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Early CinemaHUM 3280: Narrative Film
Fall 2014Dr. Perdigao
August 25-27, 2014
Staging• Mise-en-scène
“placement in a scene” or “onstage” (Corrigan and White 64)
• Scenic elements of a movie—actors, aspects of lighting, sets and settings, costumes, make-up (64)
• First movies as “scenes”—Edison and Lumière films (66)
• Dating back to Greek theater around 500 B.C.E.
• 1915—change in films with art directors and set designers
• Soundstages designed in 1920s
• Location shooting as mid-twentieth century development
• Setting—as “fictional or real place where the action and events of the film occur”
• Set as “constructed setting”(70)
• Realism—truthful picture of society (70)
Propping
Propping• Props (short for property), tool used by actors
• Centrality of prop in The Maltese Falcon; red shoes in The Wizard of Oz; umbrella in Singin’ in the Rain (Corrigan and White 72)
• Instrumental props and metaphorical props (72)Common function versus reinvention or new purpose
• Cultural props Meaning associated with their society: Herbie Fully Loaded’s Volkswagen Beetle; Easy Rider’s motorcycles (73)
• Contextualized props Change meaning within narrative; red violin; Ronin’s briefcase; Hitchcock’s “McGuffins,” props that “appear to be important only at first” (73)
Performatives• Actor, performance (use of language, physical expression, and gesture) (73-
74)
• Types of actors: leading actors, character actors, supporting actors (Corrigan and White 75)
• Character types, casting in specific kinds of roles (Tom Hanks)
• Blocking“[A]rrangement and movement of actors in relation to each other
within the physical space of mise-en-scène” (76)
• Graphic blocking Arrangement according to “visual patterns to portray spatial
harmony, tension, or some other visual atmosphere” (77)
Illuminati• Lighting—part of mise-en-scène; light sources located within the scene itself
(Corrigan and White 79)
• Natural lighting
• Set lighting
• Directional lighting—more dramatically apparent, to define and shape the object or person being illuminated (82)
• ShadingComplementing narrative
Materialism• Mise-en-scène as defining our location in the material world (Corrigan and
White 86)
• External condition—define the material possibilities in a place or space (87)
• Measure of character—establishing identity in relation to surrounding setting and sets (87)
• Naturalistic versus theatrical mise-en-scène that denaturalizes locations
• Historical mise-en-scène as attempt to recreate recognizable historical scene
• Theatrical mise-en-scène as the fantastic: Sherlock Jr.?
• Expressive mise-en-scène—setting, sets, props asserted independently of the characters, describe emotional or spiritual life “permeating the material world,” surrealism, horror films, magic realism (89)
• Constructive mise-en-scène—world as shaped or altered by characters (92)
Cinematography• Beginnings of cinematography with Eadweard Muybridge’s
chornophotography and Zoopraxiscope (Corrigan and White 99)
• W. L. K. Dickson, working for Thomas Edison, invented the Kinetoscopic camera in 1891 (99)
• 1895—Lumière brothers
• Wide-angle lens
• Handheld cameras
• Widescreen processes in 1950s, anamorphic lens (102)
• Steadicam
• Cinematography as “writing in movement”
• Shot
• Point of view (105)
Frames• Subjective and objective points of view
• Focus
• Framing—“contains, limits, and directs the point of view within the borders of the rectangular frame” (Corrigan and White 105)
• Canted frameUnbalanced or askew (105)
• Mobile frame“may follow an action, object, or individual, or it may move to show different actions, objects, or individuals” (106)
• Aspect ratio (107): widescreen 1.85:1, correlation with television in 1950s
• MasksCamera cutting off portions of frame (108)
Frames• Iris shot
Circular image (108)
• Iris-inOpening circle
• Iris-outClosing circle
Scaling• Distance of camera from subject determines scale (Corrigan and White 109)
• Close-up
• Extreme close-up
• Extreme long shot—greater distance between camera and person or object, space dwarfs objects (110)
• Medium shotMiddle ground, human body from waist or hips up (110)
• Medium long shot3/4 view of character, from knees up (111)
• Medium close-upCharacter’s head and shoulders, in conversation scenes (111)
Angling• High angle
Downward on individuals or scene, making them smaller (112)
• Low angleUpward, making individuals appear larger (112)
• Overhead or crane shotFrom high above (112)
• Point-of-view (POV) shotFrom character’s perspective (112), subjective camera
• Deep focusMultiple planes in image in focus (113)
• Shallow focusOnly narrow range of field is focused (113)
• Rack focus (or pulled focus)Focus shifts from one object to another (113)
Camera positions• Reframing
Movement of frame from one position to another (Corrigan and White 116); Citizen Kane example
• PanSide to side movement, vertical axis (117)
• TiltFrame moved up or down on horizontal axis (117)
• Tracking shotChanges position by moving camera forward or backward (117)
• Dolly shotMovement of camera on wheeled dolly (117)
• Traveling shotUsed to describe both tracking and dolly shots
Camera positions• Following shot
Following an individual character (117)
• Handheld shotThe Blair Witch Project (1999)
• SteadicamTo achieve the stability of a tripod mount, fluidity of a tracking shot, and the flexibility of a handheld camera; special stabilizing mount (118)
Zooms• Zoom lenses (Corrigan and White 118)
• Zoom-inCamera stationary as zoom lens changes focal length
• Zoom-outReverses action
Sounds• Edison’s phonograph in 1877
• Sound experiment by Edison Studios in 1895
• Phonography as “sound writing” (Corrigan and White 179)
• 1927-1930: incorporation of synchronized sound
• 1926-1927: Warner Bros. and Fox competing with sound technologies
• 1926: Warner Bros.’ Vitaphone sound-on-disk system
• Fox with Movietone sound system
• The Jazz Singer as Warner Bros.’ second feature film with recorded sound; Don Juan (1926) as first with recorded score
• Studios signed with Western Electric (subsidiary of AT&T) to adopt a sound-on-film system to replace sound-on-disk process (182)
• 1930s: silent films no longer produced by major studios; only few independent filmmakers, such as Charlie Chaplin, stayed with silent films (182)
Sounds• Radio Corporation of America joined with Keith-Orpheum theaters to become
RKO, one of five studios, the “majors,” that dominated sound-era cinema—produced King Kong in 1933 and Citizen Kane in 1941