Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition

by Stephen Prince

  to design a film are narrowed to a single approach as

  color, sets, costumes, editing, and sound—as well as

  filmmakers decide how to organize the tools of film-

  the relationship between traditional analog methods

  making. Decisions about where to place the camera,

  of production and digital tools—in order to arrive at a

  whether to move it, and what type of lenses to use

  coherent and expressive audiovisual design. ■

  THE CAMERA AND HUMAN PERCEPTION:

  CINEMA’S DUAL CAPABILITY

  The camera records screen action through a changing series of positions, angles, lenses, and movements, and as they make their creative decisions, filmmakers need to anticipate how viewers will see and make sense of their images. To what extent does the camera’s way of “seeing” approximate the viewer’s customary habits of viewing the world? Is there a relationship between the appearance of images on the movie or television screen and the appearance of real-world objects and things in the viewer’s mind’s eye? These issues are relevant for comprehending how film structure operates and how viewers understand films.

  Transforming Visual Reality

  Obviously, both camera and human eye can see color, texture, movement, and the location of people and things in three-dimensional space. Motion pictures seem very lifelike, and even impossible objects, like Godzilla, can be rendered with apparent photographic realism. The camera, though, can see selectively in ways the human eye cannot. In other words, it has the property of perceptual transformation , the ability to show things in ways that differ from ordinary visual experience. Telephoto and wide-angle lens perspectives have no counterpart in human vision. The eye cannot magnify the size of distant objects, as a telephoto lens can, or increase the apparent distance between near and far objects, as a wide-angle lens can. A cinematographer who cranes up to a high-angle long shot employs a unique cinematic technique that DO THE RIGHT THING

  (40 ACRES AND A MULE

  FILMWORKS, 1989)

  A wide-angle lens alters normal

  visual reality by stretching and

  exaggerating perspective in

  this shot of Radio Raheem (Bill

  Nunn). His hands and rings seem

  unnaturally large compared to

  the rest of his body, and the lines

  of perspective in the image are

  bent. Note the way the roofline

  on the buildings seems to curve.

  The optics of the lens have trans-

  formed the ordinary appearance

  of things. Frame enlargement.

  50

  Film Structure

  the viewer’s eye cannot duplicate, as does an editor who cuts among shots taken from different camera positions and angles, and with different lenses, to provide a shifting series of perspectives on the action. Viewers quickly learn that motion picture images and stories can define their own rules of representation. Stylized films like The Crow (1994) or The Matrix (1999) take viewers on imaginary journeys to screen worlds that differ remarkably from the one they inhabit in daily life. Viewers accept the unusual images, characters, and stories established in these films as a representational reality that is true on its own stylized terms.

  Corresponding with Visual Reality

  But the camera and other elements of film structure do not simply alter and transform the viewer’s experience of people, places, and physical environments. Cinema also has the capability of perceptual correspondence , the ability to show things in ways that reference and correspond with the viewer’s visual and social experience. Close-ups, for example, emphasize facial expressions. Social experience has taught viewers how to interpret these as signs of a person’s thoughts, feelings, and intentions.

  CLOSE-UP

  How Movies Create the Impression of Motion on Screen

  Viewers see only apparent motion on screen. As a

  is emitting. (A popular nickname for the movies

  strip of film runs through the projector, each frame

  is flicks . This term dates from the silent era when

  is projected individually. Inside the projector is a

  slower projection speeds were used, enabling spec-

  device called the shutter , which blocks the light for

  tators to see a flicker effect, produced by the pulsing

  a fraction of a second while the next frame is pulled

  light from the projector. Hence the term flicks .)

  down into place. The projector thus emits light in a

  Retinal after-images and flicker fusion explain

  pulsating beam that turns on and off. In the theater,

  why viewers fail to perceive the projector’s pulsating

  viewers see a series of still frames projected on the

  light. They do not, however, explain why viewers

  screen and sit in alternating periods of light

  see moving objects on screen. Motion perception is

  and dark.

  a complex phenomenon, and under the right condi-

  The illusions of cinema—the viewer’s impressions

  tions spectators will see apparent motion when no

  of movement and of a continuously illuminated

  real movement has occurred. If a series of closely

  screen—are due to several factors of perception. The

  spaced light bulbs are illuminated in rapid sequence

  retina of the eye retains an image for a fraction of

  in a darkened room, a spectator will see a single

  a second after the source is gone (a phenomenon

  light source moving across the room rather than a

  called persistence of vision ). If a light source is

  series of lights illuminated one after another. This

  switched on and off rapidly enough, a threshold

  phenomenon has been called beta movement . If

  is reached where flicker fusion occurs, a blending

  the intervals between a series of illuminated lights,

  together of the individual pulses of light. 24 frames

  or the positions of a galloping horse captured in a

  per second, the projection speed of sound film, is

  series of film frames, are small enough, the eye’s

  adequate to sustain retinal after-images and pro-

  motion detectors encode this information as move-

  duce flicker fusion. At 24 frames per second, view-

  ment. The viewer sees a single travelling light or a

  ers cannot see the pulsing light that the projector

  galloping horse on screen.

  ( continued)

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  Film Structure

  Many viewers today watch movies on elec-

  tronic display devices such as computer screens or

  widescreen monitors and image resolution varies

  considerably depending on the video source and

  the display device. Electronic images are scanned as

  FIGURE 5

  lines of pixels (a pixel is the smallest unit of picture

  Intermittent motion at 24 frames per second.

  information in an electronic display). A standard

  DVD outputs 720 x 480 pixels (width by height)

  to create an interlaced image that is composed of

  two fields (odd-numbered scan lines are one field,

  even-numbered lines are the other). A DVD video

  frame is composed of the two fields, presented in

  an alternating fashion. Resolution suffers in an in-

  terlaced image because it is prone to distortion and

  noise. HD (high definition) video, as found on Blu-

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5...

  ray offers a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels that

  are progressively scann
ed, that is, the lines of pixels

  composing each frame are created in sequence,

  FIGURE 6

  producing superior resolution and a much cleaner

  Successive events perceived as apparent

  image. In each case, the output of scan lines is

  motion.

  above the critical fusion threshold, ensuring that a

  viewer sees a continuously illuminated image rather

  than scan lines or individual pixels. In these ways,

  do not have to make any effort to bring them

  the most fundamental features of cinema—the ap-

  into play. The cinema activates universal percep-

  pearance of continuous light and motion—are built

  tual abilities held by all members of its audiences.

  on shared characteristics of perception common to

  This fact underlies the medium’s great appeal and

  all viewers. These features are automatic. Viewers

  accessibility. ■

  The Na’vi of planet Pandora in Avatar (2009) are tall, blue, cat-people created as digital characters, but their behavior is modeled on the performances by live actors. The animators preserved the actors’ distinctive facial features in their Na’vi counterparts so that the characters played by Zoe Saldana, Wes Studi, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, and others would seem recognizably human. They did this even when it resulted in a ‘wrong’ face. Sigourney Weaver, for example, has a thin, aquiline nose that is one of her most distinctive features. Na’vi, though, have broad, flat noses consistent with their cat-like appearance. Even so, Weaver’s Na’vi character was animated to have the actresses’ distinctively thin nose so as to visually connect the digital character with the famous face of the actress playing that character. Throughout the film viewers study the faces of the Na’vi for clues about their feelings, thoughts and motivations. These blue, cat-like faces were built to correspond with a viewer’s understanding of human behavior and feeling.

  Among the most powerful correspondences that cinema can establish with the

  viewer’s experience are perceptual ones. On the movie screen, the viewer sees depth, distance, and motion in ways that seem remarkably lifelike. A fully three-dimensional world comes to life on the flat two-dimensional screen. When the Na’vi ride atop the giant flying banshees, a viewer experiences the sensation of gliding through space 52

  Film Structure

  AVATAR (TWENTIETH

  CENTURY FOX, 2009)

  Even in highly stylized films,

  facial expression corresponds

  with the viewer’s under-

  standing of behavior and

  personality. Zoe Saldana’s

  performance as Neytiri was

  captured using an innova-

  tive camera that focused

  exclusively upon her face.

  The facial information cap-

  tured by this camera, in

  turn, was used to digitally

  animate the character. Frame

  enlargement.

  because of the highly detailed and emphatic motion perspective that has been built inside the computer-generated flying shots. But movement and depth on screen are both visual illusions. Neither really exists.

  The camera captures the same information about light, shadow, color, texture, motion, and location in space that viewers use in perceiving and responding to the real three-dimensional world. Movies build this information into shots in ways that emphasize the three-dimensionality of the image appearing on the flat screen. This opens the door to tricks of all kinds in cinema. In The Matrix , some of the most memorable visual effects are the high-speed moving camera shots that envelop the characters in scenes of fast action. But during production these shots did not involve any camera movement. Keanu Reeves and the other performers were photographed by a series of still cameras arranged into the circuit that the nonexistent moving camera would travel.

  Computer software interpolated the missing pictures to fill out the orbit of a continuous camera move. Moreover, Reeves and the others were photographed against a blank background (a “greenscreen”) and were then digitally inserted into computer-animated environments. The filmmakers jokingly referred to their work as “virtual cinematography.” Neither the interactions of character and location nor the moving camera that the viewer “sees” in The Matrix in fact existed. But because the perceptual cues in the shots about movement and space seemed true, the illusions were credible and compelling.

