Ethnographic Analysis Of Films

Film exists in layers of physical existence and reality. You have the layer the audience views of the film’s world - setting, characters, and plot - and then you have the layer the film production workers view of the film’s world - actors, the set, and the story. Like photography, film is able to establish a physical existence. However, unlike photography, film uses two very unique and different techniques in order to establish its physical existence. According to Siegfried Kracauer, film establishes its physical existence through representation of reality as it evolves through time and with the help of techniques and devices exclusive to cinema cameras (Kracauer 187). All the world is a stage for film, however Kracauer lists specific techniques of film he refers to as cinematic due to how these techniques are read on the cinematic medium. Although Kracauer wrote his theory on Establishment of Physical Existence in 1960, the 2015 movie Tangerine contains a fair amount of content that can be serviced as examples in order to support Kracauer’s theory. Using the 2010’s movie Tangerine directed by Sean S. Baker, modern cinema examples from various scenes of the film can be provided for examples on Siegfried Kracauer’s theory of Establishment of Physical Existence through cinema’s recording functions of nascent motion, cinema’s revealing function of transients, and cinema’s revealing function of blind spots of the

The use of lighting in today’s cinematography has great impacts on the intended audience. The main characters in modern movies are usually directed in key lights. Generally, the lights on these key objects are brighter than the fill light and the backlight. Light is targeted to give clarity of the image, to quest for better realism and to create an atmosphere of emotions (Cohen 127). Lightings, in particular, are fundamental tools in manipulating the audiences’ response to narrative events and characters.

When I turn on the television to watch a movie, I notice that I have a tendency to focus on the words of the characters, sometimes on the music in the background and how it relates to the overall scene, but as I watch what is in front of me I rarely tend to focus my attention to the colors, lines, textures or balance of the surroundings. Everything seems to be part of the big picture of the scene rather than visuals that stand out. Every day we are surrounded by visual elements, which are just as important as actual spoken words; sometimes even more important, as they force us as viewers to make beyond conscious predictions. Whether it is the flow of lines in a painting, the choice of costume texture in a live production or the silent dull

During the process of envisioning and designing a film, the director, production designer, and art director (in collaboration with the cinematographer) are concerned with several major spatial and temporal elements. These design elements punctuate and underscore the movement of figures within the frame, including the following: setting, lighting, costuming, makeup, and hairstyles. Choose a scene from movieclips.com. In a three to five page paper, (excluding the cover and reference pages) analyze the mise-en-scène

Certain technique of mise-en-scene and cinematography can improve the film by creating relationship to meaning of the film or responses of spectators. Deep space composition can be suitable example

In classical Hollywood cinema, style, space, and time are unified and uninterrupted. These elements come together to match the viewer’s sense of time and space in reality. This is achieved through the use of many techniques such as the 180-degree rule, point-of-view shots, a lack of jump cuts, and other unobtrusive filmmaking techniques. Using these techniques allow the audience to associate with the main characters in the film. For example, the use of point-of-view shots allow the viewer to see the action from the characters’ perspectives giving the audience a sense of connection with the actors. Similarly, obeying the 180-degree rule allows films to have continuity in which there is no disruption in the viewers sense of location or

They were a close contact culture. Greeks have a closer relationship with their family than Americans. Greeks attach great importance to their family and they were a funny family and the dad didn't really like ian because he wasn't greek he was American Toula was a 30 year old who worked in her parent's restaurant with no boyfriend then she started online computer classes for college then got a boyfriend and they dated and soon got married and they put windex on everything and then on the wedding day they both had 1 huge bump on there lip then the parents gotta learn how to get along with ian and ian has to get along with there huge family and at the end of the movie the dad buys them a house that was right next door and they had a daughter. They lived in chicago with their parents where the restaurant dancing zorba. Toula lived with here whole family because they were always at her house. Their family always hugged or touched when they seen each other because they are a close contact culture and that means they always are touching or something like that.

