Film Studies

1
Film Studies

• Introduction

2
Table of Contents

• 1. What is Realism and what is Formalism?
• 2. The Lumiére Brothers Workers Leaving the
  Factory and George Méliès A Trip to the Moon
• 3. Realism vs. Formalism
• 4. Problems of Realism and Formalism

3
What is Realism?

• Dictionary definition
• (a) a style of painting and sculpture that seeks
  to represent the familiar or typical in real
  life, rather than an idealized, formalized, or
  romantic interpretation of it
• Collins English Dictionary
• (b) the style of art and literature in which
  everything is shown or described as it really is
  in life.
• Longman American Dictionary

4
What is Realism?

• (c) in the arts, the accurate, detailed,
  unembellished depiction of nature or of
  contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative
  idealization in favour of a close observation of
  outward appearances.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica

5
What is Realism?

• (a) Subject and material (content)
• -- the familiar or typical in our daily life
• (b) The way in which such a subject and material
  is represented (method)
• -- mimesis (Gk. the imitative representation of
  nature and human behaviour)
• The representation of the familiar or typical in
• mimetic manners in literature and visual arts.

6
Boxer of Quirinal, Bronze copy of a Hellenistic
Greek scuture
7

• Details

8

• Old Greek Woman (C 400 BC)

9
Caravaggio, Cardsharps (c 1594-5)
10
Caravaggio, Fortune-Teller (c 1598-9)
11
Johannes Vermeer, Young Woman with a Water
Pitcher (c 1664-5)
12
Johannes Vermeer, Woman Reading a Letter
13
What is Realism?

• Definition in film studies
• A style of filmmaking that attempts to
  represent the look of objective reality as its
  commonly perceived.

14
What is Formalism?

• Dictionary definition
• scrupulous or excessive adherence to
  outward form at the expense of inner reality

15
Jackson Pollock, No. 5 (1948)
16
Joseph Albers, Homage to Square (1965)
17
Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 10 (1939-42)
18
What is Formalism?

• Definition in film studies
• A style of filmmaking in which aesthetic forms
  take precedence over the subject matter as
  content. Time and space as ordinarily perceived
  are often distorted. For Formalism, film is an
  art because its properties are exploited to
  express filmmakers own vision

19
Lumières Films

• Workers Leaving the Factory (1895)
• Actualités (actualities) - Recording an everyday
• event with a stationary camera placed at eye
  level
• without any editing

20
Lumières Films

• Arrival of a Train at the Ciotat station (1985)
• - filmed records of the arrival of a train
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v1dgLEDdFddk

21
Lumières Films

• Auguste and Louis
• Lumière
• Representation of
• the look of reality
• as it is commonly
• perceived

22
Georges Méliès Films

• A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune
  1902)
• A fantasy about a
• rocket journey to the
• moon

23
Georges Méliès Films

• Georges Méliès
• A stage magician at Theatre Robert-Houdin turned
  filmmaker.
• The first innovator in filmmaking.
• The inventor of seminal film tricks

24
Meliés Formalism

• Visual cinematic tricks
• Jump cut - a scene is cut in the middle of
  action
• Double exposure - two images are superimposed
  on the same piece of film
• Multiple images - the screen divided into
  several separate images
• Priority given to the display of aesthetic forms
  and
• visual effects over the representation faithful
  to
• reality. Expression of the filmmakers own
  vision
• disregarding what it may be in reality.

25
Realism and Formalism

• Film realism - the Lumière tendencies
• Recording reality without changing it
• Film formalism - the Méliès tendencies
• Recreating reality or presenting a new,
  different reality

26
Lumiére-Melies Chart

• (Realism) (Formalism)
• LUMIERE MELIES
• The Blair Witch Project
  Spiderman
• Full Monty The
  Gold Rush
• Documentary
  Fantasy

27
Realism / Lumière Tendencies

• The Blair Witch Project (1999) - a low-budget
  horror film made as if amateur documentary
  footage were pieced together. Three students who
  is making a documentary film on a legend locally
  known as Blair Witch go missing.

28
Realism / Lumière Tendencies

• The viewer is told that they were never found but
  one year later their camera and films were
  discovered. The viewer watch the discovered
  footage.
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?veAkKyDfEUnUfeature
  PlayListp30083A55CA7FD332index0playnext1
• http//www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/horror/
  watch/v18951600TcMkfftj
• http//www.dailymotion.com/video/x6nkns_the-blair-
  witch-project-the-movie-p_shortfilms

29
Problems of Film Realism

• Film as representation of reality
• What is filmed is not reality itself but its
  image
• A person who appears on the screen is not herself
  but her image.
• An object who can be seen on the screen is not
  itself but its image.

30
Problems of Film Realism

• René Magrittes painting of Ceci nest pas une
  pipe (This is not a pipe)
• The picture is not the pine itself, though it is
  life-like, but its image.

31
Problems of Film Realism

• A film re-presents objects and people
• Or re-traces (an event) re-calls (an event)
  re-produce (reality), re-enact (an
  event/reality) re-fer to (an event / reality),
  re-build (reality) re-construct (reality)
  re-stage (reality / an event)
• Film is realization in second-time around thus
  actions are suffixed with -re spatially and
  temporally different from what it shows.

32
Problems of Film Formalism

• Even fantasy is constructed on our perception of
  reality.
• It is impossible to create a world totally
  detached from reality.

33
Problems of Film Formalism

• Even a creature from Mars have two eyes, a nose,
  a mouth, two arms, fingers, and two legs.

34
Coexistence and Interaction

• Realism and formalism coexist and interact
• Every film is constructed by a dialectic process
  of film realism and film formalism of mimicking
  and changing reality

35
Blade Runner

• Ridley Scotts SF film, Blade Runner was inspired
  by futuristic or postmodern city- scape of Osaka

36
Blade Runner
37
McLuhan and Annie Hall

• Real Marshall Mcluhan appears in Woody Allens
  Annie Hall
• In the film, he is only the image of Mcluhan and
  not himself