Key terms:

Rhythmic cutting

360 degree space

Jump cut

Manipulations of order and frequency

Story duration

Ellipsis

Inconsistent match on action

Temporal dislocations

Team America – montage

Spiderman – montage

Jacques Tati – Playtime – 360 degree space

The Dreamers – non-diegetic insert

-    8 mins in – jump cut

Breathless – driving scene –

Paris 1968

Pierrot Le Fou

Made in U.S.A – 5:35min

October – 2:20min or 36min

Matchstick Men – Ridley Scott

2001 a space odyssey

odessa steps sequence – Battleship Potemkin

Questions:

1. How are the shots graphically continuous or discontinuous?
2. What rhythmic relations are created?
3. Are the shots spatially and temporally continuous? If not, what creates the discontinuity? (crosscutting, jump cuts, ambiguous cues, graphic mismatch?)
4. How do the editing techniques function and what do they emphasize?
5. How does the editing technique contribute to the viewer’s experience of the film?

Transitioning between shots:
-    fade-out: darkens end of a shot
-    fade-in: lightens a shot from black
-    dissolve: superimposes end of last shot into the beginning of the next shot
-    wipe: first shot is replaced by the next through a boundary line moving across the screen. Images do not blend
-    cut: cutting and splicing images together. Mostly done during post-production. Used to be a manual process, now its primarily done on the computer

Dissolve – Guy Ritchie’s Rocknrolla

B&T: “As viewers, we perceive a shot as an uninterrupted segment of screen time, space, or graphic configurations. Fades, dissolves, and wipes are perceived as gradually one shot and replacing it with another. Cuts are perceived as instantaneous changes from one shot to another” (219)

Dimensions of Film Editing

4 basic areas of choice and control:
1.    Graphic relations between shot A and B
2.    Rhythmic relations between shot A and B
3.    Spatial relations between shot A and B
4.    Temporal relations between shot A and B
(taken from B&T: 220)

Graphic Relations
-    “Graphics may be editing to achieve smooth continuity or abrupt contrast” (BT: 221)
-    shots may be linked by graphic similarities – graphic match
-    “Shapes, colors, overall composition, or movement in shot A may be picked up in the composition of shot B” (BT: 221)
-    graphic continuity is typical of most narrative cinema
-    “Editing need not be graphically continuous. Mildly discontinuous editing may appear in wide-screen compositions organized around characters facing one another” (BT: 221)

-    Pulp Fiction – Jules and Vincent restaurant scene

- Graphic conflict – Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog – start clip at 1min

-    Graphic conflict between color qualities – Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas – “although both people are visible in each shot, the cutting stresses their separation by harsh color contrasts” (BT: 223)

Rhythmic Relations
-    editing determines the duration of each shot
-    “Lengthening shots can gradually slow the tempo, while successively shorter shots can accelerate it” (BT: 226)
- typical action scenes
-    check out Snatch clip regarding MTV editing style

Spatial Relations
-    editing creates film space
-    “Editing permits the filmmaker to juxtapose any two points in space and thus imply some kind of relationship between them” (BT: 227)
-    Kuleshov effect: one single space
-    Parallel/crosscutting editing – constructing multiple spaces

Temporal Relations

-    order of events
-    editing can control temporal succession
-    “manipulation of events leads to changes in story-plot relations” (BT: 229)
-    Flashbacks – shots out of story order
-    Flash-forward
-    Elliptical editing – “presents an action in such a way that it consumes less time on the screen than it does in the story” (BT: 229)

Continuity Editing
-    180 degree rule
-    consistent eyeline match
-    used so as not to disorient the viewer
-    create unified space – we always know where the characters are in relation to one another
-    shot reverse shot
-    establishing shot
-    “Continuity editing seeks to support and sustain this temporal manipulation” (BT: 245)
-    Events in a 1,2,3 order

Coffee and Cigarettes

Ghostworld

Paris, Texas

7:30min

My Own Private Idaho

Jerry Maguire

Rock n Rolla

Kuleshov effect

Snatch

EDITING:

-       Matching shots

-       Fade-in

-       Fade-out

-       Dissolve

-       Cut

-       Wipe

-       Graphic Relations

-       Rhythmic Relations

-       Spatial Relations

-       Temporal Relations

-       Parallel Editing

-       Crosscutting

CINEMA OF ATTRACTIONS – EARLY CINEMA

How they address the spectator?
-    shaping reality
-    embalming time
-    something to see

Chase scenes, Fighting scenes

“the system of attraction remains an essential part of popular filmmaking” – Gunning

