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MEDIA

HORROR FILM GENRE

7/25/2019

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Narrative Structure

  • Standard Chronological Structure with beginning, middle, end (Conflict, Struggle, Realization)
  • Often there is heavy foreshadowing to build tension
  • The problem the protagonist faces is caused or exacerbated by being isolated, unprepared, or naive
  • The narrative is built to cause tension, anxiety, and fear in the audience
  • Story plays on standard human fears: the dark, strangers, isolation, death, violence, insanity, creepy monsters
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Themes

  • Good vs. Evil
  • Religion and the Supernatural or Beyond
  • Death
  • Nightmares, Madness, Insanity, Suicide
  • Childhood Fears and Issues
  • Revenge
  • Science gone bad
  • Murder, Death, Hate
  • Darkness, Demons, Satanic Ritual
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Setting

  • Hospitals, Insane Asylums, Mental Institutions or Hotels (long hallways and lots of rooms)
  • Graveyard or Cemetery
  • Churches or Convents
  • Isolated communities or remote locations (cabin, abandoned mansion, haunted house, ghost town, farm field, dark woods, tunnels) deserted places
  • Basements, Attics, Science Labs
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Characters

  • Hero (protagonist usually lives) fights villain
  • Victims (protagonists usually die) often are immoral teenagers, stupid beautiful young women
  • Villain (antagonist evil force aliens, vampires, creepy children, monsters, ghosts, demons, zombies, clowns, possessed toys, scary creatures)
  • Police or "helpful" authorities may be good or evil
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Iconography and props

  • Dark colored clothes, costumes, settings
  • Weapons (rarely guns usually a stabbing or cutting weapon like knives, scythes, axes, chainsaws)
  • Religious or Demonic Symbolism
  • Blood. Lots of blood.
  • Monsters (vampires, evil scientist, werewolves, zombies, possessed people, mass murderer)
  • Lots of black and red
  • Mirrors, masks, peepholes, stalking, chasing
  • Running and then tripping and falling (being chased)
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Cinematography and Editing

  • Unnatural camera angles very high, very low, canted (to show dominance and innocence and power relations)
  • Extreme Close Up to show fear
  • Long take with a sudden jump cut to frighten viewer
  • Point of View (POV) shots from the view of the villain
  • Handheld camera adds terror
  • Shallow depth of field makes whatever is behind the protagonist blurry to build suspense
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Sound and Music

  • Ambient Diegetic sounds (footsteps, chainsaw, breathing)
  • Orchestral (violin)
  • Silence used to build tension
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MUSICALS FILM GENRE

7/25/2019

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Style and Characteristics

  • Songs sung by the characters to advance the plot or develop the film's characters or themes.
  • Singing in a movie isn’t what makes a musical – for it to be a musical, characters must be uninhibited and outwardly express emotion through song and dance
  • Rather than simply adding music to the soundtrack (non-diegetic), the characters within the film sing and dance to convey their thoughts and feelings (diegetic).
  • Characters sing and dance to the camera, for the benefit of the film viewer, rather than any ostensible audience within the film's story.
  • Musicals are always set in a fantasy world of some sort where music appears out of nowhere, where extras spontaneously act as back-up dancers, where everybody has a booming Broadway-style singing voice
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Narrative and Themes

  • Overall, musicals tend to be utopic and happy where good rules over evil – or where the protagonist prevails
  • Whether the characters in musicals are feeling up or down, whether they are alone or in public, they are always able to fulfill their desire or to feel better by dancing or singing.
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Music of Musicals

  • The musical accompaniment comes from "no where"—outside the world of the film—though the singing comes from within the world of the film, which is a violation of the rules of realism that govern almost all other genres/styles.
  • Songs are usually “Broadway” style requiring big, powerful voices
  • Singing originates from the mind and emotion of the characters – the songs are used to express inward thoughts and feelings outwardly
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Setting

  • Musicals have been set in many different times and places and are embedded in many other genres.
  • Typically, there are big, lavish, colorful, over-the-top sets -- the scenery can often change from a realistic picture to something more dreamlike.
  • Often musicals look like they are set on a theatre stage – reminiscent of Broadway theatre musical productions
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Characters

  • Male Lead: Protagonist, hero
  • Female Lead: Protagonist, often the love interest of the male lead
  • Villain: Usually an adult male, or often the conflict comes from the protagonist’s struggle against a life adversity (poverty, finding way home, unsympathetic family, forbidden love, desire for something unobtainable)
  • Sidekicks: Side/ancillary characters that round out the narrative and support/thwart the protagonists
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Musicals in a variety of Genres/Styles

  • Western = Annie Get Your Gun, Oklahoma
  • Mystery = Drood
  • War = South Pacific, Hair
  • Science Fiction = Little Shop of Horrors, Chitty Bang Bang
  • Fantasy = Mary Poppins, Wizard of Oz
  • Documentary = This is It
  • Biography = Musical Biography of Quincy Jones
  • Horror = Sweeney Todd
  • Comedy = The Mask, Singin’ in the Rain
  • Action/Adventure = Labyrinth, The Great Race
  • Family Drama = The Sound of Music, Annie, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Newsies
  • Teen = Grease, Hairspray, High School Musical, Westside Story
  • Adult Drama = Dream Girls, Saturday Night Fever, Dancer in the Dark, Moulin Rouge!, Chicago
  • Children = Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty
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SCIENCE-FICTION FILM GENRE

7/24/2019

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Setting and Narrative

•Set in a futuristic setting or an alternative history
•Usually set in a city or a space-ship
•Always some form of “not-real” alternate reality, time, or place
•Often includes space travel and time travel
•Often set on distant planets or in space
•If set on earth, then it’s usually a dystopic reality (set after a nuclear holocaust, or after technology has taken over, or after an oppressive government has limited freedom or rights, etc.)
•There’s an improbable quest or epic journey – usually to save humankind or the Earth against an invasion or oppression
•There are binary opposites of good and evil
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Typical Characters

•Hero on an epic quest, often is either totally arrogant or quite self-doubting. If arrogant, then he/she gets beaten down, but then pulls it back together and against-all-odds goes on to defeat the enemy. If self-doubting, then will question whether or not he/she is the right person (destined) to do the job – has to be convinced and developed before saving the world.
•Side-kicks, mentors, or helpers (sometimes human, sometimes not – often at least one of them dies) assist the hero
•Aliens or non-humans are the antagonists/villains (including robots, monsters, killer microbes, space creatures, androids, super-computers) – often the villains are stubborn and arrogant with cronies or soldiers to do the dirty work
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Style and Visuals

•Plenty of special effects and lavish costuming (to portray the aliens, robots, spaceships, etc.)
•Helmets, lasers, guns, metal
•Often lots of explosions, crashes, and shoot-outs
•Fast panning and tracking shots are used to follow the action and create tension
•Establishing shots show the futuristic city or space-ship before moving in to closer shots
•Lots of electronic equipment, computers, and technology that seem too complicated for us to understand
•Sometimes taps into the Horror genre codes and conventions to add suspense and fear
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Themes

•Dystopia – technological mis-utilization. The futures is bleak, oppressive, and to be avoided.
•Commentary on Societal and Cultural issues such as the warning against over-use of technology, war, racism, ecological destruction, medical ethics (genetics), and one-world government oppression
•Express society’s anxiety about technology and the future
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ADVERTISING

1/28/2019

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HOW TO READ AN ADVERTISEMENT
Reading advertisements is a complex skill, but some ads are easier to read than others, and it sometimes helps to ask a series of questions about an ad in order to make sense of its meaning and to understand exactly how it works.
 
These questions are a framework which you could use with any print or TV advertisement. You will not always want to ask all of them; you will not always need to read every ad this closely. However, they are here for you to use whenever you need to, as a checklist of the different techniques by which ads construct meaning.

a) Reading the image; what’s in the picture?
 
