1. Is Cinema Art?
How is cinema different from other forms of art?
Can collaborative groups—instead of individuals--
produce art?
Can a corporate studio produce art?
Whats’ the problem with artists having a profit
motive?

2. Studio Allegory, Corporate Identity
• “The Hollywood studio is a business that does
its business right there on the screen as the
projector rolls…”
• 1886 lawsuit Corporations=humans
• Corporate art is a tool for corporate strategy
—not same as branding; biz is on screen
• MGM vs. Warners; ‘good’ stars vs. gangsters
• Do corporations have souls? Do they express
good will? Are stars a “monopoly on itself”?

3. Classical Hollywood Cinema
1908-1927
• Motion Picture Patents
Co. (MPPC), Edison
monopoly
• Independents in CA by
20s--Famous Players
Lasky (Paramount),
MGM, Fox, Warner
Bros, Universal
• Development of
continuity system

4. Film Production--
Making the Movie
The Process
Preproduction
Research, Scriptwriting, Storyboards, Shooting Scripts,
Funding, Locations, Auditions
Production
Capturing images & sounds; working with actors--lighting,
sets, costumes, movement, music, sound effects
Post-production
Editing, motion graphics, color correction, sound mix,
score, Foley, etc
Distribution and Marketing
Film festivals, Markets, Theatrical, Online, DIY, Transmedia

5. Film Style
Ways that a film uses filmmaking techniques:
• Mise-en-scene
• Cinematography
• Editing (Montage)
• Sound
• Narration

6. Film Movements
• Films that are produced within a particular
period and/or nation and that share significant
traits of style and form.
E.g. German Expressionism, Soviet Montage,
Italian Neo-realism, etc…
• Filmmakers who operate within a common
production structure and who share certain
assumptions about filmmaking.

7. Film Criticism
Film criticism is connected to the cultural
criticism that developed in the 20th century
and relates to the study of photography, art,
media, linguistics and criticism.
Names we’ll cover:
De Saussure, Peirce, Eisenstein, Kracauer,
Benjamin, Bazin, Mulvey, Jenkins, etc..

8. Eadweard Muybridge 1878
• Stanford, governor
of CA, wanted to
see if all four hooves
of horse came off
the ground at same
time. EM set up
series of cameras
with trip wires
across the track.

9. Women in Motion
• Muybridge studied
the body
(particularly the
woman’s body) in
motion… Was it
science? Was it art?
Something else?

10. Kuleshov Effect
plate of soup (hunger); coffin (grief); woman (desire)

11. Kuleshov Effect
Hitchock Loves Bikinis….

12. Early Cinema Names
1893-1903
• Etienne-Jules Marey--camera, projector parts
• George Eastman--celluloid
• Thomas Edison/Dickson--kinetoscope, Black Maria
• Lumiere brothers--Project onto screen
• George Melies--magician, first special effects

13. D.W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation
• Crosscutting (last
minute rescues)
• Close-ups
• Directing emotions,
more subtly
• Appealing to politics

14. Continuity system
•Eyeline Matches
•Shot/Reverse shot
•Axis-of-action (180 degree rule)
•Match on action
•Establishing shots
Ex: Record a conversation at table

15. German Expressionism
1919-1926
Emphasis on mise-en-
scene--distorted shapes,
heavy makeup,
exaggerated movements.
“The film image must
become graphic art.”
Hermann Warm, designer
of “Caligari” “Film must be
drawings brought to life.”

16. Kracauer--symbolic power
• “The revolutionary meaning of the story reveals itself unmistakably at
the end, with the disclosure of the psychiatrist as Caligari: reason
overpowers unreasonable power, insane authority is symbolically
abolished.” Siegfried Kracauer, 1947

17. Soviet Montage
1924-1930
Vertov, Kuleshov, Pudovkin,
Eisenstein
“Of all the arts, for us the cinema is
the most important.” Lenin 1922
Emphasis on editing and action
Eisenstein’s intellectual montage--
juxtaposing images to create a
concept--often a revolutionary
“collision” between a “collective hero”--
the proletariat--and the enemy--the
bourgeoisie

18. French Impressionism & Surrealism
1918-1930
Emphasis on internal
psychology, dreams,
flashbacks, emotion.
Point of view shots, distorted
images, new lenses, cameras
on roller skates--mobile frames.
Surrealist Salvador Dali, Luis
Bunuel--anti-narrative, anti-rational.
(“Un Chien Andalou,” 1928)

19. Walter Benjamin
Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction
(1936)
• “The authenticity of a thing is the
essence of all that is transmissible from
its beginning…”—its aura
• “Aura” provides a magical foundation
for cult-like participation, for ritual..
• “L’art pour l’art movement preserved
and developed the sense of autonomy
and distance native to ancient religious
works (224)” Larson

20. Walter Benjamin
Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction
• “All efforts to render politics aesthetic
culminate in one thing: war..”
• Man’s “self-alienation has reached such
a degree that it can experience its own
destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of
the first order. This is the situation of
politics which Fascism is rendering
aesthetic…Through gas warfare the
aura is abolished in a new way.”

21. Walter Benjamin
Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction
•Film and photography keep audiences at a
critical distance from the art object, which
(helps) destroy the ritualistic aura.
•“Dadaism attempted to create by pictorial--and
literary--means the effects which the public
seeks in the film.” See Duchamp
•“Film’s swift juxtapositions and movements
strike the viewer violently, disrupting
contemplation and easy consumption of the
image (238)--Larson

22. Film Form
The sum of all the parts of the film,
shaped by patterns:
• Repetition and Variation
• Story Lines
• Character Traits

23. Classical narrative structure--Aristotelian
• "A chain of events linked by cause and effect
and occurring in time and space.”
• Protagonist/Antagonist--conflicting goals and
motivations
• CHC--Cause/effect structure with closure?

24. Film Narration
• “The process by which the plot presents story
information to the spectator.”
Forms of narration and terms to know:
Restricted; Unrestricted degrees of knowledge;
Objectivity/Subjectivity; Omniscient/3rd Person
Point of view shot; hierarchy of knowledge; character or
noncharacter narrators.

25. Bordwell-- Forms of Cinematic Meaning
Story and Plot
• Referential--constructed world of film
• Explicit--abstract, thematic meaning, stated
• Implicit--thematic meaning, not stated overtly
• Symptomatic--meaning unknown to filmmaker
Other terms to know:
• Diegesis; Non/extra-diegesis (Look them up…)

26. Transmedia
“Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral
elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across
multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a
unified and coordinated entertainment experience.”
Henry Jenkins
» Hope is Missing -- a social media driven
ARG

27. Ferdinand de Saussure (1907)
Linguistics and Meaning
Sign=Signifier + Signified
Relationship is learned or arbitrary
• Signifier--Form that the sign takes
• Signified--Concept it represents
Ex: Stop sign
Signifier=?
Signified=?

28. C.S. Peirce (1894)--
Semiotics--How signs denote objects
• Iconic--Signifier has resemblance to
object it represents. E.g. photograph,
portrait, sound effects on radio
• Indexical--Factual connection to object,
indicator. E.g. Smoke indicates fire,
shadow indicates presence, film=?.
• Symbolic--Abstract relation to signified.
E.g. Stop sign, language, burkas