Introduction to Film Studies - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Introduction to Film Studies

Mise

-en-scène Slide2

Lighting:

Colour

In

Colour

lighting, thin colour film placed in front of a light gives image a universal tint.

Colour

gel or filterSlide3

Lighting:

Colour

In Michael Powell and

Emeric

Pressburger’s Black Narcissus, their cinematographer Jack Cardiff got scenes lit in bold

colours

. Intense key light comes from the screen right in blue and orange.Slide4

Lighting:

Colour

The theatrical lighting in blue in the concluding sequence of

Nagisa

Oshima’s last film, Taboo (1999) Slide5

Lighting:

Colour

Dominant

colour

can be chosen to fit the mood of the film. Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo has sepia tone in order to reflect symbolically the mood of the Depression, which was the period setting for the film. Slide6
Slide7

Lighting

In William Wyler’s

Jezebel

, Bettie Davis is lit by the key light from top right, by the fill light from left and by the back light from slightly high at back. No strong contrast between light and dark parts is created – HIGH KEY LIGHTING

He’s always mineSlide8

Lighting

Three point lighting in a

colour

film

Strong key light from left, a fill light from off right of the camera, and the office behind the couple is lit more dimly and softly with background light. Whenever the camera position moves, the lighting positions must be rearranged. Slide9

Lighting

Three point lighting suited to

high-key lighting

Photography with low contrast between brighter and darker areas

The most frequently used in classical Hollywood cinema. Under the bamboo treeSlide10

Lighting

LOW-KEY LIGHTING creates stronger contrasts and sharper, darker shadows. The lighting is hard, and fill light is lessened or switched off.

Light is hard and comes from right in the shot above,

The Maltese Falcon

. Fill and back light eliminated creating a dark shadow on the wallSlide11

Analyze the ways that scenes are lit. Light, shadow, direction,

colour

, etc. Ridley Scott,

Blade RunnerSlide12

Analyse

the ways that scenes are lit. Light, shadow, direction,

colour

, etc. Roger Mitchell’s Notting HillI’m just a girlSlide13

Photography: Tonality

FILM STOCK, LIGHTING and LABORATORY PRECESS determine the

tonality

of photography

In general, a slow film stock will produce a high-contrast look – the sharp difference between the darkest and lightest areas of the frame.Hard

lighting, Low-key

,

lighting creates

strong ‘contrast’

In film

developing

process,

contrast

can be heightened or lessened – high-contrast and low contrast. Slide14

Photography: Tonality

In most black-and-white films, grays, blacks and whites are balanced

and nuance is created through

high-key, soft

- lighting, ‘normal’ film stock and standard developing.Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion French stockSlide15

Photography: Tonality

In the dream sequence of Ingmar Bergman’s

Wild Strawberries

a bleached-out look (little

colour gradation) is created through a combination of film stock, over-exposure and laboratory processing.Slide16
Slide17

dreamSlide18

Photography: Tonality

News-reel like photography in Jean Luc Godard’s

Les

Carabiniers

‘The positive prints were simply made on a special Kodak high contrast stock … Several shots, intrinsically too gray, were duped again sometimes two or three times, always to their highest contrast.’ In cinemaSlide19
Slide20

Photography: Tonality

Technicolor [

colour

film stock] famous for its sharply distinct, heavily saturated hues. Rich colours

created by a specially designed camera and a printing process. Vincent Minelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) The Trolley SongSlide21

Photography: Tonality

Soviet film stock tended to lower contrast and give the image a murky greenish-blue cast. The monochrome-like

colour

design in Andrei

Tarkovsky’s The Stalker. Actions seem to be taking place underwater. StalkerSlide22

Photography: Tonality

TINTING

- Already developed positive film is immersed in dye. Lighter areas pick up the

colour

while darker ones remain black and gray. In Abel Gance’s J’accuse

! (1919) the image was tinted in pink. J’AccuseSlide23

Photography: Tonality

TONING – when dye is added during the developing of the positive print, the darker areas of the frame are

coloured

and the brighter portions remain white or only faintly

coloured.Veá

Chytilová’s Daisies Night ClubSlide24

Photography: Tonality

Hand

colouring

–

Portions of black-and-white images are painted in colours, frame by frame. The ship’s flat in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin is hand

coloured red.Slide25

Each frame painstakingly hand

coloured

in George

Méliès

A Trip to the Moon colour versionSlide26

Photography: Tonality

Manipulations of tonalities

Stan

Brakhage

scratches off the emulsion in certain parts of the image for creating a graphic design. Chinese seriesSlide27

Photography: Tonality

Tonality is the most crucially determined by exposure. Overexposure (too much light admitted through the lens) make the image too bright and underexposure (little light) make the image too dark. Carl Dreyer overexposes the windows to create a religious atmosphere in

Ordet

.

Funeral 5.30Slide28

Photography: Tonality

The area in the strong sunshine is slightly over-exposed, while the areas in shadows are shot in right exposure. Francesco

Rosi’s

Salvatore Giuliano. Slide29
Slide30

Photography: Tonality

Women in the foreground shot in

right-

exposure, but the sun-lit town in the background is overexposed.

Inside the house a woman is underexposed, while the countryside in the background well-exposed.Slide31

Photography: Tonality

Filter

– a slice of glass or gelatin placed in front of the lens reduces certain frequencies of light reaching the film.

Day for Night

– A filter can block out part of the light and make footage shot in daylight seem to be shot at night. Slide32

George Stevens

,

ShaneSlide33

Perspective Relations

Types of camera lenses

determined by their focal

length – distance between

the centre of the lens to the point where light rays converge on the film.

Focal length of the lens can affect perspective relations in the things in a frame.Slide34

Perspectiv

e Relations

Short focal length (wide-angle) lens -

A lens of less than 35 mm in focal length Distort straight lines lying near the edges of the frame.

Two towers appear to lean rightward and leftwardSlide35

Nicholas

Roeg’s

Don’t Look NowSlide36

Perspectiv

e Relations

Anything nearer the camera appear to bulge and its shape look distorted.

In Terry Gilliam’s

Brazil a wide-angle lens is used extensivelySlide37
Slide38

openingSlide39

Perspective Relations

The wide-angle lens exaggerate depth. In a scene from William Wyler’s

Little Foxes

the lens makes the characters seem farther away from each other than we would expect.

ArrivalSlide40

Perspectiv

e Relations

Middle focal length (normal) lens

– A lens of medium focal length between 35 and 50 mm.

No noticeable perspectival distortion: horizontal and vertical lines are rendered straight and perpendicular Depth does not look stretched apart or squeezedSlide41

Perspectiv

e Relations

Long focal length (telephoto) lens

-

A lens of long focal length between 75 and 250 mm or more.

It flatten the space between what is in the foreground and in the background The planes seem squashed togetherChen Kaige’s

Life on a StringSlide42

Perspective Relations

In Godfrey Reggio’s

Koyaanisqatsi

an airport is shot from a great distance by a telephoto lens. The long lens makes the

aeroplane look as if it were landing on a crowded motorway. 25.15 koyaanisqatsiSlide43

Perspective Relations

Akira Kurosawa frequently used the telephoto lens. In his

Red Beard

a mad woman walks in a doctor’s room. It is filmed over the shoulder of the doctor and the distance between the two characters appear close at first. When they are shown sideways, the viewer would know that they are far apart.Slide44

Perspective Relations

As the telephoto lens flatten depth, a figure moving towards the camera appears to take more time to cover what seems to be a small distance.

Running-in-place

Mike Nichols’ The GraduateSlide45

Perspective Relations

Zoom lens

– a lens which can change focal length and transform perspective relations within a single shot.

The zoom lens can substitute for moving the camera forward and backward, as it can magnify and

demagnify the subject. The Conversation