English Language and Literature

SEMESTER V
Core Course VIII – Film Studies
(EN 1543)
Part I
 What is Film?
• A story or event recorded by a camera as a set of
moving images and shown in a cinema or on
television.
• This set of moving images is known as shots.
What is the basic unit of a film?
• Shots: A part of a film between two cuts. Shots are
generally filmed with a single camera and can be of
any duration.
• Film shots are an essential aspect of a movie where
transitions and cuts are used to further express
emotion, ideas and movement.
• Scene is a combination of shots, a sequence of
continuous action
 Hybrid nature of film

• Hybrid means: blend/mixture

• Film is a combination of Various art forms.
• And also we have different genres of film.
 MACRO and MICRO elements of
Film Language
• MACRO

• GENRE
• NARRATIVE – The story – What happens to the characters

• MICRO
• CINEMATOGRAPHY
• SOUND
• EDITING
• MISE EN SCENE
• SPECIAL EFFECTS
 Cinematography
• Refers to the visual aspects of a film’s
language
• Camera shots and movement can give us clear
indications of emotion, motive and give
audiences clues as to things that may be about
to happen.
• Cinematography is the act of capturing
photographic images in space through the use
of a number of controllable elements.
• These include the quality of the film stock, the
manipulation of the camera
lens, framing, scale movement
and duration, or the length of the shot.
 Camera shots

• Distance
with respect to the subject in the frame.
• Height
Refers to the degree of elevation.
• Level in framing.
 Camera shots
Distance
• Close-up and extreme close-up
• Medium shot
• Long shot
• Wide (Extreme long shot - (often establishing
shot)
 Close up
• The viewer is supposed to understand what
character feels.
 MEDIUM CLOSE-UP

• Framing the shoulder,

chest to head. It would
fill most of the screen.
• The tight presentation of
two or three actors
• Used in indoor
sequences allowing for
a visual signification of
relationships between
characters.
Extreme close up shot (ECU) show
Emotion
 LONG SHOT
Gives clear sense of character in a given location and
emphasises body language
 Height
(Refers to the degree of elevation)

• Low angle shot

• High angle shot
• Birds eye view/Aerial
 Point of View shot

• (POV) Point of view

shows what the
character sees. These
are often freehand and
are used in horror films.
 Level in framing
Canted Angle
• Suggest imbalance and instability (very popular in
horror/psycho thriller movies)
 Movement shots

