ANALYZE FILM TECHNIQUE 

In your journal: select a scene from a film video, DVD, or television program, describe what happens in the scene, the uses of camera shots, lighting, sound, and music to portray the meaning, relationships, narrative development, and representations in that scene.   Describe the purposes for the use of these techniques in terms of the program or movie’s larger purpose and positioning/creation of audiences.  For example, an action/adventure film employs a lot of close ups of hands slipping off the edge of buildings to create a sense of suspense in order to keep viewers “on the edge of their seats.”

For examples, see Teach With Movies

You can analyze use of the following techniques:

• Frames.  One of the most basic concepts is the idea of the frame-what is included as well as left out of a shot.  This relates to what is known as "off-frame" action-the fact that an audience may be aware of someone or something that is outside of the frame-a lurking murderer.  The size and focus of the frame defines the types of different shots employed.  Shots also differ in terms of where they position the audience in relationship to the setting, persons, or objects portrayed. 
• Establishing/extreme long shot.  A shot that serves to initially set the scene is an establishing shot often framed by an extreme-long shot of a landscape or locale in which characters are only speck in the scene. 
• Long-shot.  In contrast to the extreme long-shot, people are now shown at the point to which the audience can view their entire body.
• Medium shot.   A medium shot portrays the people's bodies from the waist up; in some cases, an over-the-shoulder shot with two people portrays one person looking up or down at the other person.  In the 1950s, females were often shown looking up at males, not only because they were often shorter than the males, but also because this shot implied a power imbalance. 
•  Close-up shot.  A close-up shot often fills the screen with only a face or an object for the purpose of dramatizing nonverbal reactions or signaling the symbolic importance of an object.
•  Wide-angle lens.  If a filmmaker wants to emphasize the relationships between foreground and background aspects of a face or object, they will use a wide-angle lens that creates an exaggerated look.
•  Telephoto lens.  If a filmmaker wants to give the appearance some a person or object is closer to the audience, even though they may be quite far away, they will use a telephoto lens.  This can be used in shots in which a person is running towards the audience, in a manner that seems like a long time.
•  Low angle shot.  If a filmmaker wants to place the audience as looking up on a person or object, they use a low angle shot, often for the purpose of associating power with the person or object.
•  High-angle shot.  In contrast, a shot down on the person or object places the audience in a dominant position over that person or object. 
•  Pan shot.  A pan shot is used to move or scan across a locale.
•  Tracking shot.  A tracking shot is used to following a moving person or object; the camera itself is moving, on a dolly or moving car.
•  Zoom shot.  A zoom shot is used to focus in on or to move back from a person or object. 
•  Point-of-view shot.  A point-of-view shot is designed to mimic the perspective of a person so that the audience is experiencing the world through the eyes of the person.
•  Lighting.  Students could also study the uses of lighting to emphasize or highlighting certain aspects of people or objects, or through uses of different colors, based on the following techniques:
•  Low-key lighting. Low-key lighting is employed in detective, mystery, gangster, or horror films to emphasize contrasts between light and dark images to emphasize the shadowy, dark worlds of these genres.
•  High-key lighting. High-key lighting employs a lot of bright lights with little variation of dark and light; often found in traditional comedies. 
•  Backlighting.  Backlighting involves placing the light behind the person or object to create an halo effect. 
• Colored lenses.  Different colored lens are also used to set the mood in a film based on certain semiotic or archetypal meanings for colors.  Red or yellow can be used to create a sense of warmth while a bluish color creates a sense of coldness.  In Minority Report, the faces of the characters who could predict future events were shown as ultra-white to create a sub-human image.
•  Sound.  Students could study the uses of sound and music to create a sense of mood or drama.  In a fast-paced chase scene, a filmmaker may employ a fast-paced score. To add to a slow, romantic scene, a filmmaker may employ romantic violin music.

Then, using the same scene as in the previous analysis (or pick a different scene from a different film/video/show), and the scenes before and after that scene, analyze the editing techniques being used in those scenes. How is the editing being used to convey meaning, relationships, narrative development, and themes?

To share analysis of the use of these film techniques, students could bring in video clips and share their analyses with a class, describing their perceptions of the techniques employed.  In sharing their analyses, they need to be able to not only identify the types of techniques employed, but to also describe the purposes for using these techniques. 

