An introduction and guide to film studies

An activity booklet and guide to to film history,
mise-en-scene, cinematography, and editing, designed for
GCSE Film Studies.

SECTION 1: A history of moving images, cameras and projection
YOUR SUMMARY OF THIS SECTION:
SECTION 2: The Lumiere brothers, short films and the feature film
SECTION 3: Hollywood and emerging technologies
SECTION 4: New cameras
SECTION 5: Today and the future

SECTION 1: A HISTORY OF MOVING IMAGES, CAMERAS AND PROJECTION
INTRODUCTION
Before we can look at the history we need to know why we call it film studies. Film is a complicated
noun. It means a lot and can being about emotive reactions. It can also be a verb. But what does it
mean and why do we use it.
Film itself refers to the material and object that traditionally was used to record, store and play back still
images. Today the vast majority of still and moving cameras, such as the ones in phones, tablets, DSLRs
and used to make feature films, use digital sensors to record images. Traditionally however, cameras
needed to be loaded with specially created material called film that reacted when light was shown onto
it. We’ll look at this in more detail below, but the important thing to know is that this was a very difficult
process and in order to create moving images, it essentially involved taking a lot of photos (still images)
in quick succession and then in-turn, these had to be shown in quick succession. Let’s take a look at the
development of film cameras and projection to see how we got to where we are today and to
understand how films get made.
THE EARLIEST PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE CAMERA OBSCURA
The invention of the still image camera was, like many inventions, developed by multiple people over the
course of history. But the camera was as we know it today, was invented by French inventor Joseph
Nicéphore Niépce in (around) 1816. Today we recognise Niépce as technically took the first photo on a
homemade camera and his image was forced onto silver chloride covered paper. The camera, as is the
case for all cameras now in some form, was essentially a closed box that was pitch black inside. When
light was let into the box via the lens, the ‘thing’ that the lens pointed at was then ‘burned’ onto the silver
chloride covered paper thus creating an image. The actual process was much more complex than this,
but it led the way for others to create processes that were more straight-forward.
You will find many different dates and names if you research “the first
camera” online however. Over a period of nearly 300 years people were
inventing and developing techniques for capturing and projecting images.
Niépce was the first to create and develop a photograph, though it wasn’t
particularly successful, as you can see to the left! However, as it can still be
seen in the University of Texas and is the oldest surviving photograph, it’s
regularly cited to be the first. The photo, taken from an upstairs window
at Niépce's estate in Burgundy, is of an unrecognisable image, in part due to
the way in which the process Niépce used chemical reactions to create an image.
The Daguerreotype process was the photographic process which was first widely
available to the public and created much more readily recognisable images.
From around 1840-1860, daguerreotypy became the world-wide standard for
creating images, after French inventor Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre introduced
the technique in 1839. To make the image, a sheet of silver-plated copper was
polished to a mirror finish and treated it with fumes that made its surface light
sensitive. Then it was exposed to light in a camera for as long as necessary, often
for a few seconds. The resulting image was made visible by using mercury vapor
and its sensitivity to light was removed a chemical treatment and then dried. The
final image was easily ruined so was kept behind glass as the surface was very delicate, and even the
lightest wiping could ruin it.

However, putting images behind glass wasn’t the intent of photographers-people wanted to see the
images and this has been the case for centuries. This desire to see images projected in large formats had
was most readily seen in the success of the camera obscura. These show how light can be used to project
an image onto a flat surface and can be made by anyone relatively easily. You may have also heard the
term pinhole camera. The only difference between a pinhole camera obscura and not, is that a basic
camera obscura uses a lens, while a pinhole just has the open hole.
This technology became popularized in the 17th and 18th centuries when artists used them to help
project drawings they could then trace.
But there was no actual way to preserve the image.
This is why we credit Joseph Nicéphore Niépce with inventing the camera because by 1816 he had
started, (though not fully successful) capturing images.
The earliest “cameras” weren’t used so much to take
pictures as they were to study optics. Camera
obscuras demonstrate how light can be used to project an
image onto a flat surface. In some cases, these are similar
to a pinhole camera. You may have also heard the term
pinhole camera. The only difference between a pinhole
camera and a camera obscura is that a basic camera
obscura uses a lens, while a pinhole just has the open hole.
Camera obscura’s became popular in the 17th and 18th
centuries when artists used them to help project drawings they could then trace or even paint, but there
was no way to preserve the image as a direct copy of what was shown: as a photograph. This is why
many people, including Joseph Nicéphore Niépce sought to invent the camera- because people wanted
to capture images.
THE EARLIEST MOVING IMAGES
Once the Daguerreotype process became familiar to many, not only were people looking to refine and
improve the process, but the desire to see images projected in a way like a camera obscura drove the
desire to see moving images. Early developments again came from France, and the Phenakisticope was
introduced in 1833 by inventor Joseph Plateau. This machine used a spinning
cardboard disc attached vertically to a handle. There were a series of pictures
showing different moments or images of something in motion and small slits that
were spaced evenly around the rim of the disc were used for the user to look
through whilst spinning the disc. The images within the phénakisticope became
distorted when spun fast enough to produce the illusion of movement and while
most animations were not intended to give a realistic representation, people still looked to improve upon
the process. The next machine to make a significant improvement was the which was a cylindrical
version of a phénakisticope and even had easily replaceable picture strips, was introduced as a toy
by Milton Bradley in 1866 and became very successful. The next step from this was to create realistic
images, and to do that, photographs were needed.
.
KINETOSCOPE AND THE BLACK MARIA
The inventor Thomas Edison met with Eadweard Muybridge in 1888 in part, to discuss how to develop a
system for projecting moving images. It was around this time that 35mm celluloid strips had become
available and offered a fairly accurate reproduction on them and with the development of long, flexible
celluloid strips by the Eastman Kodak Company, Edison and many others looked to take many
photographs of people and objects in motion so that, when viewed back at speed, the illusion of
movement was created. It was in this period that modern movies were essentially conceived and people
came to discover that by showing between 12 and 24 photographs per second, you could replicate

movement in a way that appeared to modestly realistic. These photographs
were taken by exposing light onto a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film
coated on one side with a very thick liquid, minute emulsion that contained
almost invisibly small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. The short name for
this? Film, film stock or film strip. What Edison and others needed, was now a
way to show or project these images quickly enough so that it appeared as if
they were moving. It was another French inventor. Louis Le Prince who
invented the kinetoscope, but it was Thomas Edison and his employee William Dickson who created the
first usable device. The kinetoscope was not a projector rather a wooden cabinet that one person could
look into at a time. A series of spindles and an electronic wheel drew film continuously underneath a
magnifying lens while an electric lamp shone up from beneath the film through a lens for the person to
look through to see the moving image. The fundamental parts of this were later used for the opposite
purpose-to make a camera which fed ‘blank’ film reels through the machine and let light in at specific
moments. This was called the kinetograph. Of course, because film stock reacted to light, and Edison
knew that in order to capture the images he wanted, he needed to control light itself. So, in 1893, he
built what is now known as the first production studio, called the Black Maria. The Black Maria was
covered in black paper and had a huge window in the ceiling that opened up to let in sunlight to help
produce clear images on film. To help this further, the building was also constructed on a giant turntable
so the window could rotate toward the sun throughout the day,
supplying the light Edison needed for the production of movies. When
word spread about the new invention, performers flocked to the Black
Maria from all over the country in order to be in the films. People such
as dancers, pugilists, magicians and vaudeville performers all wanted
to be in these moving image movies. Edison was happy to oblige, as
he saw these as publicity opportunities and would often pose with the
performers for newspaper articles.
THE KINETOGRAPH AND THE CINEMATOGRAPH
It was around the same time that Edison was inventing the Kinetograph and creating the Black Maria,
that two French Brothers were also looking at the issues of recording and projecting images to create
movies. Their invention was called the cinematograph and was remarkably unique as it was both a
camera, could develop the images on film and project the images it had taken. It
was lighter than a kinetograph, produced a brighter image and projected a
sharper image than the kinetoscope. Whilst Edison’s machines were powered
using electricity, the Lumiere’s instead used manually-operated cranks, but the
main difference was in its method of projection. The kinetoscope only allowed
one person at a time to view the projected image and in a box. The
cinematograph however, could project the moving images onto a screen, so that
a large audience could wat at the same time. The Lumiere brothers then invented
the cinema. After its initial showing in 1895, the cinematograph became a
worldwide phenomenon with people watching the projected images back in fairs
and exhibitions. Movies were short (less than
1 minute) and often simply recorded a small
section of everyday life, like short
documentaries and it was in the power of
watching something or someone that audiences had never seen
before, that the power of the cinema began to emerge. The first
moving images by the brothers was recorded and projected in
1895, with the short film Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory.
TASK:
Below is a timeline with 10 spaces on it. Read back through the information about and add 10 key
moments of your choice from the history of the camera, images and projection. You can choose any 10

but you MUST be able to summarise what that moment, invention or person is/did in the space provided
and be able to add these in chronological order. The last one has been added for you as an example.
1895

TASK:
In no more than 100 words in the space below, explain which development or invention was the most
important from 1816-1895, giving reasons why.
TASK:
As we discovered when reading about the work of others, that to create something that looked like it
was moving realistically, between 12 and 24 shots had to be shown in the correct order every second.
Most films these days run at around 24fps. Calculate how many individual shots ate used in films of
different lengths. Add your answer to the right of the run time but there is space below to do some
working out.
1 minute long.
24 minutes long.
An hour long.
A film that is one and a half hours long.
A two hour long film.
The runtime of the last two Avengers films.
The runtime of Lawrence of Arabia.
The total runtime of all the MCU films…
TASK: Draw 24 frames of a story. It’s up to you what this story contains, what part of the film it is from
and who the story features, but it must ‘move slowly’, as these frames will only last for one second of
screen time! This means that the images should only change slightly from one frame to the other, perhaps
with only the slightest of differences between the images.

KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN FILM AND FILM TECHNOLOGY
As we’ve seen, the technology to record images and then project them in a way that
created the sense that the images were moving realistically took a lot of development but this
happened in a very short space of time. We generally accept that film as an art form began in
1895, but the technology used to make films has changed dramatically since then. Whilst the
last 10 years in particular has seen a drastic change, with the introduction of things like drones,
LED-panel screens for studios, motion-capture and more, we’re going to study and learn 10 key
pieces of technology and events that have helped to create the modern film industry.
The 10 key events are as follows:
1895 First moving images (Lumière brothers)
1895-1927 Development of silent cinema from early short films to full-length
feature films, during which period the foundations of filmmaking
were established – e.g. cinematography, the principles of
lighting and continuity editing and an extensive range of mise-en-
scène, including location shooting
1920s Gradual emergence of a vertically integrated Hollywood film
industry, established by 1930 into five major studios (Paramount,
Warner Bros, Loew's/MGM, Fox [Twentieth Century Fox in
1935] and Radio Keith Orpheum [RKO]) and three minor studios
(Columbia, Universal and United Artists) – the so-called Big 5
and Little 3
1927 Alan Crosland's, The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson - the first
feature film with a soundtrack
1935 Rouben Mamoulian's Becky Sharp, the Technicolor Corporation's
first feature length, 'three strip' colour film
1948 Paramount court case which prevented studios from owning all
phases of the production, distribution and exhibition process
('vertical integration') which led, in the 1950s, to the emergence
of independent film production and agents producing films for
the Hollywood studios to distribute and exhibit
1950s Emergence of widescreen and 3D technologies as a response to
the growth of television and the corresponding decline in cinema
attendance
Late 1950s Although not the first examples, lightweight, portable cameras
were produced suitable for hand-held use (which had an
immediate impact on documentary filmmaking and were used by
a new generation of directors in France – French 'new wave'
directors)

1970s (1975
specifically)
Steadicam technology developed by cinematographer Garrett
Brown (a stabilising device for hand-held cameras to keep image
'steady' whilst retaining fluid movement). First introduced, 1975
1990s More widespread use of computer-generated imagery, most
significantly pioneered by Industrial Light and Magic in the
1970s, resulted in a move away from filmed 'special effects' to
visual effects created digitally in post-production to the computer
generated imaging of characters in films
1995 First moving images (Lumière brothers)
2000s Technology available to ordinary people makes significant
strides due to developments with lightweight cameras and mobile
phone technology, seeing a rise in ‘citizen film-making’.
2007 Netflix – the first legal streaming service for film and TV is
launched.
2010s Successful feature length films shot entirely on iPhones now
released – notable releases include TANGERINE (Baker, 2015)
and UNSANE (Soderberg, 2018).
2017 Film and TV streaming and download sites such as Netflix, Sky,
Amazon and Apple overtake DVD sales for the first time
increasing by 23% in one year.
2018 AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR becomes the first Hollywood film to
ever be shot entirely with IMAX cameras.

