Media Aesthetics
H1: Looking at movies
Cinematic language: The accepted systems, methods, or conventions by which the movies
communicate with the viewer.
- Visual vocabulary of film designed to play instinct also navigate the visual and aural info of real life
a) Movies engage viewers emotions and transport them inside the world onscreen
b) Viewers’ awareness that they are experiencing a highly manipulated, artificial reality
c) Convey meaning and mood to the viewer, lighting, mise-en-scène, cinematography,
performance, editing, and sound.
1.1 What is a Movie?
movie is a motion picture, a series of still images that, when viewed in rapid succession (usually 24
images per second), the human eye and brain see as fluid movement.
- Movies move, that essential quality is what separates movies from all other two-dimensional
pictorial art forms.
Film: a motion picture that consider to be more serious or challenging
o derives from the celluloid strip on which the images that make up motion pictures
were originally captured, cut, and projected.
Movies: entertain the masses at the multiplex
o simply short for motion pictures
Cinema: films that are considered works of art (e.g., “French cinema”)
o Cinema means in Greek kinesis (movement)
Similarities:
1. Product produced and marketed by a large commercial studio
2. When it comes to categorizing movies, the narrative designation simply means that these movies
tell fictional (or at least fictionalized) stories
Cinematic invisibility: using technical techniques to tell the story, for example low-angle shot to give
the observer the feeling of looking up to the subject.
- movie shot is capable of delivering multiple layers of visual and auditory information
- it goes so fast for and the shot is already it is taken away and replaced with another moving image
Cultural invisibility: reinforce the most fundamental desires and beliefs of the viewers
- trigger emotional responses from viewers that reinforce yearnings or beliefs that lie deep within
- unconscious, emotional level, the casual viewer may be blind to the implied political, cultural, and
ideological messages that help make the movie appealing.
Shot: One uninterrupted run of the camera. A shot can be as short or as long as the director wants,
but it cannot exceed the length of the film stock in the camera. (movie movement)
- Movies are constructed of multiple individual shots joined to one another in an extended sequence
Films are constructed from individual shots:
- unbroken span of action captured by an uninterrupted run of a motion-picture camera
- allow visual elements to rearrange themselves and the viewer’s perspective itself to shift within any
composition
,Setup: one camera position, the shot is the basic building block of the film, the setup is the basic
component of the film’s production.
Juxtaposition: an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, especially for comparison
or contrast.
Sequence: A series of edited shots characterized by inherent unity of theme and purpose.
Editing: The process by which the editor combines and coordinates individual shots into a cinematic
whole; the basic creative force of cinema.
With transition from one shot to another, movie is able to move viewer through time, space
Gives movies the power to choose what the viewer sees and how that viewer sees it
Capacity to isolate details and juxtapose images and sounds within and between
Shots gives movies an expressive agility impossible in any other dramatic art or visual
medium (different than theatre.)
Cut: A direct change from one shot to another as a result of cutting; that is, the precise point at which
shot A ends and shot B begins.
Close-up: A shot that often shows a part of the body filling the frame, traditionally a face, but
possibly, a hand, eye, or mouth.
The movie director:
- coordination of performance and camera
- the vital link between creative, production, and technical teams
- must be a strong leader with a passion for filmmaking and a gift for collaboration
1.2 Invisibility and cinematic language:
The moving aspect of moving pictures is one reason for this invisibility.
1. Fade-in/fade-out: Transitional devices in which a shot fades in from a black field on a black-and-
white film or from a color field on a color film, or fades out to a black field (or a color field)
Meaning: our daily experience of time is marked by the setting and rising of the sun let us
understand intuitively that story time had elapsed over that brief moment of screen darkness.
2. Dissolve: A transitional device in which shot B, superimposed, gradually appears over shot A and
begins to replace it at midpoint in the transition.
Meaning: usually indicate the passing of time
1. Low-angle shot (low shot): shot that is made with the camera below the action, and typically
places the observer in a position of inferiority.
Meaning: viewers’ shared experience of literally looking up at powerful figures
we see these figures as strong, noble, or threatening
2. High-angle shot (high/down shot): shot that is made with the camera above the action, and
typically implies the observer’s sense of superiority to the subject being photographed.
