Though watching a movie does not seem like much effort, examining the film in order to write about it does require much more effort than you might think.  This act involves rewatching to re-visualize nuances  you missed when casually watching the film. Here is a method for studying and writing about cinema more critically. This approach will allow you to appreciate the art of film making more. Are you ready to improve your art of film watching? By being more critical, your papers for this class will be more critical.

The Art of Studying a Film: Combing Privacy and Focus

Try to watch the film in privacy so that you are able to focus on the film more intensely. When you have friends or family members over, it is difficult to focus on the film.  Set aside time to see the film.  Just as a classic book needs to be read in privacy, so does a film.

Concentrate: Avoid Multi-tasking

Sorry, tweeting or text messaging your friend while watching a film is not good practice. Furthermore, entering data for Facebook while watching a film will not make you more critical. You may think you can do both, but instead, you are missing key aspects of the film. When you watch a film, concentrate on the film. Avoid multi-tasking, for it is your grade. Thinking about a film is hard work. There is more to these films than you think. Multi-tasking will harm not help your cinematic inner eye experience the richness of the visual feast.

Re-seeing and Note Taking

Watch the film more than once. Just as rewriting makes a draft better, rewatching a film allows you to re-see the film. Re-watch key scenes or scenes of interest several times, taking notes.  Be ready to re-watch the film with the director’s comments or the actor’s commentary. 

If you examine any film reviews found on the Internet and use any information from those reviews, be sure to document the reviews accurately within the essay and in the bibliography at the end.

The following overview of the rhetoric of cinema contains very basic terms you need to know. Please use these terms wisely in your discussions and reports about cinema.

 Written by Wayne Stein, a version of this was printed in Fresh Takes: Explorations in Readings and Writing

Approaching a Scene

Just as it takes much skill to write, it takes much skill to create a film. In cinema, textual discourse and visual discourse merge.  The following elements are some of the basic tools of the rhetor of cinematic production  that you need to know when discussing films.

Shot  +  Shot  = Scene. 

Since the cost of filming tends to be high, the director will spend much time coordinating a simple shot, which is one continuous running of a camera.  A series of shots produce a scene which creates a moment within a specific time and space.  Everything that occurs within the scene is planned.  Indeed, even the camera angle and each chosen shot have a powerful effect on the viewers. 

Mise-en-scene 

=  “Put-in-the-Scene” (French). The placement and composition of the lighting, props, characters, camera positioning, sounds, . . . . style, all create mise-en-scene.  The arrangement of the composition creates the impact or lack of impact from a scene. Originally, this term was associated with the stage.  When we see a play, it is easy for us to understand that everything placed before us was physically picked beforehand. As new scenes are added, old sets are replaced by new ones and new acts begin.  In film, hours, even days, are spent preparing for the next scene to be shot. We tend to overlook that.

Though it may look natural, everything within a scene is often placed there intentionally for effect. Thus, the props, the clothes that the actors wear, the chairs, the paintings, the mirror, the color of the car, the jewelry, and the set as a whole are all integral to the statement the director is striving to make.  Mise-en-scene also refers to the distribution of color and light within the scene. The camera angles and even the positioning of the characters all create a visual effect on the audience.   Just look at how much detail went into the sets and costumes in the fantasy,  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) or the science fiction, Dark City (1998). What about the mise-en-scene of Ran?

Sergei Eisenstein and the Montage

Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948), the Russian director, is credited with creating the theoretical understanding of the power of the montage. Here are some of his quotes:

• “Cinema is, first and foremost, montage.”
• “The shot is a montage cell.”
• “Montage is conflict.”
• “[The Montage] derives from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another” (the dramatic  principle)

Montage = Juxtaposing scenes. 

Constructive editing allows one to feel the illusion of violence. Soldiers fire rifles in one shot. Bodies fall in the next shot.   We conclude that the soldiers killed the people on the Odessa Steps. See Odessa Steps from Potemkin (1925).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euG1y0KtP_Q&feature=related

Editing

By carefully editing a series of images and sounds, or juxtaposing one scene with another scene, the effect of the scenes creates new and different impacts on emotion. The evolution of genres like science fiction, kung fu, horror or war films can be connected to the evolution of the effects of careful editing and the mixture  of music, sound or special effects providing important elements that create a different sense of being.  Note how the opening D-Day battle in Saving Private Ryan  (1998) compares to The Longest Day (1962).  Sure, Saving Private Ryan had more gore and special effects, but the added montage of a slow motion sequence,  with bullets entering the water and sound becoming muted, were all editorial decisions made by the film’s creators. 

