16. Write A Cinematography Review

1. Select any film sequence that is critically, aesthetically and historically note worthy.
2. Review the film in regards to the elements of cinematography.
3. Investigate the cinematography in the film sequence to discuss the aesthetics and technical aspects.

15. Historical film / film history Research When using film to examine and discuss history and historical events, it is useful to look at the following areas in detail:

The film as 'history' - What is the event, how is it portrayed, how 'accurate' is it, what source is it based on, from whose point of view is it from?

The Birth of A Nation is a one film that was made reflecting a real American history.  It contained a fictional narrative and historical events that happened in America.  The story line can be considered accurate since it depicted a few historical event that were actually occurred such as the death of the president Lincoln, the Civil War, the birth of KKK and the suppression of black people.  The film was based on The Clansman depicted from a novel written by Thomas Dixon Jr. that was published in 1905.  It was the second released of a trilogy on Ku Klux Klan or KKK.


The film as 'film' - What from is used (e.g documentary, fictional narrative), what techniques are used to tell the story, how is film language used (i.e editing, framing, costume, cast, music and sound)?

The Birth of A Nation uses fictional narrative.  The film portrays historical events covering the Pre-Civil War and the Reconstruction Period.  The film story line was aligned chronologically based on factual events that happened in the past.  There are couple main techniques being used by Griffith.  He uses continuity editing to ensure the story line is placed accordingly to the factual events and parallel editing concept where he shows two different events simultaneously.to portray that the events were occurred at the same time to the viewer.  Couple shot techniques such as Continuity Editing, Parallel Editing, Establishing Shots, Closeup Shots, Color Tinting, and Matte being used throughout the film by Griffith to take audience to feel the movie as real possible.  The film had employed hundreds of extras to establish the war scenes and other scene that require many extras.  All costumes, houses, uniforms and furniture were made for the cast to resemble the life and atmosphere of the film.  When the movie was released to public, it sparked all sort of attentions (goods and bad).  In theater  the movie was shown along with life orchestral performance to create more dramatic experience for the viewer.


The film in context - When was it made, who is it made for, how was it marketed, what was the social and cultural background to its creation and how did that affect the film?


This approach is helpful to both historians and film academics as not only is the film examined as a method of showing a historical event or figure, but the text itself becomes an area of historical study, a piece of social and cultural history.


Historical film / film history Research each film to be analysed  should cover the following areas:
1. A brief historical background to the events portrayed.
2. How the film represents that history and the filmic technique used to explore themes and story.
3. The films own historical context.

14. Citizen Kane (1941) is widely regarded as "one of the best films ever made". Analyze some of the factors which may be responsible for this and the extent to which contemporary viewers might agree.

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. It was Welles's first feature film.  The fresh, sophisticated, and classic masterpiece of the movie is probably regarded as the world's most famous and highly-rated film, with its many remarkable scenes and performances, cinematic and narrative techniques and experimental innovations (in photography, editing, and sound) has become few factors that contribute to its being famous.

Most importantly, the innovative in the development of cinematic technique portrayed in the film where it uses film as an art form to energetically communicate and display a non-static view of life. Its components brought together the following factors:

• use of a subjective camera
• unconventional lighting, including chiaroscuro, backlighting and high-contrast lighting, prefiguring the darkness and low-key lighting of future film noirs
• inventive use of shadows and strange camera angles similar in the tradition of German Expressionists
• deep-focus shots with incredible depth-of field and focus from extreme foreground to extreme background (also found in Toland's earlier work in Dead End (1937), John Ford's The Long Voyage Home (1940), and Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940)) that emphasize mise-en-scene; also in-camera matte shots
• low-angled shots revealing ceilings in sets (a technique possibly borrowed from John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) which Welles screened numerous times)
• sparse use of revealing facial close-ups
• elaborate camera movements
• over-lapping, talk-over dialogue (exhibited earlier in Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940)) and layered sound
• the sound technique termed "lightning-mix" in which a complex montage sequence is linked by related sounds
• a cast of characters that ages throughout the film
• flashbacks, flashforwards and non-linear story-telling (used in earlier films, including another rags-to-riches tale starring Spencer Tracy titled The Power and the Glory (1933) with a screenplay by Preston Sturges, and RKO's A Man to Remember (1938) from director Garson Kanin and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo)
• the frequent use of transitionary dissolves or curtain wipes, as in the scene in which the camera ascended in the opera house into the rafters to show the workmen's disapproval of Mrs. Kane's operatic performance; also the famous 'breakfast' montage scene illustrating the disintegration of Kane's marriage in a brief time 
• long, uninterrupted shots or lengthy takes of sequences

