School of Creative and Performing ArtsUniversity of Calgary

Smartphone Movie Making

Lorene Shybawww.loreneshyba.ca

E-mail: lorene.shyba@gmail.com

Drama 571

Explores smartphone video and computer applications to participate in various styles of moviemaking; expressionistic, narrative, and documentary. You will also be introduced to screenwriting and cinematic aesthetics such as composition and audio design, plus gain practical skills in editing and delivery systems.

What is Drama 571 about?Class Wiki Websitelorishyba.pbworks.com

• Slideshows • Assignments • Screenings

• Demo Reel

• Example of Smartphone Work

Explores smartphone video and computer applications to participate in various styles of moviemaking; expressionistic, narrative, and documentary. You will also be introduced to screenwriting and cinematic aesthetics such as composition and audio design, plus gain practical skills in editing and delivery systems.

What is Drama 571 about?

Styles and Types (Modes) of FilmsREALISM CLASSICISM FORMALISM

Documentary F I C T I O N Expressionism

Hue: A Matter of Colour Boogie Doodle

Bowling for Columbine 8 ½ Fellini

NB. These are not airtight categories and often overlap.

Styles

Types (modes)

Gone With the Wind

Characteristics of Formalist Cinema

• Emphasis on technique and expression moves formalism toward the “avant garde” or total abstraction. Conveyed by distorting the surface of the material world

• Highly subjective experience of reality

• AKA “Expressionists” – concerned with spiritual and psychological truths

• Formalist cinema excels in dealing with ideas — political religious, philosophical

What About the “Classical”Style?

• Called “Classical” because of its Aristotelian narrative style with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

• Classical cinema favours of a style of presentation that has a surface believability.

• Often expensive, story oriented,

• High premium placed on entertainment value conforming to popular genre.

• Characters often played by “stars” and audience is encouraged to identify with their goals/values.

What are Characteristics of Realism?

• Realist filmmakers attempt to reproduce the surface of reality with a minimum of distortion.

• We rarely notice the “style” in a realistic movie — concerned with what is being shown rather than how it is being manipulated.

• Realists try to preserve the illusion that their film worlds are objective mirrors of the actual world.

• The camera is used as a “recording mechanism” to reproduce the surface of tangible objects with as little commentary as possible.

• It is a style that excels in making us feel the humanity of others as beauty of film is sacrificed to capture the authentic texture of reality.

• Also known as documentary.

What About Genre?

• Definition: A recognizable type of movie, characterized by certain pre-established conventions. Common genres are Westerns, Drama (Romance, War, Action etc.), Thrillers, Sci-Fi, Comedy, etc. A ready-made narrative form.

• Genre was developed by French directors François Truffault, Jean-Luc Godard and their Cahiers du cinema associates in the mid-50s. Simultaneously with their Auteur Theory, they also developed the theory of film genre.

• Believed that the genius of American cinema was its repository of ready-made forms saying “The tradition of genres in a base of operations for creative freedom.”

FIGURATIVE TECHNIQUES

Explores the use of artistic devices that suggest abstract ideas through comparison. (All are “symbolic”)

Motifs can be a technique, an object, or anything that is repeated but does not call attention to itself.

Symbols can be things that imply additional meaning to the sensitive observer.

Metaphor is comparison that is not literally true. Cinematic

metaphors can be created through montage and editing.

Other figurative techniques are allegory, allusions (analogy) and homage.

“NARRATIVE” or Story

Aristotelian Poetics distinguished between two types of fictional narratives - mimesis (showing) and diegesis (telling). Cinema combines both.

Narratology is the study of of how stories work — the study of different narrative structures, storytelling strategies, types of stories (genres) and their symbolic implications.

POINT OF VIEW -- NARRATION

First-person narrative is where the cinematic equivalent to the “voice” of a literary narrative is the “eye” or lens of the camera. Eg?

Omniscient point of view is where the lens is the all-knowing observer that supplies evaluations of the scene. Eg?

Voice-over narration is common and when there is a narrator that literally talks over the action. Eg?

Camera as buddy is uncommon but is when the camera is treated like an active listener in the story. Eg?

Another WAY TO express ORIGINAL INSIGHTS.

Homework

Rideshare (Donovan Cook, 2011)

Shot entirely on iPhone (4) on a budget of $34K, Rideshare is a comedy about three strangers who answer a ad to drive a car from LA to DC.

The Trailer | Rent it on iTunes | IMDB complete listings

1. Chart the story. Robert McKee’s Principles

What is the Inciting Incident? (The primary cause of what follows?)

How does the protagonist react to this? (the Quest)

The Progressive Complications? How are the subplots involved?

The Crisis? What is the crisis decision?

The Climax? What’s the “value swing”?

The Resolution? What’s the point of this resolution in terms of dramatic structure?

2. What other technology is being used besides iPhone?

Rideshare Screening: Think About …