Syntagmatic analysis of film The “large syntagmatic category” of extracts drawing on Metz the image track 12 • Isolating autonomous sequences Autonomous shot Parallel syntagma Autonomous achronological • Breaking these down into ‘shots’ segments 3 Bracket syntagma • Classifying these according to Metz’s syntagmas categories 4 Descriptive syntagma • Examining: 5 Alternate (narrative) syntagma – Classifying the details within shots 6 scene – Reoccurring sub-structures chronological 7 linear Episodic

– Types of links between units narrative narrative sequences 8 – Cohesive elements across units Ordinary

North by Northwest: sequence 1 North by Northwest: •syntagma sequence 1 •chronological segment •narrative •linear shot shot shot shot •scene

Pan: right Pan: right

Further analysis ... A standard form

• Showing dialogue

A B

Gone with the wind (1939)

1 North by Northwest: A more complex example meeting scene

• Considering substructure • Evidence •Use

Pan: left Pan: left 3/4 1/2 3/4 1/2 3/4 cohesion

Metz on paradigm

“... when it reaches the level of the ‘small’ elements, the semiotics of the cinema encounters its limits... Whether one has desired it or not, one suddenly finds oneself referred to the myriad winds of culture, the confused murmurings of a thousand other utterances: the symbolism of the human body, the language of objects, the system of colors (for color films), or the voices of chiaroscuro (for black and white films), the sense of clothing and dress, the eloquence of landscape. In each of these cases ... the study ... of the properly filmic creations of the appropriate significations will provide us with no essential paradigm”

Film Language, p142 “Problems of denotation in the fiction film.” (emphasis added)

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