Chapter 8

Summary: Style as a Formal System

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The Concept of Style

• Together the film techniques studied so far interact to create style.

• Style in turn interacts with the total film.• Style can refer to one particular filmmaker’s

tendencies, or the group style of several filmmakers together.

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Creative Decisions: Style and the Filmmaker

• The filmmaker must make deliberate choices about what techniques to employ.

• Sometimes filmmakers will select techniques to point out story parallels, narrative contrasts, or to reflect the progression of the story.

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Decision Making: Techniques Working Together

• Filmmakers look for ways to incorporate parallels.

• Some filmmakers incorporate several techniques.

• Sometimes the techniques are planned and others are spontaneous.

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Watching and Listening: Style and the Viewer

• The viewer has expectations about style.• The film’s style can confirm expectations,

modify, cheat, or challenge them.• The director directs our attention and shapes

our reaction, which is part of style.

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Analyzing Film Style Step 1: Determine the Organizational Structure

• The first step is understand how the film is put together as a whole.

• Examine narrative films in terms of plot, story, causality, time, and space.

• Analyze the pattern of development. • Look for variations in restricted and

unrestricted knowledge.

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Step 2: Identify the Salient Technique Used

• Spot things such as color, lighting, framing, cutting, and sound and identify them.

• Identify which play a role in the overall effect of the film.

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Step 3:Trace Out Patterns of Techniques

• Look at how the salient techniques are patterned.

• Analyze based your expectations and whether they are fulfilled.

• Spot ways in which the style reinforces patterns of formal organization, although sometimes stylistic patterning will not respect the overall structure of the film.

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Step 4: Propose Functions for the Salient Techniques and the Patterns They Form

• Look for the role that the style plays in the overall form.

• Analyze the effects of the film on our viewing experience in areas such as emotion, meaning, and directing our attention.

• Imagining alternatives can help identify the functions of salient techniques.

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Style in Citizen Kane

• The beginning sets up a mystery through the eerie opening, which sets up a pattern of penetration into space.

• This movement is reversed at the end, echoing the opening.

• Knowledge is restricted to what Kane’s acquaintances know.

• Only camera movement offers broader, sometimes omniscient knowledge.

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Style in Citizen Kane

• Deep-focus cinematography is used to direct attention to mise-en-scene.

• Contrasts between Kane’s early and late life is emphasized through mise-en-scene.

• Parallels in sound, music, editing patterns, deep focus, and deep space emphasize the contrasts.

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Style in Citizen Kane

• The newsreel gives a map to the upcoming plot events and establishes Kane’s power and wealth.

• It is set apart through music, insert titles, different film stocks, and printing techniques and documentary footage.

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Style in Citizen Kane

• Shock cuts shift us from the narrator’s present to the recounting of past events, creating surprise and separating one portion of the plot from another.

• Transitions that compress or skip time are less abrupt.

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