English Film Appreciation

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English Film Appreciation

• Wang, Yueh-chiu
• National Penghu University

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Film History

• The birth of film In the humanitys history, the
  man has always had a deep interest in capturing
  and representing movement, different
  civilizations or people have looked for the way
  to achieve this fact. Several inventors and
  geniuses have built machines that produce the
  illusion of movement.

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• When those machines were invented, three
  fundamental elements that constituted cinema were
  achieved, the persistence of vision, photography
  and projection.

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The Silent Era

• The films were already an industry extended
  around the world. The movies were mute and it
  appeared texts amid the scenes in order to
  explain the action of the film, sometimes a
  pianist played music to make happier the show.
  The barracks of the beginning of cinema became
  elegant and roomy rooms where they began to
  assist the high

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• classes and not only the popular ones.
• Holywood was founded and the big film production
  companies started to make the history of the
  North American films.

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The Sound Era

• With the arrival of this new era of the films
  also disappeared various actors upon bringing to
  light to the public its true voice, unpleasant or
  ridiculous, that did not correspond to its
  physical appearance. The technicians and
  filmmakers changed the form to do and to think
  about the films and the actors and actresses had
  to learn to vocalize correctly.

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• The installation of the sound in the films is a
  way for the citizens to escape from daily
  problems due to Great Depression. Hollywood
  started to produce movies based on fantasy,
  comedy, music, etc. Vanity Fair (1935)and
  Gone with the Wind (1939)

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Post-war Era

• When finishing the war it appeared in Italy the
  cinema called neo-realistic, which was a
  testimonial cinema about the reality of that
  moment, it also showed a lot of humanity. It was
  worried about the problems of individuals living
  on the streets and it supposed a deep look on the
  problems of subsistence of the poorest.

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• By the 1950s the EEUU was passing a time of
  well-being that changed the lifestyle. The
  acquisition of televisions made the number of
  spectaculars smaller and they were invented new
  ways for recover it. So, the big screen appealed
  to its best argument, its spectacular nature, the
  screen grown and was projected in

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• color and the sound becomes stereo.
• It appeared the myths of cinema such as Marlon
  Brando, James Dean or Marilyn Monroe, which break
  the conventional schemes of social behavior. The
  youths become an important potential public in
  this time of rock and roll.

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Cinema at the present time

• Due to the introduction of videotapes as well as
  the massive increase of television channels, the
  public watch much more movies than ever before
  and everything without home. Nowadays the films
  look for a spectacular show because the movies
  with lots of special effects are able to attract
  several spectators to the dark room.

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• In the present films, it is imposed quality and
  profitability. The film studios produce movies
  in which computers have worked on the obtaining
  process and manipulation of images.

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Film genre

• Films can be organized according to three
  principal concepts setting, mood, and format. A
  genre can be defined as a group of movies that
  share similar elements such as scripts, types of
  actors, scenes, film techniques, camera shoots,
  sound, music, illumination, edition, etc.

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Target audience films

• The types of target audience films
• Childrens films
• Family films
• Adult films

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• A childrens film is a film aimed for children as
  its audience. Childrens film can encourage
  younger members of the community to imitate the
  role models of the glamor industry known to most
  of us as film, cinema or TV.

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Family film

• A family film is a film genre that is designed to
  appeal to a variety of age groups and families.
  To attract these diverse audiences, film makers
  often create works that operate simultaneously on
  several levels of appeal. Star Wars franchise

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Format films

• By using particular equipment to be presented in
  a specific manner
• Live action films
• Biography films
• Documentary films
• Musical films

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Mood films

• Action films
• Adventure films
• Comedy films
• Drama films
• Fantasy films
• Horror films
• Mystery films

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• Romance films
• Thrillers films

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How to appreciate the films

• Focus on the appearance of the characters and the
  location and place in time and then discuss a
  photograph.

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• Explore questions such as
• What can you tell about the characters from how
  they look and what they are doing?
• Who are they?
• What sort of people are they?
• What can you tell about the relationship between
  the characters in the scene?

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• Where are they?
• What else can you see in the frame that gives
  information about these characters, their
  lifestyles, culture, socio-economic status?

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Class discussion

• Discuss the clip using questions such as
• What is the story about?
• What do you think will happen next?
• Who are these characters?
• What are they doing?

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• Why has the film maker chosen this particular
  background or location?
• What does it mean for the story?
• How does it relate to the story?
• List all the features used by students to find
  out this information such as sound, acting,
  props, camera work, color, location music etc.

