YALE FILM STUDIES Film Analysis Web Site 2.0

DEEP FOCUS Like deep space, deep focus involves staging an event on film such thatsignificant elements occupy widely separated planes in the image.. Focus isthe quality the "sharpness" o

YALE FILM STUDIES Film Analysis Web Site 2.0

WHAT THE FILM ANALYSIS GUIDE COVERS

Welcome to the Yale Film Analysis Web Site

The Film Analysis Guide was developed to meet the needs of faculty and students

at Yale who are interested in becoming familiar with the vocabulary of film studies and thetechniques of cinema The user can either read the complete document or search out aparticular topic of interest Related links within the Guide are provided as appropriate, asare links to film clips illustrating the topic or term in question

HOW THE GUIDE IS ORGANIZED

The Guide is broken into six parts corresponding to the major divisions withincinema technique and film studies These major divisions are further broken downinto sections, subsections and definitions for terms The final Part (Analysis) offersbasic examples of how to analyze two film sequences

NAVIGATING THE GUIDE

If you see a drop down menu in the left frame, but no table of contents, click onthe button below (This problem occasionally arises with some older browsers that areunable to understand the particular JavaScript instructions used to create the table ofcontents.)

There are multiple ways to navigate the Film Analysis Guide, depending on thetype of browser being used and the visitor's needs For those who wish to read theGuide straight through without skipping around, the complete site can be navigatedusing the forward and backward arrows visible at the top and bottom of each page

Most users are likely to prefer to browse the site using the navigational toolsoffered in the left frame The content for each of the major divisions (e.g.,cinematography) is clustered in a single web page In addition, particular topicswithin the major divisions can be accessed by expanding the table of contents andclicking on the relevant link or by using the alphabetized index and search function Ifyou are unfamiliar with navigating this sort of site, more detailed instructions can befound in the menu item labeled About this Guide

You can view the complete list of film clips used in the Guide by choosing the FilmClips option on the drop down menu to the left

CONVENTIONS USED IN THIS GUIDE

When the film icon appears next to an image, that means that a film clip can beviewed that illustrates the relevant topic or term Click on the icon to start the clip Inorder to view the clips, you must have the Windows Media Player and browser plug-

in installed on your computer If you do not, they can be downloaded for free at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp

Cross-links within the Guide are offered to direct the user to related concepts or toprovide a more detailed discussion of a particular topic

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Yale University's Film Study Center houses a large collection of films on avariety of formats Click on Film Study Center or use the drop down menu on the leftframe from anywhere within this site to learn more

Yale University Libraries host a research guide on film studies which will helpyou to find film related articles and publications The URL ishttp://www.library.yale.edu/humanities/film/

Click here, or on the drop down menu to check our weekly list of On-CampusFilm Screenings

FEEDBACK

Send comments, corrections and suggestions about this site to Mariano Prunes

CREDITS

Mariano Prunes, Michael Raine, Mary Litch

Part 1: Basic Terms

AUTEUR

French for "author" Used by critics writing for Cahiers du cinema and other journals

to indicate the figure, usually the director, who stamped a film with his/her own

"personality" Opposed to "metteurs en scene" who merely transcribed a workachieved in another medium into film The concept allowed critics to evaluate highlyworks of American genre cinema that were otherwise dismissed in favor of thedeveloping European art cinema

Director Abbas Kiarostami appearing as himself in the last scene of Taste ofCherry (Ta'm e Guilass, Iran, 1997)

DIEGESIS

The diegesis includes objects, events, spaces and the characters that inhabitthem, including things, actions, and attitudes not explicitly presented in the film butinferred by the audience That audience constructs a diegetic world from the materialpresented in a narrative film Some films make it impossible to construct a coherent

diegetic world, for example Last Year at Marienbad (L'année dernière à Marienbad,

Alan Resnais, 1961) or even contain no diegesis at all but deal only with the formal

properties of film, for instance Mothlight (Stan Brakhage, 1963) The "diegetic world"

of the documentary is usually taken to be simply the world, but some drama

documentaries test that assumption such as Land Without Bread (Las Hurdes, Luis

Buñuel, 1932)

Different media have different forms of diegesis Henry V (Lawrence Olivier,

England, 1944) starts with a long crane shot across a detailed model landscape of 16th century London Over the course of its narrative, the film shifts its diegetic register from the presentational form of the Elizabethan theater to the representational form of mainstream narrative cinema.

