Genre

Through studying the topic of Genre, I have acquired a further wealth of knowledge on the subject and its overall stance within modern day cinema. Genre is the general term for any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment. Genres are formed by conventions that usually change over time as new genres are created replacing the old ones. "They (genres) offer a means by which the industry can seek to repeat and capitalize upon previous box-office successes." (Hutchings, 1995, p.61)

Peter Hutchings "Genre Theory and Criticism" examines the positive achievements of 1970s genre study as well as the influential early work on film genres by key genre theorists. This is a highly interesting chapter of the book and gives a real insight into the early study of the genre theory, which seemed to anticipate developments that were made by theorists in the 70's. "an awareness in all three writers of what might be termed here the 'liveliness' and changeability of genres."(Hutchings, 1995, p.65)

Each of the early key genre theorists were of importance to its development, though each had their own individual outlook. "Andre Bazin, Robert Warshow and Lawrence Alloway. All shared the belief that genres carried an intrinsic meaning or significance, but each adopted a different way of thinking about this." (Hutchings, 1995, p.61)

Bazin, the most well-known of the early theorists, had particular difficulty determining why certain cultures were interested in movies historically significant to other countries: "What can there possibly be to interest Arabs, Hindus, Latins, Germans, or Anglo-Saxons, among whom the western has had an uninterrupted success, about evocations of the birth of the United States of America, the struggle between Buffalo Bill and the Indians, the laying down of the railroad, or the Civil War!" (Hutchings, 1995, p.62)

Bazin knew that the success of these movies was attributed to more than the typical formal qualities of setting, objects and scenarios. The formal attributes of a western are “simply signs or symbols of its profound reality, namely the myth.” (Hutchings, 1995, p.61) Myths can be a universal and timeless story of good vs evil, with good almost always triumphing over evil.

Genre was a very interesting topic to study and one that I have prior knowledge of. We were posed with the opening question: "what constitutes a film genre?" There are (usually) certain similarities between movies that help to define which genre they belong to.

Genre films are able to attract audiences and become financially successful because they temporarily relieve the fears aroused by recognition of social and political conflict.

One question that was raised was: "is animation a genre?" I have always felt very passionate about this and feel animation is better described as a medium or an art-form.

We examined several movie clips during todays session. In "The Searchers" we discussed the main character as being an outsider, who comes along to save the day. He carries the girl into her house, like a child, in classic hero fashion. In "Annie Hall" we watched as two characters broke the fourth wall and directly addressed the audience. This is uncommon in movies, particularly in 1977, the year it was released. In "Singing in the Rain, a character starts to sing in the rain, very happy despite the unpleasant circumstances. As an audience we apply a suspension of disbelief towards this behavior which is accepted because we have different expectations for a musical than a film.

I also learned about iconography, where icons are second-order symbols and their symbolic meaning is not necessarily a connection established within the individual text. It is already symbolic because of its use in previous movies.

This week I watched Scream and Halloween. These movies are Horror - Slasher films with many similarities. Halloween is considered to be the first "true" slasher movie, whilst Scream arrived at a time when the slasher concept was becoming tired and completely rejuvenated it.

Scream essentially parodies all the cliché moments of horror movies, like Halloween, and so it was interesting to watch and compare them. Craven uses sound, camera shots, and mise en scène in a clever way to scare the viewer and keep them guessing as to who the murderer is. Halloween, very similarly uses music to instill fear, using the "Michael theme" to give indication that something bad is going to happen.

A number of occurences in the movies were already long established in the horror genre such as a long silence followed by a loud startling noise. This is an example of the use of iconography, as it is already symbolic because of its use in previous movies. Additionally, most of the horror scenes take place at night, tapping into our natural fear and helplessness in the dark.

Scream takes long established horror conventions established in previous movies and plays with them. In one scene, the character backs away from the camera, usually she would back right into the killer but in this case she doesn't. Craven messes with the audiences subconscious, misleading them into thinking something is about to happen.

Scream comes to an effective conclusion, the killers are killed and the survivors taken to hospital. However, Halloween leaves the story wide open when Michael Myers seemingly dead body vanishes. Generally genre films are well tied up at the end and Horror is one of the only exceptions to the rule.

