Study FTV-140 Film Aesthetics MIdterm Vocab Flash Cards

 
Pile Management Card
FTV-140 Film Aesthetics MIdterm Vocab

loading
deep focus
Using the short-focal-length lens to capture deep-space composition and its illusion of depth. Foreground, middle ground, and background are all in focus.
film noir
Contrast between good and bad, light and dark.
camera movement
Pan shot, tilt shot, dolly shot, tracking shot, zoom, crane shot, handheld, and Steadicam
camera angles
Shooting angle: the level and height of the camera in relation to the subject being photographed. Normal height is eye level. Angles: high angle, low angle, Dutch angle (tilted), and aerial view.
implied proximity
Distance between the camera and the subject. Everything we see on screen has been placed there to develop the narrative's outcome and meaning. The implied proximity of the camera to the subjects being shot influences our emotional involvement with the subjects. Shots: extreme long shot, establishing shot, long shot, full-body shot, medium long shot, medium shot, medium close-up, close-up, extreme close-up.
Classic Hollywood Studio System
Set and costume designers worked in close collaboration with directors of photography to ensure that the colors used in their designs produced the optimal varieties of tones in black and white. Three-point lighting system. Studios distinguished themselves from each other by adopting distinctive lighting styles and production values.
lighting design elements
Source: natural and artificial
Quality: hard or soft light
Direction: direction and angle; angl helps produce the contrasts and shadows that suggest the location of the scene, its mood, and the time of day. Three-point lighting convention is most common.
Style: determined by production values.
Elements of Film Color
The earliest films with color involved hand-painted frames. Then tinting came along which involved dyeing the base of the film so that the light areas appeared in color. Toning involved converting the black and white image to color. Technicolor additive two-color process could reproduce a specific color by adding and mixing combinations of three primary colors. Three-color subtractive process shoots three separate black and white negative through three light filters, each representing a primary color. Then Monopack, a multilayered film stock that could be used in a conventional camera. Eastman Color system produced a one-strip film stock that required less light. Color makes movies look more realistic since that is how we actually see.
tonality
The system of tones that is the distinguishing quality of black-and-white film stock.
cinematographer
Works closely with the director and makes specific decisions about how the movie will be photographed.
German Expressionism
To give objective expression to subjective human feelings and emotions through the use of such objective design elements such as structure, color, or texture; it also aimed at heightening reality by relying on such nonobjective elements as symbols, stereotyped characters, and stylization.
point of view
The position from which a film presents the actions of a story; not only the relation of the narrator(s) to the story but also the camera's act of seeing and hearing. The two fundamental types of cinematic point of view are omniscient and restricted.
film stock
Celluloid used to record movies. There are two types: one for black-and-white films, the other for color. Each type is manufactured in several standard formats.
onscreen vs. offscreen space
Onscreen space is the cinematic space that exists inside the frame.
Offscreen space is the cinematic space that exists outside the frame.
elements of design
Settings, props, lighting, and actors. Set design, decor, prop selection, lighting setup, costuming, makeup, and hairstyle design all play a role in shaping the overall design.
production designer
A person who works closely with the director, art director, and director of photography, in visualizing the movie that will appear on the screen. The production designer is both an artist and an executive, responsible for the overall design concept, the look of the movie-as well as individual sets, locations, furnishings, props, and costumes-and for supervising the heads of many departments (art, costume design and construction, hairstyling, makeup, wardrobe, location, etc.) that create that look.
open vs. closed framing
A open frame is a frame around a motion picture image that, theoretically, characters and objects can enter and leave.
A closed frame is a frame is a frame of a motion picture that, theoretically, neither characters nor objects enter or leave.
composition
The process of visualizing and putting visualization plans into practice; more precisely, the organization, distribution, balance, and general relationship of stationary objects and figures, as well as of light, shade, line, and color, within the frame.
narration
The commentary spoken by either offscreen or onscreen voices, frequently used in narrative films, where it may emanate from an omniscient voice (and thus not one of the characters) of from a character in the movie. There are two main types of narration: first-person narration and voice-over narration.
round vs. flat characters
A round character is a character that is three-dimensional, unpredictable, complex, and capable, of surprising us in a convincing way. Round characters may be major or minor characters.
A flat character is a character that is one-dimensional and easily remembered because his or her motivations and actions are predictable. Flat characters may be major, minor, or marginal characters.
familiar image
Any image that a director periodically repeats in a movie (with or without variations) to help stabilize the narrative.
story vs. plot
Story is all the the events we see and hear on the screen, and all the events that are implicit or that we infer to have happened but that are not explicitly presented.
Plot is the structure for presenting everything that we see and hear in a film, with an emphasis on causality, consisting of two factors: (a) the arrangement of the diegetic events in a certain order or structure and (b) added nondiegetic material.
satellite
A minor plot event that add texture and complexity to characters and events but are not essential elements within the narrative.
hub
A major event in a plot; a branching point in the plot structure that forces a character to choose between or among alternate paths.
nondiegetic element
Something that we see and hear on the screen that comes from outside the world of the story (including background music, titles and credits, and voice-over narration.)
diegetic element
An element-event, character, object, setting, sound-that helps form the world in which the story occurs.
Motion Picture Production Code
1922: A detailed set of guidelines concerning acceptable and unacceptable subject matter by the MPPDA (Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America.) Created because movies had no censorship and to prevent boycotting from religious groups. Nudity, adultery, homosexuality, gratuitous or unpunished violence, and religious blasphemy were among the many types of content that the code strongly discouraged. Perhaps even more significantly, the code explicitly stated that art can influence, for the worse, the morality of those who consume it.
experimental film
Also known as avant-garde film, a term implying a position in the vanguard, out in front of traditional films. Experimental films are usually about unfamiliar, unorthodox, or obscure subject matter and are ordinarily made by independent (even underground) filmmakers, not studios, often with innovative techniques that call attention to, question, and even challenge their own artifice.
"cinematic language"
The accepted systems, methods, or conventions by which the movies communicate with the viewer.
genre
The categorization of narrative films by form, content, or both. Examples of genres are musical, comedy, biography, western, and so on. Defined by sets of conventions-aspects of storytelling such as recurring themes and situations, and aspects of visual style such as decor, lighting, and sound.
verisimilitude
A convincing appearance of truth; movies are verisimilar when they convince you that the things on the screen-people, places, and so on, no matter how fantastic or antirealistic-are "really there."
anti-realism
An interest in or concern for the abstract, speculative, or fantastic.
realism
An interest in or concern for the actual or real; a tendency to view or represent things as they really are.
film content
The subject of an artwork.
film form
The means by which a subject is expressed. The form for poetry is words; for drama, it is speech and sound; and so on.
Place this card into pile: