CCS 101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Direct Cinema
4 Jun 2018
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CCS 101
Chapter 3: Types of Movies
• narrative - a way of structuring fictional or fictionalized stories presented in narrative films. A
narrative is a story.
• Types of Movies - narrative, documentary, instructional, persuasive, propaganda, experimental,
hybrid
• documentary movies - documentary film is more concerned with the recording or reality, the
education of viewers, or the presentation of political or social analyses; nonfiction but doesn't
always reflect objective truth.
• instructional movies - seek to educate viewers about common interests, rather than persuading
them to accept particular ideas
• persuasive films - concerned with presenting a particular perspective on social issues or with
corporate and environmental injustice of any kind
• propaganda films - systematically disseminate deceptive or distorted information
• direct cinema - a nonfiction filmmaking style; eschew interviewers and limit the use of narrators;
tends to record events as they occur
• experimental movies -
o not commercial; made for very low budgets and with no expectation of financial gain
o personal; they reflect the creative vision of a single artist who typically conceives, writes,
directs, shoots, and edits the movie alone with minimal contributions by others
o do not conform to conventional expectations of story and narrative cause and effect
o exploit the possibilities of the cinema and, by doing so, often reveal (and revel in) tactile and
mechanical qualities of motion pictures that conventional movies seek to obscure.
Experimental films repeatedly remind the viewer that they are watching a movie. They
embrace innovative techniques that call attention to, question, and even challenge their
own artifice.
o critique culture and media; often comment on (and intentionally frustrate) viewer
expectations of what a movie should be
o invite individual interpretation; resist the kind of accessible and universal meaning found in
conventional narrative and documentary films
• hybrid movies - fuse together different film types such as narrative, documentary, and
experimental
• genre - refers to the categorization of narrative films by the stories they tell and the way they tell
them
• common genres include the Western, horror, science-fiction, musical, and gangster film
• genre conventions - movie genres are defined by sets of conventions, aspects of storytelling such
as recurring themes and situations, setting, character types, and story formula, as well as aspects
of presentation and visual style
• theme - a movie's theme is a unifying idea that the film expresses through its narrative or imagery
• setting - where a movie's action is located and how that environment is portrayed; also a common
genre convention
• presentation - most genres feature certain elements of cinematic language that communicate
tone and atmosphere
• character types - genre films are often populated by specific character "types"
• story formulas - the way a movie's story is structured - its plot - also helps viewers determine what
genre it belongs to
• stars - even the actors who star in genre movies factor into how the genre is classified, analyzed,
and received by audiences
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