Film Studies Final
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Created by:
mariamolina on March 14, 2012
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74 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Diegesis | the implied world of the story, including settings, characters, sounds, and events. |
| Diegetic | elements that exist within the world of the history. Sounds, characters, settings and events that the characters of the film are aware of |
| Non-diegetic | elements that exist outside of the story world (credits and some film music). Use to comment on or draw attention. |
| Blockbusters | a large-budget film whose strategy is to swamp the competition through market saturation. |
| High concept films | A post-studio era Hollywood film designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience by fusing a simple story line with major movie stars and mounting a lavish market campaign. |
| Saturation Marketing | high/saturated level of marketing of a certain product. When the amount of product provided in a market has been maximized in the current state of the marketplace. At the point of saturation, further growth can only be achieved through product improvements, market share gains or a rise in overall consumer demand. |
| Characteristics of current film industry | outsourcing, runaway production, creative centralization |
| Outsourcing | Process of contracting a business function to someone else. The practice of Hollywood studios contracting out post-production work to individuals or films outside the United States. |
| Runaway Production | Film productions shot outside of the United States for economic reasons. |
| Creative Centralization | The production of ideas has become more centralized. The expenditures of six media companies account for three-quarters of the total spending on screen writing in the United States. |
| Block Booking | .forcing exhibitors to rent a studio's less profitable films along with the sure box office successes. an outlawed studio era practice, where studios forced exhibitors to book groups of films at once, thus ensuring a market for their failures along with their successes. |
| Vertical Integration | a business model adopted by the major studios, in which studios controlled all aspects of the film business, from production to distribution to exhibition. |
| Independent Cinemas | Smaller theater. film is not financed by a major Hollywood studio. Independent filmmakers secure fund by seeking out sponsors, drumming up investors, or borrowing money from friends and relatives. They are freer to explore complex topics and social issues that may be off-limits to make or studios afraid of offending their general audience. |
| Megaplexes | A large theater with more than a dozen screen. |
| Shot Transition | is the method of replacing one shot on screen with a second |
| Cut | the most common transition, when shot A abruptly ends and shot B begins |
| Dissolve | a shot transition that involves the gradual disappearance of the image at the same time that a new image gradually comes into view. |
| Fade In/Out | second most common shot in which shot A gradually darkens until the screen is black (or white or any other solid color) and then shot A gradually appears |
| Iris in/out | when a circular mask- a device placed over the lens of the camera that obscures part of the image-appears over Shot A. |
| Graphic Match | a shot transition that emphasizes the visual similarities between two consecutive shots. |
| Montage sequence | to indicate the passage of time. consist of several shots, each one occurring at a different point in time. |
| Parallel editing/ cross cutting | is when a filmmaker cuts back and forth between two or more event occurring in different spaces, usually suggesting that these events are happening at the same time |
| Continuity editing | a system devised to minimize the audience's awareness of shot transitions, especially cuts, in order to improve the flow of the story and avoid interrupting the viewer's immersion in it. |
| Soviet montage editing | is a style of editing built around the theory that editing should exploit the difference between shots to generate intellectual and emotional responses in the audience. was developed in Russia during the silent film era, when the Soviet regime had just come to power |
| French New Wave | some filmmakers break the rules of continuity editing because audiences are used to seeing films that conform to the conventions of continuity editing, filmmakers understand that intentionally upsetting these expectations can provoke emotional and intellectual responses. |
| Primary components of film sound | dialogue, music and sound effects |
| Dialogue | Forwards the narrative, giving voice to characters' aspirations, thoughts and emotions, often making conflicts among characters evident |
| Text | dialogue makes meaning through the text (the words a character says), the line reading (the way an actor says the line, including pauses, intonation, and emotion), and the subtext (the unstated meaning that underlies spoken words) |
| Volume | reflects the level and type of a person's engagement with her surroundings |
| Accent | gives the audience information on character's background |
| Music | the only function of a score is to provide background music which sustains audience attention and lends coherence to a scene. It can also develop systematically and establish motifs and parallels and it can evolve with narrative context |
| Sound Effects | Play in important role in defining a scene's location; they can lend a mood to the scene; they can suggest the environments impact on characters |
