In the early years of narrative cinema there was little pressure on filmmakers for the ‘evolution of film forms before nickelodeons’ (Salt, 1990, pp31) as cinema neither became a mass nor high cultural product and was still a novelty but ‘Production companies’ profits were based principally on the sales of longer fiction films’ in the later years (Musser, 1990, pp256) so focus was made for the production of popular narratives so I will show how the early development of narrative evolved from trick films to complex narrative. I will analyse the short film Mary Jane’s Mishap (1903, Smith) and an extract from the seminal The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W.Griffith). Mary Jane’s Mishap was made when ‘multi-scene films were becoming popular’ (Salt, 1990, pp32) It is notable for its use of experimental transitions. To ‘separate successive scenes’ (Salt, 1990, pp32) Smith used vertical wipes to transition to wider framed shot. This efficiently showed an ellipsis in time from the funeral to people visiting her grave. D.W.Griffith also used inventive shots but popularised them rather than inventing them, such as tracking shots adding pace the characters movement and the narrative. In the silent-era of film insert titles were important in explaining the narrative to the primitive viewer not well-versed in film, especially in films where the audience were not familiar with the story unlike ‘Porters The Night before Christmas‘(Musser, 1990, pp258). Griffith used insert titles which ‘changed around 1905 into summaries of the action’ (Burch, 1990, pp221) As the film had a ‘self-sufficient narrative’ (Burch, 1990, pp221) that ran for over three hours, with poor camera quality to recognise characters. But they were ‘systematically anticipating t... ... middle of paper ... ...ows this film as being a transition between the early trick films and narrative cinema. The Birth of a Nation has evolved in ‘relation to the articulation between shots in term of space and time’ (Gunning, 1990, pp89) it is of the third and fourth ciné-genres. As the ‘multi-shot narrative’ of approximately three hours long is edited as to the ‘cut is de-emphazised’ (Gunning, 1990, pp89) and is placed in the ‘fourth genre’ as the plot is disrupted through parallel editing (Gunning, 1990, pp90). In conclusion, we can see in film narrative The Birth of a Nation has progressed from the trick film narrative of Mary Jane’s Mishap to being identified according to Gunning as being of the third genre, due to both profitability and popularity of realistic cinema Moving from being of theatrical proscenium to complex cinematography to tell a story suited for the screen.
Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
script, the viewer needs another way to interpret the film. The 1922 silent film Nosferatu
Citizen Kane has earned the prestigious honor of being regarded as the number one movie of all time because of Welles’ groundbreaking narrative and plot structures that paved a path for the future of the film industry. Though critics have viewed the film with such prestige over the years, a present day viewer might encounter a great amount of confusion or difficulty as to why Citizen Kane is the number one movie on the American Film Institute’s top 100 movies of all time. Especially considering the modern day film industry, Welles’ production does not measure up to the amount of thrill and entertainment audiences experience today. Not even considering the possibilities with special effects and technology, Citizen Kane seems to lack an exciting plot that might involve some action or twists instead of the gossip of a man’s life that we no longer appreciate. In 1941, the general public could greatly appreciate the connections between Kane and William Randolph Hearst unlike young adults watching the film now.
Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980.
It is “an exhibitionist cinema” (p. 57): performers often use an exaggerating body movement mainly to attract the spectator’s attention in the theatre. They solicit the spectators to watch their shows using histrionic style of performance as if they are acting on the stage. Comparing to narrative films which rely more on scenario and performers’ facial expression, long shots are often used in cinema pre-1906 in order to capture the whole image of the scene. Long shots also allow the performers to utilize the entire frame since they emphasize more on body movement. In Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show (Porter, 1902), the way the performer acts is as mentioned in Gunning’s thesis. Even though the camera position is static with long shot and long take, the performer has succeeded to draw spectator’s attention by jumping here and there,...
Mittel, J., 2007. Film and Television Narrative. In: D. Herman, ed. 2007. The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.156-171.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
action and editing in a montage. The Birth of a Nation is also the first film to
The ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ era came about from around the 1960’s when cinema and film making began to change. Big film studios were going out of their comfort zone to produce different, creative and artistic movies. At the time, it was all the public wanted to see. People were astonished at the way these films were put together, the narration, the editing, the shots, and everything in between. No more were the films in similar arrangement and structure. The ‘New Hollywood era’ took the classic Hollywood period and turned it around so that rules were broken and people left stunned.
Since the beginning of film, technology has played an important role in the evolution of the medium. Film, much more so than literature, relies on the ever-changing nature of technological development to stay relevant. In 1980 when Seymour Chatman wrote “What Novels Can Do That Films Can’t (And Vice Versa),” there were no such thing as DVD players and the VCR was a newly introduced, and thus non-perfected, product. Today when viewing a film, one has the luxury of returning to previous scenes immediately and effortlessly in order to further soak in and contemplate filmic choices. In his essay, Chatman focuses too heavily on narrative drive and, in saying that film cannot describe, does not give full merit to the idea of returning to and repeating a film for purpose of textual analysis.
In the words of Michael O’Shaughnessy, ‘narratives, or stories, are a basic way of making sense of our experience’ (1999: 266). As a society and a culture, we use stories to comprehend and share our experiences, typically by constructing them with a beginning, middle and an end. In fact, the order that a narrative is structured will directly impact the way it is understood, particularly across cultures. This idea originated through Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept of structuralism in anthropology which ‘is concerned with uncovering the common structural principles underlying specific and historically variable cultures and myth’ in pre-industrial societies (Strinati 2003: 85). In terms of media studies, structuralism’s inherent objective is to dig beneath the surface of a media text to identify how the structure of a narrative contributes to it’s meaning. Structuralism encompasses a large range of analytical tools, however, this essay will examine Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theory of binary oppositions. Through analysis of Victor Fleming’s film, The Wizard of Oz (1939), it will be shown that although the monomyth and binary oppositions are useful tools with which to unveil how meaning is generated in this text, structuralism can undermine the audience’s ability to engage with their own interpretations of the film.
Higson, Andrew (2002). ‘The Concept of National Cinema’. In Williams, Alan (ed), Film and Nationalism, pp. 52-67. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Before looking into the rise to dominance of Hollywood, we must gain an insight into the history of the cinema industry. The first practices of cinema entertainment was with Thomas Edison’s invention of the kinetoscope in 1896, which gave the audience the chance to view nickelodeons in fairgrounds and later on short films but it wasn’t until 1903 with the ‘Great Train Robbery’ (directed by Edwin Sporter) The pistol shot used in the Great Train Robbery is used in more contemporary films such as James Bond. The audiences started to show interest as now the cinema developed a narrative for the first time with the story shown through a series of various camera shots. It was then that longer movies with more complex story lines and innovative editing were released, and cinema’s possibilities as a form of market as well as entertainment were then recognised.
Giannetti, Louis D., and Scott Eyman. Flashback: A Brief History of Film. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, 2010. Print.
Bordwell, David & Thompson, Kristin 'Narrative as a Formal System: Time,' in Film Art: An Introduction 7th ed.,2009 New York: McGraw, pp. 78–79