Cutting on action (macht-on-action): A continuity editing technique that smoothes the transition
between shots portraying a single action from different camera angles. The editor ends the first shot
in the middle of a continuing action and begins the subsequent shot at approximately the same point
in the matching action.
,- Editing techniques designed to hide the instantaneous and potentially jarring shift from one camera
viewpoint to another.
1.2.1 Cultural invisibility:
Key to entertaining the customers is to give them what they want, to tap into and reinforce their
most fundamental desires and beliefs.
Implicit meaning: An association, connection, or inference that a viewer makes based on the given
(explicit) meaning conveyed by the story and form of a film. Lying below the surface of explicit
meaning, implicit meaning is closest to our everyday sense of the word meaning.
Explicit meaning: Everything that a movie presents on its surface.
1.2.2 Viewer Expectations:
understand how experience and thus your interpretation of movie is affected by how the particular
film manipulates expected patterns.
1. enjoyed previous work by the director, the screenwriter, actors or the genre is appealing
2. publicity, advertisements, friends, or reviews have attracted us
3. we’re curious about the techniques used to make the movie.
Formal analysis: Film analysis that examines how a scene or sequence uses formal elements
(narrative, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound, etc.) to convey the story, mood, and
meaning.
Theme: shared, public idea, a metaphor, an adage, a myth, a familiar conflict, personality type.
Motif: recurring visual, sound, or narrative element that imparts meaning or significance.
1. Dolly in: Slow movement of the camera toward a subject, making the subject appear larger and
more significant.
Meaning: used at moments of a character’s realization and/or decision
as a point-of-view shot to indicate the reason for the character’s realization.
2. Zoom in: shot in which the image is magnified by movement of the camera’s lens only, without the
camera itself moving. This magnification is the essential difference from the dolly in.
,H2: principles of film form
Mise-en-scène (staging): the overall look and feel of a movie, the sum of everything the audience
sees, hears, and experiences while viewing it.
- Design elements such as lighting, setting, props, costumes, and makeup within individual shots.
Sound: transmitted vibrations received by the ear and thus heard by the recipient. In cinematic terms,
the expressive use of auditory elements, such as dialogue, music, ambience, and effects.
1. Narrative: cinematic structure in which content is selected and arranged in a cause-and-effect
sequence of events occurring over time.
- structured into acts that establish, develop, and resolve character conflict
2. Plot: specific actions/events that filmmakers select, and the order in which they arrange those
events and actions to effectively convey on-screen the movie’s narrative to a viewer.
3. Story: In a movie, all the events we see or hear on the screen, as well as all the events that are
implicit or infer to have happened but are not explicitly presented.
Scene: complete unit of plot action incorporating one or more shots; the setting of that action.
Complex synthesis builds a movie:
1. Editing juxtaposes individual shots (the product of one uninterrupted run of the camera)
2. To create sequences (a series of shots unified by theme or purpose)
3. Arranges these sequences into scenes (complete units of plot action)
- Editing juxtaposes > individual shots > sequences > scenes = movie
2.1 Form and Content
- two aspects of entire formal system of a work of art, interrelated, interdependent, and interactive.
1. Content: the subject of an artwork
a. provides something to express
b. what the work is about
2. Form: the means by which a subject is expressed
a. supplies the methods and techniques necessary to present it to the audience.
b. enables artist to shape our particular experience and interpretation of content.
c. cinematic language the techniques that filmmakers use to convey meaning
Content: Juno thinking about fingernails and changing her mind.
Form: express that subject and meaning decor, patterns, point of view, moving camera, and sound.
- Form for poetry is words; for drama, it is speech and action; for movies, it is pictures and sound
2.2 Form and Expectations
Making, processing, and revising expectations is part of what makes watching movies a compelling
participatory experience.
- Screenwriters often organize a film’s narrative structure around the viewer’s desire to learn the
answers to such central questions as (Will Frodo destroy the ring?)
MacGuffin by Hitchcock: refer to object/secret in story that’s vitally important to characters,
motivates their actions and the conflict, but turns out to be less significant to the narrative than we
first expected.
- sends expectations in a new and unanticipated direction, questions that drew us into the narrative
,Intercutting: editing technique that juxtaposes two or more distinct actions to create the effect of a
single scene.
