Films test
What is the literal meaning of the word “cinematography”?
Writing in movement
What is contrast?
Comparative difference between the darlets and the lightest areas of the frame
What is exposure, and how does it affect photographic tonality?
Crucial way to alter the tonalities, filters would e used to he[ with the affect toning too
Why are instances of under- and overexposure not necessarily mistakes on the part of a cinematographer?
Difficult to achieve, sometimes they want unbalanced
Define day-for-night shooting.
Using blue filters in sunlight
What does it mean to say that a colour is “saturated”?
The level of intensity of a colour
Explain tinting and toning as methods of manipulating photographic tonality.
Tinting = dipping the already developed into a bath of dye
Toning = dye added during the developing of the positive print
What is the standard rate of filming and projection?
24fps but today is somewhere between 8 and 64fps
Define “focal length.”
distance from the centre of the lens to the point where the light rays converge to a point of focus on the film
Describe the different perspective relations that characterise the short, middle, and long-focal length lenses.
middle - Little distortion of perspective relations – Scene appears roughly as human eye would see it
Short - Exaggerates depth – distances between foreground and background seem greater than they are – figures moving toward or away from camera appear to cover ground more quickly
Long - Allows closer shots of distant objects
Has flattening effect – Distance between foreground and background seems greatly reduced
Figure moving toward or away from camera seems to take longer time to cover distance than we might expect
Define “depth of field.”
A property of the lens
Range of distances before the lens within which objects can be photographed in sharp focus
What does it mean to say a director composes shots in “deep space”?
Matter of mise en scene involving how the scene is arranged
What is “deep-focus cinematography”?
all elements of an image—foreground, middleground, and background—are all in sharp focus
What does “selective focus” (or “shallow focus”) mean?
Selective is on the left where it’s only us concentrating on her face and the background is blurred
What does “rack focus” mean, and what is the effect of this technique?
Pulling focus switch our attention between foreground and background
The “academy ratio” is 1.33:1. What do these numbers mean?
Frame width to frame height
What is a hard matte? Why is it used?
Top and bottom of the film frame are masked to create widescreen
What is “off-screen” space, and how can it play a significant role in cinema?
The areas that are not shown inside the frame can help create suspense
What are the four general categories of camera positioning?
Angle
Level
Height
Distance of framing
What does a canted frame look like?
Framing tipped to one side or the other
Define each of the following terms describing camera distances: extreme long-shot, long-shot, medium long-shot, medium shot, medium close-up, close-up, and extreme close-up
ECU a part of the human face is in focus
Close up the human face fills the shot
MCU closer should up
Medium shot waist up (also like cowboy)
MLS knee up
LS full body in view nearly dills the frame from top to bottom
ELS human body dwarfed up or is not in shot (a lot of the time in opening shots)
What is mobile framing?
Hand shot
Explain the general types of camera movement.
Pan
Tilt
Tracking or dolly shot
Crane shot
Explain the different effects achieved by Steadicam and hand-held camera work.
Steadicam something stable holding it usually body worn
What is reframing?
Short panning or tilting movements used to adjust for movements of the subjects
What is the difference between a “long take” and a “long shot”?
Long take - uninterrupted take
Long shot - full body shot
What is the difference between loudness (or volume), pitch, and timbre?
Loudness- the sounds we hear results from vibrations in the air
Pitch- perceived highness or lowness of the sound
Timbre- the harmonic components of sounds give it a certain colour or tone quality
Name the three types of sound in films.
Speech
Music
noise
What is a dialogue overlap?
Filmmakers continues a line of dialogue across a cut smoothing over the change of shot
Explain how the layering of sound works in film.
Combining sounds after shooting is done during the mixing process, the mixer controls the volume, duration and time quality of each sound weaving them in and out.
Explain how music can function as a motif in a film.
Can subtly compare scenes, trace patterns of development and suggest implicit meanings
Define “Mickey Mousing” and explain the basic principle at work.
film technique that syncs the accompanying music with the actions on screen, "Matching movement to music"
What do film critics mean by the term “fidelity”?
The extent to which the sound is faithful to the source as we conceive it
Explain the power of offscreen sound to create film meaning.
Helps with transitions when needed, its purely a matter of expectation
Explain how the portrayal of the subjective depth of a character may be achieved through the use of sound.
