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In David Company's "Introduction: When to be Fast? When to be Slow?," (CANVAS LIBRARY RESOURCES) his main concern is - ✔✔the relationship between film and photography Which one of the following does Stephen Apkon's essay "What is Literacy?" (CANVAS LIBRARY RESOURCES) most concern itself with? - ✔✔the history of forms of communication Which one of the following occurs in Slumdog Millionaire? - ✔✔a child is blinded by a criminal, in order to be a more successful beggar The Cinematic Imaginary: Elements - ✔✔narrative premise; episodes of narrative; "fictional" storytelling: emotional logic not intellectual logic; engages human cognition and perception; creates distinction between "the thing" and "the image of the thing": Representation; presents images in transformation to achieve emotional affect David Campany, "When to be Fast? When to be Slow?" - ✔✔concentrates on unique relationship between film and photography which are shaped by the idea of speed and the flow of images; new methods of viewing reshape old images; Victor Burgin: "cinematic heterotopia," the variety of ways we can consume cinema means we are surrounded by cinema; technology of visual and moving-image media is always changing - but the cinematic imaginary is defined but the capacity to absorb these changes Stephen Apkon, "What is Literacy?" - ✔✔"Literacy is the ability to express oneself in an effective way through the text of the moment, the prevailing mode of a particular society"; includes the consumption and production of communication messages; about communicating info and emotion; all communication is mediated - the history of communication is the history of mediation; all mediums of communication have their own attributes; individual and cultural power; cinema is a revolution in mediation; language of cinema is the language of now According to this week's lectures, which one of the following is true of the concept of "The Cinematic Imaginary"? - ✔✔It is useful for studying the present and future of visual and moving image media, but not the past
In last week's reading, which one of these authors discussed mathematics, the alphabet, and the printing press, as well as movies? - ✔✔Stephen Apkon, in "What is Literacy"? The Early Cinema: Originating the Cinematic Imaginary - ✔✔emergence of 'fictional' storytelling; narrative premise - but not yet episodic narratives; consciousness of 'the image' as representation; engaging human cognition and perception to achieve emotional affect ("The Attraction"); experiments in images-in-transformation Modernity - ✔✔condition of believing that our era is one of technological and social difference and progress from any previous era; exhilarating and anxiety-provoking; happens when any society undergoes this transformation; in the West is occurred in the late 19 th and early 20 th century Modernity in the West: 1815 - 1905 - ✔✔fusing of radical technical, social, political, and cultural change; work becomes alienated and commodified; leisure becomes commodified; kinship ties reduced in importance; growing urbanism of populations; new anxieties of modern life: disjointed, unpredictable, dangerous, and exciting; new technologies: transportation, metallurgy, chemistry, photography; new forms of mass reproducible art and media to represent these realities: tabloid newspapers, magazines, lithographed posters, prints The Cinema & "The Image" - ✔✔understands the modern split between the thing and the representation of the thing: "The image of the thing is not the thing itself"; establishes relationship between the real and the image as coded: "realistic"; privileges the image as a source of cultural authenticity and excitement; the documentary impulse: accurate description; fantastic impulse: imaginative construction; narrative impulse: recruiting the documentary and fantastic image of story telling purposes Pre-Technologies of the Early Cinema 1 : Viewing Devices - ✔✔DaVinci's notes on the cinema, camera obscura Pre-Technologies of Early Cinema 2 : Illusion of Motion - ✔✔Zoetrope, mutoscope Pre-Technologies of Early Cinema 3 : Serial Photography - ✔✔Etienne-Jules Marey, 'The Camera Gun'; Eadweard Muybridge: Biomechanical Photography & the Stanford Experiments
According to Bordwell & Thompson in their essay "The Invention and Early Years of the Cinema," which one of these was the most important role of Thomas Edison in the origin of the cinema? - ✔✔inventor of early business models for the cinema Attributes of the Early Cinema: Bordwell & Thompson, "The Invention and Early Years of the Cinema, 1880 - 1904 " - ✔✔the technological prehistory of the cinema, internationalizing invention, varieties of films, growth of European industries, Melies, Edison, growing competitiveness of US film industry Artistry: The Shift to Fiction - ✔✔growth of multi-shot films, growth of "cinematic" storytelling: cinematic space and time Industry: Edison & The Cinema - ✔✔a "brand" rather than an "inventor", the idea of "the studio", monetizing the movies through patents Industry: Internationalizing the Cinema - ✔✔Europe, US, traveling exhibitors, itinerant producers Culture: "The Cinema of Attractions" (Tom Gunning) - ✔✔modernity's thrills and fears projected onto the screen, complicated pleasure, not a naive audience Modern Media Types - ✔✔Youtube, Vines, music videos, fractal films, TV commercials, go-pro videos According to Bordwell & Thompson (& Hagopian), which one of these best describes the shift in early cinema which took place between the years 1902 - 1905? - ✔✔The shift of film production from the US to France In Michael Aronson's article "Nickels and Steel: An Introduction," what city does he concentrate on? - ✔✔Pittsburgh In his article "Race and the Reception of Jack Johnson Fight Films," author Dan Streible argues which one of these? - ✔✔Johnson was the first African American heavyweight boxing champion.
