Hi to all who read this blog:)
Our second semester in 3D animation is coming to an end and our last day ends with our History of Film Production and Techniques and let me tell you that this was not an easy class.
After gathering our notes and reflecting on the distinction of many technical terms I was able to put up a few terms that I didn't quite understand at first.
For example, who knew that the words Genre, Style and Type could be so hard to distinguish... You would think they mean the same thing but in fact they are the total opposite:P
Example:
• Genre: action/romance/horror
• Style: way he did the movie
• Type: stamped out movie
And who knew that film making would be so complicated, all the rules, terms, techniques...etc.:
• Primary motion:
➢ People are in the focus
• Secondary motion:
➢ Background
• Tertiary motion:
➢ Through editing (space/time/rhythm/mood)
➢ Linear vs. non-linear
➢ Rack focus:
• Is the practice of shifting the attention of a viewer of a film or video by changing the focus of the lens from a subject in the foreground to a subject in the background, or vice versa.
➢ Chiaroscuro:
• Indicate extreme low-key lighting to create distinct areas of light and darkness in films, especially in black and white films.
• Metaphoric
• Monochrome
• Red vs. blue tint
• Deep focus (everything is in focus)
• Doomed protagonist
• Femme fatale/good girl
Nerve wrecking isn't it???:)
I, unfortunately, am not able to post everything we have learned, but here are some interesting pieces of information.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Tertium Quid
Film production theory comes with its consequences, understanding terms that are not entirely obvious at first hand, an example of such difficult theory would be the term "Tertium Quid". According to our notes, they characterize the viewer’s response to putting 2 images together, such as the famous class example of Darth Vader next to a puppy. :P If you were like me and you still didn't quite grasp the meaning of the definition, the following should help:
In today's modern societies, with all its newly developed technologies and harsh criticism, the old practice of movie making has reached its peek not only with its great actors and fancy effects, but in video editing to make it more believable and appealing to the human eye. Thats were the term "Montage" comes into play, which basically consists of juxtaposing images together. But during the 1920s, the pioneering Russian film directors and theorists Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov demonstrated the technical, aesthetic, and ideological potentials of montage. Eisenstein believed that film montage could create ideas or have an impact beyond the individual images. Two or more images edited together create a "tertium quid" (third thing) that makes the whole greater than the sum of its individual parts. Eisenstein's greatest demonstration of the power of montage comes in the "Odessa Steps" sequence of his 1925 film Battleship Potemkin. On the simplest level, montage allows Eisenstein to manipulate the audience's perception of time by stretching out the crowd's flight down the steps for seven minutes, several times longer than it would take in real time.
A good example would be the famous sequence involving a runaway baby carriage. This shows that Eisenstein used montage to grasp both emotion and ideological consciousness among the film's viewers:
http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/montage/montage-1.html
In today's modern societies, with all its newly developed technologies and harsh criticism, the old practice of movie making has reached its peek not only with its great actors and fancy effects, but in video editing to make it more believable and appealing to the human eye. Thats were the term "Montage" comes into play, which basically consists of juxtaposing images together. But during the 1920s, the pioneering Russian film directors and theorists Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov demonstrated the technical, aesthetic, and ideological potentials of montage. Eisenstein believed that film montage could create ideas or have an impact beyond the individual images. Two or more images edited together create a "tertium quid" (third thing) that makes the whole greater than the sum of its individual parts. Eisenstein's greatest demonstration of the power of montage comes in the "Odessa Steps" sequence of his 1925 film Battleship Potemkin. On the simplest level, montage allows Eisenstein to manipulate the audience's perception of time by stretching out the crowd's flight down the steps for seven minutes, several times longer than it would take in real time.
A good example would be the famous sequence involving a runaway baby carriage. This shows that Eisenstein used montage to grasp both emotion and ideological consciousness among the film's viewers:
http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/montage/montage-1.html
Post-modernism
A few weeks have past and we started prepping for our exam. But what does post-modernism mean??? Another tough question.
Apparently post-modernism in film can loosely be used to describe a film in which the audience's suspension of disbelief is destroyed, or at the very least toyed with, in order to free the audience's appreciation of the work, and the creator's means with which to express it. The cornerstones of conventional narrative structure and characterisation are changed and even turned on their head in order to create a work whose internal logic forms its means of expression. It has said that post modernism was a period in film history where people did not quite appreciate the upcoming of change and new technology tactics, that they preferred something more simple and realistic. I remembered an example used in class, more like a question asked in our exam, why did audiences prefer Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" as opposed to James Cameron's Avatar? In my opinion, as I mentioned in my answer, it was probably due to the fact that 95% of Avatar was entirely based upon special effects and extremely advanced technologies, whereas the subtext was something that has done one two many times. On the other hand, The Hurt Locker is of a more realistic background, where we have a scenario that is believable and that we can relate to. And it was entirely done with no more special effects than a few massive explosives and a great editing job. I apologize if the answer is not entirely accurate, and I hope my message came through.
