An Introduction to Film

somehow about defining an ideal; Giacometti’s seems to reach for something that lies beneath the surface of human life and the h ...

our sense that certain events produce likely actions or outcomes. We’ve learned to expect that most movies start with a “normal” ...

going down that hole. Screenwriters often organize a film’s narrative structure around the viewer’s desire to learn the answers ...

Joseph Stefano), for example, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) believes that the $40,000 she steals from her employer will help her st ...

harmonious fusion of indigenous people and their natural environment: fish glide past the camera; a smiling Pocahontas runs her ...

44 CHAPTER 2PRINCIPLES OF FILM FORM 1 3 5 2 4 6 Patterns and suspenseFilmmakers can use patterns to catch us unawares. In The Si ...

PATTERNS 45 1 3 5 2 4 6 7 Breaking patterns for dramatic effectThe six consecutive underwater shots that open Terrence Malick’s ...

familiar, or acquaint us with the unfamiliar; repeat- ing them emphasizes their content. Shot patterns can convey character stat ...

apprehension or suspense in such film noirs as Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944). In fact, lighting often conveys these thi ...

48 CHAPTER 2PRINCIPLES OF FILM FORM 5 1 3 6 2 4 Lighting and character in AtonementFilmmakers often craft the interplay between ...

in, the screen goes dark. Although the movies are distinguished from other arts by their dependence on light and movement, we sp ...

are related mainly to time. But movies manipulate space and time equally well and are thus both a spatial and a temporal art for ...

On the movie screen, space and time are relative to each other, and we can’t separate them or per- ceive one without the other. ...

52 CHAPTER 2PRINCIPLES OF FILM FORM 1 3 5 2 4 6 Manipulating space in The Gold RushFilm editing can convince us that we’re seein ...

of what is seen. This is what mediation as a con- cept implies. Unlike a video surveillance camera or a webcam, the motion-pictu ...

Welles’s Citizen Kane(1941) and Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There(2007) both begin their exploration of a life with that character’s d ...

FUNDAMENTALS OF FILM FORM 55 1 3 5 7 2 4 6 8 ...

cop’s smiling response is prolonged in a matching sustained freeze-frame. As you may have guessed, The Killeris an odd sort of l ...

that reflects everyday life. Realistic characters are expected to do things that conform to our experi- ences and expectations o ...

Verisimilitude Whether a movie is realistic, antirealistic, or a com- bination of the two, it can achieve a convincing appearanc ...