Syllabus (this is tentative and likely to change!)

Course meets once per week (remember, it's a 2MC module)

Week 1

Introduction to motion picture technology

Cognition and motion pictures

Differences between motion pictures, still photos, and live productions

Realism, formalism, and ‘classical’ cinema.

Readings:

Group A:
Allen, Richard. 1993. “Representation, Illusion, and the Cinema” Cinema Journal 32:2 pp. 21-48.

Group B:
Baudry, Jean-Louis, and Alan Williams (transl.). 1974-5. “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus” Film Quarterly 28:2 pp. 39-47.

All:
 Giannetti, Louis. 2014. Understanding Movies. Thirteenth Edition. Boston: Pearson. pp. 2-8, 233-246, 453-464.
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Week 2

Lighting, Contrast, and Color

An examination of the meaning produced by different qualities of light, levels of contrast, keys, and color pallettes. We look at standard lighting set ups used to achieve particular lighting strategies. We examine the stylized uses of lighting and contrast in expressionist and noir films and the psychological or artistic effects it is intended to have.

Readings

Maszerowska, Anna. 2012. “Casting the Light on Cinema: How Luminance and Contrast Patterns Create Meaning” MonTI 4 pp. 65- 85.

Giannetti, pp. 17-28.

Assignment 1 (3%):
Film clip: Lighting

Students make two short (~15 second) clips of the same mundane activity lit and colored in two different ways, accompanied by brief written explanation.


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Week 3

Aspect ratio, Angles, Focal Lengths, Depth of Field, and Point of View

An examination of standard cinematic aspect ratios, shots and the common meanings they are used to produce. Technical discussion of lens length and depth of field, manipulation of figure/ground, variation in angle and its effects and the use of frame dimensions for creating meaning.

Readings

Giannetti, pp. 9-16, 29-33.

Assignment 2 (3%):
Film clip: Lighting + Angle/PoV

Students make two short (~15 second) clips of the same mundane activity lit in two different ways and with two different shots/angles, accompanied by brief written explanation.
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Week 4

Editing: Continuity Editing

An examination of classical continuity editing beginning with early work by D.W Griffith, and a consideration of the basis on which, and consequences of how, such editing works in cognitive terms. We look at the manipulation of spatiality and temporality through the use of establishing shots, jump cuts, re-establishing shots, reaction shots, elision, the 180° rule, and the construction of continuity and comprehensibility.

Readings

Berliner, Todd, and Dale J. Cohen. 2011. “The Illusion of Continuity: Active Perception and the Classical Editing System” Journal of Film and Video 63:1 pp. 44-63.

Dancyger, Ken. 2011. The Technique of Film and Video Editing New York: Focal Press [pp. 3-32 Chapter 1: The Silent Period (Griffith and Eisenstein)]

Assignment 3 (3%):
Film Clip: Continuity editing

Students produce a 30 second film clip of a single everyday activity using forms of continuity editing, and including lighting, shot, and point of view, accompanied by brief written explanation.
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Week 5

Montage Editing

Focus on early soviet techniques of montage to produce meaning, how it works cognitively, and its continued importance in current cinema. Unlike continuity editing, in which the process of editing serves a broader narrative, meaning in montage editing is created through juxtaposition—it is the juxtaposition that matters. Montage editing creates a dialectic that the viewer must synthesize organically, and it is here where early theorists felt that film reached its most compelling potential.

Readings

Bordwell, David. 1972. “The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film” Cinema Journal 11:2 pp. 9-17.

Giannetti, Ch. 4.

Assignment 4 (3%):
Film clip: Montage editing

Students produce a 30 second film clip using forms of montage editing, and including lighting, shot, and point of view, accompanied by brief written explanation.
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Week 6

Sound and Score

An examination of the role of sound and music in creating meaning, tone, and continuity, including scores, special effects, themes, and sound genres. We examine the distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic sound (i.e. whether the characters can hear the sounds or only the audience can), the connection between sound and image, and the use of different/recurrent sounds—and at times silence--for particular effects.

Readings

Rogers, Holly. 2015. “Music, Sound, and the Non-fiction Aesthetic” in Holly Rogers, ed. Music and Sound in Documentary Film. New York: Routledge. pp. 1-19.

Giannetti, Ch. 5

Assignment 5 (3%):
Film Clip: Sound effect

Students create a sound effect and apply it to one of their previous clips, accompanied by brief written explanation.
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Week 7

Mise en Scène

Defined here roughly as the arrangement of visual elements in the frame, mise en scène involves casting three dimensional space into two dimensions of the screen while maintaining key properties of three dimensional space, and possibly projecting out into the space of the audience as well. Mise en scène draws on a complex manipulation of lighting, angle, aspect ratio, proxemics, frame density, open/closed arrangements, and perspective to create its various meanings.

Readings

Gibbs, John. 2002. Mise-en-scène: Film style and interpretation. London: Wallflower. [pp. 5-26 Chapter 1: The elements of mise-en- scène]

Giannetti, Ch. 2

Assignment 6 (5%):
Still photo: Mise en scène

Students produce two still photos of the same subject using different arrangements of aspect ratio, lighting, perspective and arrangement to create a contrasting sense of mise en scène across two images, accompanied by brief written explanation.
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Week 8

Movement and Kinetics

As a central defining feature of motion pictures, movement within the frame is configured in complex ways. Velocity and acceleration, trajectories, and even stasis can be depicted in a wide variety of ways to create meaning and evoke particular emotions or sensibilities. Whether the motion is a property of the figure or ground, whether something moves towards or away from the camera, the cultural conventions associated with different directions of movement, and the manner of motion all contribute to the complex and polysemous meanings that movement and kinetics evince.

