CHAPTER 3 LOOKING AT MOVIES

Narrative, experimental, and documentary are the three major types of movies (p. 64). The other choices include a combination of types, techniques, and genres.

Narrative films are directed toward fiction. Documentary and experimental films also tell stories. Narrative films are distinguished from other kinds of films in that they are works of fiction or fictionalized accounts of actual events (pp. 64-65).

flexibility of film form by blurring boundaries of film categorization

creative treatment of actuality. John Grierson originally coined the term documentary in 1926 to delineate cinema that observed life. Sometime after he started making documentaries himself, Grierson described the approach as the "creative treatment of actuality" (p. 69).

a factual documentary. A factual documentary presents people, places, or processes in a straightforward manner (pp. 69-70).

address social injustice. Persuasive films were originally called documentary films until the terms evolved to refer to all nonfiction films. The founding purpose of persuasive documentaries was to address social injustice, but today any documentary concerned with presenting a particular perspective on social issues or with corporate and governmental injustice of any kind could be considered persuasive. (p. 70)

limits the use of voice-over narration; eliminates as many signs of mediation as possible. Observational documentaries seek to immerse the viewer in the middle of the situation or story by relying entirely on b-roll and eliminating as many other signs of mediation as possible. (p. 72).

invite individual interpretation. Although experimental films are often made by a single artist, the form of these films invites various interpretations (p. 75).

The conventions of genre films are stable and do not evolve. Genres can change over time to meet the expectations of a changing society (pp. 82-83).

exploring the American dream; an antihero. These are two common characteristics of gangster films (pp. 88-90).

superhero movies. These are the elements of the story formula for superhero movies (p. 105).

deep shadows; nighttime exterior scenes; elements composed diagonally in the frame. These are three visual qualities common to most film noir movies (p. 92).

saves a community that rejects her. In horror films, the protagonist is often a loner, someone socially reviled who must save the community that rejects her (p. 97).

A pastiche is a work of art that imitates or appropriates recognizable stylistic elements from a previous work or works. To understand the concept, think of a pastiche as a collage in which pieces of preexisting drawings and paintings are snipped out and arranged on a new canvas into a cohesive assembly (p. 109).

Among the countless possible types and combinations of animation, three basic types are used widely today: hand-drawn (also known as traditional or cel animation), stop-motion animation, and computer animation (also known as 3-D animation) (p. 106).

Ava DuVernay's 2016 documentary, 13th (named after the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery) uses expert interviews, archival footage, and photographs, animation, and graphics to explain the history of the U.S. prison and justice system and to make a persuasive argument that laws and policies since the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified have systematically perpetuated a different, but still devastating, form of slavery in the United States (p. 72).

In a reflexive documentary, the documentary production itself becomes part of the experience in ways that may challenge viewer expectations of nonfiction filmmaking conventions (p. 73).

Concerned with the manipulation of space and time, which after all is the essence of filmmaking, Maya Deren experimented in Meshes of the Afternoon with defying continuity, erasing the line between dream and reality (p. 78).

Though not born out of any specific political or cultural context, musical performance was already a well-established entertainment long before the invention of a movie camera. The long-standing traditions of religious pageants, opera, operetta, and ballet all present narrative within a musical context as do musical comedies that were popular on British and American stages throughout much of the nineteenth century (pp. 100-1).

Animation. Brad Bird stresses that process is the only difference between animation and filmmaking that relies on conventional photography (pp. 105-6).