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Outside the dedicated camera department, the cinematographer also oversees the lighting department as well as the grip department, also known collectively as grip and electric. The lighting department is, well, responsible for all the lights required to shoot a scene. As should be obvious, lights require electricity. And electricity can be dangerous. Especially when you have 100 crew people running around trying to get a shot before lunch. So, the head of the lighting department is a skilled electrician, known as the gaffer. The gaffer has a first assistant as well, called a best boy. (I know, not very gender neutral. If the “best boy” is female, they might be called best babe, which is worse.) And then a whole crew of electrics who are responsible for putting the lights wherever the gaffer tells them to. Grips are there to move everything else that isn’t a light. That includes lighting stands, flags, bounces, even cranes, dollies and the camera itself. The head of the grip department is the key grip, and one of their most important jobs is on-set safety. With so many literal moving parts, it is very easy for someone to get hurt.

Photography is the art of fixing an image in durable form through either a chemical or digital process. It requires a detailed, scientific knowledge of how light reflects off the lived environment and how that light reacts to various light-sensitive media. It also requires a sophisticated grasp of color temperature and the interplay of light and shadow. And an artist’s sensibility to composition, the arrangement of objects and setting within the frame of the camera to achieve balance and visual interest. Not to mention a deep, technical understanding of the gear required, cameras, formats, lenses and their respective idiosyncrasies. And it helps if you know how to tell a story in a single image, frozen in time. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. Now do that at least 24 times every second. That’s cinematography. Capturing the moving image. For many of film lovers, and even just the casual viewer, this is what we show up for. But I’ve waited five chapters to discuss it because it’s important to understand that cinematography – while it may often get the most glory – is only one part of how cinema works. Without a sophisticated mise-en-scéne and a narrative to follow, it’s just a bunch of meaningless images. Not to mention the importance of editing, sound and performance. Put it all together and cinematography becomes the anchor point to a much larger cinematic experience. The person responsible for all of this is the cinematographer, sometimes known as the director of photography (DP). Their job is to translate the director’s vision into usable footage, using all of the photographic skills listed above and only after making a series of crucial decisions which we will get to below. It is one of the most technical jobs in cinema, requiring as much science as it does art:

D.

To be clear, an anti-hero is not the same as an antagonist. The antagonist’s role is to stop the hero from reaching their goal. In The Dark Knight (2008), Batman is the protagonist, the hero, and the Joker is the antagonist. But in Joker (2019), the Joker is the protagonist, in this case an anti-hero, and the police, ostensibly the “good guys”, are the antagonists.

anti-hero. An anti-hero is an unsympathetic hero pursuing an immoral goal, and somehow we end up rooting for them anyway. Think of basically every heist movie. Or every vigilante action movie. Or any Tarantino movie for that matter. The main characters are all essentially criminals intent on breaking the law. And we can’t wait to see how they pull it off:

A flat character lacks that complexity, does not change at all over the course of the story, and is usually there only to help the more round characters on their journeys.

ct one, which generally runs to 25 or 30 pages (or the first 25 to 30 minutes of screen time), introduces the protagonist, sets up their world, and clarifies the goal they’ll be pursuing for the rest of the story. It might also introduce a central antagonist, or it might wait until later. But typically, by page 25 or 30, we know who we’re rooting for, what they want, and what’s in their way. Maybe they’ve resisted going on the journey to that point, but by the end of act one, they are launched into act two, sometimes against their will. Act two, which is usually about twice as long as act one, is all about the obstacles. Our protagonist must confront and overcome each one, and typically, the stakes get higher every time. That is, with every obstacle, the protagonist must risk more and more, making their journey more and more difficult. Often, those obstacles are put there by someone or something specific, the antagonist. But the obstacles could also be internal, some part of the protagonist’s own psychology. Either way, there’s usually a midpoint, right around page/minute 55 or 60, where the protagonist has a choice: they can turn back, give up on the pursuit of the goal, or double-down and never look back. Of course, they double-down. But by the end of act two, around page/minute 85 or 90, our protagonist meets their biggest obstacle yet. In fact, it seems to seal their fate. All hope is lost. They, and we, feel they will never reach their goal after all. But that’s not what we paid good money to see. Act three, which is usually about the same length as act one, is all about our protagonist rallying to overcome that last obstacle leading to a climactic showdown and a resolution to their story. Usually that means they reach the goal defined in act one. But sometimes the journey clarifies a new goal, or they realize they always had what they were searching for and just needed to see it in themselves (insert eye roll here). But you get the idea, act three brings some kind of resolution.