1895 - THE LUMIERE BROTHERS AND THE FIRST SHORT FILMS
As we’ve seen, the Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis, were among the first people to
pioneer the creation and projection of moving images into short films. Their invention, the
cinematograph was a worldwide sensation and for the first time allowed people to not
only take many photos quickly, but then play them back and project them onto a screen
for an audience of many people to watch at once.
Their films documented every day like in France, and some of their most famous films are Workers
Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895), The Water Watered (1895) and The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
Station (1896). It was the shared experience as well as providing insights into worlds and experiences
never before seen by these audiences, that helped to established the idea for the cinema experience that
we know today-a large group of people communally watching moving images in a large, dark room.
1895 – 1927 – FEATURE FILMS
The Lumiere’s films were very short, often only a minute long, but with the method of
shooting enough footage to create moving images now
relatively easy, people were quickly experimenting with the
format and developing longer and more complicated films.
Another Frenchman, George Méliès was arguably the most ambitious and
well-known of the filmmakers at the time. He experimented with editing,
special effects and telling stories in new, fantastic ways unlike many of his
contemporaries who were still making what were essentially documentary
films. His most famous film, A TRIP TO THE MOON is a sci-fi adventure film featuring special effects and
which runs for approximately 9 minutes, far longer than anything the Lumieres had produced. Edwin S
Porter made one of the first films to retell a narrative with THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903). This 9
minute long film used innovative practises such as shooting on location and in a studio as well as film
techniques that had become popular, such as camera pans and a close-up. But it was the film THE
STORY OF THE KELLY GANG in 1906 which was an hour long that really began to set the expectations
for the length of a feature film. This continued, as did the innovation in
visual storytelling, over the next 20 years. Films such as the controversial
THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), pushed run times to over 2 hours,
used techniques such as fade-outs and dozens of extras for the first time.
The Director of BIRTH OF A NATION, D W Griffiths, was an ambitious
innovator and his next film, INTOLERANCE, featured one of the most
extravagant sets ever built and a reported 67,000 actors, helping to
emphasise the storyline which covers a period of over 2500 years in a runtime that runs over 3 hours. In
Russia, one of the most enduring of the film language innovations of the time was developed, in the form
of montage. The most famous example of this was seen in the film BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925) and it
arguably contributed more towards modern filmmaking than any other before.
TASK: In your own words, summarise the information above in this box. You MUST include any
words in italics or names of people involved in this technological advancement.
SECTION 2: THE LUMIERE BROTHERS, SHORT FILMS AND THE FEATURE FILM.

1920s – THE BIG 5 AND THE LITTLE 3
As film became more popular and rapidly became a profitable business, a number of
film studios emerged who were making a vast number of films and becoming very
profitable as a result. By 1930 they became known as the Big 5 (the 5 biggest and
most successful studios) and the Little 3 (the smaller, but still prominent studios). These
big 5 studios, funded their own films, made them usin directors and stars who they
had exclusivity contracts with, shot the films in their own studios in Hollywood and would then put these
films into cinemas that they owned. Some of these studios are still house-hold names today though some
no longer exist. The 5 are Paramount, Warner Bros, Loew's/MGM, Twentieth Century Fox in and Radio
Keith Orpheum, known as RKO.
Paramount had a roster of incredibly famous and successful film stars who made films exclusively for
them, including the like of Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich. Warner Brothers was an innovative film
studio, pioneering technology such as sound and colour in films. RKO produced 2 of the most famous
films of all time in KING KONG (1933) and CITIZEN KANE (1941), MGM was a hugely successful
studio financially and used that money to help develop colour film and a roster of star actors and
directors and 20th
Century Fox (named Fox Films until 1935) was a large studio with an often turbulent
business.
The Little 3, Columbia, Universal and United Artists were, financially, not as successful as the Big 5, but
were still successful in not only being responsible for some excellent, famous films but Columbia and
Universal continue to be successful film studios to this day.
1927 – THE JAZZ SINGER AND SOUND
Whilst many film studios and short films had been experimenting with sound in their
films, it was THE JAZZ SINGER in 1927 that was the first feature-length film to feature a
synchronised recorded music score and lip-synchronous singing and speech in some of
the sequences. Its release marked the beginning of the end for silent film and the rapid
rise of “talkies”-films with sound. Produced by Warner Bros, THE JAZZ SINGER had a
crude, but effective method of creating a film with sound, using a “sound-on-
disc system” which was ‘locked’ to the projector showing the film, so that the film could
be played in synchronisation with the sound which came on a separate disc.
Sound has come a long way since, from stereo (two separate speakers), to surround
sound and more recently with Dolby Atmos, a technology which uses dozens of tiny
speakers placed throughout a theatre that allows the filmmakers and exhibitors to
control exactly where, when and how an individual sound is heard by an audience.
SECTION 3: HOLLYWOOD AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES.

1935 – COLOUR FILM
As with sound, film studios were working on competing technologies to create colour
films for years before 1935 and the release of BECK SHARP. Created using a three
strip technology called Technicolor, the complex process involved various film strips
and large, bulky cameras and needed bright, clear light to shoot in. Despite this, it
was a huge success and within 20 years not only were the vast majority of films now
colour, but companies sought to constantly improve and refine the technology in order to create clearer,
more accurate colour reproduction.
1948 – THE PARAMOUNT DECREE
The American film industry, mostly based in Hollywood in California, had become incredibly
successful and mostly very profitable. This was, in part, due to how the film industry had
evolved to become vertically integrated. This meant the film companies used their money to
make their films, starring actors they had under exclusive contracts and would then only
show the films in cinemas that they owned. If an audience member wanted to see Gary
Cooper in a film an audience would likely have to watch him in a film made by
Paramount which was then shown only in a Paramount cinema. Having such exclusivity rights was
technically illegal in America as the law attempted to create a free-market whereby companies were free
to compete and engage in competition that was free and open to everyone. In 1948 however, that all
changed and there were many consequences from this decision. Some, such as Paramount selling their
cinema chain, were relatively minor. However, this ruling paved the way for the end of the dominance of
the Big 5 and gave rise to many more independent film studios and cinemas in later years, arguably
offering audiences a more varied and wide-range films.

1950s – WIDESCREEN AND 3D
In 1950 there were 6 million TVs sold in America, by far the highest number sold in
the country before. Before the decade was out, over 67million TV sets had been sold.
Estimates suggest that the vast majority of homes had a TV in by 1960, fuelling a
dramatic rise in the need for TV programming, but also contributing towards the
decline in cinema attendance. In 1946, approximately 70% of the 177 million
people who lived in the USA went to cinema at least once a week. 10 years later, this
figure was closer to 25%-a huge decrease. One of the main reasons for this was the rise of TV ownership
and as a result, film and cinema companies needed to develop technologies that gave people a reason
to visit the cinema again. With colour TVs being developed and improving all the time, cinema looked to
giant, wide screens and 3D as a means to entice people away from the homes and offer an experience
that simply could not happen in homes.
“Widescreen” was essentially that-large movie screens that were rectangular and wide in shape. They
offered not only a larger picture than before but allowed filmmakers to create wide images of
landscapes and large-scale scenes that would have not been as spectacular if on the traditional screen
shape and size. As with most technologies and advancements in film and cinema, a range of competing
technologies emerged during this time. One such unique idea such was Cinerama, which involved using
3 projectors at once to create a huge image that was incredibly wide image projected on a huge curved
screen. Cinerama was seen as more of a gimmick and while some films we moderately successful, it was
an extremely expensive and complex format to work in. More traditional widescreen technologies
included Cinemascope which was developed by 20th
Centrury Fox which used a special lens attached to
existing equipment and VistaVision by Paramount which involved using a 35mm film strip but filmed and
projected sideways, to create a wider, 70mm size image, which resulted in a widescreen image.
The development of 3D was even more complex, using new and again, competing technologies to
create an experience that was simply unachievable on home screens. It was film pioneer Edwin S Porter
who developed some of the first 3D technologies for film in 1912, but between 1952 and 1954 a slew
of feature films, cartoons, short films, documentaries and experimental films used anaglyph and
polarization techniques to create 3D images that aimed to create brand new experiences. This process
involved However, the format was essentially dead by 1955, in part due to the costs and problems of
making and projecting the image, but also because audiences often felt that the quality of the films were
lacking and eventually stopped watching.
Of course, over time, widescreen TVs became the standard format and 3D became a novelty format
which improved over time and made comebacks in the late 80s and then the mid to late 2000s.