• Pan
• Tilt
• Zoom
• Dolly/Tracking
• Crane
 DEPTH OF FIELD

• How sharp images are within a frame. The

frame for this purpose can be divided into the
foreground, middle ground and background.
Deep focus: includes foreground, middle-ground, and
extreme-background objects, all in focus.
staging with great depth of field, using relatively wide-
angle lenses
Shallow focus: one plane of the image is in focus while
the rest is out of focus. Shallow focus is typically used
to emphasize one part of the image over another.
 Racking focus
• can change the focus of the lens to a subject in
the background from the foreground or vice
vera.
• This can be used to shift the audience’s
attention or to point out a significant
relationship between the two subjects.
 Shot reverse shot
• Shot reverse shot (or shot
counter shot) is a film
technique where one
character is shown looking
at another character, and
then the other character is
shown looking back at the
first character.
• Since the characters are
shown facing in opposite
directions, the viewer
assumes that they are
looking at each other.
180 degree rule
 Rule of Thirds
• The Rule of Thirds is
perhaps the most well-
known ‘rule’ of
photographic
composition.
• The basic principle
behind the rule of thirds
is to imagine breaking
an image down into
thirds (both horizontally
and vertically) so that
you have 9 parts.
• The theory is that if you place points of
interest in the intersections or along the lines
that your photo becomes more balanced and
will enable a viewer of the image to interact
with it more naturally.
• Studies have shown that when viewing images
that people’s eyes usually go to one of the
intersection points most naturally rather than
the centre of the shot
 Off-screen Space
• There are six zones of
off-screen space, the
four edges of the frame,
the space behind and in
front of the screen.
• By using these unseen
spaces, the director can
achieve, surprise,
suspense, and other
effects.
 Sound in Cinema
• Talking films(talkies) dates back from
1927 with Alan Crosland’s The Jazz
Singer.
• Sound put to an end to the silent era of
slapstick comedy.
• The most basic elements of the film
sound track includes speech, music,
sound effect etc.
 Diegetic sound
• Sound whose source is visible on the screen or
whose source is implied to be present by the
action of the film.
• voices of characters
• sounds made by objects in the story
• music represented as coming from instruments
in the story space
 Non-diegetic sound
• Sound whose source is neither visible on the
screen nor has been implied to be present in
the action:
• narrator's commentary
• sound effects which is added for the dramatic
effect
• mood music
 Authorship
• Auteur Theory
– In film criticism, auteur theory holds that
a director's film reflects the director's personal
creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur"
(the French word for "author").
• In 1954, François Truffaut
wrote an essay entitled A
Certain Tendency in French
Cinema. In this work he
claimed that film is a great
medium for expressing the
personal ideas of the
director. He suggested that
this meant that the director
should therefore be
regarded as an auteur. In
fact, Truffaut once
provocatively said that:
"There are no good and bad
movies, only good and bad
directors"
• Auteur Theory suggests that a director can use
the commercial apparatus of film-making in the
same way that a writer uses a pen or a painter
uses paint and a paintbrush. It is a medium for
the personal artistic expression of the director.
• Auteur Theory suggests that the best films will
bear their maker’s ‘signature’. Which may
manifest itself as the stamp of his or her
individual personality or perhaps even focus on
recurring themes within the body of work.
 Genres of film
• Action (Disaster): Stories whose central struggle
plays out mainly through a clash of physical
forces.
• Adventure: Stories whose central struggle plays
out mainly through encounters with new
"worlds."
• Coming-of-Age Drama: Stories whose central
struggle is about the hero finding his or her
place in the world.
• Epic/Myth: Stories whose central struggle plays
out in the midst of a clash of great forces or in
the sweep of great historical change.
• Fantasy: Stories which are animated, or whose
central struggle plays out in two worlds - the
"real" world and an imaginary world.
• Gangster: Stories whose central struggle is
between a criminal and society. (This genre is
often blended with Film Noir).
• Social Drama: Stories whose central struggle is
between a Champion and a problem or
injustice in society. Usually the Champion has a
personal stake in the outcome of the struggle.
• The Black Comedy: A comedy that uses death
and morbid doings as the root of its humor.
Surfaces regularly. Most recent incarnations,
Very Bad Things and Pulp Fiction.
• Science Fiction: Stories whose central struggle is
generated from the technology and tools of a
scientifically imaginable world.
• The Picaresque: An episodic string of adventures
by a hero who moves from place to place.
• Apocalyptic fiction: is a sub-genre of science
fiction that is concerned with the end of human
civilization.
• Magic realism or magical realism: is a genre where
magic elements are a natural part in an otherwise
mundane, realistic environment.
• Film noir : is a cinematic term used primarily to
describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas,
particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes
and sexual motivations.
 A Brief History of Motion Pictures
• The magic lantern or
Laterna Magica is an early
type of image projector
developed in the 17th
century.
• Can be considered as a
prototype of movie
camera.
• an early version of a slide
projector that allowed
images to pass through a
lens with the use of light,
often supplied by a
kerosene lamp.
• The inventor of the magic lantern is debated,
although most sources credit Dutch scientist
Charles Hugyens in the late 1650s.
• The magic lantern was used mostly for purely
entertainment value.
• Once the Magic Lantern entered the United
States in the mid 19th Century, it permeated
American society, becoming widely popular
and profitable.
• Throughout most of the 19th century, the idea of
moving pictures remained grounded in the use of
static photographic stills projected rapidly.
• The concept of creating continuous live action did
not occur until 1872 when British photographer