Also, here are the degree rules in camera angles:
➢ 30°rule:
A basic film editing guideline that states the camera should move at least 30° between shots of the same subject. This change of perspective makes the shots different enough to avoid a jump cut.
➢ 180°rule:
A basic guideline in film making that states those two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle.
Apparently post-modernism in film can loosely be used to describe a film in which the audience's suspension of disbelief is destroyed, or at the very least toyed with, in order to free the audience's appreciation of the work, and the creator's means with which to express it. The cornerstones of conventional narrative structure and characterisation are changed and even turned on their head in order to create a work whose internal logic forms its means of expression. It has said that post modernism was a period in film history where people did not quite appreciate the upcoming of change and new technology tactics, that they preferred something more simple and realistic. I remembered an example used in class, more like a question asked in our exam, why did audiences prefer Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" as opposed to James Cameron's Avatar? In my opinion, as I mentioned in my answer, it was probably due to the fact that 95% of Avatar was entirely based upon special effects and extremely advanced technologies, whereas the subtext was something that has done one two many times. On the other hand, The Hurt Locker is of a more realistic background, where we have a scenario that is believable and that we can relate to. And it was entirely done with no more special effects than a few massive explosives and a great editing job. I apologize if the answer is not entirely accurate, and I hope my message came through.
Also, here are the degree rules in camera angles:
➢ 30°rule:
A basic film editing guideline that states the camera should move at least 30° between shots of the same subject. This change of perspective makes the shots different enough to avoid a jump cut.
➢ 180°rule:
A basic guideline in film making that states those two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle.
Film Noir
Everyone loves scary, thriller, murder mystery stories. But before horror and thrillers came into place, there was a very popular genre that was quite appreciated a few decades back, this was called "Film Noir". Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low key black and white visual style that was inspired from German Expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.
The term film noir, first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the classic era. Cinema historians and critics defined the noir canon in retrospect; before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic film noirs were referred to as melodramas. The question of whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre is a matter of ongoing debate among scholars.
Here are a few characteristics from movie examples that are quite oblivious to the presentation of Film Noir:
• Indicate extreme low key lighting to create distinct areas of light and darkness in films, especially in black and white films.
• Metaphoric
• Monochrome
• Red vs. blue tint
• Deep focus (everything is in focus)
• Doomed protagonist
• Femme fatale/good girl
A few examples of movies that have been shown to us during the first few weeks of the semester are:
• Detour
• Double indemnity
• In a lonely place
• House of bamboo
The term film noir, first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the classic era. Cinema historians and critics defined the noir canon in retrospect; before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic film noirs were referred to as melodramas. The question of whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre is a matter of ongoing debate among scholars.
Here are a few characteristics from movie examples that are quite oblivious to the presentation of Film Noir:
• Indicate extreme low key lighting to create distinct areas of light and darkness in films, especially in black and white films.
• Metaphoric
• Monochrome
• Red vs. blue tint
• Deep focus (everything is in focus)
• Doomed protagonist
• Femme fatale/good girl
A few examples of movies that have been shown to us during the first few weeks of the semester are:
• Detour
• Double indemnity
• In a lonely place
• House of bamboo
The French New Wave
We were told of a very known influence that apparently was inspired by Classic Italian Neo-Realism, it was called the French New Wave. In class we took down the following notes:
• French New-Wave:
• Break away from convention
• Apparition of Italian Neo-Realism:
➢ Realist movement
➢ Shot on location
➢ Usage of real people
➢ Response to propaganda films
Needing to expand our knowledge on the fact, i researched a few things; the French New Wave was an artistic movement whose influence on film has been as profound and enduring as that of surrealism or cubism on painting. The French New Wave made its first splashes as a movement shot through with youthful exuberance and a brisk reinvigoration of the filmmaking process. It was popular roughly between 1958 and 1964, although New Wave work existed as late as 1973. The socio-economic forces at play shortly after World War II strongly influenced the movement. A politically and financially drained France tended to fall back to the old popular traditions before the war. One such tradition was straight narrative cinema, specifically classical French film. The movement has its roots in rebellion against the reliance on past forms, often adapted from traditional novellic structures, criticizing in particular the way these forms could force the audience to submit to a dictatorial plot-line. They were especially against the French "cinema of quality", the type of high-minded, literary period films held in esteem at French film festivals, often regarded as "untouchable" to criticism.