What can you tell about the age, sex, class, race of the different people shown in the ad from:
  • clothing/facial expression/the direction of their eyes – who or what are they looking at?
  • body language – the way they are posed, grouped or what they are doing/their relationship to each other in the frame.
 
What other objects are featured prominently in the ad, and what do they suggest?
 
Where is the ad set?
  • Where is it supposed to be – and how do you know?
  • What can you see in the background, and what does it suggest?
 
What is the product?
  • What kind of product is being sold?
  • Where is the product placed in the frame – if at all?
  • What can you tell about it from the other elements in the ad?
 
b) Technical codes – how was it constructed?
 
What visual techniques does it involve?
  • Drawing, animation, still or moving photography, or just graphics?
  • Why have these elements been used?
  • Is it black and white or colour? How has colour been used, and what effect does it create?

Lighting
  • How has it been lit?
  • What effect does the lighting create?
 
Use of the camera in print ads
  • Where was the camera placed to take the photograph?
  • What kind of shot has been used, and what effect does this create?

Use of the camera in TV commercials
  • What variety of shot and camera movement do you notice – and what effect does it create?
 
Composition and framing
  • What is your eye drawn to within the frame, and why?
  • Has the image been cropped, and if so, what might be happening outside the frame?
 
Editing
  • Has the image been edited or treated?
  • Has anything been left out or removed, and if so, why?
  • In a TV ad, how have the shots been edited together – neat cuts, mixing from one to the next, or fading in and out of each other? What effect does this create?
  • Pace and style – how many shots, how quickly or slowly do they follow on from each other? What effect is created by the speed of the editing?

Focus
  • Are all elements in the image in focus? If not, why not?
 
Reproduction
  • Do you notice any other photographic effects used to reproduce the image – e.g. filtering video/film, increasing the contrasts, airbrushing out bits of the picture, over or under-exposing the picture, enlarging it, etc? If so, what effect do they create?
 
Layout
  • How does the image fit in with the overall design of the ad?
  • Where is it in relation to the text/copy?
  • How much space does it take up?
 
c) The text of the advertisement
 
Brand name of the product
  • What does it suggest?

Slogan
  • How does it work? How does it relate to the images?
 
Copy in print ads
  • What does it say about the product?
  • How does it relate to the images?
  • What kind of language does it use – and who is it talking to?
  • Does it remind you of any other type of ad – or another media genre?
 
Soundtrack in TV or radio commercials
  • What different sources of sound do you hear on the soundtrack – e.g. voice-over, music, sound effects, dialogue?
  • What kind of music is used, and who might it appeal to? What atmosphere or mood does the music convey?
  • What sorts of voice-over are used – male or female? received pronunciation or dialect? formal or informal language? What tone of voice or mood does the voice convey?
 
Typography and graphics
  • What different typefaces are used?
  • Why were they chosen?
  • What other design elements have been used to illustrate or explain?
 
d) The genre of the advertisement

  • What kind of ad is this?
  • What else does it remind you of?
 
Narrative
  • Does it have a story, and if so, what kind of story?
 
 
Who is the ad aimed at?
How can you tell:
  • from the choice of images
  • from the product
  • from the text/soundtrack?

Where might the ad be seen?
If print:
  • What sort of publication, aimed at which readers?
  • Where might you buy the publication?
  • Who else might see it?
  • Whereabouts in the publication might the ad be printed – inside cover, middle pages, classified ad section, etc? Why?
 
If TV and radio:
  • When and where would it be scheduled?
  • Alongside which programme?
  • At what time of day?
  • In which geographical areas?

Who was it made for?
  • What can you tell about the producers of the product itself?
 
Why was it made?
  • Can you tell anything about the thinking behind the ad?
 
Is it part of a larger campaign?
How does it relate to:
  • different ads for the same product?
  • ads for the same product in other media?
  • ads for other products made by the same company?
  • other ads made by other people?

