storytelling necessitating the
rapid development of a visual language of expression. It is within this era of the Nickelodeon
boom that Biograph actor-turned-director, D.W. Griffith, would leave the company in 1913
to produce a body of infamous films that would change the face of modern visual storyte-
lling. Learning from earlier films and his own experimentations, Griffith developed the rules
of continuity editing at a scale never seen before in his most influential film The Birth of a
Nation (1915). Griffith shot his scenes with multiple cameras to create a continuous flow
of dramatic storytelling while maintaining continuity in space and time across his numerous
cuts.
The Birth of a Nation was the highest-grossing film of the silent film era, but for all its
innovative camera techniques and narrative achievements, it was also highly controversial
and socially devastating. Griffith’s film tells the story of the American Civil War through a
focus on two white families torn apart by the conflict and the threat of the freed slave. Three
hours of racist propaganda, The Birth of a Nation starts with the Civil War and ends with the
Ku Klux Klan riding in to save the South, and more specifically white women, from the uncivi-
lized emancipated slaves. The origin of stereotypes like the loyal Uncle and Mammy charac-
ters became popularized through their prominently portrayal by white men in black face in
these characters’ unwavering service towards their owners.
In contrast, the other slaves within the narrative are ruined through their freedom, having
become violent, arrogant, and sexually aggressive. In the middle of the second act, Flora,
a young white woman flees the unwanted attentions of Gus, a former slave turned Union
soldier, who wants to marry her. Rather than be despoiled by a black man, she jumps off
a cliff, leading her brother to form the Ku Klux Klan to avenge her death. In The Birth of
a Nation, lynching is the tool suggested to exact vengeance and bring order to the land.
Through filmmaking tools, Griffith creates sympathy for the white characters and demoni-
zes black slaves as dangerous narrative elements to be destroyed. The editing cuts closer to
Flora to set up character psychology that highlights her purity, and it cuts increasingly faster
between Flora, Gus, and her brother, who desperately searches for her, to create drama and
tension. Editing and a sweeping orchestral score is used in The Birth of a Nation to emoti-
vely portray the Ku Klux Klan as heroes and to position the audience on their side, in a revi-
sionist history of America’s birth.
Although Griffith is often incorrectly credited with introducing innovations such as
cross-cutting, and the close-up, Griffith effectively used these techniques to show seve-
ral competing lines of action, moving between different shot sizes and groups of characters,
with a clarity of story that remains astounding for the 1910s. In the climax of The Birth of a
Nation, Griffith displays a sophisticated use of parallel editing that builds tension and exci-
tement in terms of emotional and narrative cues. Cutting between Klan members riding to
the rescue, to a white family under siege in a small cabin by black soldiers gone mad with too
much freedom, to Lillian Gish fighting for her virtue against the mulatto, Silas Lynch, Grif-
fith cuts from full-figure shots to close-ups to accentuate the drama. In the little cabin, as
a father prepares to kill his own daughter to save her from the bestiality of attacking black
soldiers and characters desperately fight to hold off the horde, Griffith inserts a close-up of
a child crying to further manipulate audience emotions. He consistently returns to the sight
of the Klan as the white characters’ only hope and creates drama by shortening the shot
lengths to accelerate the pace and deepen the emotional stakes. Though the content of
Griffith’s film was immediately criticized by many viewers and has become a dark spot in film
history, he has been revered for filmmaking techniques that effectively manipulate viewer
emotions. Griffith’s mastery of crosscutting provided a foundation for narrative action and
pacing in cinema, which underpins modern Hollywood cinema today.
When The Birth of a Nation opened to audiences in 1915, it was met with standing
ovations across the country by white audiences, but also the counter-pressure of massive
protests organized by the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colo-
red People) due to its dangerous misrepresentations and
liberties taken in recounting history, which many Ameri-
can filmgoers at the time mistook as accurate. Griffith’s
film singlehandedly aided in the resurgence of the Ku
Klux Klan, who actively used The Birth of a Nation as a
recruiting tool. While The Birth of a Nation is conside-
red by many to be the foundation of modern Hollywood
cinema, it is also representative of racism, white supre-
macy, and America’s history, and it cannot responsibly
be understood separately from its politics and ideology.
Understanding this connection between Hollywood’s
foundations and the ideology that it perpetuates is
The Birth of a Nation protest
F ILM HIST O R Y 19
important to historically orient Hollywood practices today, like whitewashing and the use of
racist stereotypes. A criticism or study of Hollywood cinema today must take into conside-
ration its beginnings rooted in Griffith’s sensational film.
After the record-breaking success of Griffith’s three-hour The Birth of a Nation there
was no going back. The multi-film reel or feature film became the norm. With longer films
came other stylistic standards: more restrained acting style and the further development of
character psychology, which would lead in turn to the emergence of the star system and
fan magazine culture like Motion Picture Story Magazine (1911) and Photoplay (1911). The
classical style of storytelling and editing evocatively showcased in Griffith’s film set in place
the editing practices that still make up the basis of Hollywood cinema to this day. More
recently Hollywood films have drawn from the troubled historical legacy of The Birth of a
Nation to speak to contemporary concerns in America. In 2016 Nate Parker released The
Birth of a Nation, which repurposed Griffith’s film title to challenge a white supremacist
version of events and tell the story of the birth of America from the slave’s perspective.
Although also marked with controversy, Parker’s film won numerous awards, and the distri-
bution rights were bought for $17.5 million by Fox Searchlight Pictures, breaking the record
for the largest amount paid to date for a Sundance Film Festival production. In Spike Lee’s
2018 film, BlacKkKlansman, referencing The Clansman, the original title of The Birth of a
Nation, Klan leader David Duke screens Griffith’s film for the Colorado Springs chapter after
a secret induction ceremony. Using audience awareness of The Birth of a Nation as the
foundation of the American film industry, Lee’s film reengages Griffith’s in a satirical exami-
nation of race and politics in modern America.
Griffith was only one of many directors creating feature length films during the silent
film period important to the development of Classical Hollywood cinema. Mentored by
Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber was a prolific director, screenwriter, and highly recognized
and sought after talent in Hollywood alongside D.W. Griffith. Unlike with D.W. Griffith, the
course of film history has obscured Weber’s importance to silent cinema laying its creative
trajectory chiefly at the feet of men. In Suspense (1913), a roughly 10-minute film in which
a man, chased by police, steals a car in his haste to reach his remotely located home to save
his wife and baby from a threatening tramp, Weber engages in superior editing to heighten
the suspense and narrative clarity of her story. Using a variety of film techniques from a
three-way split screen to introduce characters in order to explain space and location to the
audience, to a key hole effect to create a close-up, and cut-ins to cut closer to the action,
Weber produces an immersive experience for her film audience. In one startling moment,
Weber places the spectator within the point of view shot of the young mother in peril as she
peers from her upstairs bedroom window and meets the gaze of the tramp who looks strai-
ght into the tilted camera representing the shocked mother’s, and audience’s, gaze. Weber
cleverly heightens the tension and emotion of her film through her manipulation of shot
sizes and parallel cutting between the home invasion and the husband on his way, building
upon the legacy of the rescue sequence that D.W. Griffith would display on the immense
stage of The Birth of a Nation.
One of the early directors to create feature-length films in the 1910s, Lois Weber’s 1914
film, The Merchant of Venice, is widely considered to be the first American feature direc-
ted by a woman. In 1916, she would be the first, and only, woman elected to the Motion
Picture Directors Association in honor of an oeuvre that addressed the social issues within
her time and her own personal politics. In films like Hypocrites (1915), Where Are My Chil-
dren? (1916) and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1917) she challenged the power and
hypocrisy of religious institutions and issues of contraceptives and abortion, respectively.
By the end of the 1910s the feature film was a staple of Hollywood cinema, and the
industry was steadily migrating to the West Coast to take advantage of the year-round
sunlight and good weather crucial for outdoor filmmaking. Classical Hollywood narrative
form informed a universal language of cinema that still remains the norm today. In other
countries around the globe, directors began taking alternative approaches to telling stories
visually that would continue to impact on the development of the medium through the
rise of an international avant-garde cinema. This alternative to Hollywood narrative cinema
would use its cinema to encourage new representations of reality, and to call forth a new
cinema spectator.
World War I & international avant-garde cinema

French Impressionism
Referred to as ‘the first modern war’, World War I saw the technological clash of the
Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire) against the
Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States).
This modern war saw the unprecedented use of chemical warfare and military technology,
which would result in socio-political upheaval and the deaths of civilians and soldiers on a
massive scale. On the winning and losing side respectively, the cinema industries of France
and Germany were particularly affected through the immense casualties experienced during
the war.
Before World War I French studios like Pathé Frères and Leon Gaumont dominated the
international film market, but the loss of conscripted personnel and the use of the studios
for wartime purposes during the Great War basically brought these giants to a stands-
till. Hollywood cinema rose to fill the gap. By the end of the war there was a desire to
create a distinctly French cinema, to reclaim the theaters from the hegemony of Hollywood
by producing a distinctly national product. In 1918 French Impressionism, a film move-
ment invested in the centrality of the emotions and the subjective spaces of characters,
deepened the possibilities of what cinema as a medium could do. Filmmaker-theorists Louis
Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein, Marcel L’Herbier and Abel Gance were strongly asso-
ciated with the movement and used different aesthetic approaches to explore cinema’s
unique ability to make audience’s feel emotions, not simply see them displayed. In a move-
ment away from the more objective world of the earlier actualities, Impressionism allowed
audiences to intuit meaning from emotional impressions, rather than the often linear, clear-
-cut understandings encouraged in classical Hollywood cinema.
Abel Gance’s La Dixième Symphonie (The Tenth Symphony, 1918) is considered the
first major film of the Impressionist movement and tells the tale of a composer who, belie-
ving his wife is having an affair, expresses his pain through a powerful symphony. The Tenth
Symphony showed the possibility of mainstream cinema to be liberated from theater and
F ILM HIST O R Y 21
the novel, which tend to tell meaning directly, in a move towards the sensations that gives
rise to meaning and emotional truths within the audience. In Gance’s film the performance
of a symphony is felt through visual devices and emotional reactions of the people who
listen to the symphony. The bodies of characters layered within the frame heave in shared
feeling, moving silently as one as they physically react to impressions inspired by the music.
The use of superimpositions and inserts of a woman dancing in a woodland glen evoke the
mental space of characters, privileging the creation of mood over plot. The Tenth Symphony
showed the possibility of cinema outside a classical Hollywood narrative form dominated
by realism.
Impressionism is characterized by point of view storytelling, lighting, and the revolutio-
nary technology of frame mobility that allowed the camera to represent the eyes and expe-
rience of characters. Most films around the world were still largely static, but Impressionism
saw the rise of a new generation of filmmakers who strapped their cameras to carousels,
and locomotives in an attempt to facilitate the ease of experiential character movement. In
L'argent (1928), L'Herbier’s camera swoops and glides through cavernous rooms, pulled by
numerous pulleys and dollies in its visualization of corrupt practices, and shifting perspec-
tives as characters are consumed by their surroundings. Due to Impressionists’ interest in
character subjectivity, their films also often played with optical effects to suggest the inner
life and experience of its characters. Germaine Dulac's La Souriante Madame Beudet (The
Smiling Madame Beudet, 1923) presents a narrative concerned with a young housewife’s
fantasy of escape from a dull marriage. Dulac uses visual techniques – slow motion, double
exposure, irises, dramatic lighting and distortions – to allow the spectator entrance into
feminized mental spaces of dreaming and loneliness.
The Smiling Madame

Beudet (Dulac, 1923)
Central to Impressionism was the idea of photogénie, a concept introduced by Jean

Epstein that saw as the essence of cinema its artistic ability to enhance the soul or charac-
ter of things through filmic reproduction. Plot and story should thereby be secondary to
the creation of what is truly cinematic, that is moments of photogénie. For the Impressio-
nist filmmaker the camera should be wielded in spontaneous ways to break free of the limits
of the traditional film narrative and present fresh ways of seeing and understanding the
world. For Epstein, the use of the close-up intensifies emotions and provides opportunity
for photogénie.
In Jean Epstein’s Cœur fidèle (The Faithful Heart, 1923), a stand-off occurs between two
men, Jean and thug Petit Paul, over the fate of Marie, an exploited young woman they are
both interested in. In a confrontation sequence that shifts between a variety of shot sizes,
Epstein utilizes over twenty short, extreme close-ups of faces, fists, and a hand grasping a
bottle to highlight the tension and anxiety imbued in the moment. What creates photo-
génie in this sequence is the many subtle movements made visible by the use of close-ups
that generate a world of the emotions and meanings that would otherwise be lost through
a focus on dialogue and intertitles. In Impressionist cinema, the rhythms of editing and the
distortions inherent in dreams, hallucinations and other mental states, can be confusing and
exciting to untangle. These techniques destabilize the neat realist presentations of classical
narrative cinema and force spectators to be active in generating film meaning.
Dada and Surrealism

The Dada movement emerged across all media around 1915 as a reaction to the sense
of meaninglessness and disillusionment felt over the unparalleled loss of life experienced
during World War I. Horrified, artists in Zurich, France, Germany and New York rejected
the rationality of science that had led to such a war, choosing instead to adopt an absur-
dist view of life, one centered in nonsense, irrationality and anti-art, or anti-bourgeois capi-
talist sensibilities. Entr'acte (Clair, 1924), is one of the best known representations of Dada
film. From the very start of Entr'acte, Clair throws the audience into disorientation through
his ambivalent shifts from slow motion to fast cutting and unstable camera movements. In
one sequence, a canon fires at the audience in a point of view that is absurdist and filled
with narrative ambiguity even as a clear statement on war can be read. A hilarious fune-
ral procession ensues when the mourners are forced to chase the hearse when it escapes
the camel that is pulling it. Entr'acte challenges traditional ideas of storytelling in cinema
through its undermining of conventions of character, plot and setting, its nonsensical images
and disconnected scenes that defy clear interpretation, and its overturning of clear temporal
and spatial relations. In Clair’s irreverent postwar film, laughter is the only thing that makes
absolute sense.
Many members of the Dada movement went on to form
the Surrealist movement, originating in Paris from 1924. André
Breton officially founded the movement in 1924 when he wrote
The Surrealist Manifesto in which he argues that cinema should
be understood in terms of dreams. In the 1920s the question of
‘what is cinema?’ and how it could be differentiated from the other
arts gained ground. For Breton, cinema was different from other
arts in its ability to approximate the dream, and so cinema had
a unique way of merging dream-states with reality. The surrea-
lism of the dream forces the spectator to engage in a higher level
of thought that escapes the limits imposed by traditional ways
of structuring a story through the cause and effect structure and
formal aesthetics of Hollywood narrative cinema. While Surrea-
lism partakes in Dada politics of negotiating anxieties concerned
with the state of the world, Surrealist cinema combined absurdist
imagery with shocking, often sexual and irrational juxtapositions
Entr'acte (Clair, 1924)
F ILM HIST O R Y 23
to present new ways of considering reality through dream states. It
is no wonder that the critical work of Sigmund Freud on dreams and
the subconscious were crucial to surrealist work.
Even as the Surrealist movement grew out of France, its artists
hailed from different nationalities and no one specific Surrealist
expressed themselves the same stylistically. In 1927 American visual
artist, Man Ray, a Dadaist-turned-Surrealist, produced the hypno-
tic short film Emak Bakia composed of dreamlike images and film
techniques that blur the distinction between objects in its presen-
tation of female mental space. The film ends with the famous image
of a woman with eyes painted on her eyelids. It is only when she
opens her eyes and smiles direct at the audience, that the trick is
fully revealed, and the strange unease felt at the woman’s previous
blank stare is dissolved. It is a shocking moment that forces the spec-
tator to draw their own conclusions and engage with the cinematic
medium at a ‘higher’ level than required by narrative cinema. Ironi-
Emak Bakia (Ray, 1927) cally, Emak Bakia was criticized by many Surrealists as containing too
little narrative.
Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí and Mexican filmmaker Luis
Buñuel are the individuals most associated with Surrealism in
cinema, chiefly due to their famous collaboration Un Chien Andalou
(An Andalusian Dog, 1929). Un Chien Andalou ostensibly presents
the story of two lovers, but Buñuel disrupts the clarity of traditio-
nal cinematic storytelling by structuring his film along the lines of
the dream. Following the title-card, “Once upon a Time”, Buñuel
introduces a man who, in a shocking cut to close-up, slices open a
woman’s eye with a razor blade. He then proceeds to undermine
the narrative continuity by having the woman, who was previously
blinded, regain her sight following an intertitle telling the audience
Un Chien Andalou (Dali/Bunuel, 1929)
that eight years have passed. Un Chien Andalou destroys the linear
and logical expectations of seeing and understanding the world of
the story in cinema. Filled with aggressive imagery, Un Chien Anda-
lou is composed of vignettes and nameless characters with unclear
spatial and temporal relations to each other.
Despite the popularity of Un Chien Andalou, Germaine Dulac’s
La coquille et le clergyman (The Seashell and the Clergyman, 1928)
is considered by many to be the first Surrealist film. Originally an
Impressionist filmmaker, Dulac shifted briefly to Surrealism to direct
The Seashell and the Clergyman, a film about a priest’s frustrated
pursuit of a beautiful woman. Filled with dream imagery, disjointed
settings, superimpositions, and split screens among other techniques
that place the spectator within character’s mental spaces, Dulac’s
The Seashell and the Clergyman film challenges the idea of cinema as representation of reality. By the
(Dulac, 1928)
1930s and 1940s, many Surrealists emigrated to the Americas as
the globe became embroiled in World War II, allowing a resurgence
of Surrealist ideas to enter into Hollywood cinema.
German Expressionism
Although Germany lost World War I, hit with sanctions and losses that isolated and
devastated the society economically and socially, it would become a juggernaut in the world
of cinema production with highly technical and moody storytelling that would challenge
the norms of narrative cinema across the globe. The harsh reparations that Germany was
forced to pay to the Allies at the end of the war led quickly to inflation. The German
economy collapsed, hyper-inflation rocked the country by 1923, and unemployment visited
all, including those belonging to the middleclass who had never before experienced econo-
mic depression. Discontent, anxiety, and disillusionment were felt everywhere as the natio-
nal trauma of losing the war and humiliations of ‘peace’ hovered over the society. During
the war Germany had banned the import of foreign films, so between 1916 and 1920,
with no competition, domestic German film production soared. Expressionism was already
a flourishing movement in German art and theatre before World War I. After the war, as
the German people increasingly suffered under socio-political and economic tensions, the
Expressionist movement gained a foothold in German cinema, redefining the relationship
between cinema and realism.
The German Expressionists sought an approach to cinema that questioned the way
that reality was traditionally represented and understood in cinema by translating the inner
experiences of its characters onto the world around them. The mise-en-scène – makeup,
costumes, set design – took on the qualities of character’s emotions, often anger, angst, and
shock. While the Expressionists shared the centrality of the emotions as a defining trait of
their movement with the French Impressionists, the Impressionists’ focus lay in their camera
mobility and cinematography techniques. The Expressionists, on the other hand, used mise-
-en-scène and simple continuity editing techniques to express emotions. They pushed the
human figure into exaggerated performances and expressed character subjectivity through
visual distortions in set design, like unparallel lines and jagged shadows. Expressionist
cinema also drew heavily from earlier Expressionist theatre and painting, borrowing techni-
ques of stylized sets, geometric compositions, tilted angles, low-key lighting, and heavy
shadows. In revealing the artificiality of cinema, that is, by making it clear to audiences that
they are watching something that has been carefully constructed, the Expressionists sought
to awaken the spectator of Expressionist cinema to their own realities. In watching Expres-
sionist films, we become aware that our worlds also have been structured in certain ways by
institutions, like religion, education, and politics. By troubling vision, Expressionism attempts
to reveal these systems of control and introduce new ways of seeing and thinking.
In 1920 Robert Wiene’s silent horror The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was screened to audien-
ces. Its unique abstraction of space with oblique lines and angles, dark staging and thea-
trical movement of characters would signal the beginnings of a new German cinema of
expression. Wiene’s film recounts the tale of a psychotic hypnotist, Dr. Caligari, who uses
a somnambulist, Cesare, to commit murders. The film played with narrative expectations
SEE CH3
by telling the story from the point of view of a young man, Francis, who is revealed at the FOR MORE
end to be a patient in a mental institution, a classic unreliable narrator. The stylized sets, ON MISE-
chiaroscuro lighting, the iris shots that open and close scenes, among other techniques all EN-SCÈNE
challenge the perception of the audience and retroactively suggest that the world of The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is caught up in the twisted mindscape of the mad.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari would be the first of many Expressionist films that would
deal with themes of madness, alienation and monstrosity. Horror remains one of the most
F ILM HIST O R Y 25
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1920) Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922)
important genres impacted upon by the Expressionist movement. While some Expressio-
nist films resemble The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with its highly stylized and graphic mise-en-
-scène that clearly draws from Expressionist painting and theatre, other Expressionist films
sought out the expressionism inherent in exotic locales at tension with everyday reality. In
1922 F.W. Murnau released the Expressionist horror masterpiece Nosferatu, a film adapta-
tion of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Thomas Hutter travels to the faraway Carpathian Mountains
to meet a reclusive client, Count Orlok, who wishes to purchase a new home. Unbeknownst
to Hutter, Count Orlok is an ancient vampire who will wreak havoc on his life, and those he
loves. Everything about Count Orlok is wrong. From his too long body and fingers, to his
too long teeth and ears. Starkly highlighted through harsh lighting and exaggerated acting,
Count Orlok’s shadow creeps across walls in an expression of his bestiality, but also of his
alienation and loneliness. Central to the creation of an expressionist style in Nosferatu is
Murnau’s use of real landscapes rather than studio-built sets. In Hutter journey’s towards
Count Orlok’s castle, Murnau captures the brooding, alien feel of the landscape through
long takes, providing a sense of an insight into the vampire’s very old, yet enduring soul.
With the ‘Rentenmark-currency miracle’ of 1924, the German economy stabilized.
Economic and cultural life flourished in what would come to be known as “the Golden Age
of Weimar". Technological advancements abounded and new techniques replaced the old in
the face of burgeoning modernity. With the success of the Expressionist movement, many
German directors like Wiene and Murnau, emigrated to Hollywood, just as the Nazi party
began to gain in power in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Filmmaker Fritz Lang made one
of the last German Expressionist films, Metropolis (1927), and this marked the end of the
movement in Germany. Set in an urban dystopia, Metropolis follows the fraught love story
of Freder, the son of rich management and Maria, child of workers, and their attempts to
surmount the gulf between the classes. Fritz Lang used exaggerated movements of charac-
ters, geometrical lines of his urban landscape, and stylized contrasts between high and low
social spaces to imbue his film with social commentary about the dangers of technological
progress at the expense of the human condition.
As film history progressed beyond its early stages, it incorporated new technologies
and cultural standards in film industries. But the core principles of storytelling, editing, and
cinematography from early cinema remained the same. The feature film is still our standard
for widely distributed cinema. In fact, the three-act structure, which was developed in the
1920s is still our screenwriting standard. Since developing continuity editing in the 1910s,
which keeps coherent time and space across shots, we have not changed it. And the cinema
style developed in French Impressionism, Surrealism, and German Expressionism through
cinematography, mise-en-scène, and editing, continue to be our building blocks of style
today.
French Impressionism: A cinema movement of the 1920s in which character psychology is portrayed with
point-of-view storytelling, lighting, mobile framing, and optical effects.
Dada: A short movement of the 1910s that expressed meaninglessness and disillusionment in the world.
An absurdist view of life is portrayed with nonsense, unstable camera movements, and play with fast and
slow motion.
Surrealism: A 1920s art and cinema movement that focused on dream logic, absurd combinations of shots,
and shocking imagery.
German Expressionism: A 1920s art and cinema movement that expressed suffering and angst through
exaggerated acting, harsh shadows, and off-kilter set geometry.
Other chapters in this textbook continue the story of film history: Classical Hollywood
Cinema is covered in Ch 2: Narration; French New Wave and camera technology are cove-
red in Ch 4: Cinematography; "Talkies" transition to sound is covered in Ch 6: Sound; Film
Noir is covered in Ch 8: Genre; and Third Cinema, Direct Cinema, Underground films, and
the Post-Cinema Age are covered in Ch 9: Beyond Genre.
QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION:

FILM HISTORY
(1) What is film history? Every year montages of the year’s best films are created and posted online
(YouTube, Vimeo etc.). View one such montage, and consider this question in light of how the
montage is edited together. What nationality and gender is mainly represented for instance?
What genre or type of film is dominant? What tone does the montage take on? What does
this tell us about the way film history is imagined, and the role of perspective in recalling or
recording film history?
(2) Across film history there have been many different approaches to cinema, all concerned with
using the medium of cinema to represent reality. How can we think about cinema today in light
of representations of reality? Think about the films you have seen in the last year, and discuss
how these films choose to frame reality in terms of cinematography, editing and content. How do
these cinematic approaches shift across nation, gender of the director and character, or engage
with your own understanding of realism as a person in the world?
F ILM HIST O R Y 27
C H A P T E R T W O
NARRATION
NARRATION 28
Classical Hollywood narrative 28
STORY, PLOT & NARRATION 31

Diegetic & non-diegetic 31

THREE-ACT STRUCTURE (INSERT) 32

NARRATORS 34
FEMALE NARRATION 36
Unreliable narrators 36
THE RASHOMON EFFECT 37

Restricted & unrestricted narration 39
Temporal frequency 39
TIME TRAVEL NARRATIVES (INSERT) 41

NARRATION
What is it about cinema that transcends the barriers of nationality, ethnicity, and
language, at its best revealing a shared humanity despite our differences? Every culture
tells stories. From the earliest oral traditions to contemporary forms of social media, stories
have been used to entertain, educate and stimulate the emotions. Few of us have grown
up without hearing bedtime stories and moral tales like the Good Samaritan or comedic
anecdotes from friends to explain an unexpected situation or horrendous breakup. Story-
telling pervades every aspect of life and provides a means of understanding self and world.
Whether we go to the movies or sit at home in front of the computer, when we watch
films, image and sound come together in visceral and subjective ways. Despite our respec-
tive backgrounds, we experience the story world from the same point of view, through
the same empathetic or dispassionate lens. Of course, this
does not mean we will always understand or feel the same When we watch films, image
things when we watch a film, only that cinema uses unique
techniques on all spectators to help follow its storytelling and sound come together in
and also to manipulate the minds and emotions.
Narrative film is one of the most popular and common visceral and subjective ways.
forms of cinema, and in its broadest terms can be unders-
tood as fiction films with a particular structure that tells a
story. Classical Hollywood narrative cinema is the most powerful and pervasive style of
this filmmaking. It characterized American cinema from 1917 to 1960 and remains the
dominant approach to visual storytelling worldwide. Through a focus on invisibility and
continuity (see Ch 5: Editing), the Classical Hollywood approach to filmmaking hides the
artificiality of the medium, convincing audiences that they are watching something real, not
pieces of film sutured together by filmmakers. In this way, Classical Hollywood cinema is
marked by its assumed realism and rational linear narrative centered on the psychological
motivation of its characters as they struggle to overcome the obstacles set before them.
Every film has a shape or a form that dictates how the content of a film is presen-
ted both narratively and stylistically. For example, you might think about beginnings and
endings. All stories have a beginning and an end, but an end can be open, where we are
left with uncertainty for the future of characters, or it can be closed with a clear resolution
to events. Similarly, a film can begin at the end of a hero’s journey rather than at the start,
challenging how the sequence of narrative events will be visually presented. In Cinema
Paradiso (Tornatore, 1988), audiences are introduced to successful filmmaker Salvatore Di
Vita who arrives home late one evening to the news that his mother called to say someone
named Alfredo had died. But who is Alfredo? And why has his death deeply shaken our
protagonist? With Alfredo’s death, Salvatore returns home to Sicily first in memory, in an
extended flashback sequence, and then in person as an adult in the present to say goodbye
and gain closure after an absence of thirty years. In the Classical Hollywood narrative style,
the flashback is one of the only ways that straightforward linear structure can be undermi-
ned in cinema, typically through visualization of a character’s memory.
Director Giuseppe Tornatore could have shaped his film in many different ways. He
could have begun his film in a chronological fashion, with Salvatore (called Toto) as a child
growing up and finding love in his home village of Giancaldo, Sicily. You could also imagine
a scenario where the film begins with an adult Salvatore learning of Alfredo’s death and
N A R R ATI O N 29
Cinema Paradiso
(Tornatore, 1988)
immediately returning to his hometown where he must face the specters of his past in real
time as an adult. Instead, Tornatore uses aural triggers of bells and chimes to move back
and forth in time as Salvatore relives his childhood and remembers the deeply parental rela-
tionship between himself and Alfredo. Rather than the conventional shape of beginning,
middle, and end, with a clear resolution often characteristic of Classical Hollywood Cinema,
Cinema Paradiso takes on the structure of memory. The narrative takes place mostly in the
past. The director frames his film with an adult Toto remembering the love and loss of his
youth until we eventually circle fully back to the present to an adult Toto who must make
peace with his ghosts. In all of these different ways to organize the telling of Toto’s life, the
story remains the same: Toto finds love and mentorship in the past and remembers it in the
present. But in each strategy of telling the same story, the plot changes. The plot is the
arrangement of the story elements. In this case, the story begins in the present but takes
place largely in the past, moving back and forth between past and the present. Even when
stories appear to move across different timelines, these timelines all must move forward
through time towards some goal or big reveal that the narrative is dependent upon.
You might have noticed that I have been using the term ‘narrative’ but what exactly is
narrative? Narrative presents the story world in specific ways for our consumption. It is the
whole storytelling system of a film composed of story, plot and narration, as well as the film’s
structural elements of similarities, oppositions, and repetitions that guide audience unders-
tanding of the film and its patterns. Often when we think of narrative it is a literary text that
comes to mind rather than a film. It is helpful to think of films as texts that display an unfol-
ding of causal events in time and space. A narrative is not a random chain of events, but,
through character action and reactions (the cause) that prompt an effect or response from
others, characters propel a film’s story forward. In Classical Hollywood cinema, for exam-
ple, film form adopts a causal narrative, where everything is a result of a certain action, thus
creating logical and often predictable outcomes.
Narrative film: A fictional or fictionalized story. As opposed to documentaries (non-narrative films).
Classical Hollywood narrative: A specific storytelling structure developed in early American cinema that
has become the norm for narrative film. Includes elements like the three-act structure, causal relationships
between events, clear character motivation, and often, a closed ending.
Open ending: The film intentionally leaves the audience uncertain about the future of characters.
Closed ending: The film ends with a clear resolution to story events.
Causal narrative: Story events progress in a cause-and-effect relationship. Every event is the cause of a
certain action, often creating predictable outcomes. There is little room for randomness or non-sequiturs
in these narratives.
Story, plot, and narration
Story, plot, and narration can be difficult concepts to grasp, as they are often nested
within each other, and the terms are used interchangeably in popular culture. Story presents
the film’s diegesis: a story world in which things both seen and unseen (also heard) give insi-
ghts into how characters think and the rules by which the world functions. Narration points
to where the story emerges from, that is, from whose perspective the story is being told. It
is often caught up in camera perspectives, point of view gazing and authorial voiceovers. As
mentioned earlier, plot, on the other hand, is the arrangement of the story in time. These
three important modes of a film (story, plot and narration) occur all the time and make up
a narrative system through which audiences intuit meaning. In most films, we are often
asked to identify with a protagonist or characters who lie at the center of the story. Narra-
tive is important to understand a character’s motivation, their place in the story world, and
their growth and change throughout a film. Narrative introduces characters and directs us
through impressions of their character.
For example, in Cinema Paradiso, the story is about a famous filmmaker who learns
that his old mentor has died and remembers his days spent within the walls of the movie
house Cinema Paradiso while he developed an enduring relationship with the middle-a-
ged projectionist, Alfredo. But we learn more about Toto’s life than just the direct facts of
the story. We also build our understanding of story from events that occur off-screen, that
we learn third-hand or that grow out of purely visual moments like flashbacks and nonver-
bal cues. These additional levels of story create viewing excitement because they ask us to
play detective and to read deeper into the film, much like analyzing a text. Six-year-old Toto
learns of his father’s death from watching a newsreel playing at the Cinema Paradiso. The
director cuts to Toto walking with his sobbing mother but instead of succumbing to grief
himself Toto smiles at a poster of famous film star Clark Gable on a wall as he passes by. We
can understand several things in this moment. Although we never see Toto running to tell
his mother the news of his father’s death, this gap is filled by our deduction of the missing
pieces to the story. In this way, the audience becomes a type of narrator and both imagi-
nes the unseen that has happened, in a fleshing out of the story, and composes meaning
that deepens character insight and motivation. By reading the shot/reverse-shot editing SEE CH5
FOR MORE
between Toto and Clark Gable, utilized in the midst of Toto’s grappling with the death of a O N SH O T /
father he does not remember, the spectator understands that Toto is blurring his father with REVERSE-
Clark Gable. The story of Cinema Paradiso then is not simply one of a man who returns to SH O TS
his past to find closure, but a love story that emerges out of loss, where both cinema and
Alfredo become parental and life substitutes for Toto.
Story: A series of events that form the building blocks of narrative.
Diegesis: A story world within which characters live and interact with its own set of rules and customs.
Includes what is seen in the frame and also what exists beyond the edges of the frame that characters
react to.
Plot: The arrangement of story elements in time. Events can be organized chronologically or told out of
temporal order.
N A R R ATI O N 31
Book excerpt provided by Michael Wiese
Productions from Crash! Boom! Bang! How
to Write Action Movies by Michael Lucker
Three-Act Structure
All stories are broken into three acts: a beginning, middle, and an end. That's it. Try to drop
one of them and the story falls apart. The beginning is the introduction where you introduce
everyone and everything you need to set your story in motion. This is Act One. The middle
is the complication where you complicate everything you already set up. This is Act Two. The
end is the resolution where you resolve everything you complicated earlier. Act Three. Easy
peasy, right? But good act structure is often tossed asunder.
The beginning, middle, and end of your story are all separated by what are known as plot
points. These are major twists that propel your hero from one act to the next, forcing them
to make new decisions. The best plot points alter the course of the story in a way neither
the hero nor the audience was expecting. Ideally, they drop the hero into a predicament
from which they cannot return. If a hero loses his phone, no big deal, he goes back and finds
it. Bad plot point. If a hero loses his job, or his leg, or his virginity, tougher to fix. Good plot
point. These unforseen turns should not only complicate matters for the hero, but also raise
the stakes, that which is at risk of being gained or lost.
In action films, plot points must be extraordinary. The genre itself implies action and plot
points must deliver it. Something must blow up. Someone must get robbed. Somewhere
people die. Lies and threats and thefts can all be solid twists in action films, but the good
ones literally propell your hero forward. Through the air. Through a wall. Or through time.
That is the fix action audiences are accustomed to getting.
Plato, Shakespeare, Hitchcock, Spielberg, Tarantino all have plot points in their work.
Because they work. Because we're wanting something to happen. We're wanting progress. In
screenplays, one page is equal to one minute of screen time. So a two-hour movie (120 minu-
tes) is 120 pages. A three-act structure breaks down like this:
Plot Point I: between pages 25 & 30

Plot Point II: between pages 85 & 90
But that leaves a dark and murky sea between them of almost sixty pages. In the old days,
filmmakers could get away with those few twists. But not today. We're used to getting much
more much quicker and need a Midpoint Plot Point around page 60 to bridge the gap. James
Cameron says he writes in seven acts. Something that turns your hero's life upside down in
an instant and forces them to make a new decision.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981) Lethal Weapon (Donner, 1987) Mission: Impossible III (Abrams, 2003)
THE CALL TO ACTION

Every action hero is called to action. We meet them set in their dysfunctional ways in
their dysfunctional world. Then someone calls. Someone walks in the door. A letter is
delivered. With a mission.
Indiana Jones, we need you to find an ark.

Detective Riggs, we need you to find a killer.
Ethan Hunt, your mission, should you choose to accept it, find the rabbit's foot.
This is what's known as the inciting incident of the story and falls around the tenth
minute. If you wait much longer, the audience gets antsy.
HIGH STAKES
What is your hero fighting for? For your hero to go to the ends of the earth, face the fire,
and risk everything they have in order to get tickets to the opera seems, well, ridiculous.
In action films, you want your hero's quest to be worthwhile. Of course, there could be
great rewards for their success, but also consider what the consequences of failure may
be:
Their fiance may be killed.