LATE 1950s - PORTABLE CAMERAS
The earliest hand-cranked cameras, such as the cinematograph, were too heavy and
bulky to be easily moved and carried around. They also needed tripods in order to
keep the camera steady and out of the hands of the operators who were unable to
hold the heavy machines. Filmmakers did begin to attach cameras to things like trains,
wagons and horses in order to create variety and develop their visual style, but it took
further development in camera technology to progress these
ideas further. As we will learn about in the Cinematography unit, camera
accessories like cranes and dollys were invented and cameras were then able
to move in a wider variety of directions with improved fluidity. These camera
movements helped to establish the language of camera movement as we
understand it today and allowed filmmakers to create a ‘mobile frame’, rather
than a purely static one like photographs of old.
However, filmmakers sought an increasing amount of
movement and freedom and in World War 2, 16mm film (half the regular size
film strip) allowed the development of smaller, more portable cameras and this
then lead to the development of cameras that were even more portable. This in
turn lead to filmmakers developing their own artistic styles which aimed to
produce a more ‘realistic’ and less rigid visual style. This is perhaps best seen in
the French New Wave movement which wanted to reject traditional film making
styles and create a new, unique and innovative style. This can be seen in the use of wheelchairs and
modified cars being used to mount lighter cameras that provided unique perspectives into the lives of
characters. Many critics took against this often “shaky”, “mobile frame” style because, in part, it did not
follow formal, classical Hollywood styles. However, the influence of the French New Wave is
undeniable, whether seen in horror films to create immediacy and realism, or in action films to create
pace and offer engaging and dramatic perspectives.
SECTION 4: NEW CAMERAS

1970s - THE STEADICAM
One of the developments that came from the creation and development of increasingly
portable cameras was the Steadicam. As we have seen, many found the visual style of
the French New Wave to be jarring, unpleasant even and the jerky, mobile shots and
scenes were, to some, difficult to watch. What was undeniable however, was the
possibilities that moving the camera around afforded-no longer were filmmakers
content to stick to the classic, rigid styles of classical Hollywood and instead wanted to
be able to offer fresh, immediate and innovate movements and perspectives. So, how could these two
competing ideas, a mobile camera but one that offered a smooth and steady frame, be achieved? By the
creation of the Steadicam, by cameraman Garrett Brown. His invention involved placing a camera onto
a complex mechanical setup that ensured that any knocks or jolts were absorbed, resulting in the ability
to place the camera in a range of places and situations but avoiding the previously shaky and uneven
picture. Australian Garrett was an experienced and successful cameraman and put his invention to use
first in the 1976 film BOUND FOR GLORY, but it was his use of the Steadicam in ROCKY (also released
in 1976) that really caught the imagination of filmmakers and filmgoers alike. The now famous scene of
Rocky running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art was captured using a Steadicam and the
smooth movement of the camera makes it almost look and feel like Rocky and the audience are gilding
up those stairs. The Steadicam was used throughout the film, from following Rocky during his training on
the streets, in his small apartment and in the ring during fights, with each example offering new
perspectives and image quality that would come to help define the look and feel of modern filmmaking.
The Steadicam is now the industry standard and has also been used by the TV and sports industries for
years and it’s only since the rise of drones, mechanical wires and programmable robots, as well as
virtual cameras used in CGI, that has seen the use of the Steadicam become less ubiquitous.
1990s - CGI

1990s – CGI
Computer Generated Imagery. These three words have transformed the film industry
and with it, audience expectations of how a modern, ambitious film should look. This in
turn, has changed the very nature of the stories being told by film and the potential of
films is now limitless-filmmakers are only limited in their ambition and budget.
The history of CGI is a long and interesting one, but to get to the core ideas, we need to go back to turn
of the century in France and look once again, at the work of Gerorge Melies. He was fascinated by the
potential of film and his own ambitious ideas led him to play visual tricks on the audience and to
manipulate the very nature of film, by cutting uo some reels and adding in and removing some shots to
create the sense that characters would disappear, he’d shoot a scene and reuse the film to use
superimposition and create more than one shot on screen at the same time, and use paintings and
models combined with inventive camera angles and movements-all things he’d learned from his time as a
stage performer and magician in French theatres. His films such as A VOYAGE TO THE MOON resulted
in fantastical images created by effects never-before-seen on screen. Melies, and indeed many others,
may have paved the way for in-camera effects, but this was never enough for some filmmakers and the
desire to tell more complex and visually ambitious stories drove the need for better ways of creating new
scenes, characters and perspectives in storytelling.
Some of the earliest examples of CGI occurred in the 70s, with films like
WESTWORLD (1973) and STAR WARS (1977) using computers to create basic
additions to an existing shot, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that computers became
powerful enough to begin to create characters and large-scale special effects that
actors would need to interact with. Films like TRON (1982), THE LAST STARFIGHTER
(1984) and YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES (1985) pushed the idea of what a computer could create
further and by the time JURASSIC PARK was released in 1993, computers were beginning to be able to
successfully and accurately animate non-human characters. The remainder of the decade was a constant
series of improvements and developments, from the first fully CGI film in TOY STORY (1995) to ground-
breaking techniques like ‘bullet time’ in THE MATRIX (1999) and even replacing a deceased actor with
CGI-enhanced images. The use of green screen technologies continued to develop through the years and
in the 00s, the quality of CGI was so lifelike that films began to travel less to shoot on location and
instead use Green Screens that could be used to ‘paint’ in a location for the characters later on. This of
course has bought problems to the filmmaking process but CGI continues to evolve and adapt in a way
that perhaps no other film technology has.
The technology used in film has been ever-changing since the very first films. It’s impossible to predict
what might happen next or how technology could change film and the stories that are told in films. One
thing is for certain though; filmmakers will continue to develop new and exciting technologies to help
create increasingly-realistic and inventive films.
SECTION 4: CGI
TASK: In your own words, summarise the information above in this box. You MUST include
any words in italics or names of people involved in this technological advancement.

