Film Analysis Introduction

1. Film Analysis Introduction

2. What does a director really do? • A director does not simply tell the story of film through the plot. • He or she uses other elements of the film making process to help the audience interpret the story of the film. • If you think about, a director is really telling the story from their point of view. In essence, they are manipulating the audience to think like they do.

3. Elements of Film We will consider the following elements of film: 1. Angle 2. Focus 3. Shot 4. Montage • Note: Each of these elements have subcategories.

4. 1. Angle • Low angle • High angle

5. Low angle a shot in which the subject is filmed directly from below and the camera points up at the action or character, to make the subject appear larger than life, more formidable and menacing, or perhaps tall and regal

6. High Angle a shot in which the subject is filmed from above and the camera points down on the action, often to make the subject small, weak and vulnerable

7. Focus -- communicates information to the audience. Deep focus Racking Focus Shallow focus Soft focus

8. Deep focus Both close and distant planes are clearly visible (including the three levels of foreground, middle-ground, and extreme background objects) in the same shot.

9. Racking Focus • Racking focus refers to the practice of changing the focus of a lens such that an element in one plane of the image goes out of focus and an element at another plane in the image comes into focus. • This technique is an even more overt way of steering audience attention through the scene, as well as of linking two spaces or objects. • Example: The Graduate (1967) – the scene in which Elaine realizes that Benjamin is having an affair with an 'older woman' (her mother) by the focus shifting to the image of Elaine's mother (Mrs. Robinson) behind her

10. Shallow focus -- keeps only one plane in sharp focus. Shallow focus suggests psychological introspection, since a character appears as oblivious to the world around her/him.

11. Shots • Close-up and Extreme Close-up Shot • Medium Shot • Long Shot • Cutaway Shot • Establishing Shot • Arc Shot

12. Close-Up and Extreme Close-Up Shot • A framing in which the scale of the object shown is relatively large. • In a close-up a person's head, or some other similarly sized object, would fill the frame.

13. Medium shot • Framing such than an object four or five feet high would fill most of the screen vertically • This is the most common shot used in films.

14. Long shot a camera view of an object or character from a considerable distance so that it appears relatively small in the frame

15. Cutaway Shot a brief shot that momentarily interrupts a continuously-filmed action, followed by a cutback to the original shot; often filmed from the POV of the character and used to break up a sequence and provide some visual relief, or to ease the transition from one shot to the next, or to provide additional information, or to hint at an impending change

16. Establishing Shot inform the audience with an overview in order to help identify and orient the locale or time for the scene and action that follows

17. Arc Shot a shot in which the subject(s) is photographed by an encircling or moving camera. Example: the dizzying camera shot during the Carrie (1976) prom scene.

18. Montage • This is a technique directors use in the editing room. • A Montage is: • a relatively rapid succession of different shots in a movie. • the juxtaposition of such successive shots as a cinematic technique.

19. Credits • http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/index.htm • http://www.filmsite.org/filmterms7. • http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/gramtv.html • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page • http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0111495/1-2.jpg • http://classes.yale.edu/filmanalysis/htmfiles/sound.htm