Can be presented through the soundtrack or visual track
Explain the difference between internal and external diegetic sound.
Internal comes from the inside of the character (subjevtive)
External the sound has a physical source ub the scene (objective)
Explain how sound perspective can be suggested by loudness/volume.
The closer it is, the louder , the further vice versa
Define “synchronous sound.”
audio that lines up precisely with what's happening on screen
Explain the difference between simultaneous and non-simultaneous sound.
Nonsimultaneous: sound from earlier in story than image.
Simultaneous: images and sound takes place at the same time.
Define “sound bridge.
occurs when the sound of the next scene begins while images of the last scene remain on-screen or when a sound lingers as the next scene appears.
Define the terms “style” and “group style” as they are used generally in film criticism.
Group style use or techniques across the work of several filmmakers
How do the conventions of genre create audience expectations about a particular film’s style?
Provide firm basis for reinforcing our prior assumption
The text encourages you to identify salient techniques; what does this mean?
What techniques the film relies on
Identify some of the salient techniques on view in one or more of the films on the course.
Do the right thing 'point of view' or P.O.V shots, close ups, over-the-shoulder, wide-angle shots, special effects (FX) and sound
What characteristics of Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari make it an expressionist film?
makes use of expressionist architecture and expresses interior reality through exterior means with its use of extreme distortion in its production design
Why, according to Fabe, did Murnau view Caligari as both an inspiration and a dead end? How does The Last Laugh respond to the perceived limitations of Caligari’s expressionist style?
inspiration because it abandoned the slavish imitation of a real, objectively perceived world to present a subjective vision.
dead end because
It projected the character’s vision primarily through the film’s mise-en-scéne, that is, its two-dimensional painted sets, a means borrowed from the theatre.
What are the key stylistic qualities of Italian neorealist cinema?
Location shooting in urban settings
Rough, documentary style cinematography
Frequently used novice actors
Stories of poor and working class characters
Looser narrative form
How does the neo-realist movement break with the conventions of Mussolini-era Italian cinema?
Neorealist scenarios focus on common, even banal events in the lives of humble working-class people. For some reason, the depiction of lives of workers or the poor strikes us as more real than the depiction of the more insulated lives of the rich.
What does the term “expressionism” mean, and how is German expressionist cinema related to the expressionist movement in other artistic media?
Squeezing out, anti bourgeois, crudely apinted forms and vibrant colours
How is expressionism related to developments in the field of psychology in the early 20th century?
Freud's psychoanalysis on hysteria
What are the key stylistic features of expressionist cinema?
oblique camera angles, distorted bodies and shapes, bizarre and incongruous settings that are almost Gothic in their look and framing.
Why is film noir arguably better described as “a visual style” rather than “a genre or movement”?
a visual style which came about as a result of political circumstance and cross-fertilization.
What, according to Susan Hayward, are the “essential ingredients” of a film noir?
specific location or setting, its high-contrast lighting as well as its low-key lighting,
What are the typical narrative strategies of film noir?
often side-lighted to enhance the pro fi le from one side and leaving the other half of the face in the dark, thus pointing to the moral ambiguity of this main character who is neither inheretily bad or knight in shining armour
What is a femme fatale, and how does the type of the femme fatale break with Hollywood’s conventional representations of women?
The power the femme fatale exerts over the hero is his own doing, because he has over-invested in his construction of her sexuality at the expense of his own subjectivity
femme fatale and privileges her as active, intelligent, powerful, dominant and in charge of her own sexuality – at least until the end of the fi lm when she pays for it (through death or submission to the patriarchal system).
Furthermore, the masochistic sexual fantasies implicit in the threat the femme fatale poses for the male protagonist are, in this respect, tied up with questions of (male) identity.
If Beale Street Could Talk
(Barry Jenkins, USA, 2018, 119m)
Do the Right Thing
(Spike Lee, USA, 1989, 120m)
Victoria
(Sebastian Schipper, Germany, 2015, 138m)
Singin’ in the Rain
(Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, USA, 1952, 103m)
M
(Fritz Lang, Germany, 1931, 113m)
Double Indemnity
(Billy Wilder, USA, 1944, 107m)
Bicycle Thieves
(Ladri di biciclette, Vittorio De Sica, Italia, 1948, 93 m)