Furthermore, the he cinematic style of Citizen Kane use of extreme deep-focus photography and it was considered a groundbreaking and innovative as the film’s narrative technique. At the time, the prevailing Hollywood style was characterized by diffuse lighting and shots with a very shallow depth of field.  It was Welles’ cinematographer, Gregg Toland, who pioneered this use of deep-focus.

Welles’ discards the usual cinematic approach of shot/reverse-shot during this scene, instead using a mobile camera with deep focus that keeps us continually aware of everyone. This technique, couples with Welles’ use of long takes, permits that “our eyes have the same freedom to wander around the screen image as we have in the theater. We can focus on the actor who is speaking or instead watch the actor who is listening.

Additionally, Welles’ ever-changing camera angles, and his constant use of hard light and strong shadows, have a strong effect on our emotional approach to characters and scenes. According to film critic Andre Bazin, this stretching of the image in depth, along with its pronounced camera angles, “produces throughout the film an impression of tension and conflict, as if the image might be torn apart.

8. In some films, the characters have very clear roles to play and are easy for audiences to identify. List 5 characters 'types' you are familiar with from film and describe sample actions in a film for the characters 'types'.

Firstly, I picked Harrison Ford in his film Indiana Jones.  His whip, hat, gun, satchel and brown jacket resemble his character appearance as Indiana Jones.  His sense of humor, deep knowledge of many ancient civilizations and languages, and fear of snakes make what we know best Indiana Jones.

Secondly, I chose Don Vito Corleone portrayed by Marlon Brando in The God Father movie.  The Godfather is widely regarded as one of the greatest gangster genre of all time.  Marlon Brando voice, appearance, over weight with jowls appearing in what is often classified as the mafia boss.  His calmness and patient resemble part of mafia boss character.  Vito Corleone listed as the greatest movie character in history and ranked 10th greatest movie character by Empire Magazine.

Thirdly, the T-800 Terminator portrayed by Arnold Schwarznegger marked my choice.  The appealing characters are daunting, cool and careless as being a machine that covered with flesh.  His word "I'll be back" becomes the mark for the later appearance of Arnold in the next Terminator sequence.  Big guns and masculine resemble the character strength and robotic energetic element.

John Rambo portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in the First Blood aka Rambo (1982) marked my forth picked of the day.  The character resembles a hero born out of the Vietnam war.  Rambo good with traps and weapons, mostly shirtless to portray power and strength.  The red bandana has become a trademark in the Rambo sequence movie.  The movie has high death counts (except the first sequence).

Thomas A. Anderson "Neo" portrayed by Keanu Reeves in The Matrix (1999) gave my last piece of character choice.  Neo character as someone who has the ability to dodge and stop bullets.  His trenchcoat and sunglasses marked an icon of the character being cool, smart, challenging, determine, and focus.

9. How do filmmakers present characters in films?

In film, character introductions are extremely important. Filmmakers present characters in their film in various ways, styles and creativity.  The first push will be looking at the ability of the filmmaker to invoke some of the most powerful emotions in the world such as joy, anger, fear, and envy.  Not only can this moment inspire an intense audience reaction, but it can also offer a unique opportunity to understand the character insight and perhaps provide more explanation reflecting the character emotions being portrayed.  This is one of the basic step that many filmmakers will usually eye at.