Readings Giannetti, Ch. 3

Assignment 7 (20%):
  One Minute Film due

Max. 1 minute of footage of an everyday activity with demonstrated attention to lighting, angle, editing, sound, mise en scène, and motion.
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Week 9

Representing the ‘Real’
Documentaries and other ‘realist’ genres of motion pictures have a complicated relation to reality. Premised on presenting undistorted reality or ‘truth’, documentaries nevertheless rely on the same meaning-making technologies as other motion pictures and thus are also mediated and constrained to a particular perspective. This unit will examine how documentaries manipulate perspective and emotion to advance arguments and agendas.

Readings

Group A:
Egginton, William. 2001. “Reality is Bleeding: A Brief History of Film from the Sixteenth Century” Configurations 9:2 pp. 207-229.

Group B:
Stadler, Jane, and Kelly McWilliam. 2009. Screen Media: Analyzing Film and Television. Allen & Unwin. [pp. 185-214 Chapter 7: Reality and Realism]
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Week 10

Culture, Cinema, and Meaning

The meanings produced by motion picture technologically are not necessarily understood universally in the same way. This unit examines potential differences in cinematic meaning based on cross- cultural expectations and culturally dependent cognitive ‘styles’, including different conceptions of figure/ground relations, and the culturally-conditioned meanings of color.

Readings

Barratt, Daniel. 2014. “The Geography of Film Viewing: What are the Implications of Cultural-Cognitive Differences for Cognitive Film Theory?” in Ted Nannicelli and Paul Taberham, eds. Cognitive Media Theory New York: Routledge pp. 62-82.
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Week 11

Film/genre analysis presentation

Students select either a film genre, the work of a particular director, or the work of a particular cinematographer and analyse how they use the technologies discussed in the module to create a discernible ‘style’.
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Week 12

Film/genre analysis presentation, continued.
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Readings (These are subject to change!)

Allen, Richard. 1993. “Representation, Illusion, and the Cinema” Cinema Journal 32:2 pp. 21-48.

Barratt, Daniel. 2014. “The Geography of Film Viewing: What are the Implications of Cultural-Cognitive Differences for Cognitive Film Theory?” in Ted Nannicelli and Paul Taberham, eds. Cognitive Media Theory New York: Routledge pp. 62-82.

Baudry, Jean-Louis, and Alan Williams (transl.). 1974-5. “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus” Film Quarterly 28:2 pp. 39-47.

Berliner, Todd, and Dale J. Cohen. 2011. “The Illusion of Continuity: Active Perception and the Classical Editing System” Journal of Film and Video 63:1 pp. 44-63.

Bordwell, David. 1972. “The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film” Cinema Journal 11:2 pp. 9-17.

Dancyger, Ken. 2011. The Technique of Film and Video Editing New York: Focal Press [pp. 3-32 Chapter 1: The Silent Period (Griffith and Eisenstein)]

Egginton, William. 2001. “Reality is Bleeding: A Brief History of Film from the Sixteenth Century” Configurations 9:2 pp. 207-229.

Giannetti, Louis. 2014. Understanding Movies. Thirteenth Edition. Boston: Pearson. [Course Textbook]

Gibbs, John. 2002. Mise-en-scène: Film style and interpretation. London: Wallflower. [pp. 5-26 Chapter 1: The elements of mise- en-scène]

Maszerowska, Anna. 2012. “Casting the Light on Cinema: How Luminance and Contrast Patterns Create Meaning” MonTI 4 pp. 65-85.

Rogers, Holly. 2015. “Music, Sound, and the Non-fiction Aesthetic” in Holly Rogers, ed. Music and Sound in Documentary Film. New York: Routledge. pp. 1-19.

Stadler, Jane, and Kelly McWilliam. 2009. Screen Media: Analyzing Film and Television. Allen & Unwin. [pp. 185-214 Chapter 7: Reality and Realism]

Films
We will watch quite a number film clips, and students will be expected to contribute heavily to curating (and analyzing) them.
We will also screen a film per week, intended to evoke particular aspects of course topics. 
Here is a tentative list, likely to change:

Week 1: Night of the Hunter dir. Charles Laughton 1955
Week 2: The Lives of Others dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmark 2006
Week 3: Pulp Fiction dir. Quentin Tarantino 1994
Week 4: Battleship Potemkin dir. Sergei Eisenstein 1925
Week 5: Apocalypse Now dir. Francis Ford Coppola 1979
Week 6: No Country for Old Men dir. Joel and Ethan Coen 2007 Week 7: Enter the Dragon dir. Robert Clouse 1973
Week 8: Cannibal Tours dir. Dennis O’Rourke 1988
Week 9: Goodfellas dir. Martin Scorcese 1990
Week 10: Rushmore dir. Wes Anderson 1998

Assessment

Remember that this is a 2MC module, and assessment are scaled accordingly.

Assessment will be based on a combination of:
  --Meaningful participation in seminar
  --An analytic term paper
  --A variety of short, practical, hands-on exercises deploying the concepts we cover in seminar
  --A multimedia presentation

Instructor

A/P Peter Vail
National University of Singapore
University Scholars Programme
Cinnamon South Learn Lobe #02-03
18 College Avenue East
Singapore 138593

Email: peter.vail@nus.edu.sg

Background

I trained as a cultural anthropologist (cornell u) and as a sociolinguist (georgetown u), which, added together, I suppose makes me a linguistic anthropologist. I work mostly in mainland southeast asia - thailand, laos, cambodia. I have worked on a variety of projects focusing on language shift, literacy, visual literacy, and culture along the thai-cambodian border and have studied muay thai as a cultural spectacle and locus of nationalism in thailand.