Takeaways From Chapter 2: Moving Pictures, Chapter 2 How to Watch a Movie







 

What is new for you? 

Because I have never taken a film course, almost all of the material was new for me. I jotted down notes, here’s what was new:

 

Cinematic Language

 

Movies are a series of still images, at least 24 per second. The brain interprets that as movement, illusion of movement, or beta movement.

 

Shots: the basic building blocks. Could last second, minutes or hours, basically everything from when director calls action to when they call cut.

 

Editing: arranges shots into patterns that make scenes, sequences, and acts. It’s like how words then get combined into sentences and paragraphs.

 

Cinematic language: a set of rules and conventions by which cinema communicates meaning to the viewer. This can evolve over time.

 

Visual lexicon: images, angles, transitions, camera moves, lighting style, color palette that we all understand mean something. Like how a weird camera angle could signal danger. Viewers aren’t really supposed to notice, it’s meant to be in the background.

 

Angles: close up, medium shot, long shot, low-angle shot, high angle shot. They change how we interpret the scene. For example, a high angle shot where the audience looks down makes them feel like gods.

 

Transitions: fade-ins, fade-outs, dissolves, hard cuts. For example, a long fade out could signal the end of a part of a movie. Hard cuts, also called cutting on action, are the most common.

 

Explicit and Implicit Meaning

 

Watch “the Poetry of Details” by Lynne Ramsay (7 min clip). she pays attention to details. Framing, Sound, images all evoke emotions.

 

Explicit Meaning is obvious and directly expressed.

 

Implicit Meaning is indirect, deeper, essential meaning.

 

Theme is what the movie is really about. It’s the implicit meaning expressed through shots, scenes and sequences, music, etc.

 

Co-expressive: sound can change how you perceive and image, and an image can change how you perceive sound.

 

non-diegetic musical score. It’s music that only the audience can hear. Think the star wars soundtrack.

 

Sound design includes the score, dialog, sound effects, and background noise.

 

mise-en-scene. the overall look including set design, costume, make-up – to evoke a sense of place and visual continuity

 

Difference between movies and theater: movies can use all sorts of different points of view and camera angles.

 

Framing/Composition: arrangement of people, objects and setting within the frame of an image. Basically what’s on screen versus off screen.

 

Recurring patterns/motifs: can be used with sound, mise-en-scene (set design, costume, makeup), and narrative structure. Examples are the movie clips: Kubrick and one-point perspective, Jenkins and color, Coppola and cages.

 

Movement: how people and objects move within a frame, and how the frame moves.

 

Form, Content, and the Power of Cinema

 

Cultural Feedback Loop: film influences and is influenced by the context it’s in. WOKE ALERT: people who have historically had access to the capital required to produce that very expensive medium tend to all look alike. That is, mostly white, and mostly men. Though film can challenge the status quo.

 

Everyone’s a Critic

 

Good and Bad is different than Like and Dislike: It’s totally fine to dislike a well-made movie like Citizen Kane, and to like a poorly-made movie (she uses Twilight as an example)

 

What is review?

Really, none it was review the first time through for me.

 

Free associate to other encounters with this content.

 

As I think about some recent movies I’ve watched, like The Super Mario Bros. Movie, I’ve been thinking about how animated films use all the same concepts, like framing, lighting, and sound. Older movies I grew up with like Toy Story and Star Wars that I used for my shot examples also do a great job with all the film-making fundamentals. It will be interesting when I goto my next new release movies to see if I notice any of the filmmaking techniques (good or bad).

 

Image Source: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/back-view-of-a-man-sitting-on-a-couch-watching-movie-on-his-big-flat-screen-tv-gm1168937327-322939144


 

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