Film Production and Style: A Primer

With thanks to Film Art: An Introduction

David Brodwell and Kristing Thompson, eds.

Film Production, Distribution and Exhibition

Production

• Major Film Production is a multi-million dollar business, some films having budgets approaching hundred(s) of millions of dollars.– Costs of Book Copyrights, Scripts, Actors, Film Crew,

Director, Editors, Sound, Music, Mixing, Special Effects, Costumes, Locations, Advertising, Business and Legal Advisors

– Importance of securing financial success—a capitalist venture. Investors are involved.

• Indie Films have brought a new found freshness to the industry. Use low cost technologies, unknown actors, walk-ons, improvised or found sets and locations, minimal costs (sort of).

One Film Production Company: Time/Warner

• Studios: Warner Bros, CastleRock, New Line, Fine Line

• Theaters: Cinamerica (50% with Vicaom)• Broadcast: CNN, HBO, WBTV, TNT, TCM,

Cartoon Network• Publishing: Little, Brown, Warner Books, Time,

Life, Sports Illustrated, People• Music: Warner Music, Atlantic, Electra• Other: Six Flags, Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Hawks

Exhibition/Distribution

• Theatrical vs. Non-theatrical – Theatrical presentations involve: a) a large screen; b)

a public venue with strangers; c) immersion in darkness.

– Non Theatrical presentations involve: a) a small screen; b) a private, more intimate venue; c) the kitchen, pets and front door are nearby.

– Web Sites: Blair Witch Process actually reversed the process—the film was an extension of an interactive and popular website.

– Each of these possibilities for presentation has its own distinct phenomenological shape.

• Video or DVD vs. Film—Film negative images are more detailed

• HD—Will bring video imaging to the brink of film negatives

• Shape of Picture. Most Videos, DVDs use either cut or compressed images to fit on the television screen. Letterbox is often closer to theatrical viewing conditions.

Film Style

• Mis-en-Scene

• Cinematography

• Editing: Relating Shot to Shot

• Sound

Mis-en-Scene

• Setting– Interiors– Exteriors

• Costume and Make-up

• Lighting

• Staging: Movement and Acting

Cinematography: The Photographic Image

• Tonality: Color/BW, Intensities of Hues, Graininess, Contrast

• Film to video often alters colors to a lighter, brighter color range.

• Speed of motion: freeze frame, slow and fast motion, time lapse

• Focal Length: wide angle, middle focal, telephoto, zoom

• Close-ups, Long Shots, Deep Focus, Shallow Focus

Depth of Field

Cinematography: Framing

• Dimensions and Shapes of the Frame• Onscreen and Offscreen Space• Angle, Level, Height and Distance of Framing—

Overhead, Point of View Shot• Mobile Frame—Crane, Pan, Glide, Tilt, Track,

Subjective (Hand Held), Animation, Tracking Shot

• Camera Movements on screen affect our perception of space and time—build up into a style of being in time and space.

Cinematography: Duration

• The Long Take—often uses mobile framing. Not to be confused with the long shot. A Long Take is temporal. A Long Shot is spatial.

Editing: Moving from Shot A to Shot B

• Graphic Relations• Rhythmic Relations• Spatial Relations• Temporal Relations• Continuity vs. Discontinuous Editing

– Continuity—180 degree system around axis of action: right to left stays the same

– Crosscutting– Discontinuous Cut (Flashback or Spatial

Juxtaposition), Jump Cutting, Cut to a Metaphor (Nondiegetoc Insert)

Sound

• Perceptual Properties: Loudness, Pitch, Timbre• Sound Editing and Mixing: Selection, Alteration,

Combination• Rhythm—Very powerful aspect of sound in films• Fidelity—The sound fits the source• Space—spatial insofar as from a source; onscreen and

offscreen• Time—matching sound with image or not, simultaneous

or non-simultaneous (sound flashback) • Diagetic vs. Nondiegetic Sound—Diagetic sound has its

source in the story world; Nondiagetic includes music enhancement, other sound effect (e.g. playing a football game reportage as the sound drop to a love scene)