Their daughter could be kidnapped.
The president could be assassinated.
Aliens may destroy the world.
In all movies, stakes should elevate as the story progresses. But it is imperative in action
movies. For example, in the beginning your hero may learn someone has been killed and
he is assigned to find the killer. The stakes? If he doesn't find the killer, the crime goes
unpunished, the person died in vain, and the killer is free to kill again. That is pretty signi-
ficant.
"THREE-ACT STRUCTURE" CONTRIBUTED BY

MICHAEL LUCKER
GEORGIA FILMMAKER &
SCREENWRITING LECTURER
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH GEORGIA
T h ree - A ct S tr u ct u re 33
Narration: The subjective telling of story from a specific point of view. This point of view can be seen in
plot organization, in a voiceover, and in cinematography, editing, or mise-en-scène choices.
Off-screen: Events that occur beyond the film frame provided to the viewers. These events are in the
diegesis and characters may have access to them, but viewers must learn of off-screen events by deduc-
tion.
Narrators
Cinema has the unique ability to tell its stories aesthetically, through the use of close-
-ups, music, lighting, the framing of on-screen and off-screen space, even dance and panto-
mime. Gazing in particular is distinctly filmic and a central means of narration in cinema.
Cinema always presupposes a narration, a story being told by someone even when there is
not an actual narrator. To perceive the narrator of any film, one must ask the question: from
whose perspective is this story being told? The narration in Cinema Paradiso is from Toto’s
point of view and told via flashbacks, but even when we are in the present with an adult
Toto, the camera lets us know that his story is the one that is privileged through framing,
close-ups and eyeline matches that follow the character and keep us close to his body and
his psychology. Often when we imagine the narrator of a film, we think of either a physical
character within the diegesis who relates the order of events and guides us through the film,
or a non-character, someone unseen who speaks in voiceover and assumes the position of
authority in the text. But not all narrators fall cleanly into these two categories; many films
mix a voiceover with a subjective point of view to tell a story. Tarsem Singh’s fantasy film,
The Fall (2006), frames narrative as a story being told to a little girl named Alexandria, by
Roy, a depressed silent film stunt actor, who wishes to manipulate her into helping him to kill
himself. Voiceover brings emphasis and clarity to a film’s mise-en-scène and story develop-
ment, aiding in continuity and the structure of the filmic text. The Fall thus adopts a story-
-within-a-story structure and positions its voiceover narrator as a character within the film,
moving between Roy’s oral tale and Alexandria’s visualization of the story.
An interesting development occurs in The Fall as Roy narrates his tale, and Alexandria
frequently interrupts its telling. Alexandria begins to move from mere listener-spectator
of the story to replace Roy as storyteller. Although initially Roy narrates the story, it is the
listener’s voice which begins to take over the frame’s point of view or subjectivity. Alexan-
dria’s voiceover and sight is privileged alongside Roy’s as storyteller. She is able to re-ima-
gine the look of characters based on events from her own life and, ultimately, change the
The Fall
(Singh, 2006)
The Truman Show (Weir, 1998)
course of events at the end of the film by adding herself

as a character to the story.
For the non-character voiceover narrator, who is
historically male, there is an understanding that he has
full knowledge of the events that will unfold, unlike the
film’s characters who are caught in the story’s web and so
have limited knowledge. In this way, the non-character
narrator often is considered a ‘voice of God’, even though
the commentator may lack objectivity. In The Truman
Show (1998) director Peter Weir plays with audience
understanding of the voiceover narrator as God. Star-
ring Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, The Truman Show is
about a child adopted and raised by a corporation who
grows to adulthood inside a popular simulated television
show based on his life. As an adult, Truman grows to be
aware of the artificiality of his life and seeks to escape
the fantasy on-screen bubble in which he lives. At the
end of the film, Christof, the show's creator and executive producer, attempts to convince
Truman to stay by speaking to him anonymously through a speaker system. For Truman, in his
artificial story world, Christof’s voice takes on the appearance of God in its disembodiment
and absolute knowledge of characters and events within the diegesis. And yet, this voiceo-
ver narrator stills holds limited knowledge of the interiority of characters, and he cannot fully
predict the choices that characters make within the story. Christof cannot control Truman’s
actions, even though he can manipulate the artificial world, and he is surprised by Truman’s
final decision to leave the bubble.
The voiceover narrator is also often used as a fountain of information to relay past
events and deepen the emotional nuance of a story. Non-character voiceover narrations
are typically understood as non-diegetic, since the narration originates from outside the
film’s story world. Some films choose to reveal the non-character narrator as a character at
some impactful point of the film’s narration. These films shift the narrator from non-diegetic
to diegetic, with the intention of shocking audiences and advancing plot. Sunset Boulevard
(Wilder, 1950), for example, presents its story about a forgotten silent film star’s desperate
attempt to return to the movies from the point of view of a dead screenwriter found in the
pool of the aging starlet. The film opens with a flash-forward and the voiceover narration of
a man surprisingly revealed as dead within the first few minutes of the film, prompting the
audience’s need to discover what happened as the film flashes back to the very beginning.
Between 1950 and now, many films have repeated the dead-narrator voiceover techni-
que made famous by Sunset Boulevard. One of the more successful
examples is Sam Mendes’ American Beauty (1999) whose voiceover
narrator, Burnham, is an advertising executive in the midst of a midlife
crisis. Unlike Sunset Boulevard, American Beauty begins in the present
and creates the illusion of a simple linear narrative in time and space.
The film’s end shockingly discloses that the narrator has been dead all
along, deepening the impact of American Beauty as a cautionary tale
and as an exploration of American middle-class family values.
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)
Female narration
As mentioned earlier, voiceover narrators are typically gendered male in mainstream
cinema, tapping into social assumptions of authority, knowledge and truth as male-cente-
red attributes. The presence of a female narrator can point to, and challenge, such uncons-
cious stereotypes and biases, allowing for female expression and perspectives. It would be
in the so-called “woman’s films” or melodrama of the 1940s where a plethora of first-per-
son female narrators would arise only to find their voices often undermined by the autho-
READ rity of men within the text. As originally articulated by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey, in
LA U R A
M U LV E Y ' S Classical Hollywood Cinema the gaze of cinema is male. You might think here of a classic
E SSA Y story pattern where a male hero engages in an epic struggle against a clever villain or anta-
gonist and at some point, inevitably, rescues his love interest—the quintessential damsel in
distress—from his enemy’s clutches to win day. Often we assume the point of view of the
protagonist. His subjective understanding of the world becomes our own. Women are often
presented as the object of a male gaze to be viewed from his perspective, not her own,
which has been a difficult obstacle to overcome in female storytelling.
The Piano (Campion, 1993) stands as a unique
film for its mute female protagonist, Ada, who controls
the film’s voiceover, and also for its female authorship.
Director Jane Campion wrote the screenplay for The
Piano, providing a re-imagining of Emily Brontë's 19th
century novel Wuthering Heights, also authored by a
female writer, and incorporating the theme of dangerous
female gazing through its narrative and aesthetic staging
The Piano (Campion, 1993)
of the Bluebeard folktale. Ada’s muteness sets up a poli-
tics of female resistance to patriarchal language and structures that seek to contain and
disempower female voice and sexuality. The Piano begins immediately in female voiceover
over a black screen, before image, as Ada narrates her background, privileging the use of a
woman’s voice as narrator over the male gaze of the camera, and highlighting the inherent
power of the female author and historian. Rather than have her story told by third parties
or be constructed by a male ‘God’ narrator, Ada tells her own story, possessed of the ability
to define her own self. Campion subverts the patriarchal mechanism of cinema, which typi-
cally privileges male voice and gazing as center of the story action, to situate Ada in a posi-
tion of power as storyteller.
When a film has a narrator we often assume the reliability of the narrator, that the story
they tell must be the truth, but films can also have unreliable narrators with compromised
memories or who blur the truth. As we watch Toto grow into a young man in Cinema Para-
diso, for instance, he falls in love with a beautiful young girl called Elena from an upper class
SEE CH4 family. But is Elena real, or is she only a figment of his imagination? Through the use of
& CH5 close-ups and reaction shots, the audience is constantly kept within Toto’s emotional frame
FOR MORE
ONCLOSE- of reference, and often when we see Elena, her presence is mediated through cinema and
UPS & the movie camera in some way. For example, Elena is never seen outside of Toto’s point of
R E A C TI O N
SH O TS view. The first time he sees her is through the eye of his home movie camera, and their secret
meetings together typically occur in places of cinema or in his memory. One hot summer
night at an outside film screening, Toto laments a rotten summer away from Elena and muses
that if his love-affair were a film it would already be over, fade-out, cut to storm. Immediately
thunder sounds and lighting strikes as rain begins to fall. The theme music swells as Elena
suddenly appears within the close shot frame of Toto, and the two kiss. The improbability
of the moment positions Toto’s relationship with Elena as one born out of cinematic fantasy,
and it reveals Toto’s narration of the past as subjective, and thus compromised.
Narrator: The character or characters from whose point of view the story is told. The character(s) may be
on-screen or off-screen; they may be diegetic or non-diegetic.
Voiceover: The voice of a character layered over the film image. This voice may be an omniscient perspec-
tive or an inner voice. Voiceovers most often are associated with the film’s narrator.
Non-diegetic: Elements that exist outside of the diegesis, or story world. Characters in the story cannot
see or hear non-diegetic elements, for example credits, subtitles, or orchestra music. When a narrator is
non-diegetic, they exist outside of the diegesis and characters on screen are not aware that he is speaking.
Unreliable narrator: Narrators who defy our expectation the be told the "true" story. Unreliable narrators
have compromised memories, intentionally blur the truth, or straight out lie to the viewer.
The Rashomon Effect and experiments in time
Rashomon
(Kurosawa, 1950)
All acts of storytelling represent a perspective, and as such can never be truly objec-
tive. Some films structure their form around the very unreliability of the narrator. Storyte-
lling presupposes the telling of tales or lies, and directors can play with audience expecta-
tions of a narrator’s truth-speaking to delve into deeper political and socio-cultural issues
of nation and identity. In 1950, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon broke storytelling conventions
with its revolutionary structure, which repeated the same dramatic incident from four diffe-
rent character perspectives: the samurai’s, his wife’s, the bandit Tajōmaru’s, and the woodcu-
tter’s. What happens in the grove remains a mystery that leaves the samurai dead (and his
story told through a psychic), his wife raped, and the murderer in question. At their trial, all
four individuals give contradictory versions of the event in flashback sequences that privi-
lege each individual narrator, presenting that storyteller in a more positive or sympathetic
point of view than the rest. In one version of events, the bandit is a stud; in another, the
husband is betrayed by his wife; in another, the wife is a childlike victim; and in another the
woodcutter is an innocent bystander. Each story preserves a certain self-image that valori-
zes the individual and explores the ideas of memory and identity. Rashomon never resolves
the whodunit mystery of its plot with its series of unre liable narrators, leaving its audience
uncertain of what is truth, and both hopeful and untrusting of human nature.
Since Rashomon, many films have repurposed its unique
storytelling structure that examines the unreliability of the
narrator. Park Chan-Wook’s Joint Security Area (2000)
adopts the Rashomon effect in the story of two North Korean
and two South Korean soldiers who cross the divide, secretly
forming a friendship in a small North Korean border house.
The brotherhood formed between these four men presents
an imagined community of a united Korea, but one night
something happens in the border house that triggers fear and
violence, leaving two men dead. The hope of a united Korea
finds itself overwhelmed by power dynamics and the webs
Joint Security Area (Park, 2000)
of cultural expectations about the ‘other’. The hunt to solve
the mystery and stop an international incident between the
two Koreas finds itself frustrated by conflicting witness accounts. Why would these soldiers
tell two different versions of events? As with Rashomon, Joint Security Area is composed
of flashback sequences as the survivors narrate their stories, and a neutral party seeks to
parse out the truth. Unlike Rashomon, Joint Security Area shares the ‘true’ story at the film’s
conclusion in a dossier that will never be shared with the North and South Korean govern-
ments and superior officers.
The audience alone is privileged with this final story and made to understand why these
soldiers feel the need to tell stories. In its literal traversing of borders between self and
other, often utilizing storytelling vehicles like the photograph, song, or memoir, the film ques-
tions the ‘truth’ of a conflict learned secondhand, the line separating vilified other from civi-
lized self, the impossibility of neutrality or bridging the gap, and stresses the necessity of
alternative modes of representation. Storytelling is politicized in Joint Security Area as the
ordinary man must tell stories in order to survive in a world of uneven power dynamics, a
world of division where the South Korean self is defined against the North Korean other.
The theme of storytelling also reveals the similarity between the South and North Koreans
and so humanizes the previously demonized North Korean Other, particularly by positioning
two popular South Korean actors as North Koreans in the film.
Storytelling acts as an accessible and comfortable technique to address the present by
constantly looking backwards and putting narrativity itself into question. Characters tell and
retell stories as truth becomes a fluid and contradictory construct that time and distance
only complicates and deepens. The audience is forced to adopt the role of investigator, with
understanding growing the more a story finds itself retold, revised, and extended. One effect
of these narrators who deliberately withhold ‘truth’ from the spectator is the shattering of
the suspension of disbelief, which allows the spectator to sink into film narratives without
questioning the reality before them. The Rashomon Effect disallows escape into the typical
linear expectations of classical film narrative with its closed endings, calling forth a thinking
spectator with no easy moral resolutions. While story and narration share points of intersec-
tion, it is important to note the distinction between the two. As The Rashomon Effect illus-
trates, story has a whole life separate from narration, and thus can be told in different ways
by different narrators who experience the story event from different emotional standpoints
and with different motivations.
The flow of information in narration is typically understood as being either restricted or
unrestricted. When information is restricted in a film, both the character and the audience
are given access to similar story information, and thereby learn and come to conclusions
at roughly the same time. Unrestricted information, as the name suggests, privileges the
audience with more knowledge than characters, both visually and aurally. For example,
in M (Lang, 1931), a serial killer who preys on young children is
identified to the audience only by the tune he whistles before he
murders them. Imagine a scenario in this story world where a kindly
non-descript man approaches a child and begins to whistle as he
buys her a balloon and walks away with her. While the charac-
ter is unaware that she is in the hands of a killer, the audience has
been given access to this unrestricted information through the use
of an aural cue, creating intense suspense as we helplessly watch,
knowing what will happen. Later in the same film, the old blind
man, who had previously sold the balloon to the little girl’s murde-
rer, hears the whistled tune and recognizes the presence of the M (Lang, 1931)
serial killer – now the narrative turns to restricted information. The
audience in this moment does not know more than the old man
in terms of the killer. Can characters know more than the audience? Such an idea intro- SEE CH6
duces another way in which information flows in narration, where knowledge is delibera- FOR MORE
ON M
tely withheld from the audience but accessible to characters in order to shock and surprise.
Films move between different types of information flows at all times constantly working to
manipulate their audiences’ investment in the narrative.
All stories are an experimentation in time. A story may be arranged in or out of chro-
nological order. The duration time over which the story unfolds can be a few hours, a day,
several years or centuries (think here, for instance, of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), which
follows a vampire’s love story across time immemorial). The duration of a film can be exten-
ded and slowed in order to have audiences linger on a moment or pick up on subtler cues.
Or, the film can be shortened through editing and ellipses to quicken the pace and excite-
ment of the film. A story may also be told multiple times in a film, as in Rashomon, or a shot
may be repeated by plot even though it only takes place once in the story. The amount of
times the story or shot recurs in a film refers to its temporal frequency. Frequency can point
to character psychology by indicating a repeated dream or memory, or it may simply create
a pause in the film for audience introspection.
Every scene serves a particular function to cue the spectator into the film’s meaning.
Meaning can be explicit, that is, on the surface, emerging as plot summaries or a description
of what exists directly before our eyes and ears. But meaning can also be implicit or beneath
the surface, which requires an active spectator to read, not just watch, the filmic text to unco-
ver the deeper implications of the narrative. Motifs are particularly important as a stylistic
technique often used in cinema to nonverbally enhance the meaning in a film. A motif refers
to any significant element of a film that is repeated to deepen narrative meaning. A motif
can be aural, like the whistling in M or the use of ringing bells to send the spectator spira-
ling through time in Cinema Paradiso. It can be a color, for example the repeated use of red
in a film to signal budding rage and resistance. Motifs can be objects, settings, camera angles
or a particular lighting, character, or camera movement. It really depends on the needs of
the particular film and its individual style. Narration is human interaction, through which we
communicate our thoughts, dreams, ideas and imaginings with one another. It can be spoken
dialogue, gestures, and expressions, or a stream of visual images, sound, and music without
characters saying a single word. As audiences we intuitively read the narrative system that
structures a film in an attempt to perceive the larger point or argument that lies at the heart
of every story.
The Rashomon Effect: A term used to describe the unreliability of eyewitness accounts. Based on the film
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950).
Restricted narration: Both the protagonist and the audience are given access to the same story informa-
tion.
Unrestricted narration: The audience knows more information than the protagonist. Often used to evoke
suspense in narrative progression.
Temporal frequency: The amount of times that an event or shot recurs in a film.
Implicit meaning: Story meaning that is not given directly to the viewer, but is hidden and needs active
interpretation to unpack.
Motif: Any significant element of a film that is repeated to deepen narrative meaning.

NARRATION
(1) How can we continue to think through the intricacies of story and plot in cinema? If all cinema
is a kind of time machine, whether or not a film follows a time travel narrative, we can trace
the way in which time operates across a filmic text to move both characters and the audience
through space, time, and information. Following the example provided in the Time Travel
Narratives insert, create your own table outlining the play between story and plot in a film of
your choice.
(2) What does it mean to gaze or look in cinema? Gazing is often articulated in terms of power
dynamics, where the person who gazes controls the knowledge and narrative action of the film.
While gazing is traditionally thought of as male, is there such a thing as a female gaze. Is there a
difference between male and female cinematic gazing, or the gazing of marginalized figures in
society?
"I’m going to stop you right there, Scott. Are you seriously telling me
that your plan to save the universe is based on Back to the Future?"
-Tony Stark, Avengers Endgame
Time Travel Narratives

DR. TOBIAS WILSON-BATES
Not only is time travel Scott Lang’s plan to save the universe, it is one of the most popular
ways that film experiments with narrative. In time travel stories, the viewer is presented with
the idea that events do not need to happen in chronological order. As modern film viewers,
audiences are actually already comfortable with non-sequential time. When a character
remembers an earlier scene or imagines a moment in the future, we often read the movie’s
signals without becoming confused about why we are seeing a moment from an earlier or
later time. However, in a time travel story, the characters are also in on the joke. They know
that they are suddenly occupying their own past or future. In such a film, the time of the
world within the film becomes as malleable as our experience of watching it.
Our modern idea of time travel emerges from a number of sour-

ces. Traveling through time appears in Hindu mythology and
then repeatedly throughout history in stories about dreams or
drug states, but many scholars attribute the current tradition as
emerging from HG Wells’ 1895 novel, The Time Machine. In the
book Wells draws on recent scientific literature to propose time
as a line that can be traversed forward and backwards with the
correct mechanism. While physicists have moved past that rigid
model of time as a straight line, it actually aligns very well with
the technology of film, which makes time machines a great way
The Time Machine (Pal, 1960)
to think about cinematic time!
All cinema is a kind of time machine, not only in terms of its use
of the idea, but the very medium itself is geared towards moving
spectators and characters in and out of time. This happens not
only through flashback and flash-forward, but also through the
ways in which a film can actively have two or more times side by
side operating in tandem. In Stephen Daldry’s The Hours (2002),
for example, we see three generations of women living in diffe-
The Hours (Daldry, 2002)
rent times all connected by Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs Dalloway.
The use of multiple or non-sequential timelines in films allows for compelling cinema-
tic storytelling. In James Cameron’s Terminator (1984) the spectator is introduced to actual
time travelers, but also sees speculative visions of time focalized through characters’ memo-
ries or dreams. In the movie, Kyle Reese, a time traveler from a dystopian robot apocalypse
T i m e Tr a ve l N a rr a t i ve s 41
La Jetée (Marker, 1962)
future, pursues an image in a photograph of his leader’s mother, Sarah Connor, hoping
to save her from an unstoppable mechanical assassin. As the movie progresses, Kyle and
Sarah develop a relationship and their union results in the birth of John Connor, the very
friend who sends Kyle back in time with the photograph. Towards the end of the film, we
see a photo taken of Sarah Connor, the very image that eventually propels Kyle through
time to his past future.
This propulsion through time via fixation on an image is in a real way the technology
of cinema. Technically none of the pictures move, they are all still frames run one after
the next to produce the illusion of movement. The spectator’s memory of earlier frames
become the material of cinematic memory in the film. Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962)
opens with the text “This is the story of a man, marked by an image from his childhood.”
The movie, almost entirely a sequence of photographs with voiceover narration, marks the
viewer with the same image and this image becomes the means by which the protagonist
later time travels in the film. Cinema operates as a time machine, weaving the material of
the audience’s own memory. Films like La Jetée and Terminator push spectators to consi-
der our human attachment to images. How do we relate to photographs or to images from
our own present and past?
1 2 3 4
The filmic movement of time seems simple enough at first glance. The audience experien-
ces the events of the movie in order. For example, in Groundhog’s Day (1993), Bill Murray
plays a weatherman who is sent for the fourth year in a row to cover Punxsutawney Phil,
the famous groundhog who will or will not see his shadow on Groundhog’s Day. The story
and plot move in tandem at the beginning of the film. The first thing we see is also the
first thing that happens. On the day that comprises most of the film Murray awakens to
irritating radio DJs (1), hits on an unreceptive coworker (Andie MacDowell) (2), unenthu-
siastically reports the story (3), and fails to leave town (4).
Henry Reich details the myriad twisting
paths and loops that movies use to play
with time in his MinutePhysics Youtube
The next day he awakens to the same irritating radio DJ banter from the day before and we
soon learn that the day is happening over again. Although the scene happens after the other
events, in the plot of the movie we have actually returned to (1) the first event of the day. In
all the film represents at least moments of the day happening 38 times, and director, Harold
Ramis, estimated at different times that the total amount of time that passed in the film
would have been between 10 and 40 years’ worth of days..
In order to recreate the directorial play with plot and story, you can even outline how
the two interact with a simple table. If the entire movie is shot in sequence with no flash
forward, flashback, memory, time travel etc., then the story (represented here as A, B, C, D)
and the plot (1, 2, 3, 4) would appear as follows:
A movie like Groundhog’s Day that returns repeatedly to the initial position could become
quite complicated!
In the above example the story progresses as the plot is re-arranged but the inverse can
also happen as it does in Michel Gondry’s The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
where the plot moves forward but the story becomes a tangle of coiling memory, nostalgia,
and forgetting. All films manipulate this relationship between story (the events in the world
of the film) and plot (the arrangement of how those events are presented to the audience).
These rearrangements have been going on for so long that in films like Avengers Endgame
(2019), Superman (1978), or Back to the Future (1985), characters in the world of the film
openly discuss how they must re-order events in their worlds to fix broken or traumatic
storylines. Audiences find themselves caught up in cinema’s time machine as they parallel
the characters’ consideration of how a director and creative crew put together all the pieces
of time that make up a cinematic narrative.
"TIME TRAVEL NARRATIVES" CONTRIBUTED BY
DR. TOBIAS WILSON-BATES
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
GEORGIA GWINNETT COLLEGE
T i m e Tr a ve l N a rr a t i ve s 43
C H A P T E R T H R E E
MISE-EN-SCÈNE
SETS, PROPS & COSTUMES 45

Shallow & deep space 46
PERFORMANCE 48
Choreography & blocking 49
LIGHTING 52
Three-point lighting 52
LIGHTING FOR GENDER & RACE 55
COLOR 56
CONCLUSION
** GLOSSARY
MISE-EN-SCÈNE
Even though we often talk about watching a film, for example, we say “I went to see a
film yesterday” or “I watched a really good film in class today,” in reality we really read a film.
If we think about film as a grammar, what we are speaking of is a universal language of film,
the ways in which a common language is used to enable an audience to ‘read’ a film and
understand the specific choices being made by the director in order to communicate story
and meaning to audiences. Mise-en-scène is one of the key ways directors provide cues for
us to read a film.
The French term mise-en-scène derives from theater and simply translated means
‘placing on the stage’ or ‘putting in the scene’. Essentially, all the elements that have been
arranged within the camera frame is mise-en-scène: setting and set design, lighting, décor,
props, performance and choreography, make-up, costume, camera placement and angles,
color and more. Literally everything within the frame that makes up the frame can be consi-
dered mise-en-scène. All film, as such, contain mise-en-scène, which contrives to bring about
the look and feel of a film.
Through mise-en-scène the director stages the events of the film. The careful compo-
sition of these visual elements constantly communicate meaning to the audience about
characters, their inner lives, and the world in which they live. Mise-en-scène directs our
understanding of narrative events in both explicit and implicit ways.
Sets, props, and costumes

Setting can be its own character. Unlike with theater, you can
have a space devoid of people and it will evocatively tell its story. In
the films created by the Italian Neorealists at the close of World War
II, for example, the postwar landscape was a powerful metaphor
that haunted their films filled with depression and struggle. Roberto
Rossellini’s Germany, Year Zero (1948) begins with a camera that
tracks through the rubble of Berlin, a setting the 12-year old young
protagonist, Edmund, will continually walk, work and play in as he
symbolically suffers for the bad choices of his elders. In the arche-
typical Hollywood Western, dialogue is unnecessary against the vast Germany Year Zero (Roseellini, 1948)
emptiness of its landscape and isolation of characters in a newly

discovered world slowly catching up to the rules and regulations
of modernity. Fifth Generation filmmaker Chen Kaige shot his film
Yellow Earth (1984) entirely on location in an examination of the
relationship between the Chinese landscape and the Chinese indi-
vidual. Similar to Germany, Year Zero, Kaige’s film begins with lands-
cape as his camera pans over majestic yet barren mountain ranges
that dwarf the human individual. Landscape dominates the frame
and undermines the usual importance given to people and the sky Yellow Earth (Chen, 1984)
in cinematography, highlighting the value of this yellow earth to the
people who live in it. Plot is entirely secondary to the visual presen-
tation of the setting in these moments.
M ise - E n - S C è N E 45
While the use of on-location settings can deepen the sense of realism in a film, setting,
of course, can also be staged to engage in important narrative functions. German Expres-
sionist directors often created elaborate stage designs in their films to challenge the way in
which we perceive reality in traditional cinema and convey SEE CH1
the inner, subjective experience of its characters. The Cabi- FOR
MORE ON
net of Dr. Caligari (1920), is a story, told in flashback from the G E R MA N
point of view of a young man named Francis, about a myste- EXPRESS-
I O N ISM
rious Dr. Caligari who commits murders through control of
a somnambulist. Director Robert Wiene hired Expressionist
painters Walter Reimann and Hermann Warm to construct
a set composed of geometrical patterns, strange angles, and
jagged edges in a reflection of the twisted mindscape of its
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1920)
narrator. Considered to be one of the earliest horror films,
set design in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is key not only to the
distortion of reality, and audience understanding of the story
world, but also to the generation of mood through the crea-
tion of a frightening and alien diegetic landscape.
Set design refers to the dressing or décor of a set, the way
in which a space is staged in order to elicit greater meaning
and direct the thought of the audience. A lot of considera-
tion goes into the placement of props within any set in order
to subtly suggest subtext and build additional information
into a film. In Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963), a chauf-
fer’s son is mistakenly kidnapped instead of the son of a weal-
thy self-made businessman, Mr. Gondo. The kidnapper still
demands payment, but if he pays the ransom, Gondo will go
High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963)
bankrupt and lose everything he has worked hard for. Caught
in a moral dilemma, Kurosawa sets his film largely in one room
containing Gondo, policemen, the chauffer, and his wife, and creates a sense of claustropho-
bia through tight composition and the use of long takes that prolong the sense of time within
the same room.
Gondo is repeatedly framed between characters or at the periphery, caught between
the desires of others, and his own conscience. Drapes become a very important prop to
the visualization of his anxiety and entrapment in High and Low. When Gondo opens the
drapes to survey the world below, a sense of space, light and power is created through the
S E E C H 4 fostering of deep space. Forced to close the drapes to prevent the kidnapper from having
F O R M O R E visual access to the house, and thereby discovering that the police have become involved,
ON DEEP
S P A C E the drapes function both to signal an off-screen space where a kidnapper lurks and to create
a movement from deep space to shallow space that aids in the feeling of claustrophobia as
space and light diminishes. Kurosawa further uses the drapes to emphasize how pressured
Gondo feels to do the ‘right’ thing by having the character pace restlessly alongside the prop
as first his chauffeur, and later his wife, close him in against the drapes as they plead with
him to pay the ransom.
Props possess the ability to provide insight into characters, similar to costumes and
makeup which can also affect the tone of a film. Costumes for instance can indicate the
historical time period of a film, deepening the realism
for audiences, or point to a character’s emotions or
development over the course of a story simply through
a change of color. Rebel Without a Cause (1955), for SEE CH4
FOR MORE
example, is a film concerned with teenage delinquency ON REBEL
and the failure of the American nuclear postwar family. WITHOUT A
CAUSE
Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955) In this film, the color red is worn by all three main
teenage characters at different points throughout the film, and becomes an indicator of
rebellion and a crisis of self. At the end of Rebel Without a Cause, Jim (James Dean) repla-
ces his iconic bright red jacket, which he has placed over the corpse of his friend, with his
father’s sports-coat in a symbolical movement from teenage angst and sexual confusion to
social conformation and adulthood. Red clothing is ultimately phased out as teenage charac-
ters mature and are re-contained within the safe harbors of marriage and the family.
Props, alongside costume and makeup, work to
communicate story information to audiences as much
as setting and characters. The manipulation of props,
costume and makeup can be key to critical shifts in our
understanding of the plot, and character decisions. Blade
Runner (1982) is a science fiction film set in 2019 where
bounty hunters called blade runners are commissioned
to ‘retire’ or terminate runaway cyborgs known as repli-
cants. In the midst of tracking down several missing repli-
cants, blade runner Rick Deckard develops feelings for a
Blade Runner (Scott, 1982)
replicant, Rachel, who has learnt that her entire human
childhood was a fabrication. Hiding in Deckard’s apartment, she touches and examines old
photographs that adorn Deckard’s piano. While the prop of the photograph can often help
to establish a character's back story in time and space, thereby assisting in lending flesh to a
character and moving plot forward, the photograph here does something different.
Earlier in Blade Runner, Rachel presents a photograph of herself as a child in her mother’s
arms to Deckard as proof of her humanness, undermining the status of the photograph as
incontestable truth when her replicant nature is revealed. Even as Rachel’s interest in the
photographs reveal her own yearning to be human, they raise the question of photographs
as a prop of our memory. Photographs can be used as evidence, but as a technology they
can also be manipulated. Photographic images do not necessarily present ‘real’ memories,
but the way in which we choose to remember or present a version of ourselves and others.
Removed from any context of location or time period except for their aged appearance, the
portraits on Deckard’s piano that should validate his childhood memories, as compared to
Rachel’s, instead open the door for a questioning of Deckard’s own background and the legi-
timacy of his humanity.
Shifts in costume (clothing and its accessories) and makeup can suggest a character’s
mood or consciousness, often functioning to more fully articulate a character. As Rachel
comes to terms with her new reality as a runaway replicant, her sharp clothing that highli-
ghted her cold aloofness is changed, her hair unpinned and worn down in loose curls, and
her red lipstick removed in favor of nude lips. These choices in makeup and costume soften
Rachel, heightening her vulnerability and childlike appearance to humanize her and encou-
Blade Runner (Scott, 1982)
rage the audience, and Deckard himself, to sympathize with the cyborg. The sudden deli-
beration behind Rachel’s decision to change her appearance lends an ambiguity to Rachel’s
actions when Deckard roughly forces a sexual interaction between them: is Rachel truly in
love with Deckard, or is she playing a role in order to survive in a world that either enslaves
or kills her kind? While make-up and costume often strive for realism and thus invisibility,
make-up and costume can alternatively be elaborated or exaggerated to emphasize a state
of being or feeling that is embedded in fantasy or psychological states. The mise-en-scène
elements of setting, costume, makeup and props all work in tangent with character and their
performance to articulate deeper meanings and generate a complexity of emotions in the
audience.
On-location: A real space is used as a set for a scene. As opposed to a “studio” set.
Set design: The dressing or décor of a set and the way that space is staged.
Prop: Short for “property”. Any object used in set design.
Deep space: Many planes of space moving off into the distance, created by set design.
Shallow space: Few planes of space (sometimes only two). Often gives a sense of claustrophobia or a flat-
tened image.
Performance
Actor performance is an important aspect of mise-en-scène. Controlled by the direction
of the director, the physical performances of characters are crucial to the thematic expres-
sion of a film.
While the posture of an actor and the expressions of their face (figure expression) often
function to express character thoughts and emotions, gestures and character action (figure
movement) can also create dynamic patterns and moments of meaning in a film. We can
trace the movement of a character from insecure to confident, for example, by examining
the subtle changes in their posture. A character in this case may begin a film with a bent
posture and pinched expression, and by the end of the film stand tall with bright eyes and
a mischievous smile. Other elements of mise-en-scène and cinematography would conti-
nue to flesh out this character. Imagine, for instance, this same pinched faced, slumped
character in an ill-fitting, wrinkled suit working in the glare of an old computer within the
tight confines of an office overflowing with miscellaneous clutter and crumpled sheets of
paper covered in coffee stains. The film might then end with this character in linen slacks
on a beach, throwing his briefcase filled with work documents in a wide arc into the ocean
to denote his freedom from the conventional grind of capitalism. The control the director
exerts on character performance supports the overall argument or larger point of the film.
The delineation of figure expression is typically aided by the shot sizes of the camera,
for example, the close-up is the most frequently used shot size to emphasize a character’s
emotional state of being. Figure movement on the other hand is often represented through
the choreography of characters and things. Choreography, or blocking, is the designing
of movement in space and time. An understudied aspect of cinema, choreography is often
under-considered in film studies but in dealing with the tension and emotion of movement,
choreography remains a core element of the medium.
Most often when we think of choreography, we think about dance. Films can have
recurring dance sequences central to the expression of character emotion and dreaming
as seen in Hollywood musicals and Bollywood cinema. Here the camera itself becomes a
character to be choreographed in turn, and through its movements lengthens or dynamically
shortens the articulation of the dance. We might call this camera dancing, as through main-
taining continuity between character movement and camera shots, editing enhances the
experience of the dance. By choreographing the camera and controlling the editing of the
dance performance, the director heightens the movement visible on the screen in a commu-
nication of specific messages to the audience. Dance and choreography thus operate as
main themes in the film.
Set in North East England, Billy Elliot (2000) is a dance film about an 11-year old boy
who wants to dance but is caught between the social expectations of his family who are
struggling with the very real economic concerns of the 1984 coal miner’s strike, the desi-
res of his dance teacher, and the social stigma surrounding male ballet dancing. Placed on
top of a table by his brother, and surrounded by these dissenting forces, the camera adopts
Billy’s point of view and cuts between Billy looking at his family and dance teacher arguing
from atop the table to Billy cornered against a brick wall dancing. Cutting between Billy’s
tap dancing feet, to fuller shots of him dancing, every door that Billy opens leads to a physi-
cal barrier in his way as he attempts to dance his frustration out, but also perhaps dance the
dance out to make his family happy. No matter where he turns barriers hem him in, and he
finds his path literally blocked at the end of his dance routine by a rusted galvanized fence.
The shallow space created aids in the sense of entrapment caused by poverty and culture
that sees generations going down in the mines. Billy’s path was already set before his birth.
Framing and composition of space is important to the visualization of bodies in motion
on the screen. Camera position thus works in tangent with choreography in order to anti-
cipate the flow of bodies across space for maximum emotional impact. Bodies in motion
BillyElliot
(Daldry,2000)
communicate at a deeper psychological and emotional level than dialogue. Billy could have
delivered a moving soliloquy where he exposes his feelings of claustrophobia, confusion,
and anger to audiences, but such a performance would not have been true for this young
character who has difficulty communicating his desires to those around him. Through the
movement of camera and dance the audience feels what Billy does, entering into a grea-
ter intimacy with the character where dance gives entrance to what cannot be communi-
cated through words. Unlike in the musical, narrative action does not pause for the dance
sequence but rather the dance sequence in Billy Elliot is key to character and plot develo-
pment, holding an important place in audience understanding of the passage of time, and
the emotional nuances of the film.
Contrary to the camera dancing of the dance film, some drama-
tic films contain one or more dance sequences that focus chiefly on
the choreography to provide further insight into characters and the
shifting moods of the film. While dancing is not central to the film,
these films use dance choreography in often revelatory and humo-
rous ways. The question to ask here is what would have been lost
(or gained) without the mise-en-scène of character dancing? In the
cult classic Napoleon Dynamite (2004) a socially awkward Napo- NapoleonDynamite (Hess,2004)
leon bursts into dance on a stage in front of his high school peers
in a last ditch attempt to help his friend, Pedro, become class Presi-
dent. Filmed chiefly in wide shot to display Napoleon’s entire moving body, the freesty-
led dance sequence works as a triumphant climactic moment for Napoleon that the entire
film rides upon, one where he momentarily transcends his situation in a dead-end Idaho
town. Napoleon surprises his entire year by dancing, and dancing well. Throughout the
film Napoleon has been picked on and bullied. At the end of his performance, he returns to
the slouched posture he has held throughout the film and runs off-screen to the rapturous
applause of his blindsided peers. Through the mise-en-scène of Napoleon’s energetically
bizarre movement, his peers finally see that there is something cool in Napoleon’s unique
difference, and that he is more than just a social pariah.
Choreography, though, is not only about dance. It can interface with any designed
movement in a film, from staged combat like martial arts and medieval battles, to tense car
chase scenes, and political rallies. Even a scene set at a frat party involves some level of
choreographed movement as drunk and partying bodies move around the main characters.
The choreography of large groups can often be overlooked in cinema as a backdrop for the
more important interactions of main characters that advance plot. As in the aforementio-
ned frat party, the drunk revelers will only exist as a prop against which important charac-
ters are situated and defined. In the right hands, the directing of large groups of people can
be moved from a largely unremarkable backdrop to a stylized presentation that emphasizes
the argument of the film or deepens dramatic tension.
French director Jacques Tati's 1967 comedy Playtime, a film loosely structured around
a bumbling character (Mr. Hulot) who confusedly navigates a modern Paris, depends on
an understanding of choreography as mise-en-scène. The choreography of large groups of
people as they interface with modern architecture and space is crucial to the presentation
of visual and aural gags in a critique of contemporary French society. The film begins in an
airport where moving figures are framed against one another in an articulation of modern
Playtime (Tati, 1967)
space. In a world composed of rigid lines, glass, cold minimalisms and high-rise architec-
ture, people walk in straight lines and do not deviate from the paths laid out before them.
By the end of the film, the uniformity of the modern individual has collapsed beneath the
chaos of life and humanity in a culminating scene where the poorly constructed architec-
ture of a new restaurant falls around the heads of its inebriated costumers. Everything and
everyone within the film is carefully choreographed in terms of their interactions with each
other, especially in their eventual disarray. In its delineation of space, choreography in Play-
time reveals modern architecture as the true main character of its filmic text.
Tati’s careful coordinated scenes powerfully allow the audience access to his overarching
argument without a typical emphasis on dialogue and psychological drama. Tati’s use of wide
shots keeps the audience at a distance that allows full views of modern life, one filled with
isolated individuals, alienating technological advancements and superficial performances of
wealth. Playtime contains little to no dialogue in its dependence on choreography to deli-
ver its implicit meaning to audiences. Choreography possesses the ability to bear the chief
weight of meaning in a story, creatively building a specific audio-visual expression that both
entertains and drives the viewer to a deeper penetration of the narrative world.
Figure expression: The posture of an actor and the expressions of their face.
Figure movement: An actor’s gestures and character action.
Choreography / Blocking: The design of movement in space and time.
Lighting
The design of lighting in cinema remains one of the most important elements of a shot
as the story world of a film cannot be seen without the use of light. The very medium of film
stock depends on the presence of light to bring images into visibility. In early cinema, natu-
ral lighting was crucial for the clarity of images leading to the creation of studios deliberately
SEE CH1
FOR MORE
built to maximize sunlight (the Black Maria), and prompting the exodus of filmmakers to the
O N TH E West Coast to capitalize on the brighter year-round weather. By the late 1910s and 1920s,
B LA C K
MA R IA
most lighting had become artificial, and the function of lighting had moved from simply
lending light to a scene to using lighting to add emotional nuance and depth to characters
and space. The cinematographer or lighting director would control the amount of light that
enters any scene, and, through the manipulation of light and shadows, how we understand
the cinematic world.
The three-point system forms the basis of most film
lighting, and is the primary way in which figures in cinema
are lit. This system is composed of three lights: the key
light, the fill light and the back light. The key light provides
the main source of illumination, while the softer fill light
‘fills’ out the shadows cast by the key light on faces and
the background. In early cinema, the sun, as the strongest
source of light, was a natural key light with any surrounding
reflective surfaces acting as fill and back lights. Today, you
can still see directors on exterior shoots using the natural
light of the sun to define characters and collapsible reflec-
tors as fillers to bounce light back unto surfaces.
A back light completes the triad of lights by subtly defining character outlines and sepa-
rating the actor from the background to achieve a three-dimensional look. Early filmmakers
would often deliberately place the back light behind their white female stars with the intent
of creating a ‘halo effect’ around their hair to emphasize their ‘blondeness’ and virtue. By
the 1930s hair lighting would become a feature in Classical Hollywood cinema across hair of
different colors but not typically across race or gender. In other words, while brunettes and
red heads were privy to halo lighting, women of color and men were not typically treated to
the same hair lighting effects for virtue. In cinema today while hair lighting occurs regardless
of race, it is not as frequently visible a technique in color cinema as it was on the earlier black
and white screen. Lighting as an element of mise-en-scène is rigidly controlled by the ligh-
ting director to imply meaning. Through varying different levels of key, fill and back lighting
the specific world of a film comes into being.
Lighting is important for psychological effect. Through its presence it can reveal some-
thing about a character, and thereby deepen the meaning in a story. Conversely the absence
of light and presence of shadows can also tell us more about the inner state of charac-
ters and the tone of a film than words or actions alone can always disclose. Depending on
how it is wielded by the director of lighting, lighting can produce a diversity of contrasting
meanings. For instance, it can aid in enhancing realism in a scene, but it can alternatively be
used to create subjective spaces that expose the mental workings of characters. It can make
a character appear angelic and in the next moment reveal the hard exterior of someone who
leads a dangerous double life.
Consider these film images of Classical Hollywood cinema icons Greta Garbo and
Marlene Dietrich. How does lighting suggest the story of her character, and how the direc-
tor wants us to feel about her persona?
In the first image, the director of lighting illuminates Greta Garbo with soft lighting. Soft
lighting, typically some type of diffused lighting, is often used for beauty shots or to soften
the appearance of the actor. Soft light hides wrinkles and other undesirable marks on the In
the first image, the director of lighting illuminates Greta Garbo with soft lighting. Soft ligh-
ting, typically some type of diffused lighting, is often used for beauty shots or to soften the
appearance of the actor. Soft light hides wrinkles and other undesirable marks on the body
in order to create a fetishized image of beauty, innocence or vulnerability. With soft lighting
shadows are softer and undefined producing fewer points of contrast in the image. Over-
cast skies where light is diffused across the entire sky, rather than emanating from the single
source of the sun, or some type of gel, paper or silk placed between the subject and light
source all aid in softening light and creating more angelic and beautiful images. Notice the READ
hair light on Garbo that emphasizes her blondness and provides her with ‘glow’. According R I C HA R D
DYER'S
to Richard Dyer, glow remains key to idealized representations of white women, especially E SSA Y
in black & white cinema.
In the second image of Marlene Dietrich, we see that the key light, as the strongest
source of illumination, is also a hard light. Hard lighting can be defined as lighting that casts
sharp and defined shadows, in other words, as lighting that shows the contours and (im)
perfections of the body. It is not a lighting that hides, but rather a lighting that forces things
into visibility. A spotlight, the unfiltered light of a harsh sun or single uncovered bulb in a
small dark room can all be sources of hard lighting. In this image, the hard lighting is direc-
ted to Dietrich’s front and side creating a dramatic chiaroscuro effect that highlights her fair-
ness against the blackness of clothing and background. The hard lighting produces defined
shadows that reveal Dietrich’s trademark cheekbones and dangerous exoticism in a creation
of her film persona.
The third image is from the Josef von Sternberg film Shanghai Express (1932) in which
Marlene Dietrich, shaken from a fight with another character, smokes a cigarette in agitation.
A shot designed for the audience to simply gaze upon Dietrich’s beauty and inner turmoil,
Sternberg lights Dietrich from above and to the front, like a flower searching out the light.
Lighting, here, focuses our attention on the allure of Dietrich’s face, but also serves to lend
texture to the image by highlighting the edges of her hair, the brocade design on her shoul-
der, and the pattern of the wall. Notice the peculiar shape of the shadow beneath Dietrich’s
nose. Dietrich was often lit with what came to be known as ‘Butterfly Lighting’ or Paramount
Lighting. The key light placed directly above a character’s head created a small, butterfly-
-shaped shadow right under the nose that would come to be the standard of Hollywood
glamour lighting in black & white cinema. The beauty of the image transcends the action of
the narrative, and the deliberate use of light fosters the audience’s immersion in the screen.
Lighting can be high key or low key, emanate from different sources and directions,
and, influence the look and feel of a scene through its color. When
lighting is high key, a scene is brightly lit with few (if any) shadows.
Think here of your typical musical film, like My Fair Lady (1964) or
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and the way in which it is lit to
eliminate shadows from characters’ faces, and illuminate the bright
colors of clothing and space despite dark themes of poverty and
failed relationships. Not all musicals are created equal, though, as
there are characters and plot concerns that still need to be empha-
My Fair Lady (Cukor, 1964)
sized giving rise to more contemporary musicals like Sweeney Todd:
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Les Misérables (2012), which use low key ligh-
ting to dramatic effect.
In contrast to high key lighting, low key lighting is characterized by its darker, shadowy
look. As its name suggests, low key lighting calls for a softer key light. Contrarily, high-con-
trast lighting, also known as chiaroscuro lighting, is considered a type of low key ligh-
ting even though it calls for a combination of high key light and shadow. High-contrast
lighting therefore visualizes the ‘high contrast’ between light and shadow in a scene. Low
SEE CH7
key lighting is most often used in the genres of horror, thrillers, and
FOR MORE film noir to stylistically depict dark social conditions and experien-
O N F ILM
NOIR
ces. For example, in the crime film, The Godfather (1972), Francis
Ford Coppola uses low key lighting as a means to create charac-
ter. The film begins in a dimly lit office with the Godfather, Don
Vito Corleone, meeting a father desperate for vengeance against
two boys who have destroyed his daughter’s life. Corleone is shot
with overhead lighting and little fill light, creating a strong contrast The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
between light and dark areas (high-contrast lighting) that deepens
the shadows in the room while illuminating characters for psycho-
logical effect. The particular use of low key lighting here has the double effect of shading
or hooding Corleone’s eyes. Eyes are the proverbial windows to the soul, and dark secrets
lie within Corleone’s soul only to be suggested by our inability to see into his eyes. We are
within the dark world of the gangster, the underbelly of society, and the low key lighting
aids in the expression of our entry into an enigmatic world. And yet, the precise use of ligh-
ting in this scene further complicates this dark insight into the Godfather by directing our
eyes to the cat he caresses in his hands, and the rose pinned to his tuxedo lapel. This is not
a simpleminded, aggressive thug. Corleone is dressed for his daughter’s wedding, and the
use of mise-en-scène introduces us to a man whose hands wield more than violence, and
who loves his family deeply.
Watch this 2-minute video about the hit HBO series Insecure
in which the Director of Photography, Ava Berkofsky, discusses
her techniques for the lighting of dark skin tones with the aim to
deepen story and celebrate diversity.
There is a significant difference between low key lighting, which fosters shadows, and
unlit characters that reveal poor lighting expertise. In Hollywood cinema typically non-white
actors are the ones who have historically been ‘unlit’ due to the racism embedded in the
medium. As late as the 1990s Kodak ‘Shirley cards’, depicting photographed white women,
were used as universal ideal skin tone markers to help professional film developers calibrate
color in the processing of their photographs. While great for white skin, darker skin tones
looked terrible under such a racially exclusive technique.
While such a technique would eventually change, lighting for blackness would conti-
nue to lack nuance with filmmakers often throwing lots of light onto darker hued characters
regardless of the psychology of the scene and character, or continuing to light for whiteness
and thereby locking dark skinned characters into obscurity. Only recently has there begun
to be a different approach to lighting darker skin tones to highlight not only the beautiful
diversity of skin tones across ethnicities but also to light clearly for character mood and film
genre.

