Cinema Form/”Language”
- mise en scene – world depicted/in front of the camera, faces, landscape, gesture, costume
- framing – camera position and lens, moving camera
- editing – continuity and montage, order, rhythm, syntax/grammar
- sound – voice, music, effects, 3d space
Cinema Space > Storytelling
Continuity Editing: connecting shot to shot so that there is momentum in the narrative telling and a seamless narration of causally connected events. All edits are discontinuous. Story and character drive the editing and the sense of continuity.
EARLIEST FORMS
Eadweard Muybridge – motion studies (1878)
Thomas Edison – Kinetoscope, movement, sensational (1896)
Lumiere Brothers- outside (light), portable, travel, “documentaries” (1895)
Melies – theater, vaudeville, fantasy, special effects, illusion (1909)
HER TRUST – D.W. Griffith (1912)
“A shot of a whole battlefield would be incomprehensible because looking at real things, the human vision fastens itself upon a quick succession of small comprehensible incidents like a mosaic out of such detail- the director counterfeits the operation of the eye with his lens and varies the length of shots to avoid the hypnotic affect.” – Griffith
Continuity Editing (The Classical Hollywood Style)
objective camera, invisible editing, dramatic tension (desire and obstacle), cause and effect chains
INTER-FRAME NARRATIVE- editing
- 180 degree rule
- Cut in
- Match on Action
- Parallel action
- Motivated Pov shot
- Eyeline match
- Flashback
- Multiple camera set ups
- Close up
- Extreme long shot/Establishing shot
- Cross cutting, intercutting / Parallel Action
- Visual Dramatic climax. Form=Content
INTRA-FRAME NARRATIVE-
- production design
- mise en scène: set /costume / acting/ facial expression/gesture
- pan
- tilt
- camera angle
- lighting effect
- fade
- dissolve
- iris shot
- mask
- split screen
- soft focus
- matte shot