Film and Meaning

1. Film and Meaning Explicit Implicit An implicit meaning is a generalization that a person makes about a text or a subject of a text A film’s mise en scene, cinematography, editing and sound can suggest or reinforce meanings Narrative itself is a major source of implicit meanings, because viewers often infer some general implications of a story A narrative or some aspect of it may be unknowable or ambiguous: it is open to two or more plausible interpretations perhaps because it provides conflicting information and withholds significant information Filmmakers and other makers of texts may create symbols: anything perceptible that has significance beyond its usual meaning or function. Usually symbols go unexplained in films and viewers interpret them variously • Generalizations included in a text about one or more of its subjects • Explicit meanings are sometimes thought as flawed in Western storytelling, because these audiences like meanings to be suggested and not explained • An explicit meaning is not necessarily comprehensive or persuasive, and it is not the definitive word on any of the film’s projects

2. Is a similarity a formula? • It’s not déjà vu. Summer movies are often described as formulaic. But what few people know is that there is actually a formula—Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. In the book, author Blake Snyder, a successful spec screenwriter who became an influential screenplay guru, preaches a variant on the basic three-act structure that has dominated blockbuster filmmaking since the late 1970s. • (Opening image) • (Theme is stated) (Set-up) • (Catalyst) • (Debate) • (Break into Act II) • (Fun and games) • (Midpoint) • (Bad guys close in) • all-is-lost moment • dark night of the soul. • (Break into Act III) • (Finale) • (Final image)

3. Documentary Film Film or video representation of actual (not imaginary) subjects

4. Documentary Filmmakers • Select what subjects to film and in what ways • They can combine footage they shoot with already existing footage • Sometimes they stage or re-create situations • Edit the resultant footage

5. Mediated reality • In every documentary, every edit you make, every choice you make is yours (the filmmaker’s judgment call) • Even when filmmakers like the Mayslesbrothers try to be a “fly on the wall” they still choose what to look at and what eventually makes it into the film (link) • Mediate means to work as an intermediary between two sides—or work as a go-between • Reality—documentary film—viewer • The documentary is not reality, but an intermediary between reality and the viewer • It may seem to represent reality objectively, but it does not • A documentary film is never an objective indisputable truth • It is the result of the selections, recordings and manipulations of one group of filmmakers

6. What do documentaries do? • Inform All documentaries do this • Entertain Most documentaries are meant to entertain, because that is how they hold the viewer’s interest • Criticizemade out of the filmmakers conviction that something is wrong • Celebrate present a topic in a way that viewers can appreciate or admire • Achieve more than one goal Link: When the Levees Broke, A Requiem in 3 Acts accomplishes all of these goals

7. Informative Language • narration, title cards or subtitles, interviews, signs (or a combination) • Before 1960 most films Featured a strong voiced, supposedly impartial male narrator • This changed due to availability of portable equipment as well as the belief that no single narrator can do justice to a subject’s complexity

8. Artifacts • May film new material (staged or not) • May represent subjects in a realistic or stylized way • May use existing footage • Photographs • Fragments of radio broadcasts • Audio recordings • Still photographs • Signs and maps • Editing all of these sources is like creating a film from scratch • Artifacts and informative language help persuade the viewers of the accuracy of a film’s representation

9. Non-narrative documentary • Scientific films • Many TV documentaries • Industrial films • Training films • Promotional films • Sometimes they make an argument for or against something • Present various types of information organized into categories

10. Narrative Documentary • Like fictional films, narrative documentaries represent events chronologically or non-chronologically • There is a fabula (logical sequential order of events) and the the plot can follow the fabula closely or out of order • Many have a single plotline, but like fictional films they may have two or more

11. Narrative Documentaries can use the following expressive narrative techniques • 3 act structure • Split screen • Parallel editing • Cutaway editing (action reaction) • Slow motion • Fast cutting • Slow cutting • Transitions

12. Roger and Me, Parallel Editing • Link here • How does the use of parallel editing communicate a meaning in this scene? • How does the use of a sound bridge communicate a meaning in this scene? • Do you think that the use of narrative technique diminishes the informative role of documentary?

