Week Three: Genre

This week in class we focused on the different types of movie genres there are in film and movies today.  Three distinguished critics in film genre are Andre Bazin, Robert Warshow and Lawrence Alloway.  Although they are share the belief that “genres carried an intrinsic or significance, but each adopted a different way of thinking about this”.

Out of these three individuals, Bazin was in fact the more well-known “Pioneer” and I found that his views on the popularity of the Western-type movies with certain countries fascinating:

“What can there possibly be to interest Arabs, Hindus, Latins, Germans or Anglo-Saxon, among whom the western has had an uninterrupted success, about evocations of the birth of the United States of America, the struggle between Buffalo Bill and the Indians, the laying down of the railroad, of the Civil War!”. (Hutchings, 1995, p.61).

Bazin believes that there must be more to the succession of these films, other than the typical formal qualities – setting, objects and scenarios.  Like Bazin, I also believe that there is more to the genre of Western films other than the usual widespread landscape, men galloping on horses, gunfights and railroad chase scenes.  Westerns formal attributes are “simply signs or symbols of its profound reality, namely the myth”.  This mythical quality is in relation to the austere landscapes that these films are set in.

I chose to study the genre of slasher-horrors this week.  I watched Halloween and Scream and found both very similar in their own unique way.  Halloween is said to be one of the very first “true slasher-horror” films, changing the genre of horror movies at its time.

Re-watching this movie I noticed a few key features that make it successful.  The repetition of the “Mike Myers” tune always makes you suspect that he is close by or in hiding, watching one of his victims.  

I found myself extremely anticipated throughout the whole film and almost on the edge of my seat waiting to see him jump out at someone – especially moments where there is dead silence (pardon the pun).  Most of the action scenes in the films have the music going a lot faster which makes you anticipate him more.  I found myself gripped while noticing all of these key points in the movie and my heart racing to find out what happens.

Scream is viewed as a “slasher”; however, this film almost turned horror movies on its head as it is a parody towards all the cliché moments in this genre of movies.  I feel this was a good move as at this stage in movies, horrors from this category were becoming tiresome and far too predictable.  This is why I really enjoyed Scream when I first saw it.

Watching a clip near the beginning of the movie has a huge amount of well used clichés – alone in the house and the phone rings, locking doors and barricading the entry points, being watched while on the phone, falling over and being chased. This comes under Alloway's term of "iconography", which is analysing generic indentities in films:

"In this way we can indicate typical patterns of recurrence and change in popular films which can be traced better in terms of 'iconography' than in terms of individual creativity.  Indeed, the personal contribution of many directors can only be seen fully after typical iconographical elements have been identified".

This is true, especially in Scream, with the high amount of well known clichés and iconographical scenes which are almost "in-your-face" to the audience who can instantly relate to these types of scenes from previous viewed films.

I found it quite amusing that the main character is stroking the kitchen knife while discussing the movie “Halloween” to the caller (never mind the fact that she has no idea who it was and she was having a deep conversation with them!)

Although these movies are eighteen years apart from one another, they both portray the same qualities and ideas that make them a great movie within the genre of horror.

The questions that I have been thinking are, what makes a good slasher movie? Why does people love these types of movies and why are they so successful?

The majority of these styles of movies are very similar: main character in a calm and happy environment – usually a party scene, something then happens to disrupt the calm atmosphere (someone is killed), other characters are involved into the plot/friends of the main character, the problem the characters face is resolved (killed dies/captured) and the atmosphere fades back into a calm and relaxed state.  

However, horrors nowadays are sometimes quite different, where all of the characters are killed or there is some form of flip in the plot near the end.

In my opinion, I feel that these horrors are very successful as viewers like to pay into a cinema to be scared in a fantasy environment where they know themselves that they cannot be harmed.  I find myself in the cinema laughing at myself the fact that I am almost jumping out of the seat when there’s a “jumpy” moment in a horror.  

Most horrors nowadays – Paranormal Activity, Drag Me To Hell, Insidious, Sinister – all use these huge jumping moments to engage with the viewers and make them feel that they are there in the scene to make it more believable.