New Wave critics and directors studied the work of western classics and applied new avant garde stylistic direction. The low-budget approach helped filmmakers get at the essential art form and find what, to them, was a much more comfortable and honest form of production. Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, and many other forward-thinking film directors were held up in admiration while standard Hollywood films bound by traditional narrative flow were strongly criticized.
http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/fnwave1.jsp
• French New-Wave:
• Break away from convention
• Apparition of Italian Neo-Realism:
➢ Realist movement
➢ Shot on location
➢ Usage of real people
➢ Response to propaganda films
Needing to expand our knowledge on the fact, i researched a few things; the French New Wave was an artistic movement whose influence on film has been as profound and enduring as that of surrealism or cubism on painting. The French New Wave made its first splashes as a movement shot through with youthful exuberance and a brisk reinvigoration of the filmmaking process. It was popular roughly between 1958 and 1964, although New Wave work existed as late as 1973. The socio-economic forces at play shortly after World War II strongly influenced the movement. A politically and financially drained France tended to fall back to the old popular traditions before the war. One such tradition was straight narrative cinema, specifically classical French film. The movement has its roots in rebellion against the reliance on past forms, often adapted from traditional novellic structures, criticizing in particular the way these forms could force the audience to submit to a dictatorial plot-line. They were especially against the French "cinema of quality", the type of high-minded, literary period films held in esteem at French film festivals, often regarded as "untouchable" to criticism.
New Wave critics and directors studied the work of western classics and applied new avant garde stylistic direction. The low-budget approach helped filmmakers get at the essential art form and find what, to them, was a much more comfortable and honest form of production. Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, and many other forward-thinking film directors were held up in admiration while standard Hollywood films bound by traditional narrative flow were strongly criticized.
http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/fnwave1.jsp
1930-1948 time frame
Today, we learned about the history that happened in the time frame of 1930-1948. If we start off by the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, which lasted from the end of the silent era in American cinema in the late 1920s to the late 1950s, thousands of movies were issued from the Hollywood studios. Throughout the 1930s, as well as most of the golden age, MGM dominated the film screen and had the top stars in Hollywood, and was also credited for creating the Hollywood star system altogether. Some MGM stars included "King of Hollywood" Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Jeanette MacDonald and husband Gene Raymond, Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland, and Gene Kelly. Another great achievement of US cinema during this era came through Walt Disney's animation company. In 1937, Disney created the most successful film of its time, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Also in 1939, MGM would create what is still, when adjusted for inflation, the most successful film of all time, Gone with the Wind. Many film historians have remarked upon the many great works of cinema that emerged from this period of highly regimented film-making. One reason this was possible is that, with so many movies being made, not everyone had to be a big hit. A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively unknown actors for example Citizen Kane, and often regarded as the greatest film of all time, fits that description.
Unfortunately, the studio system and the Golden Age of Hollywood succumbed to two forces that developed in the late 1940s:
• a federal antitrust action that separated the production of films from their exhibition;
• The advent of television.
In 1938, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released during a run of lackluster films from the major studios, and quickly became the highest-grossing film released to that point. Embarrassingly for the studios, it was an independently-produced animated film that did not feature any studio-employed stars. This stoked already widespread frustration at the practice of block-booking, in which studios would only sell an entire year's schedule of films at a time to theaters and use the lock-in to cover for releases of mediocre quality. This is where Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold, a noted "trust buster" of the Roosevelt administration, took this opportunity to initiate proceedings against the eight largest Hollywood studios in July 1938 for violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The federal suit resulted in five of the eight studios (the "Big Five": Warner Bros., MGM, Fox, RKO and Paramount) reaching a compromise with Arnold in October 1940 and signing a consent decree agreeing to, within three years:
• Eliminate the block-booking of short film subjects, in an arrangement known as "one shot", or "full force" block-booking.
• Eliminate the block-booking of any more than five features in their theaters.
• No longer engage in blind buying (or the buying of films by theater districts without seeing films beforehand) and instead have trade-showing, in which all 31 theater districts in US would see films every two weeks before showing movies in theaters.
• Set up an administration board in each theater district to enforce these requirements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_States#Golden_Age_of_Hollywood
Unfortunately, the studio system and the Golden Age of Hollywood succumbed to two forces that developed in the late 1940s:
• a federal antitrust action that separated the production of films from their exhibition;
• The advent of television.
