Part 1: Basic Terms AUTEUR French for "author". Used by critics writing for Cahiers du cinema and other journals to indicate the figure, usually the director, who stamped a film with his/her own "personality". Opposed to "metteurs en scene" who merely transcribed a work achieved in another medium into film. The concept allowed critics to evaluate highly works of American genre cinema that were otherwise dismissed in favor of the developing European art cinema.
Director Abbas Kiarostami appearing as himself in the last scene of Taste of Cherry (Ta'm e Guilass, Iran, 1997)
DIEGESIS The diegesis includes objects, events, spaces and the characters that inhabit them, including things, actions, and attitudes not explicitly presented in the film but inferred by the audience. That audience constructs a diegetic world from the material presented in a narrative film. Some films make it impossible to construct a coherent diegetic world, for example Last Year at Marienbad (L'année dernière à Marienbad, Alan Resnais, 1961) or even contain no diegesis at all but deal only with the formal properties of film, for instance Mothlight (Stan Brakhage, 1963). The "diegetic world" of the documentary is usually taken to be simply the world, but some drama documentaries test that assumption such as Land Without Bread (Las Hurdes, Luis Buñuel, 1932). Different media have different forms of diegesis. Henry V (Lawrence Olivier, England, 1944) starts with a long crane shot across a detailed model landscape of 16th century London. Over the course of its narrative, the film shifts its diegetic register from the presentational form of the Elizabethan theater to the representational form of mainstream narrative cinema.
EDITING The joining together of clips of film into a single filmstrip. The cut is a simple edit but there are many other possible ways to transition from one shot to another. See the section on editing.
Picture: Yelizaveta Svilova at the editing table of Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s kinoapparatom, Dziga Vertov USSR, 1929)
FLASHBACK FLASHFORWARD A jump backwards or forwards in diegetic time. With the use of flashback / flashforward the order of events in the plot no longer matches the order of events in the story. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) is a famous film composed almost entirely of flashbacks and flashforwards. The film timeline spans over 60 years, as it traces the life of Charles Foster Kane from his childhood to his deathbed -- and on into the repercussions of his actions on the people around him. Some characters appear at several time periods in the film, usually being interviewed in the present and appearing in the past as they tell the reporter of their memories of Kane. Joseph Cotten, who plays Kane's best friend, is shown here as an old man in a rest home (with the help of some heavy make-up) and as a young man working with Kane in his newspaper.
FOCUS Focus refers to the degree to which light rays coming from any particular part of an object pass through the lens and reconverge at the same point on a frame of the film negative, creating sharp outlines and distinct textures that match the original object. This optical property of the cinema creates variations in depth of field -- through shallow focus, deep focus, and techniques such as racking focus. Dziga Vertov's films celebrated the power of cinema to create a "communist decoding of reality", most overtly in Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s kinoapparatom, USSR, 1929).
GENRES Types of film recognized by audiences and/or producers, sometimes retrospectively. These types are distinguished by narrative or stylistic conventions, or merely by their discursive organization in influential criticism. Genres are made necessary by high volume industrial production, for example in the mainstream cinema of the U.S.A and Japan. Thriller/Detective film: The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
Horror film: Bride of Frankestein (John Whale, 1935) Western: The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
Musical: Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952)
MISE-EN-SCENE All the things that are "put in the scene": the setting, the decor, the lighting, the costumes, the performance etc. Narrative films often manipulate the elements of mise-en-scene, such as decor, costume, and acting to intensify or undermine the ostensible significance of a particular scene.
STORY / PLOT Perhaps more correctly labelled fabula and syuzhet, story refers to all the audience infers about the events that occur in the diegesis on the basis of what they are shown by the plot -- the events that are directly presented in the film. The order, duration, and setting of those events, as well as the relation between them, all constitute elements of the plot. Story is always more extensive than plot even in the most straightforward drama but certain genres, such as the film noir and the thriller, manipulate the relationship of story and plot for dramatic purposes. A film such as Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) forces its audience to continually reconstruct the story told in a temporally convoluted plot.
SCENE / SEQUENCE A scene is a segment of a narrative film that usually takes place in a single time and place, often with the same characters. Sometimes a single scene may contain two lines of action, occurring in different spaces or even different times, that are related by means of crosscutting. Scene and sequence can usually be used interchangeably, though the latter term can also refer to a longer segment of film that does not obey the spatial and temporal unities of a single scene. For example, a montage sequence that shows in a few shots a process that occurs over a period of time.
SHOT A single stream of images, uninterrupted by editing. The shot can use a static or a mobile framing, a standard or a non- standard frame rate, but it must be continuous. The shot is one of the basic units of cinema yet has always been subject to manipulation, for example stop-motion cinematography or superimposition. In contemporary cinema, with the use of computer graphics and sequences built-up from a series of still frames (eg. The Matrix), the boundaries of the shot are increasingly being challenged. Part 2: Mise-en-scene The representation of space affects the reading of a film. Depth, proximity, size and proportions of the places and objects in a film can be manipulated through camera placement and lenses, lighting, decor, effectively determining mood or relationships between elements in the diegetic world.
Section 1 - Decor An important elememt of "putting in the scene" is décor, the objects contained in and the setting of a scene. Décor can be used to amplify character emotion or the dominant mood of a film. In these shots from 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1969) the futuristic furniture and reduced color scheme stress the sterility and impersonality of the space station environment. Later, the digital nature of the HAL computer is represented by the repeating patterns and strong geometrical design of the set.
In Senso (Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1954) décor emphazises the social difference between a wealthy married woman in her richly furnished apartment and her soldier lover in the barren military barracks. Ultimately, she finds the contrast so appalling that she ruins her reputation and financial standing in order to satisfy her lover's desire for a luxurious lifestyle.
REAR PROJECTION Usually used to combine foreground action, often actors in conversation, with a background often shot earlier, on location. Rear projection provides an economical way to set films in exotic or dangerous locations without having to transport expensive stars or endure demanding conditions. In some films, the relationship between scenes shot on location and scenes shot using rear projection becomes a signifying pattern. In other films, it's just cheap... Rear projection is featured extensively in Douglas Sirk's lush melodrama Written On The Wind (1956). Specifically, almost every car ride is shot in this way, a common feature in Classical Hollywood films, due to the physical restrains of shooting in the studio. In addition, by speeding up the rate of the projected images in the background, or quickly changing its angle, rear projection allows for an impression of speed that involves no real danger.
Even if one of the protagonists of Written On The Wind is a fast-driving alcoholic millionaire (and therefore there are multiple instances of careless driving), rear projection is preferred to stunts both for economic and aesthetic reasons. For example, physical spectacle is not as important in a melodrama as it would be in an action film..
Section 2 - Lighting The intensity, direction, and quality of lighting have a profound effect on the way an image is perceived. Light affects the way colors are rendered, both in terms of hue and depth, and can focus attention on particular elements of the composition. Much like movement in the cinema, the history of lighting technology is intrisically linked to the history of film style. Most mainstream films rely on the three-point lighting style, and its genre variations. Other films, for example documentaries and realist cinema, rely on natural light to create a sense of authenticity.