Lumiere/Melies influence continues - ✔✔Lumiere: description and the documentary impulse; Melies: invention and the fantastic impulse The US Motion Picture Industry 1905 - 1915 - ✔✔industry shifts from emphasis on director/filmmaker to production to distribution network; movies become a "media industry"; monopoly to independence: "The Trust" to "The Independents"; production process becomes more formalized: rise of "segregated crafts" system built around narrative filmmaking The Motion Picture Industry 1905 - 1915 - ✔✔distribution shifts from sales to rental, allowing for networking; production shifts to California 1911 - 1915 ; theaters organize into chains; support services industry emerge; rise of "Star System" & "Regulated Narrative" - narrative itself becomes a commodity; industry becomes integrated, cartelized, and globalized: by 1915 the movies are a big business The International Expansion of the Movies During the Nickelodeon Era - ✔✔rise of European centers of production and distribution; development of the international film trade, dominance of the Hollywood film industry overseas Regularizing Distribution: Advertising & Synopses - ✔✔Rise of exchanges, advertising, & networking of theaters The Nickelodeon Theatre: A Democratic Cultural Space 1 - ✔✔not built as a theater but re-purposed as a theater; communal space for viewing movies: accommodated all ages, genders, classes; minimal investment, flexible siting; fit its audience's "lifestyle"; became part of cityscape; created anxiety among elites The Nickelodeon Audience - ✔✔a modern audience; nickelodeons part of new texture of commodified urban leisure; widely identified with working class & immigrant audiences; identified with "escape" or fantasy; provoked anxieties about class and ethnicity among middle classes and upper classes; aspirational toward middle class audiences Boxing Films: The Cinema and Social Transgression - ✔✔first African American world heavyweight boxing champion; six major films of Johnson fights 1908 - 1915
Who was Harold Lloyd? - ✔✔Long apprenticeship in short films; one of three major silent film comics; highly successful economically; character concerned with class and status: a middle-class "striver"; in the 1920 s a symbol of motion picture celebrity as "American Royalty" What to Look For in Safety Last - ✔✔Episodic Narrative: character, time, and space; Comedy: built around gags and their extension; white middle class orientation (consumption, social standing, race, migration) The nickelodeon era is important in this course because it saw - ✔✔The establishment of norms for film as both art and industry in the US Which of the following occurs in Safety Last? - ✔✔A male immigrant meets and marries a female immigrant In their essay, "Griffith and His Contemporaries, 1908 - 1920 ," what do the authors say is D.W. Griffith's most significant contribution to the cinema? - ✔✔He was the first director to portray African Americans positively, in The Birth of a Nation D.W. Griffith: Form and Influence 1 - ✔✔Extensive "training" in filmmaking at Biograph 1908 - 1912 ; formal innovations: integrated close-ups, "cinematic" time, "cinematic" space, naturalistic acting, editing to generate suspense, pathos D.W. Griffith: Form and Influence 2 - ✔✔Influence on other filmmakers: pioneered use of "epic story values", pioneered cultural role of the director as "auteur", pioneered film as a means of edification Other Innovators during the Nickelodeon Era - ✔✔Thomas Ince: the story as commodity; Cecil B. DeMille: middle class tase as a commodity; Mack Sennett: comedy as a 'subversive' commodity D. W. Griffith: The Movies as a Self-Conscious Cultural Force - ✔✔The Birth of a Nation, 1915 The Nickelodeon Era: The Movies Become a Mass Communications Medium - ✔✔"Business Pure and Simple": index of movies as an industry; censorship: index of the movies as a social force; "The Movies" as middle-class iconography: consumption, advertising, mores
United Artists, 1919 : The Death Knell of the Nickelodeon Era - ✔✔Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and corporate officers sign incorporation papers, 1919 The Passing of the Nickelodeon Meant... - ✔✔centralization of production, distribution, and exhibition; shift to middle-class orientation; restriction of access to the nation's screens for marginal and political cinemas; institutionalization of the storytelling mode called "the Classical Hollywood Cinema"; worldwide economic and cultural influence of Hollywood Harold Lloyd: "Movie Crazy" - ✔✔managed transition from the nickelodeon to features; personal success story/played "Success Boy" in the movies The Lloyd Formula - ✔✔The Thrill Comedy and The character Comedy Safety Last: Making the Movies Middle Class - ✔✔middle-class locus, emphasis on social status and consumption, aspirational character, City: a setting for danger but also conquest Bordwell & Thompson, in their essay on documentary