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Film Lesson Plans (2015)

Classic Hollywood Style - Invisible Storytelling

On a more fundamental level all films can be boiled down to just two core building blocks:
the shot and the cut. As such, the use of camera and editing are crucial elements of moving
image language.

most conventional and dominant mode of visual storytelling.

The most important aspect of this particular style is that it encourages you the viewer to
become enthralled and captivated by a story but actively discourages you from consciously
noticing the editing and camera techniques that are being used to tell it.

The continuity style deliberately sets out to make the camera, camerawork and editing
invisible or, at the very least, unobtrusive. The events on screen seem to take place within a
world of their own. They look as though they have simply been captured by some kind of
unseen observer, who just happened to be watching and recording the action from
convenient and suitable positions or angles. This is the key to the continuity style; its ability
to tell a story whilst at the same time hiding the storytelling mechanisms themselves.

You, the audience member, are drawn into the narrative. The techniques are deliberately
used in order to effect precisely the right emotional response in you and at the right
moment. The result is seamless and engaging storytelling and great filmmaking can really
make us feel as if we are actually participating in an event.

The continuity style developed as a way to present a story in forward progression…. Early
filmmakers found that, as long as they contained some narrative glue, scenes placed side by
side would be understood as occurring either simultaneously, earlier or later than one

Filmmakers developed formal methods that made shooting relatively quick and easy:

 shoot whatever scenes are most economical to shoot at a given time (shoot out of
sequence when necessary)
 cover any given sequence from as many different angles as possible and with
multiple takes of each angle to give the producer and editor a lot of material to
choose from
 edit the material to create linear continuity, cut on movement, keep eyelines
matched (maintaining the direction a person is gazing from one shot to another)

The continuity style is a form that is economical to reproduce. Once the basic methods of
shooting and editing a film became institutionalised in the early part of the 20th century it
was easy to keep doing it that way. Although every studio during the classical period of
Hollywood production (roughly between the late 1910s to early 1950s) performed slight
variations on the continuity style, its basics were constant and used by everyone.

The basic components of the classical Hollywood style are:

 Narrative flow is pieced together out of small fragments of action in such a way that
the piecing together goes unnoticed and the action appears continuous.
 Sequences that occur at the same time but in different places are intercut to create
narrative tension
 Dialogue sequences are constructed by a series of over-the-shoulder shots from one
participant in the dialogue to the other
 The gaze of the viewer is linked to the gaze of the main characters through a series
of shots that show a character and then show what the character is looking at.

and all narrative threads are sewn together at the end.


Cross Cutting
Cross-cutting or inter-cutting is a primary narrative device of the continuity style. This
technique pieces together sequences that occur at the same time but in different places in
order to increase narrative tension. The literary equivalent of this device is simple narrative
transition such as “meanwhile” or “in another part of town”. Some films borrow these verbal
clues by using inter-titles or voice-over narration.

In terms of technique, Jonathan Demme based a lot of it on his study of Alfred Hitchcock’s
films and in particular how Hitchcock strikes a balance between identification and suspense.
“I have embraced it (the Hitchcock style) more and more in my own quiet way, not
necessarily in terms of visual flamboyance but more in the use of subjective camera and how
to photograph actors to communicate story and character points.”

Point of View Shot

Point of view camera and editing is a key device through which filmmakers create audience
identification with characters in a film. This technique is often used to place the audience in
the position of the main character. The Point of View shot (POV) begins with a character
looking off screen – we then cut to the object the character is looking at.

As Robert P. Kolker explains, in his essay ‘The Film Text and Film Form’ in the Oxford Guide
to Film Studies: “The constant cutting across the gazes of the characters slips us into their
narrative space because we are continually asked by the cutting to expect something more.
Someone looks, and we are primed to respond, ‘What is the character looking at?’ And the
next shot inevitably tells us, by showing the person (or object) being looked at.”
Introducing Genre
Studying Genre


concentrating on the formal and stylistic qualities of films.

with different audiences sharing common expectations and experiences.