THREE-POINT LIGHTING The standard lighting scheme for classical narrative cinema. In order to model an actor's face (or another object) with a sense of depth, light from three directions is used, as in the diagram below. A backlight picks out the subject from its background, a bright key light highlights the object and a fill light from the opposite side ensures that the key light casts only faint shadows.
Illustration courtesy of http://www.tcf.ua.edu/TVCrit/ These shots from Written On The Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956) demostrate the classical use of three-point lighting. Laurel Bacall and Rock Hudson are rendered glamorous by the balanced lighting. Compare this to the manipulation of lighting for expressive purposes on the high-key lighting and low-key lighting pages.
HIGH-KEY LIGHTING A lighting scheme in which the fill light is raised to almost the same level as the key light. This produces images that are usually very bright and that feature few shadows on the principal subjects. This bright image is characteristic of entertainment genres such as musicals and comedies such as Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, Tsui Hark, Honk Kong, 1986)
LOW-KEY LIGHTING A lighting scheme that employs very little fill light, creating strong contrasts between the brightest and darkest parts of an image and often creating strong shadows that obscure parts of the principal subjects. This lighting scheme is often associated with "hard-boiled" or suspense genres such as film noir. Here are some examples from Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958.)
Section 3 - Space The representation of space affects the reading of a film. Depth, proximity, size and proportions of the places and objects in a film can be manipulated through camera placement and lenses, lighting, decor, effectively determining mood or relationships between elements in the diegetic world.
DEEP SPACE A film utilizes deep space when significant elements of an image are positioned both near to and distant from the camera. For deep space these objects do not have to be in focus, a defining characteristic of deep focus. Staging in deep space is the opposite of staging in shallow space. Deep space is used throughout many Iranian films such as The Color of Paradise (Rang-e Khoda,1999). Director Majid Majidi likes to integrate the characters into their natural surroundings, to map out the actual distances involved between one location and another in order to emphasize just exactly how hard it is for a particular character (especially children) to move from one place to another.
In this composition, Mohammad's father looks in apprehension at the school where his blind son is visiting.In the far background, Mohammad is playing with his sister and other "normal" children, but his father does not believe Mohammad should try to mingle with them since he could never be their equal, due to his disability. On the other hand, Mohammad enjoys the company of his new friends in the countryside much more than the School for the Blind in Tehran, where he spends most of the year. The distance between the two points of view, as well as the impossibility of communication between Mohammad and his father (the son is too respectful of his father, the father finds his son's situation too painful), is reflected in the deep use of mise-en-scene.
FRONTALITY Frontality refers to the staging of elements, often human figures, so that they face the camera square-on. This arrangement is an alternative to oblique staging. Frontal staging is usually avoided by the invisible style of continuity editing, since it supposedly breaks the spectator's illusion of peeking into a separate world, by having characters look directly into the camera as if they were aware of the viewers' presence. Some films may go even further and have the characters speak to the camera, in what is called a direct address. Accordingly, frontality is often used in films that are more willing to play with, or openly defy, the distance between the screen and the spectator. In this shot from The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Italy, 1996) Dario Argento exploits the iconicity of frontal staging in multiple ways.
First, he situates his characters on a parallel plane with the famous profile portraits of The Duke of Urbino and his wife by Piero Della Francesca. Then, he flattens the characters by making the space between them and the paintings shallow with the use of a zoom lens, while keeping all planes in focus. As a reflexive auteur, Argento thus uses frontality to equate his characters with the paintings: both are fictional creations, the product of an artist's work. As a final self-referential pun, Argento has his Japanese tourist taking a picture of us!
MATTE SHOT A process shot in which two photographic images (usually background and foreground) are combined into a single image using an optical printer. Matte shots can be used to add elements to a realistic scene or to create fantasy spaces. In these four examples from Vertigo (1958), director Alfred Hitchcock uses all possible combinations. In the first image, the white belfry is a model added on the foreground of a shot of the roof; in the second image, the sky in the background is clearly a painting, with the purpose of making us believe the scene takes place on a bell tower's top floor, rather than on the studio's ground.
The other two shots belong to the fantasy sequence of Scottie's dream. In the first one his face is superimposed over a campy "unconscious" image; the last one reverses the process, having a mixture of "real" and matted elements in the background (the roof and the belfry) with the added silhouette in the foreground.
Matte shooting is one of the most common techniques used in studio filmmaking, either for economical reasons (it's cheaper to shot a picture of the Eiffel tower than to travel to Paris) or because it would be impossible or too dangerous to try to shot in the real space. Sometimes, as when animation and real figures interact, that space may not even exist. In recent years, however, special effects and computer generated images have taken over the function of matte shots.
OFFSCREEN SPACE Space that exists in the diegesis but that is not visible in the frame. Offscreen space becomes significant when the viewer's attention is called to an event or presence in the diegesis that is not visible in the frame. Offscreen space is commonly exploited for suspense in horror and thriller films, such as The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Dario Argento, Italy, 1996)
As discussed in the offscreen sound entry, this scene from Life on Earth (La Vie sur Terre, Abderrahmane Sissako, Mauritania, 1998) explores the difficulties of establishing communication in a postcolonial space that still depends on the former colonial master for its technology and even its calendar.
SHALLOW SPACE The opposite of deep space, in shallow space the image is staged with very little depth. The figures in the image occupy the same or closely positioned planes. While the resulting image loses realistic appeal, its flatness enhances its pictorial qualities. Striking graphic patters can be achieved through shallow space. In these frames from My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari No Totoro, Japan, 1988) Miyazaki fills the entire background with a lamp-eyed, grinning catbus. Shallow space creates ambiguity: is the cat brimming with joy at the sisters' encounter, or is he about to eat them?
Shallow space can be staged, or it can also be achieved optically, with the use of a telephoto lens.This is particularly useful for creating claustrophic images, since it makes the characters look like they are being crushed against the background.
Section 4 - Costume Costume simply refers to the clothes that characters wear. Costume in narrative cinema is used to signify character, or advertise particular fashions, or to make clear distinctions between characters.
In this example from Life on Earth (La Vie sur Terre, 1998) filmmaker and actor Abderrahmane Sissako uses "similar" costumes (long loose clothes, big hats) to further stress the cultural and psychological implications of a nomadic existence, split between the cold affluence of France and the colorful poverty of Mauritania.
Part 3: Cinematography Section 1 - Quality This section explores some of the elements at play in the construction of a shot. As the critics at Cahiers du cinéma maintained, the "how" is as important as the "what" in the cinema. The look of an image, its balance of dark and light, the depth of the space in focus, the relation of background and foreground, etc. all affect the reception of the image. For instance, the optical qualities of grainy black and white in Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Maarakat madinat al Jazaer, Algeria, 1965) seem to guarantee its authenticity. On the other hand, the shimmering Technicolor of a musical such as Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952) suggests an out-of-this-world glamor and excitement.