In some respects, it’s easy to suggest that technology in film has matured and developed to the
point where there is nothing else to develop! Films are shot digitally in 8K, edited and stored
‘forever’ digitally, projected digitally and then stored digitally in the cloud for people to watch
forever. CGI is so good that it’s essentially indistinguishable from ‘real imagery’ and filmmakers can now
use CGI, VR technology (known as The Volume) that means that even the imagery used when making
the film is pixel perfect and almost makes filming on location pointless. The driving factor for all of this?
Shrinking and improving technology. Almost everyone can carry around a tiny digital camera in their
pocket and some can even edit the film and upload to the internet for anyone to watch as well!
This has empowered people: the ‘entry’ to making a film is now less than ever before and this has partly
transformed the film industry in a way that hasn’t seen such a change since the rise of the independent
film in the 1960s onwards. As a result of this, as an audience we have the possibility of seeing a much
wider range of films from a much broader range of filmmakers and this is also made possible by the
other major technological advancement-an increase in speed of the internet across the world. The days
of needing to wait for a film to be on TV, to have to travel to a rental video store or even physically
buying a copy of a film have all been eradicated because of how quickly internet speeds have become,
allowing us to easily access a film online. This began in the 2000s, the rise
of digital technology meant that even with analogue films being needed to
record onto, cameras and the film/tape was becoming smaller every year
and eventually led to entirely digital cameras that could record images onto
a digital card. Camera formats such as DV and Mini DV gave way to SD
cards and the like, and as digital lenses improved and shrunk, so did the
ability to shrink cameras and eventually the cost of owning one.
At the same time, rental services such as Blockbuster struggled to keep up with
internet based rental companies who would post the DVD you wanted to rent
directly to you. Services like Netflix in the US
and Love Film in the UK meant that people
could spend less time at the video store and
choose the films they wanted to rent on a
website and have it sent to them. Both services then pivoted to
streaming, and in 2007 Netflix launched the first legal streaming service
for film and TV is launched, even removing the need for a disc or
postage at all. As cameras got smaller, so did mobile phones, and by the 2010s the two technologies
converged and high-quality cameras could now be placed into phones and it was the iPhone that really
pushed the quality of what a phone could achieve. Whilst many amateur filmmakers were using phones
to make films, Steven Soderberg, a key figure in the rise of independent films in the 80s and 90s,
released a film called UNSANE in 2018. This was a horror/thriller and received a full cinematic release,
but was perhaps most notable for being filmed entirely on iPhones. This followed Sean Baker’s film
TANGERINE a couple of years earlier in 2015 which really showed off what a camera phone to do,
filming his film also entirely with iPhones.
SECTION 5: TODAY & THE FUTURE

With the film industry collectively moving towards an internet-based industry, physical sales of DVDs &
Blu-Rays fell away and the convenience of owning digital copies of films meant that by 2017 film and TV
streaming and download sites such as Netflix, Sky, Amazon and Apple overtook DVD sales for the first
time increasing by 23% in one year.
Film exhibition was not left out of the development of the industry: with the convenience of digital films
and increasingly large TV screens, people once again begun to
shun visiting cinemas. Cinema chains then had to fight for audiences
to come to them for increasingly unique spectacles, and the last 2
decades has seen a series of fads and gimmicks being developed,
just as cinemas did in the 1950s. 3D was the first major technology
to be introduced in the early 2000s. This time it didn’t use the same
technology of the red and blue filters as the 1950s and was a much
cleaner experience, but still mostly required the viewer to wear cumbersome glasses that took the
originally blurry image and smooth it out to create an interesting, if gimmicky 3D effect.
With the popularity of the format soon came 3D TVs, but over time audiences grew wary of the glasses
and the often silly nature of the films made to take advantage of the format. Since the decline of 3D, a
raft of other innovations have appeared in larger multiplexes, including 4DX which includes a 3D image
alongside seats that move with wind and water blown into the face of audience viewers, ScreenX which
has 3 screens-1 at the front and 2 on the side walls and IMAX, the largest screens in the world. IMAX
has been around since the early 70s, but it was the late 2000s that saw an explosion in both the number
of films being shot for IMAX and the number of IMAX screens being made available. Essentially a very,
very large screen, IMAX often is much taller than it is wide, allowing filmmakers to create huge images
that show much more of a filmed scene than a regular screen which may cut off an image due to the
smaller screen size. It was perhaps THE DARK KNIGHT in 2008 that really saw a push with the IMAX
format, as the film featured several scenes that were shot with IMAX cameras and the larger 70mm film
format (most films are still shot on 35mm film or the equivalent, making IMAX images twice the size of
‘regular’ film). However, because of the larger film needed, IMAX cameras are also significantly bigger
than ‘regular’ cameras and in the case of THE DARK KNIGHT, the sheer size of the cameras meant that
very few scenes were actually filmed in the IMAX format. As with other cameras though, the technology
improved and over time, the cameras shrunk, the costs
reduced and as the screens were able to show more
feature films and fewer documentaries, the more
audiences grew to appreciate the format. By 2018 then,
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR became the first Hollywood
film to ever be shot entirely with IMAX cameras and
perhaps not coincidentally, became one of the most
successful films of all time.

TASK:
Read your summaries of the information above. You’re now going to reduce this information down even
further. For each of the 10 developments in film technology, you are to choose just ONE word or name
for each one, to remind you of what that development or invention was. You will also add the date to
each one so that you can learn the key dates in order and a word associated with that time period.
DATE
ONE WORD OR
NAME TO
SUMMARISE THIS
DATE AND THE
DEVELOPMENT
DATE

Below is a slightly expanded version of the timeline of film and film technology as part of Component 1.
You’ll find a series of blank spaces: use the word bank at the end of page 2 to see what words are
missing and fill in the gaps. A quick note: each word/phrase can only be used once…
In the late 1800s, all across the globe people, photographers, inventors, engineers and ambitious
magicians were all attempting to be the firs to make images and pictures move. From Edison in America,
Birt Acres and Louis Le Prince in Britain and the Skladanowsky Brothers in Germany, there was a
genuine race to be the first to record and project a film. It’s widely recognised though, that it was the
Lumiere Brothers who were the first people to exhibit ________ ________ in Paris on 28th
December
1895.
For the next 32 years, there was a consistent development of silent cinema from early short films to full
length feature films, during which period the ____________ of filmmaking were established – e.g.
cinematography, the principles of lighting and continuity editing and an extensive range of mise-en-
scène, including location shooting. During this time, the idea of film went from a curiosity, to a hobby, a
carnival exhibition and slowly a notable and noteworthy new artform, which saw a rapid development.
Across the whole world thousands of filmmakers developed the new medium and it saw consistent
innovation. One natural by-product of the popularity of film was that it became monetised and turned
into an industry, with the American film industry quickly becoming one of the most prominent and
successful. After many studios and producers moved from New York and the East Coast of America, the
1920s saw Hollywood in California on America’s West Coast become the new ‘home’ of film. During
this decade, the gradual emergence of a __________ ________ Hollywood film industry took place,
and 1930 it has established into five major studios (Paramount, Warner Bros, Loew's/MGM, Fox
[Twentieth Century Fox in 1935] and Radio Keith Orpheum [RKO]) and three minor studios (Columbia,
Universal and United Artists) – the so-called Big 5 and Little 3.
The next big innovation took place in 1927 when Alan Crosland's, THE JAZZ SINGER, starring Al Jolson
– became the first feature film with a __________. Relatively soon after in 1935, Rouben Mamoulian's
BECKY SHARP, became the first feature-length colour film when the Technicolor created the 'three strip'
________ film, which resulted in a colour film that by modern standards looks quite unnatural.
However, the ubiquity and power these film studios created over the next two decades saw they produce
monopolies that stifled competition and prevented consumers from being put before profits of the film
studios. Asa direct result, the Paramount court case of 1948 ruled against all studios and prevented them
from owning all phases of the production, distribution and exhibition process ('vertical integration') which
led, in the 1950s, to the emergence of ____________ film production and agents producing films for the
Hollywood studios to distribute and exhibit.
Post-war America saw much change and by the 1950s cinema chains and film studios had to fight
against a slump in cinema attendance. Most notably, the emergence of ____________ and __
technologies were a direct response to the growth of television and the corresponding decline in cinema
attendance.
Later in the decade in the late 1950s, although not the first examples, _________, ___________
cameras were produced and were suitable for hand-held use. This in-turn had an immediate impact on
documentary filmmaking and were most notably used by a new generation of directors in France – by
'new wave' directors such as Agnes Varda, Jean-Luc Goddard, Francois Truffaut and many others.
Camera technology developed further in the 1970s when __________ technology developed by
cinematographer Garrett Brown created a stabilising device for hand- held cameras to keep image
'steady' whilst retaining fluid movement. First used in the film BOUND FOR GLORY (1975), this was

quickly followed up with a wide range of uses in films, most notably in ROCKY (1976) THE SHINING
(1980) and THE RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983).
Whilst camera technology had developed to the point where it seemed that there was little room for
development or improvement, the move from analogue to filmmaking became increasingly more possible.
A key aspect of this was the consistent ‘shrinking’ of literal technology, making microchips more powerful
as a result. In the 1990s this led to a more widespread use of ________-_________ __________ which in
turn resulted in a move away from filmed 'special effects' to visual effects created digitally in post-
production to the computer-generated imaging (CGI) of characters in films.
This technological advancement meant that by 1995, the first CG (computer generated) feature length
cartoon – ____ _______ directed by Jon Lassater for Pixar Animation Studios was possible, and the film
industry never looked the same ever again.
The increasingly portability of powerful technology eventually made its way from film studios to normal,
every day users and consumers. This meant that in the 2000s technology was available to ordinary
people which made significant strides due to specific developments with lightweight cameras and mobile
phone technology, seeing a rise in ‘_______ film-making’.
Coupled with this, an dramatic improvement in internet speeds and a mass adoption of Boradband and
meant that the move from physical media to digital and digitally distributed media meant that in 2007,
DVD rental company Netflix became the first legal __________ service for film and TV.
Then, in the 2010s this technological advancement reached its next logical development, and successful
feature length films shot entirely on _______ were now released – notable releases include TANGERINE
(Baker, 2015) and UNSANE (Soderberg, 2018).
The improvement in consumer broadband and rise of the ability to use mobile devices to access digital film
stores and streaming services meant that in 2017, the use of film and TV streaming and download sites
such as Netflix, Sky, Amazon and Apple ________ DVD sales for the first time increasing by 23% in one
year.
To round out our brief history, one of the most successful films of all time is released: AVENGERS:
INFINITY WAR. Not only did it smash box office records but it was also notable for becoming the first
Hollywood film to ever be shot entirely with _____ cameras.
TOY STORY
iPhones
overtake
IMAX
foundations
vertically
independent
widescreen and 3D
moving images
citizen
streaming
steadicam
integrated
soundtrack
lightweight, portable
colour
computer-generated
imagery

GLOSSARY
PLAYLIST FOR FURTHER VIEWING
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeNerb9lxe3mgY-4wUbw6um0al-kjKtNW

SECTION 1: Mise-en-scene introduction, settings & props.
SECTION 2: The position of people and objects.
SECTION 3: Costume, hair and make-up.
SECTION 4: Summarising mise-en-scene.

SECTION 1: MISE-EN-SCENE INTRODUCTION, SETTINGS & PROPS.
INTRODUCTION
Mise-en-scene is a French phrase that means ‘placing on stage’. It is used to
describe aspects of film that we can see. Over this half term we’ll be learning how to identify
the different examples of mise-en-scene, explore why they’ve been included and what we learn
from their inclusion.
To analyse and discuss mise-en-scene we need to identify and analyse 4 main areas;
1. settings and props,
2. position of people and objects,
3. costume, hair and make-up,
4. facial expression and body language and
We’ll look at each one over a range of different lessons and then ensure that we can evaluate
the use of mise-en-scene in any film we watch.
Let’s begin with Settings and Props.
SETTING
The setting refers to the place that a film is set in. However, almost every film takes place in
more than one place, so there are often multiple settings in a film.
The setting is used to help show where a film takes place, but it can also help to show when a
film takes place. While a setting in a film can also show where a character comes from or is
going to, it can also suggest things about a character or the story, for example-the size of a
house can reflect the wealth (or not) of a character. This can be taken even further though: a
specific room within a building can also help to convey something depending on what the type
of room is and how it looks. The key things to consider when watching a film is, why these
places? Why these buildings? And why these rooms? Why did the screenwriter, director or
producer make these decisions? To tell us something.
When we consider setting, first identify the place, then what is happening and then finally,
consider why the scene is taking place there.
Second to this is the idea of filming location. In order to make a film it will need to be filmed in
a specific location that looks like the identified place in the film. We can also consider then, the
filming location to get an idea of what has been filmed and where, to understand why a certain
setting or location has been chosen.
For JURASSIC PARK, it mostly takes place on an island called Isla Nublar. However, this is a
fictional place, made up for the purpose of the book that the film is based on. Therefore, much

of the film was shot on location in Hawaii, which looked like the perfect representation of Isla
Nublar. But the film also has a range of other settings-the first major scene takes place in the
Badlands desert in Montana, America, then in a trailer in that desert, later over Isla Nublar in a
helicopter, and numerous locations on the island itself, in just one example, in an auditorium.
TASK:
Now that you know where these scenes takes place, consider why they take place there: what is
the reason for having these scenes in these places? These are available to watch on YouTube if
you wanted a little more context beyond the images provided. The link is at the end of this
booklet.
Consider things like: what are the characters doing there? What do we learn from this? Could
the same conversation or scene have taken place somewhere else and if not, why?
In the boxes below, write down why the scene takes place in this setting and what we learn
from this.
1 2
3 4
1 2
3 4

Settings then often work well as the first things we see on screen because they can tell us
WHERE a film is set, WHEN it is taking place and also SUGGEST something about a person or
place-they instantly tell us what is happening.
This can be done in two ways: explicitly, with a title card (more on this in a moment) or
implicitly by letting the audience work it out for themselves.
Title cards look a little like this:
This is a quick and simple way of establishing place, time and tone. You may recognise the
places, but some might be slightly more obtuse and ambiguous. By including the name on the
screen however, it quickly communicates the idea of where or when this scene is to the
audience. This is especially important if the place itself has some relevance or connotations
associated with it. Again, some are more obvious than others: for example, France in 1941
likely has a lot more connotations than ‘Ego’s Planet’ has.
TASK:
Connotations are things that we think of when we see or hear something. List as many
connotations for each of these locations as you can. If you don’t have any connotations for a
particular place take a look at what it looks like or ask someone nearby for ideas.
1 4
2 5
3 6
1 2
3 4
5 6

Settings can also be established using props in the scene to tell the audience where someone is
or where they’re going to, for example using signs or famous landmarks:
TASK:
Take a look at the shots below-match the name of the city to the image and write the name
below the image.
London | Shanghai | Rio De Janeiro | San Francisco | Sydney |
St. Petersburg | Dubai | New York | Tokyo
TASK:
Research and list the names of films which feature these cities in them. Aim to find at least one
film per location, but you’ll probably find more than one quite easily.

