FS102
Metropolis
● Screenplay by: Thea von Harbou
● Production Cost: approx. 7 million Reichsmark (200 million USD)
● Genre: German Expressionist, science fiction, silent film, new digital restoration, casts of
thousands
● 3 acts: Prelude, Intermezzo, Furioso
● The ‘Shot’ - comprised of mise-en-scene and cinematographic elements: what is filmed
and how it is filmed
○ Includes 3 factors:
■ Photographic aspects
■ Framing duration
● The standard rate (speed of motion) after the advent of sound was 24 fps in 1920s, now,
we have a choice from 8-64 fps
● The special process effect developed specially for Metropolis is called the ‘Schufftan
process’ for its inventor, Eugen Schufftan
○ Mirror + scale model+matte painting
● Moloch
○ In the old testament, the god of the ammonites and phoenicians to whom parents
offered their children to be burnt in sacrifice
○ Any institution or authority with the power to exact merciless sacrifices
● The frame is important because it actively defines the image for us
● Framing can powerfully affect the image by means of:
○ The size and shape of the frame
○ The way the frame defines onscreen and off-screen space
○ The way framing imposes the distance, angle, and height of a vantage point onto
the image
○ The way framing can move in relation to the mise en scene
● The ratio of frame width to height is called ASPECT RATIO
○ Proportions of the rectangular frame were approx. 4:3, yielding an aspect ratio of
1.33:1
● Eyeline match
○ Continuity editing technique that preserves spatial continuity by using a
character’s line of vision as motivation for a cut
● Mise en scene
○ Framing combines elements of the HOW with the WHAT of filmmaking
○ = all of the elements placed in front of the camera to be photographed
○ 3 components
■ Setting and prop
■ Human figure (actor’s bodies/faces; costumes, makeup, etc)
■ Lighting
■ (extra) composition (visual arrangements of objects, actors, space within
frame
● German Expressionism
○ A movement in the visual arts and theatre beginning in 1905 with Die Brucke
group in Dresden, followed by 1911 by Der Blaue Reiter in Berlin
○ Characterized by extreme distortion to express an inner emotional reality rather
than surface appearances
○ Goal: express feelings in the most direct and extreme fashion possible - “extreme
states of subjectivity”
Wizard of Oz
● Genre
○ Musical
○ Fantasy
○ Like metropolis, this exemplifies the studio-bound, special-effects-based
approach to cinematic narrative: the ‘formative tendency’, characterized by
fantasy, reflexivity, anti-realism
● Hollywood Studio Era
○ 1915-1948
○ ‘The studio system’ - hollywood’s efficient mode of production, distribution and
exhibition
○ ‘Cultural industry’ - recognizes the plurality and complexity of this feature of
contemporary cultural production and consumption and the meanings and values
attached to them…
● The ‘Studio System’
○ Example of cultural industry, is characterized by:
■ Relatively large budgets
■ Hierarchized division of labour
■ Assembly-line production
■ Recurrent character types
■ Conservative story lines
● Classical Hollywood Style
○ Dominated Hollywood production: 1930s - 1950s
○ Cuts across various genres
○ Supported by Continuity Editing system
○ Epitomized by Wizard of Oz
● Continuity Editing
○ Originating in 1900-1915
○ A form of editing used to ensure narrative continuity (coherence, clarity,
causality)
○ Supported by specific strategies of cinematography and mise en scene
○ Basic purpose: allow space, time, action to continue in a smooth flow over a
series of shots
○ = the foundation of CHS
○ Basic components
■ The 180 degree rule/ axis of action
● Within a scene, once the camera starts filming on one side of the
action, it will continue filming on that same side of the action for
the rest of the scene
● Ensures that:
○ Relative positions in the frame remains consistent
○ Consistent eyelines
○ Consistent screen direction
○ The viewer doesn’t become ‘disoriented’
■ Eyeline match
● A cut obeying the axis of action - 1st shot is someone looking off
in one direction, 2nd shot shows the space containing what they
see
■ Kuleshov effect
● Named for Lev Kuleshove, a Soviet-era director (1920s)
● Based on leaving out a scene’s establishing shot and leading the
spectator to infer spatial or temporal continuity from the shots of
separate elements
● In cinema, the viewer’s response depended less on the individual
shot than on the editing - the montage of shots
■ shot/reverse shot
● 2 + shots edited together that alternate character, typically in
conversation
● Film Form
○ Unity by 2 principles - a narrative one and stylistic one
○ ‘Form’ and ‘content’ are not separate but rather both=aspects of the film’s total
formal system
○ ‘Total formal system’ accounts for both intelligible meaning and emotional
impact
● Rear-screen projection
○ Technique used to join live action with a pre-recorded background image with a
projector placed behind a screen and projects an image onto it while actors and
cameras are in front
Bicycle Thieves
● Art Film
○ In post war period 1940s onwards
