Film as Art: Creativity, Technology, and Business M otion pictures are so much a part of our lives that it’s hard to imagine a world without them. We enjoy them in theaters, at home, in offices, in cars and buses, and on airplanes. We carry films with us in our laptops, tablets, and cellphones. Press a button, and a machine conjures up movies for your pleasure. Films communicate information and ideas, and they show us places and ways of life we might not otherwise know. Important as these benefits are, though, something more is at stake. Films offer us ways of seeing and feeling that we find deeply gratifying. They take us through experiences. The experiences are often driven by stories centering on characters we come to care about, but a film might also develop an idea or explore visual qualities or sound textures. Such things don’t happen by accident. Films are designed to create experiences for viewers. To gain an understanding of film as an art, we should ask why a film is designed the way it is. When a scene frightens or excites us, when an ending makes us laugh or cry, we can ask how the filmmakers have achieved those effects. It helps to imagine that we’re filmmakers, too. Throughout this book, we’ll be asking you to put yourself in the filmmaker’s shoes. This shouldn’t be a great stretch. You’ve taken still photos with a camera or a mobile phone. Very likely you’ve made some videos, perhaps just to record a moment in your life—a party, a wedding, your cat creeping into a paper bag. And central to filmmaking is the act of choice. You may not have realized it at the moment, but every time you framed a shot, shifted your position, told people not to blink, or tried to keep up with a dog chasing a Frisbee, you were making choices. You might take the next step and make a more ambitious, more controlled film. You might compile clips into a YouTube video, or document your friend’s musical performance. Again, at every stage you make design decisions, based on how you think this image or that sound will affect your viewers’ experience. What if you start your music video with a black screen that gradually brightens as the music fades in? That will have a different effect than starting it with a sudden cut to a bright screen and a blast of music. At each instant, the filmmaker can’t avoid making creative decisions about how viewers will respond. Every moviemaker is also a movie viewer, and the choices are considered from the standpoint of the end user. Filmmakers constantly ask themselves: If I do this, as opposed to that, how will viewers react? The menu of filmmaking choices has developed over time. Late in the 19th century, moving pictures emerged as a public amusement. They succeeded because they spoke to the imaginative needs of a broad-based audience. All the traditions 3 that emerged—telling fictional stories, recording actual events, animating objects or drawings, experimenting with pure form—aimed to give viewers experiences they couldn’t get from other media. Men and women discovered that they could use cinema to shape those experiences in various ways. Suppose we center the actors so they command the frame space? Suppose we cut up a scene into shots taken from several angles? Suppose we move the camera to follow the actors? Learning from one another, testing and refining new choices, filmmakers developed skills that became the basis of the art form we have today. Thinking like a filmmaker is all very well, you might say, if you want a career in the business. What if you just want to enjoy movies? We think that you can appreciate films more fully if you’re aware of how creative choices shape your experience. You’ve probably looked at some making-of bonuses on DVD versions of films you love, and some of those supplements have increased your enjoyment. We enhance our appreciation of The Social Network or Inception when we know something of the filmmakers’ behind-the-scenes discussion of character motivation and specific line readings. We can always get more out of the films we see, and thinking about the filmmakers’ choices helps us to understand why we respond as we do. This is why we start our survey of film art by looking at the process of film production. Here we can see, in very tangible ways, the sorts of options available to people working in this medium. In every chapter that follows, we invoke what film artists have said about the ways they’ve chosen to solve creative problems. Throughout this book, we focus on the two basic areas of choice and control in the art of film: form and style. Form is the overall patterning of a film, the ways its parts work together to create specific effects (Chapters 2 and 3). Style involves the film’s use of cinematic techniques. Those techniques fall into four categories: mise-enscene, or the arrangement of people, places, and objects to be filmed (Chapter 4); cinematography, the use of cameras and other machines to record images and sounds (Chapter 5); editing, the piecing together of individual shots (Chapter 6); and sound, the voices, effects, and music that blend on a film’s audio track (Chapter 7). After examining the various techniques, Chapter 8 integrates them in an overview of film style. In later chapters, we discuss how form and style differ among genres and other types of films (Chapters 9–10). We consider how we can analyze films critically (Chapter 11) and how film form and style have changed across history, offering filmmakers different sets of creative choices (Chapter 12). In all, we’ll