Settings can also be used if they’re not places that are instantly recognisable as they help to
establish tone or genre.
Tone is a way of describing the mood of a scene. There is more work on this in the
Cinematography unit, but just by looking at an image it can help to help suggest the mood for
the audience or, what type of film or scene we’ll be watching in this setting.
TASK:
Below each image write down what type of film (known as genre) you think this scene is
suggesting the scene or the film will be, and then what you think the mood is.
As an extension, give reasons why, focusing on things like the colours, light, props and anything
else you see that makes you think of that genre and mood.
Just like these exterior shots that we’ve been looking at, interior settings can also reveal what a
person or place is like, establish tone and help to reinforce genre. Interiors are especially useful
for suggesting things about people quickly and implicitly. Part of this will be done through the
use of props, of which we’ll learn more about soon, but the overall style or aesthetic of a setting
is called the set design or the art direction and when combining props with setting and
cinematography, we can then understand what a person or place is like.
TASK:
For example, in this shot to the right we can see a small group of people but
they’re not the important factor here: look at the size of the room-it has 5
people in it but still has plenty of room around them suggesting that it’s a very
large room. This then suggests that these people are rich or at the house of
someone rich. This is reinforced by the presence of the chandelier and the
expensive looking furniture. There is another room beyond this that looks large
as well, emphasising the wealth of the owner. Finally, notice how the curtains
billow here: this is because the windows are open and this is could be because
this is setting is either in a warm country or it’s a hot time of year.

TASK:
Take a look at the 3 images below. Using the example on the previous page, analyse at LEAST
ONE of the images and aim to establish what genre they could belong to, what we learn about
the places or the people in the settings. Aim to explain why and how you came to those
conclusions and aim to focus on the setting and the things in there rather than the people.
Finally, to create a settings used in a film, there are three main options; either filmed on
location, or shot in a studio where people have made sets that look like they’re a real location,
or, finally, a studio which uses green screen to augment the setting.
On location refers to filming in a real place which exists. This could be in a new country,
in a specific house that already exists or in a location which needs some changes
being made to it through use of physical sets. On the next page we can see how
STAR WAR: THE FORCE AWAKENS and THE REVENANT were filmed on location.
As we learned in the Film History unit, filming on location was the most immediate and original
way of making a film. The Lumiere Brothers filmed everyday life to document what a camera
could capture and to show an audience what they may not have seen before-they created
essentially, documentaries. However in fictional feature films, filming in the place where the film
is supposed to take set, it not only creates the sense of realism to the setting and the film, but
adds authenticity and allows the audience to be submersed in the world, just like the actors
were.
Your analysis:

A location scout will work with the rest of the crew before filming takes place to find
locations where scenes in the film would be best filmed. They may scour the entire
earth looking for somewhere suitable and may end up filming in an entirely
different place compared to the name of the place in the film. This can be very expensive;
moving an entire film unit and all of the cast and crew to a specific place can be very costly and
time consuming, so other options might be preferable. Of course, filming on location like in the
shots above, may not be convenient or even literally possible if working with a sci-fi film, so the
location scout will find somewhere that looks like as if it could be the setting.
Even if filming takes place on location, often that location may need to have changes made to
it. At the most obvious it will be to include a range of adaptions that allow for cameras, sound
equipment and most crucially, lighting setups to be added, as seen in these behind the scenes
photos from ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, SPECTRE and the HARRY POTTER series.
Scenes in STAR WARS like the one on the next page below
were filmed in the Rub' al Khali desert, near Abu Dhabi to
stand in for the planet of Jakku.
Some of THE REVENANT was filmed in Argentina to
represent the middle of America during Winter.

If a location cannot be found, if something isn’t suitable, if it’s too expensive to use or if
it’s technically very difficult to film on, a film set in a studio might be used. These
have been the traditional way to make films, especially in Hollywood during the
‘golden age’ of Hollywood between 1910 and 1960s. Some studio sets were made at
huge expense and used for only one film, such as DW Griffith’s astonishingly ambitious set for
the film INTERLORANCE in 1916 (below on the left), or Fritz Lang’s sci-fi masterpiece,
METROPOLIS (1927) below on the right.
However, not all films had the budge to create sets on such an extravagant scale, and the
dominant method of filming would be the use of a studio lot, where film companies would build
entire studios and a range of sets which could be used for many different films and could be
reused quickly and cheaply. The images on the next page give some typical examples of what
this looked like, with permanent structures used for a range of different films.
Eventually, as cameras became smaller, as portable lighting became easier to create and as
CGI became more prevalent, working on a studio that already existed became less and less
popular. Many of these old studio lots can be visited and toured around. These days studios are
used for all kinds of films, with some of the most famous props and costumes still on display.

Of course, films are still often shot in studios, but these tend to be huge spaces that can be
changed and adapted for each film, often at great expense. Peopl may build not just rooms,
or house, but even entire villages in order to achieve a realistic setting. You can see the
level of detail and therefore expense that has gone into the set from SPECTRE and
INCEPTION below, so that he filmmakers can achieve exactly what they wanted from the setting in their
film. We can then see in the shot next to it on the right that this also allows the filmmakers to create
interesting and unique visual styles because they’re able to control the set in a way that might not be
possible if filming on location. Of course, not every film has the budget to make such huge sets,
especially ones which will then be dismantled after use or that are so bespoke that they cannot be used
again in another film. There are some options in this case.
One is to create a ‘miniature’ set. These have been used for decades and involve making a smaller
version of the setting, usually for the larger areas such as a whole building, street or even city. These are
then filmed in a way that, when projected onto a screen, give the illusion that this a ‘real’ size place. We
can see in these classic examples below from STAR WARS and GHOSTBUSTERS how miniatures were
used to create large scale scenes before CGI allowed filmmakers to do so.
However, miniatures have made a comeback in the last 15 years or so, as filmmakers seek to create
realistic looking settings that can be manipulated, such as being blown up, destroyed and generally
messed around with, in a way that looks more realistic than CGI can. We can see in these examples
from INCEPTION and the HARRY POTTER series however, that the idea of a ‘miniature’ doesn’t
necessarily mean that these models are small!