A common afterthought for most movie-goers is the importance of how the film’s director planned and shot each scene in a film to effectively involve the audience emotionally and physically. Famous director Alfred Hitchcock’s main focus when directing was to visually present important information and themes in the film’s plot and of the character’s inner thoughts and emotion. He achieved this by using innovative film editing, manipulating lighting, controlling perspectives, and using a variety of shot styles which can be seen in his films such as Psych, Strangers on a Train, and Rear Window. Alfred Hitchcock was truly the master of creating themes and emotions in his films, not only through the narratives and

Edward Branigan classified elements of representation in films into six categories –origin, vision, time, frame, object and mind. According to him, origin signifies the perspective of placement of camera and use of sound in cinema. The reference point that generates images and space by glance, look, sight and gaze constitute vision. Time refers to the time of telling i.e. the time of representation and the time of what is told i.e. represented. Branigan refers to the boundary that limits selection and organization of the story as frame. Object and mind refers to the element that is represented and the mental state attributed to a character, respectively. Thus, we can argue that from a director’s point of view, Branigan’s elements – vision and

In this day and age culture means everything to certain people in this world. Culture is based on how someone lives on their own compared to other ways of standard living. Of course culture is going to be different in America compared to China because of both countries are on two different sides of the planet. In a society if people are treated unequally there is bound to be conflicts which happens because a misunderstanding of someone’s way of living and their culture.

Overview: Though many filmmakers my employ expressionistic techniques in what we would consider an essentially realistic film, in films which employ a fantasy or fantastic mode, settings and subjects, characters, and narrative time are often displaced from the viewer’s own realm into other realms, sometimes futuristic ones, whose normal laws of time and space may not apply. Characters might have superpowers,

“Each person will make for himself the kind of nude he wants, with the nude that I will have made for him. He’ll put everything where it belongs, with his own eyes” (Picasso, 2009). This is what the term aesthetic is; an individual’s set of ideas about style and taste, along with its expression. Aesthetics has the role to enhance any visual object, appliance, theme and concept, inducing the trust and relationship of form and content within a viewer or audience of a film or production. To fully understand how the role of aesthetics furthers a theme or concept of a narrative we must look at the medium of film and its scenographic elements.

Overall, it could be suggested that many different parts of a film’s composition during production are important. However, it could also be believed that different directors, and that different films place more emphasis on some aspects than others. The mise-en-scene of American Beauty is ‘crucial to shaping our sympathy for, and understanding of, the characters’ (Barsam and Monahan, 2010), whilst still also keeping the visual aspects true to the ‘essence of cinema’ (Philips, 2001), and indeed, encouraging the viewer to ‘look

It is clear that camera movement is a storytelling device across all film genres, for example in the film War Horse. Unlike Pulp Fiction there is a larger variety of camera shots used, to express visually the different scenes and emotions present. War Horse is ‘an adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s’ (Madigan 2012, 48) children’s novel, and gives its viewers a breath-taking tale of a friendship between a horse (Joey) and a young man (Albert) amongst the devastation of World War 1. The films use of cinematography creates an effective and realistic narrative, reviews stating it succeeds in painting an accurate ‘picture of the role played by horses during the First World War’ (Madigan 2012, 49). Without its use of camera angles and cinematic features the images would certainly lack in believability and its viewers would not see War Horse as a true representative of what the war was really like. It is how the use of camera movement in War Horse connected to almost all movie goers, even though it goes against a ‘conventional Hollywood movie script’ (Madigan 2012, 48) that will be the starting point of the films camerawork analysis.

When Making a film a director wants to draw the audiences emotions to the film to make them interested in what is going to happen. The director wants to make sure the audience is putting their emotions into a particular character or event. They can use this to give items importance and help us see who is an important character or if an event is serious or not. They basically tell us how to feel in a situation. They do this with the perspective/focus, lighting, and with the audio.