Film Style

1
Film Style

• Understanding form requires familiarity with art
  medium
• Film style via film form
• Mise-en-scène
• Cinematography
• Editing
• Sound
• Pattern of development bespeaks style
• Film style as use a film makes of the filmic art
  medium

2
Mise-en-scène

• Most apparent artistic technique of film
• putting into the scenetheatrical term
• Directors control over what happens in the film
  frame
• Elements of film that overlap with theatre
• Setting, lighting, costume, and acting
• Staging the event for the camera

3
Mise-en-scène

• Most often planned and deliberate
• Often judged by standards of realism
• Problematic for numerous reasons
• Need to evaluate Mise-en-scène in context of
  entire filmfunctional/stylistic
• Restricting Mise-en-scène to realism constrains
  potential of Mise-en-scène
• Georges Méliès used Mise-en-scène in
  revolutionary manner

4
Mise-en-scène

• Méliès employed magical powers of Mise-en-scène
• Extensive planning and preparation
• Extensive directorial control
• Whims of imagination
• Enormous potential of film/reality

5
Mise-en-scène

• Setting
• Costume
• Lighting
• Staging
• Elements rarely appear in isolation
• As viewers, we perceive changein time and space
• Shifts in Mise-en-scène attract our attention
• Help to cue uswhat to look for?

6
Setting

• Can be either forefront or backdrop of film
• Location or set(ting)
• Authenticity?
• Overwhelming?
• Color?
• Use of propsobjects in the setting that have
  function within ongoing action

7
Costume

• Range of functions
• Stylized?
• Graphic?
• Double as prop?
• Genre based costumes/props
• Often coordinated with setting
• Contrast
• Blend
• Coordinate

8
Makeup

• Originally used because actors faces would not
  register well on early film stock
• Used to create authenticity of character
• Makeup often now used to pass unnoticed
• Can accentuate expressions/facial qualities
• Hide/improve/alter facial details
• Emphasis on eyes
• Can be bizarre/absurd
• Stylized for comic caricature

9
Lighting

• Filmic image as result of lighting manipulation
• Texture, shading, shadowing, illumination
• Shapes objects via highlights and shadows
• Creates textures and visual cues

10
Lighting

• 2 kinds of shadows attached/shading or cast
• Attached shadow occurs when light fails to
  illuminate part of an object because of the
  objects shape or surface features
• Shading
• Cast shadow object projects a shadow on other
  element/object/figure in frame

11
Lighting

• Highlights and shadows help create sense of space
  and image
• 4 major features of film lighting
• Quality
• Source
• Direction
• Color

12
Lighting Quality

• Relative intensity of the illumination
• Hard lightingcreates clearly defined shadows,
  crisp textures, and sharp edges
• Mid-day sun
• Soft lightingcreates a diffused illumination
• Overcast sky

13
Lighting Direction

• Frontal lightinglight from front
• Tendency to eliminate shadows
• Sharp character features
• Backlightinglighting from behind subject filmed
• Alone, tends to create silhouettes
• Combined with more frontal sources, creates
  unobtrusively illuminated contour
• Edge lighting/rim lighting

14
Lighting Direction

• Underlightinglight from below the subject
• Suggests an offscreen flashlight
• Distorts features
• Used to create dramatic or horror effects
• Top lightingspotlight shines down from almost
  directly above
• Accentuate roundedness of facial features
• Lighting usually from various directions
• Overall lighting plan

15
Three Point Lighting

• Classic Hollywood filmmaking created custom of
  using at least 3 light sources per shot
• Key light
• Fill light
• Backlight
• Requires constant lighting re-design/rearrangement
  

16
Three Point Lighting

• Well suited for high-key lighting in Classical
  Hollywood Cinema
• High-key lightingoverall lighting design that
  uses fill and backlight to create low contrast
  between brighter and darker areas
• Light quality usually soft
• Shadows made fairly transparent
• Allows for lighting/creation of various times of
  day

17
Low-Key Illumination

• Low-Key Illuminationcreates stronger contrasts
  and sharper darker shadows
• Usually hard lighting
• Fill light lowered or gone
• Effect of chiarosuroextremely dark and light
  regions within the image
• Usually applied to somber/mysterious scenes

18
Lighting

• Constant directorial choice
• Can be used to create/alter motif
• Tendency to think of film lighting in two
  colorswhite of sunlight or soft yellow interior
  lights
• Filmmakers tend to use with white light and use
  offscreen filters to color light
• Lighting helps minimize and clarify information
  available to viewer in frame

19
Staging

• Directorial control of behavior and placement in
  Mise-en-scène
• Mise-en-scène allows figures to express feelings
  and thoughtsnot always vocal
• Facial expression and movement
• Expression of inanimate objects
• Animated non-human figures

20
Actor/Acting

• Actors performance derived from visual and sound
  elements
• Presumed goal of realismnot always
• Acting as functionalelement of film style
• Acting as part of larger Mise-en-scène
• Acting as part of larger narrative
• Not always individualized

21
Actor/Acting

• Typecastingcasting based on persons ability to
  conform to type
• Influence of typage from Soviet Montage cinema of
  1920s
• Actor to embody typical representative of social
  grouping
• Must evaluate acting/performance in larger
  context of film and Mise-en-scène

22
Actor/Acting

• Editing selects/highlights acting performance
• Camera can control potential of performance
• Camera can establish and minimize distance from
  viewers
• Scenes with people usually focus on face or
  pantomimic gestures of body

23
Space

• Arrangement of the Mise-en-scène creates
  composition of screen space
• Two-dimensional composition
• Organization of shapes, textures, light
• Also represents three-dimensional space in which
  action occurs
• Mise-en-scène must provide audience cues that
  allow us to understand/infer three-dimensionality
  of scene

24
Space

• Director uses Mise-en-scène to guide viewers
  attention/focus
• Helps shape viewers conception of filmic space
• Viewer attuned to changes
• Movement
• Color
• Distinction
• Size

25
Space

• Moving items usually draw our attention
• Color contrast can shape our attention and
  conception of space
• Use of backdrop vs. foreground
• Warm colors (red-orange-yellow) attract attention
  against neutral background
• Cool colors (purple, green) less prominent
  against neutral background

26
Color Design

• Limited paletteuse of few noncontrasting
  colorswhite-based
• Monochromatic at extremeslight variation
  noticeable
• Lighter shapes/object draw attention

27
Compositional Balance

• Compositional balanceextent to which areas of
  screen space have equally distributed masses and
  interests
• Director usually balances left and right
• Extremebilateral symmetry
• Loose balanceimperfect symmetry
• Balance often based on centering of human body
• Balance can be created via various objects

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Compositional Balance

• Helps to shape our expectations
• Balanced expectation as norm
• Unbalanced can be functional
• Helps to establish three-dimensionality
• Cues us on depthdepth cues
• Imagine space/depth beyond two-dimensional screen
• Function of lighting, setting, costumes, etc.

29
Depth Cues

• Suggest both volume and planes
• Volumesolid thing that occupies
  three-dimensional space
• Viewer established volume based upon knowledge of
  filmic world (diegesis)
• Planeslayers of space occupied by persons or
  objects
• Described according to how close or far away from
  camera (foreground, middle ground, background)
• Only pure blank screen as single plane

30
Depth Cues

• Helps to suggest overlap of plane edges
• Color variation also used to establish
  overlapping of planes
• Filmmakers tend to use cool or pale colors as
  background planes to establish overlapping planes

31
Depth Cues

• Movement
• Perhaps most important depth cue
• Suggests both planes and volume
• Allows physical and emotional continuity
• Suggests space via potential movement

32
Depth Cues

• Aerial Perspectivehazing of more distant planes
• Visual assumption that sharper outlines and purer
  colors belong to foreground
• Size Diminutionfigures and objects farther away
  from us are seen to get proportionally smaller
• Smaller the figure appears, the farther away we
  believe it to be
• Reinforces sense of deep space with considerable
  distances between various planes
• Linear perspective

33
Depth Cues

• Creation of dynamic relation between foreground
  and background
• Shallow-space composition
• Mise-en-scène suggests comparatively little depth
• Closest and most distant planes appear only
  slightly separated
• Deep-space compositionopposite of shallow-space
• Significant distance seems to separate planes
• Depth cues ultimately focus our attention on
  specific narrative and stylistic elements
• Frontalityviewers assumption that story
  information will derive from characters face
  rather than back

34
Time

• Shot and viewing take place in time
• Director decides how long shot will last on
  screen
• Director can direct/control rhythm of time
• Beat, pulse, pace of shots, tempo, pattern of
  accents, relation of stronger/weaker beats
• Any movement in Mise-en-scène may have rhythm

35
Time

• Viewers constantly scanning information in frame
  for time and place
• Very few frames allow us to perceive information
  simultaneously
• Time-bound process of scanning
• Takes time
• Creates time
• Creates and assumes space

36
Mise-en-scène

• Positions film shot in space and time
• Interactions of filmic elements
• Setting, lighting, costume, staging
• Movement, color, depth, planes, volume, time,
  space
• Patterns and developments define story world,
  narrative, style, and expectations