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ISBN 978-1-29204-129-2

Movies and Meaning An Introduction to Fi lm

Stephen Prince Sixth Edition

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Pearson New International Edition

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Movies and Meaning An Introduction to Film

Stephen Prince Sixth Edition

Pearson Education Limited Edinburgh Gate Harlow Essex CM20 2JE England and Associated Companies throughout the world

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Table of Contents

P E A R S O N C U S T O M L I B R A R Y

I

Glossary

1

1Stephen Prince

1. Film Structure

13

13Stephen Prince

2. Cinematography

57

57Stephen Prince

3. Production Design

95

95Stephen Prince

4. Acting

121

121Stephen Prince

5. Editing: Making the Cut

149

149Stephen Prince

6. Principles of Sound Design

187

187Stephen Prince

7. The Nature of Narrative in Film

229

229Stephen Prince

8. Visual Effects

287

287Stephen Prince

9. Modes of Screen Reality

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325Stephen Prince

381

381Index

II

G L O S S A R Y

3D digital matte A matte painting that has been camera mapped onto a 3D geometrical model in computer space. The digital matte can then be moved or rotated to simulate the perspective of a moving camera. See also camera mapping .

Additive Color Mixing A system used for creating color on television where red, blue, and green lights are mixed together to create all other hues.

ADR Automated dialogue replacement (ADR) is a post- production practice in which actors re-record lines of dia- logue or add new ones not present at the point of filming. Computer software enables proper synching of these lines with the performer’s lip movements as recorded on film.

Aerial Image Printing Method of producing dimensional effects using matte paintings in an optical printer. An image (such as a matte painting) is projected to a focal plane in space (rather than onto a surface) where it can be photographed by the process camera in the optical printer. That footage can be combined with live action footage and other optical elements.

Aerial Perspective A visual depth cue in which the effects of the atmosphere make very distant objects appear bluish and hazy.

Alpha Channel In a digital image, this channel of informa- tion specifies a pixel’s degree of transparency. The alpha channel is often used for generating male and female mattes.

Ambient Sound The background sound characteristic of an environment or location. For a film such as The Last of the Mohicans , set in a forest, ambient sounds include the rustle of branches and the cries of distant birds.

Anamorphic Method of producing a widescreen (2.35:1) image by squeezing the picture information horizontally and stretching it vertically. This method is used for both theatri- cal films and for DVD home video formatted for 16 × 9 (wi- descreen) monitors or projection systems. Unsqueezing the picture information during projection or viewing produces the widescreen image.

Ancillary Market All of the nontheatrical markets from which a film distributor derives revenue. These include home video, cable television, and foreign markets. Angle of View The amount of area recorded by a given lens. Telephoto lenses have a much smaller angle of view than wide-angle lenses. Animation 2D Traditional form of animation in cinema which involves photographing flat artwork, typically a com- bination of characters and background. Camera movement and three dimensional depth perspective is fairly limited. Animatronic Model A motorized, moveable miniature model, often used for creature effects.

Animation 3D Animation of miniature models or puppets or animation inside three-dimensional computer space. Antinarrative A narrative style that tends, paradoxically, toward eliminating narrative by employing lots of digres- sion, avoiding a clear hierarchy of narrative events, and by suppressing the causal connections among events. Art Director Working under the production designer, the art director supervises the translation and sketches into sets. Art Film Films made by overseas directors in the 1950s and 1960s that explored weighty and timeless themes and took film style in new, unexplored directions. Aspect Ratio The dimensions of the film frame or screen image. Aspect ratio is typically expressed in units of width to height. Attributional Errors Mistakes of interpretation that arise when a critic erroneously decides that some effect in a film has a meaning expressly intended by its creators or incor- rectly assigns the creative responsibility for an effect to the wrong member of the production crew. Uncovering these er- rors typically requires documentation of a film’s production history. Auteur A director whose work is characterized by a dis- tinctive audiovisual design and recurring set of thematic issues. Auteurism is a model of film theory and criticism that searches for film authors or auteurs. Auteurist Film Theory (Auteur Theory) A model of film the- ory that studies the work of a film auteur (or author). Directors are generally considered to be the prime auteurs in cinema. Auteurist theory studies the films of a cinema auteur as works of personal expression.

Back Light The light source illuminating the space between performers and the rear wall of a set. Along with key and fill lights, back light is one of the three principal sources of illumination in a scene.

Beta Movement A perceptual illusion in which the hu- man eye responds to apparent movement as if it were real. Because of this illusion, viewers think they see moving fig- ures on a film or television screen when, in fact, there is no true movement.

Binocular Disparity Each eye has a different angle of view on the world, and this difference or disparity provides a source of information about depth, distance and spatial lay- out. Stereoscopic cinema incorporates binocular disparity to create an impression of 3D.

“Blaxploitation” The cycle of films that emerged in the early 1970s aimed at African-American audiences. Most of the “blaxploitation” films were crime and action thrillers.

From Glossary of Movies and Meaning:An Introduction to Film, Sixth Edition. Stephen Prince. Copyright © 2013 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

1

Glossary

Cognitive Film Theory A model of film theory that exam- ines how the viewer perceptually processes audiovisual infor- mation in cinema and cognitively interprets this information.

Composite in a visual effects shot, combining the image layers to create the finished shot.

Composition The arrangement of characters and objects within the frame. Through composition filmmakers arrange the visual space on-screen into an artistic design.

Computer-Generated Images (CGIs) Images that are created and designed using computer software rather than originating as a scene before the camera that is pho- tographed. Sophisticated software enables digital artists to render textures, lighting effects, movement, and other three-dimensional pictorial information in highly plausible and convincing ways. Bearing this information, CGI can be married (composited) with live action photography to stun- ning effect, as the exciting interaction of real actors and CGI dinosaurs in The Lost World demonstrates.

Condensation A concept in psychoanalytic film theory that denotes the concentration of meaning found in images that are highly charged with emotional or dramatic significance. This concentration is symptomatic of repressed content that find expression in a condensed, indirect manner.

Continuity Editing As its name implies, continuity editing maximizes principles of continuity from shot to shot so that the action seems to flow smoothly across shot and scene transitions. Continuity editing facilitates narrative compre- hension by the viewer.

Contrast The differences of light intensity across a scene. A high-contrast scene features brightly illuminated and deeply shadowed areas.

Convention A familiar, customary way of representing char- acters, story situations, or images. Conventions result from agreements between filmmakers and viewers to accept certain representations as valid.

Convergence Movement of the eyes toward each other that occurs when viewing near objects. Stereoscopic cinema uses convergence information to elicit 3D effects.

Costume Designer Individual who designs costuming worn by actors.

Costumes The clothing worn by performers in a film. Costumes help establish locale and period as well as a given film’s color design.

Counter-Matte A counter-matte masks the frame in an in- verse manner to a matte. Used in combination with a matte, the matte/counter-matte system provides a means of creating composite images. See also Traveling Matte.

Coverage The shots an editor uses to bridge continuity problems in the editing of a scene. By cutting to coverage, rather than relying on the master shot, an editor can finesse many problems of scene construction and can improve an actor’s performance.

Blockbuster A hugely profitable film usually featuring a fantasy theme and a narrative heavily dependent on special effects.

Boom Shot A type of moving camera shot in which the camera moves up or down through space. Also known as a crane shot , it takes its name from the apparatus—a boom or crane—on which the camera is mounted.

Camera Mapping Method of projecting a 2D matte paint- ing onto a 3D geometrical model in computer space. Once the image is projected onto the model, it can be treated as a 3D object and moved or rotated to simulate the perspective of a moving camera.

“Camera Pen” The term used by Alexandre Astruc to designate the use of cinema as a medium of personal expres- sion. The concept was a major influence on French New Wave directors and their conviction that cinema was a direc- tor’s medium (see Auteur).

Camera Position The distance between the camera and the subject it is photographing. Camera positions are usually classified as variations of three basic setups: the long shot, the medium shot, and the close-up.

Canted Angle A camera angle in which the camera leans toward screen right or screen left, producing an imbalanced, off-center look to the image. Filmmakers often use canted angles to capture a character’s subjective feelings of stress or disorientation.

Cells Transparent sheets of cellulose on which an ani- mator draws and paints. A completed scene may be com- posed of numerous cells photographed one behind the other.

Cinematic Self-Reflexivity A basic mode of screen reality in which the filmmaker establishes a self-referential audiovisual design. A self-reflexive film calls attention to its own artificially constructed nature.

Cinematography The planning and execution of light and color design, camera position, and angle by the cinematogra- pher in collaboration with the director.

Cinephilia Love for cinema. This designates a deep passion for the medium of cinema, not merely a fondness for this or that individual film.

Classic Hollywood Narrative Type of narrative prevalent in Hollywood films of the 1930s to 1950s and still popular today. The plot features a clear, main line of action (with subordinate subplots), marked by a main character’s pur- suit of a goal, in which the story events are chained in tight causal relationships. The conclusion cleanly resolves all major story issues.

Close-Up One of the basic camera positions. The cam- era is set up in close proximity to an actor’s face or other significant dramatic object that fills the frame. Close-ups tend to isolate objects or faces from their immediate sur- roundings.

2

Glossary

Digital Backlot Practice of simulating locations using digi- tal tools as an alternative to location shooting.