COLOR Early films were shot in black and white but the cinema soon included color images. These images were initially painted or stencilled onto the film but by the 1930s filmmakers were able to include color sequences in their films. Apart from the added realism or glamor that a color image could provide, color is also used to create aesthetic patterns and to establish character or emotion in narrative cinema. In Federico Fellini's extravagant Juliet of the Spirits (Giulietta degli Spiriti, 1965) colors separate the bourgeois reality and the fantasy daydreamings of the title character, who partyhops between black and white and reds and purples.
Juliet of the Spirits was the first Fellini film in color, and he intended to make full use of it. In order to further enhance the contrast with his previous work, he cast his favorite actress and wife Giulietta Massina, the protagonist of Fellini's earlier successes such as Nights of Cabiria (Le Notti di Cabiria, 1957) in which she plays a destitute hooker in a grim suburban environment. Now Fellini has the same actress play a rich housewife in luscious technicolor, obviously signaling a clear turning point from his early Neorealism-inspired films.
Contrary to popular belief (and Goethe), colors do not necessarily carry exclusive meanings. Compare the use of red in Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers (Viskingar Och Rop, 1972),
and Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou (1990), for example.
While Zhang exploits red as a cliched signifier of unrestrained passion, Bergman associates the color with stagnation and contaminated blood.
CONTRAST The ratio of dark to light in an image. If the difference between the light and dark areas is large, the image is said to be "high contrast". If the difference is small, it is referred to as "low contrast" Most films use low contrast to achieve a more naturalistic lighting. High contrast is usually associated with the low key lighting of dark scenes in genres such as the horror film and the film noir. A common cliche is to use contrast between light and dark to distinguish between good and evil. The use of contrast in a scene may draw on racist or sexist connotations.
For instance, this shot from Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958) employs high contrast to further emphasize racial differences between a blonde American woman and a menacing Mexican man.
DEEP FOCUS Like deep space, deep focus involves staging an event on film such that significant elements occupy widely separated planes in the image. Unlike deep space, deep focus requires that elements at very different depths of the image both be in focus. In these two shots from Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) Besieged (L'Assedio, Bernardo Bertolucci,1998) all of the different planes of the image are given equal importance through deep focus, not only to the characters (like the man peeking at the window in the first image), but also to the spaces (Shanduray's basement room in the second).
While deep focus may be used occasionally, some auteurs use it consistently for they believe it achieves a truer representation of space. Directors like Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, Hou Hsao-Hsien, or Abbas Kiarostami all use deep focus as an essential part of their signature style.
SHALLOW FOCUS A restricted depth of field, which keeps only one plane in sharp focus; the opposite of deep focus. Used to direct the viewer's attention to one element of a scene. Shallow focus is very common in close-up, as in these two shots from Central Station (Central do Brasil, Walter Selles, Brazil, 1998).
Shallow focus suggests psychological introspection, since a character appears as oblivious to the world around her/him. It is therefore commonly employed in genres such as the melodrama, where the actions and thoughts of an individual prevail over everything else.
DEPTH OF FIELD The distance through which elements in an image are in sharp focus. Bright light and a narrow lens aperture tend to produce a larger depth of field, as does using a wide-angle rather than a long lens. A shallow depth of field is often used as a technique to focus audience attention on the most significant aspect of a scene without having to use an analytic cut- in.
Depth of field is directly connected, but not to be confused, with focus. Focus is the quality (the "sharpness" of an object as it is registered in the image) and depth of field refers to the extent to which the space represented is in focus. For a given lens aperture and level of lighting, the longer the focal distance (the distance between the lens and the object that is in focus) the greater the focal depth. For a given focal distance, the greater the level of lighting or the narrower the aperture, the greater the focal depth. For that reason, close-up shooting and shooting in low light conditions often results in images with very shallow depth of field. An image with shallow depth of field, as this frame from Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, Tsui Hark , 1986), has some elements in focus, but others are not.
EXPOSURE A camera lens has an aperture that controls how much light passes through the lens and onto the film. If the aperture is widened, more light comes through and the resultant image will become more exposed. If an image is so pale that the detail begins to disappear, it can be described as "overexposed". Conversely, a narrow aperture that allows through less light will produce a darker image than normal, known as "underexposed". Exposure can be manipulated to guide an audience's response to a scene.
In his film Traffic (2000), Steven Soderbergh decided to shot all of the sequences in the Northern Mexico desert overexposed. The resulting images give an impression of a barren, desolated land being mercilessly burnt by the sun, a no-man's land over which police and customs have no control.
RACKING FOCUS Racking focus refers to the practice of changing the focus of a lens such that an element in one plane of the image goes out of focus and an element at another plane in the image comes into focus. This technique is an even more overt way of steering audience attention through the scene, as well as of linking two spaces or objects. For instance in this scene from Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, Tsui Hark, Honk Kong, 1986), a connection is made between an activist in hiding and a police officer who is pursuing him.
Racking focus is usually done quite quickly; in a way, the technique tries to mimick a brief, fleeting glance that can be used to quicken the tempo or increase suspense.
RATE A typical sound film is shot at a frame rate of 24 frames per second. If the number of frames exposed in each second is increased, the action will seem to move more slowly than normal when it is played back. Conversely, the fewer the number of frames exposed each second, the more rapid the resulting action appears to be. The extreme case of frame rate manipulation is stop-motion, when the camera takes only one frame then the subject is manipulated or allowed to change before taking another frame. In this clip from Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s kinoapparatom, USSR, 1929) stop motion is used to give the impression than the chairs open up by themselves.
In Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai, Japan, 1954), slow motion is used to contrast the emotional rescue of a child with the death of the man who kidnapped him.
TELEPHOTO SHOT An image shot with an extremely long lens is called a telephoto shot. The effect of using a long lens is to compress the apparent depth of an image, so that elements that are relatively close or far away from the camera seem to lie at approximately the same distance. In this first shot from Payback (Brian Helgeland, 1999), we can clearly see there is a considerable distance beteen the fallen body and the red car.
Yet, when a telephoto lens is used for a close-up of Mel Gibson, his face looks like it is pressed against the car! Here a telephoto lens create a shallow space, which combines with extreme canted framing to suggest the physical and psychological disarray of a man who has been betrayed, shot, and left for dead.
ZOOM SHOT The zoom shot uses a lens with several elements that allows the filmmaker to change the focal length of the lens (see telephoto shot) while the shot is in progress. We seem to move toward or away from the subject, while the quality of the image changes from that of a shorter to a longer lens, or vice versa. The change in apparent distance from the subject is similar to the crane or tracking shots, but changes in depth of field and apparent size is quite different. Zooms are commonly used at the beginning of a scene, or even a film, to introduce an object or character by focusing on it. In the initial sequence of The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Dario Argento, Italy, 1996), the camera zooms from a medium long shot of people cueing up at a museum's entrance to a medium close-up of the female protagonist.
Few cinematic techniques are used in isolation. Notice how the woman "helps" the zoom to achieve its purpose of singling her out by moving around.