LIGHTING FOR GENDER AND RACE
(1) Is there such a thing as gendered lighting? in other words, are women typically lit differently
from men? What parts of the body does lighting highlight in men and women? Look at film stills
of men and women in films currently playing in theaters around you. What do you notice?
(2) What about lighting for skin color? How can we talk about the use of light between white men
and women within heterosexual relationships? Can you find examples of films where women are
framed as a light that men yearn towards?
(3) Black people have been historically unlit and darkly invisible in
cinema, especially when framed against their white counterparts.
Examine contemporary lighting for non-white characters in
television shows such as Insecure (2016 – present) and films like
Moonlight (2016) against older Hollywood examples.
Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016)
Three-point lighting system: A convention of lighting that includes a key light, fill light, and back light. Part
of the Classical Hollywood system that created "glamour" shots.
Key light: The main source of illumination.
Fill light: A soft light that fills out the shadows cast by a key light.
Back light: Defines the actor outline, separating them from the background. Can create a “halo effect” in
blond hair.
Soft lighting: Diffused light that hides imperfections.
Hard lighting: Lighting that casts sharp and defined shadow. Often shows imperfections.
High-key lighting: Brightly lights a scene with few (if any) shadows.
Low-key lighting: Creates a dark, shadowy look with a softer key light.
High-contrast lighting / Chiaroscuro: A type of low-key lighting that emphasizes the difference between
shadowy spaces and light spaces. Often used for metaphorical effect.
Color
To complicate the idea of lighting for color, it is important to understand that light comes
in a range of temperatures and colors that affect the look and feel of a film. Measured on
the Kelvin (k) scale of temperature, the lower the K, the redder or warmer the light, and the
higher the K, the bluer or cooler the color of light becomes on the screen. Light thus moves
from a spectrum of reds, to yellows to white and blues the hotter the temperature beco-
mes on the Kelvin scale. The director of photography can use light to heighten audience
emotion through their instinctive reaction to certain colors, and thus lend new visual layers
to a film.
Red, for instance, is a color that instantly triggers in an audience cultural understan-
dings of anger, violence, passion, madness and love, aligned as it is with the universal color
of blood. A shockingly dominant color, Stanley Kubrick paints the screen red with light in the
climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) where supercom-
puter, Hal, sings his swansong ‘Daisy Bell’. The self-aware
A.I. has killed everyone save astronaut Dave Bowman on
the ship. Even though the color red emanates from Hal’s
motherboard and ever seeing eye, it is Bowman who is pain-
ted red by the lighting as he deactivates Hal positioning him
as a murderer as he effectively kills Hal. We are made to
sympathize with Hal’s fear as his mind slowly slips away in a 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
scene quiet but for Hal’s pleas, Bowman’s brief but earnest
replies and the atmospheric sounds of breathing and space.
The intensity of the moment is amplified through the colored light, where strangely, despite
the emotional tenor of essentially watching a sentient computer die, the color red feels
cold, rational, alien.
Lighting for color can create a veritable cinema of the senses
for the spectator. The notion of mise-en-scène is invested in the
director’s control of what lies within the cinematic frame, and
lighting is essential to the composition of a scene. Hero (Zhang
Yimou, 2002) is a story about the assassination attempt on the
King of Qin told from the point of view of a nameless assassin.
In Hero color is used as a narrative device to make clear the four
different stories being told by the Nameless to the Emperor— the
first in monochrome, the second in red, and, as we come closer to
perceiving the truth, the third and fourth stories adopt the colors
of blue and white respectively. Zhang uses his lighting to empha-
size the specific color of the story being narrated, and to subtly
communicate the emotional valences of the scene. In the third
story, for example, remembered in blue, Moon, the pupil of master
swordsman and assassin Sword is framed against the stark blue
sky. Moon has lost her mentor, Sword, to the politics and violence
of empire building. The three point lighting illuminating Moon’s
face holds a blue tinge. The sorrow and sense of loss expressed by
her countenance is enhanced by the delicate lighting, the charac-
ter’s stillness, and the mournful music that plays over the image.
Hero (Zhang, 2002) Blue, though, can also be read in terms of serenity, peace, truth,
and challenges the way in which we are meant to understand this
moment.
Color in Zhang’s film highlights the perspective, tone, emotion,
themes and very malleable aspect of story, while lighting allows
us access to the implicit feelings of different characters. While
color is not traditionally thought as an element of mise-en-scène,
it is often beautifully utilized by directors to develop story and
meaning within their films. Wes Anderson , for example, is known
for the bright color palette that demarks his film sets and charac-
ters’ costumes. Anderson’s color thematic allows the spectator
entrance into quirky fictional worlds where color is an extension
of characters. Color can also be aligned with gender expecta-
tions, in that we associate certain colors with women as compa-
red to men, political and religious affiliations, and other cultural
representations. Directors have also used color to delineate tran-
Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939) sition and change, as illustrated by Wizard of Oz (1939) in which a
young girl from Depression-era Kansas becomes lost in Oz, a land
of dreams. The reality of Kansas is depicted in black and white (actually sepia brown), while
Dorothy’s dream in which she comes to emotional life through her adventures in Oz is full
color through the technical achievement of Technicolor.
It is clear that color can have a deep emotional and visceral impact
on the spectator. In the historical drama, Schindler’s List (1993), director
Steven Spielberg decided to film his 3-hour epic about Oskar Schindler,
an ethnic German who saved thousands of Jewish refugees during the
Holocaust, completely in black and white save for one moment when
Schindler sees a little girl in a red coat wandering lost and alone within
the madness of the Holocaust as people are gathered and gunned Schindler'sList (Spielberg,1993)
down around her. Color here is used for dramatic impact, and to place
us within the mind of Schindler, as he and the audience alone seems to
see the little girl who slips past the violence. It is in this moment that
Schindler commits to fighting the atrocity of the Holocaust. The use
of color focuses our attention on the child who humanizes and stands
in for the mass of victims whose lives were destroyed during the Holo-
caust. The bright blood red of the jacket becomes a beacon in the
black and white world of Krakow and concentration camps that Schin-
dler will continually catch glimpses of throughout the film, and signal Pleasantville (Ross,1998)
the deep stain that marks the hands of the many who knew about yet
ignored the Holocaust until war touched their own shores.
Color can act as an important part of the narrative, and present alternative dramatic
ways of examining history. Pleasantville (1998) tells the story of two siblings who become
trapped inside a 1950s sitcom set in a picture-perfect Midwest town. As with most sitcoms
SEE CH4
FOR MORE of the 1950s the people of this small town exist literally in black and white, and, as emotion,
ON COLOR sexuality and life begin to bleed into their lives, people and their surroundings become ‘colo-
red’ causing social fears and violence to erupt. Color slowly spreads throughout the black
and white town showing every person and thing touched by the changing times. Color here
also becomes an allegory to work through collective memory of race relations in 1950s
America. There are no African American main characters, but as the people in the town
begin to target the ‘coloreds’ in the town with hate crimes and restrict them from social
areas, the use of color within this black and white sitcom world embedded in a culture of
repression and social ideology, forces into sight a conversation about race, history and cultu-
ral memory in America. Without the storytelling device of color, the narrative of Pleasant-
ville cannot be communicated aesthetically and effectively to the cinema audience.
Mise-en-scène is produced through the collaboration of many different professionals
all under the auspices of the director who ultimately directs and controls the final look and
meaning of a film. World-building in a film thus draws heavily upon the visual imagination of
the director, his crew, and their construction of a cinematic edifice rooted in meaning that
enhances audience experience of the narrative text.
C H A P T E R F O U R
CINEMATOGRAPHY
CAMERA PLACEMENT 60
CAMERA MOVEMENT 61
LENSES 65
ASPECT RATIO 69
EARLY FILM GIMMICKS (INSERT) 71
COLOR 74
SPECIAL EFFECTS 76
C I N E MAT O G R A P H Y 59
CINEMATOGRAPHY
The role of cinematography in storytelling is two-fold: first, the cinematography descri-
bes a space that is convincingly “realistic” and secondly the cinematography describes a
particular point of view, a subjectivity, through which we are told about this world. Each
story has specific variables that might change these two cinematography roles. For example,
a fantasy story set in an imaginary place might not care about creating “realism”, per se. But
the cinematography will be used to establish a convincing place that feels emotionally real,
if not “real” by the standards of our world. Or, for example, a story might not be from any
particular point of view – it might not have a narrator or a sympathetic main hero to follow.
Just the same, the cinematography will still use immersive techniques to make us follow and
invest in the camera as it portrays an omniscient view of the story.
Camera placement
Though we might not always realize it, where the camera
is placed with relation to the scene gives us a great amount of
information. We generally like to look into our characters’ faces,
at eye-level, so any deviation from this standard position reads
as meaningful. A low-height camera might cut off faces entirely,
focusing on knees or feet if characters are standing. Or in Yasu-
jirō Ozu’s films like Tokyo Story (1953), for example, a low camera
height is needed to showcase characters sitting on Japanese
tatami mats. In this case, the camera is adjusted so that we can
still stare into characters’ faces as they sit at ground-level. The Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)
camera brings us down to a domestic ground and, in turn, we feel
as though we are sitting with the characters in an intimate, fami-
lial way.
A high-height camera films well above characters’ faces,
perhaps staring out at the horizon like a bird, perched on a tree.
Looking down from this vantage point onto a character, the
camera would take on a high angle, distorting the character’s
body. From a high angle, we would see the character’s head loom
large and their body would look very small and very vulnerable,
as in Avengers (Whedon, 2012). It is no surprise that high angle
shots generally evoke a sense of power or knowledge over the
characters who are in frame. This is the point of view of a mobs-
ter, looking down on his victim. And the high angle can also repre-
sent a more abstract metaphor of judgement, as in Alfred Hitch- Avengers (Whedon, 2012)
cock’s and Martin Scorsese’s films, which use high angle shots in
moments of ethical dilemma.
Alternatively, a shot that represents a victim’s point of
view, looking at a threatening man with a knife, as in Inglourious
Basterds (Tarantino, 2009), would likely use a low angle. In this
way, the camera makes the audience feel a sense of vulnerability
and powerlessness by making us feel small while the character
on screen looms large above us. Additionally, low angle cameras
Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009)
tend to distort characters’ faces, making them look unflattering
– this further places us in the victim’s point of view by distancing
us from a distorted, monstrous face. In moments of psychologi-
cal turmoil or extreme power imbalance, the camera might tilt on
its axis to create a canted angle, also called a Dutch angle. This
technique has been used since silent cinema to evoke a sense of
unease in the audience. In the 1950s, the Dutch angle was used
excessively in Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955) to show power
shifts between teenagers and figures of authority (parents, police
officers). In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Gilliam cants Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Gilliam, 1998)
his camera when characters become drug-induced – the camera

visually represents the feeling of being off-kilter.
Low-height camera: Camera is placed low to the ground, without a tilt. This shot may capture someone on
ground-level, or it could capture feet.
High-height camera: Camera is placed high above the ground to capture something in the air or a distant
view.
High-angle shot: Camera is tilted down to film an object or character from above. This shot often makes a
character look vulnerable and small.
Low-angle shot: Camera is tilted up to film an object or character from below. This shot often makes a
character look powerful and large.
Canted-angle / Dutch-angle shot: Camera is tilted on its axis to evoke imbalance, anxiety, or a mental
break.
Camera movement
Though movement in the frame is most obviously carried by the actors who move across
the set, the camera contributes greatly to the sense of dynamism in a shot. In fact, a shot
might feature static characters and still be considered dynamic through the motion that the
camera contributes to the scene.
Two very simple movements can be achieved with a static camera on a tripod or on a
standing cameraman: a tilt and a pan. By swiveling the camera from side to side, a pan repre-
sents the turn of a human head. This appears to be a very natural movement to the viewer.
Just as we turn our heads side to side in order to read a room, the camera’s pan creates
an eyeline view and reads the fictional space like a book. It is no wonder that in Western
cinema, panning from left to right feels the most natural, just like reading a Western book,
from left to right. A tilt brings the camera-head up or down and represents a vertical scan.
This feels less natural than a pan, since we generally spend less time looking up and looking
down when we read our environments. But the tilt becomes a very important tool for speci-
fic cinema moments, like reading characters from head to toe or finding hidden figures in
unusual spaces, like ceilings, in horror films.
A third, less used, camera tactic is a pedestal, where the camera
remains level but is lifted up on its tripod to read an environment up and
down without tilting. In Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941), the mansion
Xanadu is revealed to us with a pedestal. We first see a “No Trespassing”
sign, then the camera pedestals up over gates until we finally have an
answer to the question of what should not be trespassed: the mansion
Xanadu sitting on a hill in the distance with the gate’s large “K” (for Kane)
looming large in the foreground.
In order to get even more motion in a shot, we might place the camera
stand onto a moving object. In early cinema history, we see cameras
placed on trains, boats, planes, and cars to get the shot to move quickly
in a stable way. Since the camera, for most of cinema history, has been
extremely heavy, it has been hard to create a steady image using just
a cameraman’s body (a hand-held shot). It is not until cameras became
more lightweight in the 1960s that extensive use of the hand-held shot
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) became an option for cinema, and even then it was considered an expe-
rimental strategy used for European art films or for documentary footage.
Generally, a stable moving shot is created using a dolly. A track is laid out for the shot
that choreographs the camera’s path with the actor’s, and a platform is set up on this track to
move the camera and the cinematographer together as the scene is filmed. These dollies can
be set up in a straight line or in a curve, on a paved street or in a wild landscape. The main
restriction of a dolly shot is that its movement must conform to the ground.
The effect of a tracking shot is a smooth movement, often using a dolly, that tracks a
character as they walk through their environment. When we watch a tracking shot, we are
unaware of the dolly setup – it becomes invisible to the viewer because it is an unobtrusive
movement. Its smoothness allows us to feel as though we are with the character, walking
side-by-side with them and investing in their problems, their concerns, and their emotions.
The dolly shot brings us closer to characters and its invisibility helps to enforce our identifi-
cation with them.
Another type of dolly shot places the actor on a dolly too. The double dolly shot is asso-
ciated most closely with filmmaker Spike Lee, who uses the technique in nearly every one
of his films. The effect of the double dolly shot is an interior experience, an extreme close-
ness with the mental state of a character. When the camera’s dolly and the actor’s dolly are
synchronized so that they are moving the exact same pace, a different one than the rest of
the environment, we feel as though we have been let in to such a personal experience that
no one else can understand but us. This effect brings us even closer to the character and
helps us to identify even more deeply with them through a technique that feels dreamy and
isolated.
A more complicated and freer setup for a camera movement is a crane shot, in which
the camera and cinematographer sit on a crane platform that can take them up into the
air to shoot a scene from above. This is, of course, a more complicated setup because the
camera movement must be coordinated with much heavier equipment and requires more
safety measures. The effect of a crane shot is an omniscient, powerful gaze that can see the
story world from above, from a viewpoint that the characters do not have access to. Films
might use a crane for an establishing shot to orient the viewer in space before cutting in to
the scene itself. Or films might use the crane shot to create a long
take that scans the set from many angles. Hollywood musicals of the
1930s by Busby Berkeley, like 42nd Street (1933), utilized the crane
shot to create detailed geometries with dancers’ bodies, filmed from
above. The effect is kaleidoscopic as human bodies are turned into
abstract shapes from high, flying angles that feel thrillingly inhuman.
Perhaps the most famous long-take crane shot was created by
SEE CH6
Orson Welles for the opening of his Touch of Evil (1958). In this
FOR MORE scene, the camera sneaks along a wall and witnesses a bomb being
ON TOUCH
OF EVIL
placed into the trunk of a car. Then the camera lifts into the air as the
car drives away into city streets. For over three minutes, the camera
loses and catches up to the car, sometimes dipping down to street 42nd Street (Berkeley, 1933)
level, sometimes lifting up to see the street from the sky. Welles teases his audience: he
lets the tense scenario be examined from many angles and he lets the car be lost and found
again. When the car finally explodes, it does so with a sharp cut that feels like an explosion of
editing, since the three-minute long take has made us so accustomed to the smooth, omnis-
cient crane setting.
The latest technological innovation for a flying camera effect is the drone shot, which
can now replace a helicopter- or plane-mounted camera shot. A drone shot, in which a drone-
-mounted camera films from the air, can be used for establishing shots, and the footage is
often rendered in slow motion for a smoother effect. It is difficult, however, to use a drone-
-mounted camera to film close-ups and actor details. Crane shots are still the industry stan-
dard for omniscient long takes that include both establishing shots and medium shots or
close-ups in the same footage.
The crane shot and drone shot are both freer forms of filming than the dolly in that they
are able to move in all directions, unbounded by a track that must be laid out in advance of
shooting. The dolly shot is restricted to the types of terrain that are track-friendly, and its
camera is also unable to look at the ground for fear of filming its own track setup. A piece of
technology developed in 1975, the Steadicam fixed many dolly track problems. Because the
Steadicam is attached to the cameraman’s body with various stabilizers, it creates a smooth
movement even when the cameraman jostles it with rough footsteps or uneven terrain. Like
a dolly track, the Steadicam shot is smooth and immersive. But unlike a dolly track, the Stea-
dicam shot can move into spaces unfriendly to a track and can
shoot the ground, where a track would normally have been laid.
Though the Steadicam technology was used sparsely in several
late-1970s films, the most extensive use of the Steadicam is credi-
ted to The Shining (Kubrick, 1980), in which characters are tracked
low to the ground as they move through many hallway corners in
single takes. Such complicated shots would be difficult to capture
in a dolly shot. The Steadicam gaze, floating along so close to the
ground, registers to the viewer as a creeping, ghostly presence, a The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)
look that fits this horror film’s themes perfectly.
Several 1990s films have paid homage to Touch of Evil’s famous crane opening by
contemporizing it with a Steadicam. Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) uses a Steadicam
to replicate the omniscient stalking that Touch of Evil had become so famous for. The camera
follows two characters in a three-minute long take as they move from their parked car into
the backdoor of the club Copacabana and through the kitchen into the club. The Steadi-
cam gives a floaty effect, so that the viewer feels like an insect following the characters
through tight, crowded spaces. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997) combines
both techniques: the crane shot and the Steadicam. The film opens with a three-minute
long take that starts as a crane shot that tilts and flies down to the ground, then seamlessly
transitions to a Steadicam that follows characters into a club. The camera moves us from
the sky to the street to the interior, making us feel both like an omniscient observer and a
participant in the scene.
Of course, if a filmmaker desires a cheap or a rough look to camera movement,
then a handheld shaky cam shot can be preferable to the more expensive and complica-
ted options of a dolly, crane, or Steadicam. Handheld cameras have long been used for
documentary film because they provide freedom of movement and can more easily capture
unplanned events. Many of these documentary handheld cameras inadvertently create a
shaky camera look, and this look has become an aesthetic in narrative cinema that seeks a
less sleek style. For example, mockumentaries replicate the shaky cam aesthetic in order to
feel more authentic, more like a true documentary that aims to capture un-staged events.
More recently, found footage horror films like The Blair Witch Project (Sánchez/Myrick,
1999) and Paranormal Activity (Peli, 2007) have adopted shaky cam shots in order to feel
more realistic, and thus more horrific. Some light touches of shaky cam shots can be found
now in most blockbuster films to evoke authenticity. Car chase sequences in recent action
films, like Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015) and Quantum of Solace (Forster, 2008), use
small, almost imperceptible inserts of shaky cam footage, taken from a camera attached to
the side of a vehicle, in order to give authentic texture to the chase. These shots tend to be
made with lesser quality cameras than the film generally, and so the texture of the footage
feels closer to a documentary than a Blockbuster film. Though the audience is not meant
to explicitly notice these small shots edited into the sequence, they do impart a feeling of
reliability to what is otherwise a rather unbelievable action scenario.
Pan: Camera swivels from side to side.
Tilt: Camera tilts up or down on its axis.
Pedestal: Camera axis is lifted up or down while camera itself remains level.
Dolly shot: Camera is placed on a moving platform attached to a track. The track can be set up in a line or
a curve. The cinematographer sits on the platform (dolly) with the camera as it is pushed along the track.
Double dolly shot: Both camera and actor sit on dollies whose movement is linked. Creates a dream-like
effect of interiority.
Tracking shot: A smooth camera movement that follows (tracks) a character as they move. Often achie-
ved with a dolly or Steadicam.
Crane shot: Camera and cinematographer sit on a crane, which films from above and can “fly” over the
set.
Steadicam: Technology developed by Garrett Brown in the 1970s where the camera can be attached to
the cinematographer’s body with stabilizer mounts to create a smooth movement while walking.
Shaky cam shot: A rough, bumpy shot often associated with Direct Cinema documentaries of the 1960.
Can be achieved with a handheld camera on set or with computer graphics in post-production.
Lenses
Camera distance from a character and camera movement alongside a character influen-
ces the feeling we have towards them. For example, close-ups of actors and objects imbue
them with great importance in the narrative and extreme long shots orient the audience in
a time and place. A filmmaker’s choice in camera distance can also determine their choice of
camera lens because different camera lenses capture
different amounts of set space. Put simply, a wide-
-angle lens captures less range than a telephoto lens
does. Why this is true is a bit more complicated, but
worth delving into to better understand filmmaking
choices and their meanings.
Lenses are available on a scale of sizes based on
their focal length. On the small end, a wide-angle lens
can range from 24mm to 35mm. It will capture a wide
amount of space at a close range. On the long end, a
telephoto lens can range from 70mm to 300mm or
more. It will capture a narrow amount of space at a Diagram 1: The wide-angle lens (24mm) captures
long range. (See diagram1) a wider amount of space in the camera and the
telephoto lens (200mm) captures a deeper amount
Each of these types of lenses will capture the of space in the camera.
image with particular qualities. One advantage to
the wide-angle lens is that you can film
from very close to the object. For example,
when filming The Life Aquatic (2004), Wes
Anderson wanted to capture the entirety of
a ship set that was built on a sound stage
in the frame of his camera. To do this, he
had to order a very wide-angle lens (25mm),
even wider than his usual 40mm, since the
sound stage dimensions kept his camera so
close to the set. But the disadvantage of The Life Aquatic (Anderson, 2004)
the wide-angle lens is that “bulging” can occur along the edges of the frame. The lens is so
rounded that parallel lines on set will start to bend in towards each other at the edges. This
rounded “bulging” effect is most pronounced at the smallest focal lengths (8mm to 14mm),
often called “fish-eye” lenses for this reason.
Diagram 2: A wide-angle lens (left) expands distance
between objects, as opposed to a normal lens (middle). The
telephoto lens (right) compresses distance between objects.
What is actually happening within the wide-angle lens is that the shorter focal length
creates a wider angle of vision that is captured by the lens, thus the name “wide-angle”. (See
diagram 2) As a result of this wide angle and the shape of the lens, the objects in frame
have a more distanced relationship to each other. Planes in space look as though they
are set far apart from each other, creating the look of deep
space that is cavernous and vast. Using a wide-angle lens can
make characters feel emotionally distanced from one another,
or it can make a character look as though they are belittled by
their environment. In Wes Anderson’s films, like Hotel Chevalier
(2007), the aesthetic of a wide-angle lens supports his common
Hotel Chevalier (Anderson, 2007)
film themes of distanced relationships and lack of true human
connection.
One classic application of the wide-angle lens in the late 1930s and 1940s was
the technique of , developed in French Poetic Realism and popularized by Orson Welles in
Hollywood cinema. Deep focus involves several carefully planned elements to achieve the
effect of an all-perceiving and meaningful camera eye. To achieve deep focus, a filmmaker
must use a wide-angle lens to achieve deep space through a short focal length. They must
close the lens aperture to create a larger depth of field, the range of distance that creates
sharp focus. And they must fill the set with light so that the camera can capture set detail
even with a small aperture. Once all of these elements of deep focus are in place, the mise-
-en-scène will be captured in crisp, sharp focus in every plane, from the foreground to the
background of the set. The effect is simultaneous vision of foreground and background
without the need for cutting, camera movement, or focus pulling.
Jean Renoir and Orson Welles used the deep focus techni-
que for metaphoric purposes: since the wide-angle lens creates
the illusion of distance between planes, a character moving away
from the camera will quickly appear smaller and smaller within the
frame. In Welles’ Citizen Kane, the character Kane moves away
from the camera towards the back of a room while accountants
count his money in the foreground of the frame. As the accoun-
tants dribble his money away, Kane appears smaller and smaller
until he is just an insignificant figure leaning against the back wall.
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) As we hear about his money disappearing, so we see Kane’s body
disappear too. This visual metaphor, allowed by the distancing effect of the wide-angle lens
paired with deep focus, allows us to see how closely Kane is tied to his economics.
For the opposite effect, a telephoto lens can be used to create an extreme closeness
among characters or crowdedness within the environment. A telephoto lens is quite long, so
the objects that it captures must be set very far away from camera. As a result of this physi-
cal distance between camera and objects, the objects appear to be relatively close to one
Tootlsie (Pollack, 1982)
another. In the telephoto lens, planes in space look as though they have been compressed
together and they are sitting right next to each other. This makes characters feel as though
they are in very close proximity, and it makes the environment look quite full and dense.
Telephoto lenses are used often in cityscapes to make streets look fuller and more crowded,
like in Tootsie (Pollack, 1982), where Michael is framed to look like he blends in while costu-
med as "Dorothy".
The disadvantage to the telephoto lens is that it has a very shallow depth of field,
which makes it hard to keep a moving object in focus. In a crowd filmed with a telephoto
lens, a hero might be in focus but the person right behind her and right in front of her are
out of focus. Therefore, as she moves towards the camera, the cameraman must move the
camera with her at her pace in order to keep her in focus. If done correctly, the people
around her will look like a hazy sea of bodies and she will emerge as a crisp heroic image
among them.
Of course, one way for a filmmaker to not be forced make the choice between a
wide-angle lens and a telephoto lens is to use a zoom lens, otherwise known as a variable
lens. A zoom lens can shift the focal length of its lens to make it short or long. Unlike a fixed
lens, like a wide-angle or telephoto, the zoom lens moves fluidly between several settings
to allow for the same lens to have many lens options. The disadvantage of the zoom lens,
however, is that it is heavier, thus less portable, and has smaller apertures, so it is slower and
needs more light than a fixed lens to create the best image.
The zoom lens became so common and overused by the 1970s and 1980s that it gained
the reputation of being a “lazy” filmmaking technique. But the 1950s gave us a rather unique
effect that could only have been achieved using the technology of a zoom lens: the dolly
zoom. This effect was developed by Hitchcock for his film Vertigo (1958). After fainting at
a party, Hitchcock wanted to cinematically recreate the feeling of dizziness, which he could
only describe as “vertigo”. After many experiments, his special effects
team landed on a visual trick that combined a dolly track and a zoom
lens. The dolly zoom, also called the Vertigo effect, pulls a camera away
from an object as the camera lens zooms in on the object. The zoom
changes the lens by which the object is captured – first it is a wide-an-
gle lens, then it becomes a telephoto lens. The dolly track out keeps the
object occupying the same space of the frame as the zoom becomes
a telephoto lens. By keeping the object generally in the same space on
the screen but meanwhile changing the focal length, the environment
around the object will appear to move while the object appears to stay
static.
In a dolly zoom that dollies away while zooming in, the environment
will at first feel vast and elongated, but as the lens zooms in, the envi-
Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
ronment will become compressed and dense. The effect is environmental distortion that
seems to be a representation of what the character is feeling internally. Dolly zooms are
often used in times of critical peril: a psychological crisis, a sudden realization, or a feeling
of powerlessness. They are used most famously in Vertigo and Jaws (Spielberg, 1975), but
have become quite common in every genre and in every cinematic medium, including TV
and commercials. What was once a unique solution using technological innovation has
become a widely accepted and standardized metaphor.
Wide-angle lens: Range in focal length from 24mm to 35mm. Captures a wide amount of space at close
range, which makes it optimal for filming big sets. The shape of the wide-angle lens creates “bulging” at the
edges of the frame and creates distance between objects.
Telephoto lens: Range in focal length from 70mm to 300mm or more. Captures a long range of space, which
makes it optimal for filming at long distances. The distance of the telephoto lens flattens planes of space in
the frame, making objects appear extremely close together.
Deep focus: A style developed in the late 1930s, often attributed to Orson Welles. Creates sharp focus
through several planes of space in the frame. Requires a wide-angle lens, small aperture, set light, and deep
space in the mise-en-scène.
Depth of field: The range of distance that is kept in sharp focus within the frame. A shallow depth of field
keeps a small amount of space in focus. A large depth of field keeps a large amount of space in focus.
Zoom lens: A variable lens that can move between several focal lengths, potentially creating both wide-an-
gle and telephoto effects.
Dolly zoom / Vertigo effect: A style developed by Hitchcock for his film Vertigo (1958) where the environ-
ment appears to contract or expand. Achieved with a dolly track and zoom lens.
Aspect ratio
There has always been a relationship between the