What overall message does the ad give?
 
What roles, models or stereotypes are represented in the ad?
 
What ideas, lifestyles or desires does the ad seem to suggest?
 
What values are associated with the product?

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REPRESENTATION THEORIES

1/26/2019

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Stuart Hall has a number of ideas about representation:
  • the idea that representation is the production of meaning through language, with language defined in its broadest sense as a system of signs
  • the idea that the relationship between concepts and signs is governed by codes
  • the idea that stereotyping, as a form of representation, reduces people to a few simple characteristics or traits
  • the idea that stereotyping tends to occur where there are inequalities of power, as subordinate or excluded groups are constructed as different or ‘other’ (e.g. through ethnocentrism).

Richard Dyer (1983) posed a few questions when analysing media representations in general.

1. What sense of the world is it making?

2. What does it imply? Is it typical of the world or deviant?

3. Who is it speaking to? For whom? To whom?

4. What does it represent to us and why? How do we respond to the representation?

Dyer (1977) details that if we are  to be told that we are going to see a film about an alcoholic then we will know that it will be a tale either of sordid decline or of inspiring redemption.

This is a particularly interesting potential use of stereotypes, in which the character is constructed, at the level of costume, performance, etc., as a stereotype but is deliberately given a narrative function that is not implicit in the stereotype, thus throwing into question the assumptions signaled by the stereotypical iconography.

Dyer (1977) summed up the importance and concept of Representation the best.  He said: “How we are seen determines how we are treated, and how we treat others is based on how we see them.  How we see them comes from representation.”

Tessa Perkins (1979) says stereotyping is not a simple process.
​She identified that some of the many ways that stereotypes are assumed to operate aren’t true:

1. Stereotypes are not always negative, e.g:
  • Italians are very family orientated
  • Asians are good at maths
  • Homosexual men are stylish
(These are still over-simplified and take no account of individuality)

2. Stereotypes are not always about minority groups or the less powerful
Upper class twit of the year
  • Upper class = usually the most powerful social class
  • Male/Female stereotypes = stereotyping half the population

3. Stereotypes can be held about one’s own group
  • e.g. teenagers/football supporters, etc.

4. They are not rigid – they change over time
  • e.g.: the poor uneducated working class stereotype as seen with Harry Enfield – The Working Class (1930/40s) and the Royale Family  (1990/2000s).

5. They are not always false
This seems obvious, but stereotypes by their nature are based on some kind of reality and common experience.  This is why people share these perceptions.

David Gauntlett (2002) argues that “identities are not ‘given’ but are constructed and negotiated.”

In 2007, Gaunlett argued that “Identity is complicated. Everybody thinks they’ve got one. Artists play with the idea of identity in modern society.”

Gauntlett is suggesting that:
  • the idea that the media provide us with ‘tools’ or resources that we use to construct our identities.
  • the idea that whilst in the past the media tended to convey singular, straightforward messages about ideal types of male and female identities, the media today offer us a more diverse range of stars, icons and characters from whom we may pick and mix different ideas.

Jean Baudrillard (1981) was concerned with the effect that the media was having on society as a whole, and representation was a big part of his theory. In his book Simularca and Simulation, 1981, Baudrillard argued that our media-focused society has become reliant upon representations.

Baudrillard discussed the concept of hyper-reality – we inhabit a society that is no longer made up of any original thing for a sign to represent – it is the sign that is now the meaning. He argued that we live in a society of simulacra – simulations of reality that replace the real. 

This means that we have lost contact with the real, and we can no longer tell the real from the artificial. This state of affairs is what Baudrillard referred to as hyper-reality. The sign or representation of reality is now of more importance or has replaced what it was representing.

These simulations of reality that have replaced the reality itself were what Baudrillard referred to as simulacra.

The representation of the ‘thing’ comes to replace the reality - what we are represented with is now more important than what it is actually like. This is an example of simulacra. The copy is more important to most of us than the reality.

