Looking At Movies
(An Introduction to Film)
Second Edition
Richard Barsam
(Powerpoint)
CH 1. What is a Movie?
Looking at Movies
• Our goal is looking at movies rather than
just passively watching them.
• Identifying the major components of
film form and the “language of movies”.
• Exploring the grammar of cinematic
language
Form vs. Content
1.
Content: the subject of the artwork
2.
Form: the means through which that subject is
expressed.
•
A form is the overall system of relationships among
elements that make up the whole film.
e.g. Wizard of Oz(1939) -narrative elements +
stylistic subsystem (colors) + (music)

Film form may make us perceive things anew by
shaking up our accustomed way of hearing, seeing,
feeling and thinking.
Patterns
• We search for patterns or progressions in all
art forms
• As we watch a movie, we become aware that
the director has organized the work around
structural principles.
• We see patterns employed in D.W. Griffith’s
classic Way Down East(1920) through parallel
editing. {page 9}
Buzz Words
• Content- The subject of an artwork.
• Form- The means by which a subject is
expressed. The form for poetry is words;
for drama, it is speech and action; and
for movies, it is pictures and sound.
Form and Expectations
• Film form may make us perceive things anew.
• Film form may shake us out of our accustomed way of
hearing, seeing, feeling and thinking.
e.g. A what follows? B---AB-you made a formal
assumption. What follows AB? ABC? or ABA?
• Form is a concrete system of patterned relationships
e.g. Narrative Form-a chain of events in a cause- effect
relationship occurring in time.
• In Psycho, Hitchcock uses a “MacGuffin” an object
that is of vital importance to the characters in his movie.
The $40,000 (a “MacGuffin”) Marion steals sets up our
expectations. What happens to that “MacGuffin” when
Marion is murdered?
Principles of Film Form
• Movies manipulate space and time in
unique ways.
• Movies depend on light.
• Movies provide an illusion of movement.
Q. Which is the best description of the difference
between content and form?
Content is the meaning of the movie, and form is what
happens in the story.
b. Content refers to a movie’s look, and form refers to its
genre.
c. Content is the subject of an artwork, and form is the means
through which that subject is expressed.
d. Content refers to individual scenes or shots, and form
refers to the movie as a whole.
e. None of the above.
a.
Movies Manipulate Space and Time
• Movies render the dynamization of space and
the spatialization of time......Erwin Panofsky,
film theorist {page 11}
• The motion picture camera and its lens are the
key factors in manipulating space
• The camera mediates between the exterior (the
world) and the interior (our eyes and brain)
Movies and Space & Time II
 The movies unique ability to manipulate space
and time is poignantly portrayed in:
1. Sergei Eisenstein’s “Odessa Steps Sequence”
from Battleship Potemkin(1925) {page 12}
2. Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 film adaptation of
Henry V {page 13}
3. Charlie Chaplin’s Gold Rush(1925) {page 15}
Movies Depend on Light
• Lighting is responsible for the image we see on
the screen
e.g. Expressive use of light in:
1. Grapes of Wrath, (1940;Ford) {page 16}
2. Third Man, (1949;Reed)
3. Citizen Kane, (1941;Welles)
4. Double Idemnity, (1944;Wilder)
• Lighting is a fundamental characteristic of film
art
Photography
• Movies are a natural progression in the history of
photography (“writing with light”)
• Camera Obscura: Literally, “dark chamber”.
Before the advent of photosensitive film, this
device helped create life- like drawing.
• Development of the negative by William Talbot
and subsequent refinements in technology
(Daguerre) that led to plastic rolls of film by
Eastman (1889) with a gelatin emulsion.
Figure 1.1 Camera Obscura
Series Photography
• Records the phases of an action
• On May 4, 1880, using an early projector
known as the magic lantern and a revolving
disk called a zoopraxiscope, Briton
Eadweard Muybridge’s famous series of
photographs displaying a horse in motion
were demonstrated to the public for the first
time.
Series Photography II
• In 1882, Marey, a French physiologist,
made the first series of photographs of
continuous motion with the fusil
photographique (a form of chronophotographic gun) replacing Muybridge’s
multiple camera setup with a single camera
capable of taking consecutive pictures of
live action.
Q. The intermediary step between still
photography and cinematography is
a. Chronotography.
b. Series photography.
c. Chrono-photography.
d. Fusil photography.
e. Revolver photography.
Motion Picture Photography
• In 1891, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson,
working with Edison researchers, invented the
Kinetograph (the first motion picture camera)
and the Kinetoscope (a peephole viewer)
• The first motion picture housed at the U.S.
Library of Congress was Dickson’s “Edison
Kinetoscopic Record of Sneeze”(1894) later
popularly referred to as Fred Ott’s Sneeze
(DVD)
Motion Picture Photography II
• In 1893, Edison made films inside his primitive
studio known as Black Maria
• In 1889, George Eastman began mass-producing
celluloid roll film, also known as motion picture
film or raw film stock on which a rapid
succession of still photographs known as frames
can be recorded.
• On one side of the perforated acetate strip is an
emulsion with silver halides; the other side is a
non-reflective backing.
Motion Picture Photography III
• The strip of film is perforated with sprocket
holes that allow orderly movement through the
camera, processor, and projector
• Stage 1: shooting: camera exposes film to light
• Stage 2: processing: negative is developed into
a positive print.
