StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Anatomy of Film Scenes - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
The essay "Anatomy of Film Scenes" focuses on the critical analysis of the major issues on the anatomy of film scenes. In the entire history of cinema, literally, hundreds and hundreds of fabled, memorable moments and scenes come from a wide range of films…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER98.6% of users find it useful
Anatomy of Film Scenes
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Anatomy of Film Scenes"

The anatomy of a scene is what comes in to separate the great film into becoming one that is emended in the collective consciousness of a person. Right from the outside looking in, a film comprises a collection of many scenes that are subject to tie together.

Several things help in elevating a film into becoming memorable. These may include having a great concept, a great cast, and a great screenplay. As a film writer, one requires to look at the collective scenes with objectivity and be able to know how he or she would tie it all together, thus being able to turn what may seem to be a loose connection of scenes into becoming a story. A great scene, from an individual view, has the potential of highlighting itself to become the film’s greatest moment, together with having the ability to implement all the movie-making skills. This may entail employing the use of music, camera movements, acting, and scripting, among many other defining roles. The key ingredient that defines a great film scene is having a striking and cinematically beautiful image.

To look at a movie from a critical perspective, there is a need of learning a little bit about the tools that filmmakers use in creating their products. Compared to the state of studying literature, one would require learning more about the methods of identifying similes, metaphors, and symbols. However, when it comes to studying literature, there is a need of identifying the cinematic techniques and theatrical elements and be able to learn how they may affect the audiences. These cinematic elements may include aspects of framing, angle, and camera movements while taking a shot, together with the sound and editing entailed in a film. The theatrical elements may entail aspects like costumes, props, sets, and acting choices. A filmmaker uses cinematic and theatrical elements for achieving a particular purpose, and upon analyzing the film closely, there is a need of explaining the effect that each has on the audience (Haase, 37).

All through the movie filming, the word “shot” is in use repeatedly. A shot refers to a single, uninterrupted image that the viewer will see in a finished film. The shot will end at the time when the camera ‘cuts’ to another image, which is subject to separation by the tiny split second of the black image. The viewer’s eye may not manage to register a ‘black’ image but it is very similar to the blink of an eye. Framing is the first decision a director will make upon designing a shot. The list of choices on the frame entails a close-up, a medium shot, and a long shot. When an actor is subject to frame in a close-up, the viewer will only see the actor’s head, while objects shot in the close-up take most of the screen.

If the actor were to frame in a long shot, the viewer will see the actor’s entire body, implying that the type of framing would appear to be visible from some distance. If the actor is framed in a medium shot, the viewer will see the image from the waist up. A medium shot shows more details in that it reveals more of the surroundings compared to a close-up or long shot. An angle is another component to consider while choosing a scene. Upon deciding on framing, then the question of the angle will present itself. When the director positions the camera below the subject and looks up, it is a low-angle shot. The angle choice has the effect of making the subject appear to be larger and more powerful than it would normally be. When the camera is placed above the object and looking down at it, the director is employing the use of a high-angle. It has the effect of making a character appear smaller than it normally should, thus emphasizing the character’s weakness and powerlessness.

Another cinematic element to consider when choosing the scene is the camera movement within a shot. Each camera movement has its feature and effects. In most cases, one part of the camera will move, while the camera’s body remains in place. When the head of the camera is moving from left to right, or moving from right to left while staying on the horizontal axis, the director is using a pan. This technique is in use as an indication of the setting (Haase, 89). The final element to include in a screenplay is editing, which connects images that the director shot into making a cohesive and coherent narrative. Imaging techniques may include a cut, a fade, a dissolve, cross-cutting, and point-of-view editing. A combination of these cinematic elements and filming techniques helps in deciding on what scene to film and what shots will be needed to film the scene.

Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“A Scene in a Film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 5”, n.d.)
A Scene in a Film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 5. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/visual-arts-film-studies/1685692-film
(A Scene in a Film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 Words - 5)
A Scene in a Film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 Words - 5. https://studentshare.org/visual-arts-film-studies/1685692-film.
“A Scene in a Film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 Words - 5”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/visual-arts-film-studies/1685692-film.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Anatomy of Film Scenes

Lindsay Andersons View of British Class and Society

He was a film critic, documentary, feature film, and theatre director, and a pioneer of the British New Wave and Free Cinema movement.... He later became a film critic for the Sequence Magazine co-founded with his long-life friends Karl Reisz and Gavin Lambert.... He later wrote for Sight and Sound, a journal for the British film Institute and the New Statesman, a left-wing weekly....
9 Pages (2250 words) Essay

The Application of Gender Theory to Boys Dont Cry Film

The paper "The Application of Gender Theory to Boys Don't Cry film" highlights that the film exemplifies several stereotypical norms.... There are some serious concerns between the stereotypical representation of male and female power in film.... The film is of vital merit in terms of identifying gender in films, especially when it comes to the representation of gender roles.... This paper will examine the representation of gender in Boys Don't Cry, describing the key aspects of gender representation both in society and in the film....
6 Pages (1500 words) Research Paper

History Vs. Hollywood

American movie creators sometimes associated with the manipulative schemes such as supplementing inventive scenes in the history; thus, rewriting a new set of events or even called “rape of US history” (McCrisken and Pepper 1).... One of this paradigm is the movie Apocalypto, which is an action epic film regarding the ancient Maya....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

Anatomy of a Murder Movie

The paper "anatomy of a Murder Movie" operates mainly based on questions which can be stated as follows: What is the film about and does it have a theme?... anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 courtroom drama movie directed by Otto Preminger starring James Stewart, Lee Remick, George Scott, Eve Arden, and Ben Gazzara.... The film is about a murder committed by Frederick Manion (played by Ben Gazzara), a US army lieutenant, after finding out that his wife, Laura Manion (played by Lee Remick) was raped by their acquaintance and bar owner Barney Quill....
4 Pages (1000 words) Assignment

The Integration of Special Effects in Films

The term special effect applies to techniques that are used in film, television, and the entertainment industry to realize scenes that cannot be achieved by live-action.... Mechanized, scenes, props, and even "people" in the form of models are involved with these kinds of effects.... Thus in Titanic, there are traditional photographic and CGI special effects as the ship sinks, together with the more traditional type of effects in the scenes where the ship fills with water and the two main characters try to escape....
25 Pages (6250 words) Essay

Lindsay Andersons View of British Class and Society

He later wrote for Sight and Sound, a journal for the British film Institute and the New Statesman, a left-wing weekly.... This was the 1st and most successful film of the loose trilogy that included Oh Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital.... The focus of the paper "Lindsay Anderson's View of British Class and Society" is on examining the view of British Class and society that Lindsay Anderson provides in the films, pioneer of the British New Wave and Free Cinema movement, the use of the word new wave to describe cultural phenomena....
9 Pages (2250 words) Essay

The Distinctive Pleasures and Independent Features

The definition of what makes a film 'independent' has been difficult to clarify with a polarised opinion on whether independent status depends on finance or alternatively Andy Warhol's nihilistic perception of 'independent' as meaning opposition to the dominant media on several fronts (Levy, 1999).... Indeed, King highlights that the narrative of the independent film often subverts the genre, thereby heightening viewer empathy with characters in contrast to the Hollywood approach, which would support the Warhol perception of independent film (King, 2005)....
15 Pages (3750 words) Research Paper

Parodies and Patches in Scary Movie 2

In fact, in the end, far from the title, the movie becomes more of a comedy than horror because, despite parodying and patching scenes from known horror films (that is, films known to have kept to the conventions of horror films), the film becomes its own type of film, one that very much nearly makes a joke of the horror genre.... Scary Movie 2 does this through certain twists in the plot that bring out the joke in these scenes through the use of music.... It parodies and 'patches' scenes from other film texts....
6 Pages (1500 words) Movie Review
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us