Table of Contents 1 Problems of Film Realism and Formalism 2 Take a Photograph or Make a Photograph 3 Reality effects and truth effects LumiéreMelies Chart Realism Formalism ID: 653163
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Slide1
Film Studies
Reality Effects and Truth EffectsSlide2
Table of Contents
1.
Problems of Film Realism and Formalism
2. Take a Photograph or Make a Photograph
3. Reality effects and truth effectsSlide3
Lumiére-Melies Chart
(Realism) (Formalism)
LUMIERE
MELIES
The Blair Witch Project Exorcist Full Monty The Gold RushDocumentary SF FantasySlide4
Realism / Lumière Tendencies
The Full
Monty
(1997) by Peter
Cattaneo
: a British comedy about six unemployed men trying to form a male striptease group to support themselves and their families. Slide5
Mostly showing Lumière tendencies but some parts
Méliès
tendencies: photography in a realist style and fancy narrativeSlide6
Formalism / Méliès Tendencies
Gold Rush
(1925) by Charlie Chaplin: a silent comedy about a trump going to the Yukon to take part in the Klondike Gold Rush but being stranded in a cabin by snow storm.
The Gold RushSlide7
Mostly formalist film with Chaplin’s
fantastic mime
and impressive
comic performance,
but realist elements are also included such as location shooting and real historical reference.Slide8
Problems of Film Realism
Film as representation of reality
What is filmed is not reality itself but its image
A person who appears on the screen is not herself but her image.
An object who can be seen on the screen is not itself but its image.Slide9
Problems of Film Realism
René
Magritte
’
s painting of
of Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe)The picture is not the pipe itself, no matter how lifelike it, but its image. Slide10
Marshall McLuhan’s cameo appearance
in Woody
Allen’s
Annie
Hall
In the film, he is only the image of McLuhan and not himselfSlide11
Problems of Film Realism
A film re-presents objects and people
Or re-traces (an event); re-calls (an event); re-produce (reality), re-enact (an event/reality); re-
fer
to (an event / reality), re-build (reality); re-construct (reality): re-stage (reality / an event)
Film is realization in ‘second-time’; thus actions are suffixed with -re; spatially and temporally different from what it shows.Slide12
Problems of Film Formalism
Even
fantasy, fantastic images, and forms are constructed
on our perception of reality.
It is impossible to create a world totally detached from reality. Slide13
Problems of Film Formalism
Even a creature from Mars have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two arms, fingers, and two legs.Slide14Slide15Slide16
Coexistence and Interaction
Realism and formalism coexist and interact
Every film is constructed by a dialectic process of film realism and film formalism: of mimicking and changing realitySlide17
Coexistence and Interaction
Ridley
Scott’s
SF film,
Blade Runner
was inspired by futuristic or postmodern reality – the cityscape of OsakaSlide18Slide19Slide20
Problems of Film Realism and Formalism
Film
is not reality itself but the representation of it. Thus, filmed reality is subject to
filmmaker’s
interpretation and
manipulation. It is impossible to create anything which has nothing to do with the reality we perceive; the filmmaker always rely on what he/she knows, has learned and experienced in real life. Filmmaker’s imagination and creation is controlled by real existence.Slide21
Problems of Film Realism and Formalism
Realism and formalism coexist and interact in every film
Our task is:
- to identify the extent to which a film is realistic, formalistic or both;
- to explore how filmmakers achieve realism or formalismSlide22
Take or Make a Photograph
Photography is a modern invention which has enabled us to record reality
‘as
it really is
.’
Question: Is photography an objective recording of reality as it is?Slide23
Take or Make a Photograph?
Choices of exposure and shutter
speed
They reflect the photographer’s intentionSlide24
Take or Make a Photograph
John
Constable’s
two drawings of the same spot.
Dedham Vale from LanghamSlide25Slide26Slide27
Take or Make a Photograph
Photographer finds an
interesting
moment and compose.
Photos by Henri Cartier-BressonSlide28Slide29Slide30
Take or Make a Photograph
The choice of
colour
or black and
white
It depends on photographer’s aesthetic sensibility.Slide31
Take or Make a Sketch
John
Constable’s
series of paintings of the skySlide32
Take or Make a Sketch
Constable’s
studies on cloud-formation based on Alexander CozensSlide33
Problems of Realism
Constable did not simply record
reality but
learned how it looks.
Artist learns how to record reality.
Filmmakers, even those of realist film, watch and learn how they record and film reality. Filmmakers always interpret and alter the form of reality. Slide34
Reality Effects and Truth Effects
Film
(like photography and painting) is
not, no matter how realistic it is, the simple, objective recording of reality but the rearrangement of it.
‘
Virtual reality, O.K. You know what virtual means? O.K., it is like really real. So virtual reality is practically, totally real. But not. -- Jennifer Jason Leigh as Lois Kaiser in Robert Altman’s Short CutsSlide35
Reality Effects and Truth Effects
‘Realism’
is a relative concept in two
senses
1) There is no pure or perfect form of realism. Some films are
only more realistic than others. 2) The filmmaker’s and the viewer’s ideas of reality are relative. An alternative way to describe realism To discuss realism in terms of effects which a film create on the audience.Slide36
Ivan
Shishikin’s
Oak Grove
Ultimate realismSlide37
Camile
Pissaro’s
The Boulevard Montmartre
‘If you ask me what the world looks like to me, it looks like a painting of Pissaro. E.H. GombrichSlide38Slide39
Reality Effects and Truth Effects
An alternative way to describe realism (and formalism)
To discuss realism (and formalism) in terms of effects which a film (or art and literature) create on the audience.Slide40
Reality Effects and Truth Effects
‘Reality Effects’
- they come into being when
representations in moving images give the audience the impression that they mimic the
‘facticity’
of the world around us, or surface appearance. Roland BarthesSlide41
Reality Effects and Truth Effects
‘Truth Effects’
- they come into being when
representations in moving images agree with
viewer’s
ideas of what is true about the world in a general sense. They have to do with whether texts conform to what she generally believes about experience. Michel FoucaultSlide42
Reality Effects
Richard
Attenborough’s
biographical film,
Gandhi
, imitates how Mahatma Ghandi looked, how he spoke, how the world in which he lived looked like and what his life was like - creation of an impression that the film is mimicking facticity, that is, a reality effect. Slide43
Reality Effects
Jinnah and Ghandi
Hunger strike
Opening Assassination Slide44
Reality Effects and Truth Effects
Moving images have
‘truth
-
effects’
even when they are ‘objectively’ untrue. They have truth effects as long as they agree to what the audience believes true. Samuel Fuller’s House of Bamboo (US, 1955) display the images of Japan and Japanese women. False for those who know Japan and Japanese women but true for those who believe them true.Slide45Slide46
Film Realism and Reality/Truth Effects
Our impression
of whether moving
images being realistic or not depends on both reality and truth effects that they exert on us.
Reality and truth effects as alternative to film realismSlide47
Analyse
the reality and truth effects that
Gillo
Pontecorvo’s
The Battle of Algier exerts on you.Battle of Algiers