The Philosophy of Film

Millions of people flock to the movie theater year after year on a quest to be entertained. Even a mediocre movie has the ability to take the audience to another place, escaping the realities of their own life, even if for just a few short hours. Some movies are simply pure entertainment. And then, there are those movies that provoke conversation long after the film has been viewed. Despite the popularity of the recent films The Hunger Games and Divergence, the dystopian theme in film is not a new one. The Matrix shows a society where humans exist without any freedom. The film, not only entertaining but thought provoking as well, paints a world with two different dimensions, a world very much like today’s when the film is closely examined. The Matrix questions the benefit of technology and influence over society.

What were Edwin S. Porter's significant contributions to the development of early narrative film? In what sense did Porter build upon the innovations of contemporaneous filmmakers, and for what purposes?

When the film The Matrix debuted in 1999, it was an instant box office success that captivated many viewers. However throughout the featured famed actors, costumes, special effects and fight scenes, many viewers failed to notice the philosophical issues. Plato and Descartes, just like the characters in the movie are faced and driven to extreme measures to understand the world around them. They are compelled to seek knowledge in understanding what is real, evaluating the mind-body problem, and are left wondering if there is any good. These philosophical features of the movie have raised questions and have made it an interesting film to watch. While many viewers can agree that The Matrix is highly action packed, not all can truly appreciate

Millions of people flock to the movie theater year after year on a quest to be entertained. Even a mediocre movie has the ability to take the audience to another place, escaping the realities of their own life, if only for a mere two hours. Some movies are simply pure entertainment. And then, there are those movies that provoke conversation long after the film has been viewed. Dystopian themes are not new, and have historically provided a template to gage the course of human existence. The Matrix portrays a society where humans exist without freedom. The film is not only entertaining, but also thought provoking. It paints a world with two different dimensions, one with the mind numbing

Article Three – Author: David Bordwell / Title of Article: The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film

Rarely has a film impacted an audience and held the test of time as the film Gone with the Wind. I have always been curious if director, Victor Fleming and producer, David O. Selznick and screenplay writer, Sidney Howard knew what they were creating a masterpiece and how this film would have such an enormous impact on audiences for years to come. Interestingly enough there were some who thought the film should not be made, as Irving Thalberg said to Louis B. Meyer in 1936, “Forget it Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel” (Ten Films that Shook the World).

The cinematic language that we know of today would not be as it is today if we had synchronous sound recording from the beginning of film. Cinematic Language is the systems, methods or conventions by which movies communicate with the viewer. A few examples of cinematic language are; montage; mise en scene, the use of long takes, depth of field shooting in order associate people or objects; Expressionism, the use of lighting techniques, severe camera angles, and elaborate props, to name a few aspects; and realism, a technique to make the action seem as true to life as possible. The list of techniques and styles of cinematic language go on, and can only be limited by the imagination. Early films, and early sound films both had something in common; they lacked many elements of the cinematic language. The reason sound films reverted back to the same pre-cinematic style of early films, was due to the fact that they had technical difficulties, that required them to fall into the style of the old ways. I do believe that if filmmakers would have had sound from the beginning, with the same sense of movie direction they worked with, they would have used sound as a crutch rather than an enhancing element.

‘Blade Runner’, the film adaption, directed by Ridley Scott in 1982, of the 1968 novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ by Philip K. Dick. This essay will explore the meaning of the Tyrell slogan “More human than human” by following Deckard on Earth in Los Angeles 2019 as a futuristic, dark and depressing industrial metropolis by looking into and discussing what is real and what is not, the good and the bad and why replicants are more appealing than humans. This essay will analyse and pull apart the “Blade Runner’ world, the condition of humanity and what it really means to be human.

    Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.

‘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 notion that film functions rhetorically is hardly novel, and, indeed, there is a long tradition of film criticism within rhetorical studies.5 Historically, the rhetorical criticism of film has tended to focus on the representational aspects of cinema, attending to how films compel audiences at a cognitive rather than corporeal level. But more recently, scholars in an array of fields (Kennedy, 2000; MacDougall, 2006; Massumi, 2002; Shaviro, 1993; Sobchack, 1995, 2004) have begun to consider how cinema appeals directly to the senses, how it sways viewers somatically as well as symbolically. Attention to the body corresponds closely to the affective (re)turn in rhetorical studies,6 for conceptualizing rhetoric as embodied necessarily “reflects a merger of reason and emotion” (McKerrow, 1998, p. 322; see also Johnson, 2007). Rhetorical

Inception, a science-fiction thriller, was directed by Christopher Nolan and released in 2010. The film’s protagonist, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, works for various corporations, stealing information from the subconscious of each of his subjects. He is tasked with planting an idea into the mind of an heir to a business empire, a process known as inception. Nolan’s use of cinematic techniques fully engages the viewer and leaves the audience speculating about the film’s conclusion. In this essay, I will analyze the various film techniques used throughout the film to portray the separation of order and chaos, the perception of time, and the idea that absolutely nothing is certain.

I will be focusing my essay on Blade Runner: The Final Cut version released in 2007, discussing and exploring through the semiotics, themes, motifs and artistic representation that can be found within the film.

Direct Cinema The term 'direct cinema' was coined by American director Albert Maysles, to describe the style of documentary that he and his contemporaries were making in the 1960s as a result of a lightweight, portable 16mm camera and high quality lightweight audio recorders becoming available. The introduction of these, together with film-stock which was sensitive enough to give a good quality close-up monochrome picture under most lighting conditions (Including hand-held lights) led to a revolution in Documentary filmmaking, allowing film crews to be much more flexible. Gone were the days of bulky, virtually immobile 35mm cameras; now manufacturers improved their 16mm stock and accepted it

No matter who a person thinks invented the motion picture camera, whether it was Louis Lumiere or Thomas Edison, I'm sure they had no idea what it would become at the turn of the century. Motion pictures, has become an entertainment medium like no other. From Fred Ott's Sneeze to Psycho to Being John Malkovich, the evolution from moving pictures to a pure art form has been quite amazing. Different steps in filming techniques define eras in one of the most amazing ideas that was ever composed. Silent to Sound. Short to long. Black and white to color. Analog to Digital. All were important marks in the History of Motion Pictures. "It's different than other arts. It had to be invented"