• Stage 3: projecting: final print is run through a
projector
Figure 1.2 The Motion Picture Camera
Figure 1.3 Standard Film Gauges
Motion Picture Photography IIIA
• 16 fps (frames per second) for silent
film
• 24 fps for sound-creates the illusion of
movement
• Silent cameras were often hand- cranked
from 12 to 24 fps.
Motion Picture Photography IV
• Today, cameras and projectors are powered
by precision electric motors that ensure
perfect movement of the film.
• Digital technology replaces the mechanics
but the role of light is unchanged.
• A film’s format is its gauge or width which
is measured in millimeters (mm).
Q. The first motion picture camera was the
a. Kinetoscope.
b. Zoopraxiscope.
c. Kinetograph.
d. Camera obscura.
e. Cinématographe.
Motion Picture Photography IVA
• Formats: 8mm, super 8mm, 16mm, super
16mm, 35mm, super 35mm, 70mm, IMAX
(3X70mm)
• Film stock length = number of feet
(meters) or number of reels
• Film stock speed = (Exposure Index)
sensitivity to light
Motion Picture Photography V
• Digital technology uses an image capture
computer (camputer) rather than a film
camera and records to computer hard disks,
flash memory cards, diskettes, or magnetic
tape. (Tape seems to be on the way out.)
• Many filmmakers ACQUSITION on film
and edit on computer.
• Digital projectors are slowly replacing film
projectors.
Q. Which of the following technologies
makes movies possible?
a. Optics
b. Chemistry
c. Electricity
d. Precision machinery
e. All of the above
Q. Which of the following film stocks is most
often used for professional film production?
a. Super 8mm
b. Super 16mm
c. 16mm
d. 35mm
e. 65mm
Movies Provide an Illusion of Movement
 “Movies” is an abbreviation for the phrase moving
pictures and the movement on the screen is an
illusion made possible by:
1. Persistence of Vision: process by which the
human brain retains an image a fraction of a
second longer than the eye records it.
2. PHI Phenomenon: illusion of movement created
by events that succeed each other rapidly.
3. Critical Flicker Fusion: a single light turns on and
off so fast that it appears as one light.
Movies Provide an Illusion of Movement II
• During the early Silent Era movies were called
flicks because the projectors ran at slower speeds
than were necessary to sustain this illusion; hence
there was a flickering image onscreen.
• Andy and Larry Wachowski’s The Matrix(1999)
developed new technology that resembled
Muybridge’s experiments by using 120 still
cameras mounted in a roller coaster-style arc to
better create the illusion of super-slow motion.
Realism and Antirealism
 Two basic directions for all cinema:
1. Realism – French filmmakers August and
Louis Lumiere (1895 – 1905) established an
interest in the actual or real – viewing things as
they really are.
2. Antirealism (opposite of realism, formalism) –
French filmmaker George Méliès’s interest in
fantasy, abstract or fantastic. A Trip to the
Moon (1902)
Realism and Antirealism
•
Today, many movies mix real and fantastic
e.g. Donnie Darko (2001: Richard Kelly)
{page 25}
•
Portrait paintings as examples:
1. The Hon.Frances Ducombe (1777) by
Thomas Gainsborough {REALISM}
2. Nude Descending A Staircase, No.2 (1912)
by Marcel Duchamp.{ANTIREALISM}
{page 26}
Verisimilitude & Cinematic Language
• Verisimilitude: when a movie convinces you that things on
the screen are “really there” and that things could be just
like that.
e.g. Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) people, places and
things look, sound and move in believable and convincing
ways.
• Cinematic Language: the accepted systems, methods or
conventions by which the movies communicate with the
viewer. Filmmakers have a language based on shots
arranged into scenes and sequences that make up a system
(a movie) that provides us with meaning.
Q. “A convincing appearance of truth”
best defines
a. Fantasy.
b. Suspension of disbelief
c. Verisimilitude.
d. Naturalism.
e. Cinematic convention.
The 2 Levels of Film
Level One: The Essence of Film
•
At its most basic level the moving image is a symbolic representation
of being and time and its structure is an event.
•
If he were living today, Plato might replace his rather awkward cave
metaphor about human consciousness with a movie theater, with the
projector replacing the fire, the film replacing the objects which cast
shadows, the shadows on the cave wall with the projected movie on the
screen, and the echo with the loudspeakers behind the screen.
•
The essential point is that the prisoners in the cave are not seeing reality,
but only a shadowy representation of it. The importance of the allegory
lies in Plato’s belief that there are invisible truths lying under the
apparent surface of things which only the most enlightened can grasp.
The 2 Levels of Film
Level Two: Editing as Dialogue not Monologue
• The purpose of the editor is to maintain a
dialogue (a conversation) between the film, its
audience and that unique piece of time
(beginning, middle, end) that the audience
watches the film.
• Audience Film  Time
• You avoid the control that the monologue
model implies.
Essential Film Slang
•
Mediation: a key concept in film theory, literally to mean the process
by which an agent or structure, whether human or technological
transfers something from one place to another.
e.g.1. The movie camera influences our interpretation of the movie’s
meaning by selecting and manipulating what is seen.
e.g.2. Realism, no matter how lifelike, always involves mediation and
thus interpretation.
