Media Aesthetics
Notes
LOOKING AT MOVIES – MEDIA AESTHETICS
EXAM TIPS
• Phrasing: “the smirk on his face connotes happiness”, “her expression is one of doubt and anxiety”, “it
plays with”
• An interpretive claim: implicit meaning that the techniques are creating, no explicit story information, e.g.
he is trapped not vain; no character’s feelings, e.g. not he feels sad; no moral message -> look for motifs
and patterns, could also be about larger cultural ideas (e.g. a specific power dynamic, political system,
historical context), e.g. power play women and men (techniques: linear play)
§ e.g. we erosion of humanity, death and rebirth, failure of American Dream
chapter 1 -> looking at movies
• cinematic language (cinematic creativity) = the accepted systems, methods, conventions by
which movies communicate with the viewer
§ the conventions of filmmaking have evolved over time to become something like an
overall film grammar -> myriad of integrated techniques and concepts
§ allows us to infer layers of meaning and significance without even knowing anything
about the movie
§ as we do with spoken language, we often take the conventions and structures of
cinematic language for granted, allowing our brains to passively experience them
without much, or any, conscious interpretation
à cinematic invisibility of the techniques and strategies employed by the filmmakers ->
they are concealing the means of cinematic language/notion of hidden or “invisible” meaning
-> techniques hide themselves, we don’t notice their construction anymore
§ attitude towards invisibility determines how we look at and understand the movie ->
active awareness is needed
§ cinematic language is made out of patterns, techniques, expectations, e.g. chronology
(progression of time), e.g. parallel editing/crosscutting makes different events/shots
seem simultaneously
• cultural invisibility is especially difficult to perceive in a film made within one's own time,
place, and culture - filmmakers may not be aware of them, cultural differences often affect
exactly how stories are presented -> cultural values, ideas, and prejudices that are lurking
under the surface of a movie, often in form of a protagonist -> larger political ideas infusing
the work invisibly + it’s a way to unconsciously challenge viewers' shared belief systems
à cinematic invisibility vs cultural invisibility -> both designed to make themselves disappear, they
can make each other visible
• shot (one shot is a continuous film movement between two cuts/an unbroken span of action
captured by an uninterrupted run of a motion-picture camera)
-> (extended) sequence (a series of shots joined together/unified by theme or purpose to
e.g. a sequence of surprise)
-> scene (one scene is circular)
-> act: (most films have an exposition made out of acts) à movie
• the movie director is at the top of the creative hierarchy = coordinating lead artist
• different layers of meaning:
§ explicit meaning is right there on the surface of things - the result of what we have
been explicitly shown and told onscreen (can sound like plot summary)
§ implicit meaning, by contrast, is more like our traditional notion of meaning; we are
attempting to convey something less obvious, something arguable about it that
conveys a "message" or "point"
, Media Aesthetics
Notes
• viewer expectations in form of expected patterns, films (filmmakers) manipulate these
-> in order to understand the significance of those changes, we must be aware of patterns
• analysis = the process of breaking a "complex synthesis" into parts in order to understand it
better (invisible layers of meaning)/finding out what it is made of and how it all fits together ->
one essential inquiry: What does it mean?
• formal analysis = an analytical approach focused on the elements of film form, such as
cinematography, editing, sound, and design, which have been assembled to make the film
-> construction of meaning inside the text - an analytical approach concerned with the means
by which a subject is expressed -> how a scene uses formal elements to convey story
• cultural analysis focuses on the assumptions, mores, and prejudices that a movie conveys
about gender, class, race, ethnicity, nationality, age, and many other social and cultural
categories -> e.g. feminist approach -> CONTEXT
(meaning into context)
§ understanding media means understanding it in relation to its social and cultural
environment/context + in relation to other media texts/objects/documents/practices
§ exposing cultural invisibility!!!