Genre Classification

The main identifying characteristics of a film will inevitably fall into one or more of the
following categories, or “repertoire of elements”.

 Iconography
 Setting
 Characters
 Narrative
 Style
 Theme
 Audience Response
 Genre hybrids

Despite often clearly definable characteristics, however, it is important to remember that

genres are not fixed entities, but are instead constantly evolving. Often the boundaries
between genres become blurred. In most cases films represent a “genre hybrid” – or a
combination of attributes from several different genre backgrounds. Studying genre reveals
a pattern of repetition and difference. In other words, some films do have identifiable
similarities, but they also contain new elements or similar elements used in new ways.

Formalism and Realism in the Cinema

The first school of thought to defend film as an art form were the formalists. Formalists
argue that film’s specific property is its inability to perfectly imitate normal visual experience
of reality. Formalists believe that these limitations define the expressive potential of film
and offer the filmmaker the opportunity to manipulate and distort our everyday experience
of reality for artistic ends.
A filmmaker is therefore in a position to express his/her unique vision of the world, made
possible by film’s specific properties – editing, fast and slow motion, the use of low and high
camera angles, etc. It is these specific properties that distinguish film from the other arts and
define film as an art.

Realists believe that by means of its automatic mechanical recording of events, film does
indeed perfectly imitate our normal visual experience of reality. In polar opposition to the
formalists, realists argue that it is film’s ability to imitate reality that defines film as an art
form. Film’s specific property is its photographic representation of reality

To realists such as the French film critic Andre Bazin, the long take and deep focus camera
shots as the elements of film style that realize film’s specific property to imitate reality. By
allowing for a number of actions to be composed in the same shot, deep focus
cinematography dispenses with the need for editing and supports the use of long takes.
Using these two techniques, filmmakers are able to maintain the spatial and temporal unity
of a scene, thus imitating reality (in the eyes of the realists).

These two different approaches date from the very earliest days of filmmaking.

Expessionist Mise-en-scene in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

“The key to understanding this film is to understand the two broad and opposing cultural
traditions operating within it. First, the popular, commercial tradition of story continuity and
realistic imitation of the world. And second, the artistic, non-commercial tradition of
discontinuity, modernism and active transformation of the world….the narrative and
continuity style was a major popular and commercial success.”

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari uses stylised sets, with strange, distorted buildings painted on
canvas backdrops in a theatrical manner. Caligari showed how studio-built sets could
approximate the stylization of Expressionist painting. Performance works hand-in-hand with
the other elements of mise-en-scene. Conrad Veidt’s dance-like portrayal of the sleepwalker
Cesare makes him blend in with the graphic elements of the setting. According to David
Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, “the graphic design of the scene where Cesare’s body
echoes the tilted tree trunks, typifies the systematic distortion characteristic of German

“David Borwell and Kristin Thomson have noted that an actor is always a graphic element in
a film, but a stylised film, like the Cabinet of Caligari, underlines this fact. They point out,
“Conrad Veidt’s dance-like portrayal of the somnambulist Cesare makes him blend in with
the graphic elements of the setting. His body echoes the titled tree trunks. His arms and
hands, their branches and leaves.”

Three Point Lighting
The classical Hollywood studio film is an example of three-point lighting – key, fill and back
lights used in combination to light the subject. Three-point lighting is the most commonly
used lighting scheme and it can enable us to understand how lighting affects one’s
perception of a character or a setting.
The key light is the main source of illumination, but if used alone it will leaves shadows.

Another light is therefore required to fill in these areas of darkness and to soften the
shadows the key light has cast. This has become known as the fill light, a secondary light
source of slightly less intensity than the key light which is placed at eye level.

Yet even this combination of key and fill light is must be supplemented further if a director is
seeking to create a sense of depth. The third light source that provides the necessary depth
is known as the back light, as it is placed above and behind the subject. Used on its own, the
back light alone would create a silhouette of the subject. But the triple combination of key,
fill and back lights, separates the subject from its environment and creates a feeling of

Lighting techniques can be divided into high key or low key categories. A low-contrast ratio
of key and fill light will result in an image of almost uniform brightness. This is termed high-
key lighting. This is a standard, conventional lighting scheme employed in Hollywood genres
such as the musical and the comedy.