•
Verisimilitude: when a movie convinces you that things on the screen
are “really there” and that things could be just like that.
•
Cinematic Language: the accepted systems, methods or conventions by
which the movies communicate with the viewer. Filmmakers have a
language based on shots arranged into scenes and sequences that make
up a system (a movie) that provides us with meaning.
Types of Movies
1. Narrative Films
2. Nonfiction Films (Documentary Film)
3. Animated Film
4. Experimental Films
What is Narrative?
• At its simplest level, a movie’s narrative is the telling of its
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story.
The storytelling impulse runs through motion picture history.
From 1916 on, the United States became the number one supplier
of movies in the world market, a position it has held ever since.
Hollywood’s success was based on telling stories clearly, vividly,
and entertainingly. The techniques of continuity editing, set
design, and lighting that were developed during this era were
designed not only to provide attractive images but also to guide
audience attention to salient narrative events from moment to
moment.
Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in the New Hollywood:
Understanding Classical Narrative Technique.
Evolution of Narrative Form
• By 1908 the cinema had risen from the status of a risky
commercial venture to that of a permanent and full-scale, if not
yet a major and respectable, industry.
• In that year, there were ten thousand nickelodeons and one
hundred film exchanges operating in the United States, and they
were supplied by about twenty “manufacturers” who churned out
films at the rate of one to two one-reelers per director per week.
• A similar situation existed on the Continent and in Britain, and
by the time Griffith entered the cinema, the studios or “factories”
of the Western world could scarcely keep up with the public
demand for new films.
David Cook, A History of Narrative Film
Hollywood Narrative Structure
•
Even before the first talkie, Hollywood had established the basic
feature-length narrative structure and film techniques that would
dominate the industry for the next century.
• Feature-length films typically include characters who overcome
obstacles and conflict in pursuit of goals, and they follow the pattern of
a three-act structure, with rising action in the latter third of the story
and strong closure at the end.
• Film historian Kristin Thompson notes that Hollywood filmmakers
seek to avoid obvious plot “holes,” or unexplained or motivated
elements, and that “the most basic principle of the Hollywood cinema is
that a narrative should consist of a chain of causes and effects that is
easy for the spectator to follow. This clarity of comprehension is basic
to all our other responses to films, particularly emotional ones”
Q. Narrative is
a) the main event within a movie
b) the overall connection of events within the
world of a movie.
c) the arrangement or order of parts of a movie
d) the entire formal system of a work of art.
e) the main element manipulated by filmmakers
to create a movie
Genre
Genre refers to the categorization of fiction films by the
stories they tell or the ways they tell them.
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Genres are defined by sets of conventions-aspects of
storytelling such as recurring themes and situations, and
aspects of visual style such as décor, lighting, and sound
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Genres have provided a consistency to filmmaking since its
beginning
•
Genres are a flexible concept and frequently overlap
Fifteen Genres
1. Action: (or adventure) movies that involve characters
in fast-paced events, fights, chases, violence
e.g. James Bond, The Terminator (1984) The Matrix
(1999)
2. Biography: (or biopics) movies that tell the life stories
of well known people.
e.g. Malcolm X (1992), Ray (2004)
3. Comedy: Stories that make us laugh and end happily.
(also Black Comedy)
e.g. Borat (2006), Annie Hall (1977) Super Bad (2007)
Fifteen Genres (II)
4. Fantasy: tell stories about characters and events we can only
know through the imagination.
e.g. Wizard of Oz (1939), Lord of the Rings (2001-2003),
Harry Potter movies
5. Film noir: French for “black film”, the term refers to highly
stylized crime films whose characters tend to be cynical,
disillusioned and loners.
e.g. Maltese Falcon (1941) and neo-noir Chinatown (1974),
Blood Simple (1984) No Country for Old Men(2007)
Fifteen Genres (III)
6. Gangster: stories of the underworld often overlap with action,
biopics, film noir
e.g. Little Caesar(1931), Bonnie and Clyde(1967), The
Godfather(1972), The Departed(2006) American
Gangster(2007) Eastern Promises(2007)
7. Horror: stories using suspense and surprise to scare or
terrify
e.g. Bride of Frankenstein(1935), The Excorcist(1973),
Saw(2004)
8. Melodrama- stories that incorporate real life events that
build to exaggerated emotional behavior and often relate to
“women’s issues” and are sometimes called “tear-jerkers”.
e.g. Way Down East(1920), Gone with the Wind(1939), Far
From Heaven(2002)
Fifteen Genres (IV)
9. Musical: tell their stories with characters that express
themselves through song and dance, as well as spoken
dialogue.
e.g. West Side Story(1962), Singin’ in the Rain(1952),
Chicago(2002)
10. Mystery: (or crime or detective movies) Tell stories
of the suspenseful work of detectives and police.
e.g. The Maltese Falcon(1941), Zodiac(2007)
Fifteen Genres (V)
11. Romance: stories of “boy meets girl” have morphed into
“boy meets boy” and “girl meets girl” as well.
e.g. Camille(1936), Rebecca(1940), Casablanca(1942),
Brokeback Mountain(2005)
12. Science Fiction: stories of using science for exploration,
discovery, experimentation or extraterrestrial invasion.
