Language of Film

1. Language of Film

2. Cinematography and mise en scene • Cinematographyis about where the camera situates itself, how it moves, how it captures and manipulates the light, and what perspectives it adopts • Mise en scene involves what objects, people, colors, and other figures are included in the frame and how the frame is arranged.

3. What are you describing? • Frame Denotes the boundaries around the image, and also the “canvas” of the image.

4. What is a “shot” • A SHOT is an image that extends between any two edits. • It’s like a sentence that begins and ends with punctuation marks. • Check out how this shot has no edits. It’s a single “shot.” GOODFELLA’S LONG SHOT

5. Where is the Camera? Terms for camera distance take the human form as a frame of reference. Extreme Long Shot dwarfs any human form in relation to its surroundings.

6. long shot Good for setting locale, establishing location of objects, showing an area, showing big action. Extreme long shots go even further back.

7. Full Shot • A Full Shot: Frames the whole human body with little extra margin at the top and bottom of the frame

8. medium shot Frames people from the torso up. Usually focuses you on the people.

9. close up Good for conveying details, emotion, reactions, expressions Close ups magnify; good for interior monologue. Emphasize significance of object. Has intimacy, but stays within the bounds of realistic vision.

10. Extreme Close Up An Extreme Close Up isolates a single feature of the body or detail of an object. Has intense intimacy. Exceeds the limits of normal human vision.

11. Camera Angles • How is the camera being positioned by the director? For what effect?

12. High angle Looks down on the subject. This camera angle tends to make the subject seem smaller, weak and insignificant.

13. low angle The camera looks upward at the subject. Gives the subject power, authority, or a THREAT.

14. normal angle Shots taken from the eye level of the subject. This angle communicates equality between the character and the audience and conveys a sense of honesty.

15. Point of View Shot (POV Shot) A Point of View shot can be framed from any angle or distance. The shot must imply that the frame originates from the perspective of a character. Sometimes a POV shot shows a person’s face rather than what they see.

16. Overhead Shot • An overhead shot is an exaggerated high angle shot that looks down from a perpendicular view, often with estranging results.

17. Canted or “Dutch Tilt” shot • When the camera frames the mise en scene from a tilted angle so that the world is thrown off its normal axis. Tends to be disorienting, produce confusion and anxiety.

18. How much does the camera let you see? • This shallow focus or limited depth-of-field shot clarifies the foreground, but not the background.

19. Background Focus Shot • The background focus shot limits depth of field in the forward portion of the shot.

20. Deep Focus • The Deep Focus shot happens when foreground and background are shown with equal clarity. This is also a tilted shot.

21. Another Deep Focus Shot • Note the clarity and depth of field.

22. Camera Movement Panorama (pan) shot: Turning a camera left or right. The camera remains “fixed” in space, but turns laterally. It can be used to show a large expanse of scenery which won’t fit into one shot. Zoom Shot: The camera remains fixed, but zooms in or out using a lens. The camera does not physically travel.

23. Travelling Camera Shots Tracking shot: the camera is moved along a track to follow a subject. Creates action, frenzy, speed. Hand-held camera shots: can be bumpy or jerky, but they have a feeling of reality. The can be used subjectively to show what a character is seeing through her eyes.

24. Travelling Camera Shots Aerial Shot: Flies over the action, usually mounting the camera in a helicopter. The Shining Aerial Shot

25. More Travelling Camera Shots Crane Shot moves up and down vertically, often while tilting. Camera is literally mounted on a crane.

26. Palette, texture and contrast • High Contrast lighting picks up details in dark and bright portion of frame. Picks up colors, earth tones, etc.

27. Low Contrast Lighting • Grainy, underexposed lighting yields a dim image reinforcing grim, brooding, dark outlook

28. Editing and Montage A Shot is an uninterrupted visual unit of film between two edits. A Shot is like a sentence of written text. A Scene is a series of shots that are tightly joined by a narrative or aesthetic logic, much like a paragraph of text.

29. Sequence A series of Scenes that combine to form a larger movement or chapter within the narrative or aesthetic logic of the film.

30. How to Transition Shots • The Cut is the most common editing device in film and involves a clean, instantaneous break between two images, with no overlap and no gap between them. This image from the film Solaris shows Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) in direct proximity to the rain

31. How to TRANSITION Shots A Match Cut joins two images that are compositionally similar, or obey similar movement.

32. Flash Cut A flash-cut interjects a single image so quickly within an otherwise continuous action that we barely register the new image before we cut back to the initial one.

33. Fade Out/In A Fade Out/In gradually erases an image until all that remains is a solid field of color, usually black. Duration is a consideration for the director. Sometimes the blackness is representational.

34. Dissolve A Dissolve differs from a fade in that as one image fades out, the next fades in. The screen is never “empty,” and the joined images are superimposed, either briefly or for longer periods. In this dissolve, we are asked to consider the relationship between the scrambled video testimony of a now-dead astronaut and the image of the wispy, luminous planet Solaris that he was studying when he died.

35. Wipe In a wipe, one image intrudes upon another, discernible along a clear line, or forming a clear shape. The most common versions are a horizontal wipe (where a new images rolls in from the right or left edge of the frame) or a vertical wipe (where one image rises from the bottom of a frame or descends from the top). Wipes are exaggerated and self-conscious transitions. Here, in Requiem for a Dream, a moment of horrendous violence is amplified by a harsh vertical wipe:

36. Iris • A Wipe in which an image suddenly contracts into a small circle, or blossoms out from such a small circle. Old fashioned

37. Shot/Reverse shot editing Shots of one speaker alternate repeatedly with shots of the other.

38. Cross Cutting differs from shot/reverse shot editing by linking people, objects, or actions that transpire in disparate spaces or times. In this case, Jack and Karen’s dinner conversation cross-cuts with their intimate rendezvous from later that evening: