This document discusses key concepts for analyzing films, including genre, narration, image, sound, filming techniques, editing/montage, and production. It defines these terms and provides examples. Genre refers to categories of films based on similarities. Narration encompasses the story and how it is told. Images include people, settings, and representations of space and time. Editing techniques like continuity, parallel, and discontinuity editing influence the structure and chronology. Montage can heighten reality, create thematic connections, or convey temporal/spatial messages.

1. Film Analysis
Basic Concepts

2. Aspects of analysis
 Genre
 Narration
 Image
 Sound
 Filming
 Editing/Montage
 Production

3. Genre
 Genre—organization of films by category, type and
function, based on similarities and dissimilarities.
 Examples of film genre include, documentary, interview,
fiction (western, mystery, melodrama), etc.
 Genre raises the question of the form and function of
the film

4. Examples of Genre
What is the genre of this film? What visual
elements suggest this genre?

5. Narration
 Narration encompasses everything having to do with the
story, the structure of the story, and how the story is
told
 Focus is on the events that make up the story, causality,
temporality, and chronology of representation

6. Image
 The visual field of a film comprises:
 -people
 -settings, objects, costumes
 -lights and sounds
 -a representation of time expressed
through the frames that compose the film
 -a way of seeing space through the shot
 -an imagined but unseen space (offscreen
space)

7. What do we look for in a
shot?

8. What do we look for in a
shot?

9. A film sequence vs. scene
 A sequence is an ensemble of frames suggesting a single
action.
 A scene is a series shots arranged cut to cut

10. Sequence: Once Upon a Time
in the West

11. Frame and screen
 The frame or screen designates the space seen or recorded
by the camera.
 We make a disctinction between onscreen space (what is
shown) and off-screen space (not shown but implied)
 The relationship between on and off-screen space is
important
 The totality of what can be seen in a scene constituties the
visual field
 In a still frame, the onscreen space or visual field is equal
to the frame
 With a mobile frame, the visual field is only completely
revealed through a series of frames, and therefore screen
space and visual field are not identical.

12. Different ways of framing
/shots
 Shot frame our view and therefore understanding of
the filmic (diegetic world)
 They can frame our perception, or point of view, and
subtly convey information about characters, setting,
or other aspects of the story

13. Establishing shot

14. Long shot

15. Close-up

16. Close-up

17. Extreme Close-up

18. Medium shot

19. American shot

20. Shots emphasizing people
 Medium shot: the person is visible in the frame from
the waist up
 Close-up: one complete part of the person is visible in
the frame (usually the face)
 Extreme close-up: one aspect of one part of the person
(the hand, one eye) is visible in the frame
 American shot: the person is visible from mid-thing up
(classic Hollywood shot)

21. Montage
 Montage or editing refers to the sequencing of shots
within a film and to the transitions between shots
 It creates not only the structure and chronology of the
film, it also constitutes a language that forms the
spectator’s sense of time and space (and causality)

22. Types of transitions/editing
structures
 In terms of structure, filmmakers can use continuity
editing, parallel editing / montage (cross-cutting), or
discontinuity editing
 Continuity editing is the dominant form of editing
 Continuity editing emphasizes linear, progressive time
 It tends to condense time and space
 Classical narration (linear and progressive) relies on
continuity editing for strong character focus, unified
point of view and unified action

23. • Continuity editing typically follows normal
chronology of events (A follows B)
•Parallel editing/montage represents two
simultaneously occuring sets of events
•Discontinuity editing disrupts or ignores typical
chronology
•The most famous proponent of discontuity
editing, Sergei Eisenstein, considered continuity
editing a form of seduction that lured spectators
into accepting social and economic hierarchies
•Eisenstein saw the cinema’s role as exposing and
overturning those hierarchies, which is why he
advocated an editing style that disrupted
continuity (discontinuity editing)

24. •Even in classical cinema, the
normal chronology of events is
sometimes disrupted
•Flashbacks have been a part of
cinema since the very early years
•Flash forward is another
technique that has been used
increasingly

25. Meaning of montage
 Heighten the sense of « reality » in the film
 Create thematic connections through metaphore,
analogy, comparison, contrast
 Create a temporal or spatial structure or message