EDITING

The joining together of clips of film into a single filmstrip The cut is a simpleedit but there are many other possible ways to transition from one shot to another Seethe section on editing

Picture: Yelizaveta Svilova at the editing table of Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s kinoapparatom, Dziga Vertov USSR, 1929)

FLASHBACK FLASHFORWARD

A jump backwards or forwards in diegetic time With the use of flashback /flashforward the order of events in the plot no longer matches the order of events in

the story Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) is a famous film composed almost

entirely of flashbacks and flashforwards The film timeline spans over 60 years, as ittraces the life of Charles Foster Kane from his childhood to his deathbed and oninto the repercussions of his actions on the people around him Some charactersappear at several time periods in the film, usually being interviewed in the present andappearing in the past as they tell the reporter of their memories of Kane JosephCotten, who plays Kane's best friend, is shown here as an old man in a rest home(with the help of some heavy make-up) and as a young man working with Kane in hisnewspaper

FOCUS

Focus refers to the degree to which light rays coming from any particular part

of an object pass through the lens and reconverge at the same point on a frame of thefilm negative, creating sharp outlines and distinct textures that match the originalobject This optical property of the cinema creates variations in depth of field

through shallow focus, deep focus, and techniques such as racking focus DzigaVertov's films celebrated the power of cinema to create a "communist decoding of

reality", most overtly in Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s kinoapparatom,

Thriller/Detective film: The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)

Horror film: Bride of Frankestein (John Whale, 1935)

Western: The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)

Musical: Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952)

Part 2: MISE-EN-SCENE

All the things that are "put in the scene": the setting, the decor, the lighting, thecostumes, the performance etc Narrative films often manipulate the elements of mise-en-scene, such as decor, costume, and acting to intensify or undermine the ostensiblesignificance of a particular scene

STORY / PLOT

Perhaps more correctly labelled fabula and syuzhet, story refers to all theaudience infers about the events that occur in the diegesis on the basis of what they areshown by the plot the events that are directly presented in the film The order,duration, and setting of those events, as well as the relation between them, allconstitute elements of the plot Story is always more extensive than plot even in themost straightforward drama but certain genres, such as the film noir and the thriller,manipulate the relationship of story and plot for dramatic purposes A film such asMemento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) forces its audience to continually reconstruct thestory told in a temporally convoluted plot

SCENE / SEQUENCE

A scene is a segment of a narrative film that usually takes place in a single timeand place, often with the same characters Sometimes a single scene may contain twolines of action, occurring in different spaces or even different times, that are related

by means of crosscutting Scene and sequence can usually be used interchangeably,though the latter term can also refer to a longer segment of film that does not obey thespatial and temporal unities of a single scene For example, a montage sequence thatshows in a few shots a process that occurs over a period of time

SHOT

A single stream of images, uninterrupted by editing The shot can use a static or

a mobile framing, a standard or a non-standard frame rate, but it must be continuous.The shot is one of the basic units of cinema yet has always been subject tomanipulation, for example stop-motion cinematography or superimposition Incontemporary cinema, with the use of computer graphics and sequences built-up from

a series of still frames (eg The Matrix), the boundaries of the shot are increasingly

being challenged

Part 2: Mise-en-scene

The representation of space affects the reading of a film Depth, proximity, sizeand proportions of the places and objects in a film can be manipulated through cameraplacement and lenses, lighting, decor, effectively determining mood or relationshipsbetween elements in the diegetic world

Section 1 - Decor

An important elememt of "putting in the scene" is décor, the objects contained

in and the setting of a scene Décor can be used to amplify character emotion or the

dominant mood of a film In these shots from 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley

Kubrick, 1969) the futuristic furniture and reduced color scheme stress the sterilityand impersonality of the space station environment Later, the digital nature of the

HAL computer is represented by the repeating patterns and strong geometrical design

of the set

In Senso (Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1954) décor emphazises the social difference

between a wealthy married woman in her richly furnished apartment and her soldierlover in the barren military barracks Ultimately, she finds the contrast so appallingthat she ruins her reputation and financial standing in order to satisfy her lover's desirefor a luxurious lifestyle

REAR PROJECTION

Usually used to combine foreground action, often actors in conversation, with abackground often shot earlier, on location Rear projection provides an economicalway to set films in exotic or dangerous locations without having to transportexpensive stars or endure demanding conditions In some films, the relationshipbetween scenes shot on location and scenes shot using rear projection becomes asignifying pattern In other films, it's just cheap

Rear projection is featured extensively in Douglas Sirk's lush melodrama Written On

The Wind (1956) Specifically, almost every car ride is shot in this way, a common

feature in Classical Hollywood films, due to the physical restrains of shooting in thestudio In addition, by speeding up the rate of the projected images in the background,

or quickly changing its angle, rear projection allows for an impression of speed thatinvolves no real danger

(2)

Even if one of the protagonists of Written On The Wind is a fast-driving

alcoholic millionaire (and therefore there are multiple instances of careless driving),rear projection is preferred to stunts both for economic and aesthetic reasons Forexample, physical spectacle is not as important in a melodrama as it would be in anaction film

Section 2 - Lighting

The intensity, direction, and quality of lighting have a profound effect on theway an image is perceived Light affects the way colors are rendered, both in terms ofhue and depth, and can focus attention on particular elements of the composition.Much like movement in the cinema, the history of lighting technology is intrisicallylinked to the history of film style Most mainstream films rely on the three-pointlighting style, and its genre variations Other films, for example documentaries andrealist cinema, rely on natural light to create a sense of authenticity

THREE-POINT LIGHTING

The standard lighting scheme for classical narrative cinema In order to model

an actor's face (or another object) with a sense of depth, light from three directions isused, as in the diagram below A backlight picks out the subject from its background,

a bright key light highlights the object and a fill light from the opposite side ensuresthat the key light casts only faint shadows

Illustration courtesy of http://www.tcf.ua.edu/TVCrit/

These shots from Written On The Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956) demostrate the classical

use of three-point lighting Laurel Bacall and Rock Hudson are rendered glamorous

by the balanced lighting Compare this to the manipulation of lighting for expressivepurposes on the high-key lighting and low-key lighting pages

HIGH-KEY LIGHTING

A lighting scheme in which the fill light is raised to almost the same level asthe key light This produces images that are usually very bright and that feature fewshadows on the principal subjects This bright image is characteristic of entertainment

genres such as musicals and comedies such as Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, Tsui Hark, Honk Kong, 1986)

LOW-KEY LIGHTING

A lighting scheme that employs very little fill light, creating strong contrastsbetween the brightest and darkest parts of an image and often creating strong shadowsthat obscure parts of the principal subjects This lighting scheme is often associated

with "hard-boiled" or suspense genres such as film noir Here are some examples from

Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958.)

Section 3 - Space

The representation of space affects the reading of a film Depth, proximity, sizeand proportions of the places and objects in a film can be manipulated through cameraplacement and lenses, lighting, decor, effectively determining mood or relationshipsbetween elements in the diegetic world

Deep space is used throughout many Iranian films such as The Color of

Paradise (Rang-e Khoda,1999) Director Majid Majidi likes to integrate the

characters into their natural surroundings, to map out the actual distances involvedbetween one location and another in order to emphasize just exactly how hard it is for

a particular character (especially children) to move from one place to another

In this composition, Mohammad's father looks in apprehension at the schoolwhere his blind son is visiting.In the far background, Mohammad is playing with hissister and other "normal" children, but his father does not believe Mohammad shouldtry to mingle with them since he could never be their equal, due to his disability Onthe other hand, Mohammad enjoys the company of his new friends in the countrysidemuch more than the School for the Blind in Tehran, where he spends most of the year.The distance between the two points of view, as well as the impossibility ofcommunication between Mohammad and his father (the son is too respectful of hisfather, the father finds his son's situation too painful), is reflected in the deep use ofmise-en-scene.

