The document discusses film style and its analysis. It explains that a film's style is created through the interaction of various film techniques and the director's choices. A style can reflect a single filmmaker's tendencies or be a group style. When analyzing a film's style, one should examine the overall narrative form, identify the main techniques used, trace patterns in the techniques, and propose the functions of the techniques and patterns in shaping the viewing experience. The document uses Citizen Kane to illustrate these points, noting various techniques like deep focus cinematography that emphasize contrasts in Kane's life.

1. Chapter 8
Summary: Style and Film Form
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2. The Concept of Style
• The film techniques studied so far interact to
create style.
• Style in turn interacts with the total film.
• Style can refer to one particular filmmaker’s
tendencies, or the group style of several
filmmakers together.
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3. Creative Decisions: Style and the
Filmmaker
• The filmmaker must make deliberate choices
about what techniques to employ.
• Sometimes filmmakers will select techniques
to point out story parallels, narrative
contrasts, or to reflect the progression of the
story.
• Style is often consistent within a film.
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4. Decision Making: Techniques
Working Together
• Filmmakers look for ways to incorporate
parallels.
• Some filmmakers incorporate several
techniques.
• Sometimes the techniques are planned and
others are spontaneous.
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5. Watching and Listening: Style and
the Viewer
• The viewer has expectations about style.
• The film’s style can confirm expectations,
modify, cheat, or challenge them.
• The director focuses our attention and shapes
our reaction, which is part of style.
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6. Analyzing Film Style Step 1:
Determine the Overall Form
• The first step is understand how the film is put
together as a whole.
• Examine narrative films in terms of plot, story,
causality, time, and space.
• Analyze the pattern of development.
• Look for variations in restricted and
unrestricted knowledge.
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7. Step 2:
Identify the Main Techniques Used
• Spot things such as color, lighting, framing,
cutting, and sound and identify them.
• What techniques are emphasized by the film?
• Identify which play a role in the overall effect
of the film.
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8. Step 3:
Trace Out Patterns of Techniques
• Look at how the main techniques are
patterned.
• Analyze based on your expectations and
whether they are fulfilled.
• Spot ways in which the style reinforces
patterns of formal organization, although
sometimes stylistic patterning will not respect
the overall structure of the film.
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9. Step 4: Propose Functions for the Main
Techniques and the Patterns They Form
• Look for the role that the style plays in the
overall form.
• Analyze the effects of the film on our viewing
experience in areas such as emotion,
meaning, and viewer attention.
• Imagining alternatives can help identify the
functions of the main techniques.
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10. Style in Citizen Kane
• The beginning sets up a mystery through the
eerie opening, which sets up a pattern of
penetration into space.
• This movement is reversed at the end,
echoing the opening.
• Knowledge is restricted to what Kane’s
acquaintances know.
• Only camera movement offers broader,
sometimes omniscient knowledge.
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11. Style in Citizen Kane
• Deep-focus cinematography is used to direct
attention to mise-en-scene.
• Contrasts between Kane’s early and late life is
emphasized through mise-en-scene.
• Parallels in sound, music, editing patterns,
deep focus, and deep space emphasize the
contrasts.
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12. Style in Citizen Kane
• The newsreel gives a map to the upcoming
plot events and establishes Kane’s power and
wealth.
• It is set apart through music, insert titles,
different film stocks, printing techniques, and
documentary footage.
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13. Style in Citizen Kane
• Shock cuts shift us from the narrator’s present
to the recounting of past events, creating
surprise and separating one portion of the
plot from another.
• Transitions that compress or skip time are less
abrupt.
• Music also helps to smooth out temporal
transitions.
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