Midterm: Q&A

1. What are the two types of montage?

• Collision Montage: emotion from the viewer is not as predicable. Don’t always know how the audience will respond. It can have a good and bad effect. “Two events collide to enforce a concept feeling or idea. The conflict creates tension.”
• Compliment Montage: An expected emotion from the viewer. “These comprise of shots that are juxtaposed to thematically related events to rein enforce a basic theme or idea. Thematic related events are compared to reinforce a general theme.”

2. What does the editing affect?

• Editing can affect the way the audience interprets certain pictures. Montage editing, created by Lev Kuleshov, demonstrated that two unrelated shots can create an emotion from the audience. Directors from there saw that they could control shot A and shot B, but not C which is the viewers emotion. There can be some negatives but also positives to this effect.

3. Describe the Golden Era of Hollywood

• 1930-1947 Also known as the Golden Era. “During the Golden Age of Hollywood, which lasted from the end of the silent era in American cinema in the late 1920s to the early 1960s, films were prolifically issued by the Hollywood studios. The start of the Golden Age was arguably when The Jazz Singer was released in 1927”
• Used to be 5 major film companies.
• 52 movies/year or 1 movie/week. Each movie theatre had 2 movies, the Feature and the B movie (which was not made by major film production)
• Creation of sound was during this era.

4. Who is Edward Porter? What movie did he make?

• Edwin Porter (The Great Train Robbery) 1903
• Edwin Porter proved that cutting certain shots could make a movie. Such as inter cutting 2 shots that have nothing to do with each other.

5. Name the 3 different motion pictures? Explain


• Primary: which is real life motion. Need coverage (different angles taken for a certain shot).
• Secondary: the camera motion. Pan: (camera is moving from left to right), swish pan (faster than 24 frames), tilt: (camera is on a tripod and moving up to down), zoom: (bringing stuff closer, change focal point of the lens; wide angle, telephoto, aperture) vs. push in, dolly: (literally moving back or forward), track or truck, reveal.
• Tertiary: the last element, editing. Match cut, graphic cut, transitional shots, parallel editing (two events are happening simultaneously and they will come together), vectors…

6. Who is D.W. Griffin?

• 1913 D.W Griffith (The Birth of a Nation)
• D.W Griffith was first director for psychological editing. His mastery in close up revolutionized film grammar. He also started the invisible cut (mask the cut to make it more fluid).

7. What/when and who created the first movie?

• The First Motion Picture Ever Made – The Horse In Motion (1878) Eadweard Muybridge’s
• First Home Movie Ever Made – Roundhay Garden Scene (1888)
• First Movie Ever Made for Projection — Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895)

8. What year was sound integrated in movies? What was that period called?

• 1927 Movies with sound à The Jazz Singer was released in 1927
• 1930-1947 Also known as the Golden Era

9. What are the 2 types of reveals?

• Story reveals
• Camera reveals: Shot pans to reveal more about the situation.

10. What is the assembly line model, and who created it?

• 1930: Editing was made into an industry. There were classic Hollywood forms/mode. I.e.: D.W Griffith – Assembly line model
• a)     Establishing Shot (Master shot/Wide shot)
• b)    Two Shot (Medium shot)
• c)     Close up
• The general model goes from a wide shot to smaller one. The term used is coverage.
• WWII starts of juxtaposition (Third thing or the tertium quid)
• Shot A + Shot B (marrying the shot together)= emotion from the viewer.
• You can control shot a and b but not c.

11. What is the difference between Vertical and Horizontal integration?

• Vertical integration: which is to own the top to bottom. Vertical integration is when the film industry controls everything. Just like a closed house. Back in the day, producers were more in charge with their films than they are now. “Management control”
• Horizontal integration: Product Placement, Ads, Video games, Kids game made before/after the movie (even the toys from McDonalds). Product tie ins are more important. One must consider who is writing, merchandizing, advertising, and product placement… The money comes from a whole bunch of different sources, but with certain restrictions and limits to the creativity and freedom of the movie. “Horizontal integration occurs when a firm is being taken over by, or merged with, another firm which is in the same industry and in the same stage of production as the merged firm […] The goal of horizontal integration is to consolidate like companies and monopolize an industry.”

12. How did the Russian Revolution affect film editing?

• “Propaganda films began to emerge. Certain cuts were used to foster a specific psychological and emotional affect from the audience members.”