§ see ideology
• summary/synopsis (explicit) vs analysis (implicit)
• theme vs/and motif: a theme is like an overarching idea, e.g. a metaphor, that the film
talks about, a motif is a recurring element that gets meaning by its recurrence (visual,
sound, narrative element), e.g. red shorts in jaws -> techniques frame and define story
• familiar image helps stabilize the narrative by its recurrence
chapter 2 -> principles of film form
• film form = relationship (interrelated, interdependent, interactive concepts)
between content (the subject of an artwork, what the work is about)
and form (the means by which that subject is expressed and experienced)
§ e.g. various sculptures of a nude male: form and content depend on and affect each other
-> all works depict the male figure but their forms are so different that their meanings, too,
must be different
§ 3 fundamental principles of film form:
§ movies depend on light -> source of illumination, manipulated to create
mood, reveal character, convey meaning
§ movies provide an illusion of movement made possible by two interacting
optical and perceptual phenomena:
• persistence of vision (human brain retains an image for a fraction
of a second longer than the eye records it) and phi phenomenon
(events that succeed each other rapidly) related to the critical
flicker fusion (illusion of continuous light)
o persistence of vision provides the illusion of succession, phi
phenomenon of movement à result: apparent motion
§ movies manipulate time and space in unique ways (space and time are
relative to each other, “co-expressibility”) -> the camera mediates between
the exterior, the world, and the interior, our eyes and brains, time can be
reordered, transposed, distorted, etc
§ content = what? form = how? (form is closely related to style)
• use of patterns to manipulate our expectations and responses
§ we’ve learned to expect that most movies start with a “normal” world, which is altered by a
particular incident, that in turn compels the characters to pursue a goal
, Media Aesthetics
Notes
§ there is a viewer’s desire to learn the answers to presented central questions -> making,
processing and revising expectations is part of what makes watching a movie a compelling
participatory experience
• verisimilitude (verisimilar movies) = the quality that convinces us that the world
portrayed onscreen is convincing and believable/a convincing appearance of truth
-> creates a world that is consistent/cohesive (form & style) -> we believe in consistency
§ realism: a tendency to view or represent things as they really are (often usage of hand-
held technique + open frame), concerned with representation and the actual, down-to-earth
authenticity -> according to the brother’s Lumière, realism should show nature/real people
§ antirealism: an interest in or concern for the abstract, speculative or fantastic, uses our
perception of reality as a starting point -> George Méliès (Hugo) wanted to create magic
+ Lumière brothers first 45-second shot “actualite” with the camera they invented
no strict polarities!
à French filmmakers who established the realistic direction of cinema were the Lumière brothers,
while the French filmmaker who established the antirealistic direction of cinema was George Méliès
chapter 4 -> elements of narrative
NARRATIVE -> “what” -> is structured into acts that establish, develop and resolve character
conflict -> a narrative is a story, narrative movies are fiction films – telling of a movie’s story
• analysis
§ structure (three-act kind of structure, protagonist/antagonist, basic formula)
§ breaking of the narrative into three acts (first to set up the story, second to develop
it, third to resolve it) + starting with the “normal world” and a following catalyst
(=inciting incident”) + stakes, rising action, crisis (narrative peak), climax,
resolution
§ order (chronology, flashbacks/flash-forwards) -> e.g. frame narration (can have
many different layers, typical for e.g. Titanic), cause-and-effect sequence occurring
over time
è event hierarchy: events crucial to the story and minor plot events
• duration
§ story duration (amount of time that the implied story takes to occur)
vs plot duration (the elapsed time of events within the story, specific actions and
events)
vs screen duration (the movie’s running time on-screen)
§ relationship between screen duration and plot duration:
summary relationship (screen duration is shorter than plot duration, most
common type of manipulation of time/duration)
vs real time relationship (screen duration corresponds directly to plot duration,
“uninterrupted reality”, e.g. unnoticeable cuts are used)
, Media Aesthetics
Notes
vs stretch relationship (screen duration is longer than plot duration, achieved
through special effects, e.g. slow-motion)
• suspense (bought on by a partial uncertainty, plays with time, we see the bomb under
the table) vs surprise (sudden, unexpected, bomb suddenly explodes) -> Hitchcock’s
bomb scenario
• repetition, or number of times, that a story element recurs in a plot suggests a pattern
and a higher level of importance -> motifs, familiar image (audio or visual)
• setting: time and space in which a movie occurs + establishment of character’s and
cultural background -> adds texture to the movie’s diegesis
§ settings may be verisimilar and appropriate for the purpose of the story, whether or
not we can verify them as real (unfamiliar settings, e.g. Star Wars)
§ related to duration and setting is scope = the overall range, in time and place, of
the movie’s story (relative expansiveness), two scopes in one movie: historical time
and story within that historical time, e.g. Saving Private Ryan
NARRATION -> “how”
à audio-visual way of telling, character narrator could be first-person narrator (diegetic) or third-
person narrator (non-diegetic)
• range of storytelling = width of storytelling/how many characters do we follow,
two extremes: restricted narration and unrestricted narration/omniscient
§ range of narration, e.g. restricted
• depth of storytelling (how deeply can we access all information/the depth of the
characters):
objective
vs perceptual subjectivity (e.g. aural = hearing what the character is hearing)
vs mental subjectivity (access to the characters dreams, hallucinations, fantasies,
sometimes memories, we see the way they experience something)
§ depth of narration, e.g. objective