Digital Composite A composited shot produced digitally, rather than using an optical printer, by adding, substracting or otherwise transforming pixels.

Digital Effects The computer-designed components of a shot that may be composited with live action elements.

Digital Grading Method of digitally altering image ele- ments, such as color balance and saturation, contrast, gamma, and filtration. O Brother, Where Art Thou? was the first feature, shot on film, to be entirely digitized and then color-corrected in this fashion. Also called digital timing.

Digital Intermediate The version of a film on digital video that is subjected to digital grading or the computer correc- tion of color, contrast, and other image qualities. After these corrections are made, the footage on digital video is then scanned back onto film.

Digital Rendering The process during which a synthetic digital image is created from the files and data that an artist has assembled.

Digital Video An increasingly accepted alternative to cel- luloid film, this format captures picture information as an electronic signal in binary code. Images captured on digital video look different than those captured on film, but, once in binary format, images can be stored and manipulated by computer programs for editing and special effects work.

Direct Cinema A documentary style that emerged in the 1960s and sought to minimize all appearances that the film- maker was shaping or manipulating the materials of the film.

Direct Sound Sound that is captured and recorded directly on location. Direct sound also designates an absence of re- flected components in the final recording.

Director The member of the production crew who works closely with the cinematographer, editor, production de- signer, and sound designer to determine a film’s organizing, creative structure. The director is generally the key member of the production team controlling and synthesizing the contributions of other team members. On budgetary issues, however, the director is answerable to the producer who has the highest administrative authority on a production.

Displacement A concept in psychoanalytic film theory whereby repressed ideas, emotions or impulses find a sub- stitute outlet in disguised form as they are projected onto nonthreatening aspects of a scene or situation.

Dissolve A type of visual transition between shots or scenes, created by the editor. Unlike the cut, the dis- solve is a gradual screen transition with distinct optical characteristics. The editor overlaps the end of one shot with the beginning of the next shot to produce a brief superimposition.

Diversification A corporate structure in which a company conducts business operations across a range of associated markets and product categories.

Crane Shot See Boom Shot.

Criticism The activity of searching for meaning in an art- work. The critic seeks to develop an original interpretation by uncovering novel meanings inside a film.

Cross-Cutting A method of editing used to establish si- multaneous, ongoing lines of action in a film narrative. By rapidly cutting back and forth between two or more lines of action, the editor establishes that they are happening simul- taneously. By decreasing the length of the shots, editors can accelerate the pace of the editing and imply an approaching climax.

Cue Sheet A breakdown of a scene’s action, listing and timing all sections requiring musical cues.

Cut A type of visual transition created in editing in which one shot is instantaneously replaced on screen by another. Because the change is instantaneous, the cut itself is invis- ible. The viewer sees only the change from one shot to the next.

Deduction The method by which the critic works, using the general goals of the critical model to guide the search for supporting evidence.

Deep-Focus Cinematography A style of cinematography that establishes great depth of field within shots. Gregg Toland’s cinematography for Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane is a classic example of deep-focus composition.

Depth of Field The area of distance or separation between sharply focused foreground and background objects. Depth of field is determined by the focal length of a lens. Wide- angle lenses produce deep focus or great depth of field, whereas telephoto lenses have a shallow depth of field.

Depth Score The way that stereoscopic (3D) space is cho- reographed on screen in order to express a film’s underlying themes and story issues.

Description A stage in creating criticism wherein the critic fully describes those relevant features of narrative or audiovi- sual design on which the critical interpretation will be based.

Design Concept The underlying creative concept that orga- nizes the way in which sets and costumes are built, dressed, and photographed on a given production.

Deviant Plot Structure A narrative whose design and orga- nization fails to conform with viewers’ expectations regard- ing what is proper or permissible.

Dialogue One of the three basic types of film sound, it in- cludes speech delivered by characters in a scene and voice-over narration accompanying a scene or film.

Diegetic Sound Sound that can be heard by characters in a scene and by film viewer. See also nondiegetic sound .

Digital Animation Animation inside three- dimensional com- puter space, aided by software to produce many photographic- like effects. Digitally created lighting effects, for example, can be very elaborate, and when used with texture mapping of skin and other surfaces, these can create remarkable illusions of depth.

3

Glossary

Extras Incidental characters in a film, often part of the background of a shot or scene.

Eyeline Match The matching of eyelines between two or more characters who are engaged in conversation or are looking at each other in a scene, in order to establish rela- tions of proximity and continuity. The directions in which the performers look from shot to shot are complementary. That is, if performer A looks screen right in the first shot, performer B will look screen left in the next shot.

Fade A visual transition between shots or scenes created by the editor. Unlike the cut, the fade creates a gradual transi- tion with distinct visual characteristics. A fade is visible on screen as a brief interval with no picture. The editor fades one shot to black and then, after a pause, fades in the next shot. Editors often use fades to indicate a substantial change of time or place in the narrative.

Fall-Off The area in a shot where light falls off into shadow. Fast fall-off occurs in a high-contrast image where the rate of change between the illuminated and shadowed areas is very quick.

Fantasy A basic mode of screen reality in which settings and subjects, characters, and narrative time are far removed from the conditions of the viewer’s ordinary life. Fantasy characters may have super powers or advanced technology that lends them extraordinary abilities.

Feature Film A film typically running between 90 and 120 minutes.

Female Matte In a matte/counter-matte system, the female matte (also known as a cover matte) is an opaque frame in which the foreground figure is transparent. The opaque area of the female matte blocks light during printing.

Feminist Film Theory A model of film theory that ex- amines the images of women in film and issues of gender representation.

Fetishizing Techniques As emphasized in psychoanalytic film theory, these are elements of style that concentrate the viewer’s attention for extended periods upon erotic imagery or material in a way that displaces other components of a scene or shot.

Fill Light A light placed opposite the key light and used to soften the shadows it casts. Along with key and back lights, fill light is one of the three principal sources of illumination in a scene.

Film Noir A cycle of crime and detective films popular in the U.S. cinema of the 1940s. Low-key lighting was a major stylistic attribute of this cycle.

Film Stock Camera negative identified by manufacturer and number. Stocks vary in terms of their sensitivity to light, color reproduction, amount of grain, contrast, and resolution.

Film Theory A philosophical or aesthetic model that seeks to explain the fundamental characteristics of the me- dium of cinema and how it expresses meaning.

Final Cut The finished edit of a film. The form in which a film is released to and seen by audiences.

Documentary A type of film dealing with a person, situa- tion, or state of affairs that exists independently of the film. Documentaries can include a poetic, stylized audiovisual design, but they typically exclude the use of overt fictional elements.

Documentary Realism A subcategory of the realist mode of screen reality. The documentary realist filmmaker employs the camera as a recording instrument to capture events or situations that are transpiring independently of the filmmaker. Documentary realism is also a stylistic construction in that the filmmaker’s audiovisual design imposes an artistic organiza- tion on the event that has unfolded before the camera.

Dolly A type of movable platform on which the camera is placed to execute a tracking shot. Tracking shots are some- times called dollies or dolly shots.

Editing The work of joining together shots to assemble the finished film. Editors select the best shots from the large amount of footage the director and cinematographer have provided and assemble these in the proper narrative order.

Editor The member of the production crew who, in con- sultation with the director, designs the order and arrange- ment of shots as they will appear in the finished film and splices them together to create the final cut.

Effects (Sound) One of the three basic types of film sound. Effects are all of the nonspoken, nonmusical sounds in a film (e.g., footsteps, breaking glass, etc.).

Emulsion The light-sensitive surface of the film. Light sensitivity varies among film stocks. Fast films feature emul- sions that are very light sensitive, requiring minimal light for a good exposure. Slow films feature emulsions that are less light sensitive, requiring more light on the scene or set for proper exposure.

ENR Named for Ernesto N. Rico, this method of film processing retains a portion of the silver in film emulsion, which is normally removed during developing. This has the effect of making shadows blacker, de-saturating color, and highlighting the texture and edges of surfaces.

Errors of Continuity Disruptions in the appropriate flow of action or in the proper relation of camera perspectives from shot to shot. These errors may include the failure to match action across shots or to maintain consistent screen direction.

Establishing Shot A type of long shot used to establish the setting or location of a scene. In classical continuity editing, establishing shots occur at the beginning of a scene and help contextualize subsequent close-ups and other partial views of the action.

Explicit Causality The tight chaining of narrative events into a strong causal sequence in which prior events directly and clearly cause subsequent events. Characteristic of Hollywood filmmaking.

Expressionism A basic mode of screen reality in which film- makers use explicit audiovisual distortions to express extreme or aberrant emotions or perceptions.

4

Glossary

Gray Scale A scale used for black-and-white cinematography that measures color intensity or brightness. Black-and-white film and the black-and-white video camera can differentiate colors only if they vary in degrees of brightness. The gray scale tells filmmakers which colors will separate naturally in black and white.

Greenscreening Filming of live actors against a blank and colored (green) screen for subsequent compositing with digi- tal elements.

Gross The total box office revenue generated by a film be- fore expenses are deducted.

Hand-Held Camera A camera that is physically held by the operator rather than being mounted on a tripod, dolly, or other platform. It permits more freedom of movement and is especially suited for scenes where the action is spontaneous and unpredictable.