e.g. Thing to Come(1936), 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968),
War of the Worlds(2005) Blade Runner (1982)
Fifteen Genres (VI)
13. Thriller: stories that generate excitement through
suspense about what happens next and often overlap
with other genres. The thriller is categorized by the
effect it has on us.
e.g. The Spiral Staircase(1946), Psycho(1960),
Memento(2000)
14. War: stories where the war is the major action of the
film, e.g. Saving Private Ryan(1998) or is the
background for the action, e.g. The Best Years of Our
Lives(1946), “war is hell” films Apocalypse
Now(1979), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
Fifteen Genres (VII)
15. Western: stories that tell the story of the U.S.
expansion westward after the Civil War. That
history has often been told as myth and the
characters are the Native Americans and the
pioneers who became ranchers, cowboys,
prospectors, sheriffs and criminals.
e.g. Stagecoach(1939), The Searchers(1956), High
Noon(1952), The Wild Bunch(1969),
Unforgiven(1992), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid(1969) and from this last film, Robert Redford,
who played the “Sundance Kid”, named America’s
most famous film festival: The Sundance Film
Festival
B Movies Explained
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Is it cheaply made?
Does it feature women, Italian cannibals, or black
vampires?
Has it got an eye-grabbing title (e.g. Satan’s Sadists or
The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes) that’s infinitely more
memorable that the plot?
If you answered “yes” to any two questions, you are
watching a B movie, otherwise known as an
“exploitation film”.
The genre’s heyday came in the 60’s and 70’s with Roger
Corman producing and attracting boomers ill-served by
the old studio system.
Modern cinema has adopted the gimmickry and shock
tactics of the B Movie with: e.g. Snakes on a Plane(2006),
300(2007), Grindhouse(2007)
Last Looks: Genre
• Genre movies have stories that share certain conventions in
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the way they are told.
Genre movies are successful because they appeal to our
love of certain kinds of storytelling.
We bond with those who like the same kind of movies.
(think “Star Wars”, “Lord of the Rings”)
Genres have helped the movie industry grow by giving
people what they want.
Sometimes genre films result in formulaic approaches to
movies that include stereotypes and run-of-the-mill
situations in all aspects of the story.
Genres stay vital when they expand and play with the
genre’s conventions sometimes forming a hybrid genre.
e.g. Kill Bill: Vol 1(2003)
Q. Which of the following statements is
NOT true about genre?
a) Genres avoid stereotyped filmic realities.
b) Genres are defined by sets of conventions- aspects
of storytelling and aspects of visual style.
c) Because of the flexibility of genre, there is little
consensus about when a particular type of
filmmaking deserves to be designated as a genre.
d) Genre frequently overlap.
e) None of the above.
Film Slang
• Exposition: lays the foundation for the storytelling,
includes the images, action and dialogue necessary to
give the audience the background of the characters and
the nature of their situation
• Generic transformation: the process by which a
particular genre is adapted to meet the expectations of a
changing society. Genres that don’t evolve fade away.
e.g. The Western faded away in the 1960s transformed
by the success of “Brokeback Mountain”(2005)
Nonfiction Films
• The nonfiction film=documentary film.
• The nonfiction film is enjoying a renaissance
that is unprecedented in its long history.
• We might say that narrative and nonfiction
approaches to making movies have, in some
cases, overlapped so significantly that they’ve
created a hybrid.
• Today, many narrative movies incorporate
techniques that were once thought to be solely
in the province of nonfiction, and vice versa.
Buzz Word
d-word＼’d-word＼n: 1. industry
euphemism for documentary (as in: “We
love your film but we don’t know how
to sell it. It’s a d-word.”). SEE: catch
22, self-fulfilling prophesy; 2. virtual
watering hole for those crazy enough to
make d-words.
Defining Documentary
• “creative treatment of actuality”…John Grierson
• Invites the spectator to draw socially critical conclusions
• “a work of art is a corner of Nature seen through a
temperament”…Emile Zola
• a documentary is a corner of actuality seen through a
human temperament
• a documentary is an organized story that exposes us to
evidence that is contradictory and provocative
More on Defining Documentary
• Nonfiction film=documentary
• “describing the world…life as it is, not how it might exist
in the imagination”…Krzysztof Kieslowski
( Legendary Polish Director)
• Errol Morris, Werner Herzog, Michael Moore use their
imaginations as much in their documentaries as they
would a narrative film.
• Given recent developments the narrative and nonfiction
approaches to making movies have overlapped into a
hybrid form
Four Basic Styles of
Documentary
1.
2.
3.
4.
Factual: usually present people, places or processes
in a way meant to entertain and instruct without
unduly influencing audiences.
Instructional: seeks to educate viewers about
common interests rather than persuading.
Documentary: conceived by British producer John
Grierson to address social injustice.
Propaganda: systematically disseminate descriptive
or distorted information.
e.g. “Triumph of the Will”-Leni Riefenstahl’s brilliant
film about the glory of Hitler and the Nazi Party
Q. Which of the following is
NOT a type of nonfiction film?
a) propaganda
b) avant-garde
c) documentary
d) factual
e) instructional
Factual and Dramatic Aspects of
Documentary Film I
 Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922), a pioneering nonfiction film,
established a debate that is still with us: does the use of storytelling and other
dramatic techniques compromise a factual film’s claims to authenticity and
historical accuracy?