. Cinematic storytelling draws from this same narrative source, and in that sense, is not so different from a good novel or even just a good yarn spun around the campfire. In fact, a lot of what we’ll discuss here can apply to those other literary genres. Compelling characters are important no matter the form the story takes. Likewise, a clear theme or narrative intent from the storyteller. And sure, cinema, just like novels or short stories or even poetry, come in all shapes and sizes, otherwise known as genres, from thrillers to westerns, comedies to romance.

notice the clip is about one minute, equal to that one page of screenplay. Second, how does the script page compare to the finished scene? What do you notice in the script that isn’t on the screen? And what do you notice about the finished film that isn’t in the script? You’ll likely notice that there is no mention in the screenplay about how the camera moves or how it frames the image. Nor do you notice anything about the music, or the boy’s wardrobe, or that dog in the background, or the fact that it’s raining. But you might notice mention of an alarm clock that doesn’t show up on screen.

e screenplay, or script, in cinema is many things at once. Though rarely meant to be read as literature, it is a literary genre unto itself, with its own unique form, conventions, and poetic economy. It is also often a sales pitch, at least in the early stages of production, the best version of the idea, on paper, to attract collaborators and, ultimately, the capital required to make a motion picture. But first and foremost, the screenplay is a technical document, a kind of blueprint for the finished film. Ever seen a screenplay? Let’s take a look at what one looks like

The second thing to understand is that natural selection is a process by which nature filters organisms in a population.

The simplifying assumptions mean that while the model predicts the space occupied by the protein in the cellular membrane, and how far into the membrane the retinal sits, it does not help predict the time it takes for the protein to transport protons.

In fashion, it can be said that style evolves. In biology, life and, in particular, reproducing populations of organisms with different traits evolve.

Bob could not reject his null hypothesis.

For now, you should, however, be aware that experiments carry a certain degree of confidence in the results and that the degree of confidence in the results can be influenced by many factors. Developing healthy skepticism involves, among other things, learning to assess the quality of an experiment and the interpretation of the findings and learning to ask questions about things like this.

“The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making.”

Sometimes those details don't matter, but sometimes if they aren’t known it can lead to confusion. Using vocabulary correctly and being careful about word choice is important. Knowing when to simplify and when to give extra detail is also key.

Can you give an example from your previous classes where an instructor has used an anthropomorphism to describe a nonhuman thing? What were/are the trade-offs of the description (i.e. why did the description work and what were its limitations)?

However, some students are more accustomed to studying for exams by memorizing information rather than understanding it.

How do you interpret the term mental model and why do you think that it is important for learning?

"Natural selection acts for the good of the species."   Discuss what you think about this statement - perhaps invoking some of the reading above.

Thus, the selective pressures that create the filter are constantly changing (sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly), and organisms in the same reproducing population could experience different pressures at different times and in different locations.

We can draw from real-life examples to get a better sense of this issue. For instance, when we say something like "I drove to the store", a couple of things are reasonably expected to be immediately understood. We don't need to say "I sat in and controlled a four-wheeled, enclosed platform, that is powered by the combustion of fossil fuel to a building that collects goods I want to obtain and can do so by exchanging fungible currency for said goods"

Can you give an example from your previous classes where an instructor has used an anthropomorphism to describe a nonhuman thing? What were/are the trade-offs of the description (i.e. why did the description work and what were its limitations)?

Instructors might try to use various similes or metaphors to take advantage of mental pictures or conceptual models that students already have (drawn from everyday life) to explain something new.

The act of drawing can also serves as a "self test."

How do you interpret the term mental model and why do you think that it is important for learning?

As students, you need to learn a large new vocabulary, create mental models on which to "hang" new conceptual knowledge, and to demonstrate that you can actually use this new knowledge. This process challenges both the instructor and the student.

Questions act as mini "self-tests" for students

Questions stimulate students to examine a topic from a different perspective, one that the instructor considers relevant to student learning.

Some people may think studying biology is only about medicine—however, it can lead to or influence many careers

When we understand how to “rewire” cellular decision-making networks, we may gain the ability to regenerate functional limbs or organs from someone’s own tissue, or reprogram diseased tissues back to health. All of these examples represent a small fraction of  the multitude that exist in the natural world

Studying biology also helps us to understand and solve everyday problems.

Examine the following statement: "Natural selection acts for the good of the species."   Discuss what you think about this statement - perhaps invoking some of the reading above.

It is important to reiterate that while the phenotypes carried by individual organisms may be subject to selection, the process of evolution by natural selection both requires and acts on phenotypic variation within populations

But what are these characteristics or traits? What traits/features/functions can be subject to selection

The first idea you need to grasp is that evolution can be simply defined as the development/change of something over time. In the automotive industry, the shapes and features of cars can be said to evolve (change in time).

Applications include treating (human or other animal) patients, improving agricultural practices, developing new building materials, writing new energy policies, remedying global climate change, creating new works of art—the list goes on and on. For the curious, biology has plenty of unexplored mysteries.

Understanding what the microbes which live in, on, and around us, do may help you decide whether to buy products labeled "antimicrobial" or "probiotic".

scientific method

How do you interpret the term mental model and why do you think that it is important for learning?

Discussion Point

numerous other possible sources of uncertainty in experimental data

What does the statement about falsifying hypotheses mean in your own words? Why is falsification critical to the scientific method?

producing renewable energy technologies

What does the statement about falsifying hypotheses mean in your own words? Why is falsification critical to the scientific method?

How do you interpret the term mental model and why do you think that it is important for learning?

Examine the following statement: "Natural selection acts for the good of the species."   Discuss what you think about this statement - perhaps invoking some of the reading above.

Can you give an example from your previous classes where an instructor has used an anthropomorphism to describe a nonhuman thing? What were/are the trade-offs of the description (i.e. why did the description work and what were its limitations)?

When you force yourself to write something down or to create a picture describing a process on paper, you will be able to independently assess how strong your conceptual grasp of a topic really is by seeing how easy or hard it was to put your mental image of something onto paper. If it is hard for you to draw a core concept or process from class WITHOUT EXTERNAL ASSISTANCE, it is likely that you need more practice.

By contrast, in BIS2A we ask students to think about and discuss things that happen on atomic, molecular and cellular scales and at rates that span microseconds to millennia. Most students, we guess, have not lived life on the micro to nanometer scale. Yet, this length scale is where most of the events common to all biological systems take place. Beginning students, who have not thought much about how things happen at the molecular scale, lack mental models upon which to add new information.

Some questions are designed to stimulate thought and discussion rather than to elicit a discrete answer. If called on, you should not feel compelled to have one "right" answer!! This idea is very important. Once you realize that it is perfectly acceptable (and sometimes desirable) to not know all of the answers (if you did, what would be the point of going to school?), it can take away a lot of the anxiety associated with contributing or getting called on. While it is okay to not know "the answer", it is nevertheless important for you to attempt to make a contribution to the discussion.

Examine the following statement: "Natural selection acts for the good of the species."   Discuss what you think about this statement - perhaps invoking some of the reading above.

How do you interpret the term mental model and why do you think that it is important for learning?

[BH+]AH+[B]

(a+b)5(c+d)6=∑5r=0(5r)arb5−r+∑4s=0(4s)csd4−s(a+b)5(c+d)6=∑r=05(5r)arb5−r+∑s=04(4s)csd4−s(a + b)^5 (c + d)^6 = \sum_{r=0}^{5} \binom{5}{r} a^rb^{5-r} + \sum_{s=0}^{4} \binom{4}{s} c^sd^{4-s} .

93

Which parenting style were you raised in? If you are a parent now, which style are you? If you are not a parent, which style do you believe you will follow? How did your parent’s parenting style impact you as a child, and as an adult today?

What counts as family to you? Are there people in your life you consider family who are not necessarily related to you in the traditional sense?

ther example of national style in cinema is Italian Neorealism, which coalesced around a consistent mise-en-scène in Italian cinema around the end of World War II until the mid-1950s. It was quite the opposite from German Expressionism. Italians, filmmakers included, were coming out of a brutal period of state repression and terrible violence. They had no patience for an escapist cinema with surreal settings and macabre monsters. They had just survived real monsters who were very much human. Films like Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City (1945) and Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) showed Italian life in a stark, almost documentary-like style. They often used non-professional actors, rarely built any sets, and avoided showy camera techniques. Take a look at a critical scene from De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves where the main character, Antonio, who depends upon his bicycle to provide for his family, is robbed while on the job

Nosferatu

gritty, urban setting, tough, no-nonsense characters, low key lighting, and off-balance compositions. Sometimes they feature a private detective on a case, but not always. Usually they were filmed in black and white, but not always. In fact, film noir – which literally means “dark film” in French (what is with all the French ?!) –

rule of thirds

igure 1.3.11.3.1\PageIndex{1}: Copy and Paste Caption here.The Big Combo, 1955, Joseph H. Lewis, dir.

should be obvious, you can’t have cinema without light. Light exposes the image and, of course, allows us to see it. But it’s the creative use of light, or lighting, is what makes it an element design. A cinematographer can illuminate a given scene with practical light, that is, light from lamps and other fixtures that are part of the set design, set lights, light fixtures that are off camera and specifically designed to light a film set, or even available light, light from the sun or whatever permanent fixtures are at a given location. But in each case, the cinematographer is not simply throwing a light switch, they are shaping that light, making it work for the scene and the story as a whole. They do this by emphasizing different aspects of lighting direction and intensity. A key light, for example, is the main light that illuminates a subject. A fill light fills out the shadows a strong key light might create. And a back light helps separate the subject from the background. And it’s the consistent use of a particular lighting design that makes it a powerful part of mise-en-scène.

as a screenwriter must create – or design – a character on the page, and an actor must create – or design – their approach to inhabiting that character, the wardrobe, hair and make-up departments must also design how that character is going to look on screen. This design element is, of course, more obvious the less familiar the world of the character might be. The clothing, hair and make-up of characters inhabiting worlds in a distant time period or even more distant galaxy will inevitably draw our attention. (Though even there the intention is to add to the mise-en-scène without distracting us from the story.) But even when the context is closer to home, a story set in our time, in our culture, maybe even our own home town, every element of the clothes, the hair and the make-up is carefully chosen, sometimes made from scratch, to fit that context and those particular characters. In other words, each character’s look is carefully designed to support the overall mise-en-scène and help tell the story.