Reference list
Hutchings, P., 1995. Genre Theory and Criticism in Joanne Hollows and Mark Jancovich, eds., Approaches to Popular Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Editing

I have learnt a great deal about editing and its general function and overall usefulness within the world of cinema. Film editing is a pretty important part of the creative process of film-making. "The editing process can be divided into three stages, the selection of takes and their length; the arrangement and timing of shots, scenes and sequences and their combination with the soundtrack." (Orpen, 2003, p.1)

Valerie Orpen's "Film Editing: The Art of the Expressive" is a highly interesting read on the subject. It presents the idea, originating from Soviet filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein, that editing is the creative force of film and the foundation of film art. The process of editing links back to auteurism as mentioned by Orpen "the director is expected to exert some influence over the editing stage even if s/he does not physically take part in it." (Orpen, 2003, p.2)

Editing can be thought of as collective or expressive. Collective can be the predominant way of editing, or may just appear to be, whilst being subtly expressive. Editing can be expressive, though it is quite hard to explain both why and how.

I was interested to learn that films shot on 35 mm film that are over ten minutes HAVE to contain cuts since a roll of film can only last ten minutes. I was also intrigued by the idea of a cut "saving" a movie or limited choice forcing the editor to use a scene. Viewers have limited knowledge as they don't know what material was discarded. It would seem that editing is a hard topic to study without spending more time looking at the actual shots instead of the cuts.

An interesting point made in "Film Art: An Introduction" is that editing is only effective when it is memorable. We can remember lines, but not a decent cut or a fade. Generally we only remember the overall editing style of a movie.

Editing was much easier to follow than auteurism, particularly as it is more relatable to film. I am highly familiar with editing and know the different shot types as well as the 180-degree rule (an imaginary line called the axis connecting the characters with the camera being kept on one side of this axis for every shot.)

Bridges (dissolves, wipes and fades) were discussed this week, which are basically transitions between scenes, normally placed in scenes where there's a change of location or to signify the passing of time. Cross-cutting, a technique most often used in films to establish action occurring at the same time in different locations, was also discussed. In a cross-cut, the camera cuts away from one action to another, suggesting the simultaneity of both actions.

"Cross cutting is the kind of narrative cinema with which we are most familiar tends to occur between characters or locations whose relationship is already clear (or will shortly be so). By indicating simultaneity, cross cutting also functions to stabilize rather than problematize a film's representation of time.". - (Dix, 2008, p.54)

The "Kuleshov Effect" in filming suggests that each shot is a chunk of information, almost like a building block. When each of these are placed together, they form a specific film layout. Each of these blocks has an effect on blocks around it, if one single block is moved or changed it could affect the entire film as a whole.

I learnt about contemporary uses of editing, continuity editing, formalism, realism and their relationships with editing. Continuity editing is a type of editing not intended to be noticed, it should appear 'invisible' and 'seamless.' This can be done by obeying the 180-degree rule which helps to avoid disorientation. The purpose of continuity editing is to tell a story cohertly, in a way that is not distracting to the audience. Editing generally follows a rigid set of rules and Hollywood's editing codes remained consistent over the years, unaffected by changes in technology.

This week I chose to look at the opening five minutes of "The Godfather" as part of the audio visual analysis task. The movie opens with a close-up of a man. Asides from the speech between the characters, the office is dead quiet. He describes a series of events to an off-screen character as the camera slowly zooms out in one continuous shot. He stands, walks off-screen and reappears in the foreground, the shot changes, 3 minutes 29 seconds into the movie. The next shot is a mid-shot, allowing us to see the other character's face. There is eye matching as we see Corleone's eyes move across the screen whilst the man is returning to his first position.

A wide-shot reveals two other characters in the room, we hear only soft meowing from a cat that the Don is holding. Another mid-shot of Corleone, as the first character blocks half of the frame. The shot changes to behind Corleone, and were it not for the dialogue, which shows the Dons power, you would assume that the other man is in more power, seeming larger and powerful in the shot. I found this interesting and wondered if it was to show how at ease the Don is. The scene ends with a cut to a loud bustling party happening a few feet away outside, showing stark contrast similar to the kind in Eisensteins tonal montage theory.