Hard Light Light that is not scattered or diffused by filters or reflecting screens. Hard light can establish high contrast.

Hard-Matted Method of producing letterboxed video transfers of widescreen films. The widescreen ratio is pre- served for viewing on a 4:3 monitor by masking that part of the video signal that displays on the top and bottom of the monitor’s screen and displaying the widescreen image in the unmatted area.

High-Angle A camera angle usually above the eye level of performers in a scene.

High-Definition Video Compared with standard video, which has 480 scan lines of picture information, hi-def video has up to 1080 scan lines. The Sony/CineAlta HD24P format, which George Lucas used to shoot the latest install- ments of his Star Wars series, runs at 24 frames per second, like film, and carries a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels.

High-Key Lighting A lighting design that minimizes con- trast and fall-off by creating a bright, even level of illumina- tion throughout a scene.

Historical Realism A subcategory of the realist mode of screen reality. Historical realist films aim to recreate in close detail the manners, mores, settings, and costumes of a dis- tant historical period.

Homage A reference in a film to another film or film- maker. The climatic gun battle on the train station steps in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987) is an homage to Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin (1925), which features the famous massacre on the Odessa steps.

Hue One of the basic attributes of color. Hue designates the color itself. Red, blue, and green are primary hues. They are not mixtures of any other color.

Identification A stage in creating criticism wherein the critic selectively identifies those aspects of the film that are relevant for the critical argument being developed. The identification of selective film elements enables the critic to simplify and reduce the wealth of material in the film.

Ideological Film Theory A model of film theory that exam- ines the representation of social and political issues in film.

Flashing A technique used to de-saturate color and con- trast from a shot and to create a misty, slightly hazy effect. Film stock is flashed by exposing it to a small amount of light prior to developing.

Flicker Fusion Along with persistence of vision and beta movement, this is one of the perceptual foundations on which the illusion of cinema rests. The human eye cannot distinguish the individual still frames of a motion picture because of the speed at which they are projected. Flicker fu- sion designates the viewer’s inability to perceive the pulsing flashes of light emitted by the projector. These flashes and the still pictures they illuminate blend together to produce an illusion of movement.

Focal length The distance between the optical center of the lens and the film inside the camera. Lenses of different fo- cal lengths will “see” the action in front of the camera very differently. See Wide-Angle , Telephoto , Normal , and Zoom Lenses .

Foley The creation of sound effects by live performance in a sound recording studio. Foley artists perform sound effects in sync with a scene’s action.

ForcedPerspective Perspective distortion that takes infor- mational cues about depth and distance—such as the way parallel lines seem to converge in the distance or the way objects seem to grow smaller as they get farther away—and exaggerates these to convey on the small scale of a miniature model or a matte painting an impression of great size or distance.

Foreground Miniature A miniature model suspended be- tween the camera and the set or location and photographed as part of the dramatic action.

Frame The borders of a projected image or the individual still photograph on a strip of film. Frame dimensions are measured by aspect ratio.

Framework of Interpretation The intellectual, social, or cultural frames of reference that a critic applies to a film in order to create a novel interpretation. It is the general intellectual framework within which an interpretation is produced.

French New Wave The group of filmmakers that emerged in France beginning in 1959 and whose films broke with existing studio style. They were very fond of American films, and in time their work influenced such Hollywood films as Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider.

Front Projection Method for simulating locations by projecting location footage from a position in front of the actors and set.

Genre A type or category of film such as a Western, musi- cal, gangster film, or horror film that follows a set of visual and narrative patterns that are unique within the genre.

Glass Shot Often used in early cinema, this was a method for producing a composited image in-camera by filming a scene with a matte painting on glass used to represent part of the set or location.

5

Glossary

Letterbox A method of formatting wide-screen motion pictures for video release. Black bars mask the top and bot- tom of the frame, producing a wider ratio picture area in the center of the frame. While the aspect ratio of a letterboxed video image closely matches the original theatrical aspect ratio, the trade-off is a small and narrow image as displayed on a television monitor.

Limited-Release Market The theatrical distribution of in- dependent film, typically on a smaller scale than the release market for major studio productions.

Linear Editing System Until the late-1990s, editors worked on celluloid film, with the footage in their workprints de- rived from camera negative. Using a linear system, the editor searched for material by running footage from beginning to end and joined shots sequentially, one after another. Such editors were in physical contact with actual film, unlike those using nonlinear systems who access an electronic sig- nal via a keyboard.

Live Action Those components of a special effects shot or scene that were filmed live before the camera. These elements may then be composited with digital effects.

Long Shot One of the basic camera positions in which a camera is set up at some distance from the subject of the shot. Filmmakers usually use long shots to stress environ- ment or setting.

Long Take A shot of long duration, as distinct from a long shot, which designates a camera position.

Low-Angle A camera angle usually below the eye level of performers in a scene.

Low-Key Lighting A lighting design that maximizes con- trast and fall-off by lighting selected areas of the scene for proper exposure and leaving all other areas underexposed.

Majors The large studio-distributors that fund film pro- duction and distribute films internationally. Collectively, these companies constitute the Hollywood industry. They are Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros., Disney, MGM/UA, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Universal.

Male Matte In a matte/counter-matte system, the male matte, also known as a holdout matte, is a black silhou- ette of the foreground element with all other areas of the film frame being transparent. The opaque silhouette blocks light from being transmitted through the film in this area during printing (or, if working digitally, during compositing).

Master Shot A camera position used by filmmakers to record the entire action of a scene from beginning to end. Filmmakers reshoot portions of the scene in close-up and medium shot framings. Editors cut these into the master shot to create the changing optical viewpoints of an edited scene. When used to establish the overall layout of a scene or loca- tion, the master shot can also double as an establishing shot.

Matched Cut A cut joining two shots whose compositional elements strongly match. Matched cutting establishes conti- nuity of action.

Ideology A system of beliefs characteristic of a society or social community. Ideological film theory examines the ways in which films represent and express various ideologies.

Implicit Causality The loose sequencing of narrative events. Narrative causality is minimized, and the viewer’s sense of the direction in which the story is moving is weaker than it is in films that feature explicit causality.

Implied Author The artistic perspective implied and em- bodied by a film’s overall audiovisual design.

Intensity A basic attribute of color. Intensity measures the brightness of a hue.

Internal Structural Time The dynamic tempo of a film, es- tablished by its internal structure (camera positions, editing, color and lighting design, soundtrack). Perceiving this inter- nal tempo, viewers label films as fast or slow moving, yet internal structural time never unfolds at a constant rate. It is a dynamic rhythm. Filmmakers vary the tempo of internal structural time to maintain viewer interest.

Interocular Distance The amount of distance or separation between human eyes. Stereoscopic cinema scales interocular distance in terms of dual camera position to elicit 3D effects.

Interpretation The goal of criticism. By examining a film’s structure, a critic assigns meaning to a scene or film that it does not immediately denote.

Interpretive Processing The viewer’s attribution of mean- ing to audiovisual information, as distinct from perceptual processing, which is the purely perceptual response to this information. Film viewing involves both components. Understood in terms of perceptual processing, a viewer watching a cross-cut sequence sees a succession of shots flashing by on screen as an alternating series. Via interpre- tive processing, the viewer attributes a representation of si- multaneous action to the alternating series. This attribution is not a meaning contained within the images themselves. It is the viewer’s contribution.

Iris An editing transition prevalent in silent cinema. A cir- cular mask closed down over the image (an iris out) to mark the end of a scene or, alternatively, opened up (an iris in) to introduce a new scene.

Jump Cut A method of editing that produces discontinuity by leaving out portions of the action.

Key Frames In digital animation, the points at which a character’s position changes substantially. The animator specifies and creates these key frames, and a software pro- gram then creates the intervening frames.

Key Light The main source of illumination in a scene usu- ally directed on the face of the performer. Along with fill and back lights, it is one of the three principal sources of illumination in a scene.

Latent Meaning Meanings that are indirect or implied by a film’s narrative and audiovisual design. They are not direct, immediately obvious, or explicit.

Leitmotif A recurring musical passage used to characterize a scene, character, or situation in a film narrative.

6

Glossary

from a multiplane camera. It can move toward or away from them, and they can be moved across its field of view.

Multipass Compositing Method for creating a final, ren- dered image from separate operations carried out upon different image layers. Prior to the digital era, multi-pass compositing had been carried out on optical printers. Some of the optical printer effects shots in Return of the Jedi were so complex that they required more than a hundred passes.

Music One of the three basic types of film sound. Film music may include the score that accompanies the dramatic action of scenes as well as music originating on screen from within a scene.

Negative Cost Accounting term for the expenses incurred by a film production, excluding the cost of advertising and publicity.

Negative Parallax In stereoscopic cinema, placement of the left-eye image on the right, and the right-eye image on the left, requiring that viewers converge their eyes to fuse the images. This results in positioning objects in front of the screen.

Neonoir Film noir made in the contemporary period and shot in color.

Neorealism A filmmaking style that developed in postwar Italian cinema. The neorealist director aimed to truthfully portray Italian society by avoiding the gloss and glitter of expensive studio productions, emphasizing instead location filmmaking, a mixture of non- and semiprofessional actors, and simple, straightforward visual technique.