where storytelling through the physical environment – the setting – can really come alive. Every object placed just so on a set adds to the mise-en-scène and helps tell the story. Those objects could be in the background providing context – framed photos, a trophy, an antique clock – or they could be picked up and handled by characters in a scene – a glass of whisky, a pack of cigarettes, a loaded gun. We even have a name for those objects, props, short for “property” and also borrowed from theater, and a name for the person in charge of keeping track of them all, a prop master

e sets may be built on site to blend in with the surrounding landscape, or they may be built within a large, windowless, sound-proof building called a soundstage. A soundstage provides the control over the environment production designers need to give the director exactly the look and feel she wants from a particular scene. On a big enough soundstage, a production designer can fabricate interiors and exteriors, sections of buildings, even small villages. And since it is all shielded from the outside, the production has complete control over lighting and sound. It can be dawn or twilight for 12 hours a day. And a shot will never be interrupted by an airplane flying loudly overhead.

e filmmakers realized the importance of setting as an element of design and what it contributed to the overall look of their films, it wasn’t long before a position was created to oversee it all: the production designer. The production designer is the point person for the overall aesthetic design of a film or series. Working closely with the director, they help translate the aesthetic vision for the project – its mise-en-scène – to the various design departments, including set design, art department, costume, hair and make-up. But arguably their most important job is to make sure the setting matches that aesthetic vision, specifically through set design and set decoration. Set design is exactly what is sounds like, the design and construction of the setting for any given scene in a film or series. Plenty of productions use existing locations and don’t necessarily have to build much of anything (though that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of design involved, as we shall see). But when a production requires complete control over the filming environment, production designers, along with conceptual artists, construction engineers, and sometimes a whole army of artisans, must create each setting, or set, from the ground up. And since these sets have to hold up under the strain of a large film crew working in and around them for days and even weeks, they require as much planning and careful construction as any other real-life home, building, or interplanetary city out there in the universe.

d this is probably as good a time as any to discuss the role of a director in cinema. There’s a school of thought out there, known as the auteur theory, that claims the director is the “author” of a work of cinema, not unlike the author of a novel, and that they alone are ultimately responsible for what we see on the screen. The fact is, cinema requires dozens if not hundreds of professionals dedicated to bringing a story to life. The screenwriter writes the script, the production designer designs the sets, the cinematographer photographs the scenes, the sound crew captures the sound, the editor connects the shots together, and each of them have whole teams of experts working below them to make it all work on screen. But if there’s any hope of that final product having a unified aesthetic, and a coherent, underlying theme that ties it all together, it needs a singular vision to give it direction. That, really, is the job of a director. To make sure everyone is moving in the same direction, making the same work of art. And they do that not so much by managing people – they have an assistant director and producers for that – they do it by managing mise-en-scène, shaping the overall look and feel of the final product. And while mise-en-scène has many moving parts and many different professionals in charge of shaping those individual parts into something coherent, it’s the one element of cinema that is most clearly the responsibility of the director.

othing we see on the screen in cinema is there by accident. Everything is carefully planned, arranged and even fabricated – sometimes using computer generated imagery (CGI) – to serve the story and create a unified aesthetic. That goes double for the setting. If mise-en-scène is the overall aesthetic context for a film or series, setting is the literal context, the space actors and objects inhabit for every scene. And this is much more than simply the location. It’s how that location, whether it’s an existing space occupied for filming or one purpose-built on a soundstage, is designed to serve the vision of the director. As we saw in Chapter One, in the early days of motion pictures, when cinematic language was still in its infancy, not much thought was given to the design of a setting (or editing or performance and no one was even thinking about sound yet). But it didn’t take long for filmmakers to realize they could employ the same tricks of set design they used in theater for the cinema.

Last updated Aug 26, 2023 Save as PDF 1.2: How to Watch a Movie 1.4: Narrative picture_as_pdfFull BookPageDownloadsFull PDFImport into LMSIndividual ZIPBuy Print CopyPrint Book FilesSubmit Adoption ReportPeer ReviewDonate /*<![CDATA[*/ window.hypothesisConfig = function () { return { "showHighlights": false }; }; //localStorage.setItem('darkMode', 'false'); window.beelineEnabled = true; document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].prepend(document.getElementById('mt-screen-css'),document.getElementById('mt-print-css')); //$('head').prepend($('#mt-print-css')); //$('head').prepend($('#mt-screen-css'));/*]]>*/ Page ID63598 /*<![CDATA[*/window.addEventListener('load', ()=>LibreTexts.TOC(undefined, undefined, true));/*]]>*/ /*<![CDATA[*/ //CORS override LibreTexts.getKeys().then(()=>{ if(!$.ajaxOld){ $.ajaxOld = $.ajax; $.ajax = (url, options)=> { if(url.url && url.url.includes('.libretexts.org/@api/deki/files')) { let [subdomain, path] = LibreTexts.parseURL(); let token = LibreTexts.getKeys.keys[subdomain]; url.headers = Object.assign(url.headers || {}, {'x-deki-token':token}); } else if (typeof url === 'string' && url.includes('.libretexts.org/@api/deki/files')){ let [subdomain, path] = LibreTexts.parseURL(); let token = LibreTexts.getKeys.keys[subdomain]; options.headers = Object.assign(options.headers || {}, {'x-deki-token':token}); } return $.ajaxOld(url, options); } } });/*]]>*/ \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} }  \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}} \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}} \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,} \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,} \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}} \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}} \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}} \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|} \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle} \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}} \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}} \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}} \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,} \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,} \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}} \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}} \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}} \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|} \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle} \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}} Table of contents SETTINGCHARACTERLIGHTINGCOMPOSITIONCINEMATIC STYLEVideo and Image Attributions Allow me to introduce a word destined to impress your friends and family when you trot it out at the next cocktail party: Mise-en-Scène. And even if you don’t frequent erudite cocktail parties, and who does these days (a shame, really), it’s still a handy term to have around. It’s French (obviously), and it literally means “putting on stage.” Why French? Because sometimes we just like to feel fancy. And let’s face it, to an American, French is fancy. But the idea is simple. Borrowed from theater, it refers to every element in the frame that contributes to the overall look of a film. And I mean everything: set design, costume, hair, make-up, color scheme, framing, composition, lighting… Basically, if you can see it, it contributes to the mise-en-scène. I could have started with any number of different tools or techniques filmmakers use to create a cinematic experience. Narrative might seem a more obvious starting point. Cinema can’t exist without story, and chronologically speaking, it all starts with the screenplay. Or I could have led off with cinematography. After all, we often think of cinema as a visual medium. But mise-en-scène captures much more than any one tool or technique in isolation. It’s more an aesthetic context in which everything else takes place, the unifying look, or even feel, of a film or series

topography

____________

____________

final word on how to watch a movie before we move on to the specific tools and techniques employed by filmmakers. In as much as cinema is a cultural phenomenon, a mass medium with a crucial role in the production of meaning, it’s also an art form meant to entertain. And while I think one can assess the difference between a “good” movie and a “bad” movie in terms of its effectiveness, that has little to do with whether one likes it or not. In other words, you don’t have to necessarily like a movie to analyze its use of a unifying theme or the way the filmmaker employs mise-en-scene, narrative structure, cinematography, sound and editing to effectively communicate that theme. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), arguably one of the greatest films ever made, is an incredibly effective motion picture. But it’s not my favorite. Between you and me, I don’t even really like it all that much. But I still show it to my students every semester. Which means I’ve seen it dozens and dozens of times and it never ceases to astonish in its formal technique and innovative use of cinematic language. Fortunately, the opposite is also true: You can really, really like a movie that isn’t necessarily all that good. Maybe there’s no unifying theme, maybe the cinematography is all style and no substance (or no style and no substance), maybe the narrative structure is made out of toothpicks and the acting is equally thin and wooden. (That’s right, Twilight, I’m looking at you.) Who cares? You like it. You’ve watched it more often than I’ve seen Citizen Kane and you still like it. That’s great. Embrace it. Because taste in cinema is subjective. But analysis of cinema doesn’t have to be. You can analyze anything. Even things you don’t like.

And it is also due in part to the social reality that the people who have historically had access to the capital required to produce that very expensive medium tend to all look alike. That is, mostly white, and mostly men. And when the same kind of people with the same kind of experiences tend to have the most consistent access to the medium, we tend to get the same kinds of stories, reproducing the same, often unexamined, norms, values and ideas.

Another word for this is composition, the arrangement of people, objects and setting within the frame of an image. And if you’ve ever pulled out your phone to snap a selfie, or maybe a photo of your meal to post on social media (I know, I’m old, but really? Why is that a thing?), you are intimately aware of the power of composition. Adjusting your phone this way and that to get just the right angle, to include just the right bits of your outfit, maybe edge Greg out of the frame just in case things don’t work out (sorry, Greg). Point is, composing a shot is a powerful way we tell stories about ourselves every day. Filmmakers, the really good ones, are masters of this technique. And once you understand this principle, you can start to analyze how a filmmaker uses composition to serve their underlying thematic intent, to help tell their story.

All of the above applies to both cinema and theater, but cinema has one distinct advantage: the intimacy and flexibility of the camera. Unlike theater, where your experience of a performance is dictated by how far you are from the stage, the filmmaker has complete control over your point of view. She can pull you in close, allowing you to observe every tiny detail of a character’s expression, or she can push you out further than the cheapest seats in a theater, showing you a vast and potentially limitless context. And perhaps most importantly, cinema can move between these points of view in the blink of an eye, manipulating space and time in a way live theater never can. And all of those choices effect how we engage the thematic intent of the story, how we connect to what that particular cinematic experience really means. And because of that, in cinema, whether we realize it or not, we identify most closely with the camera. No matter how much we feel for our hero up on the screen, we view it all through the lens of the camera.

