Introduction to Film Studies - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Introduction to Film Studies

Mise

-en-scène

Slide2

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’Accuse

Slide3

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 Club

Slide4

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.

Red flag

Slide5

Each frame painstakingly hand

coloured

in George

Méliès

A Trip to the Moon

colour

version

Slide6

Photography: Tonality

Manipulations of tonalities

Stan

Brakhage

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

Chinese series

Slide7

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

Slide8

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

.

Slide9

Slide10

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.

Slide11

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.

Slide12

George Stevens

,

Shane

Slide13

Perspective Relations: Lens

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.

30-80 mm – normal lens; under 35mm – wide-angle lens; over 85 mm – telephoto lens

Slide14

Perspective Relations: Lens

WIDE ANGLE LENS – a lens with short focal length with a wide angle of view. It exaggerates apparent depth of space and distorts

straight lines lying near the edges of the frame.

Slide15

Perspective Relations: Lens

With wide angle lens a wide area of space is captured.

With telephoto lens an angle of view is very narrow

With normal lens an angle of view is narrower than with wide angle lens but wider than with telephoto

Slide16

Perspective Relations: Lens

With wide angle lens, our impression of the depth

of space is exaggerated.

Stanley Kubrick’s

Paths of Glory

Slide17

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 leftward

Slide18

Nicholas

Roeg’s

Don’t Look Now

Slide19

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 extensively

Slide20

Slide21

opening

Slide22

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.

Arrival

Slide23

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 squeezed

Slide24

Perspective Relations: Lens

TELEPHOTO LENS – a lens of long focal length with a narrow angle of view. It condenses space, flattens depth, and bring distant things close.

Slide25

Perspectiv

e

Relations: Lens

Long focal length (telephoto) lens

-

A lens of

long focal

length between

80 and

250

mm

or more.

It condenses space and flatten the space between what is in the foreground and in the background

The planes seem squashed together

Chen

Kaige’s

Life on a String

Slide26

Perspective

Relations: Lens

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

koyaanisqatsi

Slide27

Perspective

Relations: Lens

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.

Slide28

Perspective

Relations: Lens

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

Graduate

run for

elaine

Slide29

Perspective

Relations: Lens

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

de-magnify

the subject.

The

Conversation

Slide30

Describe that in Kurosawa Akira’s

Kagemusha

what

lenses are used and what effects do they create.

Slide31

Describe that in Stanley Kubrick’s

Shining

what lenses are used and what effects they create

.

Come play with us

Slide32

The Lens: Depth of Field and Focus

Depth of focus = the range

before the lens within which

objects can be photographed

i

n sharp

focus.

A lens with a depth of field of 10ft (3m) to infinity renders any object in that range clearly, but anything outside it (e.g. in 4ft) goes out of focus.

Slide33

Lens: Depth of Field and Focus

A wide-angle lens has a relatively greater depth of field than does a telephoto lens. A scene from Orson Welles’

Citizen Kane –

an example of ‘pan’ focus. All the people in this frame are in sharp focus.

Slide34

Depth of Field

and

Focus

Only one plane is in focus and the other planes are blurred –

s

hallow focus

. David Fincher’s

Social Network

(2010) A young man’s head in focus, another man in front slightly out of focus, and everybody beyond the central figure completely out of focus.

A scene

Slide35

Depth of Field

and

Focus

Objects nearer to the camera are thrown out of focus, so that the viewer’s attentions is drawn to the sharper middle ground.

A popular visual style in the 1940s.

More recent example,

Godfather

(1972)

Slide36

Lens: Depth of Field and Focus

Selective

f

ocus

can be used for a more abstract compositional effect. Leo

Carax’s

Boy Meets Girl

(1984)

I am what I am

Slide37

Depth of Field and Focus

Faster film stock, wider-angle lens, more intense lighting yield a greater depth of field.

Deep focus

　

photography, in which everything is in focus. In

Citizen Kane

Greg

Toland

achieved memorable deep focus photography.

Slide38

Slide39

Lens: Depth of Field and Focus

Deep focus

photography a popular stylistic choice in the 1940s and 50s. Samuel Fuller,

Underworld USA

(1961)

The Girl Backed down

Slide40

Lens: Depth of Field and Focus

Perspective relations can be adjusted by using

rack (racking) focus

or

pulling focus

. One object is in focus in one plane and you

rack focus

so that another thing in another place, which was out of focus, come in focus. Wes Anderson’s

Rushmore

Swimming pool

Slide41

Describe the ways in which scenes are focused in Paul Thomas Anderson’s

The Master

and what effects it creates?

The cause

Slide42

Describe the ways in which scenes are focused in Stephen Spielberg’s

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

and what kind of effects it creates.

Last encounter

Slide43

Where in the scene is the rack focus found and for what effect is it used?

Da

vinci

code