shape of film stock and the shape of theater projection. The
conventions for aspect ratio, or the ratio of width to height
of a screen, has changed over cinema history as new lenses
have been developed and standards for projection quality
has increased. Silent cinema started with a 1.33:1 aspect
ratio for 35mm films and TV matched this aspect ratio
Diagram 3: Aspect ratio changes over film history.
so that movies originally filmed in 35mm could be easily 1.33:1 (or 4:3) in silent cinema; 1.85:1 and 2.35:1
translated to TV screens. This squarish format worked well widescreen formats in the 1950s.
for close-ups, since a character’s face fills the shape in a
comfortable way.
When theater attendance dropped in the 1950s due
to the popularization of TV, the cinema industry upgra-
ded its technology to allow for newer widescreen stan-
dards. The wider aspect ratios – first 1.85:1, then 2:35.1 –
created a more dynamic image viewing experience than TV Ho w to Marry a Millionaire (Negulesco, 1953)
could allow and brought many viewers back into theaters.
But filmmakers found the new shape challenging to film
in because many of their previously used framings looked
awkward with a wider screen. Close-ups no longer filled
the shape. Two-shots also didn’t fill enough of the space.
So filmmakers started to place more and more characters
into the frame to fill it. Often, so many characters were
Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955)
standing side-by-side to fill the frame that they looked like
they were pinned to a line – this look was called clothes-
line staging and was commonly criticized by filmmakers. A film like Rebel Without a Cause
(Ray, 1955), which used a new anamorphic widescreen lens called CinemaScope, found
creative ways to fill the frame without setting up simplistic clothesline staging. Rebel’s set is
carefully organized in levels, using architectural features, cars, or furniture, to allow charac-
ters to be positioned throughout the frame horizontally and vertically, not just in a line. The
set also carves out aperture framings in the background, like windows and doorways, to
allow for multiple mini-frames, cutting up the wide space, in which characters can appear.
And the camera is often placed at a low angle or a canted angle so that more of the rectan-
gular frame is filled by characters’ bodies.
First introduced to the public in the late 1940s, the anamorphic lens was one of the
many innovations that the film industry tried out in order to compete with TV technolo-
gies, first introduced to the public in the late 1940s. To lure audiences back into theaters
for unique experiences, studios tried 3D films, gimmicks, and giant screens similar to our
current Imax theaters. 3D film technology was borrowed from comic books, using the same
principle of anaglyph (red and blue) glasses. A polarization option was also developed in
which two projectors would synchronize two separate images. Cinema gimmicks would be
marketed as theatrical experiences most often in B-film horror. William Castle, the self-pro-
To lure audiences back into theaters for unique expe-
riences, studios tried 3D films, gimmicks, and giant
screens similar to Imax theaters.
claimed “king of gimmicks”, would scare his audiences with skeletons flying across the thea-
ter, buzzers attached to seats, and life insurance taken out in audience members’ names.
Such gimmicks promised a unique theater experience that could not be replicated at home.
Widescreen formats like Cinerama promised an epic film experience in which three projec-
tors created an image three times as large as a regular screen across a curved wall. Though
very impressive, Cinerama had so many technical issues, like easily unsynched projectors,
that it did not catch on like CinemaScope’s anamorphic lens, which captured image with one
camera and projected it in nearly as wide of a format with only one projector.
Contemporary widescreen cinema has now been standardized to a 1.85:1 aspect ratio,
but some filmmakers will play with the size of the image in order to evoke a previous cinema
era. Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is a great example of this principle,
as it organizes the time period of each scene according to its appropriate cinema aspect
ratio. The most contemporary scenes, set in 1985, are presented in 1.85:1; the scenes set
in 1968 are in 2:35:1, an anamorphic aspect ratio; the scenes set in 1932 are in 1.37:1,
the standard Academy ratio of the 1930s. Many viewers overlook the changing shapes of
their screens while watching this film. The different aspect ratios, though, are meant to pay
homage to differing film styles and the screen frame restrictions must be used uniquely and
creatively for each era, as filmmakers of past aspect ratio transitions have had to do.
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Anderson, 2014)
Aspect ratio: The ratio of width to height of a screen.
Widescreen: Aspect ratio developed in the 1950s to create a bigger, more exciting image for theaters.
Anamorphic widescreen lens: A specific lens developed to capture more image onto the film stock through
compression, which then would be expanded in projection. Had similar distortion problem as other wide-
-angle lenses.
Gimmick: An extraneous device or event meant to attract attention. Examples are marketing campaign-
sand 4D theater tricks.
"We all have a common interest: bigger and more horrible monsters --
and I'm just the monster to bring them to you."
-William Castle, 'King of the Gimmick'
Early Film Gimmicks

ALEX LUKENS
Hollywood has always needed an audience to do what it does best: sell

movies. By 1910, theater owners regularly developed their own promo-
tional materials for films. They did this because it was often cost-prohibi-
tive to advertise in local newspapers. Instead, they borrowed methods from
the circus tradition of P.T Barnum, making their own posters, pressbooks,
and even hiring barkers to create buzz. Film studios quickly took notice of
a growing need to shape public opinion about their movies playing at other
people’s theaters. In 1915, Paramount was among the first studios to deve-
lop their own “Exploitation Department”, which provided theater owners
with gimmicks, stunts, and “tie up” advertising that included buy-in from
P.T. Barnum, 1910s
local businesses. People couldn’t avoid seeing or hearing about a film when
it came to town, if it was properly exploited. This would create quick amuse-
ment, word of mouth, and ultimately, paying customers.
For instance, in 1918, Harry Reichenbach, a prolific publicist and provoca-

teur, pulled off a stunt to promote the upcoming Tarzan of the Apes. As the
story goes, Reichenbach inquired with the Belleclaire Hotel in New York if
they could accommodate a concert pianist with a particular penchant for
eating huge quantities of meat. The hotel agreed and provided the supposed
pianist, Mr. T.R. Zann, with a steady supply of meat. After the hotel got wind
that there was no music being played, as well as a whiff of some decaying
meat, they inquired about Mr. Zann. Management, followed by journalists
that were likely told about the story, forcibly opened Zann’s hotel room door
to find a full-sized lion had taken up residence there. The publicity from the
stunt gave the film a huge opening and made it successful.
Reichenbach and other Exploitation Managers actively worked to put their

Tarzan (Sidney, 1918)
rhetoric in the mouths of both journalists and would-be filmgoers. Often, word of mouth
would spin itself into thick lore, with supporters and detractors alike promoting a film after
getting taken in by an enticing gimmick. By the 1920s, news outlets were getting wise to the
schemes employed by these movie exploiters. A 1924 headline in Motion Picture Magazine
read “The Movies Outdo Barnum: And Poor Pictures Make Money Because of Clever and
Extensive Exploitation While Good Pictures May Fail Thru Lack of It”.
E a r l y F i l m G i m m i ck s 71
Reefer Madness (Gasnier, 1936) Mom and Dad (Beaudine, 1945)
Throughout the 1930s and 40s, drugs and sex became popular exploitative topics in films.
Reefer Madness (1936) was a repackaged morality tale originally made by a church group,
with scintillating scenes added to exploit drug use and sex alluded to in the film. Mom and
Dad (1945), relied on similar techniques. Kroger Babb produced a “sex hygeine” film that,
on the surface, sought to educate audiences about the dangers of sex. The film featu-
red live births, seen for the first time in theaters. Babb exploited this by bombarding small
towns with tie-up advertising, had paid presenters write fabricated letters to newspapers
protesting the film, and required male/female segregated screenings, to heighten contro-
versy surrounding it. Keeping moral and educational lessons intact allowed producers
to skate past the newly implemented Hays Code of film censorship, while still exploiting
audiences’ want for illicit scenes.
Though studios had entire departments dedicated

to exploiting a film’s basic features, no single produ-
cer or director had more gimmicks up their sleeve than
William Castle. His first memorable gimmick came as a
stage director in the late 1930s, when he hired German
actress Ellen Schwanneke. At the time, German actors
were only permitted to act in plays first performed in
Germany, during Nazi rule. Castle quickly wrote a script
and had it translated into German. Schwanneke received
an invitation from the Nazi party to perform the play in
Germany, which Castle saw as a promotional opportu-
nity. Castle claims that he wrote a telegram to the Nazi
party, declining the invitation. In the press, he fanned
sensationalism by referring to Schwanneke as “The Girl
Who Said No to Hitler”. This got people talking and
Castle kept the controversy going by defacing the thea-
ter himself with painted swastikas on the exterior. The
play was well-attended as a result.
Castle would parlay his success in theater to a full career

The Sunday Times, Jan 7, 1945
in film, making a name for himself through the 1940s
and 50s as a B-movie director who delivered films on time and
on budget. He flirted with 3-D in 1953 with the western Fort
Ti, upon seeing the massive crowds for Bwana Devil (1952),
noted for igniting the first wave of 3-D features in the United
States. Castle practiced his aim and threw everything he could
at the camera. He remarked to his wife upon seeing movie-
goers ducking projectiles in the theater, “I’m not a director, I’m
a great pitcher”. Bwana Devil (Oboler, 1952)
During Castle’s heyday as a director, he utilized numerous technologi-

cal “processes” that involved branding a live theater experience with
catchy names. This was common at the time, as the film industry tried
to promote the movie theater as offering more than television. For
House on Haunted Hill (1959), Castle invented “Emergo”, where a skele-
ton would pop out of a box above the screen and sail across the theater,
where young patrons would throw popcorn at it. For his seminal film, The
Tingler (1959), Castle utilized “Percepto”, where he rigged plane wing de-
icer motors to the bottoms of theater seats. He coordinated with thea-
ter employees to buzz people’s butts when the film purported that The The Tingler attack, from
screening of The Tingler at
Tingler was loose in the theater. Emory University, 2012
Castle’s schemes became more complex over time, adding hired actors to
pose as nurses in theater lobbies, planted audience members to “faint” at
certain moments, and even “Coward’s Corner”, a branded box that patrons
could retreat to if the film scared them too much. Theater owners often
complained about putting on a Castle film in terms of cumbersome tech-
nology and gimmicks like the “Fright Break” for Homicidal (1961), which
promised patrons their money back if they were too scared to continue. "Fright Break" in
Homicidal (Castle, 1961)
His legacy lives on today as the film industry is always looking to exploit
the next great gimmick to entice audiences.
"EARLY FILM GIMMICKS" CONTRIBUTED BY

ALEX LUKENS
GEORGIA FILMMAKER &
LECTURER OF EMERGING MEDIA DESIGN
BALL STATE UNIVERSITY
Color
Experiments in film color can be traced back to the late 19th
century, when some black & white film prints would be hand-colo-
red with paints to create a “color” film projection. Color film cinema-
tography has been patented with various techniques since the early
1900s. But the most widely used early color process in Hollywood
was Technicolor, used for major studio pictures like The Wizard of Oz
(1939), Gone with the Wind (1939), and Fantasia (1940). Each subse-
quent color film technology fixed some technical issues, like light,
ATriptotheMoon (Melies,1902) camera, and projection requirements.
(handpainted) Since the popularization of color film stock, cinematography has
been interested in the psychological and emotional effect that color
and color combinations have on the viewer. We have already seen that color has symbolic
value in film (Chapter 2: Mise-en-scène). Audience associations with color are culturally defi-
ned, so the same color in two separate cultures might have opposing meanings. For exam-
ple, the color red has associations of power and warning in Western cultures, but in many
Eastern cultures, red is associated with weddings and beauty. So color symbolism does not
always translate perfectly across the world. But film also creates its own color association
language by color-coding films according to their genres. For example, psychological thrillers SEE CH2
FOR MORE
tend to be cast green, horror films tend to have a blue cast, and fantasy films tend to be cast ON COLOR
purple.
These overall color casts are only somewhat created on set
through the art departments. Most of the color hues are crea-
ted with the post-production process of color grading, which
creates consistent color quality across all shots and all scenes.
This color technique can enhance and change the costumes,
the set, the light, and even skin tone. Color correction helps
HarryPotterandtheSorcerer'sStone footage from multiple shoots over many days and locations look
(Columbus,2001) like they belong in the same time and space. In many ways, it
covers over any continuity errors by fixing unnatural contrast,
lighting, and color levels. Color grading allows for films to take
on new color hues to provide an overall sense of world immer-
sion. Many of these color grading choices work alongside ligh-
ting to create mood in the scene and in the film. We can see the
progression of these choices within a franchise like Harry Potter,
whose first film has a magical golden glow and whose third film
HarryPotterandthePrisonerofAzkaban turns an icy blue with dark shadows. In this way, Harry Potter’s
(Cuarón,2004)
themes evolve alongside its color grading: as Harry Potter ages
and matures, his world becomes less golden and more terrifying.
Not every film has a single generic color theme across all scenes. In fact, most genres
use color palettes that combine multiple color hues and saturations to convey more compli-
cated mood and tone through visual means. Three common color palettes – monochroma-
tic, analogous, and complementary – use just a few colors to organically evoke composure or
tension within the scene. A monochromatic color palette uses multiple saturations or values
of the same color hue. For example, the film The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999) uses different
values of green across most matrix scenes. This gives the impression of a consistent world
that runs by a single set of rules. An analogous color palette uses two or three neighbo-
ring colors to create a cohesiveness to the story world. For example, Her (Jonze, 2013) uses
pinks, reds, and browns throughout most of the mise-en-scène to create a slightly futuris-
tic but believable world. This color palette sounds a bit dull, but Jonze creates contrast in
the environment by playing with saturation, using highly saturated pinks and very dampened
browns. The effect is simultaneously naturalistic and enchanted.
A complementary color palette uses two or more opposing colors
to create tension in the story world. For example, Amélie (Jeunet,
2001) uses opposing reds and greens in nearly every scene to
represent Amelie’s inner tension between her independence and
her need for companionship. Lately, blockbusters have been criti-
qued for overusing the complementary colors teal and orange to
aesthetically create tension in otherwise unmotivated scenes. We Amélie (Jeunet, 2001)
can clearly see this teal-orange tendency in recent blockbuster
posters, which evoke a tone of dramatic conflict in a single image:
Transformers (Bay, 2007), Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve, 2019), Brave (Chapman/Andrews,
2012), Dark Phoenix (Kinberg, 2019).
A less common color combination is a triadic color palette, which includes three comple-
mentary colors, arranged in a triangle on the color wheel. This type of palette is jarringly unna-
tural and is often used for discontinuity effect. Jacques Demy, part of the Left Bank Group in
the French New Wave, famously used triadic color palettes in his
musicals. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) boldly uses yellow,
red, and blue in the same frame to create an artificiality to the
musical when other elements, like singing and character moti-
vation, remain quite naturalistic. Recently, La La Land (Chazelle,
2016) referenced this Demy yellow-red-blue color palette in
many scenes where costumes and props clash to create a bold
theatricality. Other scenes in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg create The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy, 1964)
a triad of blue-pink-green and a tetrad of pink-green-blue-orange.
Though these colors are dull in saturation to make them slightly
more believable in the scene, the off-putting color combinations create the effect of unresol-
ved tension in the characters’ interactions.
Digital color grading has created a greater efficiency in the area of film color. With the
touch of a button, visual effects specialists can experiment with color casts, saturations, tone,
and palettes. It is no wonder that in the past several decades, since access to this new techno-
logy, we have seen more vibrant colors on screen than can be captured with color film stock
or with digital cameras. Many of our films have entered the realm of color fantasy, even when
outside of the fantasy genre. But, perhaps ironically, our dramas and thrillers have become
even more dark and muted as we enter an era of digital filmmaking and post-production
that allows for shadows to take on more detail and nuance. So we see contemporary cinema
pulled in two color directions: the excess of color and the desaturation of color. In fact, digital
filmmaking has also seen a resurgence of black & white cinema, which is often filmed in color
and then digitally transferred into black & white. Recent films like Ida (Pawlikowski, 2013), A
Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Amirpour, 2014), and Roma (Cuarón, 2018) have won criti-
cal acclaim for their rich hues and contrast in black & white photography. Other contempo-
rary black & white films, like The Lighthouse (Eggers, 2019), have received acclaim for their
use of traditional lenses and black & white film stock to achieve a more textural and visceral
viewing experience than digital cameras and techniques allow.
Color correction: Adjusts color hue, light, and saturation across shots to create cohesive sequences.
Color grading: Creates world immersion by casting scenes in a particular color hue.
Color palette: Combination of color hues and saturations to convey mood and tone through visual means.
Includes monochromatic, analogous, complementary, and triadic palettes.
Black & white cinema: Films absent of color hues. Can be achieved with black & white film stock or in digi-
tal post-production.
Special effects
The question of believability in cinema lies not only in the way that action in front of
the camera is captured, but also in how the eye can be tricked into believing movie “magic”.
Special effects have always been a part of film production, and many of the first special
effects were created or inspired by theater magicians. Special effects in part work because
they look believable, but some less authentic-looking effects work simply because the film
has created such an immersive story world that the viewer is put into a suspension of disbe-
lief.
Some classic special effects no longer look convincing to the
contemporary viewer, but they are the basis for our more convin-
cing visual effects of the digital age. Matte paintings, for exam-
ple, which use paintings and, as we move into the digital age, 3D
renderings of landscapes, are the predecessors of green screens.
Rear projection, in which footage is projected onto a backdrop
while the actor before it is filmed from the front, is the predeces-
sor of travelling mattes and digital rotoscoping. The rear projec-
tion technique was used often for car shots to showcase charac- Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939) – A matte
ters conversing in the front seat while the environment flashes past painting of Emerald City makes up the
background while a small hole in the
them, and for high action sequences filmed in studio, like chases on painting fits the live-action.
foot, by boat, or even on horse-back.
Another common effect that has changed little since early
cinema is slow motion and fast motion. With traditional film stock,
the change in motion is achieved by adjusting the speed of image
capture. With hand-crank cameras, the cameraman would over-
crank the film stock in production so that when projected at a
regular speed, the image would seem to move slowly. Similarly, for
Dr. No (Fleming, 1939) – Connery "drives"
a car in front of a screen that has a road
projected onto it from behind.
fast motion, the cameraman would undercrank the film stock so that the projection would S E E C H 1 &
appear to move quickly. Silent cinema often looks undercranked to us now because our C H 8 F O R
S P E C IAL
projection standards have changed. In silent cinema, film stock was captured and projec- E F F E C TS
ted at 16 frames per second (fps) but since the advent of sound cinema, the standards have A N D
adjusted to 24 fps. So, when projecting a 16 fps film at 24 fps, the film will appear to be in VE FISFUE AL C TS
slightly fast motion.
Slow motion has often been used to evoke despair, isolation, or inner turmoil. French
Impressionist cinema of the 1920s famously used slow motion to explore characters’ inner
emotions and psychology (See Ch 1: Film History). More contemporary films, like Casino
(Scorsese, 1995) and Chungking Express (Wong, 1994), continue to use slow motion to
express inner feelings: an isolating emotion, a hazy memory, a thought process, or the effect
of alcohol or drugs. Slow motion can also give a “cool” factor to a character by extending
their movement or to an action otherwise unseen by the human eye. Films like Reservoir
Dogs (Tarantino, 1992) and The Usual Suspects (Singer, 1995) use this effect to show power
in characters’ gait. Films like The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2008) and Drive (Refn, 2011) use
this effect to expand time in order to appreciate the small moments captured on film.
Fast motion was classically used to show the supernatural, as
in Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922), or to show inhuman action, like a
brutal murder. Lately, action films have combined the slow motion
effect with fast motion to create a ramping effect. Films like 300
(Snyder, 2007) and Sherlock Holmes (Ritchie, 2009) use ramping
to put focus on a character’s isolated movements and their mode
of thinking through this movement. By suggesting that only this
character would be able to think and act so quickly, ramping suggest
supernatural abilities along with a “cool” factor.
Though special effects like ramping are not meant to look realis- Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922) – Nosferatu’s
carriage moves at hyperspeed to evoke
tic, in that we cannot see ramping in the real world with our own the supernatural, in contrast to the
eyes, these effects feel realistic because they exist within an immer- “normal” speed of humans.
sive story world that has become believable to the audience. Objec-
tivity in cinema does not always align with realism. It is entirely possi-
ble for an impossible fantasy space to be realistic. And it is entirely possible for a realistic
scenario to be filmed in a way that could not be seen with our own eyes. The camera eye is a
subjective point of view even when it is not positioned in a point of view shot. Through cine-
matography decisions, like camera placement, movement, lenses, color, and special effects,
we are displaced from our theater seats and moved into the story world, gazing through a
particular vision of this world. This kind of suspension of disbelief allows us to engage with
a historical biopic like Ali (Mann, 2001) through just as much imaginative movie “magic” as a
technically unrealistic fantasy film like Avatar (Cameron, 2009).
Matte painting: A painting that is composited with live footage to take the place of an on-location set.
Rear projection: Footage is projected onto a backdrop while the actor is filmed in front of it.
Slow motion: Image is captured at a faster speed and so appears to slow down when projected.
Fast motion: Image is captured at a slower speed and so appears to speed up when projected.
Ramping: Fast motion and slow motion used sequentially in a single shot.

CINEMATOGRAPHY
(1) How can color show a character’s journey, or allow for deeper insights into a film’s meaning?
Select a single shot or still frame from a film, one that you think is particularly interesting or
significant in terms of its use of color. Analyze this still as you would a painting or a photograph.
What is the role of color in this still, and how does it challenge the different ways in which the
image can be understood?
(2) Cinematic aspects such as camera angles, camera position, and camera movements are vital to
the shifting impact of a film on the viewer. Examine a short film and jot notes under these three
categories of cinematography, or any other cinematic choices that capture your imagination.
What strikes you as special or impressive, and how do these images make you feel? What do you
think is the role of cinematography in the film’s effect on you?
C H A P T E R F I V E
EDITING
CONTINUITY SYSTEM 81
Film grammar 82
KULESHOV EFFECT 85
Alfred Hitchcock 86

DISCONTINUITY 87
Breaking the 180-rule 87
Defamiliarization 89

CONCLUSION
** GLOSSARY
ed i t i ng 79
EDITING
Film editor and sound designer Walter Murch famously complained that when audien-
ces whine about “bad editing” in film, they just mean that the film is too long. But editing is a
much more complicated and ingrained film process than just the final viewing length. Editing
gives a scene a unique pace and rhythm. It defines the space in which characters move and
have conversations. It can even change the expression on an actor’s face and his relationship
to the event that he is looking at. A good editor will be able to
manipulate footage to give us a sense of characters’ interiority:
their motivations, emotional reactions, and modes of thinking.
When cinema first emerged as an art form, certain rules of
editing that we now take for granted were not yet invented. After
all, editing deals in the art of time, and this element of temporality
makes cinema unique against all other arts. Cinema editing had to
start from scratch. So, for example, if a script described a charac-
ter reacting to a fire with shock (as in Life of an American Fireman,
1903), early directors would place the camera at a long distance
from the actor to frame him and the fire together in the same
shot. This way, the audience could see the actor put his hands
over his face with shock, then jump and run around wildly, reac-
ting to a blaze just across the frame from him. But within a decade
of the film industry, directors learned to use close-ups to develop
more emotional connection and intimate moments in film. The
same scene, using more nuanced editing, could be much more
effectively and quickly communicated to the audience: A shot of
flames, rising higher and higher, threatening to explode; a shot of
the character’s face, in shock at what he is seeing; a shot of the
flames again, rising even higher; a shot of the character’s face,
eyes dodging, looking for water, thinking through his next steps.
The new scene is, of course, much more effective. It can show
emotion on the actor’s face, which can use more subtle move-
ments than a wildly gesturing body in a long shot. It brings the
audience closer to the character’s mindset and shows us what he
Life of An American Fireman (Porter, 1903)
is thinking. This aids in identification, a bond between audience
and hero, that often drives our love of movies. The new scene is also faster. In just a few
short shots, we are given the impression of the scene instead of a single, drawn out shot that
shows us the events in pantomime. The new scene also feels faster because it has more cuts,
and so it has a faster pace, moving us from fire to face in a dynamic way that gets our blood
pumping with excitement and the feeling of danger.
It is helpful to think of editing not in how long it takes to show the events, but in how
the shots are put together to give the feeling of an event. Many early filmmakers used the
French term “assemblage” for editing, and this is a more appropriate way to think about the
art of editing. By thinking of editing as assembling pieces of footage, we can focus on the
stitches that editing makes, bringing together shots or scenes into a larger whole.
In our fire scene example, we were focusing on shot-to-shot editing, which brings toge-
ther individual shots into a larger sequence. A shot is the smallest unit of film. Simply put, it
is a piece of footage without any cuts. A shot can be long (a “long take”), where the camera
keeps rolling, following the characters as they walk from room to room for minutes, someti-
mes even for hours. A shot can be very short, just a small blip, almost unseen and subliminal.
But most shots are between these two extremes. The average shot does the job of showing
us something, and then it is assembled with other shots through cuts.
A sequence is a larger unit of film that is made of several shots stitched together. If you
think of a shot as a word, a sequence, then, is almost like a sentence that is composed of
words. A sequence usually shows us a series of actions that relate to each other. Often, the
shots of a sequence occur in the same space and in the same time. When the film jumps
from one space to another or from one time to another, we see scene-to-scene editing
that lets us know that we are jumping. Often we will see a transition between scenes, like
a fade, dissolve, wipe, or iris, which tells us we have moved to another space or to another
time. For example, in Star Wars: A New Hope (Lucas, 1977), when a scene set in Tatooine
ends and a scene set on the Millennium Falcon begins, the two scenes are assembled with
a wipe. In A Christmas Story (Clark, 1983), when Ralphie finishes retelling a nostalgic story,
the screen turns into an iris (a circle) and the circle closes in until the screen is entirely black.
Shot: A single piece of footage without any cuts. The smallest unit of film.
Sequence: A larger unit of film that is made of several shots stitched together with cuts. Each sequence
exists in a single time and space.
Shot-to-shot editing: Editing that stitches together multiple shots into one sequence.
Scene-to-scene editing: Editing that stitches together multiple sequences. Often this type of editing
moves between times and/or spaces.
Transitions: A style of scene-to-scene editing that uses an optical effect, like a fade, dissolve, wipe, or iris.
These styles are usually meant to be obvious in order to mark a change in time and/or place.
Continuity system
Early moviegoers in the 1890s did not have a strong understanding of editing. Both
shot-to-shot editing and scene-to-scene editing felt strange and incomprehensible. This is
because early moviegoers were not trained in movies like we are today. When we call film
editing a “language” or a “grammar”, this is exactly right: like a language, the grammar of film
editing must be learned. Film grammar as we know it is an artificial system, not a natural one,
and needs to be taught by lots of movie-watching, sometimes since infancy, in order to feel
natural. In fact, studies from 2010 have shown that contemporary cultures which are not
exposed to cinema, like communities living without electricity in remote mountain villages
in Turkey, find it difficult to understand basic film conventions, such as camera pans, cross-
-cuts, and shot/reverse-shots.1
1 Schwan & Ildirar (2010).
Watching film for the first time: How
adult viewers interpret perceptual ed i t i ng 81
discontinuities in film. Psychological
Science, 21, 1-7.
By watching more and more movies, audiences find that film conventions become more
and more naturalized, until they are practically invisible. These film conventions, which were
developed in the 1910s, have become standardized as the continuity system or Hollywood
system. By using these standards, filmmakers can bring attention to the action and emotions
of a story rather than bring attention to the editing of shots. In the continuity system, the
most effective assemblage of shots is invisible to the average audience member. So, when
James Bond kicks in a door, we just focus on how he kicked in the door, not noticing that it
took four shots, carefully stitched together by the conventions of invisible editing, for the
action to be shown to us. Practically speaking, continuity editing allows a scene to be filmed
across several different days or across different settings and still look like it is occurring in a
continuous time and space.
There are a few key editing strategies that are part of the continuity or Hollywood system,
and they correspond to common actions described by
stories. When a film introduces us to a new setting, it Like a language, the grammar of
does this through an establishing shot with a piece of the
landscape and characters interacting within it. An estab- film editing must be learned.
lishing shot is usually utilizes a long shot or an extreme
long shot framing that shows us a wide view of the setting. This establishes the setting so that
we can orient ourselves once the camera moves in closer to the characters. An establishing
shot is a map. And like a map, it needs to be referenced more than once. So even though
each scene will usually begin with an establishing shot, it will occasionally return to a wide
view of the setting – a reestablishing shot – to remind us of the map and where characters
are situated within it.
Diagram 4: 180-degree rule.