We can say the same about the relationship between cinema and theater. Both use a carefully planned mise-en-scene – the overall look of the production including set design, costume, make-up – to evoke a sense of place and visual continuity. And both employ the talents of well-trained actors to embody characters and enact the narrative structure laid out in the script.

So, what are some of those meaningful units of our cinematic language? Perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of them are based on how we experience the world in our everyday lives. Camera placement, for example, can subtly orient our perspective on a character or situation. Place the camera mere inches from a character’s face – known as a close-up – and we’ll feel more intimately connected to their experience than if the camera were further away, as in a medium shot or long shot. Place the camera below the eyeline of a character, pointing up – known as a low-angle shot – and that character will feel dominant, powerful, worthy of respect. We are literally looking up to them. Place the camera at eye level, we feel like equals. Let the camera hover above a character or situation – known as a high-angle shot – and we feel like gods, looking down on everyone and everything. Each choice effects how we see and interpret the shot, scene and story. We can say the same about transitions from shot to shot. Think of them as conjunctions in grammar, words meant to connect ideas seamlessly. The more obvious examples, like fade-ins and fade-outs or long dissolves, are still drawn from our experience. Think of a slow fade-out, where the screen drifts into blackness, as an echo of our experience of falling asleep, drifting out of consciousness. In fact, fade-outs are most often used in cinema to indicate the close of an act or segment of story, much like the end of a long day. And dissolves are not unlike the way we remember events from our own experience, one moment bleeding into and overlapping with another in our memory.

images, angles, transitions and camera moves that we all understand mean something when employed in a motion picture.

Because all of this happens so fast, faster than our optic nerves and synaptic responses can perceive, the mechanics are invisible. There may be 24 individual photographs flashing before our eyes every second, but all we see is one continuous moving picture. It’s a trick. An illusion. The same applies to cinematic language. The way cinema communicates is the product of many different tools and techniques, from production design to narrative structure to lighting, camera movement, sound design, performance and editing. But all of these are employed to manipulate the viewer without us ever noticing. In fact, that’s kind of the point. The tools and techniques – the mechanics of the form – are invisible. There may be a thousand different elements flashing before our eyes – a subtle dolly-in here, a rack focus there, a bit of color in the set design that echoes in the wardrobe of the protagonist, a music cue that signals the emotional state of a character, a cut on an action that matches an identical action in the next scene, and on and on and on – but all we see is one continuous moving picture. A trick. An illusion.

or example, between 1969 and 2004, entrepreneur Kirk Kerkorian bought and sold MGM three times (mostly so he could put its name on a casino in Las Vegas) until finally selling it to Sony, the Japanese electronics company. In 1990, Warner Bros. merged with Time, Inc. to form Time Warner which was in turn purchased by AOL, an internet service provider, in 2000, then spun off into its own company again in 2009 before being purchase by AT&T in 2019. Throughout the 1980s, 20th Century Fox changed hands among private investors multiple times until finally falling into the hands of Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. It was in turn acquired by Disney in 2019. But it’s Universal that has the most colorful acquisition history. In 1990, MCA which owned Universal was acquired by Panasonic, another Japanese electronics company. In 1995, Panasonic sold it to Seagram, a Canadian beverage company, which in turn sold it to Vivendi, a French water utility in 2000 (the French again!). Vivendi sold the studio to General Electric, this time an American electronics company that already owned NBC. Finally, in 2011, GE sold NBC Universal to Comcast, the cable provider (which incidentally joined forces with Sony to purchase MGM back in 2004). If all of that makes your head spin, you’re not alone. In short, back in 1983, 90% of all American media was controlled by more than 50 distinct companies. By 2012, that same percentage was controlled by just 5. By 2019, it was down to 4: Comcast, Disney, AT&T and National Amusements.

he New Hollywood was done in by a one-two punch of films that were so successful, so astronomically profitable, they would have to coin a new term for them: Blockbusters

It cost less the $500,000 to make and earned nearly $60 million at the box office. Something had indeed changed. The major studios weren’t sure exactly what It was, but they knew they wanted a piece of it.

Warren Beatty, an ambitious young actor, walked into Jack Warner’s office with a scandalous script about two mass murderers named Bonnie and Clyde in his hand. Inspired by the upstart, avant-garde filmmakers making waves in France with their edgy, experimental films like Agnes Varda’s La Pointe Courte (1955), Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) and Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) (we can’t seem to get away from the French!), Beatty wanted to break the mold of the Warner Bros. gritty crime thriller. He wanted to make something bold, unpredictable, and transgressive. He begged the aging Warner brother to finance the film. Maybe Jack Warner was at the end of his creative rope. Maybe he knew the movie business needed to start taking risks again. Maybe he was inspired by Beatty’s artistic vision. Or maybe he had just sold the studio to Seven Arts and figured Beatty’s crazy idea for a movie would be their problem, a parting shot before the last Warner left the building. Whatever the reason, Warner Bros. bankrolled Bonnie and Clyde (1967), tried to bury it on release, but ultimately had to admit they had a huge hit on their hands. It was as bold, unpredictable, and transgressive (for its time) as Beatty had hoped. And audiences, especially younger audiences, loved it

he was the first to win her case.

house style of a given studio meant that all of their resources went into making the very best version of certain kind of film

house style

the studios maintained a stable of actors on contracts that limited their salaries to low weekly rates for years on end no matter how successful their films might become. There were no per-film negotiations and certainly no profit sharing. And if an actor decided to sit out a film or two in protest, their contracts would be extended by however long they held out.