Another, filmmakers will groom characters in film by creating phenomenon that will cause viewer to  learn by what the characters do and say.  The twist from the filmmaker mindset will also cause viewer to learn by what other characters say about them and how they react to those characters.  This whole set of learning between the audience and the character that the filmmakers are bringing into the film will derive the quality of the movie and set a standard that either can bring a good name to the filmmaker or otherwise.

Filmmakers create the best character in film not only use the above-mentioned means, but they also do it in a concise and creative way.  If done correctly, the character introduction can begin the transformation of a character into an icon.  This icon can then give high influence to the viewer in various ways; spiritually or physically.  One good example is the Star Wars epic movie that was first released in 1977 is one example of successful film portraying various characters into iconic element into society of all levels and generations.

12. How the coming of sound affected the making of motion pictures? List 5.

The birth of sound in film affected the making of motion pictures in various ways.  In brief, we can list at least 5 as follow:

1. Birth of musical film came into the picture.  One good example is the Bollywood film industry that is still keeping its film signature by incorporating musical element inside every film production since its inception in 1930s.


2. The production cost of making a motion pictures have increased compare to the early 1920s.  It has caused theater owners to spend and house new sound equipment to fit with the new demand in sound film birth.  It also gave a new form of stage where it demands a soundproofed type to incorporate realtime audio recording.  It caused some studios went into debt.


3. In order to record sound at best, many filmmakers during the 1930s to 1940s use a soundproof booth where the camera is placed inside the booth motionless and become static throughout the filming process.


4. Staging limited by the placement of the microphones.  During the early stage, this has become a known phenomenon and dilemma to many filmmakers.


5. Since sounds recording technology and technique into film were basically still primitive, the film takes were longer and without cuts.

11. The invention of the Vitaphone (BellaLabs/Western Electric, 1925) sound on disc system contributed to some major technological cinema development. List 5.

Vitaphone

Vitaphone was the last sound-on-disc system and the only one which was widely used and commercially successful.  The Vitaphone records dialogue and music separately on phonographs to be played as the film ran. The vitaphone was linked to the projection system to keep the sound and pictures matched up, and the marriage of the two elements proved tremendously successful.  The invention of Vitaphone had led to 5 technological cinema development as follow:

1. Stereo Sound - in 1931 at Columbia's Studios in Hayes, Middlesex. Alan Blumlein began using a twin microphone technique he had developed to record a stereo signal on to film in the same area taken up by the standard mono optical track.


2. 3D Sound & Film - Warner Brothers, after putting the Vitaphone in bed due to popularity of Sound-on-film, were experimenting with stereo images in the form of 3-D which they called NaturalVision, again to try and offer audiences that extra something that television could not. Their first 3-D film being 'Bwana Devil' in November 1952.


3. Projectors - more and more sophisticated projection being designed and built commercially to fit inside cinemas to adopt various new technological sound-film production as well as give more compelling experience to the audience.  From 70mm projection to 35mm projection format has been built throughout the 1950s. 


4. Dolby Stereo - Although there had been several attempts to improve optical sound quality in cinemas it was not until Dolby Laboratories, working out of Clapham at the time, looked to apply their already successful 'noise reduction' system to film sound. The first experiments were only mono and it soon became obvious to the engineers at Dolby that what the industry really wanted was high quality optical stereo. 


5. Digital Theater Sound (DTS) - A birth of digitalize sound-on-disc technology for cinema digital sound experience as how it started.  The invention begin 4 years after Dolby Lab produces Dolby Stereo in the 1990s.

These 5 items have contributed a wide array of technological advancement in cinema audio and projection after the invention of Vitaphone.  The vitaphone phenomenon and legacy in sound-on-disc had brought the birth of these 5 items into the world of cinema that we know today.