Reference list

Orpen, V., 2003. Film Editing: The Art of the Expressive. London: Wallflower

Dix, A., 2008. Beginning of Film Studies. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Auteurism

In my study of the "auteur theory" I have learnt much more about the nature of auteurism within film criticism. The auteur theory suggests that a director's film reflects his/her personal creative vision, as if they were the primary author or "auteur." "Culture is tyrannically centerd on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions." (Barthes, 1977, p.143)

My mind has been opened significantly by what I have read and has made me consider, among other things, the identity loss of an author and/or their character(s). When a character speaks his mind, how can we know with any great certainty that this is what the character thinks personally and is not simply the reflections and beliefs of the author.

Michel Foucault discusses our own personal view of authors and how we perceive them as being outside the realms of history and presents the notion that they are each simply a product of their times. He mentions the process of searching for a piece of work by author name as opposed to the subject matter or the year published. I believe this to be the way in which a majority of individuals search for a title, and it certainly feels more natural to me personally to search by author. "a (authors) name permits one to group together a number of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to others." (Foucault, 1984, p.105)

I agree particularly with Foultcault's view on the use of an authors name and how certain changes can affect how their name functions. "If we proved that Shakespeare did not write those sonnets which pass for his that would constitute a significant change and affect the manner in which the authors name functions." (Foucault, 1984, p.105) If we discovered someone else wrote a famous piece, the work would remain the unchanged, although the way in which we perceive the supposed author is likely to change.

"Author function" is basically what makes us more interested in the author of a book or poem than a commercial. I found that author function translates beautifully to cinema, and kept this in mind. It made me consider the different factors that make a “Tarantino” movie identifiable as his, and how I would be able to tell, without prior knowledge, that it was his movie. This is a consideration I will return to in greater detail later.

At first I found the auteurism topic quite overwhelming as I didn't have a great deal of experience in film theory and had never even heard of an "auteur." I gradually eased into the subject as the day progressed and soon found myself totally engrossed in it. I found out that authorship was "primarily a critical device for recording the history of American cinema, the only cinema in the world worth exploring in depth beneath the frosting of a few great directors at the top." (Wantenberg & Curran, 2005, p.103)

We watched clips from a number of David Lynch movies (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire) then discussed the similarities between each movie and what made them identifiable as Lynch movies. We found that his movies could portray quite a degree of both creepiness and confusion by focusing on images that can make the audience feel quite uncomfortable or sick.

We discussed whether or not we follow the careers of particular directors and their past work. I would say I most definitely do, and the reason I choose to is that I have thoroughly enjoyed their past successes and naturally would like to experience similar enjoyment with a new set of characters. I would happily go to a cinema in order to watch a movie directed by Steven Spielberg because of his past successes though I would definitely have high expectations based on those previous efforts.

I watched two movies directed by someone I consider to be an auteur (Quentin Tarantino) and looked for qualities that highlight these movies as his. The two movies were “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction.”

I noticed that the dialogue in both movies is extremely trivial (large discussions dedicated to fast food or on tipping etiquette.) I noticed that the conversations did really well to develop strong personalities for each character, showing their flaws and making them real people for the audience. It seems fairly evident that Tarantino is more interested in dialogue than actual plot, which in retrospect is fairly thin. I realised that there isn't much to the storyline, but instead a cast of really interesting characters helped to strengthen each movie. This shows an emphasis on style over substance, which describes Tarantino’s work well, and shows that he is a more post-modern director than, for example, Hitchcock.

What stands out most about these movies is the order in which they are both shown. This is more apparent in Pulp Fiction where the story(s) is shown completely out of sequence, the end is at the start and the middle is switched around. In Reservoir Dogs the biggest event, the robbery, is not actually shown but instead we are told what happened through character dialogue and the chase through flashbacks. Most of the story is set in a warehouse where dialogue is of critical importance.

My belief that Tarantino is an auteur has strengthened after re-watching these movies and discovering their similarities. I was interested to find articles during my research that were against calling him an auteur in comparison to legendary directors such as Hitchcock and Welles.

Reference list

Barthes, R., 1977. The Death of the Author in Barthes' Image, Music, Text. Glasgow: Fontana.

Foucault. M., 1984. What is an Author? in Paul Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books.

Wantenberg, T., & Curran, A., 2005. The Philosophy of Film: Introducing Text and Readings. London: Blackwell.

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