Essentially, the studios would force theaters to buy a block of several films to screen (block booking), sometimes without even knowing what they were paying for (blind bidding). One or two might be prestige films with well-known actors and higher production values, but the rest would be low-budget westerns or thrillers that theaters would be forced to exhibit. The studios made money regardless.

It was a HUGE success. Unfortunately, Sam Warner didn’t live to see it. He died of a brain infection on October 5th, the day before the premiere.

The Jazz Singer, the first film to include synchronized

What next? Color? Don’t be ridiculous…

Sam, had a vision. Or rather, an ear.

They built extravagant movie palaces in large market cities, and hundreds more humble theaters in small towns, effectively controlling all aspects of the business: production, distribution and exhibition. In business terms that’s called vertical integration. It’s a practice that would get them in a lot of trouble with the U.S. government a couple of decades later, but in the meantime, it meant big profits with no end in sight.

1915, after a few years of failed lawsuits (and one imagines a fair number of temper-tantrums), Thomas Edison admitted defeat and dissolved his Motion Picture Patents Company.

y 1912, Los Angeles had replaced New York as the center of the film business, attracting filmmakers and entertainment entrepreneurs from around the world. World-renowned filmmakers like Ernst Lubitsch from Germany, Erich von Stroheim from Austria, and an impish comedian from England named Charlie Chaplin, all flocked to the massive new production facilities that sprang up around the city. Universal Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Warner Bros., all of them motion picture factories able to mass-produce dozens, sometimes hundreds of films per year. And they were surrounded by hundreds of other, smaller companies, all of them competing for screen space in thousands of new movie houses around the country.

his burgeoning new entertainment industry was not, however, located in southern California. Not yet, anyway. Almost all of the production facilities in business at the time were in New York, New Jersey or somewhere on the Eastern seaboard. Partly because the one man who still controlled the technology that made cinema possible was based there: Thomas Edison. Edison owned the patent for capturing and projecting motion pictures, essentially cornering the market on the new technology (R.I.P. Louis Le Prince). If you wanted to make a movie in the 1900s or 1910s, you had to pay Edison for the privilege

Weber, Griffith helped pioneer the full-length feature film and invented many of the narrative conventions, camera moves and editing techniques still in use today.

hort film

uspense (1913) she pioneered the use of intercutting and basically invented split screen editing.

The Kuleshov Effect

Fritz Lange and Robert Weine helped form one of the earliest examples of a unique and unified cinematic style, consisting of highly stylized, surreal production designs and modernist, even futuristic narrative conventions that came to be known as German Expressionism

A Trip to the Moon,

The following year she wrote, directed and edited what many consider the first fully fictional film in cinema history, The Cabbage Fair

turns out there was another French inventor, Louis Le Prince (apparently we owe a lot to the French), who was experimenting with motion pictures and had apparently perfected the technique by 1890. But when he arrived in the US for a planned public demonstration that same year – potentially eclipsing Edison’s claim on the technology – he mysteriously vanished from a train. His body and luggage, including his invention, were never found. Conspiracy theories about his untimely disappearance have circulated ever since (we’re looking at you, Thomas Edison).

The Lumiere brothers would receive the lion’s share of the credit, but Latham and the Lumieres essentially tied for first place in the invention of cinema as we know it.

kinetoscope

5 second “scene” of a man sneezing.

first “movie studio,” a small, cramped, wood-frame hut covered in black tar paper with a hole in the roof to let in sunlight. His employees nicknamed it the Black Maria because it reminded them of the police prisoner transport wagons in use at the time (also known as “paddy wagons” with apologies to the Irish).

The basic concept of animation was already in the air through earlier inventions like the magic lantern and eventually the zoetrope

fixing an image on a photographic plate through a chemical reaction of silver, iodine and mercury. He called it a daguerreotype

photoetching

Camera Obscura, a technique for reproducing images by projecting a scene through a tiny hole that is inverted and reversed on the opposite wall or surface

Muybridge pocketed the $25,000 and became famous for the invention of series photography, a critical first step toward motion pictures.

1872, Stanford was a wealthy robber baron, former Governor of California, and horse racing enthusiast with way too much time on his hands. Spending much of that time at the track, he became convinced that a horse at full gallop lifted all four hooves off the ground. His friends scoffed at the idea. Unfortunately, a horse’s legs moved so fast that it was impossible to tell with the human eye. So he did what really wealthy people do when they want to settle a bet, he turned to a nature photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, and offered him $25,000 to photograph a horse mid gallop.