 Flaherty spent years in the north living with the Eskimo, or Inuit, bringing his
camera and film laboratory into the field to record the lifestyle and hunting
practices of this nomadic people.
 After accidentally setting fire to his footage during the editing process (celluloid
was extremely flammable in those days), Flaherty returned north and filmed a
second time. Released through Pathé, a French company with extensive
experience distributing international newsreels, the film became an international
success.
Factual and Dramatic Aspects
of Documentary Film II
• We do not assume that a nonfiction film tells the “truth”
about its subject, because any act of filmmaking involves
mediation between filmmaker and subject.
• Every aspect of filmmaking uses formal elements and
technical properties-such as narration, camera angles,
editing, and music that alter the material being filmed.
• Thus, a nonfiction film, even though it is about real
people, places and events is no more “true” than a
fiction film.
Q. Which of the following is true about
both fiction and nonfiction films?
a) They involve either love or crime.
b) They are completely contrived.
c) They must tell good stories.
d) They are always based on real people, places, and events.
e) They involve mediation between filmmaker and subject.
Factual and Dramatic Aspects of
Documentary Film III
 Some fiction films seem quite honest and true and some nonfiction films
seem duplicitous. Because both types of filmmaking may employ similar
equipment, techniques, and traditions (cameras, editing, sound tracks,
directors, on-location shooting), it can be difficult to isolate the essential
differences between the two types.
 Furthermore, fiction films and nonfiction films influence filmmakers and
the culture at large and so go on to influence each other; some fiction films
incorporate factual, instructional, documentary, and even propaganda
filmmaking techniques, and some nonfiction films employ methods straight
out oh Hollywood.
 “Mockumentaries” such as Rob Reiner’s seminal This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
and Christopher Guest’s A Mighty Wind (2005), and fiction films such as
Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969) and Robert Altman’s Tanner ´88
(1988) and Tanner on Tanner (2004), which inserts actors into footage of
real events, remind us of just how fluid the boundary between “real” and
“staged” can be.
Factual and Dramatic Aspects of
Documentary Film IV
 Indeed, we might say that fiction films and nonfiction
films differ primarily in terms of allegiance: fiction films
begin with an allegiance to dramatic storytelling, but
nonfiction films begin with allegiances to the recording of
reality (factual films), the education of viewers
(documentary films).
 Whatever their allegiance, all nonfiction filmmakers
employ storytelling and dramatization to some degree in
shaping their material. If they didn’t, their footage might
end up as unwatchable and dull as a surveillance video
recording everyday comings and goings.
Explaining Direct Cinema
 In the 1960s, a group of documentary filmmakers took advantage
of portable handheld 16mm cameras, cheap light-sensitive film
stock (which allowed filming without supplementary light), and
lightweight sound-recording equipment to create a new style of
documentary film they called “direct cinema.”
 Directors such as D.A. Pennebaker, Albert and David Maysles,
and Frederick Wiseman sought to create a more spontaneous form
of nonfiction film that immersed its audience in a more “direct”
experience of the subject.
The Art of Direct Cinema
 The film that heralded this breakthrough was 1960’s PRIMARY,
a collective effort of Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, D.A
Pennebaker, and Albert Maysles, among others (known as Drew
Associates), which captured the inner workings of the John F.
Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey campaigns during that year’s
presidential primary.
 These filmmakers all went on to have distinguished careers of
their own, creating seminal direct cinema documentaries that
today stand as benchmarks of the craft.
Filmmaker Albert Maysles
 Albert Maysles has made portraits of famous people
like John F. Kennedy and the Rolling Stones. But
Albert Maysles is probably best known because he
makes astonishing films about ordinary lives.
 Back in the 1960s, Maysles was one of the first
filmmakers who harnessed a new generation of
lightweight documentary cameras. Maysles used
them to peer into people’s souls in a way that nobody
had ever done before.
Filmmaker Fredrick Wiseman
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Wiseman has made 35 documentaries since leaving his job as a law
professor in 1967 to film TITICUT FOLLIES, about a Massachusetts
asylum for the criminally insane, which was banned in the United
States for 25 years. Most of his films are involved meditative studies of
social institutions and systems.
Major Films: TITICUT FOLLIES (1967)- Frederick Wiseman’s Titticut
Follies exposes the inhumane treatment of inmates inside a
Massachusetts asylum for the criminally insane. The film was the
subject of a lawsuit and was eventually banned, but it also sparked an
outcry that led to the closing of the facility.
HIGH SCHOOL (1969)
WELFARE (1975)
THE STORE (1983)
ZOO (1993)
PUBLIC HOUSING (1997)
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE (2002)
Barbara Kopple: Direct Cinema in
Service of Political Critique
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Major Films: (Harlan County USA 1977), American Dream (1991)
• Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson (1993), Wild Man
Blues (1997)
 In Harlan County, at first nobody trusted us and the women gave us
phony names. They called themselves Martha Washington and Florence
Nightingale, and they said, “OK, you can be on the picket line tomorrow;
you have to be there at 5 A.M. in the morning.”
 “We were staying in a little motel on this huge mountain; it had no guard
rails and it was pouring rain and a car came and went past us and
our car flipped over, and, um, we were all OK. We just crawled out in the
pouring rain and walked to the picket line with all our equipment. News
travels fast in, you know, these little areas in the coal fields and after that
happened they knew that we were all right.”