In another clip from the same film, a zooms is used to offer a more detailed view of an object. Furthermore, as we move closer and closer to the painting (Caravaggio's Head of Medusa, 1590-1600) , both our attention and tension are increased.
Section 2 - Framing In one sense, cinema is an art of selection. The edges of the image create a "frame" that includes or excludes aspects of what occurs in front of the camera -- the "profilmic event". The expressive qualities of framing include the angle of the camera to the object, the aspect ratio of the projected image, the relationship between camera and object, and the association of camera with character. In Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun zankoku monogatari, Oshima Nagisa, 1960) the radical decentering of the character in relation to the frame marks their failed struggle to find a place in their world.
ANGLE OF FRAMING Many films are shot with a camera that appears to be at approximately the same height as its subject. However, it is possible to film from a position that is significantly lower or higher than the dominant element of the shot. In that case, the image is described as low angle or high angle respectively. Angle of framing can be used to indicate the relation between a character and the camera's point of view. Or can simply be used to create striking visual compositions. Camera angle is often used to suggest either vulnerability or power. In The Color of Paradise (Rang-e Khoda,1999) the father, who rules absolute over his family, is often portrayed from a low angle, therefore aggrandizing his figure.
On the other hand, his blind son Mohammad and his elderly grandmother are often shot from a high angle, emphasizing their dependence and smallness. These interpretations are not exclusive, however. The relation between camera and subject can be rendered ironic, or it may suggest more the subject of perception than to the state of the object. The father in this film is so busy smiling at his fiancee that he falls off his horse, while Mohammed and her granny seen from above may also indicate that God is watching over them, and keeping them under protection.
ASPECT RATIO The ratio of the horizontal to the vertical sides of an image. Until the 1950s almost all film was shot in a 4:3 or 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Some filmmakers used multiple projectors to create a wider aspect ratio whereas others claimed that the screen should be square, not rectangular. Widescreen formats became more popular in the 1950s and now films are made in a variety of aspect ratios -- some of the most common being 1.66:1, 1.76:1, 1.85:1, and 2.35:1 (cinemascope). Widescreen films are often trimmed for television or video release, effectively altering the original compositions. Some DVD's have the option of showing the film in its original format and in a reduced ratio that fits the TV screen. Compare the same frame from Bertolucci's Besieged (L'Assedio, 1998). Objects appear much more cramped with the reduced aspect ratio, giving an impression of physical (and psychological) space different from the theatrical release.
LEVEL OF FRAMING Not only the angle from which a camera films but the height can also be a significant element in a film. A low-level camera is placed close to the ground whereas a high-level camera would be placed above the typical perspective shown in the cinema. Camera level is used to signify sympathy for characters who occupy particular levels in the image, or just to create pleasurable compositions. Camera level is obviously used to a greater advantage when the difference in height bewteen objects or characters is greater. In The Color of Paradise (Rang-e Khoda, Iran, 1999) Majid Majidi uses different camera height to emphasize the difference between Mohammad and his father.
In the first image, the camera concentrates on Mohammad as he recognizes his father's hand, after patiently waiting for him for hours. The father is almost absent from the scene; only the part of him that Mohammad touches is visible, therefore increasing our empathy with the blind boy. On the second image, camera level is adjusted to the father's size, making Mohammed a puny, defenceless figure in a world that overcomes him. The first shot is on Mohammad's School for the Blind, while the second is on a shop in Tehran. Through different camera levels, the director makes clear where Mohammad's fits and where he does not.
CANTED FRAMING Canted Framing is a view in which the frame is not level; either the right or left side is lower than the other, causing objects in the scene to appear slanted out of an upright positon.Canted framings are used to create an impression of chaos and instability. They are therefore associated with the frantic rhythms of action films, music videos and animation.
Many Hong Kong films of the 80s and 90s blend elements of the genres mentioned above, for instance Tsui Hark's Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, 1986). These films employ unconventional framings to achieve their signature dizzing, freewheeling style. Canted framings are also common when shooting with a Steadycam.
FOLLOWING SHOT A shot with framing that shifts to keep a moving figure onscreen. A following shot combines a camera movement, like panning, tracking, tilting or craning, with the specific function of directing our attention to a character or object as he/she/it moves inside the frame. In this shot from Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) the camera pans slightly to accompany a couple into the ballroom floor.
REFRAMING Short panning or tilting movements to adjust for the figures' movements, keeping them onscreen or centered. An important technique of continuity editing, thanks to its unobstrusive nature. The characters' actions take precedence over the camera movements, as in this dancing scene from Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
POINT-OF-VIEW SHOT A shot taken with the camera placed approximately where the character's eyes would be, showing what the character would see; usually cut in before or after a shot of the character looking. Horror films and thrillers often use POV shots to suggest a menacing and unseen presence in the scene. Films that use many point-of-view shots tend toward dynamic and non-naturalistic style. In this clip from Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, Tsui Hark, Hong Kong, 1986) the female impersonator's fear of the soldier who attempts to procure him for his general is rendered comic by the cut to POV and wide angle.
POV is one of the means by which audiences are encouraged to identify with characters. However, it is actually a relatively rare technique: identificatory mechanisms rely more on sympathetic character and the flow of narrative information than on simple optical affiliation.
WIDE ANGLE LENS A lens of short focal length that affects a scene's perspective by distorting straight lines near the edges of the frame and by exaggerating the distance between foreground and background planes. In doing so it allows for more space to enter the frame (hence the name "wide"), which makes it more convenient for shooting in a closed location, for instance a real room, rather than a three-wall studio room. In addition, a wider lens allows for a bigger depth of field. In 35mm filming, a wide angle lens is 30mm or less. See also telephoto lens.
Since a wide angle lens distorts the edges of an image, as in this frame from Yi Yi (Edward Yang, Taiwan, 2000), extreme wide lenses are avoided in naturalistic styles, or they are used in unrestrained or open spaces, with no converging lines around the edges of the frame.
Section 3 - Scale If the same object were filmed at different shot scales it would often signify quite differently. Shot scale can foster intimacy with a character, or conversely, it can swallow the character in its environment.Orson Welles exploited divergent shot scales in Citizen Kane (1941) to demonstrate the changing power relationship between Charles Foster Kane and his lawyer. As a boy, his figure is lost in the snow at the back of the shot as the lawyer arranges for his adoption. As a young man he rebels against Bernstein's oversight, rising in the frame as he asserts himself.
EXTREME LONG SHOT A framing in which the scale of the object shown is very small; a building, landscape, or crowd of people will fill the screen. Usually the first or last shots of a sequence, that can also function as establishing shots.. The following examples of framing from Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) and A Summer Tale (Conte d'Été, Eric Rohmer, 1996) well illustrate the range of uses for this particular shot scale.
These two extreme long shots are also establishing shots. However, their primary function is different. Whereas Rohmer give us a standard establishing shot that introduces the locale where the main characters are about to meet, Kubrick uses the ballroom shot mainly as a brief transition between two more important scenes. While the two shots above have similar sizes, some extreme long shots can be significantly larger, particularly if shot from the air with the help of cranes or helicopters. This kind of extreme long shot is also called bird's eye view shot, since it gives an aerial perspective of the scene.
