This document provides an introduction to key concepts in film studies, including definitions of film and what constitutes a movie. It discusses Peircian semiotics and the three modes of signs: icons, indexes, and symbols. It also summarizes important concepts like mise-en-scene, editing, camera shots, the gaze, and cinematic space. It then outlines several approaches to film theory as well as genres like film noir, female melodrama, and gothic films. It concludes by discussing theories of adaptation from literature to film.

1. Introduction to Film Studies
• “A film is a multimedial narrative form based on a physical
record of sounds and moving pictures. Film is also a performed
genre in the sense that it is primarily designed to be shown in a
public performance. Whereas a dramatic play is realised as live
event, and can theoretically be repeated infinitely without any
change. Like drama, film is a narrative genre because it presents
us with a story (a sequence of actions). Often, a film is an
adaptation of an epic or dramatic narrative (examples are
Stanley Kubrick s adaptation of Anthony Burgess s novel “A
Clockwork Orange”, Milos Forman s film of Peter Shaffer’s
• “Amadeus”. (Jahn, 2003)

2. What is a Movie?
• “A movie is a text that interweaves sound
in any or all of its aspects (noise, music
speech) and image (everything from the
printed word to physical action,
movement, gaze, and gestures) for the
purpose of telling a story”. (Dick, 1998).

3. Peircian Semiotics The Three Modes
• The Icon
• The Index
• The Symbol

4. The Symbol
• Symbol/ Symbolic: a mode in which the
signifier does not resemble the signified but
which is fundamentally arbitrary or purely
conventional – so that the relationship must be
learnt e.g. language in general (plus specific
languages, alphabetical letters, punctuation
marks, words, phrases and sentences),
numbers, Morse code, traffic lights, national
flags.

5. The Icon
• Icon / iconic: a mode in which the signifier is perceived as
resembling or imitating the signified (recognisably
looking, sounding, feeling, tasting or smelling like it) –
being similar in possessing some of its qualities: e.g. a
portrait, a cartoon, a scale model, onomatopoeia,
metaphors, ‘realistic’ sounds in ‘programme music’, sound
effects in radio drama, a dubbed film sound track, imitative
gestures. Film stars may be regarded as intertextual icons
often associated with specific genres and narrative
structures (e.g. James Cagney and the Gangster films)

6. The Index
• Index/ indexical: a mode in which the signifier is
not arbitrary but is directly connected ion some
way (physically or causally) to the signified - this
link can be observed or inferred: e.g. ‘natural
signs’ (smoke, thunder, footprints, echoes, non-
synthetic odours and flavours), medical symptoms
(pain, a rash, pulse rate) ..Indexes do not exist in
isolation .The icon is always an indexical sign.
Indexicality is culturally bound.

7. Editing and Mise –en -scene
• These are two fundamental cinematic concepts
• Mise-en –scene includes: decor,types of
shots,colour,lighting, performance,space relations or
blocking,the Gaze,diegetic sound ,angularity.
• Editng refers to the order in which shots are asssembled
within a scene and bewteen scenes.
• Within the Classical Holllywood tradition edting is
supposed to be invisible. This is called continuity editing
• Classical Hollywood narratives were character driven and
interpellated the spectator through their seamlessness in
terms of cutting .The spectator did not become aware of
the construction of the cinematic text .

8. Camera Shots and Angularity
– 1-Long shot
– 2-Establishing shot
– 3-Medium shot
– 4-Close up
– 5-High angle and low angle
shots.
– 6-Point of view shot
– 7-Two shot
– 8-Soft focus
– 9-Wide angle shot
– 10-Subjective shot

9. The Gaze
• Spectatorial gaze
• Camera gaze
• Intradiegetic gaze
• Gendered gaze
• Ethnic gaze
• Normalising gaze
• Empowered/disempowered gaze

10. Cinematic Space
Point of view/audition
• Onscreen space
• Offscreen space
• Focalisation
• Point of view /audition
• Restricted narration
• Voice over
• Spectatorial interpelllation (suture)
• Allegiance/Alignment with onscreen characters

11. Signifiers in Film Texts
• There are three kinds of signifiers in film
texts:
• 1-Visual
• 2-Auditory or acoustic
• 3-Verbal (speech and print)
• It is fundamental to analyse the interelation
between the three kinds of signifiers
whenever a film is analysed.

12. Film Theory.:Significant
Approaches
• Media semiotics
• Mise-en-scene Criticism
• Feminist Film Theory
• Psychoanalysis
• Postcolonial Film Theory
• Thematic Approach
• Ideological Criticism
• Intertextual Analysis (Film Adaptation)

13. Film Genres
• Film Noir
• Female Melodrama
• Gothic Film

14. Female Melodrama I
• Melodrama :Melos and Drama
• Origins in the pre-revolutionary French
unofficial theatrical performances (18th
century)
• Textual characteristics:
• 1-Emphasis on the victim
• 2-The presence of masochism

15. Female Melodrama II
• 3-The struggle between female desire and socially
sanctioned femininity (Feminist Film Theory)
• 4-The articulation of unspeakable feelings of the
characters through mise-en-scene
• 5-The inability of the characters to understand the
full implications of their existential position within
society
• 6-Feeling of entrapment within the bourgeois
home
• 7-Lack of agency of the female gaze

16. Female Melodrama III
• 8-The presence of excess made manifest through
decor, colour, uses of light, and shadow, musical
score and body language
• 9-The casting choices of film stars associated
with this mode (e.g. Bette Davies)
• 10-The subtle critique of the American Dream and
Patriarchal ideology through the subversion of the
narative structure which usually contains a fake
happy ending
• 11-The use of distanciation techniques

17. Gothic Films I
• Textual characteristics :
• 1-The Fantastic
• 2-The Uncanny
• 3-Haunting
• 4-Abjection and the Grotesque

18. Gothic Films II
• 5-The presence of the monster or freak
• 6-Monster cannot be expelled
• 7-The intrusion of the Doppelganger
• 8-No narrative closure

19. Film Noir (Kaplan:1998)
• Textual characteristics:
• 1-Investigative nature of narrative
• 2-Convoluted plots
• 3-Plot devices such as voice over narration (often
male voice over)
• 4-Presence of spider woman /femme fatale
/nurturing woman
• 5-Sharp contrast between light and darkness
• 6-Characters’ subjectivities are fragmented
• 7-Masculinity crisis

20. Theory of Adaptation
(Hutcheon:2006)
• Transtextuality
• Intertextuality
• Adaptation/Transposition
• Replication/Recreation
• From the linguistic to the iconic
• Dialogic relationship between literature/film
• From hypotext to hypertext
• Fidelity?

21. Shakespeare on Screen
• The Theatrical Mode (Hindle:2007)
• The Filmic Mode
• The Realistic Mode
• The Periodising Mode
• Adaptation/Appropiation
• The Director as Author