Barbara Kopple, interview from Independent View
Barbara Kopple: Harlan County
 Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County USA won the Academy Award for Best
Feature Documentary in 1977 and is included in the National Film Registry of
American Film Classics. The film documents a year-long Kentucky coal
miners’ strike in 1973-74. risking her life and the lives of her crew, Kopple
aligned herself with the United Mine Workers of America, who were
intimidated and sometimes shot at by strikebreakers for the Eastover Mining
Company.
 During the film, Kopple’s cameras begin to focus on the coal miners’ wives,
who encourage, cajole, and chastise their men to maintain the strike, walk the
picket lines, and hold their families and communities together. To contrast and
connect past labor struggles with the present one, Kopple uses footage of and
ballads from strikes of the 1930s and 1940s – when the region was dubbed
“bloody Harlan County.”.
Direct Cinema (Cinema Verite)
 Kopple’s Harlan County USA is a powerful example of the nonfiction
filmmaking style direct cinema. While many documentaries include onscreen
or over-the-shoulder interviewers having conversations with subjects (as in the
short films on television’s “60 Minutes”), direct cinema documentaries eschew
interviewers and even limit the use of narrators.
 Instead of having voice-over narration to encourage the audience’s indignation
about the crime, scandal, or corruption being exposed, direct cinema involves
the placement of small, portable cameras and sound recording equipment in an
important location for days or weeks, recording events as they occur.
 The resulting documentary may never include a question from an interviewer;
instead, it enables the audience to overhear conversations and interactions as
they happen.
Errol Morris: The Self-Reflexively Artful
Documentary and the Philosophical Quest I
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Major films: OEUVRE
Gates of Heaven (1978)
Vernon, Florida (1981)
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
A Brief History of Time (1991)
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (1997)
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.
(2003)
 The form Morris uses for his existential explorations [in The Thin Blue
Line] is a new one – a sort of documentary thriller. And his method,
which marries a True Detective sensibility to the fact-gathering
techniques of the documentarian, keeps asking us to make comparisons
between art and reality. On the surface, the film is a James M. Cain tale
told “Rashomon” style – a single dramatic event seen from multiple
points of view.
Hal Hinson, The Washington Post, September 2, 1988
Errol Morris: The Self-Reflexively Artful
Documentary and the Philosophical Quest I
Bold and brilliant, some might say reckless, Morris’s defense of convicted
prisoner Randall Dale Adams might not stand up in a court of law, or a
screening room of documentary purists. But it would transfix the lot.
• Morris takes the hybrid docudrama genre to its outer limits, intercutting
newspaper headlines, bullet-wound diagrams and Texas road maps with
grade-B film noir fare: a hypnotist’s swinging watch, overstuffed ashtrays,
smoking guns and repeated replays of the incident that changed Adams’ life
– the fatal shooting of Dallas police officer Robert Wood in cold blood one
November night in 1976. The dramatic embellishments, which include a
pointedly eerie score by Philip Glass and Morris’s chilling final “kicker,”
fly in the face of “objective” fact-finding. But Thin Blue Line earns its
documentary impact with the impassioned testimony of real people involved
in the case.
•
Desson Howe, The Washington Post, September 2, 1988
Errol Morris: The Thin Blue Line (1988)
 Most significantly, The Thin Blue Line utilizes many sophisticated lighting,
staging, and editing effects familiar from fictional feature films.
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For example, when two people being interviewed mention films, Morris cuts to
brief clips of the films.
 As various witnesses describe the events leading up to the murder and each
presents conflicting details, Morris presents a series of different highly stylized
reenactments.
 At one point, the getaway car and its license plate appear in many varieties,
illustrating the diversity and confusion of “eyewitness” accounts. By combining
the documentarian’s dogged persistence for getting at some kind of truth with a
catalog of filmmaking techniques that includes those of the fictional film, Morris
invites us to explore a new kind of documentary that challenges the distinction
between fact and fiction.
Ken Burns: Folk History and
the Voices of Authority
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Major films:
Brooklyn Bridge (1981)
The Civil War (1990)
Baseball (1994)
The West (1996)
Thomas Jefferson (1997)
Frank Lloyd Wright (2001)
Mark Twain (2001)
Jazz (2001)
In 1990, Burns completed what many consider his “chef d’ oeuvre”: the elevenhour The Civil War, which earned an Emmy (among other honors) and became
the highest rated miniseries in the history of public television. Civil War was the
apotheosis of Burns’ master mixture of still photos, freshly shot film footage,
period music, evocative “celebrity” narration and authentic sound effects.
Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Ken Burns: Folk History II
 Working on the borderline between factual filmmaking and
documentary filmmaking, Ken Burns seeks to bring history alive,
presenting historical documents, photographs, locations, and
artifacts to public-television audiences in an exciting and
inspiring style.
 Burns’s approach to history balances the traditional biographical
concern with “great men” and leaders with the more
contemporary interest in “bottom-up” explorations of working
people, minorities, and average citizens.
 One measure of his success in striking the right balance is that
his multipart series The Civil War and Baseball were the most
widely seen shows ever on public television. Both reaching
over forty million viewers.
Ken Burns: In His Own Words
 Burns describes his filmmaking style as: the
careful use of archival photographs, live modern
cinematography, music, narration, and a chorus
of first-person voices that together did more than
merely recount a historical story. It was
something that also became a kind of “emotional
archaeology,” trying to unearth the very heart of
the American experience; listening to the ghosts
and echoes of an almost inexpressibly wise past.