Cameras 1 and 2 are both on one side of
the axis of action (within 180 degrees).
They will consistently film character A
on the left-hand side and character B on
the right-hand side.
When characters speak, we prefer to see their faces so that we can gauge emotion and
thought process in their acting. Since we like tight framings (a close-up or medium shot) for
dialogue, it becomes hard to use only two-shots to describe character interactions. The shot/
reverse-shot convention allows us to move between two characters as they speak and still
see reactions on their faces. Two cameras set at opposing angles will film the two charac-
ters individually, and the editor will assemble these two sets of footage to create a back-an-
d-forth rhythm of two characters speaking (see diagram 1). By assembling footage of charac-
ter A with footage of character B (a shot and its reverse-shot), the editor allows us to see the
conversation in more detail than a long shot which would include both characters in frame at
the same time. Additionally, the rhythm of editing – bouncing between the shot and its rever-
se-shot – feels like a visual conversation and becomes more engaging to watch than simply
one static shot.
Within the shot/reverse-shot convention, we see that camera angles are usually set up
consistently so that one character always speaks from the left and one character always
speaks from the right. This is easier for us to process, especially as the conversation beco-
mes faster, more heated, or more emotional. By always filming the conversation from one
side of the axis of action (see diagram 1), the directionality of the conversation is maintai-
ned. This principle is also called the 180-degree rule: never cross the axis of action within a
single scene unless you are willing to confuse your audience. Why would crossing the axis of
action (the 180-degree line) confuse the audience? As viewers, we are very willing to ignore
small differences from shot to shot as long as the meaning of the scene is maintained. For
example, if we are engaged in the emotion of a lovers’ quarrel, like the rain scene in The
Notebook (Cassavetes, 2004), we will naturally ignore the fact that one character’s hair is
completely wet in one shot and only somewhat damp in the next shot. But too much diffe-
rence will snap us out of our engagement with the scene and make the “invisible” qualities
of continuity editing blatantly obvious. If the camera crosses the axis of action in a lovers’
quarrel, then one character will speak from left to right, towards his lover, in one shot, then
in the next shot he will suddenly be speaking from right to left, towards his lover. This might
just be enough visual change for the audience to be snapped out of the emotion of the
scene and disengage from the film entirely. For most of cinema history, the film industry
decided that filming from one side of the axis of action was a rule that could not be broken
without risking audience engagement. (See “Discontinuity” section for more on breaking the
180-degree rule)
Another way to keep audience engagement in the scene is to match the energy of the
scene action with the energy of the editing. Often, the rhythm of editing will match how
much or how little action is happening on screen. For example, action films are cut almost
twice as fast (with almost twice as many shots) as dramas simply because the pace of action
films tends to be faster than dramas. In this way, editing rhythm supports the content of
the film. One way to keep the audience engaged in the scene without noticing the editing
rhythm, especially when it is fast as in action films, is to cut between different camera angles
on a physical action. Match-on-action cuts use the physical action (a kick, a jump, or even a
hug) to “hide” or make invisible the fact that two different cameras are being used to describe
the scene. This helps the audience to not notice the change, and thus to remain engaged in
the scene’s dynamism. But also, practically speaking, it allows the editing to create action.
For example, if you cut on a punch, the punch itself does not have to be filmed – one shot
can describe a swing and the next shot can describe an impact from another camera angle.
The editing itself, by giving the impression of impact, creates the punch.
So far we have been describing editing on the level of shot-to-shot. Editing on the level
of scene-to-scene moves the viewer in time or space by assembling several sequences toge-
ther. One very common creative mode of scene-to-scene editing assembles many indivi-
dual moments in time (hours, days, months, or years) into a very short amount of film time.
Hollywood montage condenses great expanses of time and space in ways easily and quickly
understood by audiences. This type of editing is also called elliptical editing because it acts
like an ellipsis (. . .) in literature, skipping over unnecessary material and creating rhythm in
the writing. In film, the montage sequence often describes monotonous action which must
be repeated over a long period of time or it describes the process of growing up, represen-
ed i t i ng 83
ted by a series of coming-of-age events.
Rocky (Avildsen, 1976) features perhaps the most famous
Hollywood montage sequence in cinema history, describing boxer
Rocky Balboa as he trains for a championship: shots of Rocky
jogging are intercut with him training in a gym and at a meat packing
plant. The impression of the montage sequence is that Rocky has
been training for days on end, growing stronger and stronger with
each short slice that we are able to see of each day. The meaning
that the sequence imparts visually is that Rocky is growing from
an unknown meat packer to someone worth watching and betting
on. His montage training journey takes him from being a nobody
to being a somebody. The sequence culminates in Rocky running
up the stairs at the foot of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and
throwing his hands up in victory.
Rather than moving us quickly through time, other scene-to-
-scene edits can move us quickly in space. A crosscut assembles
footage from two separate spaces in order for the audience to see
two events happening simultaneously. This type of editing is also
called parallel editing, because the film treats the two scenes as
parallel events which take place side by side in time. Crosscutting
Rocky (Alvidsen, 1976)
can have a variety of effects and meanings. It can create tension by
letting the viewer in on a truth that only they can see. It can create
a sense of romance by showcasing two distanced lovers bonded in time, if not in place.
It can also play tricks on the viewer by setting up expectations. For example, Demme’s
Silence of the Lambs (1991) assembles footage from inside a house with footage from
outside a house to suggest that the same house is being described within the sequence.
The editing pace becomes faster and faster as we get closer and closer to entering the
house, making the viewer expect that the interior and the exterior belong to the same
building. However, the crosscutting conclusion reveals that the inside footage and outside
footage actually belong to separate houses; we have been in two separate spaces all along.
Surprisingly, this editing “trick” does not break audience immersion, but rather brings the
viewer into a deeper engagement with the film by making the viewer think that they must
become better film detectives.
Continuity system / Hollywood system: Standardized film conventions that make it easier for the viewer
to understand the film’s time, space, and movements. Includes establishing shots, shot/reverse shots, the
180-degree rule, match-on-actions, and eyeline matches.
Invisible editing: The prime goal of continuity editing is to be invisible to the viewer. This way, the viewer
does not focus on the editing, but rather focuses on emotions, story, characters, etc.
Establishing shot: A common way to introduce a new space at the beginning of a scene. Most often an
establishing shot is an extreme long shot of a landscape and characters interacting within it.
Shot/Reverse-shot: A common way to edit two characters in conversation. One shot features one charac-
ter; the other shot (the “reverse-shot”) features a second character. Cuts move us between these two shots
as the characters converse.
Axis of action: An imaginary line that can be drawn between two characters in a shot/revere-shot setup.
This line is the “180-degrees” of the 180-degree rule.
180-degree rule: Do not cross the axis of action within a single scene. Adhering to the 180-degree rule
maintains directionality of characters (one character always sits on the left of the screen; the other charac-
ter always sits on the right).
Match-on-action: A cut between two camera angles is “hidden” by an action that is shown in both shots.
For example, the action of a door opening, when matched in two shots, “hides” the fact that one shot was
filmed from inside a room and the next show was filmed from outside.
Montage sequence / Elliptical editing: A sequence that condenses great expanses of time by showing
small portions of actions stitched together.
Crosscutting / Parallel editing: A sequence that stitches together shots from two different spaces to show
two events occurring at the same time.
The Kuleshov effect

The manipulative quality of filmmaking has been scientifi-
cally studied since the origins of the art form. Most famously, Lev
Kuleshov and Vsevolod Pudovkin ran film editing experiments
in the 1910s and 1920s to prove that film editing choices have
a profound effect on our understanding of film meaning. Their
most famous film experiment, credited to Kuleshov, assembled a
static shot of actor Ivan Mosjoukine after three different shots: Kuleshov / Pudovkin experiment, 1910s
a bowl of soup, a girl laying in a coffin, and a woman laying on a
couch.
The shot of Mosjoukine does not change – he held a neutral
face in the shot and the shot length remained the same. But
depending on which shot was edited in after the Mosjoukine
shot, audiences read a different emotion onto his quite neutral
face. Later in life, Pudovkin described the original reaction this
way:
“[the audience] raved about the acting . . . the heavy pensi-

veness of his mood over the forgotten soup, were touched
and moved by the deep sorrow with which he looked on
the dead child, and noted the lust with which he observed
the woman. But we knew that in all three cases the face
was exactly the same.”2
2 “Naturshchik vmesto aktera”,

Sobranie sochinenii, Volume I, Mos- ed i t i ng 85
cow: 1974, p 184.
How strange that the same face can exert such a variety of emotions. Kuleshov conclu-
ded that the editing must change the impression of the face on the audience. The Kuleshov
effect has come to describe this great power of editing to change the impression of a shot
based on what it is assembled with.
Though many Russian directors of the 1920s edited based
on the Kuleshov effect, Alfred Hitchcock famously popularized
the principle in the 1960s in a series of filmed interviews. He
was interested in the psychological impact of cinema, and the
Kuleshov effect explained to him why editing holds such great
psychological power over an audience. He called the Kuleshov
effect “impressionistic” and praised its ability to suggest action
and meaning rather than hand meaning over directly.
Most famously, Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) uses the princi-
ple of “impressionistic” editing to suggest the action of a murder
Hitchock's recreaction of Kuleshov's experiment, in a shower setting. Hitchcock uses 52 cuts in only 45 seconds
1960s
to describe this event, an extremely fast-paced editing sequence
meant to evoke terror and anxiety in its audience. What makes
this sequence “impressionistic” is that the knife never literally stabs the victim – we never
see the murder itself. We see short close-ups of a victim’s body, quick images of a glistening
knife, a shadowy outline of a murderer, and bloody water washing down the drain; but we
never see the murder itself. Violence is suggested through a series of visual impressions. Just
like in the Kuleshov effect, we read into Psycho’s shower sequence to extract the meaning
of a bloody murder, and the victim’s eyes read as even more horrified against the other shots
which horrify us. It is not just Janet Leigh’s performance that is so effective at portraying
surprise and hopelessness, but our impression of the assembled shots inflect her eyes with
more surprise and more hopelessness. It is important to notice how the montage of Rocky
differs from the shocking, rapid cuts of Psycho. Hollywood montage should not be confused
with the discontinuity editing of Soviet montage, which emerged in the mid-1920s. Rather
than communicating information seamlessly across time and space, Soviet montage can be
understood in terms of a juxtaposing or collision of shots to create ideological meaning or
emotion in the audience.
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
Not all editing that uses impressionistic editing must be as
dramatic as a murder sequence. In fact, the Kuleshov effect is at
play in nearly all editing, no matter how mundane. The shots that
are assembled next to the shot of an actor’s face will necessarily
effect our impression of his performance. In his films, Hitchcock
routinely used an eyeline match to inflect a rather neutral, thinking
face with an emotion created by a separate shot. His Rear Window
(1954) showcases Jimmy Stewart, whose emotions and thought-
-processes are described almost entirely by eyeline matches. He
looks out his window onto his neighborhood’s goings-on, and
Hitchcock describes this gazing out in two distinct types of shots:
Jimmy Stewart’s face and what he is looking at. By assembling a
shot of a window view next to a shot of a face, we automatically
assume that we are being shown a character and his gaze. Accor-
ding to the Kuleshov effect, Jimmy Stewart’s face does not need to Rear Window (Hichcock, 1954)
change much in order for us to imbue his face with meaning based
on the thing he is looking at. In the film, when an eyeline match tells us that he is looking at
a beautiful woman, we believe that his face is imbued with desire, and when he looks at a
depressed, lonely person, his face is imbued with sympathy.
The Kuleshov effect: The psychological principle that adjoining shots influence each other’s qualities in the
viewer’s eyes.
Eyeline match: A shot of a character looking off-camera cut with a shot of an object. The cut suggests that
the object is a point-of-view shot from the character’s perspective.
Discontinuity
Much of the editing we have been describing so far has fallen under the most common
umbrella of the continuity system, or Hollywood system. This style of editing is designed to
be as invisible as possible so that the audience can feel its effect without necessarily noti-
cing its artistry. But another type of editing is discontinuous and aims to be noticed by
the audience in either an obvious or subliminal way. Discontinuity editing does not follow
conventional modes of editing from mainstream film, sometimes breaking Hollywood rules
altogether, and it draws attention to itself as editing artistry.
In opposition to the long-standing convention of the axis of action and the 180-degree
rule, which maintains directionality in conversation scenes, some discontinuous editing will
intentionally break the 180-degree rule in order to evoke a sense of unease or disrup-
tion in the viewer. Japanese films of the 1930s were some of the first to consistently break
this rule. Tense domestic arguments or power imbalances or swordfights would violate the
180-degree rule in order to evoke disorientation in the viewer.
Though in the 1930s, these violations were much more obvious since they were quite
rare, now breaking the 180-degree rule has become quite common and has less of an
obvious effect on the viewer. As we have become more film-literate and greater consumers
of film material, it takes more radical editing choices to completely disorient us within the
ed i t i ng 87
film’s time and space. But a subliminal feeling of disorientation might linger with some more
contemporary 180-degree rule violations. For example, in Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), we
watch a father played by Jack Nicholson slowly lose his mind and become homicidal. Some
of Jack’s mental breaks are visually represented by 180-degree breaks. In one, he is filmed
through a mirror and then this footage is assembled with similar shots of Jack directly in
front of the camera – this gives the impression that Jack has shifted angles without moving
and evokes an off-putting feeling to the audience. In another scene, Jack is filmed laterally
as he is speaking to a door at the left side of the screen. As he picks up an axe to break the
door down, the editor cuts to the opposite side of the room, crossing the axis of action, to
show Jack swinging the axe towards the door which is now on the right side of the room.
This gives the impression that Jack’s actions are erratic and the audience feels a visceral
sense of mania.
In a more contemporary example, Nolan’s Dark Knight (2008) concludes with a tense
interrogation between Batman and The Joker. As the two characters converse over a table,
playing verbal games and outdoing one another’s wits, the camera moves around the table.
Each time a character wins the upper hand in the conversation, the camera crosses the
axis of action to reveal a power shift by switching the characters’ positions on the screen.
Viewers are not necessarily meant to catch this camera trick, as it keeps moving around the
action, but we are left with an uneasy feeling that our beloved Batman might not win this
round.
Other discontinuity techniques are also borrowed from film history and imported into
contemporary cinema. Silent cinema developed many creative editing tricks in order to tell a
story as visually, with as few intertitles, as possible. The graphic match was used in surrea-
list films like Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel, 1929) in order to compare two visual elements to
each other. Like the surrealism movement in art, surrealist film favored collage and non-se-
quiturs as representations of how our mind pieces together seemingly random experiences
into cohesive thoughts and feelings. (See Ch 1: Film History for more on surrealism in film).
By comparing an armpit to a sea urchin, Un Chien Andalou draws our attention to a
visual simile: this armpit is prickly and scratchy like a sea urchin.
When compared next to ants, both armpit and sea urchin come
alive with movement. Each graphic match creates a comparison
that inflects shots with each others’ qualities.
Art cinema of the 1960s and 1970s reused these early
surrealist film techniques and raised their stakes. Kubrick’s 2001:
A Space Odyssey (1968) famously matched a shot of a bone
flying through the air four million years ago with a satellite in
outer space in 2001. This match shot serves as elliptical editing,
skipping over millions of years to compare humanity's pre-history
with human’s future. The editing evokes a sense of great evolu-
tion and also, perhaps, a lack of progress, as human’s connection 2001:ASpaceOdyssey(Kubrick,1968)
to tools has not changed. Similarly, the match cut in Lawrence of
Arabia (Lean, 1962) between a lit match being blown out and the
setting sun over a desert evokes a sense of human power over nature. In both cases, graphic
matches of the 1960s act as grand metaphors that dominate the themes of the films.
More playful editing violations of the continuity system poke fun at Hollywood conven-
UnChienAndalou
(Bunuel,1929)
tions. French New Wave films of the 1950s and 1960s adopt American genres like gangs-
ters and mysteries in order to twist them into parody by sapping them of their deep meta-
phors and grand heroes. Just like French New Wave characters float through life without
many goals or aspirations, editing techniques like jump cuts describe these flippant lifes-
tyles. Rather than use cuts to move between characters or between camera angles, a jump
cut maintains the same camera position with the same footage, but takes out a small piece
of film. The effect is jumpy and erratic, like a film mistake. The cut has not done anything for
the progression of film time or film space, and so it is discontinuous, pointing attention to
the mere fact of cutting in place without creating change or movement.
Often, discontinuous editing is described as defamiliarization, an art term from Russian
Formalism (1910s & 1920s). Discontinuity takes material that is otherwise “normal” and
through the form of editing makes it “strange”. The editing points to itself, thus showing itself
off, and so it becomes visible whereas most editing conventions ask this art to be invisible. SEE CH6
FOR MORE
Films like The Graduate (Nichols, 1967) use discontinuity throughout the editing in order to ON THE
create a sense of disconnection and alienation in the viewer – if you are constantly aware GRADUATE
of editing tricks, it becomes difficult to immerse yourself in the story world and to identify
with main characters. Other films, like Godard’s Contempt (1963) or even Chazelle’s La La
Land (2016), use discontinuous editing in order to say something about filmmaking itself. In
these films, which usually take place on a film set or are told through the eyes of a filmmaker,
the discontinuity never lets the audience forget that they are watching a film. Fiction never
becomes mistaken for reality. In this way, discontinuity is self-reflexive: it uses the art form
to comment on the art itself and the form that it can take.
Discontinuity editing: Does not follow conventions of the continuity or Hollywood system. Points atten-
tion to itself by disregarding “invisible editing” rules.
Breaking the 180-degree rule: The camera crosses the axis of action in a conversation or fight scene so that
each character flips positions in the screen with cuts. Creates a sense of unease or disruption.
Graphic match: Adjoining shots use objects that take up similar shapes in the screen. This creates a compa-
rison between objects. In discontinuity editing, the objects usually have no relation to each other and the
non-sequitur is jarring. In continuity editing, the similar shapes help to blend the two shots together and the
cut becomes “invisible”.
Jump cut: A cut between two shots where the camera position remains the same. A small piece of film is
cut out, so that the object on screen looks "jumpy".
ed i t i ng 89
EDITING
(1) What is a shot breakdown? A shot breakdown unpacks all the shots that make up a film. This
slowing down of the film allows for alternative ways to examine the choices of its director from
shot to shot. Choose a favorite film sequence and break it down shot by shot, creating your own
shot list where you list each shot, shot size, cinematographic aspect (angle, movement, position),
and editing cut or transition. What do you notice, or what can your shot breakdown tell you
about the cinematic aims of your chosen film?
(2) Editing challenges the structure and implicit meaning of a film. Think about how different
editing styles can completely transform how the audience understands or perceives the same
story. For example, create a simple story or scenario, such as two people meet in a restaurant
when suddenly they are approached by a stranger. Draw four separate storyboards to show how
you would edit this sequence if you were
(a) A Classical Hollywood film director
(b) A montage director
(c) A French New Wave director
(d) A contemporary director of your choice.
How does the plot and story change dependent on editing?
C H A P T E R S I X
SOUND
SILENT CINEMA TO "TALKIES" 92

Benshi 93
Technology 93
Silence 95
VOICE 96
SOUND EFFECTS 97
Sound perspective 98
MUSIC 99
SOUND DESIGN 101
SOUND 91
SOUND
An audience can only look at one picture at a time, but it can hear many different sounds all
at once. Amazingly, we can judge the weight, gender, and directionality of someone walking near us
just by the sound of their footsteps. We tend to think of listening as musical attention, during which
we care about loudness, pitch, or tone. But everyday listening – where we care about the source of
sound, its cause, and its meaning to us – is crucially important to human experience and to sound
design in film. The human perceptual system relies on sound for many of its functions: spatial orien-
tation, judging danger or threat, and information processing. It is no wonder that in monster films,
most of our excitement and fear is generated by the audio mix. Hearing a threatening rustle behind
us or the low bass frequency of heavy footsteps rouses our base survival instincts, which tell us to
run from stalking or large predators. These sound effects are often more effective at evoking fear
than a full-frame image of a monster.
Sound design balances a triad of sound categories: dialogue, sound effects, and music. Gene-
rally, the triad will be organized according to a hierarchy that privileges dialogue over music and
sound effects. So when a character is speaking, this sound is brought to the foreground while all
other sound is pushed to the background. We see this most obviously in very loud settings, like a
nightclub scene, where we are still able to hear characters speak to one other. Similarly, when an
important sound effect is featured, music or ambient noise is pushed to the background so that the
sound effect can be heard crisply.
Each sound category provides the film with a different quality that might be featured or mixed
with other qualities. Dialogue provides information, so it tends to be featured most prominently in
the foreground of the sound design, which speak most directly and obviously to the audience. Some
sound effects are treated this way too, handing over important information to the audience in an
obvious way, like the sound of a failing engine that anticipates our hero’s car crash or the sound of
a turning door knob that anticipates our hero’s partner returning home. These informational sound
effects are made unnaturally loud so that they can dominate our sonic attention and speak to us
directly. But most sound effects live in the background, creating a consistent and rich soundscape.
The background sound design, usually constructed of music and sound effects, gives shape to the
world and makes it feel consistent. Music and ambient noise bleeds between scenes to make them
feel like they belong together. And though some music gives us an obvious sense of emotional peaks,
most music and sound effects are unremarkable and work on our subconscious rather than our cons-
cious viewing experience.
Silent cinema to the “Talkies”

Given how important sound design has become in current cinema, it might seem impossible to
find connection to its roots in silent cinema. But it is important to remember that silent cinema was
never actually silent. Until 1927, when sound cinema became available to the general public, the
movie theater was filled with live music accompaniment. The shift from silent cinema to “talkies” in
1927 was not from silence to sound, but rather it was from live sound to recorded sound.
In the U.S., silent cinema was shown with a live orchestra, band, or pianist seated in front of
the screen. You can see such a setup in Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, 1924), which features a movie thea-
ter with an orchestra dugout. The musicians would sometimes play a musical score that was written
specifically for the film and would create consistency across all viewings
in all cities. But sometimes the film did not come with a score, and this
allowed for musical creativity. Specialized pianists would even improv
music on the spot, without having seen the film in advance.
Other countries included additional elements into the sound
mix of silent film. Japan, for example, had a tradition of using benshi
(film narrators) who stood just to the side of the screen and worked with
a musician to explain the film narrative and to play characters in dialo-
gue. These benshi were not bound to a script, and so they had a lot of
Sherlock, Jr. (Keaton, 1924) creative license in their performances. Many became celebrities in their
own right, and audiences would buy tickets to specific film screenings
to see their favorite benshi perform.
When sound technology was being developed in the U.S. in the
mid-1920s, the aim was to standardize the film’s sound so that each
viewing experience would be identical and to create a more cost-ef-
ficient industry. There were many up-front costs to changing the film
industry to “talkies”. Studios would have to buy new equipment, deve-
lop new technologies, hire new voice actors, and build new sets. Thea-
ters would have to invest in new projectors, sound systems, and some-
Benshi performance times even rebuild sections of the theater entirely.
Understandably, change was slow. Even though the first “talkie”
The Jazz Singer emerged in 1927, there were many theaters that were
not equipped to show the film. And for a transitional period between
1927 and 1930, many films were produced and released in two versions
– a silent version that relied on live accompaniment and a “talkie” that
required an updated sound theater – so that the film could play across
the country in every theater. We see a similar trend happening now
with 3D, IMAX, and VR versions of films where multiple versions of the
The Jazz Singer (Crosland, 1927) product will cover multiple technological capabilities. A single film now
can have a 70mm print for theaters with classic projectors, a digital print
for most theaters, a 3D theatrical version, and can be distributed on
DVD, Blu-ray, streaming platforms, and VR gaming consoles.
Similar to today’s digital climate, the sound technology revo-
lution involved several companies who developed different techno-
logies to meet the studio systems’ demand for synched sound. Vita-
phone sound-on-disc, developed by Warner Brothers in 1926, paired
a record player with a projector, thus pairing a sound system with an
image system. Vitaphone technology debuted publicly with Don Juan
(1926), where the New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance of
the score was distributed on disc alongside the film image. But Vitapho-
ne’s second feature, The Jazz Singer (1927), is largely known as the first
“talkie” because it included dialogue on the disc as well as music.
Another type of sound technology, sound-on-film or opti-
Vitaphone sound-on-disc
cal sound, had several competitors. The most influential system, RCA
Photophone, debuted in 1927 with music and sound effects for the
SOUND 93
silent film Wings (1926). The sound-on-film or optical sound technology prin-
ted the audio track directly on the film strip itself, in a column near the spro-
ckets. This became a far superior technology to the sound-on-disc, because
sound was synched perfectly with image within the technology itself. Unlike
sound-on-disc, which relied on a projectionist to start the disc and film at the
same time and keep each element synched throughout the screening, opti-
cal sound needed only a specialized projector to be perfectly, mechanically
synched. An optical soundtrack could also be cut just like the image portion
of the film strip, so editing was more nuanced in sound-on-film than in soun-
d-on-disc.
More technology needed to be developed to create a better-quality
sound on set. Boom microphones were held over actors to capture dialo-
gue more discreetly. Directional microphones captured sound from a single
optical soundtrack
source, extracting it from the cacophony of noise around it. Cameras were
first encased in blimps, huge moveable boxes with a window through which to film, so that the loud
noise of cranking would not be picked up by the mics. Clapboards created synch points for image
and sound (the visual of the clapboard closing with the sound of a “clap”). Many standardized visual
elements of sets had to be changed because of the noise that they gave off – new lighting systems,
set materials, and props had to be developed.
New genres were created to showcase all of this new technology. Starting in 1927 with The
Jazz Singer, vaudeville performances were already the origin point for “talkies”. But as the indus-
try advanced, radically new spectacles were developed to create the expensive and popular genre
of musicals. MGM’s Busby Berkeley, a choreographer and director, dominated this genre with new
advancements: moving cameras, crane shots, and geometric choreography. To see a Berkeley film,
like 42nd Street (1932), was not at all like seeing a musical performance on stage, at a distance.
Musical films brought the audience into the dance, above the dance, and below the dance. It was
an immersive and playful use of emerging 1930s cinema technologies, bringing a light-heartedness
to cinema that had been largely dominated by serious melodrama in the 1920s. Within the genre,
several sub-genres emerged. “Singing sweethearts” featured duets between musical or dancer cele-
brities. “Aquamusicals” featured synchronized swimming and diving – cameras would film through
large aquariums and above the water with cranes. “Backstage musicals” were self-reflexive, telling
the story of a play or musical being produced.
Perhaps the most famous “backstage musical” is Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly/Donen, 1952),
which tells the story of transitional filmmaking at the cusp of the “talkie” era. Set in 1927, Singin’ in
the Rain showcases many of the production difficulties of the transitional era, like sound synchroni-
zation, microphone sound capture, and acting voices. But as a 1950s musical, the film also displays
42nd Street (Berkeley, 1933) Thrill of a Romance (Thorpe, 1945) Naughty Marietta (Thorpe, 1935)
many contemporary conventions and technologies, like an upbeat tone, creative choreography, cele-
brity duets with Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds, and Technicolor.
Ironically, the advent of sound technology also allowed for film to become truly silent for
the first time. Once audiences became accustomed to listening to sound – hearing it, differentiating
its layers, interpreting it – the most radical way to get attention was to turn the sound off. In 1931,
Fritz Lang’s M did just this. Contrasting boisterous musicals and chatty rom-coms, M turned to dark
themes of child abduction and murder. When a little girl Elsie goes missing, Lang uses silence to
show the gravity of her absence. We see shots of her empty chair at the dinner table, her ball rolling
to nowhere, her balloon disappearing into the sky – all absolutely silent with no music or dialogue to
ease the audience’s nerves or provide solace.
In M, Lang avoids a film score altogether. Especially in an early
era of marveling at sound technology, this is a bold choice. Without
music to guide our emotions, we pay more attention to the sound
effects and diegetic music, like children singing about a man in black
who’s coming to get them or like the killer’s whistle that indicates he
is near. This whistle is cinema’s first use of leitmotif in film. By repea-
ting the whistle when the killer's shadow is on screen, the audience
is trained to associate the killer with his whistle tune, and even-
tually its sound alone will start to conjure up the killer, even when
he is off-screen. Between the dead silence and the leitmotif whistle,
Lang showed that very careful and sparse sound design could carry
audience tension, immersion, and emotion just as well as an overa-
bundance of musical energy.
A lack of sound has always been uncomfortable to audien-
ces, and current cinema has been using silence to create tension in
thrillers and horror films. Uniquely, A Quiet Place (Krasinski, 2018)
works silence into the diegesis by setting up a world where violent
M (Lang,1931) alien creatures attack by tracking noise. In this world, keeping silent
becomes vital to survival. For the audience, a silent world is nerve-
-wracking to watch and physically immersive by creating lean-in moments to hear whispers and
push-back moments at jump scares.
“Talkies”, even in the 21st century, have a continued interest in the traditions of silent cinema.
Beyond using silent cinema’s creative visual techniques, some films adopt the interactive theatrical
experience of silent cinema. Midnight screenings of Rocky Horror Picture Show, for example, will
use actors in front of the screen who pantomime, parody, and inter-
pret the film – serving a modern-day benshi function. Some films
even take on the form of old silent film in order to evoke a particu-
lar time period. The Artist (2011) received accolades for its silent film
form that told the story of Hollywood’s silent-to-talkie transitional
period. The film used a recorded musical score, but the scarce dialo-
gue was presented in intertitles, like a silent film. The Artist was only
the second mostly-silent film to win a Best Picture Academy Award
TheArtist (Hazanavicius,2011) since the Oscars began in 1929.
SOUND 95
Benshi: Film narrators who describe a silent film while standing just to the side of the screen. A Japanese
tradition.
Talkie: Early term for sound cinema. The Jazz Singer (1927) is commonly descried as the first “talkie”, since
it was the first sound film to feature spoken dialogue.
Sound-on-disc: Early sound technology that synched a record player’s sound with the projector’s image.
Sound-on-film (optical soundtrack): Sound technology that prints the sound track directly on the film strip
itself. For celluloid film, this became the standard of production.
Boom microphone: A mic attached to a long pole. Allows dialogue to be recorded discreetly, without
microphones embedded in costumes or props.
Directional microphone: A mic that captures sound from a single source. (As opposed to “omnidirectio-
nal mic”)
Blimp: A large box that encases a camera to dampen the sound of cranking.
Musical: New genre created in response to the rise of sound film. Features singing, dancing, and specta-
cle-driven camerawork.
Backstage musical: Musical subgenre that is self-reflexive, telling the story of the making of a musical.
Leitmotif: A musical phrase that comes to be associated with a particular character or place.
Voice
One of the startling realizations of the sound cinema age was how important an actor’s voice
quality is to their performance. During the transitional period, many actors lost their jobs because
their voices were off-putting or wrong for the role. In some cases, dubbing became a way to add a
quality voice to a famous face that had a poor voice. Voice actors can record song or dialogue after
the film production itself, matching their voice tempo to the image. The result is a collage of talent:
one facial performance meshed with a separate voice performance. In M
(Lang, 1931), Peter Lorre, who played the child killer, didn’t know how
to whistle, so Fritz Lang, the director, sang the whistle leitmotif for the
film. Ironically in Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly/Donen, 1952), the actress Jean
Hagen, who plays the brash-voiced Lina, actually had a lovely voice. In
the film, when Kathy (Debbie Reynolds) appears to be dubbing over Lina’s
voice, it is actually Hagen’s lovely voice that is being used. So in fact, the
film is using ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement), where an actor will
lip sync their own performance in an audio booth after filming for clearer
audio quality. Recently, it has become more important to audiences that Singin'intheRain(Kelly/Donen,1952)
actors are singing their own parts in musicals. Films like the remake A Star is Born (Cooper, 2018) are
marketed on the fact that their actors can sing and have done their own ADR work.
Good-quality sound that is well-synched to the image is essential for our immersion into a diege-
tic world. Without crisp sound and without synchronization, we consider the film to be of poor
quality and find it hard to watch. Yet some famous, high-quality films contain moments of badly
synched sound or badly recorded sound. For example, Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) has a moment
of horrible dubbing early on when the character Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) says “you’ll get what’s
coming to you” to her colleagues. The ADR recording is choppy, as though it was overly manipula-
ted in post-production, and the sound doesn’t quite match Ripley’s mouth movements. But Alien is
considered a classic, so just one moment of bad ADR does not necessarily ruin a film. Contempo-
rary cinema, even amateur independents, are raising the bar of production quality, becoming more
and more professionalized. This is due to emerging affordable softwares and technologies that allow
anyone to create a recording booth at home and a sound design on their laptop.
But one area that still receives overwhelming critique is foreign film dubbing. Produced in one
language, then distributed with dubbing from a new set of voice-actors, foreign language dubbing
runs the high risk of un-synched voice and image and often the dubbed recordings are not merged
well with the rest of the sound design. Many viewers prefer the work of reading subtitles in foreign
films than listening to a badly-dubbed version in their native language. This inconvenience of foreign
film dubbing and subtitling was created by the sound film industry. In silent film, intertitles were
inserted between footage, so that audiences did not have to juggle both reading and viewing the
film, and the intertitles were easily switched out with translations for global distribution. But the fast-
-paced nature of “talkie” dialogue required a more efficient way of conveying information to foreign
viewers. Though subtitles are often an inconvenience, many viewers become accustomed to the
process of reading-while-watching after the first act. We see evidence of this broad acceptance of
subtitles in the first foreign-language Best Picture win in Oscars history, for the South Korean film
Parasite (Bong, 2019).
Dubbing: One actor’s voice is replaced with another’s in post-production.
ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement): An actor records her own voice in post-production for crisper
sound quality.
Subtitles: Captioned dialogue printed on the screen on top of the film image. Used to provide translated
dialogue information in foreign-language films and captioned dialogue for hearing-impaired viewers.
Sound effects
Similar to dubbing quality, sound effect quality is essential to the believability of a film’s diegetic
world. We need the image to match the sound we hear in order to feel that the world is cohesive.
This is achieved with sound fidelity (or synchronous sound), which ensures that each prop that we
see on screen makes a believable sound in post-production. Foley artists work hard to find the right
material to make the right sound. But this material is not always the prop that we see on screen. In
order to get “good” sound, a radically different material might be used. For example, the sound of
rain is chaotic and difficult to purely record. So Foley artists will often use the sound of frying bacon,
SOUND 97
which can be controlled in a studio, to simulate the sound of rain. Bacon has a crisp sound that is
easily recordable and controllable, and when we hear it paired with the image of rain, our brains
merge the two neatly. Other Foley pairings include crumpled chips bags to simulate fire, coconuts
hit together to simulate horse hooves, and snapping celery to simulate bones breaking.
Although Foley switches out the prop’s sound for another’s, essentially “dubbing” one sound
for another, it usually aims for sound fidelity because it aims to be invisible and continuous to the
viewer. Alternatively, sound effects that are obviously different from the prop’s sound lack fide-
lity (they are asynchronous). These discontinuous effects are often used for exaggerated or comic
effect. For example, a character’s horrible headache might be represented with the sound of a train
whistle. The whistle is not the natural sound of a headache, but in this case asynchronous sound
is the best way to exaggerate the agony of a headache. The train whistle is obviously unnatural
and is not meant to fool the audience into a sense of realism. Similar
asynchronous sound is used in the opening of Daisies (Chytilova, 1966),
where two characters sit on the floor, moving their arms in robotic ways.
Each robotic movement is paired with the sound of creaking wood, as
though the characters are being described as wooden dolls and robots.
The effect is comic, but it is also metaphorical, comparing the characters
to inanimate playthings.
Once sound effects are created, their volume is determined by
several factors. If the sound serves the general ambiance, like the sound
of traffic in a city scene, the sound’s volume will be brought down to Daisies (Chytilova, 1966)
merge with the rest of the sound design background. But if this sound
is subjective – for example, the sound of traffic is annoying a character
who is trying to sleep – the volume might be brought up to showcase
its importance. Sonic close-ups bring attention to a specific object or a
specific experience. They are used to create subjectivity in a film and to
bring the audience closer to a certain detail. In Blue (Kieslowski, 1993),
sonic close-ups of ordinary objects, like a teacup overflowing with tea,
bring us close to the grieving hero’s sensitive mental state. Blue (Kieslowski, 1993)
It is not only props on screen that give us sound effects. A simple
way of establishing off-screen action is with off-screen sound. This
sound is still within the diegetic world, but it is just out of frame. Some-
times this out-of-reach quality can be intentionally frustrating; some-
times it is scary. But most often, off-screen sound creates the film’s
atmosphere and is essential to our subconscious acceptance of the story
world’s believability. An envelope of sound makes our central characters,
who are often on screen, feel like they are part of a larger world, which
is often off screen. BeastsoftheSouthernWild (Zeitlin,2012)
Just as camera framing and movement choices create visual
subjectivity in film, sound perspective creates aural subjectivity, carrying the viewer on an intimate
journey of the story world. Sound perspective will often match a visual close-up with a sonic close-
-up. The more intimate we are with an object, the better we can hear it. And the more intimate we
are with a character, the better we can hear what they hear. In Beasts of the Southern Wild (Zeitlin,
2012), we can hear our hero’s thoughts in voice-over narration along with the sounds that she
experiences directly. When the hero picks up a chicken to listen to its chest, we hear the chicken’s
heartbeat loud in our ears too. This sound perspective brings us emotionally closer to the hero, who
becomes our prosthetic eyes and ears in the film world.
Perhaps the most famous use of sound perspective is in the
opening of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil, where a 3-minute long-
-take crane shot takes us over a city to track a car carrying a bomb
in its trunk. At the start of the long take, we see a bomb placed
in the car’s trunk, then when the car is turned on, its radio blasts
loudly. As the car weaves through the city and the camera alterna-
TouchofEvil (Welles,1958) tely loses it and catches up to it, we can hear that radio music cons-
tantly. Through Welles’s use of sound perspective, we can judge
how far away the car is from us (and the camera) based on the radio
music’s volume. When the music is faint, we instinctively know that we are losing the car. Even when
off-screen, the car’s presence and movements are felt through sound effects. When the car swings
back on screen, the radio music volume blasts up, almost congratulating us for finding it. In Touch of
Evil, Welles teaches filmmakers how to effectively create tension and immersion simply through the
careful staging of sound.
Sound fidelity (synchronous sound): Each prop that we see on screen makes a believable sound in post-
-production. The image and sound appear to match.
Lack of fidelity (asynchronous sound): Sound effects are obviously different from the prop’s “natural”
sound. Often used for exaggerated or comic effect.
Foley: The reproduction of everyday sounds using various materials in a studio. Named after the sound-e-
ffects artist Jack Foley.
Sonic close-up: The volume of a certain sound effect is increased to bring attention to an object or expe-
rience.
Off-screen sound: Diegetic sound whose action is out of frame.
Sound perspective: Matches camera distance to sound volume. Sonic close-ups are matched with visual
close-ups. Sound becomes muffled when it is far away from the camera or unimportant to the story.
Music
Film music takes the audience on an emotional journey that is largely based on instinctive reac-
tions to certain sounds. Music scored in major keys will evoke joy and power in a film scene. Music
scored in minor keys will evoke sadness, tragedy, or fear in the film scene. Hitchcock once descri-
bed music as “company”, and this is a great way to explain the musical term “accompaniment”. In film,
music serves as company for the characters and the audience, and so it can provide us with relief in
the most intimately painful experiences. Our own feelings of loneliness are never as poetic or enter-
taining as a tragic hero’s alienation when paired with a delicate, mournful soundtrack.
SOUND 99
For some directors, this concept of musical “company” influen-
ces their decision to not include a score in their film. For example, Hitch-
cock decided not to hire a composer for his film Lifeboat (1944), which
takes place entirely on a lifeboat floating in the middle of an ocean. When
questioned on this decision, Hitchcock would retort: In the middle of an
ocean, where would the orchestra sit? The film creates a high sense of
isolation simply from the lack of aural “company” for the characters and the
audience. Taking a cue from this technique, Zemeckis didn’t want a musical
score for his film Cast Away (2000), also a film about being stranded at sea.
But Zemeckis did hire the composer Alan Silvestri, though he asked him to
Lifeboat (Hitchcock,1944)
compose “music” without the use of instruments. Silvestri thought about
this challenge carefully, and he started to record the sounds of wind in
place of traditional instruments: happy wind tunes, tragic wind tunes, fear-
ful wind tunes. The resulting orchestration of sound effects does not serve
as non-diegetic “company” to the story; rather, it is completely naturali-
zed in the story world and gives hints as to an emotional journey without
feeling obvious and overly-manipulative to the audience.
Many directors will work with a single composer for their entire
careers, creating a tonal consistency across their films. Hitchcock worked
closely with Bernard Herrmann for many of his films, and Herrmann was
instrumental in creating the mysterious, disconcerting tone of thrillers. For CastAway (Zemeckis,2000)
Vertigo (1958), Herrmann used two undulating musical phrases that meet
to alternately create harmony and dissonance. This score is a musical repre-
sentation of the feeling of vertigo, alternately falling and picking itself up. It also keeps the viewer
on edge, unsure of how the narrative will progress. Christopher Nolan works consistently with Hans
Zimmer to create the tense scores for his films. Zimmer is known for his overblown brass notes and
has been credited with starting the trend for “braaam” sound effect in action movies and film trai-
lers. In Inception, Zimmer’s style of incorporating traditional orchestration with electronic distortions
matches the film’s themes of artificially created, yet naturalized dream-worlds. Through both Herr-
mann’s and Zimmer’s scores, the orchestration matches the film themes to enhance them.
Other soundtracks are filled with pop music to achieve similar effect. The first film to use an
entire score recorded by a pop musician was The Graduate (Nichols, 1967), and it revolutionized the
landscape of film soundtracks. For The Graduate, Nichols hired the popular band Simon & Garfunkel
to use some of their pre-written tracks and to write some new ones. The most famous track of the
film album, “Mrs. Robinson”, was actually a pre-written track titled “Mrs. Roosevelt”, whose lyrics
were slightly changed to match the name of the film character. The songs on the soundtrack, like
many Simon & Garfunkel tracks about counterculture movements, are mournful and pessimistic,
even when upbeat. The track “The Sound of Silence”, which repeats three times in the film, perfectly
matches the film’s themes of loneliness, lack of ambition, and life stasis.
Since The Graduate, many films have taken the approach of hiring a single artist or band
to create the entire soundtrack: from Cat Stevens’s Harold and Maude (1971) soundtrack to
Radiohead’s Suspiria (2018) soundtrack. Others have heavily featured a single artist in the soun-
dtrack, like Kendrick Lamar on the Black Panther (2018) soundtrack. But most films now feature a
medley of artists who each contribute a different tone, emotion, or association to the scene. For
example, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) uses Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”,
an upbeat song about juvenile delinquency, to match a montage where a grandfather teaches his
young grandkids how to steal and gamble. The film also uses Elliott Smith’s “Needle in the Hay” to
enhance the sadness and desperation of a character’s suicide attempt. And it invokes 1970s nostal-
gia and associations with gentle, pleasing ballads through Nico’s “These Days” track.
Sound design
Soundtracks create a “wallpaper” for films that can cover over imperfections in other areas, such
as mise-en-scène continuity, script quality, and acting. The job of a Sound Designer is to create a
cohesive world that feels alive with energy, momentum, and possibility. Unmotivated lags in the
soundtrack or moments of “bad” sound can ruin this sense of a cohesive world, and thus break this
“wallpaper” continuity.
Diagram 5: L-cuts and J-cuts. An L-cut
bleeds Audio 1 into Video 2, making an
"L" shape in the mixer. A J-cut bleeds
Audio 3 into Video 2, making a "J" shape
in the mixer.
Along with dubbing, Foley, and musical soundtracks, Sound Desig-