Parallel editing: technique that makes different lines of action appear to be occurring simultaneously
a. Cuts back and forth between two or more simultaneous actions
b. Very familiar convention in chase or rescue sequences.
c. Broken patterns create suspense
Meaning: heighten the drama of the characters
created an illusion of connections among these various shots
leaving us with an impression of a continuous, anxiety-producing drama.
Crosscutting (parallel editing): Editing that cuts between two or more lines of action, often implied to
be occurring at the same time but in different locations.
Split screen: A method created either in the camera or during the editing process of telling two
stories at the same time by dividing the screen into different parts. The split screen can tell multiple
stories within the same frame.
Meaning: to present a more immediate depiction of simultaneous action
Narrative patterns:
a. provide an element of structure, ground us in the familiar
b. acquaint us with the unfamiliar; repeating them emphasizes their content.
Shot patterns:
a. convey character state of mind, create relationships, and communicate narrative meaning.
Closed frame: An approach to framing a shot that implies that neither characters nor objects may
enter or leave the frame, rendering them hemmed in and constrained.
Open frame: A frame around a motion-picture image that, theoretically, characters and objects can
enter and leave.
3.1 Fundamentals of Film Form
Movies depend on light: key formal element that film artists and technicians carefully manipulate
to create mood, reveal character, and convey meaning.
- sharp contrasts of light and dark occur throughout the film, thus providing a pattern of meaning
Light: the luminous energy
o Responsible for image we see on the screen, photographed (shot) on film or created
with a computer.
Lightning: the crafted interplay between motion-picture light and shadow
o Responsible for significant effects in each shot or scene.
o It enhances the texture, depth, emotions, and mood of a shot.
o Emphasizes a character’s subjective feelings, state of mind or suspense
o Conveys by other elements within shot (dialogue, movement, or composition)
3.2 Movies provide an Illusion of Movement:
Movies are distinguished from other arts by their dependence on light and movement.
- Early movies were called flicks: projectors were slower speeds, result was flickering image onscreen
- Acute human eye can discern no more than fifty pulses of light per second
- Shutters modern projectors “double-flash” each frame of film, we watch forty-eight pulses per
second (close enough to the limit of perception to eliminate our awareness of the flicker effect.)
, 1. Persistence of vision: process by which the human brain retains an image for a fraction of a
second longer than the eye records it.
a. we see a smooth flow of images and not the darkness between frames.
b. gives illusion of succession, or one image following another without interruption
2. Phi phenomenon: illusion of movement created by events that succeed each other rapidly, as
when two adjacent lights flash on and off alternately and we seem to see a single light
shifting back and forth.
a. This cognitive phenomenon is part of the reason we see movies as continuously
moving images rather than as a successive series of still images.
3. Critical flicker fusion: phenomenon that occurs when a single light flickers on and off with
such speed that the individual pulses of light fuse together to give the
a. illusion of continuous light
4. Apparent motion: movie projector’s tricking us into perceiving separate images as one
continuous image rather than a series of jerky movements.
a. Result of such factors as the phi phenomenon and critical flicker fusion.
3.3 Movies Manipulate Space and Time: the movies give time to space and space to time
- Erwin Panofsky: the dynamization of space and the spatialization of time
Manipulate space:
o Move from one space to another (from a room to a landscape)
o Make the space move (when the camera turns around or away from its subject,
changing the physical, psychological, or emotional relationship between the viewer
and the subject)
Manipulate time:
o Fragment time in many different ways (record real time in chronological passing as
well as subjective versions of time passing as slow motion)
Co-expressibility of movie: (flashes forward then flashes back, close-up, etc.)
- live theatre performance can attempt versions of temporal effects, but a play can’t do seamlessly,
immediately, persuasively, or intensely as a movie can
Camera eye: camera mediates between the exterior (the world) and interior (our eyes and brains)
- key to understanding our connection to the camera lens lies in the differences between how the
human eye and the camera eye see.
1. Camera eye captures series of different pictures (shots), camera positions, movements, lighting
2. See the movements, colors, textures, sizes, and locations more selective in its view
Mediation: An agent, structure, or other formal element, whether human or technological, that
transfers something, such as information, from one place to another.
