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Agenda• Announcements• Singin in the Rain
discussion• Break• Elements of Narrative• Elements of Genre
Announcements• First Blog Post: due Friday by Midnight• Shot List and Essay: due next Friday (4/25) by Midnight• Extra Credit (1 point final grade): – Next week, go to any event in the Cinema Pacific Festival
and blog about it to get extra credit– OR: Reflections Unheard: Black Women in Civil Rights;
Thursday, April 24th from 4:00 to 5:30 pm in the Knight Library Browsing Room
– OR: Working Filmmakers Series, Tuesday, April 29 at 12:15 pm in the Knight Library Browsing Room
• Quizzes: Wednesday of Weeks 4, 6, 8, and 10• Week 5: 8 ½?
How to Win at Blogging• Try to focus on one idea:– Show us how you
interpret films, using the tools we’ve set out in class
– Make us think about the film in a new way
– Use evidence from the movie to defend your idea
• Read the rubric• Write at least 500 words• Post before Friday at
Midnight
Shot List and Essay Assignment: Due by Midnight, Friday 4/25
• Choose a short scene or sequence (1-4 minutes, but not less than 10 shots) from any of the films we will have watched by Week 4—Sherlock Jr. (1924), Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Singin’ in the Rain (1952), or Peeping Tom (1962)—and annotate it with a shot list. I posted a sample shot list and shot list form on the assignments page.
• • Then, use your shot list to develop a short (3 pages, 750 to 1000
words) critical essay about the scene. Your argument should focus on how ONE formal element of the sequence (mise-en-scene, cinematography, etc) helps to create emotion, convey narrative, or contribute to one the film’s central themes.
Discussion• What was your initial response to the film? What did you like
best about it?
• What did you notice about the form of the film?
• What makes Don the hero of the film? What makes Lina Lamont the villain?
• How/what do the song-and-dance sequences add to the narrative?
• What’s the ideology of this film? What does it tell you about Hollywood in 1927? About Hollywood in 1952?
What’s a Genre?
• “The categorization of narrative films by the stories they tell and the ways they tell them” (LaM 84)
• Qualities of genre:– Story formulas– Character types– Setting– Presentation– Stars– Also: Temporality
The “City Symphony”• Experimental/documentary
• No narrative, dialogue, actors, resolution
• Fast editing, sharp juxtapositions
• A “poetic” vision of reality
• Examples: Berlin (1927), Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Bronx Morning (1931)
The Musical Genre• What are the rules of the
genre?
• Types of Musical:– Revue– Backstage– Integrated– Animated
• Genre History: – Rise and fall and rise . . .
Review: Narrative
• “A cinematic structure in which content is selected and arranged in a cause-and-effect sequence of events occurring over time” (Barsam and Monahan 542)
• Questions to Ask:– What are the major events the film? – How are those events ordered in time?– What events are left out?– What are the film’s beginning and end points?
Review: Difference Between Story, Plot, and Narrative
• Story: The BIGGEST picture – What we imagine takes place in real time, and in real space (even if
it’s not depicted on screen)– Objective reality or history
• Plot: All the stuff that happens in a movie, as we imagine it in chronological sequence.
• Narrative: The way the story and plot are told:– The selection and arrangement of space and time. – Some events aren’t depicted – Some time is elided, or presented in a nonlinear way – We follow certain characters, but not others
Five Elements of Storytelling
• 1. Perspective
• 2. Characterization
• 3. Narrative Events
• 4. Narrative Structure
• 5. Narrative Time
1. Narrative Perspective• Whose perspective does the film
(esp. the camera) give us?
• Ways to describe:– First, Second, Third Person
• 1. camera identified with a particular character’s p.o.v.
• 2. Identified with the audience’s p.o.v.• 3. identified with a kind of neutral,
bystander’s p.o.v.
– Restricted v. Omniscient• What ? What spaces and people does
the camera have access to?
– Focalization
2. Characterization• Types of Characters:– Flat/Round:
• Which characters develop or change, and which do not? What traits do they have?
– Protagonist/Antagonist– Major/Minor/Marginal:
• Which characters have agency: the power to shape the world around them?
• Motivation, Goals, Obstacles
3. Kinds of Narrative Events
• Major Events: Determine the course of the story; decision-points
• Minor Events: Shape our perception of the characters, or the world they inhabit
• Non-Narrative Events: Don’t really contribute anything to plot or characterization
4. “Three Act Structure”
• Act I: Exposition, establishing the “normal world,” characterization . . .
• Act II: Rising Action, Establishing the conflict, the stakes of the conflict . . . Crisis/Climax
• Act III: Falling Action, Resolution, and Closure
5. Narrative Time• Types of Duration:– Story Duration– Plot Duration– Screen Duration
• Time Relationships:– Stretch Relationship– Real Time– Summary
Relationship