When I first entered this class, film as an art form and as an expressionistic medium was foreign to me. Films have always been a part of my life; I grew up in the era of Disney and Pixar, but it was an art form I had not analyzed before this year. Throughout grade school, you are exposed to painting, drawing, even perhaps photography; rarely does film enter the picture. You learn about the great master artists, such as Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo Da Vinci, or even Ansel Adams. These are the people that are remembered in our classroom. Film has its own masters of the craft, a concept I did not realize before I took this course. Each part of a movie is carefully crafted; the director is the skilled artist and the film is his masterpiece. This …show more content…
It is equivalent to a painter’s brush or a sculptor’s chisel. Directors use the camera to create their masterpiece, which requires extraordinary talent and skill. Placement and movement of the camera in this film provide the viewer with preconceptions about the narrative and provide the viewer a place to insert themselves in the story. Throughout the film, especially in the analyzed sequence, the audience’s point of view is solely through the camera. Unlike in other films where the viewer may obtain a character’s point of view, this film makes a point of showing the film through the camera’s eye. In the second shot of the sequence, the camera is placed at a distance from the action of the scene; the very long shot of this scene elicits a voyeuristic feeling. The audience’s point of view comes from the camera and it is like you are spying on Alma. The camera’s position in the trees and the lack of movement aids in the voyeuristic undertones of this shot; the camera remains stationary out in the trees, even when Alma goes inside to first fetch the broom and the dustpan and then again when she goes inside to put them away. In a shot and sequence that both contain so much movement, the camera is relatively stable, which is what allows for the audience’s interpretation that you are spying on Alma, that you are not supposed to be there or witness her actions. The choice of camera distance and angle were thought out decisions and as previously proven, affect the way that a scene or shot is
In his essay, “It’s Just a Movie: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes”, Greg M. Smith argues that analyzing a film does not ruin, but enhances a movie-viewing experience; he supports his argument with supporting evidence. He addresses the careful planning required for movies. Messages are not meant to be telegrams. Audiences read into movies to understand basic plotlines. Viewers should examine works rather than society’s explanations. Each piece contributes to Smith’s argument, movies are worth scrutinizing.
Even more difficult than defining art is coming to an agreement on what constitutes art. Along this extensive history of debate came the consideration of whether film is art. Films were not considered an art form and had not been seriously debated until film theorist Rudolf Arnheim challenged what art could be with his theory. Arnheim, who claims that the more a film differs from reality the more it should be considered art, would certainly argue that a film like Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2010) is art in that it significantly displaces the viewer from their lived reality. He rejects the “assertion that film is nothing but the feeble mechanical reproduction of real life” (“Film Theory and Criticism” 228), instead postulating that human perspective and choices should be involved in the process of making a film to meaningfully shape elements of our lived experience.
Bordwell David and Thompson, Kristen. Film Art: An Introduction. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
Typically, the relationships between theatre and film are encountered--both pedagogically and theoretically--in terms of authorial influence or aesthetic comparisons. In the first method, an instructor builds a syllabus for a "Theatre and Film" course by illustrating, for example, how Bergman was influenced by Strindberg. In the second method, the aesthetic norms of the theatre (fixed spectatorial distance and stage-bound locations) are compared to those of the cinema (editing and location shooting) to determine which art form is better suited (or "superior") to which material.
Rascaroli, Laura. "The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments." Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 49.2 (2008): 24-47. JSTOR. Web. 08 May 2014.
The next shot (shot 4) is composed so that we see Annie and Karin on the porch swing as if the narrator is standing out in the field watching them from afar. The following shot (shot 5) begins similarly, looking down on the corn field, but dollies and turns to follow Ray (indicated in shot 5.1 and 5.2) for a close-up amidst his crops as he first hears that famous line. He quickly looks around: shot 7 consists of a quick pan across the skyline — there’s nobody there. The movement of the camera in these opening shots makes it very clear that the camera is acting as a watchful and knowing presence, and it can easily be argued that the camera takes the point of view of the spiritual figure guiding the plot’s events. Shot 14 in particular, in which Ray exits the frame entirely and re-enters at the sound of the voice, reveals the camera to be a narrator with omniscient knowledge. The camera doesn’t follow Ray because something else is about to happen right where he was standing. It’s also important to note that in shot 5, the camera begins high above the landscape and then delves into the field so that the shot is almost overrun by the corn growing through the edges of the frame — the spiritual
Walt Disney Films are known to be as an incredible and outstanding fantasy stories producer. It created more than a hundred of films. Majority of what has been produced rely on fictional stories. The films that were released used animation to capture children’s interest and musically performed as well. Walt Disney produced fantasy stories like The Little Mermaid 1989; Sleeping Beauty 1959; Beauty and the Beast 1991; Cinderella 1950 and more. The tales most often than not were always about the life of a princess in search of her prince charming.
... Film Art: An Introduction. 5th ed. of the book. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 1997.
This New Wave aesthetic solidified film as a mainstream artform, stressing that film was carefully crafted similarly to literature. Individual directors, or auteurs, were expected to “author” their films in much the same way that an author would write a novel. This auteur theory and its accompanying aesthetic became the backbone of the French New Wave and was what drove innovation. Breaking free from the screenwriter, producer, and studio driven systems of the past, and putting the creative power back in the hands of the director was seen as a crucial step in solving Cahiers’ perceived problems with French cinema before the movement.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.
With this short but very interesting and informative class I have just scratched the surface of the what it takes to make a full fleged film. It takes much more than I had presumed to make a movie in Hollywood. The number of people that it takes to make a minute of a movie let alone the entire movie was astonishing to me. There are many things that it takes to start making a movie but without an idea of some sort there is no movie to be made.
Bordwell, David, and Kristen Thompson. Film Art an Introduction. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2001.
Many people don’t think about it so much, but movies (or just film in general) have become such a big part of our lives that we don’t think much of it because it just feels like a usual part of living. But have you ever wondered why this is, and how far back film started? Movies and film have been around for a long time, have developed in big ways throughout time, and has advanced in such a big and new way to this day.
In the early days of cinema it was suggested that cinema is never art, film was said to be a photographic record of an artistic performance but not an art form in its own right but film is much more than a recording, filmmakers make numerous choices about every shot they make then you need to edit the film which results in the final product which is completely different to what an eyewitness to the filmed event would or could see, more people today have the view that all or most film is art, Noel Carroll whose book on mass art is a book on the effort to ...