While Modern Film Productions Have Lost The Ambitious Classicism

In the reading, Violence in Movies: Cinematic Craft or Hollywood Gone Too Far?, the response that states "Point: Hollywood, Stop Exposing Our Kids to Violence" is more persuasive than "Counterpoint: Hollywood Filmmakers Should Not be Villainized for Movie Violence" because it provides better-supported facts that are reliable and credible. The "Point" response explains how violence in movies has become very excessive and is allowing children to act out and think it is okay because of what they see on TV. While, the "Counterpoint" response explains how Hollywood filmmakers should not be punished for their creative writing and that parents should monitor their kids and decide whether or not they should be watching it.

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

During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that,

In “A Century of Cinema”, Susan Sontag explains how cinema was cherished by those who enjoyed what cinema offered. Cinema was unlike anything else, it was entertainment that had the audience feeling apart of the film. However, as the years went by, the special feeling regarding cinema went away as those who admired cinema wanted to help expand the experience.

David Bordwell wrote his article ‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film’ in an effort to convey the main idea that “art cinema” can be considered as a distinct mode of film practice, through its definite historical existence alongside other cinematic modes, set of formal conventions, and implicit viewing procedures. Rather than searching for the source of the art, or what drives the art in film, Bordwell compares art cinema to the classical narrative cinema, and highlights the differences in narrative structure. Bordwell makes the assumption that it defined itself against the classical narrative mode; especially with the way it deals with space, time, and the cause and effect link of events.

During the 1940’s, the idea of the auteur theory arose. It was crafted by Andre Bazin, who was a French film critic, and Roger Leenhardt, a filmmaker. They stated that a film should represent the directors vision. Another French film critic, Alexandre Astruc, enhanced the auteur theory by expressing that directors with their camera should be like writers with their pen. This would make a director’s films all have the same type of aspects. Once a director makes a number of films, a certain “finger print” can be seen throughout his creations.

The auteur theory is an idea or principle, which states that the film is a reflection of a director’s creative personal vision, as if to say the he or she is the primary author (which in French, means “auteur”). This theory first came to be in 1954, by a French film director named Francois Truffaut. The auteur theory’s birth was through the French New Wave, which was a group of new French filmmakers during the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the beginning, the theory received positive and negative responses. And to this day, it will create a heated debate. Many have questioned the theory, because there are usually multiple people involved in the development of a film. Ultimately, a film

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).

‘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’

Auteur Theory is based on three premises, the first being technique, the second being personal style, and the third being interior meaning. Furthermore, there is no specific order in which these three aspects must be presented or weighted with regard to a film. An Auteur must give films a distinctive quality thus exerting a personal creative vision and interjecting it into the his or her films.

In this essay I will be discussing five key points throughout Post Production history between the 1900s-1960s. Post Production is seen as a vital component in the cinematic industry as it essentially finalises the final products. Techniques that have been developed over the years are incredibly important, but they all have an origin. Although these techniques started out without overwhelming effect, they are now unbelievably crucial to how films are constructed. The five points I wish to discuss go as follows: The Great Train Robbery and Edwin Porter himself, D.W. Griffith and his overwhelming influence on editing, The Jazz Singer, the Kuleshov Effect and finally, 2001: A Space Odyssey. As well as discussing these key factors, this essay will take into consideration secondary material.

When photographs and film were first invented it was seen as a means for capturing reality. They would replace paintings in the role of capturing reality, due to the ability to capture pictures in real-time. In class we discussed about the idea that artists may choose to omit a part of a portrait that is not representative of the person being depicted (such as a random strand of hair standing up). Additionally, a random ray of light may draw attention to something in the real world that may also not be of great importance to the person in question. These same problems are things that can arise in movies and rather than having the viewer interpret and figure out what is being shown, the director can take on these responsibilities through the use of camera angles, multiple cuts, editing, artificial lighting, and the use of professional actors who can portray the director’s vision of the characters. Bazin identifies cinema as the human need for realistic representations. Bazin is a believer in realism and explains the elements of realism consisting of long takes, deep focus, limited editing, and the use of non-professional or relatively unknown actors (De Sica, “Metteur En Scene,” p.65). Though realism does have its place in filmmaking, it would fail to take advantage of the artistic gifts and skills of the director to show what he envisions the film to be. After considering both sides carefully, I have come to the conclusion that the formalist approach to filmmaking is

Style constitutes, thus, a key concept in the theory. Therefore, through the years, the politique’s critics have perfected a precise definition of the term, ultimately describing it as the unique cinematic expression of ‘the auteur’s personality, [which] endows his work with organic unity’ (Edward Buscombe 2008:78) and, as I will explain later, elevates it to the status of art. On a practical level, auteur style is hence embodied, in the filmmaker’s work, by easily distinguishable visual, aural or narrative patterns, on one hand, and, by recurrent personal themes, on the

The concept of Auteur was first introduced by Andre Bazin in an essay featured in a 1954 edition of Cahier du Cinema, often referred to as ‘camera stylo’ or ‘signature style’ as a way of critiquing French new wave cinema. This theory allowed film to be criticised and analysed in the same way as other creative platforms such as art and literature. By identifying the director as auteur as opposed to just ‘Metteur-en-Scène’ it transformed them into an artisté, by assuming creative control they in turn gave a film a certain style. The auteur was a director “consistently expressing his own unique obsessions, the other was a competent, even highly competent,

“Wim Wenders places a digital camera everywhere and creates cinema!”, I exclaimed after a retrospective of his films at FTII in Pune. A disastrous strive in one of my practices to emulate the grasp made me realize the way it takes meticulous planning and the satisfactory information of the cinematic language for two hours to look so casual and natural.One cannot simply place the camera and shoot. And this, to my thoughts, is what ails maximum of our movies today.