Film

Aesthetics Notes from the Readings

January 9, 2013: Sound: Pages 281-298 & 306-307 Rhythm: Sound unfolding overtime. - Fidelity: A sound relating to its perceived source with greater or less "fidelity" -Sound suggests something about the spatial condition in which it occurs. - Sound relates to the visual events that take place at particular points in time and this relationship gives sound a temporal dimension. -Rhythm involves, minimally a beat. It can be found in music, noises in film and speech. - Many films match rhythm to the action, including Jules and Jim and many animated films. -Rhythm in Sound and Image: Disparities - One of the most common options is to edit dialogue scenes in ways that cut against natural speech rhythms. The editing won't coincide with accented beats, cadences or pauses in the officer's speech. - The filmmaker may contrast the rhythm of sound and picture if the source of sound is primarily off screen. The filmmaker can utilize the behaviour of onscreen figures to create an expressive counter rhythm. -Musical accompaniments may even seem rhythmically inappropriate in some films. Fidelity: - Fidelity refers to the extent to which the sound is faithful to the source as well conceive it. i.e. if we see a barking dog we hear a barking dog synced accurately. - From the filmmakers standpoint, fidelity has nothing to do with what originally made the sound in production, things can be electronically placed. As long as the viewer takes the sound to be coming from its source in the diegetic world of the film, then it is faithful regardless of its actual source in production. -Fidelity is thus purely a matter of expectation. - Does the sound have a physical source in the scene? Let's call this "external

diegetic sound. - Does the sound come from inside the mind of the character? Let's call this "internal diegetic sound". - To summarize: Sound my be diegetic (in the story world) or non-diegetic (outside of the story world). If it's diegetic, it may be onscreen or off screen and internal or external. Sound Perspective: - One characteristic of diegetic sound is the possibility of diegetic sound is the possibility of suggesting sound perspective. - Sound Perspective is the sense of spatial distance and location analogous to the cues for visual depth and volume that we get with visual perspective. - Volume is key in sound perspective. Sound perspective in the Theatre space*: - Multichannel recording and reproduction tremendously increases the filmmakers ability to suggest sound perspective. In multiplex theatres equipment with multitrack sound systems, three speakers are located behind the screen. The center speaker transmits most of the onscreen dialogue as well as the most important effects and music. The left and right speakers are stereophonic, adding their sound effects, music and minor dialogue. Surround channels principally carry minor sound effects and some music and they are divided among several speakers arranged along the side and in the back of the theatre. -Stereo reproduction can specify a moving sound's direction. Time: -Synchronous Sound: Sounds that take place at the appropriate image and in sync. -Asynchronous Sound: Out of sync, take place before or after the action. -Simultaneous Sound: Two audio tracks playing at once i.e a truck coming down the street and two characters talking over it. Dieetic Sound: -Sound Bridge: The sound from the previous scene may linger while the next scene

has already started. -ADR is the postdubbing of sound. January 9, 2013: Lighting: Pages 124-131 Lighting: -Lighting shapes objects by creating highlights and shadows. -A highlight is a patch of relative brightness of a surface. -Lighting creates not only textures but overall shape. "The proper use of light can embellish and dramatize every object". -Lighting Quality: -Four Major aspects of lighting that filmmakers exploit: 1) Quality 2) Direction 3) Source 4) Colour -Lighting quality refers to the relative intensity of the illumination. I.e Hard lights or Soft lights. -Frontal Lighting: Recognized b its tendency to eliminate shadows. -Sidelight/Crosslight: Sculpt characters features. -Backlighting: Comes from behind the subject. Used with no other source of light, backlighting tends to create silhouettes. -Underlighting: Light that comes from the subject. -Top Lighting: Lighting that shines down from above. -Source: Lighting has a quality and it has direction. It can also be classified by its source. -Key Light: The primary source, providing the most directional light and it is usually suggested by a light source in the setting. -Fill Light: Less intense illumination that "fills in", softening or eliminating shadows

cast by key light. - Combining Key and Fill lights lets us control the lighting quite exactly. Three point lighting: The key light is off left, fill light comes from just to the right of the camera and a bright backlight from the rear upper. These can be combined in any direction but this is the most typical. -Background or Set lighting: Addition fill lights that fall on the setting and on crowds. HIgh-key lighting: Refers to an overall lighting design that uses fill light and backlight to create relatively low contest between bright and dark areas. Usually, the light quilt is soft, making shadow areas fairly transparent. Low-key lighting: Creates stronger contrast and sharper, darker shadows. Often the lighting is hard and fill light is lessened or eliminated altogether. The effete is of chiarosurco or extremely dark and light regions within the image. Colour: Filters allow filmmakers to control the colour and tone of the film. Coloured light can be realistic or unrealistic. January 16, 2013: Mise-en-Scene & Time. Pages: 140-151: Mise-en-Scene in Space and Time: -Most basically, the filmmaker has to guide the audience's attention to the important areas of the image. The filmmaker also wants to build up our interest by arousing curiously and suspense. Screen Space: -Filmmakers generally assume that viewers will concentrate more on the upper half of the frame, probably because that's where we tend to find character's faces. -Bilateral Symmetry: The attempt to balance the right and left halves of the frame. -Simplest way to achieve compositional balance is to centre the frame on the human body. -Contrast in lighting and on the screen is also a way of the filmmaker controlling what we look at first and what gets our attention first. Colour contrasts don't have to