While we all need to take one for the team sometimes or compromise for the sake of the group, the doormat is a person who is chronically submissive to the point that it hurts the group’s progress

Leadership is one of the most studied aspects of group communication.

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Task cohesion refers to the commitment of group members to the purpose and activities of the group. Social cohesion refers to the attraction and liking among group members. Ideally, groups would have an appropriate balance between these two types of cohesion relative to the group’s purpose, with task-oriented groups having higher task cohesion and relational-oriented groups having higher social cohesion. Even the most task-focused groups need some degree of social cohesion, and vice versa, but the balance will be determined by the purpose of the group and the individual members. For example, a team of workers from the local car dealership may join a local summer softball league because they’re good friends and love the game. They may end up beating the team of faculty members from the community college who joined the league just to get to know each other better and have an excuse to get together and drink beer in the afternoon. In this example, the players from the car dealership exhibit high social and task cohesion, while the faculty exhibit high social but low task cohesion.

There are also disadvantages to small group interaction. In some cases, one person can be just as or more effective than a group of people. Think about a situation in which a highly specialized skill or knowledge is needed to get something done.

While our interpersonal relationships primarily focus on relationship building, small groups usually focus on some sort of task completion or goal accomplishment. A college learning community focused on math and science, a campaign team for a state senator, and a group of local organic farmers are examples of small groups that would all have a different size, structure, identity, and interaction pattern. Size of Small Groups

Truman vetoed the law. “In a free country,” Truman famously responded, “we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they hold.”

By 1948, Europe was divided between democratic and Communist states along a line that corresponded to the orientation of the two superpowers whose armies had liberated Europe from the Nazis.

In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. One way sociology achieves a more complete understanding of social reality is through its focus on the importance of the social forces affecting our behavior, attitudes, and life chances. This focus involves an emphasis on social structure, the social patterns through which a society is organized. Sociology provides a lens for understanding the human condition and the structural forces that influence our behavior and attitudes.

It’s important to be aware of schemata because our interpretations affect our behavior. For example, if you are doing a group project for class and you perceive a group member to be shy based on your schema of how shy people communicate, you may avoid giving him presentation responsibilities in your group project because you do not think shy people make good public speakers.

fluorine

Topic sentence: There are numerous advantages to owning a hybrid car. Sentence 1 (statistic): First, they get 20 percent to 35 percent more miles to the gallon than a fuel-efficient gas-powered vehicle. Sentence 2 (fact): Second, they produce very few emissions during low speed city driving. Sentence 3 (reason): Because they do not require gas, hybrid cars reduce dependency on fossil fuels, which helps lower prices at the pump. Sentence 4 (example): Alex bought a hybrid car two years ago and has been extremely impressed with its performance. Sentence 5 (quotation): “It’s the cheapest car I’ve ever had,” she said. “The running costs are far lower than previous gas powered vehicles I’ve owned.” Concluding sentence: Given the low running costs and environmental benefits of owning a hybrid car, it is likely that many more people will follow Alex’s example in the near future.

parallel

Yet, it is remarkably complete, with its last stanza referring back to the first. Coleridge may have had a self-protective desire for his radical views not to be taken too seriously

Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be) Shine opposite!

swept, the long sequacious notes Over delicious surges sink and rise, Such a soft floating witchery of sound As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land, Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers, Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,

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not invented by the individual

We are active users of technology - I am teaching and you are learning online. When we're submerged in this kind of environment, it's sometimes easy to forget that what's known as the digital divide still exists. Our access to technology gives us advantages in accessing information that many around the world do not have. This information graphic from the International Monetary Fund illustrates that

And in academia especially, only a privileged few have access to certain types of scholarly writings.

Derelict

e Big C and the little c.

There is one exception. Another little ritual everyone gets used to on a set. At the end of a scene, when all of the shots are done, the location sound recordist will whisper to the 1st AD, and the 1st AD will call out: “Hold for room tone!” And then everyone stops in their tracks and holds still, remaining completely silent for at least 60 seconds.

The person responsible for all of this is the cinematographer, sometimes known as the director of photography (DP). Their job is to translate the director’s vision into usable footage, using all of the photographic skills listed above and only after making a series of crucial decisions which we will get to below. It is one of the most technical jobs in cinema, requiring as much science as it does art:

harsh

4

substrate

The loose brushwork, vivid colors, and unfinished style shocked viewers, invoking an emotional response to the painting, which was exactly what the artists of the Fauvism period wanted.

atomic radius (teal triangels)

Methanol, CH3OH, is counted as a primary alcohol even though there are no alkyl groups attached to the the -OH carbon atom

-OH group is only attached to one alkyl group

good nucleophile

Stationary phase is a stationary medium, which can be a stagnant bulk liquid, a liquid layer on the solid phase, or an interfacial layer between liquid and solid.

Mobile phase is a moving liquid, and is characterized by its composition, solubility, UV transparency, viscosity, and miscibility with other solvents.

The word chromatography means color writing.

High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is a technique in analytical chemistry used to separate the components in a mixture, and to identify and quantify each component.

ΔtΔt\Delta t to be the average time between collisions