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• How has the film makers used the various filming
  elements to tell their story?
• Please make notes about technical aspects.

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Film form

• Concepts of film form
• Form as system Form is the overall system of
  relationships among the parts of the whole film.
• Any set of elements in a film that depend on and
  effect each other makes a system.

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• When viewing a film, we look at the individual
  parts and try to explain whey they are in the
  film and what effect they have on the viewer.
• The purpose of a films form is to communicate
  with the viewer in a uniquely cinematic way.

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Systems of Elements

• Narrative elements the films story.
• Stylistic elements editing, cinematography,
  sound, etc.
• The viewer relates, compares, contrasts, and
  connect these systems of elements to one another.

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Form vs. Content

• Content is the subject matter and other abstract
  ideas in the film.
• Content is a component that functions as a part
  of the overall pattern that makes form.

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Formal expectations

• Suspense is a created by a delay in fulfilling an
  established expectation.
• Conflict derives the form of the film.
• The viewer has expectations that the conflict
  will be resolved.
• Surprise is a result of an expectation that is
  revealed to be incorrect.

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• They may cause the viewer to readjust our
  expectations about what can happen in the story.
• Comedy often depends on surprising the viewer
  expectations.

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Formal Expectations

• Curiosity is the ability of the viewer to make
  guesses about prior events.

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Conventions and Experience

• A large factor in the viewers understanding and
  interpreting a film is their prior experience.
• The main way a viewer is able to predict the
  outcome of a film is based on prior experience.

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• Genres depend heavily on conventions.
• Bodies of conventions create norms of what is
  expected in a particular tradition.

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• It is a convention of the musical film that the
  characters sing and dance.
• It is a convention of narrative form that the
  conclusion solves the problems that the
  characters confront.
• It contains journey pattern.

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Form and feeling

• The interaction and relation between the emotion
  represented in the film and the emotional
  response felt by the viewer play a large role in
  the films form.
• For example, the actor grieves in pain, but the
  viewer find it comical.

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Form and meaning

• Tangible meanings are called referential meanings
  because they refer to things or places already
  invested with importance.
• An openly asserted meaning in the film would be
  an explicit meaning.

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Form and meaning

• Implicit meanings are suggestive interpretations
  of a film.
• Implicit meanings can lead the viewer to come up
  with broad concepts for the film called themes.

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Form and meaning

• A symptomatic meaning is a manifestation of a
  wider set of values characteristic of a whole
  society.
• The set of value that get revealed can be
  considered a social ideology.

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Evaluations

• Coherence, complexity, originality and intensity
  of effect are the conventional formal criterion
  in evaluating a film.
• Personal taste must be excluded in criteria to
  help form a more objective evaluation.

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• Characters, environments, times or activities all
  need variety, contrast and change in a film.
• Within the image, there are differences in
  tonality, texture, direction, and speed of
  movement, etc.

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• Difference may manifest itself through setting,
  action and character conflict.
• Repetition and variation co-exist together.
• We should look for both similarities and
  differences in a film.

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Development

• The best way to recognize how a film develops
  formally is to compare the beginning and the
  ending of the film.

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• When all the relationships we notice in a film
  are clear and economically interwoven, then a
  film has unity.

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Film adaptation

• A common form of film adaptation is the use of a
  novel as the basis of a film, but film adaptation
  includes the use of non-fiction, autobiography,
  comic book, scripture, plays, and even other
  films.

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Novel adpations

• Novels are frequently adapted for films. For the
  most part, these adaptations attempt either to
  appeal to an existing commercial audience (the
  adaptation of best sellers and the prestige
  adaptation of works) or tap into the innovation
  and novelty of a less well known author.

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• The question of faithfulness arises, and the
  more high profile the source novel, the more
  insistent are the questions of fidelity.

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• Change in adaptation is essential and practically
  unavoidable, mandated both by the constraints of
  time and medium, but how much is always a
  balance. Some film theorists have argued that a
  director should be entirely unconcerned with the
  source, as a novel is a novel, while a film is a
  film, and the two works of art must be seen as
  separate entities.

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• Others argue that what a film adaptation does is
  change to fit (literally, adapt), and the film
  must be accurate to either the effect of a novel
  or the theme of a novel or the message of the
  novel and that the film maker must introduce
  changes where necessary to fit the demands of
  time and to maximize faithfulness along one of
  these axes.