The Art of Film : announcements

1. The Art of Film: announcements • Lectures start promptly at 12:07. • You should be thinking about a choice of film and formal approach for your final paper. • Every seat in this room will be filled. • Please try to sit toward the front of the room and the middle of rows to leave room for late arrivals. • Please do not sit in the aisles! • Please turn off your cell phones upon entering the lecture hall. • No food or drink is allowed in the auditorium. • Please take all trash with you when leaving.

2. Point of view and narration • Point of view of camera • Point of view of character • Point of view of spectator • Controlling the flow of story information • To channel, direct, and control the spectator’s knowledge and desire along the predetermined pathways of the plot.

3. Point of view • Ideology • Film style • Psychology of spectator

4. Point of view • Ideology • Point of view formulates sets of moral or evaluative norms, beliefs, or opinions. These moral norms may be challenged or placed in conflict, but they usually are reconfirmed as a condition of narrative closure. • The point of view of the film as its implicit set of values. • Interpretation • To lay out, in the unfolding of the plot, different levels or degree of knowledge (between camera, characters, and audience) in the resolution of a mystery and the accomplishment of a desire. • Identification • Point of view establishes for the spectator mental points of entry into the narrative. It enables the audience to identify with the characters, to be caught up in their desires and their fortunes, and to be carried away, as it were, by the plot.

5. Point of view and film style • Controlling the range of story information • Levels of knowledge • Omniscient narration. • A character who speaks directly for him/herself. • Spreading knowledge and limiting perspective across several characters. • Unrestricted and restricted narration

6. Point of view and film style • Controlling the depth of story information. • Spatial association. • Optical point of view. • Mental subjectivity.

7. Optical point of view, or perceptual subjectivity • Over-the-shoulder shot • Point of view shot, or point/glance editing • Subjective shots

8. Optical point of view • Over-the-shoulder shots (OTS) and the shot/reverse shot figure (S/RS).

9. Optical point of view • The point of view shot (POV).

10. Optical point of view • The point-glance figure.

11. Optical point of view • Subjective shots.

12. Point of view and film style • Mental subjectivity

13. Point of view and film style • Mental subjectivity

14. Point of view and spectator psychology • How the spectator identifies with the narrative and the image (Christian Metz). • Identification with the camera (primary cinematic identification) • Identification with a character (secondary cinematic identification)

15. Continuity editing and the spectator • To maximize the visual pleasure of the spectator by minimizing the degree of mental and perceptual effort required to understand the film. • Presupposes a passive spectator. • A suppressed awareness of your own interpretive activity. • The spectator placed as an invisible onlooker at an ideal vantage point.

16. Point of view and spectator psychology • Continuity editing and the mobility of point of view. • The spectator’s seamless movement between levels of point of view. • The power of anonymous and invisible witnessing. • Continuity editing, with its constantly changing fields and views, encourages spectators to move psychologically, freely and easily, between different levels of point of view.