(“Why I Decided to Make The Civil War”)
Michael Moore: Impresario with
a Camera
• Oeuvre: The Big One (1997), Roger and Me (1989),
Bowling for Columbine (2002), Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004),
Sicko (2007)
 Since his 1989 debut with “Roger and Me,” Michael
Moore – gadfly, provocateur, muckraker, authorityquestioner – has perfected what some might call an art,
others a shtick. Posing as a latter-day Candide, naively
bumbling around America’s hinterland to uncover the
depredations of crony capitalism, he has entertained a
devoted audience with mocking portraits of the corporate
class, all the time casting himself as the noble voice of pure
reason.
Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post, October 18,2002
Michael Moore:
 While there will always be a debate about the authenticity of Michael
Moore’s documentary techniques, there’s no arguing that Bowling for
Columbine succeeds equally well as a provocative essay on gun violence
in America and an opportunity for the writer/director to engage in some
heavy self-promotion. Whether you like him or hate him, it’s impossible
to deny Moore’s charisma and persuasiveness as a showman. He takes a
thesis and runs with it, and, while some of his conclusions may be a little
farfetched, his probing often pays unexpected dividends.
 Viewers attending a Moore film should be aware that the director has a
history of “faking” scenes. So, unlike in a more traditional documentary,
not everything that appears on screen can be believed. Moore is skillful
enough that we don’t recognize when we’re being fooled. It took a Film
Comment exposé by Harlan Jacobson to unearth all of the behind-thescenes shenanigans in Roger and Me. When Moore starts barging into
houses in Toronto to determine whether Canadians keep their doors
locked, this could easily have been arranged before the cameras rolled.
We just don’t know. Moore claims one thing; his history argues another.
.....James Berardinelli (Film Critic)
Michael Moore:
 Like Errol Morris and Ken Burns, Michael Moore has developed a style
of nonfiction filmmaking that defines itself against the mainstream.
Moore’s darkly humorous, self-aggrandizing style of muckraking
documentary has won over many filmgoers and perhaps outraged just
as many. Blatantly outspoken in his leftist political convictions,
irreverent toward any and all sacred cows, the sloppily dressed Moore
serves as the comical and sarcastic center of all his films.
 In Roger and Me, Moore is the “Me” who goes on a quest to interview
Roger Smith, the General Motors CEO who oversaw the deactivation
of the GM plant in Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan. In Bowling
for Columbine, Moore seeks to understand the high rate of gun assault
and murder in the United States, venturing far beyond single, common
answers in his analysis.
Controversial Nonfiction Films
• Tupac: Resurrection (2003)- about the life of Rap star Tupac
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Shakur gunned down in Las Vegas.
(director: Lauren Lazin)
Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005)- an attack on
Walmart policies.
(director: Robert Greenwald)
Super Size Me (2004) an attack on fast food culture.
(director: Morgan Spurlock)
Grizzly Man (2005) the story of Timothy Treadwell who lives
with and is eaten by a bear.
director: Werner Herzog)
Zoo (2007) a film about a real-life case of bestiality which tries
to get beyond the uncomfortable laughter.
(director: Robinson Devor)
Animated Films
• Next to narrative films, animation is today the second most
popular type of film with audiences.
• Before computer- generated imagery (CGI), which accounts for
virtually all animated films today, animated films (or cartoons)
were made by photographing drawings frame by frame with a
special animation camera.
• Making a traditional animated film is an arduous task and
requires 24 individual drawings for each second of film or
14,400=10 minutes.
Evolution of Animation Techniques
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While there are countless possible types and combinations of animation,
three basic types are used widely today: hand-drawn, stop motion, and
digital.
1.
To create hand- drawn animation, animators draw or paint images that
are then photographed one frame at a time in a film camera. Since
twenty- four frames equal one second of film time, animators must draw
twenty- four separate pictures to achieve one second of animation.
2.
Stop motion records the movement of objects (toys, puppets, clay figures,
or cutouts) with a film camera; the animator moves the objects slightly
for each recorded frame.
3.
Digital animation, which may begin with drawings, storyboards, puppets,
and all the traditional tools of theater and animation, uses the virtual
world of computer-modeling software to generate the animation.
Hand-Drawn
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In 1914, Winsor McCay’s classic animation “Gertie the Dinosaur” required over
five thousand drawings on separate sheets of paper
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The difficulty of achieving fluid movement by perfectly matching and aligning so
many characters and backgrounds led, the next year, to the development of cel
animation.
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Animator Earl Hurd used clear celluloid sheets to create single backgrounds that
could serve for multiple exposures of his main character. Thus he needed to draw
only the part of the image that was in motion, typically the character or a small part
of the character.
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Although the highly flammable celluloid first used for this process has now been
replaced by acetate, this type of animation is still called “cel” animation. Until the
advent of digital animation, this method was used to create nearly all feature-length
animated films.
Stop Motion
 Among the first American stop-motion films was
The Dinosaur and the Missing Link, a Prehistoric
Tragedy (1915), by Willis O’Brien, who went on
to animate stop-motion dinosaurs for Harry O.
Hoyt’s live-action adventure The Lost World
(1925), then added giant apes to his repertoire
with Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B.