LONG SHOT A framing in which the scale of the object shown is small; a standing human figure would appear nearly the height of the screen. It makes for a relatively stable shot that can accomodate movement without reframing. It is therefore commonly used in genres where a full body action is to be seen in its entirety, for instance Hollywood Musicals or 1970s Martial Arts films.
Another advantage of the long shot is that it allows to show a character and her/his surroundings in a single frame, as in these two images from Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) and A Summer Tale (Conte d'Été, Eric Rohmer, 1996).
MEDIUM LONG SHOT Framing such than an object four or five feet high would fill most of the screen vertically. Also called plain américain, given its recurrence in the Western genre, where it was important to keep a cowboy's weapon in the image. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
A Summer Tale (Conte d'Été) France Eric Rohmer, 1996
MEDIUM CLOSE-UP A framing in which the scale of the object shown is fairly large; a human figure seen from the chest up would fill most of the screen. Another common shot scale. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
A Summer Tale (Conte d'Été, Eric Rohmer, 1996)
CLOSE-UP A framing in which the scale of the object shown is relatively large. In a close-up a person's head, or some other similarly sized object, would fill the frame. Framing scales are not universal, but rather established in relationship with other frames from the same film. These two shots from Eyes Wide Shut and A Summer Tale can be described as close-ups, even if one starts at the neck and the second at the upper chest..
Framing scales are usually drawn in relationship to the human figure but this can be misleading since a frame need not include people. Accordingly, this shot from The Color of Paradise (Rang-e Khoda, Majid Majidi, Iran,1999) is also a close-up.
EXTREME CLOSE-UP A framing in which the scale of the object shown is very large; most commonly, a small object or a part of the body usually shot with a zoom lens. Again, faces are the most recurrent images in extreme close-ups, as these images from The Color of Paradise (Rang-e Khoda,Majid Majidi, 1999),
The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Dario Argento, 1996),
and My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari No Totoro, Miyazaki Hayao, 1988) demonstrate. With regard to the latter, it should be noted that while all of these film terms equally applies to animation, the technical procedure to achieve a particular effect can be very different. For instance this last frame is a drawing of Totoro's teeth, not a zoom on his face, as it would have been the case in a live-action film.
Section 4 - Movement There are many ways to move a camera: in fluid long takes, rapid and confusing motions, etc. that establish the rhythm and point of view of a scene.A film such as Man with the Movie Camera ( Chelovek s kinoapparatom, Dziga Vertov, USSR, 1929) features a full catalog of the creative possibilities open to the film camera. In one famous sequence, we get to see the cinematographer using a car as a mobile support for a tracking shot. Furthermore, one soon realizes that the whole process is probably being mirrored by a second car, in order to film the first one.
Scenes taken from both cameras are playfully incorporated into the film. Was this image of the car passing by taken by the first or the second car/camera unit?
CRANE SHOT A shot with a change in framing rendered by having the camera above the ground and moving through the air in any direction. It is accomplished by placing the camera on a crane (basically, a large cantilevered arm) or similar device. Crane shots are often long or extreme long shots: they lend the camera a sense of mobility and often give the viewer a feeling of omniscience over the characters.
Crane shots can also be used to achieve a flowing rhythm, particularly in a long take, as in this clip from The Player (Altman, 1992)
HANDHELD CAMERA, STEADYCAM The use of the camera operator's body as a camera support, either holding it by hand or using a gyroscopic stabilizer and a harness. Newsreel and wartime camera operators favored smaller cameras such as the Eclair that were quickly adopted by documentarist and avant-garde filmmakers, notably the cinéma verité movement of the 1950s and 1960s. They were also used by young filmmakers since they were cheap and lent the images a greater feeling of sponteneity. At the time this challenge to prevailing standards was perceived as anti-cinematic but eventually it came to be accepted as a style. Whereas hand held cameras give a film an unstable, jerky feel, they also allows for a greater degree of movement and flexibility than bulkier standard cameras --at a fraction of the cost. Filmmakers now are experimenting with digital video in a similar way. Gyroscopically stabilized "steadicams" were invented in the 1970s and made it possible to create smooth "tracking" shots without cumbersome equipment. More recently, they are extensively used in music videos and in the films of the Dogme movement, such as Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (Denmark, 2000)
Ironically, while today's steadicams allow for a fairly stable image, Lars Von Trier and his accolites prefer to exacerbate the jerkiness and unstability traditionally associated with these cameras as a marker of visceral autorial intervention. In fact, combining steadicam shooting with aggressive reframings and jump cuts , or even by shooting on low definition formats, Dogme and other radical filmmaking movements attempt to create a new cinematic look as further away as possible from mainstream Hollywood.
PAN A camera movement with the camera body turning to the right or left. On the screen, it produces a mobile framing which scans the space horizontally. A pan directly and immediately connects two places or characters, thus making us aware of their proximity. The speed at which a pan occurs can be expoited for different dramatic purposes. For instance, in a Mizoguchi or a Hou film, two characters may be having a conversation in a room, and after several minutes, the camera might pan and reveal a third person was also present, thus changing the whole implication of the scene. In a film like Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000), on the other hand, pans are usually very quick, suggesting that characters have no time to waste, and that decisions must be taken fast, therefore contributing to the sense of imminent danger and moral urgency that the films tries to communicate.
In the clip above, the defense lawyer has just finished a long, clever speech, yet the judge has no second thoughts on his verdict, nor any pity for the (presumably guilty) accused and their rich legal cohorts. Lastly, a pan does not necessarily mean that the camera moves along an horizontal line. This clip from The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Dario Argento,1996), illustrates what we could call a 360° pan.
TILT A camera movement with the camera body swiveling upward or downward on a stationary support. It produces a mobile framing that scans the space vertically. Its function is similar to that of pans and tracking shots, albeit on a vertical axis. In this clip from Besieged (L'Assedio, Italy, 1998) Bernardo Bertolucci uses a tilt to establish the social (and even racial) distance between an African housemaid and her wealthy English employer.
A tilt usually also implies a change in the angle of framing; in this clip the camera starts with a high angle view of the woman and ends up on a low angle view of the man --which obviously reinforces the social inequality of their relationship. Lastly, a tilt is also a means of gradually uncovering offscreen space. This can be exploited for suspense, since a sense of anticipation grows in the viewer as the camera movement forces her/his attention in a precise direction, yet never knowing when it will stop, nor what will be found there.
TRACKING SHOT A mobile framing that travels through space forward, backward, or laterally. See also crane shot, pan, and tilt. A tracking shot usually follows a character or object as it moves along the screen. Contrary to the pan, which mimicks a turning head, a tracking shot physically accompanies the entire range of movement. It therefore creates a closer affinity with the character or object moving, since the spectator is not just watching him/her moving, but moving with him/her. A standard tracking shot, as it was devised in the Classical Studio filmmaking, consisted in placing the camera on a wheeled support called a dolly, and moving it along rails or tracks to ensure the smoothness of movement associated with the continuity editing style. As cameras became lighter and steadier, tracking shots became more flexible and creative: bycicles, wheelchairs, roller skates, and many ingenious wheeled artifacts augmented the range of movement of tracking shots. In this clip from Central Station (Central do Brasil, Walter Salles, Brazil, 1998), one ininterrupted movement is rendered with two different tracking shots, linked by a match on action.
