Film Analysis

NOTES DONE

Verisimilitude: How real the world of the story appears to the audience - e.g. is it believable?
Diegesis-diegetic world: The world in which the film takes place.
Juxtaposition: Placing one object next to another to create meaning.
Narrative theory: Theories that categorise narratives and find features to common to them.

Levi-Stauss and Binary Opposition: "Cinema is a set of universal rules, a set of relations that could be described as the grammar of film."
Levi-Strauss theorised that since all cultures are products of the human brain, there must be, beneath the surface, features that are common to all.
Structuralism attempted to deromanticise the filmmaker as auteur and apply a more scientific approach to uncover the underlying structures of film.

Levi-Strauss Binary Opposition: Narrative tension is based on opposition or conflict. This can be as simple as two characters fighting, but more often functions at an ideological level. Examples......

• Good vs Evil
• Black vs White
• Boy vs Girl
• Peace vs War
• Young vs Old 

Vladimir Propp was a Russian and Soviet formalist scholar.
He analysed the plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their basic narrative elements. He came to the conclusion they are made up of 31 plot elements, which he called functions.

Propp's 8 Character Types: The Villain, The Helper, The princess or prize, Her Father, The Donor, The Hero, The False Hero, The Dispatcher.

Todorovs Theory: Todorov proposed a basic structure for all narratives. He stated that films and programmes begin with an equilibrium (a calm period). Then agents of disruption causes disequilibrium (a period of unsettlement and disquiet). This is then followed by a renewed state of peace and harmony for the protagonists and a new equilibrium brings the chaos to an end.

Action + Enigma Codes (Roland Barthes)
Action Codes: What will happen next...
                        She falls over - will he catch her?
                        She has been caught - what will he do with her?

Enigma Codes: The audience questions why...
                          Why is there a shoe on the floor?


Denotation is what you can see - for example, a red sports car.
Connotation is the meaning you derive from a text. When analysing a text it is important to consider connotations.

Rick Altman argues that genre offers audiences a set of pleasures:
Emotional
Visceral (gut response i.e excitement, fear, laughter)
Intellectual (Does it make you think)

Get out is a horror/thriller (hybrid)

Horror Genre Conventions:
White girl ('final girl').
protagonist - resourceful, virgin, abstains from drugs/drinking - sole survivor.
Black teenager dies first.

Mise-en-scene - Setting is a quite, suburban neighbourhood - leafy, long wide streets. (mainly for 80s slasher films) Normally white n middle class.

Sound - eery music, one instrument (string or drum), used to create jump scare, often with silence between.

Editing - Longer takes/cuts, followed by quick cuts for jump scares.

ContraPunctual Music - When music contradicts what is going on the screen.

If a film does not go with the conventions, that means it subverts the conventions.

Get Out starts of with the very stereotypical beginning - leafy long road.
One long take - 1 min 52 secs in and no cuts.

One long take - zooms out to show the 'groundskeeper'.