Great Train Robbery
•    Inside & outside space as a coherent whole
•    Parallel action – multiple story lines
•    Parallel depiction of events
•    Final shot – seeing unique things is an essential component of film – Gunning

Melies: Trip to The Moon 1902
•    Fixed camera position
•    Similar to theatre – set, costume
•    Special effects/trick effects
•    Concerned with controlling vision & bringing the audience into the set
•    Sequential depiction of events

Gunning & Cinema of Attraction:
•    Remains a place for spectacle in cinema
•    Spectacles of the exotic
•    Cinema as apparatus to provide views – to see things
•    Eisenstein – “attractions”
•    Moving away from realism
•    Animating what we can’t experience ourselves
•    Cinema of effects
•    Ride films – fairground/rollercoaster

CINEMA OF ATTRACTIONS – TOM GUNNING – SUMMARY

• Possibilities of the cinematic medium
• “matter of making images seen”
• visibility, act of showing, exhibition
• “the potential of a medium”
• Film theory and the dominance of narrative films
• Melies was typically discussed in relation to his contribution to the storytelling medium. However, early cinema wasn’t dominated by narrative
• Lumiere tradition: “placing the world within one’s reach” (travel films)
• Melies: “the scenario constructed in this manner has no importance, since I use it merely as a pretext for the ‘stage effects’, the ‘tricks’, or for a nicely arranged tableau”
• Illusory power of cinema – exoticism
• “the cinema of attractions does not disappear with the dominance of narrative, but rather goes underground” (musical genre)
• Show something – exhibitionist cinema
• Constructs WITH its spectator – looking directly at the camera/audience
• Relate to fairground attractions and amusement parks
• “The cinema of attractions directly solicits spectator attention, inciting visual curiosity, and supplying pleasure through an exciting spectacle – a unique event, whether fictional or documentary, that is of interest in itself”
• Doesn’t emphasize psychological motivations of its characters
• Directly addresses its spectator – sing along etc.
• “Synthesis of attractions and narrative” – chase films
• “A mini-spectacle pause in the unfolding of narrative”

QUESTIONS:

1. How do these scenes from contemporary films relate to Gunning’s theory of cinema of attractions?
2. What techniques are used that show the potential of the cinematic medium?
3. How do these scenes “construct with its spectator”?

CLIPS

Pirates of the Caribbean ride

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTQ5eWBlApY

Hugo – Scorsese and Cameron discuss 3D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyyvboSwJoI&feature=related

Matrix Reloaded – chase scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF9AC2Ce2ow

Speed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSHASpSKHi0&feature=related

Kill Bill – Crazy 88 scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVDl16kvkYM

Drive – chase scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z5LXyWn3-w&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLB50F4F2CB4E9051F

Alien – fight scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kMBztOSdg4

Alice in Wonderland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhzLsBpIj84

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZgAynN2N7I

behind the scenes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5LQcVRSFJA&feature=related

Annie Hall – Marshall McLuhan scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY

short version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE

Austin Powers – music scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sbNQoGwXGg

Devil’s Advocate – ending scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYjIRbNNYe4

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – Final scene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0af1bEGkxoA

Goodfellas – 3:55 and 4:42

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1UMCfbqDsU&feature=related

Hedwig and the Angry Inch – Wig in a Box scene 4:10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl07XuVRkHw&feature=related

Early Cinema

Cinema from Attractions: Story and Synergy in Disney’s Theme Park Movies

YouTube: The New Cinema of Attractions

This Wounded Cinema, This Wounded Life

A few articles using Gunning’s “Cinema of Attractions” for anyone who’s interested.

Early Cinema & Magic

Also, for something different. Here are a few art videos from the VDB that are inspired by early cinema and Gunning’s “Cinema of Attraction” – Soft Science: Cinema of Attraction

- What is hidden or revealed?

- Whose perspective is it? POV?

- How does framing effect time and space in a scene?

- Pan: right to left

- Tilt: up and down

- Tracking/Dolly shot: any direction

- Crane shot: above ground level

- Handheld

- Increase spatial information

- Do you think objects become sharper or more vivid than in stationary framings? Since new objects, spaces, figures are revealed

- How does camera movement function as a substitute for our movement? And to what effect?

Rules of Attraction – split screen

500 Days of Summer

Elephant

Boogie Nights – steadicam, long shot

Pulp Fiction – off screen space & pan/tilt

American Psycho – pan, tilt

Notting Hill – long take, time & duration

Napoleon Dynamite – character framing

- People entering & leaving the frame don’t distract from the camera’s overall course – zooming on continues. No narrative cause & effect.