The first is a classic tracking shot, with the camera on rails sideways to the character that is moving, following the child as the trains departs. The second uses the train as a dolly, as it moves away from the running child. Indeed, tracking shots are one of the most suggestive and creative camera movements, one that can be accomplished in a number of clever ways. Not surprisingly, some auteurs like Max Ophuls or Orson Welles made virtuosistic tracking shots a staple of their films, often in conjuntion with long takes.
WHIP PAN An extremely fast movement of the camera from side to side, which briefly causes the image to blur into a set of indistinct horizontal streaks. Often an imperceptible cut will join two whip pans to create a trick transition between scenes. As opposed to dissolves, action or graphic matches, and fades --the most common transitions of the continuity style-- whip pans always stand out, given their abrupt, brisk nature. Commonly used in flashy action genres such as kung-fu movies from the 70s, like Fists of Fury (Tang Shan Da Xiong, Wei Lo, Honk Kong, 1971).
Part 4: Editing Section 1 - Devices a) TRANSITIONS The shot is defined by editing but editing also works to join shots together. There are many ways of effecting that transition, some more evident than others. In the analytical tradition, editing serves to establish space and lead the viewer to the most salient aspects of a scene. In the classical continuity style, editing techniques avoid drawing attention to themselves. In a constructivist tradition such as Soviet Montage cinema, there is no such false modesty. Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s kinoapparatom, USSR, 1929) celebrates the power of the cinema to create a new reality out of disparate fragments.
CHEAT CUT Cheat cut. In the continuity editing system, a cut which purports to show continuous time and space from shot to shot but which actually mismatches the position of figures or objects in the scene. In this sequence from Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minelli, 1944) the editing sacrifices actual physical space for dramatic space. As we can see in the first shot, there is a wall behind the telephone.
However, that wall magically disappears in the third shot in order to show both the telephone and the family seated around the dining table (an important element in the film) from an angle that would had been impossible in an actual room. Cheat cuts were also often used to disguise the relatively short stature of leading men in relation to their statuesque female co- stars.
CROSSCUTTING, aka PARALLEL EDITING Editing that alternates shots of two or more lines of action occurring in different places, usually simultaneously. The two actions are therefore linked, associating the characters from both lines of action. In this extended clip from Edward Yang's Yi Yi (Taiwan, 2000), father and daughter go out on dates at presumably the same time, and go through the same motions, even if the father is in Japan and the daughter in Taipei.
To further stress the similarities, the father is actually reliving his first date with his first girlfriend (whom he has just met again after 20 years), while his daughter is actually on her first date! Yang uses parallel editing across space and time to suggest that history repeats itself, generation after generation.
CUT-IN, CUT AWAY An instantaneous shift from a distant framing to a closer view of some portion fo the same space, and vice versa. In Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark ( Denmark, 2000) Selma and Bill have a dramatic conversation in Bill's car that is framed by a cut-in and a cut-away.
The two cuts neatly bracket Bill's anguished confession as a separate moment, private and isolated, that only Selma knows about. This editing-constructed secrecy will ultimately have drastic consequences for Selma.
DISSOLVE A transition between two shots during which the first image gradually disappears while the second image gradually appears; for a moment the two images blend in superimposition. Dissolves can be used as a fairly straighforward editing device to link any two scenes, or in more creative ways, for instance to suggest hallucinatory states. In this series of shots from The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Dario Argento, 1996), a young woman becomes so absorbed by Brueghel's The Fall of Icarus that she actually dives into the painting's sea! (at least in her imagination, in "real life" she faints).
IRIS A round, moving mask that can close down to end a scene (iris-out) or emphasize a detail, or it can open to begin a scene (iris-in) or to reveal more space around a detail. For instance, in this scene from Neighbors (Buster Keaton, 1920), the iris is used with the comic effect of gradually revealing that the female protagonist is 1) ready for her wedding and 2) ready for her not-too-luxurious wedding.
Iris is a common device of early films (at at time when some techniques like zooming were not feasible), so much so that when it is used after 1930 it is often perceived as charminlgly anachronistic or nostalgic, as in Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960).
JUMP CUT An elliptical cut that appears to be an interruption of a single shot. Either the figures seem to change instantly against a constant background, or the background changes instantly while the figures remain constant. See also elliptical editing, steadicam.. Jump cuts are anathema to Classical Hollywood continuity editing, but feature prominently in avant-garde and radical filmmaking.When the French Nouvelle Vague films of the 1960s made jump cuts an essential part of their playful, modern outlook, many directors from around the globe started to use jump cuts --either creatively or in a last ditch attempt to become "hip". More recently, jump cuts are more commonly associated with music videos, video or alternative filmmaking, like Lars Von Trier's Dogma films. Here is an example from Dancer in the Dark (Denmark, 2000).
Jump cuts are used expressively, to suggest the ruminations or ambivalences of a character, or of his/her everyday life, but they are also a clear signifier of rupture with mainstream film storytelling. Rather than presenting a film as a perfectly self-contained story that seamlessly unfold in front of us, jump cuts are like utterances that evidentiates both the artificiality and the difficulties of telling such a story.
ESTABLISHING SHOT/REESTABLISHING SHOT A shot, usually involving a distant framing, that shows the spatial relations among the important figures, objects, and setting in a scene. Usually, the first few shots in a scene are establishing shots, as they introduces us to a location and the space relationships inside it. In the initial sequence from Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan, Honk Kong,1986), director Tsui Hark uses three shots to establish the locale. In the first one, three musicians are shown against a fireplace in what looks like a luxurious room. Our suspicions are confirmed by the second establishing shot, which shows us the other half of the ample room (shot/ reverse shot) and reveals a party going on.
After this introduction, the camera moves forward with several close-ups of both the musicians and the spectators. At the end of the sequence, Hark shows us the entire room in a larger shot. This final establishing shot is called a reestablishing shot, for it shows us once again the spatial relationships introduced with the establishing shots.
SHOT/REVERSE SHOT Two or more shots edited together that alternate characters, typically in a conversation situation. In continuity editing, characters in one framing usually look left, in the other framing, right. Over-the-shoulder framings are common in shot/reverse-shot editing. Shot / reverse shots are one of the most firmly established conventions in cinema, and they are usually linked through the equally persuasive eyeline matches. These conventions have become so strong that they can be exploited to make improbable meanings convincing, as in this sequence from The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Italy,1996). Director Dario Argento has his protagonist Anna looking at Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (c1485)...
...but with the use of successive shot/ reverse shots, eyeline matches and matching framings, it soons begins to look as if Venus herself is looking at Anna!