13. How did television and the rise of the suburbs contribute to the end of the Golden Era of Hollywood?

• Hurt the film business because people were living further from the city where movies where being shown.
• 1946 the year the TV was invented.
• 1948 The government started to take control over the big studios creating this anti trust act (divorcement).

14. What is unique about Polygram Films’ business model?

• Polygram is horizontal, yes and no.
• Yes: Because a big studio owned it: Philips, GE.
• No: polygram pictures. Take a chance on a movie. Letting people create without restriction.
• Polygram was based on the (record) label system “A record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Often, a record label is also a company that manages such brands and trademarks; coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing, promotion, and enforcement of copyright for sound recordings and music videos; conducts talent scouting and development of new artists (“artists and repertoire” or “A&R”); and maintains contracts with recording artists and their managers.”

15. What 12 minute movie is considered “a milestone in film making” and why?

• “The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American Western film written, produced, and directed by Edwin S. Porter. The film used a number of innovative techniques including composite editing, camera movement and on location shooting.”

16. Describe what mise-en-scene is and how each aspect of it contributes to a film.

• Mise-en Scene
: The term usually used to denote that part of the cinematic process that takes place on the set, as opposed to editing, which takes place afterwards. Literally, the “putting-in-the-scene”:
• 1. Decor (properties)
• 2. Lighting (Director of photography)
• 3. Camera position angles (Director of photography)
• 4. Blocking (actors?)
• 5. Costumes
• *Sound

17. What are some of the differences between “The Golden Age” and now?

• “The mode of production came to be known as the Hollywood studio system and the star system, which standardized the way movies were produced.”
• “All film workers (actors, directors, etc.) were employees of a particular film studio à results in a certain uniformity to film style: directors were encouraged to think of themselves as employees rather than artists, and hence auteurs did not flourish.”
• “The Hollywood Studio System was controlled by the Big 8 studios, however, the Big 5 fully integrated studios were the most powerful. Big 5 à MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, and RKO. They all operated their own theater chains and produced and distributed films as well. The ‘Little 3’ studios (Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists) were also full-fledged film factories but they lacked the financial resources and therefore produced fewer A-class features, which were the foundations of the studio system.”

18. What contributed to the end of the Golden Age in Hollywood?

• Suburban life: people spreading out of the city
• Collapse of the studio system,
• Television’s invention
• Auteurism among directors and its growing popularity
• Increasing influence of foreign films and independent filmmaking.
• The 1948 U.S. Supreme Court decision, which outlawed the practice of block booking and the ownership and operation of theater chains by the major film studios (as it was believed to constitute anti-competitive and monopolistic trade practices)

19. Who was Margaret Booth and what did she do?

• Started her Hollywood career as a ‘patcher’, editing films by D. W. Griffith, around 1915.

20. What’s the difference between “Off Line Editing” and “On Line Editing”?


Offline Editing: are often women who cut the story together (a.k.a: rough cut).

• “where the raw footage is copied and edited, without affecting the camera original film stock or video tape. Once the offline editing is done à Online editing.
• The term offline originated in the computing and telecommunications industries, meaning “not under the direct control of another device” (automation).
• Modern offline video editing is conducted in a non-linear editing (NLE) suite. The editor and director are then free to work with all the options to create the final cut.”

Online Editing: mostly men. Once the story is finished, the technical stuff comes into play. They get paid more money.

• “Online editing is a post-production linear video editing process that is performed in the final. Occurs after offline editing.
• The term online originated in the telecommunication industry, meaning “Under the direct control of another device” (automation).”

21. Now days, what do we see more in films “Vertical Integration” or “Horizontal Integration”? Explain what it is.

• Nowadays, we see more horizontal integration because of product placement, big studios…
• “Studios seek content that can move fluidly across media channels” Horizontal seeks to merge similar companies into one big one for competitive advantages. Vertical aims for the raw material resources or the distribution.

22. What is parallel editing? Why is this technique used?


• Also known as cross cutting, is the technique used to alternate between two or more scenes “that often happen simultaneously but in different locations. If the scenes are simultaneous, they occasionally culminate in a single place, where the relevant parties confront each other.” To assimilate two simultaneous scenes together and making them come together. It is used to interest and/or excite the audience. It is also used to build suspense.

23. Who was Georges Méliès? What is he best known for?

• 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938 was a French filmmaker “famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema.” Melies was the inventor of “special effects, accidentally discovered the substitution stop trick in 1896 (and hand-painted color in his work).”
• A Trip to the Moon (1902); The Impossible Voyage (1904) The Great Train Robbery.