Jorgen Leth Constraints

When novels are adapted for the cinema, directors and writers frequently make changes in the plot, setting, characterization and themes of the novel. Sometimes the changes are made in adaptations due to the distinctive interpretations of the novel, which involve personal views of the book and choices of elements to retain, reproduce, change or leave out. On the contrary, a film is not just an illustrated version of the novel; it is a totally different medium. When adapting the novel, the director has to leave out a number of things for the simple reason of time difference. Furthermore, other structures and techniques must be added to the film to enhance the beauty and impressions of it. Like a

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 aesthetics of realism in each film can be utilized in many diverse ways to offer certain truths about the world of the film to further express the film’s story. These theatrical elements emphasize what the film attempts to relay to the audience; moreover, it intensifies the authenticity of each aspect of the film. The use of real people, on-camera interviews, textual information, and of direct address to the camera displays the realism of each film.

For a movie to proceed to its final “point”, a filmmaker must have an image of what has to be and not be familiarized. Source three unveiled, ”Clements

Nominated for seven academy awards for his work in cinematography, and propelled by Wilder’s film noir style, we see the excellent use of lighting and camera work that is almost lost on modern cinema. The more sinister characters are silhouetted, obscured by clouds of their own cigarette smoke, or viewed from a slightly upward angle, as to make them appear looming and threatening. The protagonist of our film is always well lit, shot from a level surface, and is often wholly visible in every frame he inhabits. Less serious and goofy characters often take up very small portions of the screen, and are shot on a downward angle, as if to make us literally look down upon them. As important as the use of angles with characters are, the score to the film is a character all its own. Franz Waxman is the mastermind behind this very

Theorist Vsevolod Pudovkin claims that narrative films are mainly a “product of construction” and cautious compilations of “selections of images that have been shot” (Renée).

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

‘There are…two kinds of film makers: one invents an imaginary reality; the other confronts an existing reality and attempts to understand it, criticise it…and finally, translate it into film’

The directors; Norman Taurog, King Vidor, Victor Fleming, Mervyn LeRoy, and George Cukor, cleverly conceal the films explicit meaning using classical cinematic invisibility. However, by looking at the films cinematographic

Critics have called the 1941 film Citizen Kane one of the best movies of all time, and director Orson Welles’s direction is largely to thank for the work’s accolades. Citizen Kane is famous for its use of long shots, deep staging, deep focus, and, as will be considered in this paper, its lighting practices. Welles strategically lights his characters in order to develop them throughout the film; this paper will focus on three shots that show Jerry Thompson (William Alland) develop from functioning as a narrative device to directly invoking the work’s thematic meaning.

Andrew Sarris, a renowned film critic, clarified the Auteur Theory to be the notion that “the way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels,” and that “good directors express style and theme across their body of work,” (Stam 89; Sampson, Lecture 8.2). Although director Jonathan Glazer has a diverse body of work, his personal themes and style are able to shine through across all visual mediums, thus proving him to be a good director, according to Andrew Sarris’s interpretation of the Auteur Theory. In his “Odyssey” commercial for Levi Strauss, his music video for “Rabbit in Your Headlights” by Unkle, and his film Birth, the combination of his themes of persistence and unclear identities, along with his style of capturing people’s faces and use of tracking shots reveals his worldview that human beings are complex and strong entities.

The romantic idea of the auteur is described by film theoretician, André Bazin, observing the film form as an idealistic phenomenon. Through the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard reference, Bazin primarily refers to an essential literary and romantic conception of the artist as central. He considers the relationship between film aesthetics and reality more important than the director itself and places cinema above paintings. He described paintings as a similar ethical creation to film stating a director ‘can be valued according to its measurements and the celebrity of the signature, the objective quality of the work itself was formerly held in much higher esteem.’ (Bazin, 1967: 250). Bazin contemplates the historical and social aspects that indeed hinder a director’s retribution to their own personalised film, thus en-companying their own ideological judgement upon the world ‘more so in cinema where the sociological and historical cross-currents are countless.’ (Bazin, 1967: 256)

When it comes to movies, many directors are good at their jobs. However, other directors are great in the art of film making. There is no doubt such statement is considered utterly subjective, but what would life be without subjectivity, for it is our differences that make us thrive against a monotonic existence. By the same token, Alfred Hitchcock and Christopher Nolan utilize their singularities to create films that for decades have impacted the movie making universe. In fact, it is their differences that provide us with a high contrast to compare and scrutinize their job and find what made them great at it.

In Andrew O. Thompson’s ‘Astral Grandeur’, ASC discusses the work and mentality of French director Luc Besson and his work on the The Fifth Element (1997). The article, within its’ four pages, interviews both Besson and his director of cinematography, Thierry Arbogast, on the collaboration in the look for each frame and the desired look that Besson wanted for the 90s hit. Thompson learns that unlike his other films within the last two decades before it, Besson desired a ‘comic-book’ atmosphere for the movie. Though Thierry and Besson both acknowledged the movie as an action-packed science-fiction, Besson wanted a color scheme to complement the comedic moments within the film. He used both 25 mm and 50 mm lenses for what Thompson notes as ‘in the action’ cinematic style.

The evaluation of a film assigns some form of value to a film and the experience you encountered while watching the film. Evaluation can imply the criteria and standards that you can argue about to place value on a film. Thus, giving people a reason to question a film to develop reasons, make such standards are met and to understand the film. These standards can stem from the classical evaluation and pluralistic-category method which has given viewers a blueprint of how you should properly evaluate a film. There are certain ways that you can go about judging a films effectiveness. For instance, the classical evaluation method imposes the use of cinematicity within three concepts that all films should have. Like medium specificity, cinematicity allows film to distinguish itself from theatre with the use of close-ups, camera movement, etc.; thus, creates a universal structure for critics to judge a film. This is based on the creative style of the director and how much the viewers admire the way the has stuck with its cinematicity. However, the pluralistic-category does not base its evaluation on style and opinion. In all, these types of evaluations are used in different ways which will be further explained throughout this essay.