Newspaper/Television Reviewing A mode of film criticism aimed at a general audience that performs an explicit con- sumer function, telling readers whether or not they should see the film being reviewed. Film reviews presented as part of television news or review programs also belong to this mode.

New Wave A new stylistic direction or design appearing within a national cinema in the films of a group of (usually young) directors who are impatient with existing styles and seek to create alternatives.

Nodal Tripod Camera mount that enables a camera to pivot around the optical center of the lens, producing no motion perspective. Often used in shots employing hanging miniatures to disguise the presence of the miniature.

Nondiegetic sound Sound that cannot be heard by charac- ters in a film but can be heard by the film’s viewer. See also diegetic sound.

Nonlinear Editing Systems Computerized editing on digital video. This system gives editors instantaneous access to any shot or scene in a film and enables them to rapidly explore different edits of the same footage. Once a final cut has been reached on the digital video footage, the camera negative is then conformed (edited to match) this cut. Unlike an editor using a linear system who would actually handle film, the nonlinear editor uses a computer keyboard to find shots and join them together.

Matte A painted landscape or location that is composited with the live action components of a shot. Mattes were traditionally done as paintings on glass, but many con- temporary films use digital mattes created on a computer. Matte can also refer to a mask that is used to block or hide a portion of the frame, as when producing a widescreen im- age in theatrical projection. See Soft-Matted , Hard-Matted, Counter-Matte, Traveling Matte .

Maquette A small, 3D sculpture that forms the basis for subsequent digital animation. Often used in creature effects.

Medium Shot One of the basic camera positions in which a camera is set up to record from full- to half-figure shots of a performer.

Melodrama The predominant dramatic style of popular cinema, emphasizing clear moral distinctions between hero and villain, exaggerated emotions, and a narrative style in which the twists and turns of the plot determine character behavior.

Method Acting An approach to screen performance in which the actor seeks to portray a character by using per- sonal experience and emotion as a foundation for the por- trayal.

Miniature A small-scale model representing a portion of a much larger location or building.

Mise-en-scène A film’s overall visual design, created by all of the elements that are placed before the camera. These include light, color, costumes, sets, and actors.

Mockumentary A fiction film that uses the style of docu- mentary to create the illusion, typically for comic effect, that it is a documentary.

Monocular Depth Cues Informational sources about depth, distance and spatial layout that can be perceived with one eye.

Montage Used loosely, montage simply means “edit- ing.” In a strict sense, however, montage designates scenes whose emotional impact and visual design are achieved primarily through the editing of many brief shots. The shower scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho is a classic example of montage editing.

Motion Control Cinematography in which the camera’s movements are plotted by computer so that they can be rep- licated when designing the digital components of the shot.

Motion Parallax Also known as motion perspective , the term designates the changing positions of near and far ob- jects as the viewer or the camera moves through space.

Motion Perspective The change in visual perspective produced by the camera’s movement through space. The visual positions of objects undergo systematic changes as the camera moves in relation to them. Camera movement will produce motion perspective but a zoom shot will not.

Multiplane Camera A standard tool of 2D animation used to produce effects of camera movement and motion and depth perspective. Cells are arranged at varying distances

7

Glossary

Perceptual Processing The film viewer’s perceptual response to audiovisual information, as distinct from interpretive pro- cessing, which is the active interpretation of that information. Film viewing involves both components. The viewer sees color, depth, and movement (perceptual processing) in cinema and may attribute particular meanings to those perceptions (inter- pretive processing). Understood in terms of perceptual process- ing, a viewer watching a cross-cut sequence sees a succession of shots flashing by on-screen as an alternating series. Via in- terpretive processing, the viewer attributes a representation of simultaneous action to the alternating series. This attribution is not a meaning contained within the images themselves. It is the viewer’s contribution.

Perceptual Realism The correspondence of picture and sound in cinema with the ways viewers perceive space and sound in the real, three-dimensional world.

Perceptual Transformation Those properties of cinema (e.g., a telephoto lens or a simultaneous zoom and track in opposite directions) that distort or alter the visual informa- tion that viewers encounter in the everyday world or that create completely novel visual experiences that have no basis in real-world experience. An example of the latter would be the high-speed bullet effects used in The Matrix.

Performance Capture Digital means for extracting the movements of a live actor and compositing these into a cartoon or special effects character. The live actor’s perfor- mance is thereby mapped onto the digital character.

Performance Style The actor’s contribution to the audiovi- sual and narrative design of a film.

Persistence of Vision A characteristic of the human eye in which the retina briefly retains the impression of an image after its source has been removed. Because of persistence of vision, viewers do not see the alternating periods of light and dark through which they sit in a theater.

Phi Phenomena The many different conditions under which the human eye can be fooled into seeing the illusion of movement. Beta movement is one of the phi phenomena.

Photogrammetry Method of building a 3D environment in the computer by using photographs. By tracing the camera’s lines of sight in multiple photographs of the same area, and plotting their intersection, a 3D model of the depicted area can be assembled.

Pictorial Lighting Design A lighting design that does not aim to simulate the effects of an on-screen light source. Instead, the design moves in a purely pictorial direction to create mood and atmosphere.

Pixel With reference to computer-based images, a pixel is the smallest unit of a picture capable of being digitally ma- nipulated. The sharpness or resolution of an image is a func- tion of the number of pixels it contains. High-end computer monitors, used in sophisticated film effects work, may have 2000 pixels per screen line.

Plot The order and arrangement of story events as they ap- pear in a given film.

Nonsynchronous Sound Sound that is not in synch with a source visible on screen.

Normal Lens A lens of moderate focal length that does not distort object size and depth of field. The normal lens records perspective much as the human eye does.

Off-Screen Sound A type of sound in which the sound- producing source remains off-screen. Off-screen sound extends the viewer’s perception of a represented screen location into an indefinite area of off-screen space.

180-Degree Rule The foundation for establishing conti- nuity of screen direction. The left and right coordinates of screen action remain consistent as long as all camera posi- tions remain on the same side of the line of action. Crossing the line entails a change of screen direction.

Open Matte Formatting of 1.85:1 aspect ratio films for the television/home video ratio of 4:3 by transferring the film full frame without the matting that was used during projec- tion in theaters.

Optical Printer Device used to composite effects shots dur- ing the Hollywood studio era. Optical printers were made of a synchronized process camera and a process projector that was called the printer head. Master positive footage of effects elements—models, travelling mattes, animation—was loaded into the printer head and run through and photo- graphed frame by frame in the process camera. (A process camera is one used in the laboratory for effects work, in distinction to a production camera used to film live action.) The final composite (the finished effects shot) was created gradually by this process of re-photographing each of its components.

Ordinary Fictional Realism A subcategory of the real- ist mode of screen reality. Such films feature a naturalistic visual design, a linear narrative, and plausible character be- havior as the basis for establishing a realist style.

Pan A type of camera movement in which the camera piv- ots from side to side on a fixed tripod or base. Pans produce lateral optical movement on-screen and are often used to follow the action of a scene or to anticipate the movements of performers.

Pan-and-Scan A method of formatting wide-screen motion pictures for video release. Only a portion of the original wide-screen image is transferred to video. A full screen im- age appears on the video monitor, but it represents only a portion of the original wide-screen frame.

Parallel Action An editing technique that establishes mul- tiple, ongoing plot lines and simultaneous lines of action. Editors generally use the technique of cross-cutting to estab- lish parallel action.

Perceptual Correspondence Those properties of cin- ema that duplicate the visual information that viewers encounter in the everyday world. These include informa- tion about object size, light and shadow, movement, and facial expression and behavior as signs of emotion and intention.

8

Glossary

Product Placement The appearance of products on screen as part of a film scene. These appearances are advertise- ments for which the merchandiser pays a fee to a product placement agency. Film production companies derive rev- enue from these fees.

Product Tie-Ins Products marketed in conjunction with the release of a blockbuster film. For example, a Jurassic Park video game. These products often bear the logo or likeness of characters in the movie.

Profit Participant An individual who is contractually entitled to receive a portion of a film’s profits. This is often a star or director who receives a percentage of gross revenue, a practice known as taking points.

Prop Master Individual who supervises the design and con- struction of props used in the film.

Psychoanalytic Film Theory A model of film theory that examines the unconscious, sometimes irrational, emotional, and psychological relationship between viewers and films or between characters within films.

Real Author The actual flesh-and-blood author of a film, as distinct from the implied author, the artistic perspective embodied by a film’s overall audiovisual design.

Realism A basic mode of screen reality. Ordinary fictional realism, historical realism, and documentary realism are subcategories of the realist mode.

Realist Film Theory A model of film theory that seeks to explain how filmmakers may capture, with minimal distor- tion, the essential features of real situations and events, or, in the case of fictionalized events, how filmmakers may give them an apparent real-world status.

Realistic Lighting Design A lighting design that simulates the effects of a light source visible on screen.

Realistic Sound Sound that seems to fit the properties of a real source. In practice this is an elastic concept because many sounds that seem to be realistic are, in fact, artificial and derive from sources other than the one that is desig- nated on screen.

Rear Screen Projection A technique for simulating loca- tion cinematography by projecting photographic images of a landscape onto a screen. Actors are photographed standing in front of the screen as if they were part of the represented location.