ners use a few standard principles to create realistic and believable soundscapes. One standard prac-
tice is sound bridges, which take sound from one scene and bleed it into another. This creates a
sense of continuity between sharp cuts and keeps the viewer involved in the story without being put
off by the sudden change in scenery. A sound bridge can join scenes in two ways: it can bleed sound
from the next scene in the first (a “J cut”) or it can bleed sound from one scene into the next (an “L
cut”). J-cuts anticipate the image that will come. L-cuts remind of the image that was just seen.
In The Graduate, J-cuts are used to merge two diffe-
rent lives that the main character Benjamin is leading: life
at home after college and an affair with a married neighbor.
In a sequence that is meant to show how Benjamin confu-
ses his two lives, we hear his father’s voice bleed into an inti-
mate bedroom scene. We see Benjamin in his lover’s bed
while hearing his father accuse: “Ben, what are you doing?”
As Benjamin turns his head to look up, the film cuts to a shot
of his father outside, looking down on him. At first, it appears
as though Benjamin was caught in a compromising position
because of the J-cut that bled his father’s voice in from the
next scene. But in fact, we realize, Benjamin is just floating in
the pool outside with his father accusing him of being unam-
TheGraduate (Nichols,1967)
SOUND 101
bitious and lazy.
In The Graduate example, the J-cut is used for discontinuous
effect, to confuse and worry the viewer. But most J-cuts simply
set up the sensory envelope for the next image. Before we see an
establishing shot of the glorious Jurassic Park island, we want to
be set up with a bit of glorious music and the sound of helicopter
propellers in the previous shot. Or before we see the face of our
hero’s long-lost love, we want to hear her voice say “Hello, stran-
ger” while the camera is still on his face.
L-cuts work in the opposite way – they linger on what we had
just seen as we move into the next image. If we want an emotion to
follow into the next setting or time-period, we might use an L-cut
to bleed a previous piece of music or sound effect into the next
establishing shot. For example, in the opening of Apocalypse Now
(Coppola, 1979), the audio memory of the Vietnam War bleeds
into our hero’s present time: as he stares at a ceiling fan, we can
still hear the sound of helicopter propellers. Or an L-cut might hide
the visual cut in shot/reverse-shot editing: one character might be
ranting angrily, and while we are still listening to his words, we
visually cut to his partner’s face looking aggravated at the lecture.
ApocalypseNow (Coppola,1979)
Another key tool to use in hiding the artificiality of soundsca-
pes and editing cuts is room tone. Every room, unless extremely
well-padded, emits a unique room tone that will be recorded in
every actor’s microphone. Cutting between recorded on-set sound
and ADR feels artificial and choppy unless the room tone is layered
over to “wallpaper” the two audio clips together. Often, room tone
will be recorded separately to serve as this bridge between variou-
sly recorded clips, and often it is not noticeable to the audience. But
some filmmakers, like David Lynch, will intentionally bring attention
to the room tone, creating an intentionally discontinuous effect.
See, for example, Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) to hear how high-vo-
lume room tone will sound like a terrifying factory soundscape of
gears turning and textures shrieking.
Like asynchronous sound effects, Lynch’s soundscapes often
feel unnatural and unfitting to their image. For example, in the
opening of Blue Velvet (1986), the camera fluidly lowers from a
suburban yard down through the grass and into the earth, which
is crawling with bugs. As the camera lowers down, the sounds-
cape moves from the 1950s track “Blue Velvet” to a medley of
Foley effects that include squishy mud sounds and mechanical
drum spinning. The Foley soundscape is not meant to be synchro-
BlueVelvet (Lynch,1986) nous with the image of bugs, but it is meant to obviously evoke a
sense of disgust that represents the underworld living just under
the surface of a 1950s-style suburbia.
Ultimately, sound design is meant to guide our interpretation
of the image. Objective soundscapes tend to create a synchro-
nous, stable stage upon which experiences can unfold in a realistic way. Subjective sound, often
inserted into this objective soundscape, will give the audience peaks of individual experience, some-
times asynchronous and usually immersive. These peaks of subjective sound bring emotion and
personal experience to the image through various forms of sound perspective. In this way, we see
that “good” sound design corresponds to the goals of “good” image: both create a believable and
naturalistic world and also provide particular worldviews or points of view of that established space.
Sound bridge: Bleeds sound from one scene into another. Creates a sense of continuity between sharp
cuts.
J-cut: A type of sound bridge that bleeds the next scene’s sound into the first scene’s image.
L-cut: A type of sound bridge that bleeds a scene’s sound into the next scene’s image.
Room tone: An ambient sound that is emitted from every room. Recorded room tone provides natura-
lism to a scene and helps to blend together sound recorded from different sites (for example, on set and
in studio).

SOUND
(1) How does the meaning of a scene shift with a movement from diegetic to non-diegetic sound
(or vice versa)? Get into groups. Using your cell phone, film one scene or scenario twice-- once
with diegetic sound, and once with non-diegetic sound. The only thing that should change in
your scene is the type of sound. How have your diegetic and non-diegetic sound choices affected
audience understanding of your scene?
(2) Although many consider sound to be secondary to image in cinema, sound in cinema can create
worlds of meaning, a soundscape that constantly feeds information to the audience. How can we
explore the world building that sound engages in, even without the benefit of being attached to a
cinematic image? With a group of friends make your own sound collage to define a place. Choose
a location that you wish to convey a sense of. Using on-location sounds, as well as dialogue,
sound effects, music and/or other realistic and subjective sounds, create a sound design on
Audacity (or some other free audio editing platform) that best communicates your chosen place.
(3) In what ways can sound open up our understanding of the narrative system of a film? Sound
can be diegetic (existing within the story world eg. dialogue, off-screen sound), non-diegetic
(external to the story world eg. voiceovers, soundtracks), and in some cases even occur within
the minds of characters as a type of internal diegetic sound. What are some examples? How can
narration use sound to communicate mental states and information to film audiences?
SOUND 103
C H A P T E R S E V E N
GENRE
ROMANTIC COMEDY 106
SCIENCE FICTION 107
HORROR 110
SLASHER FILMS 110
J-HORROR 112
FILM NOIR 113
CONCLUSION
GENRE
We go to see a movie with certain expectations based on its genre. For example, we expect
the formula of a good action film to contain "good guys" and "bad guys". Often in action movies, the
villain is portrayed as a foreigner. Often the action hero begins as an outcast or experiences a deep
betrayal or conflict that forces him further away from law and order in order to exact vigilante justice,
and thereby restore stability to the storyworld. We often expect car chases, explosions, gunfire,
beautiful women and choreographed fight sequences. In the Marvel Universe for example, diverse
groups of superheroes work outside the rules of humans, following their own moral code of conduct
to protect humanity from evil. In The Bourne Identity (2002), The Matrix (1999), and Kill Bill (2003),
characters live at the margins of society and, as rogue figures, are able to use violence to resolve
the narrative crisis and return order to the world by
destroying the "bad guys" and their systems of power. Audience pleasure in genre stems from
Genre refers to the way in which films are cate-
gorized or marketed by film studios and the expecta- the familiarity of repetition, but it also
tions that such categories bring to bear on the cinema
spectator themselves. Film theorist Rick Altman defi- stems from the ways in which films
nes genre in terms of its predictability and repetition of
situations, themes and icons. So genre can be exami- deviate from the expected script.
ned in terms of its structural conventions (expecta-
tions of plot, character, setting or style), thematic
codes (for example, the themes of social corruption and infection contained in the zombie flick)
or iconography (objects that instantly denote genre such as cowboy hats within the Western).
Audience pleasure in genre stems from the familiarity of repetition, but it also stems from the ways
in which films deviate from the expected script. We both want to know what to expect from a
film and we also want to be surprised, to have our expectations exceeded. While audiences might
choose to view a film based on expectations and familiarity with the particular genre, a director can
surprise the audience by manipulating these genre expectations.
We just have to look at movie posters and advertisements to see the way
that the studio wants us to understand a film. Through looking at the staged
conventions and iconography in the posters, we have immediate expectations,
even before we watch the film, based on our own knowledge of the signaled
genre conventions. In The Matrix (1999), for example, the characters repre-
sented in the poster all possess various guns and wear leather pants, trench
coats, and sunglasses, highlighting their mysterious, rogue nature. The visible
weaponry and cyberpunk appearance of the characters in the poster seem to
be icons of the action film, but can also signal the science fiction genre, espe-
cially through its backdrop of computer-generated code that forces a questio-
ning of reality. Genres are not neat and stable categories despite frequently
being categorized as just one thing. Often a film can inhabit several different
generic codes that audiences will recognize.
The Matrix
(Wachowskis, 1999)
GENRE 105
Romantic Comedy
Similarly, when we buy a ticket to see a romantic comedy (rom-com), we already know that a
boy and a girl will first hate, then love, then hate each other again as they are forced to reconsider
their understandings of modern relationships and their own selves. One member of the couple will
succumb to a grand romantic gesture that will result in the couple living happily ever after. Someti-
mes the couple might love each other right from the start, only to fracture in the face of their own
personal insecurities or immaturities. But the rom-com typically ends with the reunion of the couple
and the sense that love does indeed conquer all.
While most rom-coms follow this template, some challenge audience expectations. My Best
Friend’s Wedding (1997), for example, does not end with the female lead (Julia Roberts) marrying her
best friend, despite all her comedic machinations throughout the film. Rather, it ends in her helping
the union of her best friend to another woman, despite her feelings of love. In this film, the grand
romantic gesture becomes a gesture of sacrifice that ends all chances of a romantic union between
boy and girl, as the boy marries another.
The Big Sick (2017), on the other hand, begins with the love story
of a couple, which falters in the face of the main character’s fear of
losing his Pakistani-American family by dating outside the culture and
faith, as well as the life threatening illness that suddenly befalls the
female lead. Although The Big Sick ultimately follows many of the
generic expectations of the rom-com, it departs from the romantic
comedy’s typical narrative conventions by having the male lead spend
most of the film with the female lead’s parents as she fights for her life The Big Sick (Showalter, 2017)
in a medically-induced coma. In this way, the boy-meets-girl-boy-an-
d-girl-fall-in-love-only-to separate-and-reunite trope of the rom-com
changes to boy-meets-girl-boy-and-girl-fall-in-love-only-to-lose-girl-and-fall-in-love-with-girl’s-pa-
rents-then-be-rejected-by-girl-only-to-reunite. Most Hollywood rom-coms feature a white hetero-
sexual couple at its center and focus chiefly on the perspective of the female romantic lead. The Big
Sick undermines some of these expectations with its Pakistani-American male lead, the point of view
that the film largely follows.
Genres: Categories of story-types that are used by studios for marketing purposes. The predictability and
repetition of genre elements is the basis for film-watching choices, audience expectations, and creative
surprises.
Structural conventions: Expectations of plot, character, setting, or style.
Thematic codes: Subtext embedded within genres and subgenres, often based in historical context.
Iconography: Objects that instantly identify a genre or subgenre.
Romantic comedy: Genre that follows a simple structural convention: a boy and girl alternate loving and
hating each other until they are reunited through a grand romantic gesture.
Science Fiction
George Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902) is widely conside-
red one of the earliest examples of the science fiction film that set
key conventions of the genre – spectacular use of special effects,
journey to another world (the moon), and the iconography of aliens
and space ships producing themes of space travel, discovery, and
the fear of the unknown. The science fiction plots tend towards
themes of science, technology, ethical or moral anxieties, and
philosophies that shed light on humanity and society. Visual effects
and advanced technology props, such as teleportation machi-
nes and hovercrafts, characterize science fiction as a speculative A Trip to the Moon (Méliès, 1902)
film genre imagining future technologies and realities. Charac-
ters range from aliens and artificial intelligence to scientists and
government officials. Sci-fi heroes often bear the sacrificial weight
of trying to save the world.
The prototypical story of the sci-fi genre revolves around the
device of the novum, Latin for the "new thing". The novum is a
technology or cultural trend pushed into a logical, but often dysto-
pian, endpoint in order to distance it from the audience, making
it appear foreign. The punch line of these films is often that the
novum is not actually a "new thing" at all. The plot reveals that the
future version of the "new thing" was on earth all along or was
Earth itself. For example, Planet of the Apes (1968) tells the story
of American astronauts who crash onto an unfamiliar planet in the Planet of the Apes (Schaffner, 1968)
future where intelligent, articulate apes subjugate mute humans.
The film ends with the shocking discovery of a buried Statue of
Liberty by the lead astronaut (Charlton Heston) as he escapes his
enslavement by the apes, and the horrible understanding that this
strange future planet, the new thing, is actually Earth.
The Matrix is also set in the future, but one where machines
have taken over the world, manufacturing incubated humans as
batteries and keeping these humans subdued and unaware in a
virtual world (the Matrix). The real world, on the other hand, is a
dystopic space where the last remnants of freed humans fight a
losing battle against the machines in a long drawn out war. Compu-
ter programmer Neo (Keanu Reeves) discovers the deception and
becomes ‘The One", a special person able to move freely through
the different realities of the Matrix and the real world, and a hero
destined to save humanity from their enslavement. The Matrix
uses the figure of an everyday worker, a spiritually empty cog in the
machine, to reflect a general malaise of contemporary audiences
towards a capitalist society. And the film reinvigorates a need for
‘reality’ in the audience through Neo’s virtual body and his expe-
riences in the Matrix. In Neo, we are given a young man despe- The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)
GENRE 107
rate to believe that he is special, distinct from all the other copies and illusions as he fights to defeat
bureaucratic clones within a hyper-industrialized landscape.
Genre is not static; rather, it is heavily influenced by its current cultural environment. In this
way, genre films are time capsules that contain the specific cultural references and mindsets of the
time and place in which they were made. Science fiction film would experience a surge in produc-
tion in the 1950s, a period also known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction Films, due to the
famous UFO sightings in the late 1940s into the 1950s near Roswell, New Mexico, and in Washing-
ton State. And during this Golden Age, the films’ theme of anxiety about mass destruction is clearly
influenced by common 1950s nuclear and communist fears. With images of the massive destruc-
tion of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945, Americans were more aware than ever
before of the ability of man to destroy himself and others. The rise of Communism and the conti-
nued threat of nuclear warfare during the Cold War in the 1950s led to widespread paranoia concer-
ning the infiltration of communists within American lives. This ‘Red Scare’ resulted in witch-hunts,
loss of employment, and imprisonment, touching all areas of American society. Numerous sci-fi films
such as The Thing from another World (1951) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) tapped
into a pervasive fear of communism imagined through themes of infection, the uncertainty of iden-
tity, and the notion that the enemy looks just like you. The subgenre of the monster or mutant film
would also emerge from these apocalyptic concerns, and lend itself to a reworking of the horror
genre.
In blending genres, Ishiro Honda’s science fiction kaiju
(monster movie) Gojira (Godzilla, 1954) remains one of the most
successful monster-as-allegory films. Gojira emerged both from
the trauma of the atomic bomb and the awareness of nuclear
warfare as a continuing threat to Japanese lives as evidenced by
the Lucky Dragon 5 incident, in which radiation exposure conti-
nued well after combat. Six years after the end of World War
II, American military tested a hydrogen bomb near a Japanese
fishing vessel filled with civilians, exposing them to radiation.
As a reference to the Lucky Dragon 5 incident, Gojira begins
with an explosion of light that destroys the peaceful routine of
men on a fishing vessel. This light configures the monster Gojira
as an allegory for an atomic bomb. Later in the film, characters
watch the aftermath of Gojira’s rampage through Tokyo on tele-
vision. The panning camera shows a Tokyo in ruins, deliberately
recalling the war torn post-World War II landscape. Honda used
singing children to create sentimentality and, in highlighting the
true victims of nuclear threat, stressed the importance of peace.
The figure of a scientist in a lab coat is a crucial character within
the sci-fi film universe because he translates a scientific or ratio-
nal decision into human terms. It is through his humanity, or lack
thereof, that we understand the stakes of the crisis and political
response. In the end of Gojira, after using a powerful weapon
Gojira (Honda, 1954) of mass destruction to destroy the monster, scientist Serizawa
sacrifices his own life to take the secret of his weapon to his
grave in fear that the inherent weakness of man will lead to his
weapon’s use for further global warfare.
Traditionally, science fiction as a genre privileges male leads and, thus, largely male action and
concerns. In earlier classical film, women chiefly occupy the role of damsel in distress, object of
desire, or subordinate sidekicks who serve little purpose beyond propping up the male lead. Even as
late as Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope (1977), arguably the most culturally impactful science
fiction film in contemporary cinema, the male robotic drones had more dialogue than the ‘real’
women did in the film. The Second Wave of Feminism in the 1960s-1970s ushered in new repre-
sentations of women with the agency to act and make decisions on their own in Science Fiction
cinema. Ellen Ripley in Alien (1979) provides the quintessential example of a strong female lead
at the helm of a historically male-oriented genre. The huge success of the Alien franchise would
lead to increased visibility and popularity of female heroes within the sci-fi landscape who escape
gender expectations placed upon them. In more contemporary films, like Terminator 2: Judgement
Day (1991), Arrival (2016), Gravity (2013), and Her (2013), female perspectives and storylines have
occupied a greater stage. This evolution of the sci-fi genre shows how the film industry has evol-
ved according to audience expectations and has nego-
tiated the complexity of gender politics in the world
today.
In the Ex_Machina (2014) poster, the shocking
image of a young woman’s interior circuitry clues us in
to the thematic tension between human and android
that will be central to the film. While the sterility and
futuristic feel of the lab setting suggests that the
genre belongs to science fiction, the text of the poster
warns of the machine’s human desire “to survive” and
the low-key lighting of the shot indicates the possi-
ble presence of another genre – horror. By highligh-
ting the internal "difference" of the female android
from a female human, the poster troubles the common
sci-fi message that humanity is essential to "save the Ex_Machina (Garland, 2014)
world" and poses a monstrosity in the android’s enig-
matic quality that is so close to being human. The film
refuses to hide the android qualities of this almost-human character, and her obvious android-ness
forces the audience to meditate on contemporary fears of scientific excess and gender relations.
Ada, as an android, shatters the binaries of gender expectations and refuses narrative confinement
within romantic plotlines with her male leads. She defies the trope of the damsel in distress while
also manipulating the same trope to escape her enslavement by performing fear and helplessness
for the male characters. Androids and cyborgs in sci-fi cinema build upon the themes of what is
widely considered the first science fiction text, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), which is about
the artificial creation of life and the scientist who is horrified at his creation. In Frankenstein , we
explore the idea of playing God and questions of the human, and we also grapple with our own
humanity in the face of scientific progress, race, gender and other social concerns.
Science Fiction: Speculative genre that follows themes of science, technology, ethical or moral anxie-
ties, and social philosophy. Includes iconography of futuristic technology, scientists, or a dystopian setting.
Often allegorical stories that address historical events and social systems through subtext.
GENRE 109
Horror
When we talk about Horror, what we are really talking about is how visualizations of violence,
terror, and boundary-crossing taboos shock the viewer into navigating their own fears and anxieties,
in terms of both the nation and the body. Similar to the Science Fiction film genre, horror delves
into social and political issues that preoccupy the nation, but horror cinema focuses particularly on
bodies, especially female bodies, and issues of gender and sexuality. It is little wonder that science
fiction and horror genres often cohabitate in their shared concern for exploring social ills and repres-
sions. As horror runs the gamut from psychological and horror-thrillers, to Italian gialli (murder-mys-
teries) and slasher films, it is easier to discuss horror in terms of its major genre and cultural conven-
tions rather than find one fixed definition that defines all horror. In this way, we will briefly examine
the slasher and J-Horror subgenres to point out how their specific concerns shape the aesthetic look
and genre conventions of horror.
Slasher films
The Slasher Film surged into massive popularity during the golden period of the 1980s with
John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980), and Wes Craven's
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). These films are largely credited with launching the numerous
imitations, sequels, and franchises that recycled characters and plotlines, giving rise to the genre.
A key plot characteristic of the slasher subgenre is the repeated situation of naïve teenagers who
journey to an isolated area and, away from easy access to help or means of escape, find themsel-
ves the prey of a serial killer who picks them off one by one. The teenagers, falling into the arche-
types of the virgin, the slut, the alpha male or dumb jock, the intellectual and/or the slacker, all typi-
READ cally die except for the virtuous one. Film theorist Carol J. Clover coined the slasher film trope “the
CAROL Final Girl”, named after a common “virtuous” character who usually holds a gender-neutral name
CLOVER'S
E SSA Y and ‘deserves’ to survive because she embodies societal expectations of female virtue and heroism.
After being terrorized for most of the film, the Final Girl eventually fights back to be the only survi-
vor at the film’s end.
The two most important characters in the horror film is the monster, who is coded male, and the
suffering female hero-victim. Without the threat of the monster and the vulnerability of his victim,
there can be no horror. Unlike the science fiction genre, the horror film often features a female lead
with a few notable exceptions such as the Italian giallo, which classically alternates between a male
or female amateur detective who stumbles upon the murder of a beautiful woman and seeks out her
killer. It is also worth noting that the killer in the Italian giallo often moves between genders too, just
like the hero. In Hollywood cinema, the killer in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) infamously embo-
dies both male and female counterparts as he seamless switches between young, charming innkee-
per, Norman, and his murderous dead mother. Although not a slasher film, Jordan Peele’s Get Out
(2017) importantly inverts the placement of a young white woman as hero-victim in the horror film
with an African American male in order to interrogate liberal biases and race relations in contempo-
rary America. Regardless of the gender and race of the killer-victim dynamic, the slasher film is not
horror without the iconography of the bloodcurdling scream, vibrant red blood, and the desperate
but fruitless flight of a beautiful victim from the killer.
So incredibly ridiculous is the chase scene in the classic slasher film that many media lampoon
the token helpless female victim who repeatedly trips and falls in her heedless race away from the
killer who inevitably kills her due to her poor choices. Instead of running towards a well-lit main
road filled with pedestrians, for instance, the victim will dart into the darkest alley with a locked and
rusted chain-linked fence at its end. Effectively trapped, the female victim becomes easy pickings
for the killer with his huge chainsaw, machete, razor or large hunting knife that will dismember and
puncture her flesh in a parody of sexual penetration. While the genre of horror often plays with
identity and gender fluidity, especially in its classical form, most slasher movies deliver a simple
formula for audience pleasure: the killer slashes, pierces, mutilates, tortures, and humiliates female
bodies as the viewer occupies and takes pleasure in a violent point of view. As the cult of the killer
grew in popularity, inundated by ever-growing franchises, the killer in the slasher film would even-
tually become the anti-hero, eclipsing the victim’s perspective.
By the end of the 1980s, audiences felt a growing fatigue towards the genre’s predictable plotli-
nes, and it would not be until the late 1990s that films like Wes Craven's Scream (1996) would rein-
vigorate the horror genre. Scream broke the genre by parodying the clichéd tropes of the slasher
film while also challenging established genre expectations by, for example, having a sexually active
Final Girl. A genre-breaker wears its violation of traditio-
nal expectations of genre on its sleeve. By making visible to
audiences the conventions that denote the genre, genre-
-breakers invite laughter in its self-conscious commentary.
Genre-benders, on the other hand, more subtly work on
audience anticipations of genre, and they subvert these
expectations of convention, thereby misleading the viewer.
In A Nightmare on Elm Street, for instance, Wes Craven
merged the supernatural with the slasher film by introdu-
cing an undead killer and setting the film in a dreamscape.
The dream logic of A Nightmare on Elm Street pushed the Scream (Craven, 1996)
boundaries of the genre to create a startlingly unique and
unpredictable audiovisual landscape that hooked audien-
ces and made Freddy Kruger an instant star.
Horror cinema depends heavily on the historical arche-
type of the damsel-in-distress, found in gothic literature and
early cinema, and the anxiety she produces. Sound effects
and music play an especially significant role in deepening
suspense and audience tension. German Expressionism
(see Film History Chapter), with its use of shadows and
disorienting mise-en-scène to reflect character subjectivity,
A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1986)
influence the look and feel of the horror genre today. The
horror genre also borrows its low-key lighting, which creates
tone and tension through the production of mysterious and menacing spaces from which monsters
can leap upon the unsuspecting victim, from early film movements. The damsel-in-distress works in
tangent with the common gothic trope of the ‘beast in the boudoir’. From The Cabinet of Dr. Cali-
gari (1920) to King Kong (1933) and Frankenstein (1994), monsters in Classical Horror cinema cons-
tantly breach the bedroom of the nightgowned damsel in distress, who is unable to save herself,
and, unfortunately for her, who cannot be saved by the male hero either. The gaze of the audience
is important to the horror aesthetic. As our eyesight is repeatedly aligned with the monster through
point-of-view shots and high-angle shots on the victim, we adopt the monster’s subject position
as he secretly gazes upon women. We thus become the monster who breaches the bedroom. In
modern horror, with the arrival of the Final Girl, we see a clear shift from the girl of Classical Horror
who needs to be saved to the girl who saves herself and has an ultimate accounting with the mons-
ter she will kill.
GENRE 111
J-horror (Japanese Horror)
Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror that embodies the spectator within the growing
fear and mental instability of its characters. While the slasher film typically follows the linear struc-
ture of a Classical Hollywood narrative, psychological horror tends more towards elliptical or surreal
storylines. One of the key differences between the slasher film and psychological horror lies in
the figure of the monster/killer. Even when the mysterious killer in the slasher film demonstrates
seemingly mystical properties such as returning repeatedly from the dead, his monstrosity is grou-
nded in a very human body and an explainable backstory, unlike the ghosts, ghouls, evil entities,
dreamscapes, and unexplainable phenomenon of psychological horror. Film theorist Robin Wood
(1986) famously argued that:
“[the] true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that
our civilization represses or oppresses..”3
An investigation of J-Horror reveals how psychological horror delves into the repressed of society
through an exploration of mental states and primal fears.
Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Cure (1997), Miike Takeshi’s Audition (1999), and Nakata Hideo’s Ring (1998)
exploded audiences’ perceptions of the horror film in the 1990s, with their supernatural elements
and social criticism of modern life. J-Horror emerged within the historical moment of millennial Y2K
paranoia as the 20th century drew to a close, and it addressed how celluloid, now an antiquated
technology, began to be replaced by digital technology. These films explore the cinematic medium
and find cultural "ghosts" within the technology. J-horror meditates on Japan’s meteoritic economic
rise after their defeat in World War II and the cost of this rise on the Japanese individual. Concerned
with the spiritual emptiness of the modern individual, their alienation, and loss of identity and tradi-
tion, these films provide a commentary on Japan and the modern self. The J-Horror genre featu-
res urban and suburban settings, using apartment complexes as sites of social and familial estrange-
ment. The everyday is turned strange through inventive and eerie sound designs. The main editing
technique of the horror genre, the jump scare, is eclipsed by the creation of unique soundscapes
that create psychological spaces of madness and terror. Although composed of various narratives, in
J-horror the supernatural narrative tends to dominate. It is the vengeful, wet female ghosts (onryou),
stemming from Japanese folklore and literature, with their long black hair, corpse-pale skin and inhu-
man movements that are the principal trope of J-Horror. Like many psychological ghost stories, the
point of view or story of the tragic ghost wronged by society is important to the narrative arc of
J-Horror. Solving the mystery of the ghost’s haunting allows a deeply critical insight into alienating
modern life and the fractured family. Mothers and (ghost) children haunt the cinematic frame and the
figure of the father is an especially distant or absent one.
Ring, for example, follows a news reporter and single mother, Reiko Asakawa, as she attempts
to solve the mystery of an anonymous video tape before it kills her and her son, Yoichi. Seven days
after viewing the video, an onryou, called Sadako, emerges from a well to wreak her vengeance on
the spectator. A young child murdered by her parent, Sadako ultimately seeks a mother figure in
Reiko, whose own family unit is broken. Through the figure of the abandoned child embodied by
Sadako, both Reiko and her estranged ex-husband come together to save their own child and flee-
tingly reunite the family. Nakata continues this theme of modern alienation and broken households
through his film Dark Water (2002) and its young, lonely ghost, Mitsuko. Dark Water positions
the single working mother, Yoshimi, in the midst of an ugly divorce and custody battle with her
3 ““An Introduction to the American Hor-

ror Film,” in American Nightmare: Essays
112 F I L M A p p r e c ia t i o n on the Horror Film. (Toronto: Festival of
Festivals, 1979), p.10.
husband over their young daughter Ikuko. With little money, Yoshimi
moves with her daughter into an old apartment with a small leak
on its ceiling that over the course of the film grows like a pregnant
belly until it finally bursts in a torrent of dark water and black hair of
the onryou. The spreading stain on the ceiling and constant dripping
water becomes a metaphor for the growing anxiety felt towards the
tarnished Japanese household that the professional woman fails to
maintain. Herself a child traumatized by parental neglect, Yoshimi
Ring (Nakata, 1998)
must embrace her role as a mother and form a family with Mitsuko,
her new uncanny child, in order to save her real child. There is a
concern with mothers in these films, and Nakata, in particular, points
to the professional woman in both Ring and Dark Water as the
problem in modern Japan. Both Reiko and Yoshimi ultimately have to
adopt traditional roles of caretaker and nurturer to lay their respec-
tive ghosts to rest.
Mothers proliferate in the slasher film genre, but where these
Dark Water (Nakata, 2002)
mothers are just "bad" mothers, mothers in J-horror can also be the
films’ heroes and are given opportunities to achieve redemption
through great suffering and sacrifice. The onryou and other ghosts in J-Horror return us to Wood’s
concept of “the return of the repressed” in the horror film. Ghosts within Japanese horror point to
a sense of something lost or repressed within the culture of Japan that forces itself into sight and
examination through the genre of horror. Subtext, what lies behind the literal, is essential to unders-
tanding Horror.
Horror genre: Broadly covers themes of violence, terror, taboos, fears, and anxieties. Sometimes allegori-
cal, focusing on issues of female bodies, gender, and sexuality. Stylistically built on low-key lighting, sound
effects, and jump scares.
Slasher Film: Horror sub-genre popularized in the 1980s that typically features naive teenagers who
become the prey of a serial killer.
Final Girl: A slasher film trope coined by Carol J. Clover. Describes a female character who survives the
serial killer’s attacks and becomes the film’s hero.
J-Horror: Horror sub-genre from Japan that critiques alienating modern life through figures of ghosts
(onryu) and familial relations.
Film Noir
Film Noir, literally translated as "black film," was a term coined in French journals in 1946 to
initially describe a similarity of content and style in five Hollywood films: The Maltese Falcon (1941),
Double Indemnity (1944), Laura (1944), Murder, My Sweet (1944), and The Lost Weekend (1945).
Considered the quintessential American film genre, film noir must be situated historically and cultu-
rally to explain what lies behind the growth of these dark films during the 1940s. Film noir brid-
GENRE 113
ges World War II America— a time when the nation was still struggling out from under the Great
Depression and President Roosevelt had instituted the New Deal in an attempt to stave off the
massive unemployment rocking the nation. Many men felt impotent and humiliated in their inability
to support their families during the Depression, and these feelings were exacerbated with the entry
of women into the workforce during the war. The very real presence of the working woman would
give rise to the femme fatale or deadly woman in film noir, a villainous love interest who inevitably
dies, but not before leading (or attempting to lead) the male protagonist to his doom. The femme
fatale is often balanced out by the “good”, but bland, woman who acts as a safety net for the male
protagonist.
In the first decade of its incarnation, film noir reflected the anxiety and pessimism of the times.
Influenced by popular detective novels and German Expressionist cinema, these noir films dealt with
essentially fragile and disillusioned men despite their appearance of tough machoism. Humphrey
Bogart epitomized the noir anti-hero, who was typically an investigator or detective, spoke in fast-
-paced dialogue, was cynical towards women, and lacked moral scruples despite having a code of his
own. In The Maltese Falcon, when Sam Spade explains why he must turn in his femme fatale lover
to the cops, it is not solely because she confesses to killing his partner for her own gain, but largely
because he fears being made to look the fool over her. Perhaps it might be better to call film noir
a cinema of fear or a crisis of masculinity as the stock characters all work to shore up the mascu-
line confidence of the male lead. In contrast to the anti-hero, the villains of film noir are habitually
foreigners and are often coded queer through their style of dress or mannerisms. Against the exces-
sive masculinity of the American noir lead, foreigners are shown to be less masculine and, someti-
mes, feminized. Noir cinema reflected a changing America filled with uncertainty and perversity both
through its generic characters, and through its use of low-key lighting and cinematic angles.
The 1930 Hays Production Code was a form of self-censoring in
Hollywood that, among other things, limited sexuality and violence in the
cinema. Queerness, adultery, perversion and lustful kissing were also prohi-
bited under the auspices of the Production Code. Directors had to find
clever ways of visually representing the decadence of the film noir world.
Through lighting, symbolism, and the use of ellipses, these dark films would
suggest sexual interactions between couples without explicitly showing
them. In The Maltese Falcon, for example, Spade bends over to kiss Brigid,
who is lying seductively on the couch. The camera frustrates any comple-
tion of the action, moving past Sam and towards an open window. When
next we see the couple, they call each other “sweetheart”, suggesting the
changed status of their relationship. The cinematography of film noir func-
tions to deepen the tension and sense of anxiety that suffuses the frame.
From a deep focus camera emphasizing foreground and background,
extreme close-ups and low angles that bring ceilings into view, film noir
undermines Classical Hollywood’s mode of invisibility and realism. Cinema-
tic space becomes dynamic and psychological, unsettling the audience and
revealing new aspects in characters and objects.
Many consider the year 1947 as the death of film noir in its original The Maltese Falcon
form. It is not that noir films stopped being made, in fact, film noir conti- (Huston, 1941)
nues to be one of the more recognizable film styles in cinema today, but
film noir changed with the coming of the Red Purge to Hollywood. The men
and women who had used the film genre for social critique found themselves largely silenced and
encouraged by the President of the Motion Picture Association of America to create films that glori-
fied American life. There continues to be much argument over whether film noir constitutes a genre.
Some argue that film noir is a director’s style rather than a typified collection of films. For our purpo-
ses, it is clear that the distinct look and feel of film noir immediately creates generic expectations
within the viewer. While today’s film noir no longer looks like the films of the 1940s, it has evolved
to cross numerous genres and to meet the needs of the times.
Film Noir: Genre of the 1940s that features low angles, close-ups, harsh shadows, and deep space to
represent psychological turmoil and anxiety. Associated with several historical moments: post-Depression
threatened masculinity, the Hays Code, and the Red Scare.
Femme fatale: A seductive yet dangerous female villain in the film noir genre.
It is important to understand that genre is heterogeneous; despite its marketability or surface

appearance as one fixed category, most contemporary films are composed of multiple genres. Genres
bleed across barriers like amoeba to touch other genres and produce unpredictable texts, often in
the midst of narrative predictability. Even when a film is dominated by one clear genre, it will often
test the boundaries of its form, leading to continued argument over what determines one genre
from another. Illustratively, A Nightmare on Elm Street provides a point of argument between those
who label it a slasher film, for its obvious slashing of young teenagers and presence of a Final Girl,
and those who claim the film for psychological horror with its supernatural killer. Despite its imita-
tive character, and thus often predictable outcomes, film genre does not close off the possibility of
different readings. In the end, these categories depend on how audience desires drive the popula-
rity of certain types of films and how successfully individual films change the form of their genres to
surprise and titilate audiences.

