Media Language

Quotes

• ‘Unlike all the other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time, to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity. I’d say that film is the sculpting of time.’ – Andrei Tarkovsky.

• ‘The art of film can only really exist through a highly organized betrayal of reality.’- Francois Truffaut.

• ‘My distinguishing talent is the ability to put people under the microscope, perhaps to go one or two layers farther down than some other directors.’ -David Lean

• ‘I’m just a storyteller and the cinema happens to be my medium. I like it because it re-creates life in movements, enlarges it and enhances it. It is far closer to the miraculous creation of life than a painting. Its not just an art form; its actually a new form of life, with its own rhythms, perspectives and transparencies. It’s my way of telling a story’ –Federico Fellini

• ‘You make films to give people something, to transport them somewhere else. The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, dreams, presentiments, all this is the inner life of a human being and all this is the hardest thing to film.’ –Krzystof Kieslowski

• Mise-En-Scene: This include set, costume, lighting and location.

• Mise- En-shot: This include camera shot, camera movement, shot scale, depth of focus, the pace of editing.

• Primary Action- the movement of character/objects within the frame.

• Secondary action- the movement of the camera in relation to those objects

Editing

• Continuity- continuous action shown in sequence.

• Montage- a series of seemingly unrelated shots that the audience must work to connect.

• Hollywood movies used ‘continuity editing’, a style also known as transparency. Action flows smoothly and audience just follow the dialogue.

• Art house films use framed editing, where the audience are continually reminded that they are viewing an artificially created text.

Sound

• It is a vital part of the information used for decoding film –whether it comes in the form of a lush string soundtrack or footsteps echoing o/s down a corridor.

• It may be diegetic coming from inside the narrative world of the film eg characters’ voice.

• It may be non-diegetic coming from another source eg a voice over or soundtrack.

• It can be synchronous where it matched the actions seen on the images.

• It can also be asynchronous that is from unseen sources, sound effects and music.