see how through choice and control, film artists create movies that entertain us, inform us, and engage our imaginations. Art vs. Entertainment? Art vs. Business? The term “art” might put some readers off. If cinema originated as a mass medium, should we even use the word? Are Hollywood directors “artists”? Some people would say that the blockbusters playing at the multiplex are merely “entertainment,” but films for a narrower public—perhaps independent films, or foreign-language fare, or experimental works—are true art. Usually the art/entertainment split rests on a value judgment: Art is serious and worthy; entertainment is superficial. Yet things aren’t that simple. Many of the artistic resources of cinema were discovered by filmmakers working for the general public. During the 1910s and 1920s, for instance, many filmmakers who simply aimed to be entertaining pioneered new possibilities for film editing. As for the matter of value, it’s clear that popular traditions can foster art of high quality. Shakespeare and Dickens wrote for broad audiences. Much of the greatest 20th-century music, including jazz and the blues, was rooted in popular traditions. Cinema is an art because it offers filmmakers ways to design experiences 4 for viewers, and those experiences can be valuable regardless of their pedigree. Films for audiences both small and large belong to that very inclusive art we call film or cinema. Sometimes, too, people consider film art to be opposed to film as a business. This split is related to the issue of entertainment, since entertainment generally is sold to a mass audience. In most modern societies, however, no art floats free from economic ties. Novels good, bad, and indifferent are published because publishers and authors expect to sell them. Painters hope that collectors and museums will acquire their work. True, some artworks are funded through subsidy or private donations, but that process, too, involves the artists in financial transactions. Films are no different. Some movies are made in the hope that consumers will pay to see them. Others are funded by patronage (an investor or organization wants to see the film made) or public money. (France, for instance, generously subsidizes film projects.) Crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter offer another alternative. You might make short videos for YouTube or Vimeo at little cost, but if you hope to make a feature-length digital movie, you face the problem of paying for it. If you can’t profit from your film, you may still hope that the project will lead to a job. The crucial point is that considerations of business don’t necessarily make the artist less creative or the project less worthwhile. Money can corrupt any activity, but it doesn’t have to. In Renaissance Italy, painters were commissioned by the Catholic Church to illustrate events from the Bible. Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci worked for hire, but we revere their artistry. In this book we won’t assume that film art precludes entertainment. We won’t take the opposite position either, claiming that only Hollywood mass-market movies are worth our attention. Similarly, we don’t think that film art rises above commercial demands, but we also won’t assume that money rules everything. Any art form offers a vast range of creative possibilities. CONNECT TO THE BLOG www.davidbordwell.net/blog We examine an unusual problem and a director’s unusual solution in “Problems, problems, Wyler’s workaround.” As an art, film offers experiences that viewers find worthwhile—diverting, provocative, puzzling, or rapturous. But how do films do that? To answer that question, let’s go back a step and ask: Where do movies come from? They come from three places. They come from the imagination and hard work of the filmmakers who create them. They come from a complex set of machines that capture and transform images and sounds. And they come from companies or individuals who pay for the filmmakers and the technology. This chapter examines the artistic, technological, and business sides of how films come into being. Creative Decisions in Filmmaking In Day for Night, French filmmaker François Truffaut plays a director making a movie called Meet Pamela. Crew members bring set designs, wigs, cars, and prop pistols to him, and we hear his voice telling us his thoughts: “What is a director? A director is someone who is asked questions about everything.” Making a film can be seen as a long process of decision making, not just by the director but by all the specialists who work on the production team. Screenwriters, producers, directors, performers, and technicians are constantly solving problems and making choices. A great many of those decisions affect what we see and hear on the screen. There are business choices about the budget, marketing, distribution, and payments. Connected to those choices are the artistic ones. What lighting will enhance the atmosphere of a love scene? Given the kind of story being told, would it be better to let the audience know what the central character is thinking or to keep her enigmatic? When a scene opens, what is the most economical way of letting the audience identify the time and place? We can see how decisions shape the process by looking in more detail at a single production. To See into the Night in Collateral Michael Mann’s Collateral, released in 2004, is a visually striking psychological thriller set in Los Angeles in a single night. The mysterious Vincent (Tom Cruise) hires a cab driver, Max (Jamie Foxx), to drive him to several appointments. When Max learns that Vincent is a hired killer, he struggles to break their bargain and escape. But Vincent forces him to carry on as a getaway driver. In the course of the evening, the two men spar verbally and move toward a climactic chase and confrontation. Mann and his crew made thousands of decisions during the making of Collateral. Here we look at five important choices: one that influenced the film’s form and one each for our four categories of mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound. Several of these decisions involved new technologies that became standard production tools. Scriptwriter Stuart Beattie originally set Collateral in New York City. In the screenplay, Max was a loser, hiding from the world in his cab and getting little out of life. Vincent was to goad him about his failures until Max had finally had enough and stood up to him. Once Mann came on board as director, he altered the plot in several ways. The setting became Los Angeles. Max became less a loser and more a laid-back, intelligent man content to observe the world from behind a steering wheel, endlessly delaying his plans to start his own limousine service. This more appealing Max becomes our point-of-view figure for most of the film. For example, we don’t see the first murder but stay with Max in the cab until the shocking moment when a body hurtles down onto his cab roof. The story largely consists of Max’s conflict with Vincent, so Mann’s decision to change Max’s traits altered their confrontations as well. In the finished film, moments of reluctant mutual respect and even hints of friendship complicate the men’s relationship. Such decisions as these reshaped the film’s overall narrative form. The switch to Los Angeles profoundly affected the film’s style. For Mann, one of the attractions was that this tale of randomly crossing destinies took place almost entirely at night, from 6:04 P.M. to 4:20 A.M. He wanted to portray the atmospheric Los Angeles night, where haze and cloud cover reflect the city’s lights back to the vast grid of streets. According to cinematographer Paul Cameron, “The goal was to make the L.A. night as much of a character in the story as Vincent and Max were.” This was a major decision that created the film’s look. Mann was determined not to use more artificial light than was absolutely necessary. He relied to a considerable degree on street lights, neon signs, vehicle headlights, and other sources in the locations where filming took place. To achieve an eerie radiance, his team came up with a cutting-edge combination of tools. Digital Cinematography Certain choices about photographing Collateral were central to its final look and also dictated many other decisions. For example, at that time Hollywood productions employed cameras loaded with rolls of photographic film. Night scenes were shot using large banks of specialized spot- and floodlights. If the light was too weak, dark areas would tend to go a uniform black. Mann and his cinematographers decided to shoot portions of Collateral on recently developed high-definition (HD) digital cameras. Those cameras could shoot on location with little or no light added to the scene (1.1). They could also capture the distinctive night glow of Los Angeles. As Mann put it, “Film doesn’t record what our eyes can see at night. That’s why I moved into shooting digital video in high definition—to see into the night, to see everything the naked eye can see and more. You see this moody landscape with hills and trees and strange light patterns. I wanted that to be the world that Vincent and Max are moving through.” Cinematographer Dion Beebe enthused, “The format’s strong point is its incredible sensitivity to light. We were able to shoot Los Angeles at night and actually see silhouettes of palm trees against the night sky, which was very exciting” (1.2). In a particularly dark scene at the climax, the characters become visible only as black shapes outlined by the myriad lights behind them (1.3). The suspense is heightened as we strain to see the figures. Custom-Made Lights Though digital cameras could pick up a great deal in dark situations, the audience needed to see the faces of the actors clearly. Much of the action takes place inside the taxi as Max and Vincent ride and talk. The actors’ faces had to be lit, but the filmmakers wanted to avoid the sense that there was artificial light in the cab. To create a soft, diffuse light, the filmmakers tried an innovative approach: electroluminescent display (ELD) panels. The technology had been used in digital watches and cellphones, but it had never been employed in filming. Flexible plastic panels of various sizes were custom made, all with Velcro backings that would stick to the seats and ceiling of the cab (1.4, 1.5). These ELD panels could then be turned on in various combinations. Although they look bright in Figure 1.5, the effect on the screen was a soft glow on the actors. In a shot like Figure 1.6, we might simply take it for granted that the light coming through the windows and the glow of the dashboard panel are all that shines on the characters. Such dim illumination on the faces allows the lights visible through the windows to be brighter than they are, helping to keeping the city “as much of a character in the story as Vincent and Max were.” Here’s a case where an artistic decision led to new technology. Since Collateral was made, a similar lighting technology, the light-emitting diode (LED) has become common in flashlights, auto tail lights, scoreboard displays, and computer monitors. Specially designed LED units have become central to film production. Mann’s team solved a problem in mise-en-scene, and a new option was added to the menu available to other filmmakers. Seamless Editing Collateral contains several dynamic action scenes, including a spectacular car crash. The plan was for a cab going nearly 60 miles per hour to flip, then bounce and roll several times before coming to rest upside down. If we put ourselves in the filmmakers’ place, we can imagine their options about how to show the crash. Mann’s team could have put the camera in a single spot and swiveled it to follow the car rolling past. That might have been a good idea if the scene showed us the crash through the eyes of an onlooker whose head turns to watch it. But there is no character witnessing the crash. The filmmakers decided to generate excitement by showing several shots of the car rolling, each taken from a different point along the trajectory of the crash. One option would have been to use several cabs and execute numerous similar crashes, each time filmed by a single camera that would be moved between crashes from place to place to record the action from a new vantage point. Such a procedure would have been very expensive, however, and no two crashes would have taken place in exactly the same way. Splicing together shots from each crash might have created discrepancies in the car’s position, resulting in poor “matches on action,” as we’ll term this technique in Chapter 6. Instead, the team settled on a technique commonly used for big action scenes. Along the cab’s path were stationed multiple cameras, all filming at once (1.7). The economic benefits were that only one car had to be crashed and the high expense of keeping many crew members working on retakes was reduced. Artistically, the resulting footage allowed the editing team to choose portions of many shots and splice them together in precise ways (1.8, 1.9). The result is an exciting stream of shots, each taken from farther along the taxi’s path. Music in Movements Composers are fond of saying that their music for a film should serve the story so well that the audience doesn’t notice it. For Collateral, Mann wanted James Newton Howard to score the climax so as to not build up excitement too quickly. According to Howard, “Michael was very clear about the climax taking place in three movements.” “Movements” as a term is usually applied to the parts of a symphony, a concerto, or a sonata. Thus the idea was that the score for this last part of the film should play a major role in shaping the progression and rhythm of the action. At the climax, Vincent is trying to kill a character who is important to Max, while Max tries frantically to save both himself and the other character. Howard and Mann called the first musical movement “The Race to Warn,” since Vincent gets ahead of Max in running to the building where the potential victim is located. Despite the fact that both men are running and the situation is suspenseful, Howard avoids rapid rhythms. He begins with long-held string chords over a deep, rumbling sound, then adds sustained brass chords with a strong beat accompanying them. The music is dynamic but doesn’t reach a high pitch of excitement. The second movement, “The Cat and Mouse,” accompanies Vincent getting into the building, turning off the electricity, and stalking his victim in near darkness (1.3). Again, the chords are slow, with ominous undertones, dissonant glides, and, at a few points, fast, eerie high-string figures as Vincent nears his goal. During the most suspenseful moments in the scene, when Vincent and his prey are in the darkened room, strings and soft, clicking percussion accompany their cautious, hesitant movements. Finally, there is a swift chase sequence, and here Howard’s score is louder and faster, with driving tympani in very quick rhythm as the danger grows. Once the chase tapers off, the percussion ends, and slow, low strings accompany the final quiet shots. These decisions and many others affect our experience of Collateral. Thanks to the digital imagery and innovative lighting, we have a sense of characters moving through an eerie, unfamiliar-looking world. The editing of the crash allows the taxi to come hurtling toward the camera several times. The music accompanying the fast-chase/slowstalking/fast-chase climax helps heighten the suspense and build the excitement. Creative decision making is central to every film, and Collateral stands out for making several unusual choices. Collateral’s innovative visual style showed later filmmakers what digital tools could do. Director Tony Scott replicated the HD sheen of the film in his Déjà vu. Cinematographer Robert Elswit’s half-beautiful, half-creepy images for Nightcrawler (1.10) provide a similar look into the Los Angeles night. Filmmaking relies on technology and financing. First, filmmakers need fairly complicated machines. Anyone with a pen and paper can write a novel, and a talented kid with a guitar can become a musician. Movies demand much more. Even the simplest home video camera is based on fiendishly complex technology. A major film involves elaborate cameras, lighting equipment, multitrack sound-mixing studios, sophisticated laboratories, and computer-generated special effects. Partly because of the technology, making a movie also involves businesses. Companies manufacture the equipment, other companies provide funding for the film, still others distribute it, and finally theaters and other venues present the result to an audience. In the rest of this chapter, we consider how these two sides of making movies— technology and business—shape film as an art. Illusion Machines Moving-image media such as film and video couldn’t exist if human vision were perfect. Our eyes are very sensitive, but they can be tricked. As anyone who has paused a DVD knows, a film consists of a series of frames, or still pictures. Yet we don’t perceive the separate frames. Instead, we see continuous light and movement. What creates this impression? For a long time people thought that the effect results from “persistence of vision,” the tendency of an image to linger briefly on our retina. Yet if this were the cause, we’d see a bewildering blur of superimposed stills instead of smooth action. At present, researchers believe that two psychological processes are involved in cinematic motion: critical flicker fusion and apparent motion. If you flash a light faster and faster, at a certain point (around 50 flashes per second), you see not a pulsating light but a continuous beam. A film is usually shot and projected at 24 still frames per second. The projector shutter breaks the light beam once as a new image is slid into place and once while it is held in place. Thus each 10 frame is actually projected on the screen twice. This raises the number of flashes to 48, the threshold of what is called critical flicker fusion. Early silent films were shot at a lower rate (often 16 or 20 images per second), and projectors broke the beam only once per image. The picture had a pronounced flicker—hence an early slang term for movies, “flickers,” which survives today when people call a film a “flick.” Apparent motion is a second factor in creating cinema’s illusion. If a visual display is changed rapidly enough, our eye can be fooled into seeing movement. Neon advertising signs often seem to show a thrusting arrow, but that illusion is created simply by static lights flashing on and off at a particular rate. Certain cells in our eyes and brain are devoted to analyzing motion, brightness, and edges. Any stimulus presenting changes in those features tricks those cells into sending the wrong message. Apparent motion and critical flicker fusion are quirks in our visual system, and technology can exploit those quirks to produce illusions. Some moving-image machines predate the invention of film (1.11, 1.12). Film as we know it came into being when photographic images were first imprinted on strips of flexible celluloid. Making Films with Photographic Film Until the 2000s, cinema was almost entirely a photochemical medium. Most of the movies we use as examples in this book were shot on photographic film, as were nearly all the films that you watch on DVD or streaming. Although digital production has become common, some directors and cinematographers still prefer photochemical media. So we’ll look first at motion pictures shot on film. Physically, a photographically based film is a ribbon of still images, each one slightly different from its mates. That ribbon starts life as unexposed film stock in a camera. Eventually the finished movie is another strip of film run through a projector. Both the camera and the projector move the film strip one frame at a time past a light source. For a fraction of a second, the image is held in place before the next one replaces it. In a camera, the lens gathers light from the scene photographed, while a projector uses a light source to cast the images on the screen. In a sense, the projector is just an inverted camera (1.13, 1.14). In filming, the most common shooting rate is 24 frames per second (fps), and in projection the same rate is usually maintained. In the 35mm format, the film whizzes through the projector at 90 feet per minute, meaning that a twohour feature will consist of about two miles of film. The film strip that emerges from the camera is usually a negative. That is, its colors and light values are the opposite of those in the original scene. For the images to be projected, a positive print must be made. This is done on another machine, the printer, which duplicates or modifies the footage from the camera. Like a projector, the printer controls the passage of light through film—in this case, a negative. Like a camera, it focuses light to form an image— in this case, on the unexposed roll of film. Although the filmmaker can create nonphotographic images on the film strip by drawing, painting, or scratching, most filmmakers in the predigital era have relied on the camera, the printer, and other photographic technology. If you were to handle the film that runs through these machines, you’d notice several things. One side is much shinier than the other. Motion picture film consists of a transparent plastic base (the shiny side), which supports an emulsion, layers of gelatin containing light-sensitive materials. On a black-and-white film strip, the emulsion contains grains of silver halide. Color film emulsion adds layers of chemical dyes that react with the silver halide components. In both cases, billions of microscopic particles form clusters of light, dark, and color corresponding to the scene photographed. What enables film to run through a camera, a printer, and a projector? The strip is perforated along both edges, so that small teeth (called sprockets) in the machines can seize the perforations (sprocket holes) and pull the film at a uniform rate and smoothness. The strip also reserves space for a sound track. The size and placement of the perforations and the area occupied by the sound track have been standardized around the world. So, too, has the width of the film strip, which is called the gauge and is measured in millimeters. For most of cinema history, commercial theaters used 35mm film, but other gauges also have been standardized internationally: Super 8mm, 16mm, and 70mm (1.15–1.19). Usually image quality increases with the width of the film because the greater picture area gives the images better definition and detail. All other things being equal, 35mm provides significantly better picture quality than 16mm, and 70mm is superior to both. The finest photographic quality currently available for public screenings is that offered by the Imax system (1.20). With the rise of digital filmmaking, 16mm has declined as an amateur gauge. If you take an introductory production course, you are more likely to shoot with a digital camera than a 16mm one. Yet a higher-quality version of the gauge, Super 16mm, still gets used in commercial films seeking to economize or to achieve a “documentary look.” Recent films utilizing Super 16mm include The Wrestler, The Hurt Locker, Black Swan, and Moonrise Kingdom. The comedy The World’s End combined 35mm and regular 16mm. Super 8 film is still occasionally used in professional production, usually to simulate home movies or television images; Super 8 used both Super 16 and Super 8 to present the amateur footage shot by its young protagonists. Imax and other cameras employing 65mm film have been used for fiction films, including some scenes in The Dark Knight, Inception, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Gravity, and Interstellar. The sound track runs along the side of the film strip. Magnetic tracks, consisting of magnetic tape running along the film strip (1.19), have virtually vanished. Most films today have an optical sound track, which encodes sonic information in the form of patches of light and dark running along the frames. During production, electrical impulses from a microphone are translated into pulsations of light, which are photographically inscribed on the moving film strip. When the film is projected, the optical track produces varying intensities of light that are translated back into electrical impulses and then into sound waves. The optical sound track of 16mm Filmmaking with Digital Media Digital information technology gave filmmakers a set of new tools. Computers first came into use in editing and in special-effects processes, and eventually digital shooting and projection became feasible. The term “digital film” may seem contradictory, but almost immediately everyone understood it. Just as audio books and e-books were still called books, digital films counted as films, even though they never involved light hitting celluloid. Some people prefer to speak of “digital capture” rather than “digital filming,” but most call digital image-creators “filmmakers.” So will we. Digital Filming To some extent a professional digital motion picture camera functions in the same way as the 35mm camera. The camera operator uses a viewfinder to frame a scene. There are controls to manipulate exposure and the speed of recording. At the front, a lens gathers and focuses light reflected from the scene. A shutterlike mechanism breaks the input into frames, usually 24 per second. A professional digital camera also looks very much like a traditional 35mm camera (1.21). The design reflects manufacturers’ effort to make the new device feel familiar to cinematographers. Some digital cameras can accept lenses designated for 35mm machines. Instead of a strip of film whizzing through a gate behind the lens, the digital camera has a fixed sensor. The sensor is covered with a grid of millions of microscopic diodes, or photosites. Each of these diodes measures a tiny portion of the light. The diodes create pixels (short for “picture elements”) in the final image. The sensor converts these patterns of light into electrical impulses that are sent to a recording medium and registered as files of ones and zeroes. A similar process of sampling and digital conversion occurs while recording sound. A frame of photographic film holds billions of specks carrying visual information. But pixels are much larger than photographic molecules, so making digital imagery as finely detailed as 35mm is a challenge. Digital image quality depends on several factors, including the size of the sensor, the number of pixels, and the type of compression applied to the files. As a result, several formats of digital image recording emerged. The first wave in the 1990s utilized the format known as digital video (DV). The images were quite low resolution (about 350,000 pixels), but lit by an experienced cinematographer they could be attractive, as in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, shot by Ellen Kuras. Some filmmakers played up the pebbly textures of DV imagery. Dancer in the Dark uses saturated DV imagery to suggest the fantasy world of a young mother going blind, while 28 Days Later fitted the rough-edged format to a horror film. Harmony Korine shot julien donkey-boy with mini-DV consumer cameras, transferred the footage to film, and reprinted it several times (1.22). As digital photography improved in the 2000s, high-definition (HD) video emerged as a preferred choice for digital filmmaking, amateur or professional. Today HD video usually