The document discusses various film techniques used by directors to create meaning and influence viewers, including narrative structure, editing, point of view shots, and ideological frameworks. It provides examples of several films that employ suspense-building techniques (Hitchcock films), ambiguous narratives (Breathless), and web-of-life plots (Crash). The document also examines documentaries like Man with a Movie Camera and The Thin Blue Line that use editing to shape the viewer's perceptions and attitudes. Overall, it analyzes how film style and conventions can reinforce social ideologies through both explicit and implicit meanings.
Media course work on Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock .
Alfred Hitchcock's rear window is a film full of symbolism, narratives, voyeurism and characterisation. The film focuses around the Main protagonist Jefferies, who is a photographer who recently broke his leg and is restricted to a wheelchair. The main character Jeff spends his days and nights watching the neighbours through a pair of binoculars. The audience are shown life through Jefferies eyes within the six weeks of his recovery.
Rear Window (1954) made viewers voyeurs, then had them pay for their pleasure. In its story of a photographer who happens to witness a murder, Hitchcock provocatively probed the relationship between the watcher and the watched, involving, by extension, the viewer of the film.
Hitchcock uses the point of view shot in order to show what Jeffery was seeing , using this shot doe not only allow the audience to see what he is seeing but it allows There are two main purposes for his use of optical point-of view shots in Rear Window.
One has to do with the story itself. The point-of-view shots help to pull the audience into the film and to identify more with the characters, most notably the main character Jeff. The second reason is much more universal, having to do with the nature of film itself, and the essence of cinema.
In Rear Window, female exhibitionism and objectification occurs. This is evident with the character Lisa. Lisa’s moves and poses suggest not only that she is confident and comfortable being looked at but also that she invites being looked at.
Lisa becomes a partner in Jeff’s gazing/voyeurism and an active investigator – maybe because this might be a stratagem for marriage, like her failed seduction attempt with the dinner from 21 and the sexy negligee.
Lisa’s wardrobe is expensive, high fashion (couture), and different in every visit. She is portrayed as only caring about her looks and the latest fashion which is a way of sexual objectification of women.
The gaze exercises power but also carries risks; it exposes Jeff to being seen by the other. Watching others without being seen gives Jeff a sense and a position of power, but then it is threatened and lost when Thorwald sees him from his apartment.
stereotypes are being used as the gaze is a male activity and the female the object of gaze, however Hitchcock undermines these stereotypes throughout the plot.
Jeff becomes powerless and passive when Thorwald breaks inside his apartment.
When Thorwald enters Jeff’s apartment, his eyes are lighted but his face and body are dark.
The gaze is an important element in this movie and there’s significance to Jeff using flash bulbs to try to blind and incapacitate Thorwald as to make an equal sense of powerless, however he fails.
Media course work on Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock .
Alfred Hitchcock's rear window is a film full of symbolism, narratives, voyeurism and characterisation. The film focuses around the Main protagonist Jefferies, who is a photographer who recently broke his leg and is restricted to a wheelchair. The main character Jeff spends his days and nights watching the neighbours through a pair of binoculars. The audience are shown life through Jefferies eyes within the six weeks of his recovery.
Rear Window (1954) made viewers voyeurs, then had them pay for their pleasure. In its story of a photographer who happens to witness a murder, Hitchcock provocatively probed the relationship between the watcher and the watched, involving, by extension, the viewer of the film.
Hitchcock uses the point of view shot in order to show what Jeffery was seeing , using this shot doe not only allow the audience to see what he is seeing but it allows There are two main purposes for his use of optical point-of view shots in Rear Window.
One has to do with the story itself. The point-of-view shots help to pull the audience into the film and to identify more with the characters, most notably the main character Jeff. The second reason is much more universal, having to do with the nature of film itself, and the essence of cinema.
In Rear Window, female exhibitionism and objectification occurs. This is evident with the character Lisa. Lisa’s moves and poses suggest not only that she is confident and comfortable being looked at but also that she invites being looked at.
Lisa becomes a partner in Jeff’s gazing/voyeurism and an active investigator – maybe because this might be a stratagem for marriage, like her failed seduction attempt with the dinner from 21 and the sexy negligee.