A high-contrast ratio of key and fill light will result in low-key lighting, producing dark
shadows and a night time effect, faces will often be bleached white against a black
background. Genres such as horror and film noir employ low-key lighting for its atmospheric
shadows and intense contrast of light and darkness.

Cinematographers use light and shade to direct the audience’s attention to a particular part
of the filmic space. Lighting can often be used as a characteristic of the style of a whole film
or over a number of scenes. The classic Hollywood film is usually characterised by a full
lighting effect – high key lighting. This approach to lighting was developed in the early days
of the studio system to ensure that all of the money spent on creating the image, designing
the set, etc, could clearly be seen.

The use of low-key lighting to create shadows and atmospheric effects originated in German
Expressionist cinema. These stylised techniques were incorporated into the Hollywood style
of lighting in the 1940s and 1950s in a series of films that later became collectively known as
film noir. Many of these films were directed by German émigré directors who had worked
on the original German Expressionist films.

Deep focus cinematography is a technique used to keep several planes of the shot in focus
at the same time (foreground, medium ground, background). By allowing several actions to
be filmed simultaneously, deep focus cinematography offers an alternative approach to the
use of editing to present actions in a series of separate shots. More often than not, directors
employ a combination of deep focus cinematography with extended long takes to enable
them to dispense with editing.

The Influence of Rembrandt

For cinematographers, as well as generations of art lovers, Rembrandt is the acknowledged
master of light and shadow. His chiaroscuro technique has influenced some of the most
important light-cameramen in cinema history. In her study of the relationship between
painting and the cinema, ‘Moving Pictures’, Anne Hollander argues that without the
paintings of the 17th century Dutch master, many of the masterpieces of the cinema would
not have been possible.

“The great Northern European painters”, Hollander writes, “beginning in the 15th century,
used light as if it was alive, inviting it and coaxing it to expand and create its own visions.
Light and shade, the essential components of photographic and cinematographic art, were
first given their true freedom by Rembrandt, their decisive enlargement into the imaginative
world. Moving camera poetry was made possible by him. It was Rembrandt who single-
handedly raised the stakes, and set the standard the camera would have to meet.”

Anne Hollander points to paintings by Rembrandt such as the very late Conspiracy of
Claudius Civilis or the 1646 Adoration of the Sheperds as examples of artwork which
generates a deep emotional response in the viewer through the play of light and shadow:
“Inspired lighting puts the atmosphere into motion, so that it overflows the space and
reaches toward the viewer; meanwhile the figure style and compositional mode suggest
continuous motion in a shifting frame. The result is moving drama without strong colour,
vigorous action or surface detail.”

The BBC series Moving Pictures includes a 20 minute feature on the work of Jack Cardiff in
which he discusses his love of painters such as Vermeer and Rembrandt: “I believe that if
they had existed today, these painters would have been magnificent cameramen. Most of
the painters used a front light which is 45 degrees high which went onto the face making a
shadow under the nose. Here you can see a painting by Rembrandt that uses the same
lighting as this photo-image of Marlene Deitrich.”

From German Expressionism to Film Noir

Standard histories describe film noir as a synthesis of hard-boiled crime fiction and German
expressionism. The visual style of film noir, James Naremore writes, “is characterised by
unbalanced and disturbing frame compositions, strong contrasts of light and dark, the
prevalence of shadows and areas of darkness within the frame, the visual tension created by
curious camera angles and so forth. Moreover, in film noir, these strained compositions and
angles are not merely embellishments or rhetorical flourishes, but form the very substance
of the film.”

The noir world is corrupt, threatening and violent. French film critics saw the typical noir
narrative as an existential nightmare from which the protagonist can never awaken. He is a
doomed figure journeying through an underworld of crime and deception (until the final
betrayal by the femme fatale that he has fallen for). Expressionist lighting schemes and
camera angles convey a sense of entrapment as the hero makes his way through an often
labyrinthine plot.

