Good evening! Welcome to our Unit 8 Audio Seminar Please remember to turn your speakers on!

Readings... Chapter 9, “Cinema”, in The Art of Being Human.

Questions for this evening... 1.Choose three film techniques that are used consistently in filmmaking. 2. Define these techniques in your own words and explain what their intended effect is. BUT FIRST...

Your Favorites and Why... What is your FAVORITE movie of all time and WHY?

THINK FAST!! Name three film techniques that are used consistently in filmmaking.

CONVENTIONS OF FILM Conventions o establishing shot-image that identifies where an action shot is to take place (for example, the front of a house) o close-up o sound o background music o point of view-usually a close-up of one character, followed by whatever is supposed to be seen by him/her. Pearson Longman © 2009

CONVENTIONS OF FILM Conventions o elongated moment-The slowing down of time. What may take a couple of seconds in real time is broken down into a number of separate shots. o lingering take-When the camera stays longer than expected on an object, a scene, a face. o dissolve-when one scene fades into the next. Pearson Longman © 2009

CONVENTIONS OF FILM Conventions o freeze frames when the action stops briefly and an image remains on a screen as if it were a photograph. o tracking shot when the camera, on wheels, moves in, out, up, down, or around, as in the famous train depot sequence in Gone with the Wind, when the camera moves out closely revealing the number of dead. o cut (1) when the director stops the shooting on a scene; (2) when one scene is quickly replaced by another. o flip when one screen image is turned quickly around, being replaced by another. It is different from the cut because the image is literally flipped around. o Special effects Pearson Longman © 2009

EARLY MILESTONES Invention o Thomas Edison & projector technology o “peep show” Pearson Longman © 2009

MAJOR FILM GENRES Slapstick Comedy o Chaplin & the Little Tramp – Gold Rush, Modern Times Farce o Marx Brothers – A Night at the Opera

MAJOR FILM GENRES Film Noir o Huston - The Maltese Falcon o Wilder - Double Indemnity o Truffaut - Shoot the Piano Player Pearson Longman © 2009

MAJOR FILM GENRES Romantic Comedy o When Harry Met Sally (1989) o As Good as It Gets (1997) o others you can think of? Pearson Longman © 2009

MAJOR FILM GENRES Screen Musical o Singin’ in the Rain o Dirty Dancing o Chicago

MAJOR FILM GENRES The Western o High Noon o Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid o Dances with Wolves o Open Range* o 3:10 to Yuma* Pearson Longman © 2009

MAJOR FILM GENRES Documentaries & Docudramas Documentaries – a nonfiction film that usually has a narrator but not a structured storyline. Docudrama – a nonfiction film that has not only a narrator but characters, either real people or actors, and a story line. Docudrama Examples: Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and An Inconvenient Truth Pearson Longman © 2009

MAJOR FILM GENRES Animated Film o Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs o Who Framed Roger Rabbit? o Ratatouille

NOTES ON CRITICAL VIEWING Some criteria to determine the merit of a film: o Use of a style unique to cinema o Characters with complex inner lives o Relevance to the times o Integrity o Avoidance of stereotypes o Gravity of theme o No violations of probability

Only one more seminar left! GREAT DISCUSSION!

Remember! 1.Discussion Board: two (2) threads awaiting your responses as well as those of your classmates. 2.Wrap up your final project.