cinema (Canvas reading) discuss two forms of documentary cinema. What are these? - ✔✔rhetorical and categorical The Traditional Function of the Documentary Cinema in Culture - ✔✔based on the cultural capital of cinema's capacity to describe the world literally; traditional site of "truth" vs. fiction; offers itself as an authority on its subjects; considered a more serious form of cinema Grierson: The Documentary Idealized - ✔✔Grierson: Documentary cinema should differ from narrative cinema (educational, instructional, uplifting, empowering, creates a thoughtful national community); Director, theorist, institution-builder Grierson: "First Principles of Documentary" ( 1932 - 1934 ) - ✔✔film has unique capacity for observation and retelling; documentary has a higher civic mission than simply recording events: "moral grandeur"; real people and places are more truthful than fictional ones; documentary stories are more powerful than fictional ones; criticizes over-aestheticized documentaries, especially city symphonies
Bordwell & Thompson, in their essay "Experimental Film" (Canvas), use which one of the following as an extended example of "abstract form" in experimental cinema? - ✔✔Ballet Mechanique The Experimental Cinema is... - ✔✔vast category, everything that defies convention is in some way experimental; usually the work of an "auteur" - an individual artist with a recognizable style; consciously reject convention; usually produced at or outside the margins of the commercial narrative cinema, only possible when conventions have been established to work against; influenced by other art forms; has been a presence in cinema since the beginning; influences style and content of commercial narrative films; influences other media Classicism vs Modernism - ✔✔Film Classicism: rule governed, based on assumption of an orderly universe, creates sense of mastery for the viewer, often borrows or evolves techniques and ideas from experimental cinema; Film Modernism: novelty, shatters assumption of orderly universe, creates sense of disruption, alienation, loss for viewer, often incubates techniques and ideas for the mainstream cinema Experimental Film: The Case of Scorpio Rising ( 1964 ) - ✔✔experimental visual style, fetishizes a marginalized culture, purposely offensive to mainstream values, marginal to the film industry, hugely influential among filmmakers Bordwell & Thompson: Forms of Experimental Film - ✔✔Abstract Film: reduces experience to its essence, plays with concreteness; Associational Film: invents meaning by association, seems random Some Types of Experimental Films - ✔✔Surrealist Cinema: recreates a dream state; Materialist Cinema: experiments in film medium itself; The City Symphony: collage of images associated with a city; Compilation Film: combines footage from various sources for a new purpose; Structural Film: experiments in representing time and space In the article "Experimental Films," (Canvas Library Resources) which one of these do Bordwell and Thompson say Koyaanisqatsi is an example of? - ✔✔an associational film According to lecture, the film Scorpio Rising was originally little seen by the public but has been very influential among filmmakers - ✔✔True
In his essay, "Stan Brakhage's Films Explode with Sensuous Beauty," author Fred Camper argues - ✔✔that Brakhage's films are extremely personal to the filmmaker's experience What Makes a Film Experimental? - ✔✔marginal position within the marketplace; desire to articulate marginal political or social positions, use of the medium to stretch the medium's expressive potential, draws attention to the arbitrariness of correct practices; expresses and contributes to dynamic relationship of audience to artworks/media Camper, "Stan Brakhage's Films Exploded with Sensual Beauty": Multiple Experiments - ✔✔Experiments with viewers' consciousness, autobiography, and film form Koyaanisqatsi as an Experimental Film - ✔✔an experiment in conceiving the world, creates its own rules for understanding itself, understands experience in different ways from a conventional fiction film, uses the media self-reflexively, "non-transparent" technique, reduces the viewer's sense of command of human experience The Narrative Cinema as "Experimental" - ✔✔may use conventions in new and expansive ways: musical sequences, expressive mise-en-scene or editing, dream sequences, inherently surreal experience of watching films influences experimental art Some "Experimental" techniques used in Narrative Films - ✔✔Montage and Surrealism In Bordwell & Thompson's essay on animated films, what ARE the major categories of animated films? - ✔✔traditional and experiemental What characters are Richard Thompson most concerned with in his essay "Meep-Meep!"? - ✔✔the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote some Types of Animation - ✔✔Cel animation, stop action animation, rotoscoping, silhouette/ 2 D animation, digital animation
