Film History
The studio era in Hollywood (~1927-1948-ish) was characterized by top down control and vertical integration, which meant that studios controlled these 3 aspects of film production.
What are production, distribution, and exhibition?
These are two of the characteristics which might be used to identify a film movement.
What are Politics, Aesthetics, Industry, Economics, Distribution, Culture & Diaspora?
These are the three phases of film production.
What are pre-production (all that happens before the cameras roll)
production (all the stuff that happens between first shot and last shot taken) and
post production (everything that happens after the scenes have been filmed)?
Describe the difference between a trade source and a popular and/or academic source in film and media studies research.
Academic sources are peer-reviewed - the research methods and findings have been deemed sound by a panel of experts before publication. Targeted to audience of scholars. Popular sources are aimed at a broad audience. The piece will be reviewed by an editor who may or may not be a specialist in the topic of the articles therein. Trade sources are written by and for workers within a given industry -- eg "Broadcast and Cable" for television workers.
T/F - the tools available to the documentarian include many of the same tools available to the narrative filmmaker.
T -- The elemental structures of film are largely unchanged in application to documentary (mis-en-scene, cinematography, editing, sound design, narrative). However, the documentarian's aims differ, resulting in variable application of common cinematic techniques.
These are two characteristics of the classic hollywood style.
What are -- invisible mediation, spatiotemporal continuity, narrative cause-and-effect, focus on individualized protagonists, standardized length, assumption of color/sound as default, genre conventions.
Identify one of the film movements covered in class and list some of the important features/contributions of that movement.
Answers vary -- we covered the French avante-garde, Soviet Montage, Italian neorealism, the French New Wave, New Latin American Cinema, and Japanese Cinema. I would also accept New American cinema as that movement was influenced by the other "new" cinema movements that occurred around the globe in the postwar era.
These are two activities that happen during pre-production.
What are the pitch, previsualization, screenplay (writing, acquisition, rights), and budget. Also, I would accept marketing as this is an increasingly important influence over the whole production process.
This is the product sold in the television business model.
What are audiences?In broadcast TV, YOU and I are the product, and advertisers are the customer.
These are the six modes of documentary identified by Bill Nichols.
What are expository, poetic, observational, performative, participatory, and reflexive?
*For the exam, you will need to know at least ONE of the modes in detail (including formal and content characteristics) to discuss it in an essay question.
This was the year that motion pictures were first projected for a paying audience.
What is 1895? It is often asserted that motion pictures were the quintessential medium of the 20th century, but the medium actually originated before that!
Identify one of the international film movements discussed in class, and briefly describe the major features of that movement.
Answers vary. Review the international slides :)
In an increasingly international film production landscape, these are the two parties that negotiate the particulars of production in a given location (e.g. in "Spectre" (2015) as discussed in class).
What are design interests (movie's creative talent/financial backers) and location interests (citizens/governments/institutions trying to attract production)?
Many TV formats actually originated in radio -- for example, sports broadcasting, quiz shows, soap operas, sitcoms. Why were these formats transferred from one medium to the other?
TV was conceived as "radio with pictures" and the major radio networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) became the first commercial TV networks. There was never a pre-network era of television.
Identify one of the experimental films screened in lecture or discussion, and describe how it experiments with one of the elemental structures of film form.
Answers vary.
Michel-Ralph Trouillot identified these often-conflated aspects of history as "history 1" and "history 2"
What are -- the sociohisotrical processes (events) of the past/the stories told about those events?
What is one reason that a filmmaker would want to screen their work in a festival?
AND
What is one reason that a festival would want to cultivate and exhibit new filmmaking talents?
Review Dr. Falicov's article :)
This phenomenon is called "windowing."
What is the artificial creation of scarcity (and maximization of profit) through staged release of a film to various exhibition outlets?
What is the function of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America)?
The MPAA represents the interests of Hollywood studios and is responsible for assigning ratings to movies.
These are reason(s) that narrative fiction is the default notion of "movies" while documentary and experimental films are often (erroneously) treated as secondary.
What are economics, issues of class in early 20th-century America, the relationship between film and the other arts, the process by which film studies became an academic discipline?
Many factors contributed the breakup of the studio system. Name 2
What is US v. Paramount, et. al., 1948, competition from TV, foreign and alternative influences, audience fragmentation
Currently, the world's three biggest film industries are, in order:
1) Bollywood, 2) Nollywood, and 3) Hollywood. IMPORATNT: the metric of measurement here is number of films produced, not dollars earned.
These are two functions of film industry labor unions.
What are collective bargaining associations that define roles/salaries/hours for various workers, determine size/placement of screen credits, help union members find work.
What was the significance of the Quiz Show Scandals?
The public outcry over the rigging of gameshows by advertisers led to new government regulations on truth in broadcasting, but also led to networks assuming control of programming.
WILD CARD! Describe, briefly, Rick Altman's argument about the Semantic and Syntactic definition of film genres.
Basically, genres arise spontaneously and become recognized based on the relationship between FORM AND CONTENT. The key interaction is between familiar iconography (formal elements like setting, characters, formal style - semantics) and the structural relationship between film components (narrative, conflicts, implicit and explicit meanings - syntax).