Chapter 7 ‘Sound in the Cinema’ (from ‘The Powers of Sound’ to ‘An Abundance of Choices’), pages 266 – 298
Chapter 7 in FILM ART discusses sound in the cinema. Sound is a powerful film technique that engages a distinct sense mode. The meshing of image and sound appeals to something quite deep in human consciousness. Sound actively shapes how a human perceives an image they are shown. For example, in Letter from Siberia, Chris Marker demonstrates the power of sound in altering our understanding of what is on screen. He shows the same image 3 times throughout the film, but with different sounds, which changes the meaning of the image shown. This also shows that sound can direct our attention within the image. A commentator may describe something shown in an image, and hence our attention is drawn to that certain object. Therefore, its significance is more crucial and hence we have a different outlook on the image than we would if we were not told to look at that object.
Film sound can include any mixture of speech, music and noise. Filmmakers make decisions about the types and density of sounds as well as their properties, including loudness and pitch. The choice and combination of sound materials can create patterns that run through the film as a whole. A musical score is perhaps the clearest example of this. A melody or musical phrase can be associated with a particular character, setting, situation or idea. Howard Shore, the composer of The Lord of the Rings, states that his score “is a complex piece that has to be structured carefully, musically, and thematically, so that all other parts relate to one another.”
Chapter 8 ‘Summary: Style and Film Form’ (from ‘The Concept of Film Style’ to ‘What Functions Do the Techniques and Patterns Fulfill?’), pages 308 – 314
Chapter 8 in Film Art offers a summary regarding style and film form of film. It discusses the choices a filmmaker has when deciding the style of their film, stating that one choice leads to other consequences and decisions. For this reason, filmmakers think out their decision very carefully. Films setting up narrative or thematic contrasts may recruit several techniques to reinforce them. Many filmmakers let stylistic elements cooperate to differentiate locales or story lines. In Inception, each dream level involves a distinct fantasy world. However, settings, costumes, lighting, colour schemes, weather, and other aspects of mise-en-scene allow the audience to keep track of which level each shot occurs in. The conventions of classical Hollywood cinema and of specific genres provide a firm basis for reinforcing our prior assumptions. Other films ask us to revise our expectation somewhat.
Chapter 9: ‘Film Genres’ (from ‘Understanding Genre’ to ‘Genres as Social Reflection’) pages 329 – 339 AND ‘The Horror Film’, pages 341 – 344
A genre is a style or category of art, music, or literature. In filmmaking, there are several genres and over time, these have become more complex and blended. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, described as ‘a middle eastern feminist vampire romance’, mixes genre conventions such as horror, western and romance. Another example of blended genres is Steven Spielberg’s Psycho can be seen as a slasher film or a mystery thriller. Over history, genres rise and fall in prestige and popularity. The result is the phenomenon known as cycles. A cycle is a batch of related genre films that enjoys intense popularity and influence over a fairly short period. Filmmakers deliberately address their films to current concerns or tastes. However, different points of history, the stories, themes, values, or imagery of the genre harmonize with the publics attitude in a more involuntary fashion. For example, the motion picture Selma was made to address 50 years since a march for black rights in Selma, Alabama.
Horror films are a genre of film that has sparked large audience attention. The horror film entered into a period of popularity, which has not yet ended. The genre’s iconography pervades contemporary culture. Horror films such as Jaws, Carrie and Dracula are still popular films today. Horror films are also a global phenomenon being made all around the world. For example 28 Days Later is made in the United Kingdom and Nightwatch in Russia. Another popular genre of films are musicals. Musicals came into being in response to a technological innovation. Basing a feature-length film on a series of musical numbers did not emerge until the late 1920s with the introduction of recorded soundtracks.
Chapter 10: ‘Documentary’ (from ‘What is a documentary?’ up to and including ‘Viewer-centered Arguments’), pages 350 – 364
Before we see a film, we nearly always have some sense of whether it is a documentary or a piece of fiction. A documentary is using pictures or interviews with people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject. However, some audience members believe a documentary is unreliable if it manipulates events that are filmed. However, this staging is purposely used by some directors, including James Marsh for the movie Man on Wire. Marsh assigned actors to recreate moments as he had very little footage of an acrobats abilities. As a type of film, documentaries present themselves as factually trustworthy, however many have been challenged as inaccurate. For example The Inconvenient Truth was seen as more of a fiction film as there were weak arguments and skewed data.
Very often a documentary pursues several genre options at once. A film may mix archival footage, interviews, and material shot on the fly, such as Fahrenheit 9/11. A filmmaker may choose to make a narrative or non-narrative documentary. The film might be designed to convey categorized information, which is the formal patterning categorical form. The filmmaker might decide differently, and want to make an argument that will convince the spectator of something. This would draw of rhetorical form. Categories are groupings that individuals or societies create to organise their knowledge of the world. Filmmakers have a wide range of opportunities when making a documentary. The documentary Grizzly Man captures the life of Timothy Treadwell, and American bear enthusiast and environmentalist. This documentary shows the value of the life of bears, and also mankind. It unintentionally taps into the effects loneliness and potentially, mental illness on a human.
Chapter 11: Experimental Film
Chapter 11 in FILM ART discusses experimental film, including types of form in experimental film, abstract form, and principles of associational form. This section firstly outlines that experimental filmmakers have tinkered with cinema in several ways. For example, Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man, presents cosmic metaphors. Furthermore, the experimental filmmaker may tell no story, creating poetic reveries or pulsating visual collages such as Ballet mecanique. However, experimental films may use narrative form, such as in James Sibley Watson, Jr., and Melville Webber’s The Fall of the House of Usher tells the story through expressionist sets and lighting.
Two other types of form that are characteristic of experimental films are abstract form and associational form. Abstract form is a type of filmic organisation in which the parts relate to one another through repetition and variation of such visual qualities as shape, colour, rhythm, and direction of movement. This is evident in Ballet mecanique, an avant-garde film that explains how mundane objects can be transformed when their abstract qualities become the basis of the films form. On the other hand, associational form is a type of organisation in which the films’ parts are juxtaposed to suggest similarities, contrasts, concepts, emotions and expressive qualities. This is shown in the film Koyaanisqatsi that is meant to “offer an experience rather than an idea.”
Chapter 12 ‘The New Hollywood and Independent Filmmaking 1970s – 1980s’, pages 488 – 494
Chapter 12 in Film Art analyses the differences between certain art forms. Tastes and trends vary. The division among blockbusters, program genre fare, Oscar bait, edgy experiments, and niche independents would roughly hold good from the 1970s through the 2000s. Although blockbusters were massive, for many critics, what made the 1970s an era of rejuvenation was the presence of anti-blockbusters, intimate dramas of ordinary people leading more or less recognizable lives. This occurred in movies such as The Last Picture Show (1972) and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974). These movies gave American cinema a dose of social realism that had been missing from both old Hollywood and the “New Hollywood” of Spielberg, Lucas, and more. The change generated more constraints, more opportunities, and more decisions artistically for directors who wanted to tell stories in surprising ways.
