13 terms
Chapter 3 Looking at Movies
narrative
Narrative is a story. Narrative is a type of movie. Narrative is a way of structuring fictional or fictionalized stories presented in narrative films. Narrative is a broader concept that both includes and goes beyond any of these applications. At the broadest conceptual level narrative is a cinematic structure in which filmmakers have arranged in cause and effect sequence.
factual films
A documentary film that, usually, presents people, places, or processes in a straightforward way meant to entertain and instruct without unduly influencing audiences.
instructional films
A documentary film that seeks to educate viewers about common interests, rather than persuading them with particular ideas.
persuasive films
A documentary film concerned with presenting a particular perspective on social issues, or with corporate and governmental injustice.
propaganda films
A documentary film that systematically disseminates deceptive or distorted information.
direct cinema
An approach to documentary filmmaking that employs an unobtrusive style in an attempt to give viewers as truthful and "direct" an experience as possible.
experimental films
Experimental films are not commercial. Experimental films are personal. Experimental films do not conform to conventional expectations of story and narrative cause and effect. Experimental films exploit the possibilities of cinema. Experimental films critique culture and media. Experimental films invite individual interpretation.
generic transformation
The process by which a particular genre is adapted to meet the expectations of a changing society.
stream of consciousness
A literary style that gained prominence in the 1920s in the hands of such writers as Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Dorothy Richardson and that attempted to capture the unedited flow of experience through the mind.
genre
The categorization of narrative films by form, content, or both. Examples are musicals, comedy, biography, western, gangster, animation, action movies, melodramas, romantic comedies, fantasy films and many others that fall within some genre or subgenre.
Cinema Verite
The filmmaker can participate in front of the camera and make artistic choices. Create an artifice within the film
Direct Cinema
The author is not a participant.
Observational Film
The filmmaker has to edit the film.