I really believe that this is what makes these movies extremely successful and what makes people want to pay into the cinema from hearing how scary it is from friends or by even watching the adverts on television.

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References:

Hutchings, P., 1995. Genre Theory and Criticism in Joanne Hollows and Mark Jancovich, eds., Approaches to Popular Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Week Two: Editing

I rather enjoyed the editing lecture this week in class as when I am working on my pieces of animation; the editing process is a major and, in my opinion, is the most important part of the outcome of an animation.

I learned that editing a film divides it up into three key stages; a beginning, middle and an end.  I also learned that movies are actually like a language with the way they are constructed and portrayed to the viewer.  They are almost like coherent "sentences" that are being spoon fed to the viewer. I became more familiar with bridges within films (Dissolves, Wipes and Fades).  These are placed in film where a change of environment is taking place within a story; a Wipe is usually used as a "meanwhile..." to show other characters in another place and Fades are usually to show a change of time - normally the next day.

Cross cutting was also a main thing to take away from the class this week as it is a major factor for me, especially when I am drawing out storyboards and wondering who/what to cut to next:

"Cross cutting is the kind of narrative cinema with which we are most familiar tends to occur between characters or locations whose relationship is already clear (or will shortly be so).  By indicating simultaneity, cross cutting also functions to stabilize rather than problematize a film's representation of time.  It should thus be distinguished from parallel editing, in which alternating sequences of action do not share a temporal framework but rather, belong to distant periods of narrative or symbolic connections the spectator is required to explore". - (Andrew Dix, Beginning of Film Studies, Manchester University Press, 2008, p.54)

I agree here with Dix as cross cutting in a sequence allows us to show the reader exactly what we need to convey within a film and not have to worry about the "in-betweens" - unnecessary information which has nothing to do with the narrative, which could overload and confuse the viewer.

We were shown a Spanish film which was entitled, "Le Notti Di Cabiria", which I found fascinating.  The clip we were shown in class involved a woman walking through a small wooded area and into a street, which was populated by a mass of people playing musical instruments.  The woman seemed sceptical and nervous in front of the crowd at first, then eased herself into the music and began to smile and dance herself.  I found this scene very well constructed as the music ascended with the woman's mood and emotion.

I learned quite a lot about continuity editing within a piece of film and to "cheat" by fooling the human eye.  A line from "The Art of Cinema" by Bordwell and Thompson inspired me:

"The purpose was to tell a story coherently and clearly, to map out the chain of character's actions and in an undistracting way"

Basically, camera cuts are positioned so skilfully within a film that the viewer doesn't sub-consciously notice. These kinds of cuts are usually placed in action scenes in films or when a character is talking or doing some form of action with another object.

We were told about the "Kuleshov Effect" in filming and I completely agree with this terminology.  This effect is that each shot is a chunk of information, almost like a building block.  When each of these building blocks is placed together, they form a specific film layout.  Each of these blocks derises its meaning around the other blocks (it has an effect on blocks around it).  If one single block is moved or changed it could have an effect on the entire film as a whole.

Although the Kuleshov Effect is effective in film, Noel Carroll argues that is does not correspond to the typical structure of POV editing:

"For the standard POV editing uses the character's face to give us information of emotional state with respect to what the character sees.  That is, the character's face is not, as standard versions of the Kuleshov experiment claim, emotionally amorphous, merely waiting emotive shaping from ensuing shots". (1996: 130).

This is true for The Nightmare Before Christmas, as the character of Jack Skellington has an immense amount of emotion in the film and it is shown and expressed to the viewer in incredible detail - mostly through face-on shots and for long pauses, to almost "cement" this these feeling into the viewer - to engage them more and bring them into the film world. 

I chose this film to study as a short five minute piece.  I studied specifically on the three minute sequence where Jack sings the "What's This?" song:

Immediately in this scene we have matching in the action as Jack burst out from under the snow to represent his massive lanky posture as the camera is almost looking straight up at him.  The camera has a lot of the camera cuts that I mentioned earlier from "Bordwell and Thompson" while Jack is singing and moving around Christmas Town.  