SUPERIMPOSITION The exposure of more than one image on the same film strip. Unlike a dissolve, a superimposition does not signify a transition from one scene to another. The technique was often used to allow the same performer to appear simultaneously as two characters on the screen (for example Son of the Sheik), to express subjective or intoxicated vision (The Last Laugh), or simply to introduce a narrative element from another part of the diegetic world into the scene. In this clip from Neighbors (Buster Keaton, 1920), the resentful father of the bride looks at the wedding ring and immediately associates in his mind with a five and dime store. The subjective shot gives us a clear indication of his opinion of his soon to be son-in- law.
WIPE A transition betwen shots in which a line passes across the screen, eliminating the first shot as it goes and replacing it with the next one. A very dynamic and noticeable transition, it is usually employed in action or adventure films. It often suggest a brief temporal ellypsis and a direct connection between the two images. In this example from Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (Sichinin No Samurai, Japan, 1954), the old man's words are immediately corroborated by the wandering, destitute samurai coming into town.
As other transitions devices, like the whip pan, wipes became fashionable at an specific historical time (the 1950s and 1960s), so much so as to became stylistic markers of the film of the period.
Section 2 - Styles The patterned use of transitions, matches and duration can be identified as a cinematic style. Editing styles are usually associated with historical moments, technological developments, or national schools. CONTINUITY EDITING A system of cutting to maintain continuous and clear narrative action. Continuity editing relies upon matching screen direction, position, and temporal relations from shot to shot. The film supports the viewer's assumption that space and time are contiguous between successive shots. Also, the diegesis is more readily understood when directions on the screen match directions in the world of the film. The "180° rule," shown in the diagram below, dictates that the camera should stay in one of the areas on either side of the axis of action (an imaginary line drawn between the two major dramatic elements A and B in a scene, usually two characters).
By following this rule the filmmaker ensures that each character occupies a consistent area of the frame, helping the audience to understand the layout of the scene. This sense of a consistent space is reinforced by the use of techniques such as the eyeline match or match on action. In this sequence from Neighbors (Buster Keaton, 1920), continuity is maintained by the spatial and temporal contiguity of the shots and the preservation of direction between world and screen. More importantly, the shots are matched on Keaton's actions as he shuttles across the courtyard from stairwell to stairwell.
In the Hollywood continuity editing system the angle of the camera axis to the axis of action usually changes by more than 30 ° between two shots, for example in a conversation scene rendered as a series of shot/reverse shots. The 180° line is not usually crossed unless the transition is smoothed by a POV shot or a reestablishing shot.
MONTAGE 1. A synonym for editing. 2. An approach to editing developed by the Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s such as Pudovkin, Vertov and Eisenstein; it emphasizes dynamic, often discontinuous, relationships between shots and the juxtaposition of images to create ideas not present in either shot by itself. Sergei Eisenstein, in particular, developed a complex theory of montage that included montage within the shot, between sound and image, multiple levels of overtones, as well as in the conflict between two shots. This sequence from October (Oktyabr, USSR, 1927) is an example of Eisenstein's intellectual montage. The increasingly primitive icons from various world religions are linked by patterns of duration, screen direction and shot scale to produce the concept of religion as a degenerate practice used to legitimate corrupt states.
Soviet Montage proved to be influential around the world for commercial as well as avant-garde filmmakers. We can see echoes of Pudovkin in The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, USA, 1939), Mother India (Mehboob Khan, India, 1957), and The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1973). In a famous sequence from the latter film, shots of Michael attending his son's baptism are intercut with the brutal killings of his rivals. Rather than stressing the temporal simultaneity of the events (it is highly unlikely that all of the New York Mafia heads can be caught off guard at exactly the same time!), the montage suggests Michael's dual nature and committement to both his "families", as well as his ability to gain acceptance into both on their own terms -- through religion and violence.
ELLIPTICAL EDITING Shot transitions that omit parts of an event, causing an ellipses in plot and story duration. In this clip from Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000), a drug party is rendered through elliptical editing (achieved with a plentiful use of dissolves and jump cuts) in order to both shorten the time and suggest the character's rambling mental states.
Elliptical editing need not be confined to a same place and time. A seven-minute song sequence from Hum Aapke Hain Koun (Sooraj Bartjatya, India 1994) dances us through several months in the life of a family, from a cricket match to a ritual welcoming a new wife.
from scenes of the newlyweds' daily life... to the announcement of Pooja's pregnacy,
from a gift shower for the upcoming baby... to multiple scenes of celebrations, as Pooja's approaches her ninth month.
Part 5: Sound Section I - Sound Editing Sound in the cinema does not necessarily match the image, nor does it have to be continuous. The sound bridge is used to ease the transition between shots in the continuity style. Sound can also be used to reintroduce events from earlier in the diegesis. Especially since the introduction of magnetic tape recording after WWII, the possibilities of sound manipulation and layering have increased tremendously. Directors such as Robert Altman are famous for their complex use of the soundtrack, layering multiple voices and sound effects in a sort of "sonic deep focus." In this clip from Nashville (1975), we simultaneously hear a conversation between an English reporter and her guide, a gospel choir singing, and the sound engineers' chatter.
SOUND BRIDGE Sound bridges can lead in or out of a scene. They can occur at the beginning of one scene when the sound from the previous scene carries over briefly before the sound from the new scene begins. Alternatively, they can occur at the end of a scene, when the sound from the next scene is heard before the image appears on the screen. Sound bridges are one of the most common transitions in the continuity editing style, one that stresses the connection between both scenes since their mood (suggested by the music) is still the same. But sound bridges can also be used quite creatively, as in this clip from Yi Yi (Taiwan, 2000). Director Edward Yang uses a sound bridge both to play with our expectations. The clip begins with a high angle shot of a couple arguing under a highway. A piano starts playing and the scene cuts into a house interior, where a pregnant woman is looking at some cd's...
...finally, the camera pans to reveal a young girl (previously offscreen) playing the piano. It is only then that we realize the music is diegetic, and that the young girl was looking at the window at her best friend and her boyfriend. The romantic melody she plays as she realizes they are breaking up in turn introduces a now possible future relationship for her -- which eventually happens, as she starts dating her best friend's ex-boyfriend later in the film.
SONIC FLASHBACK Sound from one diegetic time is heard over images from a later time. In this example from Kurosawa's No Regrets for Our Youth (Waga seishun ni kui nashi, Japan, 1946), the heroine Yukie hears the voices of her dead father and executed husband, voicing the aspirations that sustain her continuing struggle.
Sonic flashback often carries this kind of moral or emotional overtone, making a character's motivation explicit.
Section 2 - Source Most basically, this category refers to the place of a sound in relation to the frame and to the world of the film. A sound can be onscreen or offscreen, diegetic or nondiegetic (including voice over), it can be recorded separately from the image or at the moment of filming. Sound source depends on numerous technical, economic, and aesthetic considerations, each of which can affect the final significance of a film.
