EDITING
What is the relationship between Shot A: Shot B?
Graphic match
This is simultaneous internal diegetic sound.
Name the odd element out in this Creature Feature toolkit, and explain your rationale: a) one set of pointy prosthetic teeth; b) a cape; c) fake blood; d) murky, underexposed black/white palette; e) a stereotyped Eastern European accent; f) a cobwebby coffin propped up in the corner of the room; g) one specially-made silver bullet for killing werewolves, sitting on the mantlepiece.
The murky, underexposed black and white palette is a function of the cinematography (filmstock, shooting speed, timing, dodging, printing, etc.), whereas everything else is a component of mise-scène.
What is ramping, and what effect does it have?
The process of momentarily bumping up the recording fps, producing an isolated slow-motion effect within the larger take.
Name four of the films on the term's streaming list that featured main or secondary characters who were photographers (in front of and behind the camera).
Options include: Daguerréotypes, Shadow of a Doubt, The Watermelon Woman, Daughters of the Dust, People on Sunday, Shirkers, Sink or Swim
What is the relationship between Shot B: Shot C?
Graphic contrast
Your streaming list this term included four silent feature-length films; name them in order of their release dates.
1. The Oyster Princess (1919)
2. Häxan (1922)
3. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
4. People on Sunday (1930)
What's the difference between props and sets?
Props perform some kind of plot/narrative function, whereas sets are the backdrop for the action.
This is one way to produce composite imagery that involves filming the actors in the foreground with a screen (digital or analog) behind them, onto which you project elements of the background mise-en-scène.
Rear projection (or "process work")
Ella Fitzgerald was "in" two of the films we saw this term; which ones, and where did she appear in each?
In Illusions, she provided the vocals that were attributed to Esther Jeter, and in turn to Leila Grant in the film within the film. In The Watermelon Woman, she appears in portraits in the photo archive that Cheryl displays for the video camera in her "dunyementary" about Fae Richards.
Shot A: We see Joan (medium shot, frontal) look intently to her left (right of screen); Shot B: We see a door open, and a monk enter a room; Shot C: We see Joan again in the same framing as before, she recoils from something/someone off screen to her left (our right)
What is the relationship Shot A: Shot B: Shot C?
Eyeline match, shot-reverse-shot
Name the directors of the four silent films on the streaming list.
Ernst Lubtisch, Benjamin Christensen, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Robert Siodmak + Edgar Ulmer
Most of the films we streamed had non-diegetic musical soundtracks. Name two (2) films from our streaming list this term that featured no non-diegetic music in the main body of the film.
Pride of Place (Kim Longinotto, 1976)
The White Balloon (Jafar Panahi, 1995)
A beautifully-preserved old film depicts the daytime sequences in brown-red and the nighttime sequences in blues hues; you notice that the highlights in both day- and nighttime sequences are white, and deduce that the filmmaker used which process for colorizing film?
Toning; in this case, they might have used sepia toning (copper ferrocyanide), and Prussian blue (iron ferrocyanide).
Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Ackerman, 1975)
Pride of Place (Kim Longinotto, 1976)
Dauguerréotypes (Agnès Varda, 1976)
Illusions (Julie Dash, 1982)
Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich, 1990)
Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1991)
The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1995)
Shirkers (Sandi Tan, 2018)
Atlantics (Mati Diop, 2019)
A sequence is composed of multiple medium and close-up shots, no establishing shot; what kind of editing is this?
Constructive editing
In Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955), the train motif on the soundtrack that we discussed in class is an example of what kind of sound?
Simultaneous diegetic sound, off-screen source
Do documentary films have mise-en-scène?
What is the name of the device pictured in Shot D?
A "slate" or "clapper"
Name two proponents of theories of film formalism
Soviet Montage Theorists: Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevelod Pudovkin, Dziga Vertov
Theorists of film aesthetics: Béla Balász, Rudolf Arnheim
What's the relationship between the term "temporal ellipsis" and the editing technique called a "montage sequence"?
Temporal ellipsis is a generalized description of the omission of parts of a timeline or of an event (leaving out sections of time).
A montage sequence uses the principle of temporal ellipsis to convey narrative information in a compressed form, typically there is some kind of spatial or narrative continuity and temporal discontinuity in a montage sequence.
When the tar shehnai wails for Sarbajaya, what kind of sound is this?
Non-diegetic sound; and in that it substitutes for Sarbajaya's voice, we could call it simultaneous non-diegetic sound.
Where is Shadow of a Doubt set?
As Uncle Charlie says in the sound bridge, "Santa Rosa ... Santa Rosa, California."
What is "direct animation/film" and what is "direct cinema"? Give an example of each.
Direct animation/film: or "camera-less cinema," in which the filmmaker draws, paints, scratches directly on the filmstrip; e.g. Film Ist., the section titled "Material," or the Len Lye short Colour Box (1935), or Stan Brakhage's Mothlight (1963).
Direct cinema: also known as cinéma vérité is a documentary film aesthetic that prizes verisimilitude over stylization; Pride of Place used many direct cinema techniques to assert its truth claims (shaky camera; limited, diegetically-motivated lighting; cramped POV framing; simultaneous, single-source sound recording).
In one of the films on your streaming list this term, we saw an example of the signature artifact or trace of video interlacing, the method that predated the current industry standard for video transmission and display in broadcast TV, in which the images (clips from the midcentury TV shows Father Knows Best, and Make Room for Daddy) appear in horizontal, alternating ribbons. Which film did this appear in, and what is the name of the current technique? (Hint: it's the "p" in 1080p)
The film was Sink or Swim, and the current technique is "progressive scan."