be huge because we'er sensitive to small differences. -Monochromatic colour design: The filmmaker emphasizes a single colour, varying it only in purity or lightness. -Movement is also a way to direction attention to specific things on the screen. -Limited Colour Palettes: The use of very few colours so that when they are used properly, the filmmaker can control what we are looking at. i.e important objects are yellow onto of an overall green tinted screen. Space: Scene Space: -Depth cues are what enabled us to understand encounters as if they are taking place in realistic space. They suggest that a space has both volume and several distinct plains. -Planes: The payers of space occupied by persons or objects. Planes are described according to how close to or how far away they are from the camera. Only a completely blank screen has a single plane. Overlap: The most basic depth cue. Movement: One of the most important depth cues since it strongly suggests both planes and volume. Aerial perspective: Gives a great area of planes at times. Size Diminution: Figures and objects farther away from us are seen to get proportionally smaller. This reinforces our sense of seeing a deep space with considerable distances between the planes. Off-Center Linear perspective: The vanishing point is not the geometrical centre of the frame. Monocular: The illusion of depth requires impute from only one eye. Stereopsis: Binocular depth cue. It results fro the fact that our two eyes see the world from slightly different angles. Shallow Space: Mise-en-scene suggests little depth. Deep Space: Mise-en-scene suggests large depth.

*On page 149 there is a description of Mise-en-scene in Depth of Wrath. Time: - Pages mainly discuss very basic ideas of the timing of characters turning around and what that means to viewers. Yawn. - The viewer expects that more story information will come from a characters face than a character back, thus the viewers attention will usually pass over figures that are turned away and fasten on figures that are positioned frontally. Jan 30, 2013: Cinematography, Pages: 160-169: Cinematography: Contrast: Refers to the comparative difference between the darkest and lightest areas of the frame. - Most professional cinematography strives for a middle range of contrast: pure blacks, pure whites and a large range in-between, either greys (in black and white filming) or hues (in colour filming). High-Contrast Image: Displays bright white highlights, stark black areas and a narrow range of shades in between. Low-Contrast image: Displays many intermediate greys or colour shades with no true white or black areas. - High-Contrast images can seem stark and dramatic while low contrast ones suggest more muted emotional states. -Historically, photo-chemical filmmaking relied on photographic stocks with various degrees of sensitivity to light. Now a days many factors are used to control contrast including lighting, filtersm choice of film stock, lab processing and postproduction work. *Not finished* Jan 30, 2013: Special Effects, Pages: 175-178: Special Effects:

-The image's perspective relations can be shaped by special effects. -The most unrealistic sort of special effect is superimposition. - To create a superimposition in the 1920's and 30's you would need to create a composite, in which separately photographed images are blended in a single composition. Rear Projection: SImply projected footage of a setting or something onto a screen then filming actors in front of it created rear projection as well as superimposition. Front Projection: Used angled mirrors to summon up more realistic looking backgrounds to make rear projection look more realistic as well i.e in car shots. Matte work: Matte: A portion of the setting photographed on a strip of film, usually with a part of the frame empty. Through laboratory printing, the matte is joined with another strip of film ontaiing t he action. It was common to have expert artists paint an imagine of the setting and the painting was then filmed, leaving a blank space in the frame. The footage was combined with footage of action, filmed to fit the blank area. Several long shots in The Wizard of Oz amplify classic matte painting. Traveling Matte's: Invented because actors couldn't move against still paintings (or still Matte's) for it to look like movement. For this, the actor was photographed against a blank, usually blue, background . Then the shot of the actor was jigsawed into the moving hap in the background footage. Traveling Matte's could present persuasive images of space adventure or show cartoon characters interacting with humans. - Miniatures are also used against painted sets now a days to create worlds and their movement may be created by traveling matte's. Framing: The Lumiere's single shot train pulling into the station is a great example of how framing can influence the audience and create very different understanding of the events themselves. French Impressionism & Surrealism: Feb 6, 2013 Pages: 472-476 Impressionism: An avant-garde style that operated largely within the film industry. Most of the Impressionist filmmakers started working for major French companies

and some of their avant-garde work proved financially successful. -In the mid-1920's most former their own independent companies but remained within the mainstream commercial industry by renting studio facilities and releasing their films through established firms. Surrealism: Largely outside the film industry. These filmmakers relied on their own means and private patronage to create work. France in the 1920's offers a striking instance of how different film movements may flourish in the same time and place. History: WW1 struck a serious blow to the French film industry and the two major firms, Pathe Freres and eon Gaumount also controlled circuits of the theatres and they needed to fill vacant screens. As a result, American films began to flood the screens as not enough work was being produced in France because so many were off working in the war. The French could never totally recapture their audience after American filmmakers hit the screen and mostly tried to recreate Hollywood production methods and genres. Alternatively, there emerged a movement consistingg of younger directors: Abel Gance, Louis Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Marcel L'Herbier and Jean Epstein. Impressionism: - Between 1918-1920 young filmmakers experimented with cinema in a way that posed an alternative to the emerging Hollywood tradition. -The movement gained the name "Impressionist" because filmmakers wanted to give their narration subject depth, to capture the momentary impressions that flit through a character's mind. - The directors concentrated on intimate physiological stories and favoured a small cast of characters that were often caught up in love triangles. - An Impressionist film replaces external acton with an exploration of the character's inner life. -Flashback depicts memories. - The films register characters' dreams, fantasies and mental states.