FRONTALITY

Frontality refers to the staging of elements, often human figures, so that theyface the camera square-on This arrangement is an alternative to oblique staging.Frontal staging is usually avoided by the invisible style of continuity editing, since itsupposedly breaks the spectator's illusion of peeking into a separate world, by havingcharacters look directly into the camera as if they were aware of the viewers'presence Some films may go even further and have the characters speak to the

camera, in what is called a direct address Accordingly, frontality is often used in

films that are more willing to play with, or openly defy, the distance between the

screen and the spectator In this shot from The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di

Stendhal, Italy, 1996) Dario Argento exploits the iconicity of frontal staging in

multiple ways

First, he situates his characters on a parallel plane with the famous profileportraits of The Duke of Urbino and his wife by Piero Della Francesca Then, heflattens the characters by making the space between them and the paintings shallowwith the use of a zoom lens, while keeping all planes in focus As a reflexive auteur,Argento thus uses frontality to equate his characters with the paintings: both arefictional creations, the product of an artist's work As a final self-referential pun,Argento has his Japanese tourist taking a picture of us!

MATTE SHOT

A process shot in which two photographic images (usually background andforeground) are combined into a single image using an optical printer Matte shots can

be used to add elements to a realistic scene or to create fantasy spaces In these four

examples from Vertigo (1958), director Alfred Hitchcock uses all possible

combinations In the first image, the white belfry is a model added on the foreground

of a shot of the roof; in the second image, the sky in the background is clearly apainting, with the purpose of making us believe the scene takes place on a bell tower'stop floor, rather than on the studio's ground

The other two shots belong to the fantasy sequence of Scottie's dream In thefirst one his face is superimposed over a campy "unconscious" image; the last onereverses the process, having a mixture of "real" and matted elements in thebackground (the roof and the belfry) with the added silhouette in the foreground

Matte shooting is one of the most common techniques used in studiofilmmaking, either for economical reasons (it's cheaper to shot a picture of the Eiffeltower than to travel to Paris) or because it would be impossible or too dangerous totry to shot in the real space Sometimes, as when animation and real figures interact,that space may not even exist In recent years, however, special effects and computergenerated images have taken over the function of matte shots

OFFSCREEN SPACE

Space that exists in the diegesis but that is not visible in the frame Offscreenspace becomes significant when the viewer's attention is called to an event orpresence in the diegesis that is not visible in the frame Offscreen space is commonly

exploited for suspense in horror and thriller films, such as The Stendhal Syndrome (La

Sindrome di Stendhal, Dario Argento, Italy, 1996)

(3)

As discussed in the offscreen sound entry, this scene from Life on Earth (La

Vie sur Terre, Abderrahmane Sissako, Mauritania, 1998) explores the difficulties of

establishing communication in a postcolonial space that still depends on the formercolonial master for its technology and even its calendar

(4)

SHALLOW SPACE

The opposite of deep space, in shallow space the image is staged with very littledepth The figures in the image occupy the same or closely positioned planes Whilethe resulting image loses realistic appeal, its flatness enhances its pictorial qualities.Striking graphic patters can be achieved through shallow space In these frames from

My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari No Totoro, Japan, 1988) Miyazaki fills the entire

background with a lamp-eyed, grinning catbus Shallow space creates ambiguity: isthe cat brimming with joy at the sisters' encounter, or is he about to eat them?

