1. Chapter 7: Modes of Screen Reality

2. SCREEN REALITY
Modes:
Ways that cinema configures visual, physical, social and/or psychological reality
Modes vary across different films and groups of films
Different modes can co-exist within a film
Co-constructed by viewers
Changes over time

3. Basic Modes
Realism
Expressionism
Fantasy
Self-reflexivity

4. Realism Ordinary Fictional Realism Historical Realism
Naturalistic Visual Style
Linear Narrative Structure
Plausible Character Behavior
Historical Realism
art direction, costume design
Documentary Realism
A pro-filmic referent
Absence of Fictionalizing Elements

5. Expressionism Classic German Expressionism (1920s)
As Contemporary Style
Hitchcock
Visual Distortions as Psychological Correlate
Can co-exist with a Realist frame

6. Fantasy
Settings, characters, subjects placed in alternate realms than viewer’s own
Established Through Production Design and Special Effects
Showcasing cinema technology
Making fantasy credible:
Shooting on real locations
Accumulating narrative detail
Building perceptual realism into production design and special effects

7. Self-Reflexivity
Self-consciousness (of cinema as cinema) of style or theme
Cinema acknowledged as an artifice
Two forms:
Comic
Woody Allen, Austin Powers
Didactic
Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Luc Godard, Spike Lee