  Cinema, then, has a dual capability: It corresponds with, and also transforms, the viewer’s visual and social experience. These functions—correspondence and transformation—establish a very complex relationship between movies and viewers. To understand how filmmakers design their work, one needs to grasp how those structures build on and connect with the viewer’s perceptual skills and how they can go beyond these as well. The first condition furnishes the grounds that make film in-telligible, while the second underlies much of the delight that the medium provides.

  Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) has a main character who is afraid of heights. To visualize the character’s dizziness, Hitchcock films a city street from an extremely high angle and combines a zoom and track in opposite directions to suggest the feeling of falling through space. The resulting image deforms normal visual reality, but viewers readily accept this in the interest of style and for the delight that it provides.

  53

  Film Structure

  THE MATRIX (WARNER BROS., 1999)

  The illusion of high-speed moving camera shots in The Matrix was created without any actual camera movement. Sophisticated digital software supplied the motion perspective that created the effect. Because the 3-D motion cues in the images were realistic, viewers found the effect credible. Frame enlargement.

  SUMMARY

  Film structure or style results from the ways a filmmaker chooses to manipulate the camera, editing, light, sound, and color. This chapter has explained the fundamentals of the camera, specifically the factors of position, angle, lens, and movement, and how these factors affect the way a viewer perceives the content of a shot or scene. By understanding the range of creative choices filmmakers confront, and by appreciating their options in resolving those choices, one begins to understand a film’s structural design.

  Camera positions are variations of three basic set-ups: the long shot, the medium shot, and the close-up. While long shots typically stress landscape or environment over character, close-ups usually privilege character over environment. By varying the camera-to-subject distance, the filmmaker manipulates the viewer’s emotional involvement with the scene or character in complex ways. Camera position can emphasize facial expressions as signs of a character’s inner emotional life or can even work at cross-purposes to a viewer’s desired relationship with a scene or character.

  Camera angles are variations of low, medium (or eye-level), or high angles. Like camera position, camera angle can be used to manipulate the viewer’s reactions.

  Camera angles can represent a character’s point of view and emphasize a character’s strength or, conversely, his or her insignificance. Angles can be consistent with, or play against, a viewer’s desired relationship with a scene or character. As with camera position, the effects of camera angle are always dependent on the emotional context and action of a given scene.

  Camera lenses supply distinctive optical characteristics to shots. Telephoto lenses reduce depth of field and angle of view, while wide-angle lenses enlarge these. Zoom lenses can substitute for camera movement, although they will not produce motion perspective as does a moving camera.

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  Film Structure

  Camera movement includes pan and tilt shots, dolly or tracking shots, and

  boom or crane shots. Pans and tilts create linking movements, connecting objects or establishing relationships between them. Tracking and crane shots can add a dynamic sense of movement to a shot or
express thematic ideas.

  The camera and the structural designs it helps create both record and transform the outward appearance of things, the way they look. The cinema has a fundamental connection with the viewer’s perceptual skills and experience. The viewer’s impressions in film of continuous light, apparent motion, and spatial depth all derive from this fundamental connection. What makes the cinema such a rich imaginative experience is the way it builds on and creatively enhances this connection. Style, then, can be understood as a kind of creative response by filmmakers to the tendency of the motion picture camera to reproduce the surface appearance of the objects it photographs.

  By intervening stylistically—by choosing to use a wide-angle lens or a high camera angle—a filmmaker can creatively shape the material of the shot and the world of the film to the dimensions of the imagination.

  KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS

  angle of view

  flicker fusion

  preproduction

  beta movement

  focal length

  producer

  boom or crane

  frame

  production

  camera position

  hand-held camera

  rack focusing

  canted angle

  internal structural time

  running time

  close-up

  long shot

  shot

  composition

  medium shot

  shutter

  deep focus

  motion parallax

  Steadicam

  depth of field

  motion perspective

  story time

  director

  normal lens

  structure

  dolly or tracking

  pan and tilt

  telephoto lens

  emulsion

  perceptual correspondence

  wide-angle lens

  establishing shots

  perceptual transformation

  zoom lens

  feature films

  persistence of vision

  film form

  postproduction

  SUGGESTED READINGS

  Geoff Andrew, The Director’s Vision: A Concise Guide to the Art of 250 Great Filmmakers (Brooklyn, NY: Lawrence Hill, 1999).

  David Breskin, ed., Inner Views: Filmmakers in Conversation (Winchester, MA: Faber and Faber, 1997).

  John P. Frisby, Seeing: Illusion, Brain, and Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).