Shallow space can be staged, or it can also be achieved optically, with the use

of a telephoto lens.This is particularly useful for creating claustrophic images, since itmakes the characters look like they are being crushed against the background

Section 4 - Costume

Costume simply refers to the clothes that characters wear Costume in narrativecinema is used to signify character, or advertise particular fashions, or to make cleardistinctions between characters

In this example from Life on Earth (La Vie sur Terre, 1998) filmmaker and

actor Abderrahmane Sissako uses "similar" costumes (long loose clothes, big hats) tofurther stress the cultural and psychological implications of a nomadic existence, splitbetween the cold affluence of France and the colorful poverty of Mauritania

Section 5 - Acting

There is enormous historical and cultural variation in performance styles in thecinema Early melodramatic styles, clearly indebted to the 19th century theater, gaveway in Western cinema to a relatively naturalistic style There are many alternatives

to the dominant style: the kabuki-influenced performances of kyu-geki Japanese

period films, the use of non-professional actors in Italian neorealism, the typage ofsilent Soviet Cinema, the improvisatory practices of directors like John Cassavettes orEric Rohmer, the slapstick comedy of Laurel and Hardy, or the deadpan of BusterKeaton and Jacques Tatí, not to mention the exuberant histrionics of Bollywood films

TYPAGE

Typage refers to the selection of actors on the basis that their facial or bodilyfeatures readily convey the truth of the character the actor plays Usually associatedwith the Soviet Montage school, these filmmakers thought that the life-experience of

a non-actor guaranteed the authenticity of their performance when they attempted adramatic role similar to their real social role Typage is related to the use of stereotype

in commuicating the essential qualities of a character Although current castingpractices can no longer be described as typage, the use of performers with experience

in the role they played is common to most films, whether they rely on the star system,

or on non-professional actors In Pudovkin's Storm Over Asia (Potomok

Chingis-Khana, USSR, 1928), professional and non-professional actors are used alike The

cast was selected not on terms of their skills or reputation, but on their physicalressemblance to the following types:

The hero of the Mongol people and the explotative English capitalist

The partisan's leader, noble and stoic in his deathbed and the pompous and greedygeneral

The partisan woman, strong mother and fighter and the decrepit general's wife withroyal ambitions

Part 3: Cinematography

Section 1 - Quality

This section explores some of the elements at play in the construction of a shot

As the critics at Cahiers du cinéma maintained, the "how" is as important as the

"what" in the cinema The look of an image, its balance of dark and light, the depth ofthe space in focus, the relation of background and foreground, etc all affect thereception of the image For instance, the optical qualities of grainy black and white in

Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Maarakat madinat al Jazaer, Algeria, 1965) seem

to guarantee its authenticity On the other hand, the shimmering Technicolor of a

musical such as Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952) suggests an

out-of-this-world glamor and excitement

COLOR

Early films were shot in black and white but the cinema soon included colorimages These images were initially painted or stencilled onto the film but by the1930s filmmakers were able to include color sequences in their films Apart from theadded realism or glamor that a color image could provide, color is also used to createaesthetic patterns and to establish character or emotion in narrative cinema

In Federico Fellini's extravagant Juliet of the Spirits (Giulietta degli Spiriti, 1965)

colors separate the bourgeois reality and the fantasy daydreamings of the titlecharacter, who partyhops between black and white and reds and purples

Juliet of the Spirits was the first Fellini film in color, and he intended to make full use

of it In order to further enhance the contrast with his previous work, he cast hisfavorite actress and wife Giulietta Massina, the protagonist of Fellini's earlier

successes such as Nights of Cabiria (Le Notti di Cabiria, 1957) in which she plays a

destitute hooker in a grim suburban environment Now Fellini has the same actressplay a rich housewife in luscious technicolor, obviously signaling a clear turning pointfrom his early Neorealism-inspired films

Contrary to popular belief (and Goethe), colors do not necessarily carry

exclusive meanings Compare the use of red in Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers (Viskingar Och Rop, 1972),

and Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou (1990), for example.