Montage

Watch the marriage sequence in The Godfather  (1972) where a series of murders are juxtaposed with a wedding.  Death (leaving the family) and wedding (joining the family) in a sense are combined together in its own type of visual marriage.  According to Sergei Eisenstein, a Russian filmmaker and theorist, a well-crafted montage creates a new order of meaning or metaphors.  If Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather had shown the wedding first and then the murders next, the same connections might have been created, but by artistically combining pain and joy through the montage, the impact of life in the Mafia becomes more immediate.

Written by Wayne Stein, a version of this was printed in Fresh Takes: Explorations in Readings and Writing

A Variety of Editing Techniques

Just as an essay is composed of a variety of modes of discourse, like definition, narration, and description, a film is composed of edited shots to create a scene, juxtaposing scenes and transitioning from scene to scene. Fight scenes use a variety of shots.

Cut. 

A simple slice between two shots or scenes creates a transition, moving the story along to the next portion.

Jump-cut.  

A quick cut between two scenes can create a sense of disorientation. 

Crosscutting.

Simultaneously juxtaposing scenes for effect; e.g., combining the wedding scene and death scenes in The Godfather creates an added element to the film.

Written by Wayne Stein, a version of this was printed in Fresh Takes: Explorations in Readings and Writing

Examine the Variety of Shot Techniques and the Fight Scene

The effects of a montage comes about by editing together a wide variety and sequences of shots.   Since shots within a film were specifically chosen as a guide to the narrative, shots provide context and texture, intensity and emotions. 

Establishing Shot  (ES).

Usually the opening long shot establishes a frame for the following shots. Thus, the main characters or the setting is established.

Long Shot (LS).

This shot often helps to define a scene by allowing the audience a larger perspective, often including the main characters of the scene.

Medium Shot (MS).

Moderately up close shot, showing a person waist up, can help balance the scene.

Close Shot (CS).

A shot of just the head, hand or the door knob that creates intensity.

Fight scenes often open up with ES and then move into an LS with the all the fighters in view. The camera then shows a MS of the individual fighters and then a CS of the fighter’s face and then often eyes. Such shots help to create dramatic tension.

Written by Wayne Stein, a version of this was printed in Fresh Takes: Explorations in Readings and Writing

 

The Effects of a Variety of Camera Movements

Camera movements help guide the vision of the audience.  In a sense, it is critical for narrative effect. Often in stagingdrama, lights are used to emphasize a moment, while in films,  camera movement is a way of telling the audience while highlighting specific aspects of the plot.

Angle.

The placement of the camera in relation to the object being filmed creates emotional texture for the scene.

a.       High Angle Shot, above eye level.

b.      Low Angle Shot, below eye level.

Boom.

Using a crane, the camera moves up, down, and around to get complex angles.

Dolly.

The camera is moved smoothly along a track usually as characters walk down a street.  This gives an intimacy that is often missed on stage because you feel as though you were walking with the characters.

Pan. 

The camera moves from right to left or from left to right.  Anime (Japanese animation) uses a lot of panning as a way to create the illusion of movement and save money by having the camera move and not the drawings.

Zoom. 

The lens of the camera magnifies a shot to make it bigger or smaller (zoom in or zoom out).

Written by Wayne Stein, a version of this was printed in Fresh Takes: Explorations in Readings and Writing

Evaluating Character

Major Characters. Major characters are heroic or interesting, but often they suffer from a character flaw, usually becoming an important aspect of the plot.  The main character has to interact with a variety of characters in the film such as:

• Flat characters who  are two dimensional, not very developed.
• Round characters who are three dimensional, more fully developed.
• Foils who often have the opposite characteristics of the key characters.
• Stereotypes who are preformed racial, social, or gender types often having negative preconceived traits.

Supporting or Minor Characters.

Often character analysis involves evaluating important character flaws. For example, the original Star Wars (1977) is narrated through the voice of two minor flawed characters. George Lucas borrowed this idea from Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress (1958).   How do the minor characters help define the major characters? Are there foils within the film?