Sunday, September 12, 2010

FILM STYLES

Cinéma Vérité

Cinéma Vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combines natural techniques with stylistic cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects.

Cinéma vérité involves interaction between the filmmaker and the subject. Some argue that the obvious presence of the filmmaker and camera was seen by most cinéma vérité filmmakers as the best way to reveal the truth in cinema.

Pierre Perrault sets situations up, and then films it, for example in Pour la suite du monde where he asked old people to fish for whale. The result is not a documentary about whale fishing; it is about memory and lineage. In this sense cinéma vérité is concerned with anthropological cinema, and with the social and political implications of what is captured on film. How a filmmaker shoots a film, what is being filmed, what to do with what was filmed, and how that film will be presented to an audience, all were very important for filmmakers of the time.

PIERRE PERRAULT - POUR LA SUITE DU MONDE



Avant-Garde

"Avant-garde" is a word from the French, meaning "ahead of the crowd." In contemporary English, we'd say it's on the "cutting edge."

Avant-garde film makers experiment with new ideas and techniques which may not make sense and sh

Film Noir

Film noir ,'Black film', is used to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas from around the early 1940's to the late 1950's.

The term film noir was first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946.

Cinema historians and critics defined the noir canon in retrospect; before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic film noirs were referred to as melodramas. The question of whether film noir qualifies as a distinct genre is a matter of ongoing debate among people today.ock the audience. An avant-garde film is a way of the filmmaker being able to express themselves to the world.

Some avant-garde films are called "experimental, " a term popularized by David Curtis in Experimental Cinema (New York: Delta, 1971), in the sense that the films may be experiments to explore how the camera can emulate and/or enhance human visual perception.

ROBERT SIODMAK - PHANTOM LADY

French New Wave

French New Wave was influenced in the late 1950's and 1960's by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Filmmaker's experimented with editing, narratives and visual style.

The New Wave (French: La Nouvelle Vague) was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced byItalian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm and is an example of European art cinema. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm.

The movies featured long tracking shots (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film Week End). Many of the French New Wave films were produced on tight budgets; often shot in a friend's apartment or yard, using the director's friends as the cast and crew.

Directors were also forced to improvise with equipment (for example, using a shopping cart for tracking shots).

The cost of film was becoming a major concern,for example, in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (À bout de souffle), after being told the film was too long and he had to cut it down to one hour and a half he decided (on the suggestion of Jean - Pierre Melville) to remove several scenes from the feature using jump cuts, as they were filmed in one long take.

Parts that didn't work were simply cut from the middle of the take, a practical decision and also a purposeful stylistic one.

JEAN LUC GODARD - WEEKEND 1967


DOGME 95

Dogme 95 is sub genre of the avant garde style of filmmaking which started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. The 10 rules define this style:

The rules of Dogme:

1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story. a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.

2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e diegetic sound.

3. The camera must be a hand- held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. the film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.

4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.

6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)

7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).

8. Genre movies are not acceptable.

9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is not widescreen. Originally , the requirement was that the film had to be filmed on Academy 35mm film, but the rule was relaxed to allow low-budget productions.)

10. The director must not be credited.

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