Recces Scouting trips to find locations by the production designer and crew.

Reflected Sound Sound that is reflected off surfaces in a physical environment before being captured by the micro- phone. By manipulating characteristics of sound reflection, sound designers can capture the physical attributes of an environment.

Rental Accounting term for the revenues returned to a film distributor.

Rhetoric The use of language to persuade and influence others. Film criticism is a rhetorical activity.

Point of View The perspective from which narrative events are related. Point of view in cinema is typically third-person perspective, although filmmakers routinely manipulate au- diovisual design to suggest what individual characters are thinking or feeling. Point of view in cinema can assume a first-person perspective through the use of voice-over narra- tion or subjective shots in which the camera views a scene as if through the eyes of a character.

Point-of-View Shot See Subjective Shot .

Positive Parallax In stereoscopic cinema, placement of the left-eye image on the left, and the right-eye image on the right, enabling viewers to fuse the images without converging their eyes. This results in positioning objects behind the screen.

Polyvalence The attribute of having more than one mean- ing. Motion pictures are polyvalent because they possess multiple layers of meaning.

Postdubbing The practice of recording sound effects and dialogue after principal filming has been completed. ADR is the contemporary term for postdubbing. In the case of postdubbing dialogue, the technical challenge is to closely match the rerecorded dialogue with the performer’s lip movements in the shot.

Postproduction The last stage of filmmaking, following the shooting and sound recording of scenes, that includes the editing of image and sound and finalizing of digital effects.

Practical (Light) A light source visible on a set used for exposure.

Preproduction The stage of filmmaking that precedes the shooting and sound recording of scenes. It is the planning and preparation stage.

Previsualization Any of a number of methods by which filmmakers try to visualize a shot before actually exposing film in the camera. Storyboards are a form of previsualiza- tion, as are various software programs that will model a set as seen by different camera positions and lenses.

Producer A production administrator who hires a director and supervises a film’s production to ensure that it comes in under budget and on schedule. While directors work under a producer, in practice producers generally allow directors considerable creative freedom.

Production The stage of filmmaking that includes the shooting and sound recording of scenes.

Production Design The planning and creation of sets, cos- tumes, mattes, and miniatures according to an overall con- cept articulated by the production designer in collaboration with the director.

Production Track The soundtrack as recorded at the point of filming. The final soundtrack mix included on release prints to theaters includes portions of the production track along with a great deal of sound created in postproduction.

Production Values Those elements of the film that show the money invested in its production. These typically include set designs, costumes, locations, and special effects.

9

Glossary

Shading A visual depth cue in which gradations and patterns of light and shadow reveal texture and volume in a three-dimensional world and can be used to create a three-dimensional impression on a flat theater or television screen.

Shot The basic unit of film structure, corresponding to the amount of footage exposed in the camera from the time it is turned on until it is turned off. Shots are visible on-screen as the intervals between cuts, fades, or dissolves.

Shot-Reverse-Shot Cutting A type of continuity editing generally used for conversation scenes. The cutting alter- nates between opposing over-the-shoulder camera set-ups showing each character speaking in turn.

Shutter Device inside the camera that regulates the light reaching the film. In a film projector, the shutter func- tions like an on/off switch, regulating the light reaching the screen to produce beta movement and critical fusion frequency.

Sign In communication theory, that which embodies or expresses meaning.

Snorkel Lens A lens that is mounted to the end of an elon- gated arm, which itself is attached to the camera body. The lens can be rotated, tilted, and maneuvered separately from the camera body to produce the illusion of camera move- ment through a miniature model.

Soft Light Light that is diffused or scattered by filters or reflecting screens. Soft light creates a low-contrast image.

Soft-Matted The use of mattes during projection to mask the top and bottom of the film frame and produce a wides- creen (1.85:1) image.

Sound Bridge Sound used to connect, or bridge, two or more shots. Sound bridges establish continuity of place, ac- tion, or time.

Sound Design (Designer) The expressive use of sound throughout a film in relation to its images and the contents of its narrative. Working in conjunction with the director, the sound designer supervises the work of other sound personnel.

Sound Field The acoustical space created by all the speak- ers in a multichannel, surround-sound system.

Sound Hierarchy The relative priority given to dialogue, effects, and music in a given scene. In most cases, dialogue is considered the most important of these sounds and rests atop the sound hierarchy.

Sound Montage A type of sound editing that conjoins many discrete sound effects and sources.

Sound Perspective The use of sound to augment visual per- spective. Sound perspective often correlates with camera posi- tion. In a long shot reflected sound may prevail, whereas in a close-up direct sound may prevail.

Soundstage The acoustical space created by the front speakers in a multichannel, surround-sound system.

Speech Dialogue spoken by performers playing characters in a narrative.

Room Tone A type of ambient sound characterizing the acoustical properties of a room. Even an empty room will emit room tone.

Rotoscope A combination camera–projector used to combine live action with animation. Live-action footage is projected frame by frame onto a series of cells, enabling the animator to produce drawings that exactly fit the live action.

Rough Cut The film editor’s initial assembly of shots in a scene or film before the editing is tightened and perfected in the fine cut.

Running Time The amount of real time it takes a viewer to watch a film from beginning to end. Most commercial films run between 90 and 120 minutes.

Saturation A basic characteristic of color. Saturation mea- sures color strength and is a function of how much white light is mixed into the color. The more white light that is present, the less saturated the color will seem to be.

Scenic Artist Individual who supervises design and matte paintings.

Schema This term derives from the psychology of percep- tion and designates a mental category or framework used to organize information. Applied to cinema, it helps explain the function of devices like the master shot, which provides viewers with a schema or map of a location and the char- acters’ positions within it. Viewers use the visual schema provided by master shots to orient themselves to changing camera positions and to integrate partial views of a scene provided by close-ups.

Scholarly Criticism A mode of criticism aimed at a special- ized audience of scholars, employing a technical, demanding vocabulary, and exploring the significance of given films in relation to issues of theory or film history.

Schufftan Process Method for combining live action and miniature models or matte paintings. By placing a mir- ror that reflects the image of the miniature or painting at a 45 degree angle to the camera, live action elements can be filmed through portions of the mirror that have been scraped away to leave transparent glass. The camera sees the live action through the glass and sees the miniature reflected in the glass. The actors and the miniature or painting are thereby filmed simultaneously.

Screen Reality The represented reality depicted by a fic- tional film. Screen reality is established by the principles of time, space, character behavior, and audiovisual design as these are organized in a given film.

Sequence Shot A long take whose duration extends for an entire scene or sequence. Such a scene or sequence is accord- ingly composed of only one shot and features no editing.

Set Decorator Individual who dresses a set with furnish- ings and props.

Sets The controlled physical environment in which film- ing occurs. Sets may be created by blocking and lighting an area of ground outdoors or by building and designing a physical environment indoors.

10

Glossary

narrative information from viewers, whereas creating sus- pense depends on providing viewers with necessary informa- tion. Showing the audience the bomb under the table before it goes off will create suspense. Not showing the bomb be- fore it goes off will create surprise.

Surrealism Influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, this art style aims to appeal to the viewer’s subconscious and irratio- nal mind by creating fantastic and dream-like images. David Lynch’s Blue Velvet is a surrealist film.

Suspense A narrative technique used to create tension and anxiety in the film viewer. Creating suspense depends on revealing rather than withholding narrative information. Showing the audience the bomb under the table before it goes off will create suspense. Not showing the bomb before it goes off will create surprise. Unlike suspense, surprise de- pends on withholding information from the audience.

Synthetic Sound Artificially designed sound that does not match any existing source. The sounds of the light sabers in the Star Wars films are examples of synthetic sound.

Taboo Images Imagery depicting forbidden or disturbing subjects, often of a sexual or violent nature.

Technical Acting An approach to acting in which the per- former thinks through the requisite gestures and emotions and then exhibits them. In contrast to method acting, the technical actor does not look to personal experience as a basis for understanding the character.

Telephoto Lens A lens of long focal length that distorts object size and depth of field. Telephoto lenses magnify the size of distant objects and by doing so compress depth of field and make them appear closer than they are.

Temp Track A temporary musical track usually derived from an existing film that a director uses early in production to show the composer the type of musical composition he or she wants.

Thematic Montage A style of editing that draws an explicit comparison between two or more images, as when Charles Chaplin compares workers and sheep in a pair of shots at the beginning of Modern Times.

Tilt A type of camera movement in which the camera pivots up and down on a fixed tripod or base. Tilts produce vertical movement on screen and are often used to follow action and reveal detail.

Tracking Shot A camera movement in which the camera physically moves along the ground to follow action or to re- veal significant narrative information. Tracking shots can be executed by pushing the camera along tracks, by attaching the camera to a moving vehicle such as a car, or by using a handheld Steadicam mount, in which case the camera opera- tor runs or walks alongside the action. Tracking shots are sometimes called dolly shots , after the “dolly” or movable platform on which the camera is sometimes mounted.

Translite A photographic image, enlarged and backlit, this is one of the basic tools of production design, used to simu- late a large, scenic view in the background of a set.

Spotting A collaborative process between the director and composer during which they spot or identify passages in the film that require musical scoring.

Star The highest profile performer in a film narrative. Stars draw audiences to theaters and establish intense personal relationships with their publics.

