Film Studies A-Level

Preparing for A level – Study Support Pack – Summer 2020 Subject: Film Studies A-level The aim of this pack is to help you bridge the gap between GCSE and A level. It is specific to one of the many A level subjects that are taught at The Bedford Sixth Form and we encourage you to work through all the relevant packs for the subjects that you would like to study. www.bedfordsixthform.ac.uk 1 Introduction So you want to study film? This pack is designed to get you familiar with some of the approaches to studying films that we use at A-level. They include: • Analysis of film form including: o Aesthetic o Narrative • Exploration of a film’s context including: o Social o Political o Cultural o Historical o Institutional To support your work through this booklet, you will need to access the short film The Fall by Jonathon Glazer (2019). At the time of writing, it is hosted by the BBC on their iPlayer and should be available for another 5 months. It is likely to be freely available via other on-line hosts. Just search for ‘The Fall Jonathan Glazer’. Before you watch the film, please read this extract from a newspaper article about its unusual release. The Americas with Simon Reeve is an amiable travelogue in which a dishy documentarian gads about the US. This Sunday night he was in California, examining giant redwoods and Beyoncé’s mansion. At 10pm, the credits rolled and, abruptly, BBC Two plunged us into hell. For five minutes before the start of Live at the Apollo, the channel screened a new short film in which a masked mob hang a man in a forest. He plunges for what feels an eternity (actually 86 seconds) down a well from the wooden gibbet, before the rope stops spooling and the man – miraculously alive – slowly starts to haul his way towards the light. It was broadcast without introduction or credits. There was no clue as to who was responsible. Catherine Shoard, The Guardian (27/10/19) Why do you think a film maker would collaborate with a television channel such as the BBC to release a short film in this way? 1) Without warning or listing it in the schedule? 2) Anonymously – until the end credits? 3) Between ‘light’ Sunday evening content? Now watch the film. 4) What is your initial response? Much of the meaning that a film has comes from the person watching it. What do you bring to this film? a. Your hopes, fears and expectations? b. Your experience of other films with elements that you recognise or that seem similar here? 2 c. Things that you’ve seen in the news, or read about? Maybe political issues or stories from around the world? d. Nothing… maybe you’ve not ever seen anything like this and are totally baffled by what just happened. It’s OK if this is the case! The Guardian article continues… In fact, The Fall is the latest film by Jonathan Glazer, the British director behind gangster comedy Sexy Beast, chilly Nicole Kidman reincarnation drama Birth and Under the Skin, in which Scarlett Johansson’s erotic alien feeds on Glaswegians. All three are brilliant; Under the Skin is a masterpiece, last month named by this paper as the fourth best film of the century so far. The Fall, his first work since Under the Skin, feels entirely of a piece. Long, eerie takes, a score by Mica Levi (there is no dialogue), bright light shining through the pitch black, and everything freighted with exhilarating dread. Catherine Shoard, The Guardian (27/10/19) 5) There are two people mentioned here as being part of the creative team that made this film. Find out a bit more about each of them: a. Jonathan Glazer b. Mica Levi Jonathan Glazer talks about the artistic and political influences on the film as the article continues… The Fall may be brief, but it turns out to have at least five heavyweight inspirations – the most flippant of which is a snap of Eric and Donald Trump Jr on a big-game hunting jaunt. “The day I saw a picture of the Trump sons grinning with a dead leopard,” he says, was the day he came up with a shot of the mob posing for a selfie with their prey. It’s a moment that hauls a story, whose bare bones recall Reconstruction-era America and even stone-age justice, firmly into the present. The masks mix early man and modern social protest – half Neanderthal, half Vendetta. “I think fear is ever-present,” says Glazer when asked if a lynch-mob mentality is currently being given freer rein. “And that drives people to irrational behaviour. A mob encourages an abdication of personal responsibility. The rise of National Socialism in Germany for instance was like a fever that took hold of people. We can see that happening again.” Aside from The Fall, the feature-length film Glazer has been working on for the past six years is a Holocaust drama set in Auschwitz, apparently based on Martin Amis’s novel The Zone of Interest, about a Nazi officer who becomes infatuated with the camp commander’s wife. That film, due to shoot next spring, is “very much its own thing,” he says. Yet he has spoken about his fascination with photos of Germans thrilled by the horrors they were witnessing – something seemingly explored in The Fall. 3 Another starting point for the short, he says, was a Bertolt Brecht poem written in exile in the 1930s: “In the dark times / Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing / About the dark times.” These lines, says Glazer, were inscribed on the inside cover of a collection of essays given to him by a friend. Other inspirations include the Goya self-portrait The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, in which the napping artist is plagued by flapping bats, generally interpreted as a critique of Spanish society as ignorant, insane and corrupt. “Also,” says Glazer, “his Disasters of War etchings, urgently titled I Saw It or This Is Worse. Hell on earth, witnessed like a photojournalist such as Robert Capa or Don McCullin. Ferocious, factual, unflinching.” In case it’s not clear, Glazer is an uncompromisingly serious-minded film-maker. Ask him what he’s enjoyed lately and he says Krzystof Kieślowski’s 1979 meta-drama Camera Buff (“a great film about film-making and the nature and ethics of it”). Few directors treat film of all forms with more gravity. Though this may be his first fictional short in 26 years, Glazer built his reputation with astonishing music videos for the likes of Radiohead (he credits 1996’s Street Spirit as the turning point in his artistic development) and ads such as Guinness’s horses in the surf. “Anthony Minghella said a short film should be like a perfect sentence,” he says, “And I thought that was a really good way of thinking about them.” As for The Fall premiering on TV? Glazer won’t quite pronounce on whether some genres, such as the superhero movies made by Marvel, are – in the words of Martin Scorsese – “not cinema”. “I believe cinema is a frontier. Absolutely. And the films I’m most interested in are the ones with that in mind.” Food for thought. Especially for those who’d only tuned in for Live at the Apollo. Catherine Shoard, The Guardian (27/10/19) 6) The influences on the film include some other visual artists and their work. Find out about each of these. Try using Google images to help you visualise their influence. a. Goya’s self-portrait The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters b. Photojournalists such as Robert Capa or Don McCullin c. Krzystof Kieślowski – find out about A Short Film About Killing Here’s the picture of the Trump boys hunting: 4 7) What aspects of this still image do you think have influenced the visual style of The Fall? 8) One of the most disturbing elements of the film, for many spectators, is the use of masks. Shoard comments in the article that: “The masks mix early man and modern social protest – half Neanderthal, half Vendetta.” a. What do you think she means? b. What do you think is the impact and meaning of the masks? 9) Jonathan Glazer has made a few films, advertisement and music videos. Try finding some other short films of his to watch. I recommend the music video for Rabbit in Your Headlights by UNKLE. Can you see any similarities across his work? In filmmaking, there are a few elements of the process that are controlled by the creative team to help them build meaning into their work. At A-level we look at these separately to explore their importance. Here is a basic list: a) Cinematography – how the cameras to frame the action b) Mise-en-scéne – how all elements of the set and props are arranged c) Editing – how all the shots that make up the film are organised d) Sound – how meaning is created by the sound that is in the story and the sound that is added on top. We’ll take these in turn and think about what Glazer and his team have done. Cinematography 10) In this shot of the rope running into the well, the camera moves very slowly closer to the action. a. Why do you think this is? 5 b. What effect might be intended? 11) In this shot, the camera is positioned below the man climbing up the well walls.

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