13. Documentary Filmmakers • Select what subjects to film and in what ways • They can combine footage they shoot with already existing footage • Sometimes they stage or re-create situations • Edit the resultant footage

14. Mediated reality • In every documentary, every edit you make, every choice you make is yours (the filmmaker’s judgment call) • Mediate means to work as an intermediary between two sides—or work as a go-between • Reality—documentary film—viewer • The documentary is not reality, but an intermediary between reality and the viewer • It may seem to represent reality objectively, but it does not • A documentary film is never an objective indisputable truth • It is the result of the selections, recordings and manipulations of one group of filmmakers

15. Technology and Documentary Don’t Look Back (1967) • Before the 1960’s equipment was heavy and not very portable • Late 50’s and early 60’s introduction of 16mm film cameras and fast film • Portable sound packs • Direct Cinema came from these advances as well as Cinéma vérité in France • Imperfections can strengthen the film’s credibility

16. Video Technology Restrepo 2010 • Longer takes • Fewer interruptions while filming • Greater portability—access to subjects • Less intrusive • Relatively inexpensive—opening up possibilities for more and more people to make them

17. Experimental Films Definition • Difficult to define, because there are so many films with that title • Avant-garde, underground, personal and independent • Reject the conventions of the most popular mainstream films • Rebel against what movies are and what they stand for

18. Surrealism Un ChienAndalou 1928 by Luis Bunuel • 1920’s and 30’s a movement in European art, drama, literature and film in which an attempt was made to portray the workings of the subconscious mind as manifested in drams

19. Sources and Technique • Fictional Films or Film Theory • Optical Printer • Negative (found footage) • Personal Subjects • Recorded footage • Unexpected editing techniques • Film or Television History • Art History • Political or Social beliefs

20. Representational or Abstract Representational Abstract The subjects are unrecognizable (or) • The subjects are recognizable as people and real objects (Like Un ChienAndalou)

21. Hybrid Films Mulholland Drive 2001 • Experimental and Documentary • Installation Video and Photography • Experimental Narrative • Experimental Independent Films

22. OuterSpace While she forces her way into an unknown space together with the viewer, the cinematographic image-producing processes go off the rails all around her. The rooms through which she goes telescope into each other, become blurred, while at the same time the crackling of the cuts and the background noise of the sound track – the sound of the film material itself – becomes louder and more penetrating.

23. The pace becomes frenetic, the woman is being pursued by invisible opponents, she is pushed against a mirror, walls of glass burst, furniture tilts and the cinematographic apparatus which the heroine begins to attack in blind fury also suffers. The images jump and stutter, the perforation holes tilt into the picture, the sound track collapse inwards in a will o’ the wisp destruction scenario – something which only film can do so beautifully. In ten minutes ‘’Outer Space’’ races through the unsuspected possibilities of cinematographic error

24. A woman, terrorized by an invisible and aggressive force, is also exposed to the audience’s gaze, a prisoner in two senses. Outer Space agitates this construction, which is prototypical for gender hierarchies and classic cinema’s viewing regime, and allows the protagonist to turn them upside down.

25. La Jetee We’re persuaded, equally, that this fiction of a time rolled up in time, preserving the old film of what we once were, we’re persuaded that this parenthetical time within time articulates or produces or proves the approach of an ancient death. All I see there is this: images of life sliding, being destroyed, and growing dark within the story that they give rise to. The beauty of this thought: that the experimental subject of memory lives on only in the experiment; he dies from it or can’t survive what it has awoken. Just as a face can’t survive the notion of resemblance that makes a portrait something other than an idea or something other than the representation of an absent person. A fidelity: sometimes fidelity to the game where someone sits for the painting. But sometimes it’s the fleeting fidelity to a destiny in which that game is but a ruse.