Star Persona The relatively fixed screen personality of a star.

Stereoscopic Cinema Films and filmmaking that employ bin- ocular disparity and convergence to depict three-dimensional depth in the frame.

Stereographer Member of a production crew who consults with the director and choreographs stereoscopic (3D) space on screen.

Steadicam A camera-stabilizing system that enables the camera operator to work with a hand-held camera and produce steady, jitter-free images. It is especially suited for producing lengthy, extended moving camera shots.

Stop-Motion Animation Method used for animating three-dimensional models, such as King Kong. The model is moved and photographed a frame at a time.

Story The entire sequence of events that a film’s plot draws on and references. The plot arranges story events into a given order, which may differ from the story’s proper chronology.

Story Time The amount of time covered by the narrative. This may vary considerably from film to film. The narrative of 2001: A Space Odyssey begins during a period of primi- tive prehuman ancestry and extends into the era of space travel, while the narrative of High Noon spans, roughly, 90 minutes, closely approximating that film’s running time.

Structure The audiovisual design of a film. The elements of structure include the camera, lights and color, production design, performance style, editing, sound, and narrative.

Subjective Shot Also known as a point-of-view shot. The camera’s position and angle represent the exact viewpoint of a character in the narrative.

Subtractive Color Mixing The method for creating color in film. Magenta, cyan, and yellow dyes combined in color film produce all other hues.

Super 35 Widescreen format that captures a 2:1 aspect ratio image on the camera negative. This image is then typically cropped to 2.35:1 for theatrical release and to 1.33:1 for full-frame home video release.

Supervising Art Director During the classical Hollywood era, this was the head of the art department who supervised art design in all the films under production at a studio.

Supporting Player A performer in a secondary role who does not receive either the billing or the pay of a major star. Many performers first establish themselves as sup- porting players before they become stars.

Surprise A narrative technique used to jolt or startle the viewer. Creating surprise depends on withholding crucial

11

Glossary

narrative or, as sometimes occurs in documentary films, the narrator may exist independently of characters in the story.

Voyeurism A basic pleasure offered by cinema, derived from looking at the characters and situations on screen.

Wavelength The characteristic of light that corresponds to color. Colors are visible when white light is broken down into component wavelengths.

White Telephone Films Derogatory term for the glossy studio films produced by Cinecitta, Italy’s national studio, during the Mussolini period.

Wide-Angle Lens A short focal length lens that exagger- ates depth of field by increasing the size of near objects and minimizing the size of distant objects. Because they can focus on near and far objects, wide-angle lenses can capture great depth of field.

Widescreen Ratios Any of a large number of aspect ra- tios that exceed the nearly square, 1.37:1 ratio of classical Hollywood film and 1.33:1 ratio of conventional television. Wide-screen films must be reformatted for video release us- ing methods of letterboxing or panning-and-scanning.

Wipe An editing transition prevalent in earlier decades of sound film. A hard- or soft-edged line (generally vertical) traveling across the frame marked the border of the outgoing and incoming shots. Although wipes are rare in contempo- rary film, George Lucas used them extensively in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace to evoke the style of old movie serials.

Z-Axis Specifies the amount of depth in a digital image along which objects are arranged or through which they move.

Z-Depth Map An image that supplies a graphic render- ing of depth values in a shot. It uses gray-scale values to visualize distances, ranging from white (objects nearest the camera) to shades of gray to black (objects farthest from the camera).

Zoom Lens A lens capable of shifting from short (wide- angle) to long (telephoto) focal lengths. Using a zoom to change focal lengths within a shot produces the impression of camera movement, making it seem as if the camera is moving closer to or farther from its subject.

Traveling Matte Travelling mattes enable filmmakers to insert moving foreground figures into a landscape or other type of background that has been filmed sepa- rately. Accordingly, travelling mattes are an extremely valuable and widely-used tool of visual effects. They in- volve the application of a matte and counter-matte in or- der to prevent double-exposures. These are composed of male and female mattes. A male matte, also known as a holdout matte, is a black silhouette of the foreground el- ement with all other areas of the film frame being trans- parent. The opaque silhouette will block light from being transmitted through the film in this area during printing (or, if working digitally, during compositing). A f emale matte (also known as a cover matte) is the inverse of the male. The female matte is an opaque frame in which the foreground figure is transparent. Tromp l’Oeil Optical illusions created by painting or other visual media. Matte paintings in cinema routinely employ tromp l’oeil tech- niques to achieve the effects of perspective, scale, depth and distance.

Typage The manipulation of a screen character’s visual or physical characteristics to suggest psychological or social themes or ideas.

Unit Art Director In the classic Hollywood studio system in the 1930s and 1940s, the unit art director oversaw the creation of sets and costumes for a given production. The unit art director worked under a studio’s supervising art director who supervised set and costume design on all of the studio’s productions.

Virtual Camera Simulation via computer of the many ways in which a camera might view a scene. 2D animated films are shot with a real camera. 3D computer animation uses a vir- tual camera, mimicking the optical effects of different lenses, depth of field, rack focusing, and panning-and-tracking movements. These are far more vivid in digital animation than in 2D animation.

Visual Effects Supervisor Member of the production crew who oversees the design of a film’s special effects.

Voice-Over Narration Dialogue spoken by an off-screen narrator. This narrator may be a character reflecting in voice-over on story events from some later point in the

12

■ distinguish the three basic camera angles and describe the ways they influence viewer response

■ differentiate telephoto, wide-angle, and zoom lenses and explain their optical effects

■ explain the basic categories of camera movement and their expressive functions

■ explain how a film’s structural design is shaped by a filmmaker’s choices about how to use the tools of style

Film Structure

■ explain the nature of film structure and its relation to the ways movies express meaning

■ describe the production process and its relation to film structure

■ describe the relation between film structure and the cinema’s properties of time and space

■ distinguish the three basic camera positions and their expressive functions

■ describe how camera position can clarify the meaning of an actor’s facial expression and gestures

OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

From Chapter 1 of Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film, Sixth Edition. Stephen Prince. Copyright © 2013 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

13

Film Structure

The shark in Jaws (1975) and the digital characters in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2004) thrilled and amused moviegoers throughout the world. Audiences have em- braced films as diverse as Toy Story 3 (2010), True Grit (2010), The Social Network (2010), and The Dark Knight (2008). Each of these pictures provided its viewers with a strong cinematic experience, crafted by filmmakers using the elements of film structure: camerawork, lighting, sound, editing. To understand how movies express meanings and elicit emotions, one must begin by understanding their structural design. This chapter explains the concept of film structure, the camera’s role as an element of structure, and the relation between the camera’s method of seeing and a viewer’s understanding of cinema.

ELEMENTS OF FILM STRUCTURE Structure refers to the audiovisual design of a film and the particular tools and tech- niques used to create that design. (Scholars sometimes refer to this by the term film form . Thus, one might speak of formal design or of structural design. The terminol- ogy is interchangeable.) A convenient way to illustrate this concept is to make a distinction between structure and content. Consider the average newspaper movie review. It provides a description of a film’s story and a paragraph or two about the characters and the actors who play them. In addition, the reviewer might mention the theme or themes of the film. These descriptions of story, character, and theme address the content of the movie.

Now, instead of thinking about content, one could ask about those things that help to create the story, give shape to the characters, and illustrate and visualize the themes. These are questions about the elements of cinema—the camera, lights and color, produc- tion design, performance, editing, sound—and their organization in a given film.

The Production Process A helpful way of understanding film structure is to map its components accord- ing to their place in the production process. When does production design oc- cur? Cinematography? Editing? Filmmaking involves three basic steps or stages. Preproduction designates the planning and preparation stage. It typically involves the writing of a script; hiring of cast and crew; production design of sets, costumes, and locales; and planning the style of cinematography. Set design and camera style are both previsualized using software programs that enable filmmakers to “see” in advance how camera setups and lenses will look on the sets that are planned. Preproduction also sometimes includes a brief period of rehearsal for the actors. Production designates the work of filming the script (cinematography) and sound recording of the action. The director may request a temp track, a temporary musical score that is similar to the one that will be created for the film. Postproduction in- volves the editing of sound and image, composition and recording of the music score, additional sound recording for effects (Foley) and dialogue replacement (ADR), cre- ation of digital visual effects (these also may occur during production), and color tim- ing to achieve proper color balance in the images. This may be done digitally (known

■ describe the relation between the camera’s view of things and human perception

■ explain how the camera creates images that both correspond with and transform the viewer’s visual experience

14

Film Structure

as digital grading) or using traditional lab methods. Copies of the film are then made for exhibition, either as prints (on film) or as digital video.

Because filmmakers apply the elements of structure at different points in the production process, these elements can be used to modify or influence one another. A director might realize that a scene as filmed lacks emotional force and may turn to the composer for music to supply the missing emotion or to the editor to sharpen its dra- matic focus. A cinematographer in postproduction may alter the image captured on film by using digital grading to adjust color, contrast, and other elements.

PREPRODUCTION

Script optioning writing revisions Hiring of Cast and Crew Design of Sets and Costumes Plan Style of Cinematography Rehearsals

PRODUCTION

Shooting & Sound Recording of Scenes

POSTPRODUCTION

Editing of Sound & Image Music Scoring

Foley ADR

Digital Effects Color Timing (Digital/Lab)

Release Prints

FIGURE 1 The production process.