The meaning of this term of French origin (pronounced “meez-on-sen”) is “put into the
scene” and was first used in theatre in the direction of stage plays.
In the context of the moving image, it describes both the content of what is filmed and the
way in which it has been filmed and signifies the director’s control over what appears in the
film frame.

When studying a film’s Mise-En-Scene the key elements to look at are:

Setting & Props Costume, Hair and Make-Up, Movement, Positioning and Performance
Lighting and Cinematography

Within the context of the Classical Hollywood style, each of the above aspects must be
considered in relation to its significance and function with regards to characterisation and

Setting and Props

Settings used in films are rarely just backgrounds but are integral to creating atmosphere
and building narrative within a film. In some cases a particular location or building can even
be regarded as a character within the film itself.

Prop is a term given to objects which are seen and used within the world of a film (originally
referring to the “properties” of characters). Props, like settings, also contribute significantly
to characterisation and atmosphere but also form an integral part in the action of the film.
Props can often play a very important role in the cause-effect logic of a film’s narrative. They
may also carry symbolic meaning.

Costume and Make-Up

Costume and make-up play a large part in mise-en-scene because they can give you a very
immediate sense not only of a character’s personality but also of their status in the film and
how they function within the world around them. They also give you an instant idea of what
period a film is set in and the culture it is centred around.

Movement, Positioning and Performance

The positioning and movement of characters within a frame is also very significant for both
characterisation and narrative within a film. A filmmaker can successfully draw an audience’s
attention to an important character merely through placing them in the foreground of the
frame. Likewise placing a moving body in a stationary background or vice versa has the same
effect. Positioning can also be used to indicate relationships between people; for example,
creating physical distance between two characters in a frame can indicate emotional
distance that they might be experiencing at that point in the film.

Performance in film includes an actor’s facial expressions and body language. With film’s
ability to create a close-up of an actor’s face, for example, there is a much wider and subtler
range of emotions and feelings that can be conveyed and expressed through the medium by
means of performance. Eyes give particularly important signals when trying to read
someone’s expression. Likewise movement and the way in which actors hold and move their
bodies shows how they are thinking and feeling.
Camera Techniques
Camera Framing
Camera framing refers to three key areas:

Shot Type Camera Positioning Camera Angle

Shot Type - types of shot refer to the positioning and distance between the camera and its
subject. The main types of shot include:

 Long shot
 Medium shot
 Medium close-up
 Close-up

Shot extremes include extreme close-up and extreme long shot

Camera Positioning - In addition to considering framing in terms of shot type, it is also

important to consider shots in relation to their point of view and perspective within the
scene. Where is the camera positioned within the scene?

Camera Angle – A final, important consideration in relation to camera framing is shot angle.
Camera angle can play an important part in a film’s narration strategy (providing an
omniscient bird’s eye view of events, for example). It can also contribute to characterisation
(in increasing a sense of dominance or inferiority, for example). The two main types of angle

 High Angle
 Low Angle

Camera Movement
The main types of camera movement that are used in film are:

 Panning
 Tilting
 Crane
 Tracking
 Zooming

Panning – a panning shot is where the camera moves slowly across from side to side from a
fixed axis.

Tilting – a tilt shot is where the camera moves up and down from a fixed axis.

Crane – a crane shot is where the camera, mounted on crane, moves around at a distance
above ground level.
Tracking – a tracking shot is where the camera follows the action, moving along tracks laid
for that purpose, often pulling backwards from a scene. In some cases, a crane is used to
make it possible to move the camera vertically and horizontally at the same time.

Zooming – a zoom shot is similar to a tracking shot in that it is possible to zoom in (giving the
impression of moving forwards) and out (giving the impression of moving backwards). In the
zoom, however the camera itself remains still and so the effect is a little different. A zoom
enlarges or decreases the size of its subject. This can increase or decrease the subject’s
degree of importance, for example.

Camera Technique and Technology

The Steadicam Shot

The invention of the Steadicam in the late 1970s has enabled directors precise control of
camera movement bringing a virtuosity and sweeping grandeur to tracking camera
movement never before experienced in the cinema Famous examples of the expressive use
of the steadicam occur in the work of directors Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese.

