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MULTIMODAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS
Adaptation as story (re)telling
- Repetition with variation
- Repetition and difference
- Familiarity and novelty
Variation of the same thing. There’s something retold and something changed.
What methodological tools are appropriate for the exploration of this contact zone as a space of story (re)telling tension?
MULTIMODAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS = integration of stylistics and multimodal analysis. MSA aims to use literary stylistic with multimodal theory to analyse texts. The role of multimodal stylistics is to demonstrate how the different semiotic resources interact to produce meaning.
Different modes as integrated, including the verbal one. it refers to communication systems going beyond the verbal, it addresses a range of distinct modes (ex. Color, light, camera movement, lyrics, subtitles…) modes become semiotic resources that create meanings.
WHY? A socio-semiotic multimodal analysis in adaptation studies enables us to be concerned with semiotic affordances and constraints of modes and with plural and different ways of telling a story within a given context. Against monological discourse By addressing medial and modal textual strategies, this method foregrounds the ontological gap between the adapted text and the adaptation, thus preventing from comparing incomparable texts. Adaptation as change and not as betrayal
Changes in page-to-screen adaptations
- Medium = printed – material support for communication
- Length
- Channel
- Sender =codifier Munro or Almodovar
- Time of production
- Place of production
- Modes of production
- Recipient
- Context of fruition
- Social modes of fruition
- Temporal mode of fruition
- **Space-time logics Semiotic resources
- Inter-semiotic resources**
From space- to time-based texts Various integrated semiotic resources are articulated upon the unfolding in time to engender dynamic instances. Rather than a a static, fixed and still unit, the film is a dynamic text, a “system in flux”, governed by “patterns of change”
Film structure: terminology
- Frame : the still of a shot
- Shot : the basic meaningful video unit, an uncut video unit (SHOT = CLAUSE). Video that we have in- between 2 cuts (when we have the black screen) = as one sentence is in between two dots.
- Scene : a one time–space unit
- The sequence embraces multiple space-scenes.
ELEMENTS OF DYNAMISM IN THE FILM (which bring cohesion and continuity)
Intra-shot dynamism : within the shot
- Camera movements
- Participants’ gestures and movements (action)
- Participants’ voice (voice-in)
- Colour changes
- Light changes
Inter-shot dynamism : beyond the shot
- Shot transition
- Sound continuity via music
- Sound continuity via voice-over. narrator speaking outside
The staging of the action and the way it is shot by the camera films constitutes the mise-en-scène.
Frame Julieta , by Almodovar, 2016 the protagonist is suffering. Almodovar has decided to organise space with her in a particular posture and an artwork in the background.
A self-portrait by artist Lucian Freud (Sigmund Freud’s grandson) that very intense artwork behind her it’s a kind of overwhelming figure – it creates tension. Crucial in the meaning making of the scene. light: it comes from the left.
Scenes are sequentially organised though editing or montage.
Away from her , Dir. Sarah Polley, 2006, 110’
The film takes the sequence number 19 (between blank spaces) and divide it in fragments. Then, the director through editing distruibutes these fragments throughout all the movie.
performed.” The actual hesitations, repetitions, digressions, interruptions, and mutterings of everyday speech have either been pruned away, or, if not, deliberately included. Alongside human processing, technology is involved “all dialogue is recorded, edited, mixed, underscored, and played through stereophonic speakers with Dolby sound.
Voice quality and timbre Sound quality is multidimensional. Qualities are graded phenomena:
- Tension: tense/lax • Roughness: rough/smooth • Breathiness • Loudness: soft/loud • Pitch register: high/low • Vibrato/plain
Voice position: Voice-in •Quantitity of film dialogue • Number of speakers (e.g. monologue/dialogue/polylogue) • Voice quality (e.g. soft, rough, plain) • Rhythm (e.g. constant, slow, fast) • Spoken text (i.e. content and form) • Intersemiosis (with music, noise and dynamic images) Functions (1st^ group):
- place, time, character identification through naming,
- the provision of information related to past events, verbal events like secret revelation or love declaration,
- characterisation through dialect, accent, vocal qualities and skills,
- drawing the spectator’s attention to something and control mood, emotions, interpretation. Functions (2nd^ group) related to stylistic effect and ideological dynamics= poetic effects, jokes and humour; the expression of political, religious, moral viewpoints; the showcase of some actors’ vocal skills.
Voice position: Voice-over Oral statements, conveying any portion of a narrative, spoken by an unseen speaker situated in a space and time other than that simultaneously being presented by the images on the screen. In adaptation studies: POSITIVE APPROACH: Literary scholars see the voice-over as a pure technique, which enables the film adaptation to ‘faithfully’ transpose the adapted literary text. NEGATIVE APPROACH The voice-over is criticised by many adaptation critics for being a linear transfer of a verbal literary form of expression. – “Any idiot can write voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of the character.”
Intertitles : •Semantics
- Lexico-grammar (e.g. rank, mood)
- Font (i.e. type, size, colour) => typography.