refers to digital formats of 720p and 1080p. The numbers refer to the number of horizontal lines in the display, and “p” stands for progressive scan, which refreshes each frame in the manner of a computer monitor; 720p images contain about 921,000 pixels, and 1080p images have nearly 2.1 million. Further innovations have led to images that are sharper, more detailed, and freer of artifacts. The newer formats, often known as “digital cinema,” were standardized at 2K (usually rated at 2,048 pixels across, or about 3.2 million pixels in all) and 4K (4,096 pixels across, or over 12.7 million pixels). The rectangles in Figure 1.23 represent the numbered pixels in each of these formats. The images as projected on a screen would all be the same size, but the density of visual information increases proportionately with the number of pixels. Since the information carried on each image increases both vertically and horizontally, each step up multiplies the resolution: 4K carries not twice but four times the amount of information in 2K. Each format can produce images in different proportions, or aspect ratios, and these make the pixel count vary somewhat. (More on aspect ratios in Chapter 5.) Sensors come formatted for these various image sizes. The moving images are stored on memory cards, large versions of the sort of card used in digital still photography. For more space and longer recording capacity, filmmakers turn to hard drives (1.24). When the images are downloaded and backed up, the capture medium is wiped clean for reuse. The great advantage of this system is that digital media cost much less than raw film stock, an expensive component of a traditional film’s budget. The downside is that such huge amounts of data require a lot of storage space. A finished feature film may consist of 10 to 12 terabytes (TB) of data, and the amount shot may consume 350 TB. For this reason, digital imagery is subjected to many compression and decompression processes from production through to final projection. A feature film projected at your local multiplex probably takes up no more than 100 to 350 gigabytes (GB) on the hard drive file that is fed to the projector. In the late 1990s, George Lucas commissioned Sony to make a high-quality digital camera, which he utilized on Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones (2002). It used the 1080p format. Michael Mann’s digital camera on Collateral also delivered 2K-resolution images. More and more big-budget directors embraced HD digital formats, particularly for their price and convenience. Lucas claimed that apart from creating spectacular special effects, using HD for Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith saved millions of dollars. A comparable system was employed on Sin City, which combined HD footage of the actors with graphic landscapes created in postproduction. Basing the entire project on digital technology allowed director Robert Rodriguez to edit, mix sound, and create special effects in his home studio in Austin, Texas. Shooting in the 2K format quickly became widespread. In 2009, a few films, including District 9, Che, and Knowing, used 4K systems. Many have claimed that 4K images are the equal in visual quality to those of 35mm, and the format has become increasingly popular. Prestigious films such as David Fincher’s Zodiac and The Social Network showed that high-resolution capture could in many respects rival 35mm film while harboring its own artistic possibilities. Fincher continued to push digital filmmaking in 2014, when Gone Girl became the first commercial feature to be shot in 6K. This larger format is 6,144 by 3,160 pixels in size, yielding 2.2 times as many pixels as 4K. Most professional cameras have two big advantages over lower-cost models. They employ minimal data compression, and they tend to have larger sensors, ones about the same size as a frame of 35mm film. Both factors make for higher image quality. But consumer and “prosumer” cameras have also found roles in professional production. Filmmakers working on low budgets have discovered that not only dedicated video cameras but digital single-lens reflex still cameras (DSLRs) can yield high-quality video imagery. Stop-motion films made with puppets or clay figures often use DSLRs rather than exposing single frames with motion picture cameras. Even some cellphone cameras have the capacity for 1080p recording. Park Chan-wook, the Korean director of Oldboy, shot a prize-winning short film on his iPhone. These paraprofessional tools have proved particularly valuable for documentary filmmakers, who need to shoot hours of footage cheaply. Digital Projection For some years, films shot on digital video were transferred to photographic film and sent to theaters as 35mm prints. After rather slow growth, digital projection exploded in 2010–2011 and by 2013 had almost entirely replaced 35mm projection in most commercial venues around the world. Digital theatrical projection is usually in either the 2K or 4K format. The most common projection hardware employs microscopic mirrors and is manufactured in various designs by several companies. Running speeds are standardized at 24 fps and 48 fps. The film is encoded as a Digital Cinema Package (DCP), a set of files containing images, sound, subtitles, and other information. The DCP, delivered on a hard drive and heavily encrypted, provides a compressed version of the film (1.25). The DCP loads into a server that feeds one or more projectors in a theater complex (1.26). Important