TITANIC (PARAMOUNT/20TH CENTURY FOX, 1997) Titanic’s production design evokes a now-vanished early-twentieth-century world. Meticulously detailed costumes and sets are an essential part of the film’s structural design. Frame enlargement.

15

Film Structure

The Role of the Director A wide range of creative personnel design picture and sound on any given produc- tion. While filmmaking is a collaborative enterprise, one individual has chief artistic authority, and this is usually the director . The director coordinates and organizes the artistic inputs of other members of the production team, who generally subordinate their artistic tastes or preferences to a director’s stated wishes or vision. The direc- tor, in turn, answers to the producer , who generally has administrative control over a production (e.g., making sure the production stays on schedule and within budget). In practice, though, many producers hold more than administrative authority and are actively engaged with the director’s creative decisions, especially if the producer is a powerful figure in the industry.

Great variety exists in the working methods of directors. Some directors, such as Robert Altman ( Gosford Park , 2001; The Player , 1992), welcome input from other production team members in a spirit of shared collective artistry. Other directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock or Charles Chaplin, tend to be more autocratic and commanding in their creative approaches. Some directors, such as Woody Allen ( Match Point , 2005; Deconstructing Harry , 1997), Steven Spielberg ( The War of the Worlds , 2005; Saving Private Ryan , 1998), and Stanley Kubrick ( Full Metal Jacket , 1987; Eyes Wide Shut , 1999), take an active role in the editing of their pictures. Most directors place special emphasis on the quality of the script, believing a polished script to be essential to mak- ing a good film. Clint Eastwood’s best films as director, Million Dollar Baby (2004), Mystic River (2003), and Unforgiven (1993), feature exquisitely written scripts.

Most directors maintain enduring relationships with key production personnel. As these relationships deepen over the course of several productions, the creative, col- laborative work that results becomes richer. Steven Spielberg, for example, has used cinematographer Janusz Kaminski for War Horse (2011), Munich (2005), The War of the Worlds (2005), The Terminal (2004), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and others. Clint Eastwood relied on production designer Henry Bumstead for eleven films, including Million Dollar Baby (2004), Mystic River (2003), and Unforgiven (1993). Woody Allen invariably relies on editor Susan E. Morse, as does Martin Scorsese with editor Thelma

THE IMMIGRANT (MUTUAL FILM CORP., 1917) Charles Chaplin was the complete film- maker. He wrote, directed, performed in, edited, and composed the music for his films. Many said that, were it pos- sible, he’d have played all the characters as well. He rarely worked from a com- pleted script. He preferred to build a set, dress it with props, and then explore its comic possibilities, making up gags as he went along. Performance, not camerawork, was the centerpiece of his films. Here, Charlie and his companion (Edna Purviance) have no cash to pay for the meal they’ve just eaten. The hulk- ing waiter (Eric Campbell) suspects the worst. Frame enlargement.

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Schoonmaker. George Lucas relied on Ben Burtt as the sound designer for all six of the Star Wars films. The continuities established by these professional relationships are vitally important to a director’s ability to get what he or she wants on the screen.

Time and Space in Cinema The elements of cinematic structure, organized by directors and their production teams, help to shape the distinctive properties of time and space in a film. A conve- nient way of thinking about the arts is to consider the properties of time and/or space that they possess. Music, for example, is primarily an art of time. Its effects arise through the arrangement of tones in a musical composition that has some duration or length. Movies, by contrast, are an art of time as well as space.

The time component of movies has several aspects. Running time designates the du- ration of the film, the amount of time it takes a viewer to watch the film from beginning to end. Most commercially released films are called feature films , which means that they typically run from 90 to 120 minutes. Some films, however, are much longer. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2004), in its theatrical release, was 201 minutes long, and the director’s extended version on DVD runs even longer, 251 minutes.

Story time designates the amount of time covered by the narrative, and this can vary considerably from film to film. In Fred Zinnemann’s Western, High Noon (1952), the story spans 1.5 hours, roughly equivalent to the running time of the film itself. Story time, on the other hand, can span many epochs and centuries, as in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which goes from the dawn of the apes well into the age of space travel. Filmmakers also may organize story time through the use of flashbacks so that it becomes fragmented, doubling back on itself, as in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), in which the story of Charles Foster Kane is told largely through the recollections of friends and associates who knew him.

Internal structural time , a third distinct aspect of cinematic time, arises from the structural manipulations of film form or technique. If a filmmaker edits a sequence so that the lengths of shots decrease progressively, or become shorter, the tempo of the se- quence will accelerate. A rapid camera movement will accelerate the internal structural time of a shot. Regardless of the shot’s actual duration on screen, it will seem to move faster. (The term shot designates the basic building block of a film. During production, a director creates a film shot by shot. In this context, a shot corresponds to the amount of film footage exposed by the camera from the time it is turned on until it is turned off. Films are composed of many shots that are joined together in the process of editing. In a completed film, a shot is the interval on screen between edit points.)

In Open Range (2003) and Dances with Wolves (1990), the editing imposes a slow pace on the story by letting many shots linger on screen for a long time. Director Kevin Costner felt that a slow pace suited those stately epics about an era when horse and wagon were major modes of transportation. By contrast, contemporary action films like the Mission Impossible series (1996, 2000, 2006) race at breakneck speed, rarely pausing long enough for an audience to catch its breath.

A film’s internal structural time never unfolds at a constant rate. It is a dy- namic property, not a fixed one. Filmmakers modulate internal structural time to maintain viewer interest by changing camera positions, the lengths of shots, color and lighting design, and the volume and density of the soundtrack.

Viewers experience internal structural time as a series of story events held in dy- namic relations of tension and release. Viewers often describe films as being fast or

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FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT

Stanley Kubrick

During his 46-year career, Stanley Kubrick made only 12 feature films. Despite the relatively small body of work that he left, however, he had an extraordinary impact on the medium and is recog- nized as one of its major filmmakers. A director of legendary stature, he was renowned for spending years planning a film and years more shooting it and working on postproduction. Famous for doing many takes of each shot and for the precision of his visual designs, Kubrick honed a style that is unique and unmistakable, and his films offer bleak but compel- ling visions of human beings trapped and crushed by the systems—social, military, technological—they have created.

Kubrick’s reputation was that of an intellectual director, keenly interested in a range of subjects and whose films explored issues and ideas, yet he never finished high school. At age 17 he dropped out and began work as a photographer, working at Look magazine for several years before completing two documentary shorts for the March of Time newsreel company ( Day of the Fight [1951] and Flying Padre [1951]). Borrowing money from family and friends, he then completed his first two features as director, Fear and Desire (1953) and Killer’s Kiss (1955). In a move that announced his conviction that cinema was a medium of personal artistry and that he would control his own work, Kubrick produced, wrote, di- rected, photographed, and edited these films.

After another crime film, The Killing (1956), Kubrick made Paths of Glory (1958), a powerful drama of World War I and the first of his films to pursue what would be his great theme, the domi- nation of people by the systems they have created (envisioned in this film as the machinery of war and the pitiless chain of command). Influenced by the moving camera of director Max Ophuls, Kubrick’s sustained tracking shots became a signature ele- ment of his style.

Kubrick’s next film, Spartacus (1960), was a production on which he, uncharacteristically, did not have complete authority (the picture belonged to its star–producer Kirk Douglas), and as a result, Kubrick was careful to work as his own producer on

THE SHINING (WARNER BROS., 1980); A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (WARNER BROS., 1971) Kubrick made some of the most imaginative and precisely designed films in cinema history. His passion for design led him to shoot 30 and 40 takes of a shot until he had what he wanted. The results were mysterious, haunting, and po- etic and included Jack Nicholson’s spectacular madness in The Shining and visions of a violent, authoritarian future in A Clockwork Orange . Frame enlargements.

all subsequent films. He next went to England to film Lolita (1962), from the controversial Vladimir Nabokov novel, and he then settled there, using English production facilities for most of his ensuing films. He was becoming a filmmaker whose work transcended national boundary.

Dr. Strangelove (1963) is a modern classic, a shrewd and superb satire of the Cold War and the policy of nuclear deterrence aptly named MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction). Kubrick’s startling marriage of baroque imagery and popular music (detonating atom bombs accompanied by the sen- timental ballad “We’ll Meet Again”) became one

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of his trademarks, used famously in 2001: A Space Odyssey (spaceships pirouette to the Blue Danube waltz) and A Clockwork Orange (lurid violence set to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”).

With Strangelove , these two films solidified Kubrick’s reputation as a social and cinematic visionary. 2001 (1968) is a visual feast whose startling effects are married to a mystical and mind-bending narrative that takes humankind on a cosmic journey from the dawn of the apes to the era of space travel. Controversial for its violence, A Clockwork Orange (1971) depicted a brutal vision of future society where the state learns to control the violent impulses of its citizens. Kubrick said, “The central idea of the film has to do with the ques- tion of free will. Do we lose our humanity if we are deprived of the choice between good and evil?” By making the main character a thug and a men- ace to society, Kubrick aimed to give the question resonance.