- On-screen position (e.g. central, marginal) According to Kozloff, intertitles may be used to provide film audiences with necessary narrative information about time, space, historical background; or to create connections and/or disconnections among sequences within the narrative, thus operating at the level of cohesion and sustaining text fruition and understanding.
DYNAMICALLY ENACTED METAFUNCTIONS
Integrate the mode within the metafuncitonal dimension the ideational metafunction concern with the message that is conveyed.
THE IDEATIONAL METAFUNCTION = the ideational metafunction concern with the message that is conveyed.
- Interactive participants: beyond the text. Alice Munro and readers; Anne Wheeler and spectators While analysing a film adaptation we are aware that Munro is the author of the text. Wheeler adapted the text(she lives in Alberta. Really interested in political activism for the rights of the … minority group based in Alberta). 2 artists involved: writer and director
- Represented participants: people, places, actions, time who’s there? Observe participants as actors. We may look at the protagonist, other characters and their relationship (main characters but also secondary characters). It’s a network of human, social, interpersonal relation. When and where? Space and time= setting. ex. Edge of Madness is set in 1851, along the Red River Valley, outside the Canadian Province of Manitoba (area lived by… the minority) space and time matters to the director because it has a political value and meaning (that matters to her as she’s a political activist). For this reason she uses intertitles. What happens? A murder being confessed by a young woman. She’s imprisoned and… investigate over this case.
THE INTERPERSONAL METAFUNCTION
- Camera scale : regard the portion of the human body that we see in the screen. (speaking about human body but it can be done to everything – car, animals…) close-up: head and shoulders Medium shot: from waist up medium long shot = American shot: from knees up extreme long/long shot : all the body
1° image: backgrounded 1° image: frontgrounded
Colour and colour change
Munros= Very frequently her style relies on colour in order to convey perspective and style. Modulated, mixed, allusive and fluid.
Almodovar’s Julieta (2016): he profoundly relies on colours. Very vibrant and powerful red. And also contrast with colour blue. image: opening scene of the film
Colour saturation: intensity, powerness of the colour (in Munro we don’t have saturation)
Colour contrast: many scenes based on red-blue tension. Not because red is the colour of a character. relation between characters – relation between character/landscape –
Parametric system: Value, saturation, purity, modulation, differentiation, hue
Light light as a semiotic system ‘Edge of madness’ by Wheeler relies on light as the most important semiotic interpersonal system.
- Source of light (natural, artificial)
- brightness (intensity)
- directionality
- continuity
- tension : ex. Partially light and dark areas (to convey the feeling of insecurity or unsaid) effects
Light as multifarious and multifaced light as layered and fluid
As parametric system, encompassing illumination, brightness, directionality, continuity, tension, effects. expressing emotional, affective, cultural, social, aesthetic values.
Wheeler’s film starts with an image of Canadian wildness during winter. Very cold natural light.
TEXTUAL METAFUNCTION construction of the text as a text
Mise en scene and editing
Intersemiotics: interconnection of different modes
Framing : shot content, mise en scène human or natural represented participants?
- Crowd shout / group shot / two-individual shot (2 characters seated one in front of the other tension) / individual shot
- (sitting) half body shot / head shot
Natural or artificial (urban/rural) space?
Shot sequence fro scene constructions: Dialogue constructed by editing. the reverse angle or answer shot, reaction (in a dialogue close up on the C1 + CUT+ close up on C2): tension
Ex. The close-up and Edge of Madness The close-up is, at the same time, a strategy of foregrounding the female character and of text structuring. The whole film is, indeed, constructed through several flashbacks narrating Annie’s story, and all flashbacks are originated by close-ups on Annie’s face.
Montage : shot transition (create continuity and discontinuity)
-cut : clear, immediate -cross cutting: smooth, blurred, soft movement from one shot to another (generally used for flashbacks) -fade-in/out -crossfade = dissolve
Film music
- Music composed especially for a film or TV series (score)
- Existing music chosen to accompany the images on the screen. “*T+he replacement of a newly composed film score by a (commercially attractive) soundtrack of pre-existing tracks has become a staple feature” in contemporary cinema.
Lyrics or not? Instrumental music or with words?
Attention should be given to the verbal and non-verbal integration in a piece of music within an adaptation, that is to the presence of lyrics and of melody, of word and music.
- diegetic music (music within the narrative) – concert with people playing ex. “Kansas city” “Full metal Jacket”
- non-diegetic music - offers an emotional accompaniment to film but also carries socio-cultural meanings; this is especially true when a famous piece of music is used, a recognizable song can evoke powerful emotions in a viewer which in turn creates an emotional connection to the movie or TV series they are watching ex. “il buono, il brutto e il cattivo”
Generally the soundtrack is used for the whole film. Sometimes the volume goes up and down, sometimes it stop dis/continuity Music is present within the cinematographic narrative in a fragmentary way and operates at the textual level, in terms of film composition
‘Thanks for the ride’ clip:
- If we have lyrics in an adaptation we need to pay attention to it. Frank Sinatra, hello, young lovers. immediately recognisable voice. Mature man who is identifying establishing connection…