Subjective Style: -The French relied more on cinematography and editing. -Optical effects such as superimpositions imply characters' thoughts and mood. -POV cutting is common and so are shots suggesting altered states of perception i.e dizziness is shown in distortion or slow motion. - Impressionists also experimented with pronounced rhythmic editing to suggest the pace of an experience as a character feels it, moment by moment. -Great inventions came out of the Impressionist age i.e roller skates for moving the camera on a platform in L'Argent in 1928. - Foreign audiences generally were not attracted to the french impressionism films. -Impressionism is to of stopped as a movement by 1929. Surrealism: - Films generally shocked and perplexed ordinary audiences. - Linked directly to surrealist literature and painting. - Andre Bazin said "Surrealism (was) based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association, heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of dreams, in the undirected play of thought". -Surrealists wanted to plum the hidden currents of the unconscious while Impressionists wanted to explore conscious thought. -Automatic writing and pairing, the search for the bizarre or evocative imagers, the deliberate avoidance of rationally explicable form or style: These became the features of surrealism as it developed in the period 1924-1929. -Surrealists admired slapstick comedies and serials about mysterious super- criminals -Dali was a surrealist filmmaker and so were writers such as Antonin Artaud. -The most famous surrealist filmmaker was Luis Bunel. -Surrealist cinema was anti-narrative, attacking casuality and coherence. - Discontinuous editing is also commonly used to fracture any coherence of space and time.

-Surrealist films refused to define itself by any particular techniques, since that would order and rationalize what had to be an "undirected pal of thought". -By late 1929 when Brenton joined the Communist Party, Surrealists were embroiled in internal dissension about whether communism was a political equivalent of surrealism. February 13, 2013: Pages 420-425: *Didnt do yet February 13, 2013: Alts to Continuity Pages 420-425: Alternatives to Continuity: Single-frame films: Each shot is only one frame long, the most extreme example of films that emphasize editing rhythm over the images themselves. Spatial & Temporal Discontinuity: -Some filmmakers may ignore or violate the 180 degree rule. -Filmmakers like Jacuqyes Tati and Yasujiro Ozu are based on what we might call "360 degree space". Instead of an axis of action that dictates that the camera be placed within an imaginary semi circle, these filmmakers work as if the camera could be placed at any point on the circumference. -Ozu's films often do not yield consistent relative positions, eyeliner matches and screen directions. Many continuity editors would consider his style to have grave editing errors. -Jump Cut: When you cut together two shots of the same subject, if the shots differ only slightly in angle or composition, there will be a noticeable jump on the scnree. Instead of appearing as two shots of the subject, the result may look as if some frames have been cut out of a single shot. Many filmmakers believe that jump cuts can be avoided by shifting the camera at least 30 defers from shot to shot. This is called the Thirty Degree Rule. -Elliptical Cuts: Present two distinct angles on the subject, representing the 30- degree rule. - A jump cut however shows the action from one angle or two very similar ones. -Non-diegetic Inset: The filmmaker cuts from the scene to a metaphorical or symbolic shot that doesn't belong to the space and time of the narrative. February 27, 2013: Alts to Continuity Pages 420-425: -Documentary filmmakers often use charts, old video footage and old interviews to talk about things that they could not or did not film themselves.

 -Staging also happens in documentary; asking someone to walk towards the camera as they walk outside every day but it is not what they naturally would do yet it happens in documentaries. -The documentary filmmaker asks us to assume that what it is presenting is trustworthy. -Just as there are inaccurate or misleading news stories, there are inaccurate or misleading documentaries but they are still documentaries, not fiction films. -Documentaries often use rhetoric to to persuade an audience. -Most mockumentaries are not very serious, other than Mitchell Block's No Lies. Genres of Documentary: -Compilation documentary: Produced by assembling images from archival sources. -Direction-Cinema Documentary: Characteristically records an ongoing event as it happens, with minimal interference by the filmmaker. - Nature Documentary: About nature, usually use camera techniques that make the camera seem as if it is flying like a bird above the land etc,. -Portrait Documentary: Centers on aspects of life of a compelling person. - Very often, documentaries mix all of the aspects above into one i.e Grizzly Man uses both previous recordings of Timothy Tredwell, live footage and drama. This format is also often in television journalism. -The filmmaker can choose to employ nonnarrative types of form as well. The film might be designed to convey categorized information we we can call this formal patterning categorical form. -Or the filmmaker may want to make an argument that will convince the spectator of something. We call this rhetorical form.