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Summer Project

Storyboard

Storyboard

Ridley Scotts Autueur

Ridley Scott as an Auteur

• An Auteur is: Someone who makes a signature contribution, has a recognisable creative fingerprint and is credited as 'author' of a film. There aesthetics choices are recognisable in a film

Story

• Ridley usually tells horror/sci-fi films or historical events
• They all centre around pivotal events in a short timeline e.g. for Alien its escaping the alien planet and Xenomorph, in Blade Runner, its tracking down and killing replicants and in Gladiator its escaping slavery and avenging his family.

Style

 

Cinematic Blindness

Cinematic Blindness

• We all see things in slightly different playtime.
• Each viewer perceives a slightly different film from the person next to them, this experience is contrasted with the homogenous experience of Hollywood film.

[Clustered eye tracks reveal a focused audience in North by Northwest whereas the audience visually roams the image in Mr. Hulot’s Holiday.]

• Research shows that Human perception can often miss key people or objects even thought they are in plain sight.

(NOTES MADE FROM WATCHING VISUAL DISTURBANCES ) 



1. The Invisible Sight

• Small things like, putting the main characters in the centre of a shot, having cuts that match on action, making eye contact run through different shots and camera panning on certain characters.
• Small things like above help a new viewer understand who's the main characters and most of the plot.
• "Things on the screen appeared real, unsponsored and inevitable while the thousands of choices that created the film disappeared" - Robert Ray, A Certain Tendency of Hollywood Cinema
• These small things direct our attention to only certain things, an audience can accidently ignore or be blind a lot of important aspects of a scene,
• There was a famous phycological experiment where they filmed a clip of two groups bouncing a ball, one in black shirts one in white. They told people to count how many times the black team bounced their ball, because of this they didn't realise and were blind to the fact that a gorilla walked into the middle of the screen.

2.  HIERACHY OF PERCEPTION

• See, Blind and Misperceive
• See - Some people see what's happening
• Blind - People may be blind to something and have no clue that something is happening
• Misperceives - Someone who may have not seen something as it happens but notices later and misperceives it

Spectatorship

• Spectatorship studies are interested in the relationship between spectators and film
• Spectatorship theories are based on the belief that film is an affective medium and that spectators are affected by watching films
• The nature of the effect can be long, medium and short term.

Films can affect us in different ways

Physical response – causing physiological responses such as shock, crying, laughter, nausea, disgust.

Emotional response – causing the spectator to have feelings of pleasure, happiness, sadness.

Intellectual response – the spectator gains new information and may combine this with prior information to make intellectual jumps.

Psychological response – may respond in a subconscious or completely unconscious way. This may drive behaviour at a later date.

Mis-en-scene

Mis-En-Scene

• A french term meaning what is put into a scene or frame.
• Visual information in front of the camera.
• communicates essential information to the audience.

5 Elements of Mis-en-Scene

Setting and Props

• Setting and location are not just 'backgrounds' in films.
• Sets are either built from scratch or a great deal of time is spent to find a setting which already exists. 
• Settings can manipulate an audience by building certain expectations then taking a different turn.

Costume, Hair and Makeup

• Costumes, hair and makeup act as an instant indicator to us of a characters personality status and job.
• It tells us immediately whether the film is set in the present and what society/culture it will centre around.
• Certain costumes signify certain individuals e.g black cloak of a vampire, spideys spider-man suit.

Facial Expressions and Body Language

• Facial expression provide a clear indicator of how someone is feeling.
• If someone is smiling broadly, we assume they are happy but we may get a different feeling if this is accompanied by scary music.
• Body Language may also indicate how a character feels towards another character or may reflect the state of their relationship.

Positioning of character and objets within a frame

• Positioning within a frame can draw our attention an important character/object. A filmmaker can use positioning to indicate relationships between people.

Staging positions can include:

• Full-front: position with most intimacy, character looks in our direction
• Quarter Turn: favoured position of most film makers. offers a high degree of intimacy but with less emotion then full front.
• Profile: more remote than the quarter turn, the character in profile seems unaware of being observed
• Three-quarter turn: anonymous then the profile, used to convey a characters unfriendly or antisocial feelings, for in effect, the character is partially turning his or her back on us, rejecting our interest.
• Back to Camera: Very anonymous, often used to suggest a characters alienation from the world.

Lighting and Colour

• Colours carry certain connotations which may add meaning to a scene e.g red = danger/ passion.
• Can give a scene a particular look. feel or mood.
• Can be used for dramatic effect.
• Lighting and colours can be used to achieve a variety of effects:                                                            - To highlight important characters or objects within the frame.                                                    - To make characters look mysterious by shading sections of the face and body.                          - To reflect a characters mental state/hidden emotions e.g bright = happy, dark = disturbed.

Types of Lighting

Low Key Lighting

• Created by using only the key and backlights.
• produces sharp contrasts of light and dark areas.
• Deep, distinct, shadows/silhouettes are formed.

High Key Lighting

• More filler lights are used. Lighting is natural and realistic to our eyes.
• Produces brightly lit set or a sunny day.

High Contrast Lighting

• Features harsh shafts of light and dramatic streaks of blackness.
• often used in tradegies and melodramas.

Sound

Sound

Importance of Sound in Film

• We might think of film as a visual experience but we cannot underestimate the importance of film sound. A meaningful soundtrack is often as complicated as the image on the scene.
• Soundtrack is comprised of three essential ingredients: The human voice, sound effects and music.
• These three 'ingredients' must be mixed and balanced to produce impact.

