Structure of a Film

Micro properties of film structure

• Difference between formalist and realism
• Mise en scene/ shot
• Colour in film
• Continuity editing- point of view cutting, cutting on the action, direction
• Montage versus long takes
• (fast and slow motions)
• Montage
• Digetic and non digetic sound

Macro properties of a film

• Narrative- what’s happening or what is depicted in films.
• Narration- how that narrative is presented to the film spectator.         

Narrative structure

• What is narrative structure based on?
• Narrative logic
• Cause and effect- NOT random events. This is what drives the narrative.

Narrative logic in action

Event A a man is shot A points a gun in an off screen direction and fires. In shot B another man is shown collapsing to the ground. Because of the way the shots are edited (shot B immediately following shot A) the spectator reads the event in shot A as the cause of the event in shot B. 

Psycho (1960)

Scene 1

A long establishing shot of the city view of many buildings. We enter a room and there is a girl in bed with underwear’s and a man without t- shirt. He wants her to take the afternoon off but she cants so she starts to dress up. They are in a hotel having a secret relationship. They want to get married but they can’t because he has debts to pay and doesn’t have money, he is divorced so he has to pay alimonies to her ex wife. Lunch time.

Scene 2

Marrion office, she arrives there that is where she works two men arrive to the office, the boss and his friend. The boss daughter is getting married and he gives her a lot of money in cash as her wedding present. She needs money. The daughter gives her the money his father just gave her so Marrion would put it in the bank. She keeps the money as she needs it. She say’s the boss she has a headache and she has to leave. She leaves with the money.

Money + Marriage.

Scene 3

Her house. She packs a suitcase with a lot of things. The sound is telling us that something is happening, perhaps a crime. She takes the money in her purse and leaves. 

Jurassic Park and 9 Lives

how scenes are shot and edited	9 lives (Rodrigo Garcia) 2005	Jurassic Park (Spielberg) 1993
1. Camera position	Fixed place, from shoulder height.	Many different angles
2. camera movement	Moves as the character moves. 360 degrees movement of camera.	Fixed cameras for very short shots. They don’t need much movement as shots are very short.
3. shot scale	Not much depth, small as she is in jail	It is big but at the same time there are a lot of people in one small place, limited
4. length of shot	Very long shots	Short shots
5. the pace of editing	Not much editing	A lot of editing

9 lives: the effect given here is that as the scene is shot in a jail to make it more claustrophobic the shot scale is very small as there are a lot of walls. The camera films what the main character is seeing but also films her. Shots here are very long and the camera doesn’t move much.

Jurassic Park: There are a lot of angles used as there is a lot of action in the movie and to show the different dimensions. Shots are very small so the camera doesn’t need to move. The space of the scene is not that big for the amount of people in it, so it looks as it had more movement.