(5)While Zhang exploits red as a cliched signifier of unrestrained passion,Bergman associates the color with stagnation and contaminated blood

For instance, this shot from Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958) employs high

contrast to further emphasize racial differences between a blonde American womanand a menacing Mexican man

DEEP FOCUS

Like deep space, deep focus involves staging an event on film such thatsignificant elements occupy widely separated planes in the image Unlike deep space,deep focus requires that elements at very different depths of the image both be in

focus In these two shots from Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) Besieged (L'Assedio, Bernardo Bertolucci,1998) all of the different planes of the image are

given equal importance through deep focus, not only to the characters (like the manpeeking at the window in the first image), but also to the spaces (Shanduray'sbasement room in the second)

While deep focus may be used occasionally, some auteurs use it consistentlyfor they believe it achieves a truer representation of space Directors like Jean Renoir,Orson Welles, Hou Hsao-Hsien, or Abbas Kiarostami all use deep focus as anessential part of their signature style

SHALLOW FOCUS

A restricted depth of field, which keeps only one plane in sharp focus; the opposite of deep focus Used to direct the viewer's attention to one element of a scene Shallow focus is very common in close-up, as in these two shots from Central Station (Central do Brasil, Walter Selles, Brazil, 1998).

Shallow focus suggests psychological introspection, since a character appears

as oblivious to the world around her/him It is therefore commonly employed ingenres such as the melodrama, where the actions and thoughts of an individual prevailover everything else

technique to focus audience attention on the most significant aspect of a scene withouthaving to use an analytic cut-in.

Depth of field is directly connected, but not to be confused, with focus Focus isthe quality (the "sharpness" of an object as it is registered in the image) and depth offield refers to the extent to which the space represented is in focus For a given lensaperture and level of lighting, the longer the focal distance (the distance between thelens and the object that is in focus) the greater the focal depth For a given focaldistance, the greater the level of lighting or the narrower the aperture, the greater thefocal depth For that reason, close-up shooting and shooting in low light conditionsoften results in images with very shallow depth of field An image with shallow depth

of field, as this frame from Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, Tsui Hark , 1986), has

some elements in focus, but others are not

EXPOSURE

A camera lens has an aperture that controls how much light passes through thelens and onto the film If the aperture is widened, more light comes through and theresultant image will become more exposed If an image is so pale that the detailbegins to disappear, it can be described as "overexposed" Conversely, a narrowaperture that allows through less light will produce a darker image than normal,known as "underexposed" Exposure can be manipulated to guide an audience'sresponse to a scene

In his film Traffic (2000), Steven Soderbergh decided to shot all of thesequences in the Northern Mexico desert overexposed The resulting images give animpression of a barren, desolated land being mercilessly burnt by the sun, a no-man'sland over which police and customs have no control

instance in this scene from Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, Tsui Hark, Honk

Kong, 1986), a connection is made between an activist in hiding and a police officerwho is pursuing him

(6)Racking focus is usually done quite quickly; in a way, the technique tries tomimick a brief, fleeting glance that can be used to quicken the tempo or increasesuspense

RATE

A typical sound film is shot at a frame rate of 24 frames per second If thenumber of frames exposed in each second is increased, the action will seem to movemore slowly than normal when it is played back Conversely, the fewer the number offrames exposed each second, the more rapid the resulting action appears to be Theextreme case of frame rate manipulation is stop-motion, when the camera takes onlyone frame then the subject is manipulated or allowed to change before taking anotherframe

In this clip from Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s

kinoapparatom, USSR, 1929) stop motion is used to give the impression than the

chairs open up by themselves

(7)

In Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai, Japan, 1954), slow

motion is used to contrast the emotional rescue of a child with the death of the manwho kidnapped him

(8)

TELEPHOTO SHOT

An image shot with an extremely long lens is called a telephoto shot The effect

of using a long lens is to compress the apparent depth of an image, so that elementsthat are relatively close or far away from the camera seem to lie at approximately the

same distance In this first shot from Payback (Brian Helgeland, 1999), we can clearly

see there is a considerable distance beteen the fallen body and the red car

Yet, when a telephoto lens is used for a close-up of Mel Gibson, his face lookslike it is pressed against the car! Here a telephoto lens create a shallow space, whichcombines with extreme canted framing to suggest the physical and psychologicaldisarray of a man who has been betrayed, shot, and left for dead

of field and apparent size is quite different Zooms are commonly used at thebeginning of a scene, or even a film, to introduce an object or character by focusing

on it In the initial sequence of The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal,

Dario Argento, Italy, 1996), the camera zooms from a medium long shot of peoplecueing up at a museum's entrance to a medium close-up of the female protagonist.