GENRE
(1) Exploring genre in terms of its conventions, themes and iconography makes clear our own pre-
existing knowledge. For example, examine a poster of a movie that you have seen. What is the
genre? How do you know based solely on what is represented in the poster? Then make your
own poster of the same movie, but one in which you change the genre to another of your choice.
What are the conventions, themes and icons that now best suit this poster in light of its new
genre?
(2) If we can argue that all film today is composed of multiple genres, is the very idea of genre
antiquated and no longer useful for categorizing films? Can you think of other ways in which
we organize our viewing pleasure and expectations of a film, for example, by a star (Will Smith
films), a studio (A24 films), or director (Tarantino films)?
GENRE 115
C H A P T E R E I G H T
BEYOND GENRE
DOCUMENTARY 117
EXPERIMENTAL FILM 120
ANIMATION 123
NORMAN MCLAREN (INSERT) 127
CONCLUSION
** GLOSSARY
CINEMAS BEYOND GENRE
Beyond narrative cinema genres, film can also take the form of non-fiction storytelling,
form experiments, and animation. Each of these cinema categories might also include narra-
tive genres or traditional narrative structures, but their style of storytelling separates them
as unique categories. Unlike narrative cinema’s genres, which organize certain conventions
of storytelling, documentary, experimental film, and animation are categories that are deter-
mined by form.
Documentary
The cinematic form of documentary carries with it a few false assumptions. When we
hear the term “non-fiction” cinema, we assume that these films have a natural relationship
to objectivity and to “the truth”. Though many of these films do claim to be objective, when
we look at the nature of filmmaking, we can see that no film, fiction or non-fiction, can
actually fulfill such a promise.
Let’s imagine that a conversation is taking place across a table. One person is being
asked a series of personal questions, and they are uncomfortable, but are starting to loosen
up as the conversation continues. They are feeling the close intimacy of the situation and
are learning to trust their companion, whose calm gaze has a reassuring quality. Now, let’s
place a camera in front of the questioner. The intimacy of the situation immediately chan-
ges. The interviewee suddenly feels on edge, choosing their words very carefully because
they are being recorded and sitting up straighter with more poise since their image will be
recorded for an unknown audience – maybe dozens, maybe millions of viewers.
The very fact of the camera’s presence changes the environment of a conversation.
When we think that we are being observed, we tend to enter a mode of performance. This
might mean that we speak louder, or answer questions with less honesty, or behave in a way
that meets the expectations of the audience. It is unreasonable to think that observation
has no impact on behavior. And so it is unreaso-
nable to think that a camera can catch “reality” as The very fact of the camera's presence
it exists unobserved.
We also tend to assume that documenta- changes the environment.
ries present us with a slice of the “real world”. But
by using the tools of narrative cinema, non-fic-
tion film manipulates “real world” footage into the language and grammar of entertainment.
Documentaries often are organized by a three-act structure. And, they often follow indivi-
duals – narrative heroes – whose stories track a goal and its achievement. Documentaries
also make heavy use of camera style to effect the look of the scene and the characters: low
camera angles can make characters look powerful, slow motion can give weight to a moment
of crisis, and color palettes can set our narrative expectations. Music has the same emotio-
nal value in non-fiction cinema as it does in narrative cinema. Grand orchestral themes can
bring tragedy to a scene and pop music can bring familiarity to a scenario. Editing montages
create the illusion of repetition and speed. Lighting, moreover, can change the way that we
view a character: bright, natural light is associated with innocence; low-key lighting is asso-
B eyond G enre 117

ciated with villainous or suspect behavior. These types of filmmaking techniques that have
become so naturalized in the realm of narrative storytelling have manipulative qualities, and
so it is strange to import them into non-fiction film that claims “objectivity”. Documentary
forms are constantly battling the line between entertainment, which necessarily uses mani-
pulative filmmaking techniques, and the mission of truth-telling.
Therefore, even though documentaries are based on footage of the “real world” –
meaning, they are not filming acted performances – this footage can be manipulated and
edited to create a product that is far from unobserved “reality”. This is not to say that
all documentaries contain false messages or are merely unsubstantial entertainment. But
that all documentaries relate their stories from a certain perspective, and make aesthe-
tic and editing choices aimed to sway the viewer in one way or the
other. Whether or not visualized through the presence of a ‘host’
or voiceover narrator, the documentary is shaped by the intent and
moral values of a filmmaker. It is important to keep in mind that the
rise of narrative style in documentaries has created a very stylized
and constructed product. In fact, documentaries have recently seen a
great resurgence because of this imported style – more people watch
Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922) documentaries now than ever before because these films are so well
produced and tell stories in such an engaging way.
Throughout documentary history, some filmmakers have tried
to resist these unavoidable problems of subjectivity, manipula-
ted “reality”, and performance. The earliest documentaries of the
1920s claimed to be ethnographic studies, which showcased a
foreign culture that was generally inaccessible to the film’s audience.
Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922), a very popular documentary
in the 1920s, highlights an Inuit community in Alaska. The film picks
a hero to follow, Nanook, named for the film by the director Flaherty
– and sets up scenarios for Nanook to perform indigenous acts, like
ice fishing, igloo building, and walrus hunting. Though the footage
is technically “real” in that Nanook is actually performing these acts
and is spending time with his actual family, the documentary is highly
staged. Rather than present an unfettered view of an Inuit commu-
nity, Flaherty’s involvement in the scenarios – from giving his hero a
name, to staging events and shaping a narrative about a “traditional”
community absent of modern technology – created a very subjec-
tive film that speaks more to Flaherty’s image of the Inuit than to any
Man with a Movie Camera ethnographic study about this community.
(Vertov, 1929)
The 1920s also saw a trend in city-symphonies, poetic documen-
taries made of footage taken from around a city. Man with a Movie
Camera (1929) follows a cameraman as he finds unusual ways to film several Soviet cities
– from underneath train tracks to atop horse carriages and bridge suspensions. The scenes
are carefully framed and are playful in how they are presented to the audience. Everyday
Soviet citizens merge with urban life and machinery in distortions of perception. Objects
are animated through stop-motion techniques, while sequences move between slow motion
and rapid editing for dramatic effect. Split screens are also used to show two separate views
of the city in the same frame, doing more to upend
reality than to reinforce it. Though technically, Man
with a Movie Camera is a film comprised of non-fic-
tion footage, mostly of urban infrastructure, the
playful presentation makes the documentary feel like
an experiment in film form rather than an objective
view of Soviet life.
In opposition to clearly subjective modes of
non-fiction film, some documentary movements aim
for as unobtrusive and unmanipulated style as possi- Grey Gardens (Maysles, 1975)
ble. In the 1960s, Direct Cinema, also called “Obser-
vational Cinema” in Europe, preferred unmanipulated long takes, unnarrated footage, and
undramatic editing. Several American filmmakers became famous for this style of filming,
though they did not use it for their entire careers: Frederick Wiseman, who focused on insti-
tutions like schools and hospitals, D.A. Pennebaker, who became most famous for his cove-
rage of music festivals, and Albert and David Maysles, brothers who focused on individuals
on the fringes of American popularity. The Maysles’ most famous subjects, the Beales in
Grey Gardens (1975), were former socialites who had fallen from social circles into a state of
reclusiveness and hoarding. A mother and daughter duo, the Beales are wild characters full of
theatricality, and the contrast between this verve and their low quality of life evokes tragedy
without the Maysles needing to manipulate footage or layer on narrative explanation.
As a natural extension of Direct Cinema tendencies, essay films comment on their own
film form and evoke an intentionally subjective view of the world while commenting on its
subjectivity. Many types of filmmakers, both narrative feature-based and documentary-ba-
sed, have participated in this mode of storytelling. Orson Welles’s F for Fake (1973) descri-
bes filmmaking as a sleight of hand magic trick and as art forgery while filming magicians and
art forgers. Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988) summarizes cinema history while
also manipulating its footage and describing cinema as paradoxical and farcical.
All conventional techniques of documentary filmmaking have, at one time or another,
been critiqued by documentaries. The convention of talking heads, where the film frame cuts
off interview subjects at the shoulders as though they are heads floating in abstract, uncon-
textualized space, has been critiqued by films that choose to include the interviewer in the
frame. Trinh T. Minh-ha’s essay film Reassemblage (1982), an un-narrated film featuring Sene-
galese women, critiques ethnographic documentary films by refusing to make broad state-
ments about a culture or a people. Instead, Minh-ha includes footage of herself watching
a film to point to every film’s necessarily artificial nature. Reenactments, pieces of staged
scenarios based on past events, have become a standard in non-fiction storytelling about
the past, and many documentaries have pointed to how problematic these fictional pieces
of film are within the non-fiction format. Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line (1988) uses multi-
ple versions of the same slow-motion reenactment, sprinkled throughout the film as different
interview subject give different accounts of a past event. As the “history” of the event chan-
ges, the reenactment changes, showing us that this type of storytelling is innately unrelia-
ble. More recently, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012) invites Indonesian geno-
cide perpetrators to stage reenactments of how they killed hundreds of people. By filming
the process of reenactment staging, the film comments on the process of remembrance as it
critiques its subjects’ actions.
B eyond G enre 119

Though documentary filmmaking is necessarily un-objective, this struggle with the idea
of objectivity has created some very creative answers to questions about truth-telling. Our
current modes of documentary cinema include imaginative uses of technologies, like GoPro
footage and motion-capture animation. The documentary form is not restricted by any one
conventional style, and perhaps this is why documentaries are having a shining moment on
today’s streaming stage.
Ethnographic film: A visual anthropological study.
City-symphony: Poetic film celebrating a specific city.
Direct Cinema / Observational Cinema: A 1960s movement that featured unmanipulated long takes,
unnarated footage, and undramatic editing.
Essay film: Self-reflexive films that critique or openly discuss documentary conventions.
Talking heads: Common convention in which interview subjects are cut off at the shoulders.
Reenactments: Common convention of including staged scenarios of past events within non-fiction film.
Experimental film
Unlike mainstream narrative cinema, which is part of a film industry whose primary aim
is to make a profit, experimental cinema has different goals. Sometimes the goal is simply to
experiment with the form of cinema to see how far it can be pushed. Sometimes the goal is to
give representation to cultures and lifestyles often missing from mainstream cinema. Some-
times the goal is to make a political statement and share it as widely as possible. Funding for
these experimental projects is quite different from mainstream sources too. An experimental
film might aim to have no costs at all so that it can be further removed from the profit-goals
of traditional narratives – all equipment and labor would be donated, in this case. An expe-
rimental film might be funded by a grant aimed at supporting the arts generally. Lastly, exhi-
bition for these experimental films uses circuits outside of mainstream theaters. Some expe-
rimental films are shown in museums or galleries as installation exhibits; some are shown at
universities as part of screening series; some are shown as “events” in living rooms, rented
halls, or after-hours community spaces.
The main principle for many experimental projects is to be avant-garde, French for
“vanguard”, or ahead of the times. The term “avant-garde” has been adopted by art studies,
but it is originally a military term which describes scouts who move ahead of the main army to
test out new terrain. Applied to art and cinema, “avant-garde” describes a willingness to expe-
riment, find radical new forms, or cover unorthodox subjects. What we find over the course
of film history is that experimental filmmakers will often discover this new terrain through
experimentation, and then mainstream film will adopt these radical techniques, turning them
into conventions of film language. In this way, the main army, or mainstream film, catches up
to the avant-garde in order to make use of the new terrain. For example, the experimental
documentary Koyaanisqatsi (1982) extensively used time-lap-
ses to show the effects of human technology on landscapes
and urban environments. In 1982, the time-lapse technique
was not yet popular and looked quite strange to the average
viewer. Nevertheless, when enough mainstream films dipped
their toes into this avant-garde technique, it became norma-
Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio, 1982) lized and has now become an industry standard for showing
time passing in a stylistic way. Today, we see time-lapses used
quite freely in TV shows, like House of Cards (Willimon, 2013-
2018) and Breaking Bad (Gillian, 2008-2013), proving that the
cinema “army” has made it to the new time-lapse terrain scou-
ted by experimental film.
Ironically, experimental film does not necessarily feel
that it is working with mainstream film, but rather against it.
Underground films of the 1950s and 1960s explicitly rejected
mainstream films by showcasing sub-cultures that were gene-
rally ignored by Hollywood, such as avant-garde artists, hips-
ters, and queer communities. Kenneth Anger made surrealist
Scorpio Rising (Anger, 1961) films in this era about homoeroticism and the state of Ameri-
can culture. His most famous film Scorpio Rising (1961), about
the dissolution of American culture, mixes footage of a biker
subculture with provocative images of Nazi emblems and reli-
gious iconography, taken from a Christian documentary. The
film became both extremely popular among counter-culture
communities for its boldness and extremely controversial, beco-
ming briefly banned by a California court.
Andy Warhol, best known for his graphic pop art, was also
an experimental filmmaker, and many of his films tried to push
the boundaries of acceptable film form and subject. Some of
his films, such as Sleep (1963) and Eat (1964), quite simply
show the titled action being performed in one long take. His
film Empire (1964) is an 8-hour long take of the Empire State
Building. Very little action happens in this long take – the ligh-
ting changes over eight hours and at times a small plane is visi-
ble flying in the distance. But generally, the film is meant to be
as close to a photograph as possible while still taking the form
of film. When Empire screened at a small rented theater for the
first time, Warhol encouraged his friends to bring food, enter-
Empire (Warhol, 1964) tainment, and company with them. By questioning the conven-
tions of mainstream cinema – who says that a film must be two
hours long? – Warhol turned his film into an “event”, similar to
the experimental “happenings” of the 1950s and 1960s in the
art world.
Some of these same sentiments about film expectations
have been adopted in a more accepted high art form, slow
cinema. Filmmakers intentionally make slow narrative films
B eyond G enre 121

that are meant to deviate from Hollywood standards of action
and momentum. Abbas Kiarostami’s film Taste of Cherry (1997),
a prime example of slow cinema, moves leisurely through Tehran
and its surrounding area in a series of long takes that cover undra-
matic conversations and periods of waiting. Though the film seems
quite simple, it is not a passive viewing experience. Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997)
films slow our heartbeat and focus our attention so that we expe-
rience sensations differently, newly. Though based in an experi-
mental sentiment, Taste of Cherry won the prestigious Palme d’Or
at the Cannes Film Festival and was widely screened across the
world, proving that slow cinema is no longer an obscure, avant-
-garde concept as Warhol’s Sleep, Eat, or Empire.
Other experimental films aim to outline a political message
through an abrasive style. Most famous for its political filmmaking,
Third Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s began in Latin America
by arguing against neocolonialism, capitalism, and the profit-orien-
ted system of Hollywood filmmaking. In Argentina, filmmakers
Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino considered themselves
“militant” artists whose films were screened in homes at secret
meetings and distributed by hand from neighbor to neighbor. Their
most groundbreaking work, a three-part film Hour of the Furnaces
(1968), critiqued Western influence in Latin America with a colli-
sion of images, editing together footage of Western-style discos
with global war photographs. The film ends with a bold statement
that hands the conversation over to the viewer: “Now it is up to
you to draw conclusions, to continue the film. You have the floor.” Hour of the Furnaces
In this way, Third Cinema asked that viewers not receive the mate- (Solanas/Getino, 1968)
rial passively, but be aggravated, shocked, and pushed to action.
Throughout experimental film history, there have been experi-
ments in film form that push the boundaries of what cinema should
look like. Surrealism of the 1920s experimented with bringing
surrealist art principles, like collage and non-sequitors, into short
film form (See Ch1: Film History). These principles were exten-
ded into feature experimental films, like Alejandro Jodorowsky’s
The Holy Mountain (1973) and David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977).
Other experimental shorts played with poetic modes of cinema,
looking for visual ways to evoke universal themes and mythology.
Window Water Baby Moving
Stan Brakhage’s shorts, like Window Water Baby Moving (1959),
explore life, death, sexuality, and nature through silent montages
of images and manipulation of the film stock. By scratching and
writing on film stock and exposing it in creative ways, Brakhage
brings attention to the film medium and its potential shapes. This is
pure cinema, a type of experimental film which overcomes audio-
visual boundaries and restrictions through the manipulation of its
film form. Using the principles of pure cinema, Brakhage’s Mothli-
ght (1963) attaches pieces of grasses, leaves, and moth wings to
Mothlight (Brackage, 1963)
film stock rather than film these materials. The effect of these materials literally moved
through a projector is confusing and breathtaking: they take on abstract shapes and flicke-
ring lines, very unlike the original organic material. This experiment brings attention to the
unnatural means by which film tends to replicate the natural world, and demands an unfe-
ttering of vision from the ‘rules’ of a mainstream cinema. When actually placed through a
projector, the natural world becomes a beautiful mess.
Such experiments in pure cinema have made their way into small moments of feature
film through fantasy sequences and flashbacks. And they are also consistently featured in
opening credits of films and TV shows. David Fincher’s Se7en (1995) pays homage to
Brakhage in its opening, where crew names are “scratched” into individual frames to create
haunting and crackly effects. TV shows Dexter (Manos, 2006-2013) and Halt and Catch
Fire (2014-2017) use textural and abstract experimental footage to evoke a tone and mood
rather than to explain narrative details, like character, motivation, or setting. Such small
touches of experimental film within the more common field of narrative storytelling show-
cases the creative possibilities of playing with form, style, and expectations.
Avant-garde: Vanguard, or ahead of the times. Avant-garde film is experimental in form, style, and/or
subject.
Underground film: Film movements of the 1950s and 1960s that showcased sub-cultures ignored by
Hollywood, such as avant-garde artists, hipsters, and queer communities.
Slow cinema: A style of poetic cinema that intentionally deviates form Hollywood standards of action and
momentum.
Third Cinema: A political filmmaking movement originating in 1960s and 1970s Latin America that critiques
neocolonialism, capitalism, and profit-oriented filmmaking.
Pure cinema: Experimental cinema that focuses on manipulating film material itself, like scratching and
painting the celluloid, and creating shapes and forms rather than narrative story.
Animation
On the simplest level, animation is distinct from live-action film because it is recorded as
individual frames, and because it creates the illusion of motion rather than recording motion
in front of the camera. However, as animation has become increasingly integrated with live-
-action, through computer graphics imagery (CGI), the distinction between the two catego-
ries has become more and more difficult to discern. All blockbusters now fluidly combine
computer graphics with live action footage. Moreover, most feature films include at least
some post-production manipulation of individual frames.
In early film history, animation helped filmmakers to understand persistence of vision,
the principle by which we optically perceive individual images as if they were in motion. In
B eyond G enre 123

GertietheDinosaur
(McCay,1914)
the 19th century, Thaumatropes, flip books, and zoetropes showed images in quick succes-
sion so that the images appeared to become animated (See Ch 1: Film History). Early 20th
century film experiments in animation, like Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), drew individual
frames entirely from scratch, just like a projected flip book. Though cumbersome to make
10,000 individual frames unique, Gertie the Dinosaur comes alive with individual movement
in every part of the screen: the dinosaur’s body, the tree in the foreground, and even the
background details.
It quickly became obvious to animators that shortcuts would need to be taken in order
for the animation form to be made quickly and efficiently, especially as animation was beco-
ming more complicated and colorful. Some animators began drawing on rice paper, which
could be layered and reused for multiple frames. Soon, the industry standard for animating
efficiently became celluloid sheets, the same material used for feature filmmaking reels. Cel
animation, using celluloid sheets, employs a static background layer and a character layer
that is re-drawn and switched out for every frame shot. This way, the background layer does
not have to be re-drawn, and only a small piece of the frame is moving at any one time. As
animation became more popular, especially with Disney’s revolutionary decision to create
animated films aimed at a child audience, the cels became more complicated, with each
character on their own cel sheet, stacked on top of each other in layers.
Though cel animation has dominated the field of hand-drawn
animation, there are other, more rare, types of animation that utilize
other materials. Various painting styles create very different textu-
res in animation. Ink wash animation from China transforms tradi-
tional Chinese paintings into animated subjects with a watery
texture. Paint-on-glass animation uses oil paints, manipulated in
multiple stages of drying, and light projected through the glass on
which they lay. Some animated films have experimented with pain-
ting individual canvases as individual frames of animation. Recently,
Loving Vincent (Kobiela/Welchman, 2017) used 65,000 oil pain- LovingVincent (Kobiela/Welchman2017)
tings, created in the style of Vincent Van Gogh’s art, to generate the
frames of its animation. Each canvas was carefully planned using
computer previsualization, and then the frames themselves were
hand-painted by over 100 artists. Each element of the foreground
and background moves with this hand-made technique, and this
creates the impression of Van Gogh’s art coming alive through the
medium of film.
Stop-motion animation uses manipulated objects to create
each film frame. The same object is used in multiple frames, but it
is manipulated slightly between frames so that, taken together, the
frames create the illusion of motion. Some well-known examples TheCameraman'sRevenge
(Starevich,1912)
of this style are Claymation, which slightly molds clay models between takes, and puppet
animation, which moves puppets into slightly varying positions between takes. Claymation
and puppet animation have always been used for both children and adult genres. Puppet
animation early pioneer Ladislav Starevich, for example, humorously examined sexual infide-
lity, revenge and filmmaking through stop motion animation of dead insects in his 1912 film
The Cameraman’s Revenge. Puppet animation has recently become even more adult with
R-rated films like Team America (Parker, 2004) and Anomalisa (Kaufman/Johnson, 2015),
which received accolades at film festivals.
Pinscreen animation uses movable pins that cast a shadow
during filming. Sand animation pushes sand around between
takes to give the impression of randomly created wind patterns.
In cutout animation, another style of stop-motion animation,
characters and their environments are comprised of flat, 2D
paper figurines. Cutout animation was made famous by Russian
animator Yuri Norstein, who places cutouts on several tiers of
glass to create a foggy, poetic, layered effect in Hedgehog in
the Fog (1975) and Tale of Tales (1979). Cutout animation has
been used in the comedy genre too, including TV shows Monty
Hedgehog in the Fog (Norstein, 1975)
Python’s Flying Circus (MacNaughton/Davies, 1969-1974) and
South Park (Parker/Stone, 1997-).
Computer graphics changed the animation scene entirely. Using digital means of drawing,
animators can save time and energy in creating both foreground and background informa-
tion. Additionally, digital animation can move the “camera” of the scene into areas inac-
cessible through hand-drawn cel animation. Since traditional animation re-uses the same
background cel for multiple frames, only switching out foreground cels to make certain
characters move on top of their environment, there is no way to move into the background,
only across it. But with digital animation, the background can change with every frame, thus
allowing for more complicated and interesting movements within the scene.
The Rescuers Down Under (1990) was the first film to use Disney’s Computer Anima-
tion Production System (CAPS), which composited scanned cels with digital backgrounds
and multiplane effects. The film’s opening credits speeds the “camera” over a field of flowers,
through rock crevices, and into a house. This sequence would not be impossible to produce
using hand-drawn animation techniques, but it would take a great amount of time and
energy to zoom into the background and redraw much of the environment details, which
are constantly in motion. The digital process makes this sequence much easier to produce
since any part of the image can be adjusted frame by frame. The Lion King (1994) used the
same CAPS software to create several cinematic camera movements, like tracking shots and
dolly zooms. The famous stampede sequence, when wildebeests pour over a cliff and fill the
screen, was achieved by digitally creating some individual wildebeests, then randomizing
their movements and digitally multiplying them into a crowd.
Similarly, computer graphics imagery (CGI) has been used extensively in Hollywood
blockbusters to help efficiently and safely create scenarios that are difficult to film as live-
-action performances, including extreme stunts, property damage, and pyrotechnics. The
increased popularization of the fantasy genre, accelerated by Peter Jackson’s The Lord of
the Rings (2001), has encouraged more digital technologies that merge animation with live
B eyond G enre 125

action. Motion capture technology translates live action move-
ment to computer graphics in order to create more authentic
movement and weight in digitally animated creatures. Andy
Serkis’s portrayal of Gollum, a digitally created creature, invol-
ved motion capture of Serkis’s body movements in an empty
studio and also his live performance amongst the other charac-
ters in order to achieve real reactions from the cast. The motion-
-captured digital character was then rotoscoped onto the live
The Lord of the Rings (Jackson, 2001)
performance, thus merging digital animation with a live action
scene.
Green screens, for backgrounds, props, or characters, have
long allowed for films to incorporate multiple layers of footage, filmed separately, into one
believable space. Recently, we have seen such an excessive amount of green screening,
motion capture, and digital animation used in blockbusters that actors are having a hard time
evoking convincing performances when they are forced to work in isolation with little partner
or environment feedback. Some critics of this mode of filmmaking describe it as the “Post-
-Cinema Age”. In a way, the increased use of animation as a substitute for live-action filming
has indeed exceeded our classical notions of “cinema”, or the capturing of motion onto cellu-
loid. By filming only small portions of the frame at any one time (foreground characters or
background environment), heavily using matte composites, and working with the image on a
frame-by-frame basis, our blockbuster movies have incorporated so many animation princi-
ples that it is fair to say that they have moved “beyond” cinema.
CGI: Computer graphics imagery created in post-production. Often merged with live action footage.
Cel animation: Celluloid sheets are painted and layered, then photographed in succession so that they
appear to move.
Stop-motion animation: Uses manipulated objects to create each film frame. Includes claymation, puppet
animation, pinscreen animation, sand animation, and cutout animation.
Digital animation: Frames are drawn in a computer rather than by hand.
Motion capture: Technology that translates live action movement to computer graphics in order to create
more authentic movement and weight in digitally animated creatures.
"Animation is not the art of drawings that move
but the art of movements that are drawn."
-Norman McLaren
Norman McLaren
DR. JEFF MARKER
Understanding film as an artistic medium begins with learning film form. Knowing the terms
to describe what we’re seeing and hearing is our ticket for entry into the conversation. Things
often become most exciting, though, when we encounter a work of art to which the usual
vocabulary does not apply. A film that engages us deeply yet doesn’t fit into any of the usual
categories or allow us to easily apply what we already know is not only a special work of art,
it’s the kind of work that opens up new possibilities for the medium.
Norman McLaren’s Neighbors (1952) is such a work, a short filmed on 16mm that stands out
even among McLaren’s eclectic body of work.
McLaren is primarily known as an experimental animator,

although he also produced commercial work and deserves as
much recognition for his inventive musical scores as his imagery.
He was famous for drawing on and scratching raw film stock
to create images, and he used the same technique to create
the musical scores of many of his films, creating music with no
instruments.
Unlike most of McLaren’s work, Neighbors was filmed entirely

in live action and includes no hand-drawn animation in the film
itself.
Neighbors begins with two men sitting in front of forced-pers-

pective houses, each reading the newspaper and smoking a pipe.
The men are equal in every way: virtually identical houses, chairs,
clothes, etc. McLaren is careful to frame the men symmetrically
so each occupies, or owns, an equal half of the frame. Nothing is
dividing the neighbors, and all is peaceful.
Both story and form begin to change, though, when a flower springs up in the middle of the
frame. Each man becomes enamored with the flower, which McLaren expresses by using an
animation technique called pixilation, in which the filmmaker photographs living subjects
frame-by-frame. It is essentially stop-motion animation that replaces clay figures or puppets
with posed human actors. It is a rarely used animation technique that straddles the line
between live-action and animated filmmaking.
N or m a n McL a ren 127

In Neighbors, the technique first creates moments of silly, surrealistic comedy, as both
men react to the flower with an absurd degree of joy. The tone shifts, though, when the
men begin to argue over ownership of the flower. The story turns decidedly dramatic as
the tension rises between these formerly peaceful neighbors.
Arguing escalates to violence, and the film quickly becomes an extended action sequence
of sorts. Rather than play the fight for thrills, though, McLaren makes the men increasingly
grotesque, and the violence takes a shocking turn. One neighbor knocks down the other’s
house, revealing his neighbor’s wife and infant child. The man brutally assaults the wife
and hurls the child to the ground, presumably killing both. Then the other neighbor does
the same. This scene was so shocking when the film was first distributed that many thea-
tres cut it out prior to showing it. The escalating violence reaches its inevitable crescendo
as the men kill each other. In death, with their families and homes destroyed, each gets his
own flower.
So what would be the result if we applied the basic tools of film analysis to Neighbors?
The film defies generic categorization. It is a comedy, drama, action, social satire, and
tragedy, all in a film less than nine minutes long.
More profoundly, even the form and mode of filmmaking in Neighbors is debatable. Is it
a live-action or animated film? It is both, of course. It is also an experimental film. Howe-
ver, the Academy Awards recognized it with the Oscar for Best Short Documentary, even
though it is entirely scripted. Thus, there isn’t even consensus on what this film is.
Even though the film defies our usual descriptions, it is our knowledge of the language
of film form that allows us to understand the film. The conflict of forms mirrors the film’s
theme of human conflict, and the most powerful dramatization of the destructive human
desire for control and power is the film’s clashing of genres and styles.
McLaren’s film is personal yet offers a universal plea for peace, attempting to cut to the
core of human conflict. It reduces cinematic form to its basic property, the juxtaposition
of image against image, yet eludes basic analysis, pushing both filmmaking and film scho-
larship toward a new vocabulary.
"NORMAN MCLAREN" CONTRIBUTED BY
DR. JEFF MARKER
CMJ DEPARTMENT CHAIR
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH GEORGIA
BEYOND GENRE
(1) Can you think of other examples of slow cinema being created today? Taiwanese director Tsai
Ming-liang, for example, considers slowness to be a form of rebellion against a modern cinema
that limits the expression of the filmmaker due to its obsession with speed. He created a Walker
series where the still individual is set in the midst of urbanity. Many viewers who watched the
films in Tsai’s series felt driven to anger by his slow approach to cinema. What are your thoughts
about slow cinema? Do you consider slow cinema to be cinema, or, like some audiences, a waste
of your time?
(2) More recently Walt Disney Studios has gained a lot of attention for their repeated translation
of animated films like The Lion King (1994) and Lady and the Tramp (1955) into live action
adaptations. How is animated film similar to, yet different from traditional live action cinema?
Think here about our expectations of animation and how we ‘read’ an animated film. How can
we think about realism as pertains to the animated film and its live action counterpart?
(3) Documentary films use different techniques and strategies to convince the viewer that what we
are watching is real. At the same time, editing and other aesthetic choices can suggest meaning
to us that makes the viewer read more into the moment than what we objectively see and hear
on screen. Examine, for instance, a popular docuseries like Tiger King (2020) or Cheer (2020).
How can you see the filmmaker attempting to capture the ‘truth’ of real people and situations
and, conversely, sway us to particular ways of understanding a story?
N or m a n McL a ren 129

C H A P T E R N I N E
WRITING FILM
ANALYSIS
FILM ANALYSIS 131
QUESTIONS TO ASK 132
PAPER EXCERPTS 133

CLOSE ANALYSIS SAMPLE 133
COMPARE-AND-CONTRAST SAMPLE 135
WRITING TIPS 138
FILM ANALYSIS
Excellent film analysis will explain how a film has been made: which filmmaking techni-
ques have been chosen and why, how the visual storytelling supports the narrative, and the
effect that filmmaking elements have on the viewer. It brings together the explicit facts of
the film – mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound – with the implicit or subliminal
effects of the film on its audience.
We often can immediately describe a film's plot and how the film made us feel. These
are easy qualities to identify that do not require analysis to understand. But what is much
harder to explain is how filmmaking choices support the film's narrative and how the film
creates the feelings that the audience experience. Film analysis aims to make visible the
qualities of film that usually remain invisible. To do this, you must be trained in film literacy
– which you have been through your Film Appreciation course! – and you must apply this
training to a film that is worthy of being analyzed. Not every film warrants a close reading of
its parts. But a film that is worthy of being examined will flourish under analysis and reveal
itself to be a complicated system of moving parts that is just as exciting to admire as it is to
experience.
This chapter includes resources for your film analysis paper writing. Papers should start
with gathering data about the filmmaking of your chosen film. Use the "Questions to Ask"
list to gather information about the film's visual storytelling. See student samples for how
this data can be turned into analysis paragraphs. To form a thesis and larger argument, use
the "Writing Tips" list to keep your paper focused and organized.
W r i t i ng f i l m a n a l y s i s 131
QUESTIONS TO ASK
These are questions to help you gather data for analysis. You do not need to answer every
question in your essay.
MISE-EN-SCÈNE. How do props and costumes convey characters and themes? Are
particular colors dominant (or absent)? Is the setting significant? If so, how is it presented?
How does the lighting help convey the setting and the action? How is character blocking
and placement used? Are there any motifs introduced in your film? Where do they occur
in the film, and how do they cue the viewer's expectations?
SPACE. Is the film space deep or shallow? How is space framed to allow a greater
understanding of characters and story? How do editing and sound construct the space
of the scene, and how does this space relate to the overall narrative action of the film?
CINEMATOGRAPHY. Where is the camera placed in relation to the action? How