| Foley Artists | the artists who make the sound effects. |
| Direct Sound | sound effects recorded on location |
| ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) | a technique for recording synchronized dialogue in post-production, using a machine that runs forward and backward. |
| Looping | cutting several identical lengths of developed film and having actors record the dialogue repeatedly. |
| Primary Function | is to externalize a character's thoughts and feelings, bringing motivations, goals and conflicts to the surface. |
| Text and Subtext | Clunky dialogue that states the obvious is called on-the-nose dialogue |
| Text | the words a characters says |
| Reading | the way an actor says the line, including pauses, intonation and emotion |
| Subtext | the unstated meaning that underlies spoken words |
| Volume | suggest the emotional vigor of dialogue. Loudness usually connotes a character experiencing intense emotion, such as anger, fear, or passion. Softness, on the other hand, usually connotes a more timid or carefully considered emotional response: tenderness, diffidence, sophistication, fear, or even guile. |
| High pitched characters | associated with weakness or indecisiveness |
| Deep pitched characters | evil or duplicity |
| Speech Characteristics | Accent us a powerful indictor of background and social status. Vocal tics particular to specific individuals |
| Acoustic Qualities | The way voices sound can suggest the distance between characters, or mood, aura, or atmosphere of a place—its ambience |
| Voice Over | a direct vocal address to the audience, which may emanate from a character or form a narrating voice apparently unrelated to the diegesis. It gives special attention and allows audience access to a characters immediate thoughts. |
| Define Location | Nature of environment that surrounds the characters. Sound effects defines location rather generically |
| Lend Mood to an Environment | Likewise contribute to the mood established by the mise en scene |
| Portray the Environment's Impact on Characters | Illustrate how the environment has a direct impact on characters |
| Auteur theory | the theory proposes that the director is the author of the film. Implies that the director is the primary creative source and, therefore, his films express his distinctive vision of the world |
| Andrew Sarris Auteur approach | Director must demonstrate a distinguishable personality. films in an auteur's body of work share an interior meaning, defined as an underlying tension between the director's vision and the subject matter. |
| Technical competence | a director must be capable of creating a well made film |
| Criticism of the auteur approach | Many critics believed that Sarris did not define this last criterion satisfactorily. Kael criticized the auteur approach for refusing to take into account the collaborative nature of filmmaking. Theory ignores the fact that many people's creative decisions are part of the process of making films |
| Star Persona | The image constructed across these outlets makes up what critics call. Stars, agents and studios still manipulate the star's appearance in films |
| Voice of authority | Combine voice-over narration with images. Sole intention to persuade of the rightness of a single view as referred to as propaganda film |
| Talking Heads | Interviews and captures personal feelings |
| Director-participant | Director being part of the documentary (with self-interviews and others) |
| Direct cinema | observational documentaries. Director's perspective and judgements. |
| Self-reflexive | Process of filming and expose the way the medium constructs reality. Relationship between documentary images and reality |
| Mockumentary | o Not documentary films by fiction films that pose as documentaries by familiar conventions. (i.e. The Office) |
| Forms/Strategies of documentary films | Voice of authority; Talking heads; Director-participant; Direct cinema; Self-reflexive; Mockumentary |
| Significant styles and traditions of avant-garde films | Surrealism; abstract; city symphonies; structural film; compilation film |
| Surrealism | Rife of humor, sexuality, and scandalous images |
| Abstract films | abandon human figures. i.e. nature, items etc |
| City symphonies | A genre that combines documentary and experimental films; modern city view. |
| Structural film | The material properties of the medium: strips of film, sound waves, cameras and lenses |
| Compilation film | reuses pre-existing film footage in an entirely new context to generate innovative ideas |
| Commercial films | Generally fictional narratives involving conflict and change |
| Wipe | When shot B appears to push shot A of the screen |
| Relationship to vertical integration | Vertical integration helped the studios guarantee stable box office receipts through practices such as block booking |
| Narrative | Viewers expect to see stories about human characters whose circumstances produce comedy or tragedy or both -string of events occurring in space and time -Focus on human characters and their struggles -characters pursue goals and encounter obstacles along the way |
| Documentary | Viewers expect the film to present real world events, and might expect the film to be given factual information about historical or contemporary situation Inform and persuade audiences by presenting facts and logical arguments |
| Avant garde | Viewers expect no story at all, this type of film makers see films as a visual art form rather than a story telling |
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