Were he alive today, Baudrillard would say that Facebook represents a hyper-reality. Our Facebook profiles are a representation of ourselves. However, we now live in a time where to many this representation is more important than their actual personality, and their interactions on Facebook hold more meaning than their real-life interactions. To some, their Facebook profile is a replacement for their real personality -  a simulacra.
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SEMIOTICS

1/26/2019

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Semiotics - Roland Barthes
  • the idea that texts communicate their meanings through a process of signification.
  • the idea that signs can function at the level of denotation, which involves the ‘literal’ or common-sense meaning of the sign, and at the level of connotation, which involves the meanings associated with or suggested by the sign.
  • the idea that constructed meanings can come to seem self-evident, achieving the status of myth through a process of naturalisation.
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NARRATIVE THEORY

1/26/2019

 

What does narrative mean?​
  • The way that stories are told, how meaning is constructed to achieve the understanding of the audience.
  • Groups events into cause and effect - action and inaction.
  • Organises time and space in a very compressed form.
  • The voice of narrative can vary; whose story is being told and from whose perspective?
  • In a film, narrative is constructed through elements like cinematography, sound, mise-en-scene and editing.
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Lev Kuleshov
Lev Kuleshov in the 1920’s advised that when we watch a film or programme we try to create meaning and connect events to see a line of cause and effect. Even if there is no connection between people or events we try to make one to make sense of what we are watching. If films are not shown chronologically we try to order the events in our minds and quickly link flashbacks to the present.
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Tzvetan Todorov
Todorov proposed a basic structure for all narratives. He stated that films and programmes begin with an equilibrium, a calm period. Then agents of disruption cause disequilibrium, a period of unsettlement and disquiet. This is then followed by a renewed state of peace and harmony for the protagonists and a new equilibrium brings the chaos to an end.

The theory is simply this:
  • The fictional environment begins with a state of equilibrium (everything is as it should be)
  • It then suffers some disruption (disequilibrium)
  • New equilibrium is produced at the end of the narrative
     
    There are five stages the narrative can progress through:
  1. A state of equilibrium (all is as it should be)
  2. A disruption of that order by an event
  3. A recognition that the disorder has occurred
  4. An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption
  5. A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium

​Here narrative is not seen as a linear structure but a circular one.
The narrative is driven by attempts to restore the equilibrium.
However, the equilibrium attained at the end of the story is not identical to the initial equilibrium.
Todorov argues that narrative involves a transformation. The characters or the situations are transformed through the progress of the disruption.
The disruption itself usually takes place outside the normal social framework, outside the ‘normal’ social events.
E.g.      a murder happens and people are terrified
            Someone vanishes and the characters have to solve the mystery
 
So, remember:
  • Narratives don’t need to be linear.
  • The progression from initial equilibrium to restoration always involves a transformation.
  • The middle period of a narrative can depict actions that transgress everyday habits and routines.
  • There can be many disruptions whilst seeking a new equilibrium (horror relies on this technique)

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Vladimir Propp
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Vladimir Propp’s theory was formed in the early twentieth Century. He studies Russian fairytales and discovered that in stories there were always 8 types of characters evident. These are: the hero, the villain, the donor, the dispatcher, the false hero, the helper, the princess and her father. He did not state these characters were all separate people e.g. the provider could also be the helper. However, this is easily relatable to films and programmes today.

Film as Fairy Tale
Vladimir Propp, a Russian critic, active in the 1920’s, published his Morphology of the Folk Tale in 1928. While the Soviet cinema was producing excellent films, Propp was essentially interested in the narrative of folk tales. He noticed
Folk tales were similar in many areas. They were about the same basic struggles and they appeared to have stock characters. He identified a theory about characters and actions as narrative functions.
Characters, according to Propp, have a narrative function; they provide a structure for the text.