Schoedsack’s King Kong (1933), and
Schoedsack’s Mighty Joe Young (1949).
Digital Animation
• John Lasseter’s Toy Story (1995) was the first
feature-length digitally animated film. A commercial
and critical success, it humanized computer animation
and obliterated the fear that computer animation was
limited to shiny, abstract objects floating in strange
worlds.
• Toy Story’s focus on plastic toys, however, helped
disguise the limitations of early digital-animation
techniques.
• Five more years of development enabled digitally
animated movies such as Andrew Adamson and
Vicky Jenson’s Shrek (2001) to present compelling
characters with visually interesting skin, hair, and fur
that strive for three-dimensional realism.
The Best of Animation and Anime
• The best means not only features like the cream of Pixar’s
crop but also Sylvain Chomet’s “The Triplets of
Belleville” (2002) or Hayao Miyazaki’s dreamlike
masterpiece “Spirited Away” (2001).
• Images made in the Japanese style of animation called
anime are based on Japanese manga comic books and
feature characters from that culture.
• The same goes for “Paprika” (2006)- a Japanese anime
extravaganza whose tumbling succession of bizarre
images may well be the most eloquent visualization of the
dream state in film history.
The Best of Animation and Anime II
• The defining characteristic of the anime style is so-
called limited animation that looks like graphic
novels come to life. e.g. “Sin City” (2005)
• Robert Zemeckis’ digitally enhanced live action in
“Polar Express” (2004) was a work in progress but
his Beowulf (2007) utilizes motion capture
technology and 3-D technology to show where the
movie business is headed.
• James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) is exploring motion
capture and 3-D as well.
The Best of Animation and Anime III
• Animated works to screen include:
1. “Tron” (1982): this sci-fi thriller is the
granddaddy of computer animated films
2. “Chicken Run” (2000): wonderful clay
animation.
3. “Corpse Bride” (2005): stop motion
puppetry gem.
Q. Which of the following is a way of
making an animated film?
a. Puppet animation
b. Clay animation
c. Computer animation
d. Pixilation
e. All of the above
Explaining Experimental Films
• Experimental films are also known as avant-
garde films (literally in the “front rank), are
films in the vanguard that push the boundaries
of what most people think that movies should
be.
• “We don’t want false, polished slick films-we
prefer them rough, unpolished, but alive; we
don’t want rosy films-we want them the color
of blood”....Statement of the New American
Cinema Group
Explaining Experimental Films II
• Many experimental films do not follow the
realist-narrative construct of the mainstream
film industry but use non-linear patterns of
development, abstract images or images created
by drawing on film stock.
• Experimental films explore film form, function
and content in an individualistic and
idiosyncratic manner much like that of a painter,
dancer or a poet.
Q. What makes experimental films
“experimental”?
They are made by independent filmmakers.
b. They are short “vignettes” instead of full-length features.
c. They use the cinematic equivalent of stream of
consciousness.
d. They push the boundaries of what most people think the
movies are or should be.
e. They are based on paintings.
a.
Maya Deren
• America’s first major experimental filmmaker
famous for the surreal film: “Meshes of the
Afternoon” (1943).
• The film was a blend of dance, philosophy,
ethnography and was the cinematic equivalent
of stream of consciousness trying to capture
the unedited flow of experience through the
mind (much like Proust in Literature)
4 Subgenres of Experimental Film
1.
2.
3.
4.
The Formal: form is the overall system of
relationships among elements that make up the whole
film. John Whitney’s computer imagery in Matrix
(1971)
Self-Reflexive: those that represent their own
conditions of production. Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star
Man (1962-64); Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1967)
Satirical: the use of humor to criticize. Mike
Kuchar’s Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965)
Sexual: the exposure of hidden sexual practices. Jack
Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963) deemed
pornographic! Kenneth Anger’s gay fantasy Scorpio
Rising (1964)
Summary: What is a Movie?
• A movie is a story or event recorded by a camera,
camputer (or image capture computer); a sequence of
these photographs or images is projected onto a
screen with sufficient speed to create the illusion of
motion and continuity.
• Movies depend on photography and, thus, on light.
• Movies manipulate space and time in ways that no
other art form can.
• In a movie, the relationship between its form and
content is central to its existence.
Summary: What is a Movie? II
• A movie can create a sense of realism and or
antirealism, but it should also create
verisimilitude.
• A movie creates its effects and meanings
through a unique mode of expression that we
call cinematic language.
• Making a movie usually involves a highly
collaborative effort of many artists and
technicians.
Screening Checklist: What is a Movie?
• Before and after you see a movie, think about
the direct meanings, as well as the implications
of its title.
• Consider genre and whether the film fulfills
expectations of that genre.
Screening Checklist II: What is a Movie?
• Do any narrative or visual patterns recur a
sufficient number of times to suggest a
structural element in themselves?
• Do you notice anything particular about the
movie’s presentation of cinematic space-lots of
landscapes or close-ups? Moving camera?
• Does the director handle cinematic time in a
way that calls attention to it?
Screening Checklist III: What is a Movie?
• Does the director’s use of lighting help crate
meaning? If so how?
• Do you identify with the camera lens? What
does the director compel you to see?
• What is left to the imagination?
• How does the director’s use of the camera help
to create the movie’s meaning?