Lisa’s wardrobe is expensive, high fashion (couture), and different in every visit. She is portrayed as only caring about her looks and the latest fashion which is a way of sexual objectification of women.
The gaze exercises power but also carries risks; it exposes Jeff to being seen by the other. Watching others without being seen gives Jeff a sense and a position of power, but then it is threatened and lost when Thorwald sees him from his apartment.
stereotypes are being used as the gaze is a male activity and the female the object of gaze, however Hitchcock undermines these stereotypes throughout the plot.
Jeff becomes powerless and passive when Thorwald breaks inside his apartment.
When Thorwald enters Jeff’s apartment, his eyes are lighted but his face and body are dark.
The gaze is an important element in this movie and there’s significance to Jeff using flash bulbs to try to blind and incapacitate Thorwald as to make an equal sense of powerless, however he fails.
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This slideshow is being used by Film Studies 3030 at the University of Lethbridge, Calgary campus. The slide information is largely derived as commentary for the Giannetti and Leach textbook, Understanding Movies, and Richard Barsam's Looking at Movies.
This slideshow is being used by Film Studies 3030 at the University of Lethbridge, Calgary campus. The slide information is largely derived as commentary for the Giannetti and Leach textbook, Understanding Movies, and Richard Barsam's Looking at Movies.
Lights, Camera, Distraction: An introduction to screenwritingGaz Johnson
A workshop presented at Rawlings College, Quorn 11th March 2014 for creative writing students. Introduces the structure, format and process behind screenwriting for films.
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6. Rodger Thornhill is constantly in DANGER
Growing suspicion of Eve
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g458w2X9uHc
7. Does Rodger Thornhill know…
less than every character?
the same as every character?
more than every character?
Point of View shots
8.
9. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Contrasts norms of classical style narrative
Clarity and Unity
Ambiguity of narrative
10. Crucial action
▪ Brief and Confusing
Jump Cuts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KUVwKp6MDI
Violation of continuity
11. Elliptical Editing
Jump Cuts
Other alternative styles of narration
Avoidance of match on action
Violation of 180 degree rule
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATqTWlx
DuGY
12. Web-of-Life plot
▪ Many Characters
▪ Brought together by a single common event
Crash directed by Paul Haggis
▪ Different stories
▪ Paths cross
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEQ_ftk
pb18
13. Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
Directed by Dziga Vertov
Normally technique of editing but in this film is the filmmakers power to
control our perception by editing and special effects
Double exposure effect
Pixilation
“Kino eye”- Russian for cinema
Important genre of documentaries in the 1920’s called the city symphony
Travelogue
Candid scenes (sometimes staged)
Explicit and implicit meanings
Missed by people who do not read Russian
14. Explicit- to praise and criticize parts of the Soviet society after the revolution
Has machines and human labor - push towards industrialization
Crosscutting – leisure and hard work
Implicit – argument for Vertov’s approach to film making
Opposed narrative form and professional actors so that techniques of camera and
editing use would have an effect on the audience, but wanted to control the mise-en-
scene
Wanted viewers to see a product of specific labor
Same shots in different context – difficult film
Thin Blue Line
Directed by Errol Morris
Narrative form of documentary
Shapes our attitude toward the character by the play of narration and knowledge
15. Takes us through step by step of the criminal case with details and stories
events
Denies viewers scenes for determining what happened the night of the
murder so you can concentrate on the details given
They want us to be jurors and decide what the final decision should be
The play with narration shapes our attitudes toward the characters
who we want to like and who we dislike
16. Understanding ideology involves analyzing
for and style to create meaning
Chapter 2 types:
Explicit
Implicit
Symptomatic
Referential
17. Meet me in St. Louis
by Vincente Minnelli
Musical with family and future creates ideological framework to have meaning and
impact
Motifs stress the family's comfortable life
Light, eating, and singing can be seen as reassuring to the viewer
American ideology
Family and future to gain meaning and impact
Doesn't change peoples way of thinking, but reinforces aspects of
dominant social ideology
American values of how at home life is supposed to be
18.
19. Raging Bull
By Martin Scorsese
Is violent, but no one dies
Other then murders, this film draws conventions of cinematic realism
to make it disturbing and violent
The use of narrative and style help the ideology of the “American life”
Plot structure of rise-and-fall