- Narrative remains secondary to the temporal progression of the zoom

- Story centered suspense (body, people) is replaced by stylistic suspense

- What will the zoom eventually frame? When will it stop? Will it pan, tilt etc?

(Bordwell & Thompson p.212)

Pleasantville

The Virgin Suicides

Framing:

Death Proof

Goonies

Lost In Translation

Pulp Fiction

Snatch – framing and perspective

Night On Earth

Virgin Suicides

Koyaanisqatsi

Kill Bill Vol. 1

The shot & how it is filmed

Cinematographic qualities
1.    photographic aspects of the shot
2.    framing
3.    duration of the shot

Definition
-    “Cinematography (literally, writing in movement) depends to a large extent on photography (writing in light)” (BT, 162)
-    “the filmmaker can select the range of tonalities, manipulate the speed of motion, and transform perspective” (162)

The Range of Tonalities
-    black and white
-    color
-    manipulate film stock, exposure, and developing procedures
-    Len Lye Free Radicals (1958) – scratching film stock

-    contrast – guide the viewers eye to various points within the frame

1963 Les Carabiniers (The Riflemen)

Tonalities and color stock → “increasingly, cinematographers are using computer grading for selected shots or even an entire film” (BT: 164)

-    Pleasantville – makeup scene

-    Tinting – film dipped in dye. As seen in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – changes from blue, pink, yellow etc

Speed of motion:
-    dictating the pace of the action within the frame
-    Fast motion
-    Slow-motion
-    High speed
-    Time lapse
-    Snatch – fight scene

-    more frames per second – slower the screen action
-    Slow-motion: emphasis, focusing on a moment, creates high drama and intensity
-    Ramping: shifting speeds of movement smoothly and rapidly within a scene
-    Time-lapse: setting sun, changing seasons

Perspective:
-    “The optical system of your eye, registering light rays reflected from the scene, supplies a host of information about scale, depth, and spatial relations among parts of the scene. Such relations are called perspective relations” (BT: 168)
-    3 sorts of lenses:
1.    The short-focal-length (wide-angle) lens → lens less than 35mm. Exaggerates depth because the distance between foreground and background appear greater.
2.    The middle-focal-length (normal) lens → 35-50mm. Horizontal and vertical lines are rendered as straight and perpendicular” (BT: 169).
3.    The long-focal-length (telephoto) lens – 75-250mm. Flatten the space. Depth and volume are reduced.
Enemy of the State – intro

Closer – opening scene

-    “When we look at an image, we look purposefully. What we notice is guided by our expectations about what might be significant” p.142

Space:
-    Screen Space: colors, shapes
o    Balancing a shot – Lost in Translation final scene

Lost In Translation

Morvern Callar

Velvet Goldmine

-    contrast
o    bright costume against a more subdued background for example. Still from Volver – the red costume and beige background. Red connects mother and daughter

Volver

o    Schindler’s List

Girl in red coat becomes the primary object of attention amongst the action

Buried:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZt-s7dCAKM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADvpmlrVLUY&feature=related

Kill Bill Vol. 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pohqGgEZf-s&feature=related

-        Breaking the Waves (Lars Von Trier) – shot on 35mm, transferred to video and drained the color and then transferred back to film – desaturated images
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdKdspcMlGI

-    Lighting – Lost Highway (David Lynch) opening scene
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI61MEUT_ak

Mulholland Drive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNjX3tQMygk

Blue Velvet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDZItMrmtNI&feature=related

Lost Highway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5LQxrZccQE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0SvEUa_F5M&feature=related

SCORSESE:

Mean Streets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ7UwnfQ2nA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srphI34omF4

Taxi Driver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWTv8toR3Ug

Goodfellas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sr-vxVaY_M&feature=related

Casino

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIPmu6bYZOs

Cape Fear

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBSbjKyamRo

1:20min

1. What do we mean by film form?

2. What stylistic elements can create suspense in a film?

3. Think of your favorite director. What stylistic elements make their films recognizably theirs?

4. Can you think of any conventions used in film that you see often? Consider various genres.

5: Bordwell & Thompson ask: How does an artwork cue us to participate or perform a certain activity?

6. How is narrative connected to style in the ways in which we interpret the story? → Color for example: black and white for Kansas in Wizard of Oz and rich color for Oz.

7. What motifs were present in The Wizard of Oz & what effect did they have?

8. Think of other films where the ending or story is left open-ended. What effect did this have on your viewing experience and overall evaluation of the film?

Clips:

Wizard of Oz:

Miss Gulch/Wicked Witch of the West -

Kill Bill 1.

Elle Driver’s Whistle:

American Beauty

Beginning:

Middle:

End:

Run Lola Run