Introduction to Cinema Techniques

1. Introduction to Cinema Techniques

2. Outline • Editing • Shots and Their Functions • Overview of Professional Production • Double-System Shooting • Lighting • Sound

3. Editing

4. Editing Terms • Shot • Scene • Sequence • Overall Film Structure

5. Shot • A single piece of continuous action.

6. Scene • An assembly of shots which gives the impression of continuous space and time.

7. Sequence • A collection of scenes

8. Intrascene Editing • Cutting shots together within a scene. • Involves the notion of “continuity.”

9. Continuity

10. Two Dimensions of Continuity • “Temporal Continuity” gives the impression that time is continuous. • “Spatial Continuity” gives the impression that space is continuous.

11. Temporal Continuity

12. Real Time

13. Screen Time

14. Absolute Temporal Continuity

15. Types of Absolute Temporal Continuity • Single-shot Scene • Matching Action

16. Single-shot Scene • Where a scene is recorded in a single shot.

17. Medium Shot

18. Closeup

19. Matching Action • Action must be photographed from more than one angle. • Action must be on the screen at the moment of the cut. • The cut between one angle (shot) and another must match.

20. “Errors” in Matching Action • Jump Cuts • Overlapping Action

21. Jump Cut • Where a portion of the action is missing at the cut.

22. Overlapping Action • Where a portion of the action repeats itself at the cut.

23. Cutaways • Allow screen time to be condensed

24. Cutaways • Allow screen time to be expanded

25. Special Kinds of Cutaways • Inserts

26. Reaction Shots • Act as cutaways to condense or expand screen time. • Guide the audience’s emotional response to the main action. • Establish relationships between the characters involved in the main action and those doing the reacting.

27. Spatial Continuity • Spatial continuity allows the audience to keep oriented from one shot to another within a scene. • Spatial continuity gives the impression that real space and screen space are the same. • In spatial continuity there is no equivalent to “absolute temporal continuity,” since screen space, unlike real space, is always bounded by the frame.

28. Spatial Continuity • The framelines separate “onscreen space” from “offscreen space.”

29. 180 Degree Rule • Provides continuity of movement. • Provides continuity of direction. • Provides continuity of screen position.

30. Screen Direction

31. Crossing the 180

32. Movement

33. Direction

34. Screen Position

35. 30 Degree Rule • Changes from one shot to another should be significant, but not too great.

36. Interscene Editing

37. Opticals • Wipe • Iris • Fade-out and fade-in • Dissolve

38. Wipe

39. Iris

40. Fade-out and Fade-in

41. Dissolve

42. Graphic Matches

43. Scene Structure • Mise en scene • Montage

44. Mise en Scene

45. Montage

46. Film Structures • Narrative (dramatic) • Rhetorical • Categorical • Abstract

47. Shots and Their Functions

48. Film is like a language.

49. Two levels of meaning • Connotation • Denotation

50. Shots, like words... • have a “denotative” meaning. • have a “connotative” meaning.