In one sense, cinema is an art of selection The edges of the image create a

"frame" that includes or excludes aspects of what occurs in front of the camera the

"profilmic event" The expressive qualities of framing include the angle of the camera

to the object, the aspect ratio of the projected image, the relationship between camera

and object, and the association of camera with character In Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun zankoku monogatari, Oshima Nagisa, 1960) the radical decentering of the

character in relation to the frame marks their failed struggle to find a place in theirworld

ANGLE OF FRAMING

Many films are shot with a camera that appears to be at approximately the sameheight as its subject However, it is possible to film from a position that issignificantly lower or higher than the dominant element of the shot In that case, theimage is described as low angle or high angle respectively Angle of framing can beused to indicate the relation between a character and the camera's point of view Orcan simply be used to create striking visual compositions

Camera angle is often used to suggest either vulnerability or power In The

Color of Paradise (Rang-e Khoda,1999) the father, who rules absolute over his

family, is often portrayed from a low angle, therefore aggrandizing his figure

On the other hand, his blind son Mohammad and his elderly grandmother areoften shot from a high angle, emphasizing their dependence and smallness Theseinterpretations are not exclusive, however The relation between camera and subjectcan be rendered ironic, or it may suggest more the subject of perception than to thestate of the object The father in this film is so busy smiling at his fiancee that he fallsoff his horse, while Mohammed and her granny seen from above may also indicatethat God is watching over them, and keeping them under protection

ASPECT RATIO

The ratio of the horizontal to the vertical sides of an image Until the 1950salmost all film was shot in a 4:3 or 1.33:1 aspect ratio Some filmmakers usedmultiple projectors to create a wider aspect ratio whereas others claimed that thescreen should be square, not rectangular Widescreen formats became more popular inthe 1950s and now films are made in a variety of aspect ratios some of the mostcommon being 1.66:1, 1.76:1, 1.85:1, and 2.35:1 (cinemascope)

Widescreen films are often trimmed for television or video release, effectivelyaltering the original compositions Some DVD's have the option of showing the film

in its original format and in a reduced ratio that fits the TV screen Compare the same

frame from Bertolucci's Besieged (L'Assedio, 1998) Objects appear much more

cramped with the reduced aspect ratio, giving an impression of physical (andpsychological) space different from the theatrical release

LEVEL OF FRAMING

Not only the angle from which a camera films but the height can also be asignificant element in a film A low-level camera is placed close to the groundwhereas a high-level camera would be placed above the typical perspective shown inthe cinema Camera level is used to signify sympathy for characters who occupyparticular levels in the image, or just to create pleasurable compositions Camera level

is obviously used to a greater advantage when the difference in height bewteen

objects or characters is greater In The Color of Paradise (Rang-e Khoda, Iran, 1999)

Majid Majidi uses different camera height to emphasize the difference betweenMohammad and his father

In the first image, the camera concentrates on Mohammad as he recognizes hisfather's hand, after patiently waiting for him for hours The father is almost absentfrom the scene; only the part of him that Mohammad touches is visible, thereforeincreasing our empathy with the blind boy On the second image, camera level isadjusted to the father's size, making Mohammed a puny, defenceless figure in a worldthat overcomes him The first shot is on Mohammad's School for the Blind, while the

second is on a shop in Tehran Through different camera levels, the director makesclear where Mohammad's fits and where he does not.

CANTED FRAMING

Canted Framing is a view in which the frame is not level; either the right or leftside is lower than the other, causing objects in the scene to appear slanted out of anupright positon.Canted framings are used to create an impression of chaos andinstability They are therefore associated with the frantic rhythms of action films,music videos and animation

Many Hong Kong films of the 80s and 90s blend elements of the genres

mentioned above, for instance Tsui Hark's Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, 1986).