Characters that perform a function

  • The Hero – a character that seeks something
  • The Villain – who opposes or actively blocks the hero’s quest
  • The Donor – who provides an object with magical properties
  • The Dispatcher – who sends the hero on his/her quest via a message
  • The False Hero – who disrupts the hero’s success by making false claims
  • The Helper – who aids the hero
  • The Princess – acts as the reward for the hero and the object of the villain’s plots
  • Her Father – who acts to reward the hero for his effort 

CRITICISMS

Propp’s theory of narrative seems to be based in a male orientated environment (due to his theory actually reflecting early folk tales) and as such critics often dismiss the theory with regard to film. However, it may still be applied because the function (rather than the gender) of characters is the basis of the theory. E.g. the hero could be a woman; the reward could be a man.
Critics argue that Propp’s strict order of characters and events is restrictive. We should rather apply the functions and events randomly as we meet new narratives. E.g. the hero may kill the villain earlier than Propp expects. Changing the traditional format will change the whole way the text is received.
Some critics claim there are many more character types than Propp suggests and we should feel free to identify them. E.g. the stooge in a sci-fi film, who is usually nameless and usually killed early on to suggest the power of the alien force, is a typical modern character type.
 It applies to Fairy Stories and to other similar narratives based around 'quests' IT DOES NOTAPPLY TO ALL NARRATIVES.

WHY THE THEORY IS USEFUL

It avoids treating characters as if they are individuals and reminds us they are merely constructs. Some characters are indeed there just to progress the narrative. 

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Claude Levi-Strauss
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He stated that there need to be a binary opposition within a film or programme. This is usually presented through good vs. evil. Other binary oppositions include:
  • Peace versus war
  • Man versus nature
  • Humanity versus technology
  • Democracy versus dictatorship
  • Civilised versus savage

Binary oppositions in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (Dir. Peter Jackson)
  • Peace vs. War
  • Good vs. Evil
  • Hope vs. Fear
  • Compassion vs. Indifference
  • Bravery vs. Cowardice
  • Nature vs. Machinery

Joseph Campbell
In this book, Campbell studies many hundreds of fairy tales, folk tales and legends in order to unearth a common “pattern” in the structure of stories. Campbell defines this as the “monomyth” – the typical trajectory of a story, across all cultures and religions. This monomyth is known as the “hero’s journey”.
Comprising three stages – separation, initiation and return – the hero’s journey offers a narrative framework for understanding the progression of a character, namely the protagonist. The journey, Campbell argues, usually includes a symbolic death and re-birth of the character. The religious idea of “cleansing” is also important, giving a sense of the character transforming from old to new – the character arc.
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AUTEUR THEORY

1/26/2019

 
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“The auteur theory is a way of reading and appraising films through the imprint of an auteur (author), usually meant to be the director.”

Andre Bazin was the founder, in 1951, of Cahiers du cinema and is often seen as the father of auteurism because of his appreciation of the world-view and style of such artists as Charlie Chaplin and Jean Renoir. It was younger critics at the magazine who developed the idea further, drawing attention to significant directors from the Hollywood studio era as well as European directors.

The idea of the auteur gained currency in America in the 1960s through Andrew Sarris. He devised the notion of auteur theory (the French critics had never claimed the concept to be a ‘theory’). He used it to tell the history of American filmmaking through the careers and work of individuals, classifying them according to their respective talents.
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“Over a group of films a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature.” (Andrew Sarris)

Today, the notion of the individual as auteur is less theoretically constrained, so that we might consider actors as auteurs as well as directors and producers. The key thing is that a recognisable imprint is left on a body of films, and this may involve varying levels of creative input. For example, in the Laurel and Hardy partnership, Stan Laurel made the significant decisions about their act whilst Oliver Hardy did little more than turn up and get on with his job. But on screen we are only aware of the combined and instantly recognisable effect of the two performing together. When considering an actor, the important question to address is the kind of identity he/she projects and how this identity is created through their performances. Is their persona stable, or does it vary? Sometimes, actors are cast against type or give a markedly different performance to that with which they are associated – what is the effect of this?


