Narrative Film
What is the difference between narrative duration and narrative frequency?
Narrative duration refers to the length of time an event or action is presented in a plot, whreas narrative frequency describes how often those plot elements are inserted.
What is a hybrid genre?
Mixed forms created through the interaction of different genres to produce fusions.
What is a shooting ratio?
the relationship between the overall amount or length of film shot and the amount used in the finished project.
What's a cel?
An image produced on transparent sheets of celluloid, which are they layered and photographed against a painted background.
What is an experimental film?
Experimental refers noncommercial, often non-narrative films, analog and digital videos, installations, and computer based media that use eleemnts of form and structure for aesthetic expression.
Name the four kinds of spatial schemes that exist in narrative cinema.
Psychological, ideological, historical, symbolic.
What is the difference between prescriptive and descriptive approaches to genre?
Prescriptive: the belief that the successful genre film deviates as little as possible from a prescribed model or set of expectations.
Descriptive: Assumes that genres change over time by building on older films and developing in new ways. Generally a more flexible approach to understanding how genre works.
Name the primary documentary traditions.
social documentary, historical documentary, ethnographic film, personal documentary (hint: you're going to want to know what each of these actually are)
How is abstraction different from figuration?
abstraction: Uses nonrepresentational shapes (color, shape, and line to create patterns, rhythms and impressions in the viewer)
Figuration: featuring recognizable aspects of the real world, like the human form.
Give me an example of contrapuntal sound.
Sound which contrasts in meaning with the image that is being shown on screen. For example, a tea kettle's whistle can be replaced with an alarm bell or someone screaming.
What is a parallel plot? Provide an example.
When two plots are played out simultaneously and there's a connection between the two different plotlines that intersect at one or more points.
What is the difference between iconography and archetypes?
Iconography refers to the images or image patterns with specific connotations or meanings wihtin a genre. Archetypes is a pspiritual, psychological, or cultural model expressing certain values, virtues, or timeless realities.
Give me an example of a documentary that engages with a developmental organizational structure.
Developmental organization - places, objects, individuals, or experiences are presented through a pattern that has a non-narrative logic or structure, but still follows a logic of change or progression.
What are the three organizational structures of experimental films?
Associative, structural, participatory.
What are the two distinct traditions of experimental film?
Expressive and confrontational.
What are the three features that constitutes a classical film narrative?
-It centers on one or more central characters who propel the plot with a cause and effect logic.
-its plot develop with linear chronologies directed at certain goals, even when flashbacks are integrated.
-It employs an omniscient or restricted narration that suggests some degree of realism.
Illustrate an example of a horror film that exercises generic and/or narrative reflexivity.
generic reflexivity: demonstrating an unusual self-consciousness about generic identity. These films clearl and visibly comment on generic paradigms.
Narrative Reflexivity: When it seems clear that the characters are aware of what kind of film they are in and what is expected of them and either actively reinforce or subvert our expectations.
Actualities, scenics, topicals.
Who pioneered computer animation?
John Lasseter of Pixar Studios
List the five sound continuity practices that our authors mention.
1. The relationship between image and sound and among separate sounds is motivated by dramatic action or information.
2. With the exception of background music the sources of sound are identifiable.
3. The connotations of musical accompaniments are consistent with the images
4. The soundmix emphasizes what we should pay attention to.
5. The sound mix is smooth and emphasizes clarity.
What is an alternative film narrative?
A type of storytelling that deviates from or challenges the linearity of classical film narrative, often undermining the centrality of the main character, the continuity of the plot, or the verisimilitude of the narration.
Film genres are often considered to be like a contract. How is it like a contract?
It is a contract between filmmakers and their audiences - a contract in which each side recognizes a common language of conventions, formulations, and expectations.
What are the four rhetorical positions of documentary films?
-to explore the world and its peoples
-to interrogate or analyze an event or a problem
-to persuade the audience of a certain truth or POV
-to reflect the presence of activity of the filmmaking process or the filmmaker.
What does the multiplane camera do?
A camera apparatus that films different moving layers of an image past the camera at different speeds.
How do we normally evaluate character coherence?
Values, actions, behaviors