These films employ unconventional framings to achieve their signature dizzing,freewheeling style Canted framings are also common when shooting with aSteadycam

FOLLOWING SHOT

A shot with framing that shifts to keep a moving figure onscreen A followingshot combines a camera movement, like panning, tracking, tilting or craning, with thespecific function of directing our attention to a character or object as he/she/it moves

inside the frame In this shot from Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) the

camera pans slightly to accompany a couple into the ballroom floor

(11)

REFRAMING

Short panning or tilting movements to adjust for the figures' movements,keeping them onscreen or centered An important technique of continuity editing,thanks to its unobstrusive nature The characters' actions take precedence over the

camera movements, as in this dancing scene from Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

WIDE ANGLE LENS

A lens of short focal length that affects a scene's perspective by distortingstraight lines near the edges of the frame and by exaggerating the distance betweenforeground and background planes In doing so it allows for more space to enter theframe (hence the name "wide"), which makes it more convenient for shooting in aclosed location, for instance a real room, rather than a three-wall studio room Inaddition, a wider lens allows for a bigger depth of field In 35mm filming, a wideangle lens is 30mm or less See also telephoto lens

Since a wide angle lens distorts the edges of an image, as in this frame from Yi

Yi (Edward Yang, Taiwan, 2000), extreme wide lenses are avoided in naturalistic

styles, or they are used in unrestrained or open spaces, with no converging linesaround the edges of the frame

Section 3 - Scale

If the same object were filmed at different shot scales it would often signifyquite differently Shot scale can foster intimacy with a character, or conversely, it canswallow the character in its environment.Orson Welles exploited divergent shot scales

in Citizen Kane (1941) to demonstrate the changing power relationship between

Charles Foster Kane and his lawyer As a boy, his figure is lost in the snow at theback of the shot as the lawyer arranges for his adoption As a young man he rebelsagainst Bernstein's oversight, rising in the frame as he asserts himself

EXTREME LONG SHOT

A framing in which the scale of the object shown is very small; a building,landscape, or crowd of people will fill the screen Usually the first or last shots of asequence, that can also function as establishing shots The following examples of

framing from Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) and A Summer Tale (Conte

d'Été, Eric Rohmer, 1996) well illustrate the range of uses for this particular shot scale.

These two extreme long shots are also establishing shots However, theirprimary function is different Whereas Rohmer give us a standard establishing shotthat introduces the locale where the main characters are about to meet, Kubrick usesthe ballroom shot mainly as a brief transition between two more important scenes.While the two shots above have similar sizes, some extreme long shots can besignificantly larger, particularly if shot from the air with the help of cranes or

helicopters This kind of extreme long shot is also called bird's eye view shot, since it

gives an aerial perspective of the scene

LONG SHOT

A framing in which the scale of the object shown is small; a standing humanfigure would appear nearly the height of the screen It makes for a relatively stableshot that can accomodate movement without reframing It is therefore commonly used in genres where a full body action is to be seen in its entirety, for instance Hollywood Musicals or 1970s Martial Arts films.

Another advantage of the long shot is that it allows to show a character and her/

his surroundings in a single frame, as in these two images from Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) and A Summer Tale (Conte d'Été, Eric Rohmer, 1996).

MEDIUM LONG SHOT

Framing such than an object four or five feet high would fill most of the screen

vertically Also called plain américain, given its recurrence in the Western genre,

where it was important to keep a cowboy's weapon in the image

Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

A Summer Tale (Conte d'Été) France Eric Rohmer, 1996

MEDIUM CLOSE-UP

A framing in which the scale of the object shown is fairly large; a human figureseen from the chest up would fill most of the screen Another common shot scale

Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

A Summer Tale (Conte d'Été, Eric Rohmer, 1996)

CLOSE-UP

A framing in which the scale of the object shown is relatively large In a

close-up a person's head, or some other similarly sized object, would fill the frame Framingscales are not universal, but rather established in relationship with other frames from

the same film These two shots from Eyes Wide Shut and A Summer Tale can be described as close-ups, even if one starts at the neck and the second at the upper chest