In 1938, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released during a run of lackluster films from the major studios, and quickly became the highest-grossing film released to that point. Embarrassingly for the studios, it was an independently-produced animated film that did not feature any studio-employed stars. This stoked already widespread frustration at the practice of block-booking, in which studios would only sell an entire year's schedule of films at a time to theaters and use the lock-in to cover for releases of mediocre quality. This is where Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold, a noted "trust buster" of the Roosevelt administration, took this opportunity to initiate proceedings against the eight largest Hollywood studios in July 1938 for violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The federal suit resulted in five of the eight studios (the "Big Five": Warner Bros., MGM, Fox, RKO and Paramount) reaching a compromise with Arnold in October 1940 and signing a consent decree agreeing to, within three years:
• Eliminate the block-booking of short film subjects, in an arrangement known as "one shot", or "full force" block-booking.
• Eliminate the block-booking of any more than five features in their theaters.
• No longer engage in blind buying (or the buying of films by theater districts without seeing films beforehand) and instead have trade-showing, in which all 31 theater districts in US would see films every two weeks before showing movies in theaters.
• Set up an administration board in each theater district to enforce these requirements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_States#Golden_Age_of_Hollywood
Kuleshov Effect
In the beginning, I didn’t quite understand what the kuleshov effect was until i dove into the unknown and asked a few people and consulted a few sites. Now that i think of it, its a heck load of information. I hope the following information will enlighten you a bit more on the subject, as it did for me :
• The Kuleshov Effect is a film editing effect demonstrated by Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s.
• Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to the actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings.
• The effect has also been studied by psychologists, and is well-known among modern film makers.
• The experiment itself was created by assembling fragments of pre-existing film from the Tsarist film industry, with no new material. Mozzhukhin had been the leading romantic "star" of Tsarist cinema, and familiar to the audience.
• Kuleshov demonstrated the necessity of considering montage as the basic tool of cinema art. In his point of view, cinema consists of fragments and the assembly of those fragments, the assembly of elements which in reality are distinct. It is therefore not the content of the images in a film which is important, but their combination. The raw materials of such an art work need not be original, but are pre-fabricated elements which can be disassembled and re-assembled by the artist into new juxtapositions.
• The montage experiments carried out by Kuleshov in the late 1910’s and early 1920’s formed the theoretical basis of Soviet montage cinema, culminating in the famous films of the late 1920s by directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Dziga Vertov, among others. These films included The Battleship Potemkin, October, Mother, The End of St. Petersburg, and The Man with a Movie Camera.
• Soviet montage cinema was suppressed under Stalin during the 1930s as a dangerous example of Formalism in the arts, and as being incompatible with the official Soviet artistic doctrine of Socialist Realism.
Three pairs of images from the film experiment carried out by the Russian psychologist Lev Kuleshov around 1920. Kuleshov discovered that audiences interpreted the actor's expression (the right of each pair, and all identical) in relation to the image it was paired with (left of each pair). The actor was perceived as hungry, sad, romantically intrigued, etc., depending on what was edited together with the actor. Kuleshov's results significantly influenced the development of montage theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_Effect
http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/kuleshov.html
• The Kuleshov Effect is a film editing effect demonstrated by Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s and 1920s.
• Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to the actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings.
• The effect has also been studied by psychologists, and is well-known among modern film makers.
• The experiment itself was created by assembling fragments of pre-existing film from the Tsarist film industry, with no new material. Mozzhukhin had been the leading romantic "star" of Tsarist cinema, and familiar to the audience.
• Kuleshov demonstrated the necessity of considering montage as the basic tool of cinema art. In his point of view, cinema consists of fragments and the assembly of those fragments, the assembly of elements which in reality are distinct. It is therefore not the content of the images in a film which is important, but their combination. The raw materials of such an art work need not be original, but are pre-fabricated elements which can be disassembled and re-assembled by the artist into new juxtapositions.
• The montage experiments carried out by Kuleshov in the late 1910’s and early 1920’s formed the theoretical basis of Soviet montage cinema, culminating in the famous films of the late 1920s by directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Dziga Vertov, among others. These films included The Battleship Potemkin, October, Mother, The End of St. Petersburg, and The Man with a Movie Camera.
• Soviet montage cinema was suppressed under Stalin during the 1930s as a dangerous example of Formalism in the arts, and as being incompatible with the official Soviet artistic doctrine of Socialist Realism.
Three pairs of images from the film experiment carried out by the Russian psychologist Lev Kuleshov around 1920. Kuleshov discovered that audiences interpreted the actor's expression (the right of each pair, and all identical) in relation to the image it was paired with (left of each pair). The actor was perceived as hungry, sad, romantically intrigued, etc., depending on what was edited together with the actor. Kuleshov's results significantly influenced the development of montage theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_Effect
http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/kuleshov.html
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