Students could also examine changes in technique over time, noting how new innovations in cameras, editing, and sound changed the medium.  For example, the early Charlie Chaplin films without sound emphasized portrayal of story conflict through characters' physical movements.  With the introduction of sound, conflicts could then be portrayed through oral inflections and speech.  More recently, the introduction of digital cameras meant that filmmakers could more quickly and easily edit their films and that films could be produced at lower cost.

ANALYZE A FILM OR TELEVISION GENRE

Select one of your favorite film or television genres (detective, mystery, science fiction, horror, romance, soap opera, musical, comedy; genres and historical/cultural contexts; reality-TV dating-game shows, evangelical talk shows, sports-talk shows, info-commerical shows, buying/auction shows, MTV-video type shows, etc.).   Find a visual still clip (from the Web) or URL that contains a video clip (trailers would be very useful—go to the trailer sites:

• http://www.apple.com/trailers/
• http://www.darkhorizons.com/trailers.php
• http://www.movie-list.com/ 
• http://www.theater.nl/onstage/0,2083,1753,00.html
• http://www.vidnet.com/
• http://www.hollywood.com/multimedia/
• http://uk.imdb.com/Sections/Trailers/

Working in small groups, prepare a Powerpoint presentation to share with your class highlighting features of your genre: prototypical roles, setting(s), language/discourses, typical storylines, problems/issues dealt with, who solves the problem, the means used to solve the problem, and themes/value assumptions.

ANALYZE A FILM ADAPTATION 

Students could analyze a film adaptation of a book they are reading in terms of the degree to which the film altered the book and the specific techniques employed in adapting the book to the screen.  Students should focus on differences between the book and the film relative to differences between the two different media, as opposed to simply judging one as “better” than the other.  Students could compare their emotional reactions to and interpretations of a specific scene in the book and the film in terms of differences in their experiences of print versus film texts. 

Compare clips from the movie, Smoke Signals, or excerpts from the short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie, with excerpts from the screenplay, Smoke Signals, A Screenplay.  In the screenplay, Alexie discusses the many changes and compromises he was forced to make during the filming of the movie.  Engage students in a discussion of film making as a composing process.  For example, you might show the final scene of the movie after reading Alexie's account of how the final (movie) version came about.

After reading and viewing these texts, ask students to do a bit of background research by visiting http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/alexie.html (Interview with Alexie and critical commentary on Smoke Signals 

Then consider whether the original screenplay version, or the final film version has the more effective ending. What constraints operate in the world of filmmaking that influence how events are represented?

After exploring these issues, invite students to take a section of one of Alexie's short stories and transform it into a screenplay script. 

Consider Alexie's work alongside some native American (or other) trickster legends described on this site:

• http://members.aol.com/pmichaels/glorantha/foolsparadise.html

Then explore the following questions: 

• In what ways does Thomas Builds the Fire act as the trickster in the book and the movie? 
• In what ways does Sherman Alexie as author/screenwriter act as a trickster in his portrayal of events, themes, dialogue, cinematic direction, and other aspects of literature/film?  That is, how does he juxtapose stereotype and “reality,” humor and pathos in a way that disrupts the viewer/reader’s notions of life on the Coeur D’Alene reservation as well as notions of the dominant culture?
• How do other characters or events in the story subvert dominant ideologies with their words or actions?  (for example, Velma and Lucy in the car that drives backwards or Lester Falls Apart and his van “stuck at the crossroads.”)
• How do power relationships interrelate and intersect in Alexie's work?  Discuss how issues of race, ethnicity, class, place, and gender intertwine in the print and film versions of his stories.
• How do Thomas and Victor define themselves as adolescents by either resisting or struggling against dominant ideologies? That is, could it be said that while teenagers in general are acutely focused on how others see them, those outside the dominant culture (such as Thomas and Victor) bear a greater burden in possessing what W.E.B. Dubois calls "double-consciousness" or the constant need to view oneself through the eyes of others in the dominant culture?  If you believe this is true, how are their lives as adolescents complicated by this double-consciousness.

Students could then take a scene from the book and create their own storyboard adaptation of that scene in which they specify the use of shots and music to convey their own interpretation of that scene.