Diegetic Sound

• The most common form of sound.
• It is any sound that should be visible on the screen and exist in the reality of the film world
• Dialogue, tyres screeching in a chase, the sound of rain etc.

Non-Diegetic Sound

• Sound that is added in post-production to enhance the viewers experience of the film
• Sounds that the character cannot hear in the film world.
• Examples of non-diegetic sound include a voice over, a soundtrack and other digital music like subtle enhancements to the diegetic sound.

Dialogue

• The characters or narrators speech.
• Was not used in 'old' films as they did not have the enhancements of it
• A film is very hard to understand without it.

Synchronous Sound/Parallel Sound

• The most common form of actors dialogue. This form of sound is when the speech matches the lip movement of the character speaking.
• Sometimes actors dialogue has to be dubbed because of the conditions on set, if it is loud or windy for example. 
• So the actor re-records all the dialogue in the studio which is then dubbed onto the acting from the set footage.

Asynchronous Sound

• The opposite of synchronous sound.
• When the lips and dialogue don't match, this is either done for comedic effects or to illustrate tat a character is drugged, drink or in a dream (or if the film has been dubbed badly).

Voice Over

• A type of non-diegetic sound that gives the audience a true reflection of how a character feels.
• Also used to set the scene of the film world or to relay information to the audience.

Sound MOTIF

• Sound or music (in the form of a repeated sound track) that is associated with a particular character.
• The Motif can then be used for emotional or narrative impact.

Direct Address

• When an actor talks directly at the audience. Similar to a monologue in the play, the audience are usually invited to share the characters secrets or his/her view.
• Direct address is not common because the audience have to suspend their disbelief and also what is called the fourth wall is broken.

Soundtrack

• Music/compositions added to the film in post-production to guide the viewers feeling at a critical time in the film, when there is an emotional beat or a period of action for example.
• Sound bridge: when the music from the soundtrack is sustained from one scene to the next (to connect characters, events).

Music Sting

• A music punctuation mark to suggest a dramatic climax 0 often used in horror films to highlight a shock to the audience.

Pleonastic Sound

• Similar to a music sting but used more often.
• These are sounds added in post production in order to increase the impact of a particular moment in a film.
• for example the sound of a punch in a boxing film or the sound of a sword being taken out of a scabbard to suggest how sharp the sword is.

Silence

• Sound doesn't have to be used in some movies, silence is also a powerful tool for the director and not in the way of using silence in horror films to create tension.
• Silence is efficiently used in movies like A Quiet place.

Soundscape

• Characteristic sound that is associated with a particular location.
• for example a car horns and traffic in an urban location or the tweeting of birds in a  forest.
• These sounds add to the feeling of immersion felt by the viewer and can also be used to heighten tensions by focusing on specific sounds, again well used in A Quiet Place.

Auteur

Auteur Theory

What is Auteur?

• Someone who makes a signature contribution to a film
• Someone who has a recognisable creative fingerprint
• Someone who is credited as 'author' of a film
• Someone who's aesthetics choices are recognisable in a film

What makes an auteur?

• An auteur is recognisable by the artistic or aesthetic choices they make
• Aesthetic choices cannot be seen through one film but a whole body of work
• An auteur work always has a deeper personal or interior aspect to it, such as - themes they explore, types of characters that fascinate them or particular relationships that they return to time and time again

Identifying features of an auteur

Any use of film form can be used by auteur's to create specific aesthetics

• Particular use of cinematography
• Particular use of sound
• Particular setting or location
• Specific aspects of mis-en-scene

Characteristics of Orsan Welles (OW) Aesthetic

• The use of - deep focus, wide angles, deep staging, real location settings, diegetic sounds, use of locals in scenes, poetic realism, long shots with no edits e.g opening of double indemnity.
• OW did not like shooting close ups except for BCUs which were distorted by wide angle lens to give unsettling effect
• Use of surreal and distorted reflections to create a feeling of unreality e.g funfair and hall of mirrors scene.

Aesthetic Disputes and Control

• The studio (Columbus) took control of 'Lady from Shanghai' and inserted many closeups against OW's wishes
• Also inserted sound stings against OWs wish
• Forced OW to return from location of film and reshoot the opening scene of LFS in a studio setting. (OW hated the opening scene)
• Hall of mirrors and funfair scene was drastically cut as Columbia thought the audience would be put off by distortion 

The Studio System

The Studio System - Classical Hollywood

• From the 1920s to the 1950s Hollywood was dominated by 8 large studios
• The big five (MGM, Warner, Paramount, RKO and Fox) they produced and distributed films and owned their own theatre chains
• The little 3 (Universal, Columbia and United Artists) they also distributed and produced but did not own theatre chains
• These 8 major studios controlled 95% of films shown in the USA 
• Commercial feature films were produced on studio lots
• Each studio developed a ‘house style’

“Studios had faced back then, They could bring you blindfolded into a movie house and you looked up and you knew’’- Billy Wilder

• Studio production peaked in the 1940s as studios efficiently produced mass entertainment films and cinema attendance was high
• After WW2 this success steadily went into decline - The US supreme court ruled that major studios should end block booking (selling multiple films in units to theatres, preventing independent films from getting in theatres)
• This resulted in the breakdown of vertically integrated studios and the rise of independent
• Also theatre attendance dropped due to the rise of TV and other leisure pursuits