1. Looking at Movies
Overview

2. Cinematic Language The visual vocabulary of film
Composed of myriad integrated techniques and concepts
Connects the viewer to the story while deliberately concealing the means by which it does so

3. Active Viewing of Movies
Recognize the many tools and principles that filmmakers employ to tell stories, convey information and meaning, and influence emotions and ideas.
Understand movies as narrative, as artistic expression, and as a reflection of the cultures that produce and consume them.

4. Sweeney Todd - the play

5. Sweeney Todd - the Movie

8. Film Analysis
Analysis – the act of taking something complicated apart to figure out what it is made of and how it all fits together.
Step 1 – Identify the tools and techniques within a scene, sequence, or movie
Step 2 – Investigate the function and potential effect of that combination

9. Film Meaning
No matter how many different layers of meaning are in a movie, each layer is either implicit or explicit.
Implicit – lies below the surface of a movie’s story and presentation, more interpretive than explicit meaning
Explicit – available on the surface of the movie, obvious

10. Film Construction
Shots – unbroken span of action captured by an uninterrupted run of a motion-picture camera
Editing – the joining together of discrete shots
With each transition from one shot to another, a movie is able to move the viewer through time and space

11. How Movies Work
Persistence of vision – the process by which the human brain retains an image for a fraction of a second longer than the eye records it (Apparent motion)
Phi phenomenon – the illusion of movement created by events that succeed each other rapidly
Critical flicker fusion – occurs when a single light flickers on and off with such speed that the individual pulses of light fuse together to give the illusion of continuous light

12. Film Form
Movies are highly organized, and deliberately assembled and sculpted by filmmakers.
The synthesis of elemental systems – mise-en-scène, sound, narrative, editing, and others – constitutes a movie’s overall form.
Form – means by which the subject is expressed
Content – the subject of an artwork
They are interrelated, interdependent, and interactive

14. Movie Types
Narrative
Experimental
Documentary
Animation

15. Narrative
Narrative – a cinematic structure in which the filmmakers arrange story events in a cause-and-effect sequence
Narrative film – a movie devoted to conveying fictional or fictionalized stories

16. Narrative Tell a story Directed towards fiction Based on screenplays
Primary purpose is entertainment with commercial intent

17. Realism vs Abstraction
Realism – a tendency to view or represent things as they really are
Abstraction – an interest in or concern for the non-realistic, speculative, or fantastic
Movies can be both realistic and abstract

18. Employees Leaving the Factory - 1895

19. A Trip to the Moon