English Film Appreciation

Wang, Yueh-chiu National Penghu University

Film History
The birth of film: In the humanitys history, the man has always had a deep interest in capturing and representing movement, different civilizations or people have looked for the way to achieve this fact. Several inventors and geniuses have built machines that produce the illusion of movement.

When those machines were invented, three fundamental elements that constituted cinema were achieved, the persistence of vision, photography and projection.

The Silent Era

The films were already an industry extended around the world. The movies were mute and it appeared texts amid the scenes in order to explain the action of the film, sometimes a pianist played music to make happier the show. The barracks of the beginning of cinema became elegant and roomy rooms where they began to assist the high

classes and not only the popular ones. Holywood was founded and the big film production companies started to make the history of the North American films.

The Sound Era

With the arrival of this new era of the films also disappeared various actors upon bringing to light to the public its true voice, unpleasant or ridiculous, that did not correspond to its physical appearance. The technicians and filmmakers changed the form to do and to think about the films and the actors and actresses had to learn to vocalize correctly.

The installation of the sound in the films is a way for the citizens to escape from daily problems due to Great Depression. Hollywood started to produce movies based on fantasy, comedy, music, etc. Vanity Fair (1935)and Gone with the Wind (1939)

Post-war Era
When finishing the war it appeared in Italy the cinema called neo-realistic, which was a testimonial cinema about the reality of that moment, it also showed a lot of humanity. It was worried about the problems of individuals living on the streets and it supposed a deep look on the problems of subsistence of the poorest.

By the 1950s the EEUU was passing a time of well-being that changed the lifestyle. The acquisition of televisions made the number of spectaculars smaller and they were invented new ways for recover it. So, the big screen appealed to its best argument, its spectacular nature, the screen grown and was projected in

color and the sound becomes stereo. It appeared the myths of cinema such as Marlon Brando, James Dean or Marilyn Monroe, which break the conventional schemes of social behavior. The youths become an important potential public in this time of rock and roll.

Cinema at the present time

Due to the introduction of videotapes as well as the massive increase of television channels, the public watch much more movies than ever before and everything without home. Nowadays the films look for a spectacular show because the movies with lots of special effects are able to attract several spectators to the dark room.

In the present films, it is imposed quality and profitability. The film studios produce movies in which computers have worked on the obtaining process and manipulation of images.

Film genre
Films can be organized according to three principal concepts: setting, mood, and format. A genre can be defined as a group of movies that share similar elements such as scripts, types of actors, scenes, film techniques, camera shoots, sound, music, illumination, edition, etc.

Target audience films

The types of target audience films: Childrens films Family films Adult films

A childrens film is a film aimed for children as its audience. Childrens film can encourage younger members of the community to imitate the role models of the glamor industry known to most of us as film, cinema or TV.

Family film
A family film is a film genre that is designed to appeal to a variety of age groups and families. To attract these diverse audiences, film makers often create works that operate simultaneously on several levels of appeal. Star Wars franchise

Format films:
By using particular equipment to be presented in a specific manner Live action films Biography films Documentary films Musical films

Mood films
Action films Adventure films Comedy films Drama films Fantasy films Horror films Mystery films

Romance films Thrillers films

How to appreciate the films

Focus on the appearance of the characters and the location and place in time and then discuss a photograph.

Explore questions such as: What can you tell about the characters from how they look and what they are doing? Who are they? What sort of people are they? What can you tell about the relationship between the characters in the scene?

Where are they? What else can you see in the frame that gives information about these characters, their lifestyles, culture, socio-economic status?

Class discussion
Discuss the clip using questions such as: What is the story about? What do you think will happen next? Who are these characters? What are they doing?

Why has the film maker chosen this particular background or location? What does it mean for the story? How does it relate to the story? List all the features used by students to find out this information such as sound, acting, props, camera work, color, location music etc.

How has the film makers used the various filming elements to tell their story? Please make notes about technical aspects.

Film form
Concepts of film form Form as system: Form is the overall system of relationships among the parts of the whole film. Any set of elements in a film that depend on and effect each other makes a system.

When viewing a film, we look at the individual parts and try to explain whey they are in the film and what effect they have on the viewer. The purpose of a films form is to communicate with the viewer in a uniquely cinematic way.

Systems of Elements
Narrative elements: the films story. Stylistic elements: editing, cinematography, sound, etc. The viewer relates, compares, contrasts, and connect these systems of elements to one another.

Form vs. Content

Content is the subject matter and other abstract ideas in the film. Content is a component that functions as a part of the overall pattern that makes form.

Formal expectations
Suspense is a created by a delay in fulfilling an established expectation. Conflict derives the form of the film. The viewer has expectations that the conflict will be resolved. Surprise is a result of an expectation that is revealed to be incorrect.

They may cause the viewer to readjust our expectations about what can happen in the story. Comedy often depends on surprising the viewer expectations.

Formal Expectations
Curiosity is the ability of the viewer to make guesses about prior events.

Conventions and Experience

A large factor in the viewers understanding and interpreting a film is their prior experience. The main way a viewer is able to predict the outcome of a film is based on prior experience.

Genres depend heavily on conventions. Bodies of conventions create norms of what is expected in a particular tradition.

It is a convention of the musical film that the characters sing and dance. It is a convention of narrative form that the conclusion solves the problems that the characters confront. It contains journey pattern.

Form and feeling

The interaction and relation between the emotion represented in the film and the emotional response felt by the viewer play a large role in the films form. For example, the actor grieves in pain, but the viewer find it comical.

Form and meaning

Tangible meanings are called referential meanings because they refer to things or places already invested with importance. An openly asserted meaning in the film would be an explicit meaning.

Form and meaning

Implicit meanings are suggestive interpretations of a film. Implicit meanings can lead the viewer to come up with broad concepts for the film called themes.

Form and meaning

A symptomatic meaning is a manifestation of a wider set of values characteristic of a whole society. The set of value that get revealed can be considered a social ideology.

Evaluations
Coherence, complexity, originality and intensity of effect are the conventional formal criterion in evaluating a film. Personal taste must be excluded in criteria to help form a more objective evaluation.

Characters, environments, times or activities all need variety, contrast and change in a film. Within the image, there are differences in tonality, texture, direction, and speed of movement, etc.

Difference may manifest itself through setting, action and character conflict. Repetition and variation co-exist together. We should look for both similarities and differences in a film.

Development
The best way to recognize how a film develops formally is to compare the beginning and the ending of the film.

When all the relationships we notice in a film are clear and economically interwoven, then a film has unity.

Film adaptation
A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction, autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even other films.

Novel adpations
Novels are frequently adapted for films. For the most part, these adaptations attempt either to appeal to an existing commercial audience (the adaptation of best sellers and the prestige adaptation of works) or tap into the innovation and novelty of a less well known author.

The question of faithfulness arises, and the more high profile the source novel, the more insistent are the questions of fidelity.

Change in adaptation is essential and practically unavoidable, mandated both by the constraints of time and medium, but how much is always a balance. Some film theorists have argued that a director should be entirely unconcerned with the source, as a novel is a novel, while a film is a film, and the two works of art must be seen as separate entities.

Others argue that what a film adaptation does is change to fit (literally, adapt), and the film must be accurate to either the effect of a novel or the theme of a novel or the message of the novel and that the film maker must introduce changes where necessary to fit the demands of time and to maximize faithfulness along one of these axes.