In this three minute piece there are so many camera cuts and cross cutting, however, it more or less goes unnoticed due to the style of editing and the way the cuts go along with the song and the movements of Jack.  

There is eyeline matching with Jack and the children while they are sleeping in bed and indeed the cuts from Jack's face to his face in another shot - like a 180 degree rule.  The sound editing would have been major in this scene alone, and of course the entire film, considering every sound that it heard is post-production.  

I feel that the sound flows ridiculously well whether it being the sound of Jack in the snow, touching objects around him or his lip sync with him singing.  

In my opinion, sound syncing is one of the most difficult parts of sound editing and I believe that this scene flows very fluently and there is not anything that I would change if I had a say.

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References:

Andrew Dix, Beginning of Film Studies, Manchester University Press, 2008.

Valerie Orpen, Film Editing: The Art of the Expressive (London: Wallflower, 2003).

Week One: Auterism

As I had missed the first week of class, catching back up with what I had missed was an issue. After a couple of days of reading the lecture notes and watching the clips that were shown in class, I was back up to speed.  I watched some of the clips from movies by David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Inland Empire and Wild at Heart) and understood how they are identifiable as Lynch movies over anyone else.

Prior to this class, I have never involved myself with the film studies side of things, after reading some of the notes given out I managed to get to terms with the idea and gradually obtain a good grasp with the terminology.

"This ungainly portmanteau word is the term which regularly describes the best-known conception of authorship".

Michael Foulcalt states that the term "author" is in effect when an individual actually expresses their very own and original concepts in many different ways of expression.

I fully agree with Foulcalt's views as I feel that an author/director's work becomes fully theirs in every way and completely unique in comparison to anything else that anyone would ever create or compose.  

He also goes on to say that he doesn't want to focus solely on an individual author/director and study their persona but wants to study how these people became "individualized" in today's culture and looked upon in such a high standard, idolized almost.

"I shall not offer here a socio-historical analysis of the author's persona. Certainly it would be worth examining how the author became individualized in a culture like ours, what status he has been given, at what moment studies of authenticity and attribution began, in what kind of system valorization the author was involved, at what point we began to recount the lives of authors rather than of heroes and how this fundamental category of the "man-and-his-work criticism" began".

I thoroughly agree with Foulcalt's opinions as it is wondered how an author or director becomes so popular within the world of film and how much of an impact one individual's work has on so many people.

An individual that I would say is, without a doubt, Auter is Tim Burton.  Everything Burton works within always has his own personal feel, design and style implemented into it.  I see him as a huge inspiration to my own designs and storytelling, especially in the stop-motion movies he has directed as I am massively interested in this field of animation.  His style and personal take on characters is extremely unique; whenever you see a type of character/scenery, you know for a fact it is a Tim Burton original.

Whenever I see a movie being released that is directed by Tim Burton, I would definitely go and see it.  this also strengthens Foulcalt's previous statements.  Two movies that Burton directed that I have studied within the past week are Alice in Wonderland and Frankenweenie.

Although these two movies are completely different medias, Burton's style still shines through and you can tell that they are of his design due to the style and world that they characters are living within.

Foulcalt talks quite a lot about the "Author Function" and it made me think about Burton and his movies.  Foulcalt talks how we all see directors and authors as being "outside of history" almost and that we specifically search for movies and pieces of work by searching via author, rather than the movie itself or the year etc.  

To be honest, I search by author most of the time, specifically Burton, as I enjoy his dark quirky-themed movies.  As I fully agree with Foulcalt in this respect, I do not see why this would be a negative aspect of an author.

By reading over these notes I have gained a great insight about the auter theory and Foulcalt's bold opinions.  

I have also learned about the difference and lossage between an author and his character's (when a character speaks, is it simply how they are feeling at that precise moment or is it merely what the author is thinking and wanting to portray to the viewer?)

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References:

Foulcalt. M., 1984. What is an Author? in Paul Rabinow (ed.) The Foulcalt Reader. New York: Pantheon Books.

Barthes, R., 1977. The Death of the Author in Barthes' Image, Music, Text. Glasgow: Fontana.