Early Cinema
HUM 3280: Narrative Film
Fall 2012
Dr. Perdigao
August 27-29, 2012
Staging
• Mise-en-scène: “placement in a scene” or “onstage” (Corrigan and White 64)
• Scenic elements of a movie—actors, aspects of lighting, sets and settings,
costumes, make-up (64)
• First movies as “scenes”—Edison and Lumière films (66)
• Dating back to Greek theater around 500 B.C.E.
• 1915—change in films with art directors and set designers
• Soundstages designed in 1920s
• Location shooting as mid-twentieth century development
• Setting—as “fictional or real place where the action and events of the film
occur”
• Set as “constructed setting”(70)
• Realism—truthful picture of society (70)
Propping
Propping
• Props (short for property), tool used by actors
• Centrality of prop in The Maltese Falcon; red shoes in The Wizard of Oz;
umbrella in Singin’ in the Rain (Corrigan and White 72)
• Instrumental props and metaphorical props (72)
Common function versus reinvention or new purpose
• Cultural props
Meaning associated with their society: Herbie Fully Loaded’s
Volkswagen Beetle; Easy Rider’s motorcycles (73)
• Contextualized props
Change meaning within narrative; red violin; Ronin’s briefcase;
Hitchcock’s “McGuffins,” propos that “appear to be important only at
first” (73)
Performatives
• Actor, performance (use of language, physical expression, and gesture) (7374)
• Types of actors: leading actors, character actors, supporting actors (Corrigan
and White 75)
• Character types, casting in specific kinds of roles (Tom Hanks)
• Blocking
“[A]rrangement and movement of actors in relation to each other within
the physical space of mise-en-scène” (76)
• Graphic blocking
Arrangement according to “visual patterns to portray spatial harmony,
tension, or some other visual atmosphere” (77)
Illuminati
• Lighting—part of mise-en-scène; light sources located within the scene itself
(Corrigan and White 79)
• Natural lighting
• Set lighting
• Directional lighting—more dramatically apparent, to define and shape the
object or person being illuminated (82)
• Shading
Complementing narrative
Materialism
• Mise-en-scène as defining our location in the material world (Corrigan and
White 86)
• External condition—define the material possibilities in a place or space (87)
• Measure of character—establishing identity in relation to surrounding setting
and sets (87)
• Naturalistic versus theatrical mise-en-scène that denaturalizes locations
• The Birth of a Nation as moving between the two
• Historical mise-en-scène as attempt to recreate recognizable historical scene
• Theatrical mise-en-scène as the fantastic: Sherlock Jr.?
• Expressive mise-en-scène—setting, sets, props asserted independently of the
characters, describe emotional or spiritual life “permeating the material world”
(89)
• Constructive mise-en-scène—world as shaped or altered by characters (92)
Cinematography
• Beginnings of cinematography with Eadweard Muybridge’s
chornophotography and Zoopraxiscope (Corrigan and White 99)
• W. L. K. Dickson, working for Thomas Edison, invented the Kinetoscopic
camera in 1891 (99)
• 1895—Lumière brothers
• Wide-angle lens
• Handheld cameras
• Widescreen processes in 1950s, anamorphic lens (102)
• Steadicam
• Cinematography as “writing in movement”
• Shot
• Point of view (105)
Frames
• Subjective and objective points of view
• Focus
• Framing—“contains, limits, and directs the point of view within the borders
of the rectangular frame” (Corrigan and White 105)
• Canted frame
Unbalanced or askew (105)
• Mobile frame
• Aspect ratio (105): widescreen 1.85:1, correlation with television in 1950s
• Masks
Camera cutting off portions of frame (108)
• Iris shot
Circular image (108)
• Iris-in
Opening circle
• Iris-out
Closing circle
Frames
Scaling
• Distance of camera from subject determines scale (Corrigan and White 109)
• Close-up
• Extreme close-up
• Extreme long shot—greater distance between camera and person or object,
space dwarfs objects (110)
• Medium shot
Middle ground, human body from waist or hips up (110)
• Medium long shot
3/4 view of character, from knees up (111)
• Medium close-up
Character’s head and shoulders, in conversation scenes (111)
Angling
• High angle
Downward on individuals or scene, making them smaller (112)
• Low angle
Upward, making individuals appear larger (112)
• Overhead or crane shot
From high above (112)
• Point-of-view (POV) shot
From character’s perspective (112), subjective camera
• Deep focus
Multiple planes in image in focus (113)
• Shallow focus
Only narrow range of field is focused (113)
• Rack focus (or pulled focus)
Focus shifts from one object to another (113)
Camera positions
• Reframing
Movement of frame from one position to another (Corrigan and White
116); Citizen Kane example
• Pan
Side to side movement, vertical axis (117)
• Tilt
Frame moved up or down on horizontal axis (117)
• Tracking shot
Changes position by moving camera forward or backward (117)
• Dolly shot
Movement of camera on wheeled dolly (117)
• Traveling shot
Used to describe both tracking and dolly shots
Camera positions
• Following shot
Following an individual character (117)
• Handheld shot
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
• Steadicam
To achieve the stability of a tripod mount, fluidity of a tracking shot, and
the flexibility of a handheld camera; special stabilizing mount (118)
Zooms
• Zoom lenses (Corrigan and White 118)
• Zoom-in
Camera stationary as zoom lens changes focal length
• Zoom-out
Reverses action
• Edison’s phonograph in 1877
Sounds
• Sound experiment by Edison Studios in 1895
• Phonography as “sound writing” (Corrigan and White 179)
• 1927-1930: incorporation of synchronized sound
• 1926-1927: Warner Bros. and Fox competing with sound technologies
• 1926: Warner Bros.’ Vitaphone sound-on-disk system
• Fox with Movietone sound system
• The Jazz Singer as Warner Bros.’ second feature film with recorded sound;
Don Juan (1926) as first with recorded score
• Studios signed with Western Electric (subsidiary of AT&T) to adopt a soundon-film system to replace sound-on-disk process (182)
• 1930s: silent films no longer produced by major studios; only few independent
filmmakers, such as Charlie Chaplin, stayed with silent films (182)
Sounds
• Radio Corporation of America joined with Keith-Orpheum theaters to become
RKO, one of five studios, the “majors,” that dominated sound-era cinema—
produced King Kong in 1933 and Citizen Kane in 1941