Is Cinema Art?

How is cinema different from other forms of art?

Can collaborative groups—instead of individuals-- produce art?

Can a corporate studio produce art?

Whats’ the problem with artists having a profit motive?

How is cinema different from other forms of art?

Can collaborative groups—instead of individuals-- produce art?

Can a corporate studio produce art?

Whats’ the problem with artists having a profit motive?

Studio Allegory, Corporate Identity

• “The Hollywood studio is a business that does its business right there on the screen as the projector rolls…”

• 1886 lawsuit Corporations=humans• Corporate art is a tool for corporate strategy

—not same as branding; biz is on screen• MGM vs. Warners; ‘good’ stars vs. gangsters• Do corporations have souls? Do they express

good will? Are stars a “monopoly on itself”?

Classical Hollywood Cinema1908-1927

• Motion Picture Patents Co. (MPPC), Edison monopoly

• Independents in CA by 20s--Famous Players Lasky (Paramount), MGM, Fox, Warner Bros, Universal

• Development of continuity system

Film Production--Making the Movie

The ProcessPreproduction

Research, Scriptwriting, Storyboards, Shooting Scripts, Funding, Locations, Auditions

Production Capturing images & sounds; working with actors--lighting,

sets, costumes, movement, music, sound effects

Post-productionEditing, motion graphics, color correction, sound mix, score, Foley, etc

Distribution and MarketingFilm festivals, Markets, Theatrical, Online, DIY, Transmedia

The ProcessPreproduction

Research, Scriptwriting, Storyboards, Shooting Scripts, Funding, Locations, Auditions

Production Capturing images & sounds; working with actors--lighting,

sets, costumes, movement, music, sound effects

Post-productionEditing, motion graphics, color correction, sound mix, score, Foley, etc

Distribution and MarketingFilm festivals, Markets, Theatrical, Online, DIY, Transmedia

Film Style

Ways that a film uses filmmaking techniques:

• Mise-en-scene

• Cinematography

• Editing (Montage)

• Sound

• Narration

Film Movements

• Films that are produced within a particular period and/or nation and that share significant traits of style and form.E.g. German Expressionism, Soviet Montage, Italian Neo-realism, etc…

• Filmmakers who operate within a common production structure and who share certain assumptions about filmmaking.

Film Criticism

Film criticism is connected to the cultural criticism that developed in the 20th century and relates to the study of photography, art, media, linguistics and criticism.

Names we’ll cover:De Saussure, Peirce, Eisenstein, Kracauer,

Benjamin, Bazin, Mulvey, Jenkins, etc..

Eadweard Muybridge 1878

• Stanford, governor of CA, wanted to see if all four hooves of horse came off the ground at same time. EM set up series of cameras with trip wires across the track.

Women in Motion

• Muybridge studied the body (particularly the woman’s body) in motion… Was it science? Was it art? Something else?

Kuleshov Effect

plate of soup (hunger); coffin (grief); woman (desire)

Kuleshov Effect

Hitchock Loves Bikinis….

Early Cinema Names1893-1903

• Etienne-Jules Marey--camera, projector parts• George Eastman--celluloid• Thomas Edison/Dickson--kinetoscope, Black Maria• Lumiere brothers--Project onto screen• George Melies--magician, first special effects

D.W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation

• Crosscutting (last minute rescues)

• Close-ups• Directing emotions,

more subtly• Appealing to politics

Continuity system

• Eyeline Matches

• Shot/Reverse shot

• Axis-of-action (180 degree rule)

• Match on action

• Establishing shots

Ex: Record a conversation at table

German Expressionism1919-1926

Emphasis on mise-en- scene--distorted shapes, heavy makeup, exaggerated movements.

“The film image must become graphic art.” Hermann Warm, designer of “Caligari” “Film must be drawings brought to life.”

Kracauer--symbolic power

• “The revolutionary meaning of the story reveals itself unmistakably at the end, with the disclosure of the psychiatrist as Caligari: reason overpowers unreasonable power, insane authority is symbolically abolished.” Siegfried Kracauer, 1947

Soviet Montage1924-1930

Vertov, Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Eisenstein

“Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important.” Lenin 1922

Emphasis on editing and action

Eisenstein’s intellectual montage--juxtaposing images to create a concept--often a revolutionary “collision” between a “collective hero”--the proletariat--and the enemy--the bourgeoisie

French Impressionism & Surrealism1918-1930

Emphasis on internal psychology, dreams, flashbacks, emotion.

Point of view shots, distorted images, new lenses, cameras on roller skates--mobile frames.

Surrealist Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel--anti-narrative, anti-rational. (“Un Chien Andalou,” 1928)

Walter Benjamin Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction

(1936)

• “The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning…”—its aura

• “Aura” provides a magical foundation for cult-like participation, for ritual..

• “L’art pour l’art movement preserved and developed the sense of autonomy and distance native to ancient religious works (224)” Larson

Walter Benjamin Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction

• “All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war..”

• Man’s “self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic…Through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way.”

Walter Benjamin Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction

•Film and photography keep audiences at a critical distance from the art object, which (helps) destroy the ritualistic aura.•“Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial--and literary--means the effects which the public seeks in the film.” See Duchamp•“Film’s swift juxtapositions and movements strike the viewer violently, disrupting contemplation and easy consumption of the image (238)--Larson

Film Form

The sum of all the parts of the film, shaped by patterns:

• Repetition and Variation

• Story Lines

• Character Traits

Classical narrative structure--Aristotelian

• "A chain of events linked by cause and effect and occurring in time and space.”

• Protagonist/Antagonist--conflicting goals and motivations

• CHC--Cause/effect structure with closure?

Film Narration

• “The process by which the plot presents story information to the spectator.”

Forms of narration and terms to know:Restricted; Unrestricted degrees of knowledge;

Objectivity/Subjectivity; Omniscient/3rd Person

Point of view shot; hierarchy of knowledge; character or noncharacter narrators.

Bordwell-- Forms of Cinematic MeaningStory and Plot

• Referential--constructed world of film• Explicit--abstract, thematic meaning, stated• Implicit--thematic meaning, not stated overtly• Symptomatic--meaning unknown to filmmaker

Other terms to know:• Diegesis; Non/extra-diegesis (Look them up…)

Transmedia

“Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated

entertainment experience.” Henry Jenkins

» Hope is Missing -- a social media driven ARG

“Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated

entertainment experience.” Henry Jenkins

» Hope is Missing -- a social media driven ARG

Ferdinand de Saussure (1907)Linguistics and Meaning

Sign=Signifier + SignifiedRelationship is learned or arbitrary

• Signifier--Form that the sign takes• Signified--Concept it represents

Ex: Stop signSignifier=?Signified=?

C.S. Peirce (1894)-- Semiotics--How signs denote objects

• Iconic--Signifier has resemblance to object it represents. E.g. photograph, portrait, sound effects on radio

• Indexical--Factual connection to object, indicator. E.g. Smoke indicates fire, shadow indicates presence, film=?.

• Symbolic--Abstract relation to signified. E.g. Stop sign, language, burkas