Question 1

A satirical scene from a romantic comedy features its protagonist daydreaming of his love interest as an angel floating through the air. A slow-motion shot of this woman captures her through a gauzy filter with soft lighting as an overblown choral arrangement plays on the sound track. What is the content of the scene, and what is the form used to express it? Why might such formal elements have been chosen to express the content?

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Question 2

What is the danger in solely analyzing the content of movies?

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Question 3

How do patterns and expectations relate to one another?

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Question 4

How are plays and movies different from each other in regard to the way they usually represent space?

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Question 5

What does mediation have to do with the way the camera captures and represents the outside world?

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Question 6

Use an example of a specific cinematic technique to explain how the camera eye mediates between the world and us.

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Question 7

Explain why it is when we watch a movie, although we are usually unaware of it, we are actually watching a screen with nothing projected on it at all.

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Question 8

How does Alfred Hitchcock's concept of the MacGuffin play upon audience expectations?

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Question 9

Explain, in brief, why it is that movies do not really move but only seem to be moving.

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Question 10

Explain how a movie scene might synthesize elements of mise-en-scène, sound, narrative, and editing to intentionally construct and express meaning.

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Question 11

Explain why a documentary-style drama about the lives of ordinary coal miners and a speculative science fiction film about a future world in which cloning has become an everyday practice might both fit into the category of realism.

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Question 12

Why is it important to recognize the formal differences and similarities among works of art that possess related or even the same content?

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Question 13

Explain how the first high school scene in Donnie Darko manipulates time for thematic effect.

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Question 14

Compare Richard Linklater's Boyhood with the baptism scene from The Godfather. Which manipulates time for expressive effect, and which does so more for pragmatic storytelling purposes, and how?

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Question 15

How might a film's lighting influence the audience to feel about a character? Offer an example from the textbook and an example of your own.

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Quiz 2: Principles of Film Form