do particular compositions draw attention to elements of the settings, characters, or
themes? How does camera movement function in the scene? Are different focal lengths
or depths of field used? How does cinematography reinforce the mise-en-scène?
EDITING. What kinds of transitions are there between shots? Are these always the
same? Do they change? Does the editing have a particular rhythm, and is it consistent?
Does it conform to rules of continuity, or does it seem disjunctive and discontinuous?
What spatial and temporal relations are articulated through cutting? Graphic relations?
Rhythmic relations? Associative connections?
SOUND. What sounds are present? When does volume or pitch change? Is silence used?
Are specific sounds linked to cuts or camera movement? When and how are onscreen
and off-screen sound used? Are sounds diegetic or non-diegetic?
SAM P L E O F C L O S E A N AL Y SIS
First published by James Barrie as a play in 1904, the classic story of Peter Pan, the boy who
wouldn’t grow up, has been told countless times across the century. Today, the story: “Peter Pan
}
stands in our culture as a monument to the impossibility of its own claims” (Rose, 94). P. J. Hogan’s
2003 live action film, Peter Pan, attempts to draw in the viewers to a world where imagination
and reality are indistinguishable to children. In a single shot from the 2003 film, the clip during
which Wendy, Peter and the boys first begin flying over the city is presented with a tone, which
contributes a more romantic element that is unrealistic at such a young age. Primarily, as the four fly
over London, the focus of the scene is centered around interactions between Wendy and Peter rather
than all four of the children and the environment. The choreography of the two characters conveys The claim
"romantic tone"
is proven with
a more romantic relationship through the proximity of the actors’ faces, the facial expressions of choreography,
framing, lighting,
and color
the actors, and the motion of their heads and hands toward one-another. Similarly, the lighting in
evidence.
the scene during the sunset creates a more romantic tone than a lighthearted one of childhood. The
depiction of the characters flying through the pinks, reds and oranges of the sunset with low fill
lighting, backlighting, and warm tones creates a sense of romantic ambience which distracts from
{
the novelty of the flying experience.
In combination with this, the director’s choices in the framing and setting create a more
Connects terms with
visuals. "Thematic
scene" is linked
character-focused scene rather than a thematic scene. The setting claims to feature London yet
with setting-
oriented reality.
includes nothing but chimneys and a rather empty street. In choosing a less detailed setting, Hogan’s
"Character-focused
scene" is linked
with a bare setting film detracts from the connection of reality to the imagination. Because the children are not easily
and imagination.
Te r m s u s e d t o
prove that how
the film privileges
imagination over
reality.
identified to be in a realistic, established city, the imaginary aspect of flying above a city loses much
{
of its connection and context with the film’s theme of blending reality and imagination. While the
children briefly fly past Big Ben, they interact amongst stars and planets for a significant amount of
Links mise-
}
en-scène with
symbolic meaning. time. In “space,” the director’s choices for the setting mimic a project or mobile and even include a
few unrecognizable planets to significantly emphasize imagination over reality.
The connection of the nursery shot and flight shot serves to both contrast and connect
imagination and reality. The scene centers much more upon the experience of the characters than
the overall theme. Both the nursery scene lighting and the lighting in the flight shot utilize warm,
fill lighting. It can be argued that this version of the film is actually set in the land of make believe,
rather than linked between the imaginary and the real. The use of snow in the setting before the Connects two
scenes through
lighting,
children begin to fly contributes to the youthful attitude of imagination in contrast to the rigidity choreography,
an color to show
overall pattern in
of the adults in the scene. The choreography of the young boy “tumbling” behind the heads of the filmmaking.
adults contrasts his movement to that of the grown characters. By including this, the adult’s focus
on the loss of the hat rather than the fact that the children are flying symbolizes the blindness
of adults to the imaginary world of children. The vivid coloration, despite the low-key lighting,
connects to the setting as fantasy as well. Although Big Ben is still included briefly in the children’s
flight, it is featured so much less than the vivid planets and stars that its inclusion seems to be an
afterthought.
SAM P L E G E N E R O U SL Y C O N T R I B U T E D B Y H O P E
G A N D Y , U N G C LASS O F 2 0 2 1 , F R O M H E R P A P E R
" P E T E R PA N "
SAM P L E O F
C O M P A R E - A N D - C O N T R A S T A N A LY S I S
To get a better understanding as to what the expectations are for the classic shootout scene,
one merely must look back to the American Western. One of the most classical and cultural well-
}
known variations of the shootout is the “Mexican standoff”. One famous example that contains the
Mexican standoff is Sergio Leone’s 1966 spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. This
version of the shootout consists of two or more people standing face to face at a set distance. There
Overview of one
is a slow build-up of tension as everyone is anticipating when the other men are going to draw their
genre's style,
including framing,
weapons and fire. It all builds into a climactic and swift gunfight that usually ends with the main tempo, and
duration. Will
be used later to
character prevailing over his foes in an epic showdown. This type of shootout is the most satisfying prove difference
from other genres
styles.
for the audience as the tension building up leads to a conclusion in which all enemies to the hero
are vanquished and the hero can walk off into the sun victorious over evil.
The shootout scene in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), however, is used
in a less traditional manner than what could be expected from genres like the Western. The Grand
Budapest Hotel is a comedy with a fictionist historical setting. Although the cast includes a wide
array of well-known actors, this film can easily be considered an alternative film. The shootout
scene in question occurs at the climax of the film and has a short duration of one minute. Although
shootout scenes are more associated with the action genre, Anderson has already set up the
audience’s expectation to how this shootout will occur. His sense of humor and use of comedy
prepares the audience for how ridiculous the scene ends up being. If there was one shot throughout
{
One stylistic the entire scene that truly expresses what Anderson was trying to convey with this scene it is the
element is isolated
to showcase the
film's overall style. extreme long shot pointing straight to the ceiling as a blaze of gunfight is exchanged through the
{
chamber. No one can be seen firing the guns; the audience can only see the muzzle flashes and the
Close analysis of
mise-en-scène. walls getting impacted by an absurd quantity of bullets. This shot also puts into perspective as to
how big the space of the hallway floor is. As for the entire sequence, it all started with the main
villain firing at our heroes. This act of sudden violence leads to more and more people exiting their
rooms with weapons drawn already and proceeding to shoot and continually miss each other. The
}
majority of shots during this sequence are wide angle with some panning shots to further explore
how huge the room is and to show the amount of random people that have entered the shootout.
The amount of firepower occurring in this scene with no one ever getting injured is humorous, and
Explains humor by
naming audience
the ending with the constable arresting everyone for the shootout is not how we would expect this expectations and
how they are
defied by the
scene to end. This seemed to be the actual climax where a lot of people, including the villain and scene.
maybe even the heroes, would die. However, Anderson merely used the shootout scene to have a
quick excerpt on the absurdity of how a scene like this can play out. And his use of the shootout
scene works very well for his comedic purposes that fits seamlessly in his style of humor.
As for Bad Boys II, Michael Bay’s 2003 portrayal of the shootout scene is seemingly more
}
straightforward with a modern twist to it. Starting with the music, it is more upbeat and central to
the action as a non-diegetic source to help keep the pace. One series of shots that portrays Bay’s
Proves scene
style in earnest is the 360 degrees rotating camera. The camera physically travels through walls in "intensity" with
cinematography
details, like
a few separate long takes to reveal what the Haitians and the cops are doing simultaneously. The camera movement
and long takes.
camera is continually in motion, which adds to the fast pace and intensity of the scene as the
audience can get a grasp of what each side is doing to outmaneuver the other. The camera in this
case is restrained to medium and close-up shots focusing more on the characters as the space is
{
more cramped, which is fitting for this type of shootout as both parties are forced to fight head on.
Additionally, this scene does include a hint of comedy. However, the comedy mainly comes from
Differentiates
the dialogue. The focus of the scene is clearly the action as the comedic elements like Marcus and
this humor from
Anderson's style
Mike’s banter or toilet water splashing onto Mike’s face are secondary. This type of blunt humor is
with specific
comparison:
dialogue. also a staple of Michael Bay as the jokes are simple and to the point. It is unmistakable that Bay is
more concerned with making sure that the audience is fully engaged in the firefight and wants them
to take it for what it is; a battle between the good guy cops and the previously unexcepted enemy
that we want the cops to defeat because they are established to be criminals.
Each of these two-shootout scenes are different as they were made by two different directors,
yet there are also similarities as these scenes do come from a common place. They both in some
way go against the cultural expectation of what the shootout scene should be. They were able to
Clearly states
subvert these expectations through their direction and sense of genre. The genre from each film two specific
similarities,
while keeping
depends on how the director orchestrates the scene. One used in a quirkier form of comedy while the styles
separate in this
comparison.
the other is used for pure action and excitement. The shootout scene ultimately is about conflict
between the leading characters and an opposing force. It was originally meant to add tension and a
sense of danger for the characters the audience has grown to root for. Even if these two scenes are
used in different manners, both scenes achieve creating a build-up that would lead to a satisfying
end whether it was meant to be funny or action packed.
SAM P L E G E N E R O U SL Y C O N T R I B U T E D B Y E R I C
A Z O T E A , U N G C LASS O F 2 0 2 0 , F R O M HIS P A P E R
" E X P E C TATI O N S O F TH E SH O O T O U T S C E N E
TH R O U G H D I F F E R E N T G E N R E S "
WRITING TIPS
FIND A FOCUS. Establish an argument upon which your ideas hinge. Think about what
stand or point your paper is making. Analyze your film to prove this larger point.
IDENTIFY PATTERNS. Look closely at the visual and aural choices that the film has
made. Find patterns, and draw conclusions to help develop your argument.
AVOID PLOT SUMMARY. Organize your essay around key points in your argument,
rather than a chronological recap of the sequence.
USE EXAMPLES, NOT EXTENDED VISUAL DESCRIPTION. Select specific filmmaking

examples to fully analyze rather than describe everything that you see on screen.
BALANCE EVIDENCE WITH ANALYSIS. For every sentence or two of observations,

follow with a sentence or two of your analysis.
REPLACE EVALUATIVE LANGUAGE WITH EXPLANATION. Analyze the effects of

techniques used, not their reception.
"The costumes are strange" "The clothing looks tight, almost suffocating
the actor. This costume choice limits the
character's movement through space and
symbolizes his oppression."
USE PRECISE FILM TERMS. Is the camera movement a track, tilt, pan, or zoom? Is it a
high-angle shot or a low-angle shot? When in doubt, check the glossary.
AVOID VAGUE LANGUAGE. Aim instead to analyze the specific effect of individual
techniques.
"The use of lighting in this "The light creates a shadow across her
scene is very effective." face, which tells the audience that her
intentions are impure."
C O N C L U S I O N
Film as Mass Media

As we have learned in this textbook, film appreciation takes two parts: analyzing film
form and film style. The elements of film form are the building blocks of cinema: all of the
tools that a filmmaker has at her disposal to tell her story. Form includes mise-en-scène –
the ability to externalize the themes and subtext of the story. It includes editing – the ability
to manipulate time. It includes cinematography – the ability to immerse the viewer within
the storyworld.
Film style describes the choices that are made with these building blocks of film form.
A filmmaker might choose contemporary costumes for a historical adaptation to show the
continued relevance of the story to contemporary audiences. They might choose to film in
long takes to draw out time and make the audience feel as though they are experiencing
the film co-presently with the characters. They might choose to film in tight close-ups rather
than high crane shots to make the audience more aligned with character emotions.
As cinema became the most popular form of entertainment in the 20th century, other
medias started to adopt film form and style. Books started to adopt cinematic qualities. Late
modernist writers, like Virginia Woolf, started to rethink the form of literature by looking at
the form of film, which had offered artists a new way of perceiving the world. Literary narra-
tives of the 1920s became more interested in multiple points of view, “long take” stream-
of-consciousness writing, and images of movement.
The early 20th century also saw the development of comic
strips and graphic novels, which turned the cinematic expe-
rience into a textual one. Readers could merge text and image
in their minds to create cinematic movement and editing. Some
magazines even turned film stills into comic book frames, colo-
rizing and captioning them so that the reader would be able
to experience the film anew. For example, in the 1930s, Movie
Comics used the Italian Fumeti style of rendering to bring
current films to the page. It mixed film stills with line art and
original dialogue to give films like The Son of Frankenstein a
new or alternative life.
This hybrid of photorealistic and hand-drawn images
accustomed audiences to the style of animation, which and in
also adoptinged film form to make made animated characters
feel as though they were in a live-action film. Mickey Mouse
was given close-ups. Cinderella was “filmed” in tracking shots
as she danced across the ballroom. Lady and the Tramp were
Movie Comics, 1939
given glamourous “three-point” lighting as they fell in love. But
the relationship between animation and film worked both ways.
Just as animation drew from film form, cinema started to adopt more and more elements of
animation in its special effects and visual effects. Matte paintings and green screens merged
two planes of image, just like traditional cel animation. Motion-capture technology turned
F i l m a s M a s s Med i a 139
actor motion into digital data, much like traditional rotoscoping that lifted one element from
a frame to import it within another frame.
As more and more animation and special effects were adopted by cinema, film form star-
ted to look more like a hybrid and less like a pure art that has its own distinct style. As digi-
tal technologies entered the industry in the 1990s, cinema started to become less reliant
on its traditional modes of creation: celluloid, heavy cameras, and hands-on editing. For this
reason, the 21st century mode of digital filmmaking is often described as the “Post-Cinema
Era” or “The Digital Turn”.
Our current state of filmmaking, within this Digital Turn, still relies on film form such as
costume design, lighting setups, camera movement, and editing. But its style has changed
radically. The popularity of films like The Lord of the Rings and Avatar have solidified a film
style that includes very little true live-action filmmaking. Actors perform on green stages and
are covered in motion-capture reflectors while most of the film is animated in post-produc-
tion. Digital creatures become the most coveted “actors” of a blockbuster film. And highly
dangerous spectacles, like flying, falling, and crashing, become the most acceptable style of
entertainment.
Online streaming has radically change the viewing experience, as the landscape of cinema
has become occupied by platforms over theaters and as the cinema spectator has changed.
No longer do we go to the movies to sit in the dark as a community to experience a film
collectively. Now, we see the rise of the solitary cinema viewer, one who chooses to stay at
home and stream movies. And some platforms are beginning to make films with that spec-
tator in mind.
The 21st century has seen a radical change in the landscape of cinema , but it has also
seen the rise of quality television that has exceeded the high standards of 1950s “Golden
Age” TV to create a “Platinum Age” of entertainment. This new phase of television – from
HBO’s The Sopranos to FX’s Atlanta to Netflix’s The Witcher – differentiates itself from clas-
sic television by adopting a cinematic style. This TV content has blockbuster-grade budgets,
the most advanced technology, and has enticed the most sought-after film actors. It adopts
film form and mimics film style, but at its best, it also exceeds the capability of film form enti-
rely. We could call this era of high-quality television “long form” cinema because it gives us
eight-hour movies that have been chopped up into episodes, such a lengthy project that no
theater would be able to screen it.
In the face of these changes, we find that it’is hard to define the term “cinema” anymore.
Cinema has become hybridized with other medias. And other medias have been so inflected
by film form and style that some have become better at producing films than cinema itself.
So in the 21st century, we come back to the classic question with which we started: What is
film? It’s a classic form of storytelling, yes. But cinema still serves the same function as it did
at the beginning of the 20th century: it is a new mode of vision that makes us see the world
differently, and it is a visual language through which we communicate.
GLOSSARY
180-degree rule: Do not cross the axis of action within a single scene. Adhering to the 180-degree rule
maintains directionality of characters (one character always sits on the left of the screen; the other charac-
ter always sits on the right).
Actualities: Early non-fiction short films that were often composed as static one-shots. The first films in
cinema history were actualities.
ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement): An actor records her own voice in post-production for crisper
sound quality.
Analogous color: Three colors next to each other on the color wheel; a dominant color, a supporting color
and a color that is a mixture of the two preceding colors or an accent. Eg. blue, green and blue-green.
Anamorphic widescreen lens: A specific lens developed to capture more image onto the film stock through
compression, which then would be expanded in projection. Had similar distortion problem as other wide-
-angle lenses.
Aspect ratio: The ratio of width to height of a screen.
Asynchronous sound: See Lack of Fidelity
Avant-garde: Vanguard, or ahead of the times. Avant-garde film is experimental in form, style, and/or
subject.
Axis of action: An imaginary line that can be drawn between two characters in a shot/revere-shot setup.
This line is the “180-degrees” of the 180-degree rule.
Back light: Defines the actor outline, separating them from the background. Can create a “halo effect” in
blond hair.
Backstage musical: Musical subgenre that is self-reflexive, telling the story of the making of a musical.
Benshi: Film narrators who describe a silent film while standing just to the side of the screen. A Japanese
tradition.
Black & white cinema: Films absent of color hues. Can be achieved with black & white film stock or in digi-
tal post-production.
Blimp: A large box that encases a camera to dampen the sound of cranking.
G l o s s a ry 141
Blocking: See Choreography
Boom microphone: A mic attached to a long pole. Allows dialogue to be recorded discreetly, without
microphones embedded in costumes or props.
Breaking the 180-degree rule: The camera crosses the axis of action in a conversation or fight scene so
that each character flips positions in the screen with cuts. Creates a sense of unease or disruption.
Camera Obscura: a box with a hole on its side that reproduced a naturally occurring optical illusion.
Canted-angle / Dutch-angle shot: Camera is tilted on its axis to evoke imbalance, anxiety, or a mental
break.
Causal narrative: Story events progress in a cause-and-effect relationship. Every event is the cause of a
certain action, often creating predictable outcomes. There is little room for randomness or non-sequiturs
in these narratives.
Cel animation: Celluloid sheets are painted and layered, then photographed in succession so that they
appear to move.
CGI: Computer graphics imagery created in post-production. Often merged with live action footage.
Chiaroscuro lighting: See High-contrast lighting
Choreography / Blocking: The design of movement in space and time.
Chronophotography: Photography that captures a quick succession of movements in several images. Origi-
nally used for scientific study of body movement.
Cinema of attractions: Concept developed by theorist Tom Gunning to describe how early moviegoers
were attracted to cinema primarily as a shocking and exciting new technology.
Cinématographe: A small, portable recording camera, printer, and projector, invented in 1895 by French-
men Louis and Auguste Lumière; known for being the first all-in-one commercially viable film camera.
City-symphony: Poetic film celebrating a specific city.
Clapboard: A film slate or device that creates synch points for image and sound.
Classical Hollywood narrative: A specific storytelling structure developed in early American cinema that
has become the norm for narrative film. Includes elements like the three-act structure, causal relationships
between events, clear character motivation, and often, a closed ending.
Claymation: A type of stop-motion animation that slightly molds clay models between takes. A joining of
the words clay and animation.
Closed ending: The film ends with a clear resolution to story events. Most often seen in Classical Hollywood
narratives.
Clothesline staging: the staging of so many characters side-by-side to fill a film frame that they look like
they are pinned to a line.
Color correction: Adjusts color hue, light, and saturation across shots to create cohesive sequences.
Color grading: Creates world immersion by casting scenes in a particular color hue.
Color palette: Combination of color hues and saturations to convey mood and tone through visual means.
Includes monochromatic, analogous, complementary, and triadic palettes.
Complementary colors: Colors opposite each other on the color wheel ( a circle showing the relationship of
colors to each other). These colors strongly contrast with one another, and create tension in the storyworld.
Continuity system / Hollywood system: Standardized film conventions that make it easier for the viewer
to understand the film’s time, space, and movements. Includes establishing shots, shot/reverse shots, the
180-degree rule, match-on-actions, and eyeline matches.
Costumes / Costume design: What a character wears in specific scenes to aid in the creation of meaning
for audiences, for example by denoting the historical time period, characters’ emotions or development
over the course of a story.
Crane shot: Camera and cinematographer sit on a crane, which films from above and can “fly” over the
set.
Crosscutting / Parallel editing: A sequence that stitches together shots from two different spaces to show
two events occurring at the same time.
Cut: The most common editing technique used to transition from one shot immediately to the next shot.
Dada: A short movement of the 1910s that expressed meaninglessness and disillusionment in the world.
An absurdist view of life is portrayed with nonsense, unstable camera movements, and play with fast and
slow motion.
Deep focus: A style developed in the late 1930s, often attributed to Orson Welles. Creates sharp focus
through several planes of space in the frame. Requires a wide-angle lens, small aperture, set light, and deep
space in the mise-en-scène.
Deep space: Many planes of space moving off into the distance, created by set design.
G l o s s a ry 143
Defamiliarization: Taking an everyday, familiar object and rendering it strange in order to introduce new
ways of seeing and experiencing the familiar thing.
Depth of field: The range of distance that is kept in sharp focus within the frame. A shallow depth of field
keeps a small amount of space in focus. A large depth of field keeps a large amount of space in focus.
Diegesis: A story world within which characters live and interact with its own set of rules and customs.
Includes what is seen in the frame and also what exists beyond the edges of the frame that characters
react to.
Digital animation: Frames are drawn in a computer rather than by hand.
Direct address: When characters on screen appear to look at and speak ‘direct’ to the camera in an acknow-
ledgement of the audience’s presence, often called ‘breaking the fourth wall’.
Direct Cinema / Observational Cinema: A 1960s movement that featured unmanipulated long takes,
unnarrated footage, and undramatic editing.
Directional microphone: A mic that captures sound from a single source. (As opposed to “omnidirectio-
nal mic”)
Discontinuity editing: Does not follow conventions of the continuity or Hollywood system. Points atten-
tion to itself by disregarding “invisible editing” rules.
Dissolves: Transition between two shots where one image slowly disappears as the other image slowly
appears.
Dolly shot: Camera is placed on a moving platform attached to a track. The track can be set up in a line or
a curve. The cinematographer sits on the platform (dolly) with the camera as it is pushed along the track.
Dolly zoom / Vertigo Effect: A style developed by Hitchcock for his film Vertigo (1958) where the environ-
ment appears to contract or expand. Achieved with a dolly track and zoom lens.
Double dolly shot: Both camera and actor sit on dollies whose movement is linked. Creates a dream-like
effect of interiority.
Drone shot: A drone-mounted camera films from the air. Often used for establishing shots, and the footage
is usually rendered in slow motion for a smoother effect.
Dubbing: One actor’s voice is replaced with another’s in post-production.
Dutch-angle shot: See Canted-angle
Elliptical editing: See Montage sequence
Essay film: Self-reflexive films that critique or openly discuss documentary conventions.
Establishing shot: A common way to introduce a new space at the beginning of a scene. Most often an
establishing shot is an extreme long shot of a landscape and characters interacting within it.
Ethnographic film: A visual anthropological study.
Eyeline match: A shot of a character looking off-camera cut with a shot of an object. The cut suggests that
the object is a point-of-view shot from the character’s perspective.
Fade in: A solid color gradually becomes an image. Usually signals the beginning of a story segment.
Fade out: An image gradually becomes a solid color. Traditionally often used to conclude a film.
Fast motion: Image is captured at a slower speed and so appears to speed up when projected.
Femme fatale: A seductive yet dangerous female villain in the film noir genre.
Figure expression: The posture of an actor and the expressions of their face.
Figure movement: An actor’s gestures and character action.
Fill light: A soft light that fills out the shadows cast by a key light.
Film / Movies / Cinema: Moving images and the telling of stories; the celluloid or film stock upon which
these moving images were printed
Film Noir: Genre of the 1940s that features low angles, close-ups, harsh shadows, and deep space to
represent psychological turmoil and anxiety. Associated with several historical moments: post-Depression
threatened masculinity, the Hays Code, and the Red Scare.
Film Stock: See Celluloid
Final Girl: A slasher film trope coined by Carol J. Clover. Describes a female character who survives the
serial killer’s attacks and becomes the film’s hero.
Foley: The reproduction of everyday sounds using various materials in a studio. Named after the sound-e-
ffects artist Jack Foley.
Frame / Film Frame: a still image on a strip of celluloid that together make up the entirety of a film.
Framing: Using the rectangular edges of the camera viewfinder to compose and choose what will be shot
onscreen.
G l o s s a ry 145
French Impressionism: A cinema movement of the 1920s in which character psychology is portrayed with
point-of-view storytelling, lighting, mobile framing, and optical effects.
Genres: Categories of story-types that are used by studios for marketing purposes. The predictability and
repetition of genre elements is the basis for film-watching choices, audience expectations, and creative
surprises.
German Expressionism: A 1920s art and cinema movement that expressed suffering and angst through
exaggerated acting, harsh shadows, and off-kilter set geometry.
Gimmick: An extraneous device or event meant to attract attention. Examples are marketing campaigns
and 4D theater tricks.
Graphic match / Match cut: Adjoining shots use objects that take up similar shapes in the screen. This
creates a comparison between objects. In discontinuity editing, the objects usually have no relation to
each other and the non-sequitur is jarring. In continuity editing, the similar shapes help to blend the two
shots together and the cut becomes “invisible”.
Green screens: Vivid green backdrops that, through a process called Chroma keying, allow media techni-
cians to layer any other footage or background behind actors or foreground making one composite belie-
vable space.
Handheld camera: The camera is held in the hands of its operator, often to produce a shaky and more
realistic effect.
Hard lighting: Lighting that casts sharp and defined shadow. Often shows imperfections.
High-angle shot: Camera is tilted down to film an object or character from above. This shot often makes a
character look vulnerable and small.
High-contrast lighting / Chiaroscuro: A type of low-key lighting that emphasizes the difference between
shadowy spaces and light spaces. Often used for metaphorical effect.
High-height camera: Camera is placed high above the ground to capture something in the air or a distant
view.
High-key lighting: Brightly lights a scene with few (if any) shadows.
Hollywood system: See Continuity system
Horror genre: Broadly covers themes of violence, terror, taboos, fears, and anxieties. Sometimes allegori-
cal, focusing on issues of female bodies, gender, and sexuality. Stylistically built on low-key lighting, sound
effects, and jump scares.
Iconography: Objects that instantly identify a genre or subgenre.
Implicit meaning: Story meaning that is not given directly to the viewer, but is hidden and needs active
interpretation to unpack.
Invisible editing: The prime goal of continuity editing is to be invisible to the viewer. This way, the viewer
does not focus on the editing, but rather focuses on emotions, story, characters, etc.
Iris wipe: A transition used in early cinema that typically takes a circular shape and gradually grows smaller
until the screen is left black and no image is visible.
J-cut: A type of sound bridge that bleeds the next scene’s sound into the first scene’s image.
J-Horror: Horror sub-genre from Japan that critiques alienating modern life through figures of ghosts
(onryu) and familial relations.
Jump cut: A cut between two shots where the camera position remains the same. A small piece of film is
cut out, so that the object on screen looks "jumpy".
Jump scare: A technique used in horror cinema to surprise or scare audiences through sudden movement
or abrupt changing of an image. Usually punctuated by a character’s scream or an uncanny sound.
Key light: The main source of illumination.
Kinetoscope: A type of peep show device activated by putting a coin in the slot and invented by Thomas
Edison and William Dickson in 1891.
Kuleshov Effect: The psychological principle that adjoining shots influence each other’s qualities in the
viewer’s eyes.
Lack of fidelity (asynchronous sound): Sound effects are obviously different from the prop’s “natural”
sound. Often used for exaggerated or comic effect.
L-cut: A type of sound bridge that bleeds a scene’s sound into the next scene’s image.
Leitmotif: A musical phrase that comes to be associated with a particular character or place.
Linear editing: A form of early film editing where strips of film were cut with a razor blade and taped back
together with clear tape (splicing), arranging images and sound in a logical sequence to tell a story.
Low-angle shot: Camera is tilted up to film an object or character from below. This shot often makes a
character look powerful and large.
Low-height camera: Camera is placed low to the ground, without a tilt. This shot may capture someone on
ground-level, or it could capture feet.
Low-key lighting: Creates a dark, shadowy look with a softer key light.
G l o s s a ry 147
Magic Lantern: One of the earliest pre-cinematic projectors that used a transparent plate, lens and light
source to screen its images to audiences.
Match-on-action: A cut between two camera angles is “hidden” by an action that is shown in both shots.
For example, the action of a door opening, when matched in two shots, “hides” the fact that one shot was
filmed from inside a room and the next show was filmed from outside.
Matte painting: A painting that is composited with live footage to take the place of an on-location set.
Monochromatic color: Multiple saturations or values of the same color hue.
Montage sequence / Elliptical editing: A sequence that condenses great expanses of time by showing
small portions of actions stitched together.
Motif: Any significant element of a film that is repeated to deepen narrative meaning.
Motion capture: Technology that translates live action movement to computer graphics in order to create
more authentic movement and weight in digitally animated creatures.
Multiple exposures: A technique where two or more shots are superimposed in the same frame by expo-
sing the original frame or still image repeatedly to light or other images.
Musical: New genre created in response to the rise of sound film. Features singing, dancing, and specta-
cle-driven camerawork.
Mutoscope: A type of flip-card peep show device invented by William Dickson and Herman Casler in
1894.
Narration: The subjective telling of story from a specific point of view. This point of view can be seen in
plot organization, in a voiceover, and in cinematography, editing, or mise-en-scène choices.
Narrative film: A fictional or fictionalized story. As opposed to documentaries, which are often called
“non-narrative” films.
Narrator: The character or characters from whose point of view the story is told. The character(s) may be
on-screen or off-screen; they may be diegetic or non-diegetic.
Nickelodeon: Permanent indoor exhibition spaces that charged a nickel for admission in the early 1900s.
Non-diegetic: Elements that exist outside of the diegesis, or story world. Characters in the story cannot
see or hear non-diegetic elements, for example credits, subtitles, or orchestral soundtrack. When a narra-
tor is non-diegetic, they exist outside of the diegesis and characters on screen are not aware that he is
speaking.
Objective / Objective Perspective: Everything that is visible before our eyes or understood about the
storyworld. There are no emotional insights from a character’s perspective. This camera often keeps us at
a distance, making us voyeurs.
Observational cinema: See Direct cinema
Off-screen: Events that occur beyond the film frame provided to the viewers. These events are in the
diegesis and characters may have access to them, but viewers must learn of off-screen events by deduc-
tion.
Off-screen sound: Diegetic sound whose action is out of frame.
On-location: A real space is used as a set for a scene. As opposed to a “studio” set.
Onryou: Vengeful, wet female ghosts stemming from Japanese folklore and literature. Characterized by
their long black hair, corpse-pale skin and inhuman movements that are the principal trope of J-Horror.
Open ending: The film intentionally leaves the audience uncertain about the future of characters.
Pan: Camera swivels from side to side.
Parallel editing: See Crosscutting
Pedestal: Camera axis is lifted up or down while camera itself remains level.
Phantasmagoria: A horror exhibition chiefly produced through a magic lantern that projected images of
demons and skeletons onto walls, smoke, and transparent curtains to frighten its audiences.
Phi phenomenon: The mental act of suturing the gaps between frames or images.
Photography: The creation of permanent images with light on a light-sensitive material, often an emulsion
on paper or celluloid.
Pinhole Camera: See Camera Obscura
Plot: The arrangement of story elements in time. Events can be organized chronologically or told out of
temporal order.
Prop: Short for “property”. Any object used in set design.
Psychological horror: A subgenre of horror that positions the spectator within the growing fear and mental
instability of its characters.
G l o s s a ry 149
Puppet animation: A type of stop-motion animation that moves puppets into slightly varying positions
between takes.
Pure cinema: Experimental cinema that focuses on manipulating film material itself, like scratching and
painting the celluloid, and creating shapes and forms rather than narrative story.
Ramping: Fast motion and slow motion used sequentially in a single shot.
Rashomon Effect: A term used to describe the unreliability of eyewitness accounts. Based on the film
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950).
Rear projection: Footage is projected onto a backdrop while the actor is filmed in front of it.
Reenactments: Common convention of including staged scenarios of past events within non-fiction film.
Reestablishing shot: A return to a wide view of the setting, after the closer view that followed the estab-
lishing shot, to remind us of the map and where characters are situated within it.
Restricted narration: Both the protagonist and the audience are given access to the same story informa-
tion.
Romantic comedy: Genre that follows a simple structural convention: a boy and girl alternate loving and
hating each other until they are reunited through a grand romantic gesture.
Room tone: An ambient sound that is emitted from every room. Recorded room tone provides natura-
lism to a scene and helps to blend together sound recorded from different sites (for example, on set and
in studio).
Scene-to-scene editing: Editing that stitches together multiple sequences. Often this type of editing
moves between times and/or spaces.
Science Fiction / Sci-Fi: Speculative genre that follows themes of science, technology, ethical or moral
anxieties, and social philosophy. Includes iconography of futuristic technology, scientists, or a dystopian
setting. Often allegorical stories that address historical events and social systems through subtext.
Sequence: A larger unit of film that is made of several shots stitched together with cuts. Each sequence
exists in a single time and space.
Set design: The dressing or décor of a set and the way that space is staged.
Shaky cam shot: A rough, bumpy shot often associated with Direct Cinema documentaries of the 1960.
Can be achieved with a handheld camera on set or with computer graphics in post-production.
Shallow space: Few planes of space (sometimes only two). Often gives a sense of claustrophobia or a flat-
tened image.
Shot: A single piece of footage without any cuts. The smallest unit of film.
Shot/Reverse-shot: A common way to edit two characters in conversation. One shot features one charac-
ter; the other shot (the “reverse-shot”) features a second character. Cuts move us between these two shots
as the characters converse.
Shot-to-shot editing: Editing that stitches together multiple shots into one sequence.
Slasher Film: Horror sub-genre popularized in the 1980s that typically features naive teenagers who
become the prey of a serial killer.
Slow cinema: A style of poetic cinema that intentionally deviates form Hollywood standards of action and
momentum.
Slow motion: Image is captured at a faster speed and so appears to slow down when projected.
Soft lighting: Diffused light that hides imperfections.
Sonic close-up: The volume of a certain sound effect is increased to bring attention to an object or expe-
rience.
Sound bridge: Bleeds sound from one scene into another. Creates a sense of continuity between sharp
cuts.
Sound fidelity (synchronous sound): Each prop that we see on screen makes a believable sound in post-
-production. The image and sound appear to match.
Sound-on-disc: Early sound technology that synched a record player’s sound with the projector’s image.
Sound-on-film (optical soundtrack): Sound technology that prints the sound track directly on the film strip
itself. For celluloid film, this became the standard of production.
Sound perspective: Matches camera distance to sound volume. Sonic close-ups are matched with visual
close-ups. Sound becomes muffled when it is far away from the camera or unimportant to the story.
Special Effects: Magic tricks or effects not occurring naturally that are achieved on set (commonly abbre-
viated as SFX) as compared to visual effects (VFX) that are added afterwards with a computer.
Steadicam: Technology developed by Garrett Brown in the 1970s where the camera can be attached to the
cinematographer’s body with stabilizer mounts to create a smooth movement while walking.
Stop-motion / Stop-motion animation: Uses manipulated objects to create each film frame. Includes
claymation, puppet animation, pinscreen animation, sand animation, and cutout animation.
Story: A series of events that form the building blocks of narrative.
G l o s s a ry 151
Structural conventions: Expectations of plot, character, setting, or style.
Subjective / Subjective perspective: Places us within the character’s experience, that is, the particular
emotional or mental state of the character.
Subtitles: Captioned dialogue printed on the screen on top of the film image. Used to provide translated
dialogue information in foreign-language films and captioned dialogue for hearing-impaired viewers.
Surrealism: A 1920s art and cinema movement that focused on dream logic, absurd combinations of shots,
and shocking imagery.
Suture: To fully immerse audiences into the screen so that they forget they are watching a film and iden-
tify with characters.
Talkie: Early term for sound cinema. The Jazz Singer (1927) is commonly descried as the first “talkie”, since
it was the first sound film to feature spoken dialogue.
Talking heads: Common convention in which interview subjects are cut off at the shoulders.
Telephoto lens: Range in focal length from 70mm to 300mm or more. Captures a long range of space,
which makes it optimal for filming at long distances. The distance of the telephoto lens flattens planes of
space in the frame, making objects appear extremely close together.
Temporal frequency: The amount of times that an event or shot recurs in a film.
Thematic codes: Subtext embedded within genres and subgenres, often based in historical context.
Third Cinema: A political filmmaking movement originating in 1960s and 1970s Latin America that criti-
ques neocolonialism, capitalism, and profit-oriented filmmaking.
Three-point lighting system: A convention of lighting that includes a key light, fill light, and back light. Part
of the Classical Hollywood system that created "glamour" shots.
Tilt: Camera tilts up or down on its axis.
Time-lapse cinematography: Allows a naturally slow process to be accelerated, like the germination of a
seed to a plant.
Tracking shot: A smooth camera movement that follows (tracks) a character as they move. Often achieved
with a dolly or Steadicam.
Transitions: A style of scene-to-scene editing that uses an optical effect, like a fade, dissolve, wipe, or iris.
These styles are usually meant to be obvious in order to mark a change in time and/or place.
Triadic color: Three complementary colors arranged in a triangle on the color wheel.
Underground film: Film movements of the 1950s and 1960s that showcased sub-cultures ignored by
Hollywood, such as avant-garde artists, hipsters, and queer communities.
Unreliable narrator: Narrators who defy our expectation to be told the "true" story. Unreliable narrators
have compromised memories, intentionally blur the truth, or straight out lie to the viewer.
Unrestricted narration: The audience knows more information than the protagonist. Often used to evoke
suspense in narrative progression.
Vertigo effect: See Dolly zoom
Viewfinder: What the cinematographer looks through in a camera to compose his shot. It gives an idea of
the scope of the subject or area to be recorded. In modern cameras, it is found in the center of the camera.
Voiceover: The voice of a character layered over the film image. This voice may be an omniscient perspec-
tive or an inner voice. Voiceovers most often are associated with the film’s narrator.
Wide-angle lens: Range in focal length from 24mm to 35mm. Captures a wide amount of space at close
range, which makes it optimal for filming big sets. The shape of the wide-angle lens creates “bulging” at the
edges of the frame and creates distance between objects.
Widescreen: Aspect ratio developed in the 1950s to create a bigger, more exciting image for theaters.
Wipe: A transition effect where a boundary line travels from one part of the frame to the other to signal
one shot’s replacement by another shot.
Zoom lens: A variable lens that can move between several focal lengths, potentially creating both wide-an-
gle and telephoto effects.
Zoopraxiscope: An early cinematic device invented by Eadweard Muybridge that created the illusion of
moving images by rapidly projecting images painted on a rotating glass disk onto the screen.
G l o s s a ry 153

Film Appreciation

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FILM

DR. YELIZAVETA MOSS &

DR. CANDICE WILSON

THIS TEXTBOOK IS AN OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCE WHOSE

FEATURES OF THIS TEXTBOOK:

Celluloid: A malleable thermoplastic. Used in cinema as photographic film stock.

Frames: Still images that make up celluloid film.

WWI & INTERNATIONAL AVANT-GARDE CINEMA 23

Pre-cinematic technologies (6th c – 1890)

Camera obscura Magic lantern Phantasmagoria

Chronophotography: Photography that captures a quick succession of movements in several images.

Celluloid: A malleable thermoplastic. Used in cinema as photographic film stock.

Edison, Kinetoscope, and Lumière Brothers (1891 – 1895)

Classical storytelling and Classical Hollywood cinema

World War I & international avant-garde cinema

The Smiling Madame

Central to Impressionism was the idea of photogénie, a concept introduced by Jean

Dada and Surrealism

QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION:

STORY, PLOT & NARRATION 31

THE RASHOMON EFFECT 37

TIME TRAVEL NARRATIVES (INSERT) 41

Narrative film: A fictional or fictionalized story. As opposed to documentaries (non-narrative films).

Story: A series of events that form the building blocks of narrative.

Productions from Crash! Boom! Bang! How

to Write Action Movies by Michael Lucker

Plot Point I: between pages 25 & 30

THE CALL TO ACTION

Indiana Jones, we need you to find an ark.

Their fiance may be killed.

"THREE-ACT STRUCTURE" CONTRIBUTED BY

course of events at the end of the film by adding herself

The Rashomon Effect and experiments in time

QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION:

-Tony Stark, Avengers Endgame

Time Travel Narratives

Our modern idea of time travel emerges from a number of sour-

SETS, PROPS & COSTUMES 45

Sets, props, and costumes

emptiness of its landscape and isolation of characters in a newly

Prop: Short for “property”. Any object used in set design.

Figure movement: An actor’s gestures and character action.

Choreography / Blocking: The design of movement in space and time.

QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION:

Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016)

Key light: The main source of illumination.

Soft lighting: Diffused light that hides imperfections.

EARLY FILM GIMMICKS (INSERT) 71

his camera when characters become drug-induced – the camera

Pan: Camera swivels from side to side.

Tilt: Camera tilts up or down on its axis.

There has always been a relationship between the

riences, studios tried 3D films, gimmicks, and giant

screens similar to Imax theaters.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Anderson, 2014)

Aspect ratio: The ratio of width to height of a screen.

and I'm just the monster to bring them to you."

-William Castle, 'King of the Gimmick'

Early Film Gimmicks

Hollywood has always needed an audience to do what it does best: sell

For instance, in 1918, Harry Reichenbach, a prolific publicist and provoca-

Reichenbach and other Exploitation Managers actively worked to put their

Though studios had entire departments dedicated

Castle would parlay his success in theater to a full career