Camera speed
Film’s ability to manipulate time is one of its most distinctive qualities. Slow and Fast Motion
cinematography are achieved by varying the speed of the camera during filming. Directors
can use camera speed for a variety of expressive purposes. Action movies will often employ
slow motion to extend the feeling of terror or suspense in key scenes of high drama and

On its most basic level, editing is simply the joining together of individual shots to create
visual sequences.

There are different types of editing joins that can be used between shots, and each can
serve a different purpose or function within a narrative:

The most common means of joining two shots together is the cut. In traditional filmmaking
this involves literally trimming film with a sharp edge or razor and splicing shots together
with tape or adhesive cement. Even though most editing is now carried out digitally and
doesn’t actually involve the physical slicing of film the term “cut” is still used. Fittingly, most
digital editing systems use razor or scissor icons to represent cutting.

A fade-out darkens the end of a shot, turning it into black.

A fade-in, by contrast, lightens a shot from black.

A dissolve briefly overlaps shots by superimposing the end of one shot onto the beginning of

A wipe switches from one shot to a second shot by moving a boundary line across the screen.
Continuity Editing
The basic purpose of Continuity Editing is to arrange shots together so they tell a story in a
clear and easily understandable way. If footage is edited correctly in this style it should be
seamless and we will too be focused on the story itself to notice the editing. That’s why this
editing style is often called “invisible editing.”

The role of the editor is to take a selection of different footage filmed earlier, and to weave
it together, creating an apparently seamless narrative, complete with the illusion of space
and time. By sticking to a number of key principles, continuity editing succeeds in creating
the appearance of continuous action, manipulating your viewing expectations and emotions,
and ideally positioning you the viewer so that you become involved and engaged in the

The key techniques and principles used in Continuity Editing are:

 The 180 Degree Rule / Axis of Action

 The Eyeline Match
 Shot-Reverse-Shot
 Point of view Cutting
 The Match on Action
 Directional Continuity
 Cross or Inter-Cutting

180 Degree Rule / Axis of Action – We’ve already mentioned that the role of continuity is to
create a sense of unity in terms of space and time so that you as a viewer become fully
involved in the story on a number of emotional levels. This also involves “positioning” you
and giving you the best possible view of the action. If you go to the theatre, the action takes
place on a stage space surrounded by three walls. You, as a member of the audience are, in
a sense, looking through an invisible fourth wall. Borrowing the same idea, the assumption
in film is that shots will be filmed and cut together so that you, the audience, will always be
on the same side of the story’s action – occupying the position of that invisible fourth wall.
This creates an imaginary “180 degree axis of action” which acts as an invisible boundary for
the direction of on-screen movements, character positions and glances in a scene and which
the camera should not go beyond.

Eyeline Match – In the eyeline match, a character in one shot looks over at something that is
off-screen (or out of the frame) and a cut to the next shot reveals the object the character is
looking at. The line of the character’s glance has therefore “matched” the two separate
shots together, creating a sense of coherence and spatial orientation. The point of view of
you, the viewer, is successfully linked to the point of view of the main character, again
increasing your identification with him/her and your emotional involvement in the film’s

Shot-Reverse Shot – This is a classical device which can be used in a number of ways, but
most often is seen in basic dialogue sequences. The dialogue begins with a two-shot of the
participants in the scene. The cutting pattern then starts as a series of over-the-shoulder
shots from one participant to the other.
Point of view cutting - this is a variant of the eyeline match. The structure is the same: a
character looks off screen – we then cut to the object the character is looking at. However,
what distinguishes point of view cutting is that the object is shown from the character’s
optical vantage point – i.e. directly through the character’s eyes. (So if the character is
drunk, for example, this might mean that the shot is deliberately out of focus with the
camera moving from side to side – a rolling shot). This particular technique is even more
powerful in terms of how effectively it places the audience in the position of the main

Match on Action – in the match on action cut, the cut from one shot to another occurs when
an action is being performed, in which the action is continued from one shot to the next. It’s
this continuity of the same action across the cut which creates coherence and orientation,
helping you the viewer find your bearings.

