Piper - The film appreciation book : the film course you always wanted to take

Copyright 2014 by Jim Piper

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Allworth Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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Published by Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018

Allworth Press is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

www.allworth.com

Cover design by Chris Ritchie

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Print ISBN: 978-1-62153-435-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62153-447-1

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

About the Book

C onsider the book you are holding to be your own Film 101 course, a beginners course in film appreciation, or film study if you like.

I assume you have already seen lots of movies, and know what types of motion pictures you favor over others. You know what actors you like or dislike. You may also know something about film directors, and eagerly await new releases from your favorites. In this sense, you are at a tremendous advantage over the art appreciation student, who may not have visited many galleries, or the music appreciation student, who may not know much about Viennese composers. And of course, your vast movie-going experience has informed you, at least intuitively, about plotthat is, how matters should wrap up and give your viewing experience a sense of being whole. You know when youve been cheated because the story ends implausibly or with a thud. When the story ends agreeablynot always happilyyou leave the theatre (or eject the DVD from your player) with a sense of fulfillment.

But if you were to enroll in an actual Film 101 course at a college or university, the chances are your professor would take you beyond mere plot, to matters such as framing, composition, lighting, and digital imaging. Certainly she would drop in a little film history and theory so youd know how, why, and when certain techniques originated, and which filmmakers first tried them out. Shed want you to know how film editors work, and how they shape your response to a movie. There is a whole world of film sound shed want to introduce you tomusic, sound effects, mixing, and dubbing. And finally, meaning: your film professor will likely invite you to explore various kinds of meaning in the films she shows you. She might have you consider film as literature.

But you will get as much from this bookanalyses of images, cuts, sounds, and overall meaning. I explain why and show you how.

M OVIES INTO F ILM

When you do allow your professor (or this book) to present motion pictures to you in these ways, a magic thing happens: you may turn movies into films. Its a good thing we have these two words in our language. Movies are largely entertainments, gobbled down and forgotten like a cheap, drive-thru hamburger. Films, on the other hand, have potential to be works of art or literature. They have staying power. They continue to move us decade after decade.

William Wylers The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and Katherine Bigelows The Hurt Locker (2008) deliver truths about war. Best Years conveys truths about the end of WWII, when people didnt know what to do with their lives. The Hurt Locker is about addiction to risk and danger, even death. Your typical movie presents life as we wish it to bewhen people went back to work and family as usual after war or were totally unaffected by combat. Wyler and Bigelow knew better.

We may disagree. What might be a film for me could be a movie to you. And vice versa. But if you take my invitation to get serious about photography, editing, and soundas well as meaningyou may begin to perceive art, truth, and something close to real life in the motion pictures of your life, and thus enrich your film viewing experience. You might also enrich your life.

T O THE I NTERNET

Just as a film professor would show you still images, clips, and entire films, I am going to take you to the Internet now and then to show you clips of significance. And Ill suggest dozens of noteworthy films for you to watch.

Since paper books do not, as you know, let you navigate the Internet, I cant just drop them in this book.

But I have a solution. It involves visiting the website SkyhorseSupplements.com, and following the link for the supplement to The Film Appreciation Book. As you read the book, you will note many suggested links. For example, here is a page from the chapter called Composition:

O VERHEAD S HOTS

These are shots taken from a camera placed directly over the subject. There is seldom a need for such shots in most films. But in Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo (1958) there is considerable need as James Stewart goes all queasy when he finds himself in high places. Below is a link to a scene that contains two cutaways meant to simulate Stewarts condition of vertigo as he forces Kim Novak to climb rickety stairs in an old California historical landmark.

Vertigo

www.youtube.com/watch?v=je0NhvAQ6fM

The Vertigo effect , as it is now famously known, was produced by simultaneously tracking out and zooming in, like ELSs set in deserts. There is little to obstruct panoramic views.

The supplement contains the same links as those in the book. Read the book with a computer of some sortlaptop, tablet, smartphoneat your side and toggle from book to computer, then back to the book. Or wait until you finish a chapter and bring up all the links for that chapter one after the other.

The trouble with links

... is that in time some of the sites they take you to may disappear or become altered so much that they are of no use to us. Though I have tested and retested these links many times, expect 5 or 10 percent of my links to be inoperable by the time you read this book. If so, you can usually bring them up yourself with a quick search. For example, if you cant reach the shower scene in Psycho with my link, try going to YouTube on your computer and searching Psycho shower scene.

These changes will be updated regularly in the supplement.

Some clips and trailers on YouTube have commercials you have to sit through. I cant stop this. Fortunately these commercials are brief and often can be skipped before they finish.

Redirect notices

... look like this:

The previous page is sending you to felicelog.blogspot.com/2009/11/cold-mountain-2003-photo-gallery.html. If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page.

I H AVE ...

... taught film appreciation and filmmaking for thirty years in a California community college. I have reached students of all ages and walks of lifebecause community colleges have wider doors than any other level of higher education. They just do not exclude. I even had a blind student who did very well in the film study class with the help of her sighted daughter. Plus I had a nearly blind student in the filmmaking class who did a mostly black film with sound that suggested what it was like to be blind.