○ Rooted in the idea of creativity and the film as an expression of an individual
vision
○ = any film NOT produced in Hollywood - ie. foreign productions in languages
other than English, requiring sub titles
○ According to David Bordwell (1979), ‘art cinema’ names “ a distinct mode of
film practice, possessing a definite historical existence, a set of formal
conventions, and implicit viewing procedures”
○ Defines itself against the classical narrative mode
○ Art cinema realism is therefore partly based in the objective documentation of
‘reality’
● Neorealism
○ Film movement in italy : 1942 - 1952
○ Determined to do away with montage and to transfer to the screen the continuum
of reality
■ This means that like CHS, neorealism uses editing to preserve continuity
across a scene; neorealist style differs from CHS, however in its
dependence on the long take
● The ‘Two Tendencies’
○ Siegfried Kracauer famously divided film narrative from its very inception (in
1890s) into 2 main tendencies
■ 1. The everyday, documentarist ‘realism’ of the Lumiere brother: the
‘realistic tendency’
● Eg. the train
■ Georges Melies studio - bound, special - effects - laden fantasies: the
‘formative tendency’
● Eg. the rocket into the moon
● Realism
○ The power of cinema to present the illusion of the reproduction of 3D reality
onscreen
○ Realism functions in film on both the narrative level and figurative
● Neorealism
○ Post-war italy differs from previous cinematic realism (CHS realism) in that it
seems to “capture the reality of the physical devastation, the moral degradation
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and human suffering of the war years.” … ‘the experience of the war was decisive
for us all. Each felt the mad desire to...plant the camera in the midst of real life’
■ Differs in terms of:
● 1. Acting : Neorealism “calls upon the actor to be before
expressing himself” - chosen actors for their looks
● 2. Setting and Cinematography : actual locations + available
‘natural’ lighting
● 3. Editing and Narrative: the cuts are more invisible and more
realistic than CHS
● 4. Stories are set in the present and often based on contemporary
news events or social issues
○ Characterized by:
■ Post-synchronized soundtrack (from long history of dubbing foreign films)
■ Non-professional actors
■ Improvisation (+ inclusion of un-scripted ‘accidents’)
■ Black and white ‘documentary’-like aesthetic
■ Non-manipulative cinematography and editing in service of ‘slice-of-life’
realism
The Shot
○ Building block of a scene: an uninterrupted sequence of frames that viewers
experience as they watch a film, ending with a cut, fade, dissolve etc.
Take
○ Single uninterrupted series of frames exposed by a motion picture or video
camera between the time it is turned on and the time it is turned off
○ Filmmakers shoot several takes of any scene and selects the most appropriate one
Deep Focus
○ When objects remain in focus from positions very near the camera to point at
some distance from it
Deep Focus + Deep Space
○ Deep focus allows for the rendering of ‘deep space’ onscreen and therefore for
composition-in-depth
○ ‘Deep space’ is a property of mise en scene, while ‘deep focus’ is a property of
cinematography
Composition-in-Depth
○ Choreography of actors and arranged sets with several planes of depth
The long take
○ Disrupts the ‘invisibility’ of continuity editing
○ Places emphasis as much on time (duration) as space
○ Encourages looking (at mise-en-scene, acting etc.)
○ Builds dramatic tension, emphasize the continuity of time and space, allows
directors to focus on the movement of actors in the space of mise en scene
○ Used to draw attention to all the levels of spatial depth within the frame
● Lighting
○ An element of mise en scene because it illuminates the set and the actors and can
be used to create certain moods and effects
○ Related to issues of cinematography, since film stock, lenses and filters and
processing techniques all affect the look of a film
○ Exhibits 3 attributes
■ Quality (hard or soft)
■ Placement (direction from which light strikes object)
■ Contrast (high or low)
● Categories of Lighting
○ 3-point lighting
■ Key light
● Primary light source
● Frontal; aimed at subject from a range of positions within 45degree angle on camera-subject axis
■ Fill light
● Light (or reflector) positioned on opposite side of subject from key
light
● Eliminates shadows cast by key light
■ Eye lights
○ High Key lighting (used in comedies and musicals)
■ The key to fill ratio is 2:1 or lower
■ Fill light is as intense as key light; eliminates virtually all shadows cast by
keylight and provides even illumination of subject
■ Ex. Wizard of Oz
○ Natural key lighting (realism)
■ Ratio of key to fill light between 4:1 and 8:1
■ Key light is more intense than fill light, so fill is no longer able to
eliminate every shadow
○ Low key lighting (drama, film noir, thrillers)
■ Lighting ratio (key/fill) is between 16:1 and 32:1
■ The much greater intensity of key light makes impossible for fill to
eliminate shadows, producing a lot of shadows and high contrast