as technology is, films are part of social institutions as well. Sometimes the social context is intimate, as when a family records their lives to show friends and relations. But films that aim at the public enter a wider range of institutions. A movie typically goes through three phases: production, distribution, and exhibition. An individual, group, or company makes the film. A distribution company rents copies to theater chains, and theaters exhibit the film. Later, DVD and Blu-ray versions are distributed to chain stores or rental shops; and the movie is then exhibited on TV monitors, computer screens, or portable displays. For video on demand, streaming, and websites such as YouTube, the Internet serves as both a distribution and an exhibition medium. The whole system depends on having movies to circulate, so let’s start by considering the process of production. Most films go through four distinct phases: The producer nurses the project through the scriptwriting process, obtains financial support, and arranges to hire the personnel who will work on the film. During shooting and assembly, the producer usually acts as the liaison between the writer or director and the company that is financing the film. After the film is completed, the producer often has the task of arranging the distribution, promotion, and marketing of the film. The producer is usually responsible as well for paying back the money invested in the production. A single producer may take on all these tasks, but in the contemporary American film industry, the producer’s work is further subdivided. The executive producer is often the person who arranges the financing for the project or obtains the literary rights. Once the production is underway, the line producer oversees the day-to-day activities of director, cast, and crew. The line producer is assisted by an associate producer, who acts as a liaison with laboratories or technical personnel. A screenplay bears somewhat the same relationship to a movie as the musical score does to a symphonic performance. There are people who can read a musical score and ‘hear’ the symphony—but no two directors will see the same images when they read a movie script. The two-dimensional patterns of colored light involved are far more complex than the one-dimensional thread of sound.” —Arthur C. Clarke, co-screenwriter, 2001: A Space Odyssey The chief task of the screenwriter is to prepare the screenplay (or script). Sometimes the writer will compose an original screenplay and send it to an agent, who submits it to a production company. Or an experienced screenwriter meets with a producer in a “pitch session,” where the writer can propose ideas for scripts. The first scene of Robert Altman’s The Player mocks pitch sessions by showing screenwriters proposing strained ideas like “Pretty Woman meets Out of Africa.” Alternatively, the producer may have an idea and hire a screenwriter to develop it. This approach is common if the producer has bought the rights to a novel or play and wants to adapt it for the screen. Since 2004, a service called “The Black List” has featured promising scripts by both new and experienced writers. These have been voted as favorites by industry professionals and offered for perusal by potential financial backers. Of the 970 scripts chosen during the List’s first decade, 270 were produced, of which nearly 200 received Oscar nominations and wins. Titles included Little Miss Sunshine, Inglourious Basterds, and Nebraska. Thanks to the Internet, the Black List allows talented writers to bring their work to potential producers. The screenplay usually goes through several stages. These include a treatment, a synopsis of the action; then one or more full-length scripts; and a final version, the shooting script. Extensive rewriting is common, and writers often must revise their work several times. If the producer or director finds one writer’s screenplay unsatisfactory, other writers may be hired to revise it. Most Hollywood screenwriters earn their living by rewriting other writers’ scripts. As you can imagine, this often leads to conflicts about which writer or writers deserve onscreen credit for the film. In the American film industry, these disputes are adjudicated by the Screen Writers’ Guild. Film Appreciation Worksheet HUM/150 Version 12.1 University of Phoenix Material Film Appreciation Write 250-350 word answers to each of the following 3 sections in the matrix (750 words minimum total for the assignment). Fill out this worksheet, save it, and submit your completed worksheet. Make sure you have saved it as a Microsoft Word .doc or .docx file. NOTE that in all assignments, if you mention the title of a film, film titles must always be properly formatted and cited as if they are appearing in an essay. See “Film Title and Citation Format” under “Course Resources” 1 for reference. Questions Answers Reflect on the information garnered from Ch. 1 of Film Art and the other resources for the week and answer the following question: Why should we study film? What is the value of studying films? What do films teach us? How do they reflect/create cultural value? Reflect on the information garnered from Ch. 1 of Film Art. What are the stages of filmmaking and how does each stage condition become what we see on the screen? Describe film distribution and promotion. How do these two aspects influence reception? Copyright © 2016 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved. 1
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