Film, Form, and Culture w/ DVD-ROM

by Kolker, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780073123615
• ISBN10: 0073123617
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback w/DVD
• Copyright: 2005-08-02
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages

Summary

This text looks at film from part to whole--from the shot and the cut to the cultural, political, and economic contexts in which films are made. "Teaching Film is about getting control of the image and handing that control over to students," argues author Robert Kolker, and that's just what he does in his teaching and writing about film, including in this outstanding textbook and DVD-ROM package.The new edition includes more detailed discussion of the shot, composition, editing, and genre; a thorough discussion of the technical and aesthetic changes resulting from film's digital transformation; and a revised discussion of the cultural context of film. The companion interactive DVD-ROM includes segments from classic and contemporary films, with explanatory text, stills, and animations illustrating key film elements and strategies.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter One: Image and Reality

IMAGES OF IMAGES

The Truth of the Image

The Urge to Represent Reality

Perspective and the Pleasures of Tricking the Eye

Photography and Reality

Manipulation of the Image

Reality as Image

FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHIC TO THE CINEMATIC IMAGE

Moving Images

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Chapter Two: Formal Structures: How Films Tell Their Stories

THE IMAGE, THE WORLD, AND THE FILM STUDIO

From Image to Narrative

THE ECONOMICS OF THE IMAGE

The System Develops: Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin

The Growth of Corporate Filmmaking

THE CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD STYLE

Fabricating the Image

The Whole and Its Parts

Making the Parts Invisible

Story, Plot, and Narration

Convention And Consciousness

Notes and References

Chapter Three: Building Blocks I: The Shot

THE SHOT

COMPOSITION: THE SIZE OF THE FRAME

Cinerama

Anamorphic and Flat Wide Screen Processes

Loss of Standards

HOW COMPOSITION WORKS

Composition in Early Cinema

D.W. Griffith

The 90-degree Rule

The Studios and the Shot

MISE-EN-SCNE, GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM, EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULES

MISE-EN-SCNE IN STERNBERG, MURNAU, AND HITCHCOCK

ORSON WELLES AND THE REINVENTION OF COMPOSITION

Deep Focus and The Long Take

WORKING AGAINST THE RULES

LIGHTING AND COLOR

COMPOSING IN WIDE SCREEN

THE MOVING CAMERA

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Chapter Four: Building Blocks II: The Cut

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONTINUITY CUTTING

Griffith and Cutting

Shot/Reverse Shot

Point Of View

Sight Lines

The 180-degree Rule

CONVENTION, CULTURE, RESISTANCE

Gender

Coding

Responses To Conventional Cutting

Eisensteinian Montage

The Narrative of the Classical Style

Avant-Garde Film

Working Creatively Within and Against Conventions

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Chapter Five: The Story Tellers of Film I

COLLABORATION AS CREATIVITY CREATIVE CRAFTSPEOPLE

Cinematographer

Production Designer

Computer Designer

Sound Designers

Editor

Composer

Screenwriter

Actors

Producer

Notes and References

Chapter Six: The Story Tellers of Film II: The Film Director

EUROPEAN ORIGINS

THE BIRTH OF THE AUTEUR

THE AUTEUR THEORY

Robert Altman

Martin Scorsese

Stanley Kubrick

Alfred Hitchcock

WOMEN AUTEURS

Womens Avant-garde Films

Maya Deren

Alice Guy-Blach and Lois Weber

Dorothy Arzner

Ida Lupino

Women Filmmakers Today

Julie Dash, Julie Taymor, and Chantal Akerman

THE AUTEUR ABROAD

AUTEURISM TODAY

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Chapter Seven: Film as Cultural Practice

FILM IN THE REALM OF CULTURE

CULTURE AS TEXT

Subcultures

Media and Cultures

The New Web

THEORIES OF CULTURE

The Frankfurt School

The Critique of American Popular Culture

High Culture, Masscult, and Midcult

Walter Benjamin and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The Aura of State Intervention

The Birmingham School of Cultural Studies

Reception and Negotiation

Judgment and Values

Intertextuality and Postmodernism

CULTURAL CRITICISM APPLIED TO VERTIGO AND DIE HARD

The Cultural-Technological Mix: Film and Television

Bruce Willis, TV, and Movies

The Actors Persona: Bruce Willis and James Stewart

Vertigo and the Culture of the Fifties

The Kinsey Reports

The Vulnerable Male in Film

Postmodern Villains

Ethnicity in Die Hard

The Buddy Film

The End of Redemption

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Chapter Eight: The Stories Told By Film I

MASTER NARRATIVES AND DOMINANT FICTIONS

Closure

The Master and the Dominant

Narrative Constraints

Censorship

GENRE

Subgenres

Genre and Gesture

Generic Origins

Generic Patterns: The Gangster Film

Genre and Narrative Economy

DOCUMENTARY

Newsreels and Television

Early Masters of the Documentary

Dziga Vertov and Esther Shub

Robert Flaherty

Pare Lorentz

Leni Riefenstahl

John Grierson and the British Documentary Movement

World War II

Cinma Vrit

Television Documentary

THE GENRES OF FICTION FILMS

Melodrama

Broken Blossoms

Now, Voyager

Casablanca

Film Noir

Expressionist Roots of Noir

Hard-Boiled Fiction

The Maltese Falcon

Murder, My Sweet; Double Indemnity; Scarlet Street

Anthony Mann

Noirs Climax

In A Lonely Place

The Wrong Man

Kiss Me Deadly

Touch of Evil

Noirs Rebirth

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Chapter Nine: The Stories Told By Film II

OTHER GENRES: THE WESTERN

The Landscape

The Obstacles to Westward Expansion

The Western Star and the Western Director

The Western After the Fifties

SCIENCE FICTION

Fritz Langs Metropolis

Alien and Blade Runner

Science Fiction in the Fifties

2001: A Space Odyssey

GENRE RESILIENCE

EUROPEAN AND OTHER CINEMAS

Italian Neorealism

Bicycle Thieves

Neorealism in America

The French New Wave

Jean-Luc Godard

Michelangelo Antonioni

Yasujiro Ozu

DOUGLAS SIRK, RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER, AND TODD HAYNES: ONE GENRE, THREE WAYS

The Filmmakers

The Common Thread

That Heaven Allows and Far From Heaven

Race

Gender

FassbinderAli: Fear Eats the Soul

The Influence of Bertolt Brecht

The Gaze

Fassbinders Narrative

Happiness is Not Always Fun

BRIEF CONCLUSIONS

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Glossary

Index

DVD-ROM Contents