Edward Muybridge was hired by California
governor to win a bet that all four hooves of a race
horse left the ground when it ran.
• After several attempts , Muybridge eventually
developed the idea of setting 24 cameras in a row
along the track.
• He perfected the technique by projecting the stills
through a magic lantern.
• After witnessing the
work of Muybridge,
American inventor
Thomas Edison decided
to pursue the concept of
a visual companion to
his phonograph.
• His enthusiasm led to
the invention of
Kinetoscope.
 Kinetoscope
• The Kinetoscope is
an early motion
picture exhibition
device. The Kinetoscope
was designed for films to
be viewed by one
individual at a time
through
a peephole viewer
window at the top of the
device.
• Edison worked fast to stay ahead of his
competitors, and in Aporil1894, the first
Kinetoscope parlors were opened in New York
city.
• By July the first case of censorship against film
was enacted as one of the Edison’s film is
forbidden based on the footage showing a
dancer who reveals her undergarments,
becoming the first case of censorship against
films.
• The blunder Edison’s business venture was the
lack of pursuit given to find a means of
projection to a crowd.
• 1895 saw many inventors experimenting with
projection and demonstrating it to small
crowds.
• It was France that would earn the credit of
showing the first large-screen projected films,
led by brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere.
 Cinematographe
• The brothers owned a
photographic equipment
factory and had been
experimenting with a
camera they called the
Cinematographe, which
they actually
demonstrated in March
1895.
 A Train Arriving at the Station (1895)
• Created in 1895,
“Arrival of Train at La
Ciotat Station” is mostly
known for its legend.
• The footage is a single
shot of a train in the
distance approaching the
station.
 Georges Méliès.
• Méliès was a professional
magician who had
become interested in the
illusionist possibilities of
the cinématographe;
when the Lumières
refused to sell him one, he
bought an animatograph
projector from R W Paul
in 1896 and reversed its
mechanical principles to
design his own camera.
• The following year he
organized the Star Film
company and
constructed a small
glass-enclosed studio on
the grounds of his house
at Montreuil, where he
produced, directed,
photographed, and acted
in more than 500 films
between 1896 and 1913.
 A Trip to the Moon (1902)
• Was one of the earliest
narrative films.
• establish the fiction film as
the cinema’s mainstream
product.
• Méliès treated the frame of
the film as the proscenium
arch of a theatre stage, never
once moving his camera or
changing its position within
a scene. He ultimately lost
his audience in the late
1910s to filmmakers with
more sophisticated narrative
techniques.
 Edwin S. Porter- the "Father of the Story
Film"
• Innovative use of dramatic editing (piecing
together scenes shot at different times and
places) in such films as The Life of An
American Fireman (1903) and The Great Train
Robbery (1903) revolutionized filmmaking.
• The Great Train Robbery (1903)
• Combination of film editing and the telling of
narrative stories, Porter produced one of the most
important and influential films of the time to reveal
the possibility of fictional stories on film.
 MPPC
• Motion Picture Patents Company, also called Movie
Trust or Edison Trust is a trust of 10 film producers
and distributors who attempted to gain complete
control of the motion-picture industry in the United
States from 1908 to 1912.
• The original members were the American companies
Edison, Vitagraph, Biograph, Essanay, Selig, Lubin,
and Kalem; and the French companies Pathé, Méliès,
and Gaumont. The company possessed most of the
available motion-picture patents, especially those of
Thomas A. Edison, for camera and projection
equipment. It entered into a contract with Eastman
Kodak Company, the largest manufacturer of raw film
stock, to restrict the supply of film to licensed
members of the company.
• The company was notorious for enforcing its restrictions by
refusing equipment to uncooperative filmmakers and
theatre owners and for its attempts to terrorize
independent film producers.
• It limited the length of films to one and two reels (10 to 20
minutes) because movie audiences were believed incapable
of enjoying more protracted entertainment.
• By 1912, however, the success of European and
independent producers and the violent opposition of
filmmakers outside the company weakened the Movie
Trust, which, in 1917, was dissolved by court order.
• The Movie Trust, which was based in New York and other
cities of the East Coast, was indirectly responsible for the
establishment of Hollywood, California, as the nation’s
film capital, since many independent filmmakers migrated
to the latter town to escape the Trust’s restrictive influence
in the East.
 D.W. Griffith
• Developed the narrative language of film.
• was the first filmmaker to realize that the motion-
picture medium, properly vested with technical vitality
and seriousness of theme, could exercise enormous
persuasive power over an audience, or even a nation,
without recourse to print or human speech
• Experimented with camera movement and placement:
• panoramic panning shots not only to provide visual
information but also to engage his audience in the total
environment of his films.
• employ the tracking, or traveling, shot, in which the
camera—and therefore the audience—participates in
the dramatic action by moving with it.
• Essentially, the Hollywood Studio System was a
way to mass produce movies
• Each studio was a massive lot that took up acres
and acres of land
• Studios were complete with several different sets
(Western town, New York Avenue, European
Village, horror castle, etc)
• Also included in studios were any prop, costume,
or piece of equipment one could ever need to
make a movie
• As film grew more and more popular throughout
the 1920’s, Americans demanded more quality
films quicker
• The studio system was the answer—a way to
mass produce movies in one area
• Eventually, five major studios emerged
– Paramount
– MGM
– Warner Brothers
– Fox
- RKO
• Studio System, through mass producing movies, did
several things:
– Delivered volume of films to American people
– Created the Golden Age of Hollywood
– Turned actors and actresses into stars
– Made a ton of money in the process