​The following filmmakers/actors are considered auteurs:
  • Wes Anderson
  • Tim Burton
  • Sophia Coppola
  • David Lynch
  • Baz Luhrmann
  • Sergio Leone
  • Alfred Hitchcock
  • Leni Riefenstahl
  • Jean-Luc Godard
  • Francois Truffaut
  • Agnes Varda
  • Edgar Wright
  • Tommy Wiseau
  • Tom Cruise
  • Orson Welles
  • Plus many more...

STORYBOARDS

1/26/2019

 
Storyboards help filmmaking teams visualise a film and how to tell the film’s story through images. In a film, the audience follows a story not just through character's dialogue, but also through their actions. Even objects and settings help tell a story.

You can make decisions about how things will look by creating a storyboard. Each panel in a storyboard represents a camera shot and therefore what the camera will see and show. You do not have to recreate every frame of a film in a storyboard; that would take forever!
storyboard_template.pdf
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Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez is known for making video storyboards, especially when planning his action sequences. You can see the director at work below.

GENRE

1/26/2019

 
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Genre
is a French word for 'type' or category.  Genres have certain distinctive main features. These features have come to be well understood and recognized through being repeated over a period of time. 


Genres have a certain amount of predictability and repeated elements, which make them distinctive and which help to define them. All genres have a portfolio of key elements from which they are composed. Not all examples of a genre will have all the  elements all the time.  It is these elements which make up the formula or a repetition of elements of a given genre. 

Repetition of elements include:
Protagonists

All genres have recognisable protagonists or lead characters. These may be heroes and/or villains. Sometimes these lead males and females are so predictable that they have the same qualities across a number of genres. 

Stock characters
Another part of the formula of genre, includes recognisable though minor characters. These are called stock characters. In science fiction texts the stock characters are the scientist, aliens, robots. In news programmes the on the spot reporter, academics who are specialists in their field, eye witnesses, weather man/woman would be considered stock characters.  

Plots and stock situations
The storylines or parts of them are also predictable and recognisable. However complicated the stories are in soaps, there is bound to be a scene in which someone turns up from the past and has some form of confrontation. In horror films there is the presence of the stock situation of the monster killing someone or a shootout in a western.

Icons
This element is crucial to genre because, it is the aspect of genre we immediately recognise and lock into.

The main types of icon are:


1. Props
Props such as guns can instantly tell us about the genre of the film. A Colt 45 will inform the audience it is a western, a laser or ray gun that it is a science fiction film. Props also stand for the main ideas and themes of the genre. 

2. Costumes
Specific costumes can be associated with specific genres. For example: astronaut suits – Science Fiction, sombrero – westerns, expensive suits – gangster, bright colourful colours on TV – children’s programmes, suits – News programmes.

3. Settings
These elements are typical, distinctive and recognisable for a given genre. Their importance varies from text to text. The settings of quiz shows such as
Millionaire Hot Seat and The Chase are very distinctive.

4. Themes
The
themes or ideas which run through and come out of the stories are very much part of genres. Themes also tie in with the value messages that the genre is projecting. For example, all genre narratives say something about conflict between good and evil. But the theme of the fear of technology is central to Science Fiction films, not other genres. Fear of the unknown is central to horror.

5. Stars
Some stars or celebrities become associated with specific genres. Arnold Schwarzenegger is associated with action films, John Wayne with westerns, Bruce Lee/ Jackie Chan martial arts, Hugh Grant with romantic comedies.

6. Sounds
Some sounds are instantly associated with specific genres. A creaking door with horror, a sound of a space ship with science fiction.

Genres in film include:
  • Action
  • Adventure
  • Comedy
  • Crime & Gangster
  • Drama
  • Epic/Historical
  • Horror
  • Musical
  • Science Fiction
  • War
  • Western
  • Fantasy
  • Film Noir
  • Thriller
  • Superhero
  • Romance
  • Sports
  • Biopics
  • Disaster


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