- It always involves selection and manipulation of what is seen
- Unlike surveillance camera, the motion-picture camera eye is not an artless recorder of “reality.”
scene-by-scene: (reverse chronological order)
- Rearranging time to create new narrative meaning by juxtaposing events in ways linear chronology
does not permit
slow-motion: Cinematographic technique that decelerates action on-screen. It is achieved by filming
the action at a rate greater than the normal 24 frames per second (fps). When the shot is then played
back at the standard 24 fps, cinematic time proceeds at a slower rate than the real action that took
,place in front of the camera.
Meaning: invites the audience to pause and savor an extended moment of stylized violence
fast motion: Cinematographic technique that accelerates action on-screen. It is achieved by filming
the action at a rate less than the normal 24 frames per second (fps). When the shot is then played
back at the standard 24 fps, cinematic time proceeds at a more rapid rate than the real action that
took place in front of the camera.
Freeze-frame (stop/hold-frame): still image within a movie created by repetitive printing in the
laboratory of the same frame, so that it can be seen without movement for whatever length of time
the filmmaker desires.
- in which a still image is shown on-screen for a period of time
4.1 Realism and Antirealism:
Realism: subject matter and style
interest in or concern for the actual or real; a tendency to view or represent things as they really are.
a. Lumière brothers favored actualités, mini-documentaries of scenes from everyday life
b. Down-to-earth authenticity makes realism a natural fit for films portraying social issues (no
dramatic lighting or dazzling camera moves.)
1. naturalistic performances and dialogue
2. modest, unembellished sets and settings
3. storylines that portray the everyday lives of “ordinary” people
Antirealism: perception reality as starting point to expand purposely subvert it
interest in or concern for the abstract, speculative, or fantastic opposite of realism
a. Méliès made movies directly inspired by his interest in magicians’ illusions
b. Highly stylized and distinctive camera work, editing, and lighting to convey sensational stories set
in embellished or imaginary settings.
- Lumières and Méliès wanted to portray their on-screen worlds convincingly
- Can mix the real and the fantastic especially those in the science-fiction, action, and thriller genres.
Verisimilitude: A convincing appearance of truth. Movies are verisimilar when they convince you that
the things on the screen people, places, no matter how fantastic or antirealistic are “really there.”
- vision seems internally consistent, giving a sense that world on-screen, things could be just like that.
- expectations of reality change over time and culture, movie of Germany in 1930 can be verisimilar
for Germans at the time, but not for Americans.
, H4: Elements of Narrative
Narrative permeates more than just the world of movies, it infuses our culture and our lives, we
humans tend to order events so they will convey meaning and engage the recipient.
Narrative: a story
o cinematic structure in which content is selected and arranged in a cause-and-effect
sequence of events occurring over time.
Narration: the act of telling the story
o Omniscient narration: commentary is not spoken by one of characters in the movie
o First-person narration: when spoken by a character within the movie
o Direct address narration: on-screen character looks, speaks directly to the audience
breaking the “fourth wall” that separates the viewer from the two-
dimensional fiction on-screen.
Narrator: who or what tells the story
o Camera narrator: by selecting what we see and shaping when and how we see it
lighting, set design, makeup, and performances in each shot, through the
juxtaposition of images, primary narrator
o First-person narrator: character in the narrative who typically imparts information in
the form of voice-over narration, a character’s voice over the picture without
actually seeing the character speak the words.
hearing one narration from the first person character while watching the
narration of the camera.
o Third-person narrator: expressed by a voice imposed from outside of the narrative, a
narrator who is not a character in the movie.
knows all and can thus provide objective context to any situation.
- The narrator delivers the narration that conveys the narrative.
Omniscient narration (unrestricted): knows everything
- providing a third-person view of all aspects of a movie’s action or characters.
- provide any character’s experiences and perceptions, that no character knows.
- omniscient camera shows the audience whatever it needs to in order to best tell the story.
Meaning: knowing more than the characters
anticipating what will happen if/when they know the truth
Restricted narration: knows nothing
- providing a view from the perspective of a single character.
- reveals information to the audience only as a specific character learns of it.
- camera only the thoughts, memories, perspectives, and experiences available to the character
Meaning: encourages the audience to identify with the character’s perspective
invites us to participate in the unlocking of the narrative’s secrets.