Directional Continuity - this refers to the movements of characters/objects across the

frame. For example, if a character exits the shot from the right of the screen, he should
enter the next shot from the left of the screen, moving in the same direction.

Cross or Inter-Cutting – this technique is a primary narrative device and pieces together
sequences that occur at the same time but in different places in order to increase narrative
tension. The literary equivalent of this device is simple narrative transition such as
“meanwhile” or “in another part of town”. Some films borrow these verbal clues by using
inter-titles or voice-over narration.

inter-titles or voice-over narration.

Soviet Montage
The Soviet filmmakers who emerged in the aftermath of the 1917 October revolution in
Russia were part of an artistic avant-garde committed to innovation and experimentation
and the creation of new artistic practices. Directors Sergei Eisenstein and V. I. Podovkin were
part of the formalist tradition in film history. These Russian directors believed that editing
was the foundation of film art and they set out to shatter the illusionistic storytelling and
seamless continuity cultivated by Classical Hollywood. The pattern of editing established by
Hollywood pioneer D.W. Griffith (1915) in his films The Birth of A Nation (1915) and
Intolerance (1919) taught these filmmakers how different shots sizes and camera angles
could be combined together in the editing suite with powerful narrative force. The Soviet
filmmakers wished to harness the power of cinema as a tool of education and propaganda
and they therefore wished to go much further than simply entertaining audiences with
spectacle and historical romance.
The medium of film could be used to shock, excite and disturb a cinema audience. In the
three films he made in the 1920s about the revolutionary struggle of the Russian masses –
Strike, Battlleship Potemkin and October - Eisenstein pushed the boundaries of this new
medium with his radical approach to film editing (known as montage). In the Odessa Steps
sequence of Battlleship Potemkin (1925), the director created one of the most influential
sequences in cinema history. Battlleship Potemkin and Eisenstein’s theory of montage has
inspired directors such as Alfred Hitchcock

As Marilyn Fabe explains: “Eisenstein held that proper film continuity should not proceed
smoothly, but through a series of shocks. Whenever possible, he tried to create some kind of
visual conflict or discontinuity between two shots with the goal of creating a jolt in the
spectator’s psyche. The visual explosions on the screen were intended to create a continual
source of stimulants or shocks to keep the audience wide awake.” “The dynamics of
montage serve as impulses driving forward the total film”, Eisenstein wrote.

For Eisenstein conflict was created by the juxtaposition of shots of high visual contrast. In
Battlleship Potemkin, An extreme long shot of fleeing crowds cuts immediately to an
extreme close–up of the legs of a man about to fall down the steps. Directional continuity is
also disrupted. A shot of the crowd fleeing towards the left of the screen is followed by an
image of the crowd fleeing in the opposite direction. Similarly shot composition also created
visual dissonance and disunity. A shot emphasising vertical movement down the vast Odessa
steps cuts to a shot composed along horizontal lines. Diagonal lines from the left are
juxtaposed with diagonal lines from the right.

The dramatic impact of Soviet Montage broke all the rules of the smooth, invisible editing of
the Classical Hollywood Style. A style of filmmaking that evolved to immerse the audience in
emotional effect – to bring the audience to the edge of their seat, and in the case of the
Odessa Steps sequence, to push the viewer towards a feeling of vertigo. As Marilyn Fabe
points out, the time-bending techniques of Soviet Montage pushed the cinema beyond the
realism of Hollywood into new psychological territory. “Eisenstein was not striving to give us
a literal, realistic picture of the massacre on the steps. Through his innovative, time-
expanding film technique, he conveys the subjective reality of what it would feel like to be
trapped in a traumatic situation that seemingly goes on forever. In the Odessa Steps
sequence Eisenstein creates the time-space continuum of a nightmare from which there is
no waking.”

“Eisenstein’’s theory of montage was built around the collision and conflict of images and
ideas.” (Renny Bartlett)