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Realism in cinema
Editing in cinematography
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Film Making Styles: Realism vs. Formalism All successful filmmakers seek to create an image that will stay with the viewer even after the movie is over. The responsibility of the director is to tell the audience what they should be seeing and how they should be seeing it. Thus being understood, there are different styles of film making. Deciding what type of film being made depends on what type of response the director’s trying to gain from the viewer. What type of film making styles do film directors’ prefer to use? There is three styles of film making: realism, classicism, and formalism; formalism also being known as expressionist. Generally, the two main used styles are: realism style or the reality based film and formalism the fantasy …show more content…
Editing when using the formalism style is mandatory, to create another reality and for combining two or more realities into one film. The director uses editing in this way to force the viewer to understand they are only watching a movie, and not witnessing reality. According to the article “Formalism vs. Realism,” “Plot elements will be symbolic and sets will look like sets, with a clear indication the scene is self contained, not part of a larger scene.” The book “Understanding Movies” describes formalism as “…fantasy films that emphasized purely imagined events” (Giannetti 02). The first formalism film “A Trip to the Moon” in 1902 was created by the founder of the formalism style George Melies, a French magician whose intent was to create magic in the movies. Animated movies are easily recognized as being formalism, since animation is a series of drawings, and not actual people--they are cartoon characters. Nevertheless, animation is entirely based on the director’s imagination and artistic vision; even if the animated characters have been blended together with a cast of real life Hollywood actors to play some of the main roles in the film. The use of the formalism in this way is apparent in the 1988 film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” by Robert Zemeckis a formalistic styled
After evaluating the 2081 movie, it is apparent the film elements and techniques are important when defining the mood. The four main techniques used throughout the film were lighting, music, sound, and dialogue.
Modern day directors use a variety of methods to hold ones interest. Ethan Hawke and Kenneth Branagh’s created versions of Hamlet that shared some similarities, but ultimately had many differences in respects to an audience’s appeal. An appealing movie is one that has an alluring ambiance and an intellectual stimulus. With these two movie versions, a setting and a mood forced an audience to acquire specific emotions, but Ethan Hawke’s version generated emotions more strongly and effectively. Also, these movies had extremely different uses of music and visuals, but both movie versions incorporated them well for the ambiance it tried to obtain. Finally, both movie versions drew characters to captivate the audience; however in Ethan Hawke’s version, the characters were used so effectively that it was easy to feel involved with them. While both these versions of Hamlet had a captivating ambiance, Ethan Hawke’s version was more appealing due to the intellectual incentive that it offered.
Bordwell David and Thompson, Kristen. Film Art: An Introduction. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
The first characteristic of Classical Hollywood Elements is character. Characters are meant to learn from the difficulties they go through. For instance, there is character revelation in Lost in Translation through the relationship between Bob and Charlotte. They talk and get to know each other better by sharing life experiences. Bob is depicted more as a mentor than Charlotte mainly in the bedroom scenes. The second characteristic of Classical Hollywood Elements are crosscutting. Crosscutting is establishing an action that is happening at the same time but in two different locations. The film Lost in Translation is not organized in subtitles, and this puts the audience in the position of the character. The third characteristic of Classical Hollywood Elements are eye line matching. The audience is interested in seeing what the character sees. For instance, the opening scene shows Bob driving as he looks at billboards. Lastly, the final characteristic of Classical Hollywood is screen direction. Charlotte’s back is shown as she lays like a monolith knocked in a sideways
Film techniques are used extremely effectively in Strictly Ballroom by the director Baz Luhrman. Costume and makeup, camera angles and lighting and also character behaviours were used to influence the portrayal and development of all of the main characters. Without these film techniques, Strictly Ballroom could not have been made into a film as entertaining as it is and the characters personalities and development would not have been portrayed.
Movies come in different genres which are horror, romantic, comedy and even surreal genres. However, only a few directors were only working for films that were based on surrealism. Surreal films are the kind of films in which you found it strange and you will also think that this kind of films exists. Below is the list of the most surreal films.
John Gibbs and Douglas Pye (2005) Style and meaning : studies in the detailed analysis of film. Engalnd: Manchester University Press, pp 42-52.
The concept of Italian Neorealism includes location shooting, natural lighting, lengthy takes, the superior use of medium and long shots, the use of non professional actors which would include the individuals natural dialect, and the avoidance of any major editing to provide the viewer with a more real quality. (Marcus 22) On the other hand, a classic hollywood narrative, also known as hollywood realism, used professional actors, set up a plot patterning style, used lights and themes to enhance the characters, action, struggles and decisions that are being played out in the narrative. Unlike Italian Neorealism, hollywood realism includes “individuals who struggle...
When it comes to films most people think that the filmmakers just draft up the script, hires some actors, films and edits some scenes, then releases the next number one movie in America to the world (or select theaters near you). In actuality, there are a lot more details that go into film than that. Filmmakers are constantly making decisions in regards to a films narrative and cinematic style and making sure a film comes out as well as it can. One of those decisions fall under cinematic style and is called mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene has four elements: lighting, costume/makeup, sets/props, and figure expression and movement. The three that will be focused on when analyzing the film Modern Times are costume/makeup, sets/props, and figure expression
Auteur theory holds that, ‘a director’s films reflect that director’s personal creative vision, as if he/she were the primary author. From the earliest silent films to contemporary times motion pictures have crossed over and both entertained and educated the viewing audience.
The neorealist style was developed by a circle of film critics that revolved around the magazine Cinema, despite a severe lack of funds and equipment the Neorealist film makers sought to reveal truth of the everyday life. Filming outdoors in natural light and starring nonprofessional actors, it was a return to the Lumiere ethic of framed reality. NeoRealism became a style of film which was characterised by stories that were set amongst the poor and working class people. Realism would always be emphasized, and performances were mostly constructed from scenes of ordinary people performing fairly uninteresting and everyday tasks, completely derived of the self-consciousness that a trained actor would usually produce. The films would generally feature children as the major role but they were usually more observational rather than engaging.
This New Wave aesthetic solidified film as a mainstream artform, stressing that film was carefully crafted similarly to literature. Individual directors, or auteurs, were expected to “author” their films in much the same way that an author would write a novel. This auteur theory and its accompanying aesthetic became the backbone of the French New Wave and was what drove innovation. Breaking free from the screenwriter, producer, and studio driven systems of the past, and putting the creative power back in the hands of the director was seen as a crucial step in solving Cahiers’ perceived problems with French cinema before the movement.
The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.
The theories of the window and frame had its origins in the schools of formalism and realism. Both schools main objective was to amplify the prestige of film. During that era of film was an upstart sideshow attraction, high class form of entertainment was the theater and the visual art forms of paintings and statues. Both schools saw cinema as a way of looking a through an aperture but keeping the audience at a distance from the subject on the screen. Whether looking through at frame or looking through a window the audience would be viewing the subject matter but they would only be able to absorb it. That’s where the similarities end the formalist lead by theorist Sergei Eisenstein saw film as frame and would create shock in an attempt to provoke or raise consciousness. Sergei Eisenstein would create what he wanted to the audience to see in his films. For example in the Battleship Potemkin Eisenstein wanted to address the situation with Russia and he created the situation in his film to incite a revolution by creating chaos. The realism school lead by André Bazin saw cinema as window. To Bazin a spectator would be apart of the film as more of a witness more than just a spectator. In the movie Rear Window Jefferies was witness to his neighbor wife murder while looking through window because while looking through a window what one sees is real.
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.