With dazzling Steadicam shots of a labyrinthine hotel, Kubrick explored the effects of space on

the mind in The Shining (1980), which depicts the hotel’s sinister influence on a mentally unstable care- taker and his family and ends with one of the direc- tor’s bleakest images of futility and alienation.

Kubrick extended his pessimistic visions of hu- man failure to eighteenth-century Ireland in Barry Lyndon (1975) and the battlefields of Vietnam in Full Metal Jacket (1985). His untimely death fol- lowed completion of Eyes Wide Shut (1999), a haunting and mysterious evocation of erotic fan- tasy and its emotional consequences.

Kubrick never made the same kind of film twice. Each picture is uniquely different and uniquely reso- nant and must be seen more than once before it begins to yield up its treasures. Kubrick dedicated his life to making films, and he believed that cin- ema was an art. Few filmmakers gain the authority to pursue this conviction without compromise. Kubrick’s achievements in this regard place him in very select cinematic company. By showing film- makers what the medium can achieve, Kubrick’s work remains a continuing inspiration. ■

slow moving, but in fact, the pacing of any given film typically varies as filmmakers use structure to create narrative rhythms that alternately accelerate and decelerate. While internal structural time results from a filmmaker’s manipulations of cinema structure, viewers experience this type of time subjectively, and their responses often vary greatly. One viewer may love the dramatic intensity and emotional lyricism of The Bridges of Madison County (1995) or Monster’s Ball (2001), whereas another may find the overall pacing of these films to be too slow.

Cinema is an art of time and space. The spatial properties of cinema have sev- eral components. One involves the arrangement of objects within the frame (the di- mensions of the projected area on screen; the term also refers to the individual still image on a strip of film). This is the art of framing, or composition because it is a part of the cinematographer’s job.

The spatial properties of the cinema, though, go beyond the art of framing. Cinema simulates an illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat screen. To do so, it corresponds in key ways with the viewer’s experience of physical space in daily life, and filmmakers create these correspondences in the design of their films. Cinematographers control the distribution of light on the set to accentuate the shape, texture, and positioning of objects and people. Film editors join shots to establish spatial constancies on screen that hold regardless of changes in the camera’s position and angle of view. Sound designers use the audio track to convey information about physical space. The spatial properties of cinema are multi-dimensional and can be ex- pressed through many elements of structure. This chapter explains these spatial prop- erties and how filmmakers manipulate them.

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OPEN RANGE (TOUCHSTONE, 2003) AND MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 (PARAMOUNT, 2000) This Western, directed by Kevin Costner, has a slow pace because he wants to concentrate on the characters and their situation rather than rushing over these for action or special effects. Costner also believes that a slow pace works well in Westerns where characters travel by horse or wagon. Snappy editing and a fast pace would be as ill-suited to this material as a leisurely pace would be for contemporary action films, such as the Mission: Impossible series. Frame enlargements.

STRUCTURE AND THE CAMERA Let us begin our understanding of film structure by discussing the fundamentals of camera usage. The basic issues of camera position and lenses as discussed in this chapter are actually part of cinematography. But it will be helpful to cover them here separately as an introduction to the camera. These must be grasped before more complex issues of cinematography can be examined. The camera’s position, angle, lens, and the camera’s movement have a major impact on the visual structure of ev- ery film. The reader seeking to understand cinema should begin with a clear sense of the relationship among these characteristics and the differences between them.

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Camera Position The most basic way of classifying camera usage is in terms of camera position . This re- fers to the distance between the camera and the subject it is photographing. Obviously, the camera-to-subject distance is a continuum with an infinite series of points from very close to very far. In practice, however, the basic positions usually are classified as varia- tions of three essential camera setups: the long shot , the medium shot , and the close-up . Each of these positions has its own distinct expressive functions in the cinema.

Filmmakers typically use the long shot to stress environment or setting and to show a character’s position in relationship to a given environment. In Titanic (1997), the majesty of the ship’s enormous size is conveyed with a series of long shots that contrast the huge ship with the tiny passengers that crowd its decks. When they are used to open a film or begin a scene, long shots may be referred to as establishing shots . Many detective films, for example, begin with a long shot of the urban environment, often taken from a helicopter.

In contrast to the long shot, the medium shot brings viewers closer to the char- acters while still showing some of their environment. In The Phantom of the Opera (2004), a medium-shot framing shows the Phantom (Gerard Butler) embracing Christine (Emmy Rossum) while revealing details of the Phantom’s candlelit lair underneath the opera house. Sometimes medium shots are labeled according to the number of characters who are present within the frame. Accordingly, this shot from The Phantom of the Opera would be termed a two-shot . A three-shot and a four-shot would designate medium shots with larger numbers of people.

By contrast with long and medium shots, the close-up stresses characters or ob- jects over the surrounding environment, usually for expressive or dramatic purposes, and it can be an extremely powerful means for guiding and directing a viewer’s atten- tion to important features of a scene’s action or meaning.

Once the filmmaker chooses a camera position, the camera is typically locked down on a tripod or other type of platform in order to produce a steady image without jitter. Alternatively, rather than locking the camera down, the filmmaker

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (MGM, 1951) Longer, full-figure framings in the dance sequences of classic Hollywood musicals showcase the beauty of the dance. The longer framing allows the viewer to see the performer’s entire body in mo- tion. By contrast, contemporary filmmakers “cheat” when they film dance, using fast editing and close-ups to create the impression of a dance performance without showing the real thing. Here, Gene Kelly dances in an elaborate pro- duction number designed around the styles of Impressionist painting. Frame enlargement.

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might work with a hand-held camera . In this case, the camera operator physically holds the camera, either on his or her shoulder or on a harness strapped to his or her body. Long shots, medium shots, and close-ups can be filmed in this fashion. Going hand-held enables a filmmaker to cover the action of a scene in a more flexible and spontaneous way, but the challenge is to produce a smooth and steady image. (The Steadicam can help to achieve this—it is discussed in the section on camera move- ment.) All the shots in Jaws (1975), when the characters are at sea, are done with a

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (NEW LINE, 2001) Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) is a strong, spiritual presence as ruler of the domain of Lothlorien, where the film’s heroes journey seeking refuge. Note how the close-up framing concentrates attention on her face. The framing is tight, and the focal plane of the shot does not extend beyond her face. This gives the close-up additional punch. The halo of light and Galadriel’s glowing, luminescent appearance were created digitally in post-production. Frame enlargement.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD (PARAMOUNT, 2007) Medium-shot compositions can stress the relationship among characters while integrating them into their environment. This medium shot, in widescreen, preserves the intimacy of this moment between Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and an orphaned child that he has adopted. The widescreen frame enables the viewer to see a great deal of the train compartment in which they are riding. Frame enlargement.

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hand-held camera. It was impossible to do otherwise—locking the camera down on a rocking boat would have made the film’s viewers seasick!

The fact that filmmakers can choose among different camera positions illus- trates a basic difference between cinema and theater. In theater, the spectator views a play from a single fixed vantage point, a position in the auditorium, usually from a distance. By contrast, in film, viewers watch a shifting series of perspectives on the action, and their ability to understand the story requires synthesizing the shifting points of view as the filmmaker moves from one camera position to another, from shot to shot. How viewers make sense of changing views of a scene supplied by differ- ent camera positions is a major issue to be examined while editing.

CAMERA POSITION, GESTURE, AND EXPRESSION By varying the camera-to-subject dis- tance, the filmmaker can manipulate the viewer’s emotional involvement with the material in complex ways. What the camera sees is what the spectator sees. As the camera moves closer to a character, viewers are brought into the character’s personal space in ways that can be very expressive and emotional.

People express emotion and intention in ways that go beyond the words they speak. Posture, gesture, facial expression, eye contact, and vocal inflection express feelings and help to define relationships. These signals vary by culture, but all mem- bers of a society learn how to read the expressions and gestures of other people as a way of inferring what they are thinking or feeling. By varying camera placement, filmmakers can call attention to significant expressions and gestures and thereby help viewers understand the meaning of the relationships and situations depicted on screen.

When a filmmaker cuts to a close-up, the director can emphasize and clarify a charac- ter’s reaction, as well as bring viewers into the action and the personal emotional space of the character. Depending on how the viewer feels about that character, this can give rise to either positive emotions (e.g., compassion, empathy) or negative ones (e.g., fear, anxiety).

JAWS (UNIVERSAL, 1975) All the shots in the second half of Jaws , once the characters are at sea, are done with a hand-held camera. They look remarkably steady, however, because the camera operator used his body to absorb the rocking of the boat. The camera had to be hand-held because locking it to a tripod or other fixed platform would have induced seasickness in the viewer. The camera operator was Michael Chapman, who went on to become cinematographer of Raging Bull and Taxi Driver . Frame enlargement.

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In George Cukor’s A Star Is Born (1954), James Mason plays a tragic Hollywood actor, Norman Maine. With his acting career destroyed, the alcoholic Maine col- lapses into despair and considers suicide. He begins to cry. The camera draws in to a medium close-up, and director Cukor keeps the shot on screen for a surprisingly long time. Cukor said, “To see that man break down was very moving. All the credit for that goes to James [Mason]. He did it all himself. What I did was to let him do it and let it go on and on, let the camera stay on him for an eternity.” The shot is designed to elicit the viewer’s empathy by revealing an intimate glimpse of a man’s private hell.