DIEGETIC/NON-DIEGETIC SOUND Any voice, musical passage, or sound effect presented as originating froma source within the film's world is diegetic. If it originates outside the film (as most background music) then it is non-diegetic. A further distinction can be made between external and internal diegetic sound. In the first clip from Almodóvar's Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios, 1988) we hear Iván speaking into the microphone as he works on the Spanish dubbing of Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954). Since he is speaking out loud and any other character could hear him, this is an example of external diegetic sound. This clip has no non-diegetic sounds other than the brief keyboard chord that introduces the scene.
Sound and diegesis gets more complicated in the next clip, from Dario Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Italy, 1996). As Anna looks at Paolo Uccello's famous painting of the Battle of San Romano (c1435), we begin to hear the sounds of the battle: horses whimpering, weapons clashing, etc. These sounds exist only in Anna's troubled mind, which is highly sensitive to works of art. These are internal diegetic sounds (inside of a character's mind) that no one else in the gallery can hear.
On the other hand, the Ennio Morricone eerie score that sets up the scene and mixes with the battle sounds, is a common example of non-diegetic sound, sounds that only the spectators can hear. (Obviously, no boom-box blasting tourist is allowed into the Uffizi's gallery!)
DIRECT SOUND When using direct sound, the music, noise, and speech of the profilmic event at the moment of filming is recorded in the film. This is the opposite of postsynchronization in which the sound is dubbed on top of an existing, silent image. Studio systems use multiple microphones to record directly and with the utmost clarity. On the other hand, some national cinemas, notably Italy, India and Japan, have avoided direct sound at some stage in their histories and dubbed the dialogues to the film after the shooting. But direct sound can also mean something other than the clearly defined synchronized sound of Hollywood films -- the Cinéma verité, third world filmmaking and other documentarist, improvisatory and realist styles that also record sound directly but with an elementary microphone set-up, as in Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (Ta'm e Guilass, Iran, 1997).
The result maintains the immediacy of direct sound at the expense of clarity. Furthermore, incidental sounds (street noise, etc) are not mixed down, but left "as it is". Impression and mood are favored over precision: not every word can be made out. The final sonic picture is blurred and harder to understand, but arguably closer to what we perceive in real life.
NONSIMULTANEOUS SOUND Diegetic sound that comes from a source in time either earlier or later than the images it accompanies. In this clip from Almodóvar's Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios, Spain, 1988) Pepa adds the female voice to the dubbing of Johnny Guitar, the male voice having previously been recorded by Pepa's ex-lover Ivan. (You can see Ivan's dubbing here)
While Pepa's voice is diagetic and simultaneous, Ivan's voice is also diegetic, and yet it is nonsimultaneous, since it comes from a previous moment in the film. Almodóvar uses nonsimultaneous sound to establish a conversation that should have taken place but never did (Ivan is not returning Pepa's calls and she is becoming desperate) when, with a perverse melodramatic twist, he has the jilted lovers repeating the words of another couple of cinematic jilted lovers. As in this example, nonsimultaneous sound is often used to suggest recurrent obsessions and other hallucinatory states.
OFFSCREEN SOUND Simultaneous sound from a source assumed to be in the space of the scene but outside what is visible onscreen. In Life on Earth (La Vie sur Terre, Abderrahmane Sissako, 1998) a telephone operator tries to help a woman getting a call trough. While he tries to establish a connection, the camera examines the office and the other people present in the scene. Yet, even if the operator and the woman are now offscreen, their centrality to the scene is alway tangible through sounds (dialing, talking, etc).
Of course, a film may use offscreen sound to play with our assumptions. In this clip from Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios, Pedro Almodóvar, 1988), we hear a woman and a man's voices in conversation, in what it looks like a film production studio. Even if we do not see the speakers, we instantly believe they must be around. Gradually, the camera shows us that we are in a dubbing studio, and only the woman is present, the man's voice being previously recorded. Moreover, theirs is not a real conversation but lines from a movie dialogue.
POSTSYNCHRONIZATION DUBBING The process of adding sound to images after they have been shot and assembled. This can include dubbing of voices, as well as inserting diegetic music or sound effects. It is the opposite of direct sound. It is not, however, the opposite of synchronous sound, since sound and image are also matched here, even if at a later stage in the editing process. Compare the French dubbed, or post-synchronized, version of Mission: Impossible 2 (John Woo, 2000), with the sychronized original.
You can hear the original English version here.
SOUND PERSPECTIVE The sense of a sound's position in space, yielded by volume, timbre, pitch, and, in stereophonic reproduction systems, binaural information. Used to create a more realistic sense of space, with events happening (that is, coming from) closer or further away. Listen closely to this clip from The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942) as the woman goes through her door and comes back.
As soon as she closes the door her voice sounds muffled and distant (she is walking away), then grows clearer (she is coming back), then at full volume again, as she comes out. We can also hear hushing remarks that gives us a sense of the absent presence of a whole web of family members in the house. The stronger the voice, the closer his/ her room. Sound perspective, combined with offscreen space, also gives us clues as to who (and most importantly, where) is present in a scene. Welles' use of sound in this scene is unusual since Classical Hollywood Cinema generally sacrifices sound perspective to narrative comprehensibility.
SYNCHRONOUS SOUND Sound that is matched temporally with the movements occuring in the images, as when dialogue corresponds to lip movements. The norm for Hollywood films is to synchronize sound and image at the moment of shooting; others national cinemas do it later (see direct sound, postsyncronization) Compare the original English version of Mission: Impossible 2 (John Woo, 2000),
with the French dubbed version.
VOICE OVER When a voice, often that of a character in the film, is heard while we see an image of a space and time in which that character is not actually speaking. The voice over is often used to give a sense of a character's subjectivity or to narrate an event told in flashback. It is overwhelmingly associated with genres such as film noir, and its obsessesive characters with a dark past. It also features prominently in most films dealing with autobiography, nostalgia, and literary adaptation. In the title sequence from The Ice Storm (1997) Ang Lee uses voice over to situate the plot in time and to introduce the subject matter (i.e., the American family in the 1970s), while also giving an indication of his main character's ideas and general culture.
While a very common and useful device, voice over is an often abused technique. Over dependance on voice over to vent a character's thoughts can be interpreted as a telling signal of a director's lack of creativity --or a training on literature and theater, rather than visual arts. But voice over can also be used in non literal or ironic ways, as when the words a character speaks do not seem to match the actions he/she performs. Some avant garde films, for instance, make purposely disconcerting uses of voice over narration.
Section 3 - Quality Much like quality of the image, the aural properties of a sound -- its timbre, volume, reverb, sustain, etc. -- have a major effect on a film's aesthetic. A film can register the space in which a sound is produced (its sound signature) or it can be otherwise manipulated for dramatic purposes. The recording of Orson Welles' voice at the end of Touch of Evil (1958) adds a menacing reverb to his confession.
The mediation of Abbas Kiarostami's voice through the walkie-talkie and the video quality of the image in the coda of Taste of Cherry (Ta'm e Guilass, Iran, 1997) underscore the reflexivity that is characteristic of his films.
The majority of this handout is adapted from the following film analysis guide at Yale: http://classes.yale.edu/film- analysis