In the modern world of film making, the reality is that all methods of creating a set are used, including
using studios and real life locations but combined with green or blue screen technology to allow
filmmakers to create real sets for the actors to work with, but then augment, develop and extend these
sets using CGI. This can also allow filmmakers to include additional details like characters or special
effects like explosions, magic or specific weather.
As well as this, the advancements in CGI and physical technologies such as lighting and giant
displays using advanced technologies mean that even the traditional ideas of what makes a
set are changing. For the TV series The Mandalorian for example, the variety of locations
needed to create a convincing series of locations in space, meant either travelling around the world at
great expense, or using CGI which can produce
slightly unconvincing results. In the end, they used
a new technology which involved the actors
working in a set with a giant display above and
around them to create ethe sense that they are in
that setting. Not only that, but the amount of
control offered to the filmmakers meant that that
were able to easily manipulate the setting and
the lighting and weather conditions in a way that
is not only innovative, but realistic and relatively
cheaply compared to some other methods.

SUMMARY
Overall then, scenes in a film are set in specific places for a variety of reasons. The way in which these
look are partly to do with props, which we’ll look at later on, and cinematography, which we’ll cover in
a different Unit of work.
The actual places where these scenes are filmed are chosen for a variety of reasons and in modern
cinema tend to be a mix of technology, meeting budgets and the requirements of the cast and crew.
Complete the tasks below to show your understanding of setting in film.
TASK:
Describe, in as much detail as possible, referring to a range of examples, what kind of settings, buildings
or overall places you’d use as a setting for these types of films below:
A horror film: A teen film:
A Western film: A sci-fi film:
TASK:
What can a setting in a film can suggest or what can it be used for? Read back and summarise these
ideas in exactly 40 words below.
TASK:
What are the 3 different types of setting when making a film?
For each one, give at least one thing positive about using it and one negative thing about using it.
1.
2.
3.
TASK:
In your own words and in the space below, explain why films aim to be shot on location. Then, explain
why it make be easier for filmmakers to shoot in a studio and use green screens.

TASK:
Research the filming locations for Harry Potter films.
Give a list of at least 5 filming locations, either real or in a studio. For each one, explain why you think
that location was used as a filming location.
Then, choose ONE of the scenes and explain what it tells the audience and how it does this.
SETTING ANALYSIS TASKS:
Now is your turn to analyse a range of different settings. You will do so by describing the explicit details
of that setting and then the implicit suggestions that come from that setting. You should use all of the
ideas and information you have learned so far to help inform your analysis.
EXPLICIT: (describe what you can see) IMPLICIT: (what this setting suggests)

SETTING MINI-ASSESSMENT:
Watch the following clip from Mission Impossible: Fallout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W70CRKtm1do
Firstly: identify what type of setting this is and what genre of film you think it is.
Then: where or how might this scene have been filmed and why do you think that place or method of
filming was chosen?
Next: what mood do you think the film is seeking to achieve for the audience? How does the setting help
to achieve this?
Finally: what is the significance of choosing this setting for this scene? Look at what you can see and
what can be seen in this setting-why does this setting work for what is happening in the film?
GLOSSARY
aesthetic
art direction
augment
bespoke
connotations
context
explicit
exterior
genre
implicit
interior
location scout
mise-en-scene
on location
props
representation
setting
studio
tone

While this shot from TAXI DRIVER shows that this is a local corner
shop style setting (often referred to as a ‘deli’) in America, but the
messy nature of the props and the inclusion of the gun shows that
a violent crime has taken place.
In this shot from FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, props show that this is
an ornate and luxurious setting, but also that the character is
intelligent and calm: playing competitive chess in front of a crowd
but happy to relax and smoke a cigarette as he does so.
PROPS
Props, or to give them their full name, theatrical property, are the objects in a scene that help to make a
scene appear realistic or at the very least, as if the film we’re watching is a real place. Props can help to
make somewhere look old or new, busy or quiet or just show us what is happening. They can create
convincing worlds in a sci-fi film, suggest ideas about a character or propel a story.
Props can be almost any item that is included in a scene, such as food, furniture or photos but they can
be items that people use, things that people own or even things which we as the audience don’t see, but
the characters do or are aware of. We’ll visit this idea in more detail later.
As with most aspects of film language, props can work on two levels-the explicit description of what we
can see, but also the implicit suggestion of what the props suggest. For this reason, a setting may have
been carefully created by a prop master, working with a production designer. Every setting then will
include a specific set of props to suggest what the person in the person or people in the scene is like, or
as we learned about settings to create tone.
In the remainder of this unit, we’ll be exploring why props matter. They’re often overlooked in favour of
analysing other aspects of a film, but as we can see from above, props hold significance and provide
interesting relevant detail in ways that demand a closer inspection. We could list thousands of uses for
props but we’re going to focus on just 5; they establish the world of the film, they create deeper
meaning, they represent characters, they develop the plot and they set the tone.
The key thing to remember is that they’re objects, but objects that have been placed on screen for a
reason. As a result these objects are significant, either to a character or the film as a whole and we need
to try and find out why those objects have been included-what do we learn from their inclusion?
The inclusion of the food and drink items in this shot from SHAUN
OF THE DEAD make clear to the audience that this is a local corner
shop, despite not being told that explicitly.
At first, this shot from the film NINE looks like a behind-the scenes
shot of a film. That’s because the use of props in this shot here
help to accurately recreate what a film set would look like.

PROPS ESTABLISH THE WORLD OF THE FILM
Every object is placed on screen, in a specific place, for a specific reason. Most props, when used
correctly contribute to the verisimilitude of the film and the scene . However, anything that looks out of
place in the world will snap the audience out of the film because it won’t make sense visually (a good,
literal, example of this on TV was the mistaken inclusion of a Starbucks cup in an episode of GAME OF
THRONES). The introduction of the now iconic blue lightsabre gifted to Luke Skywalker in STAR WARS
(1977), suggests that this really is a galaxy far, far away. In the other shot below from
BLADE RUNNER 2049, we see hundreds of children stripping electronic components from old
electronics. The props in their hands and the piles of them on the table depicts precise, painful and
repetitive work that suggests the world we are seeing on screen represents a period of time after basic
electronics are no longer used or have much importance or value beyond scrap. It also suggests ideas
about child slavery, orphans and the conditions in which they live.
TASK: THINK OF AND/OR RESEARCH, EXAMPLES OF PROPS HELPING TO ESTABLISH A WORLD OR
SPECIFIC SETTING IN A FILM
PROPS CREATE DEEPER MEANING
Some props can offer a deeper insight or meaning to something or someone. Objects can be seen
throughout a film and can simply be an object, but later be revealed to be something significant. In
CITIZEN KANE for example, the revelation (SPOILER ALERT) of Kane’s final word of “rosebud” is that it
refers to a small sled from his childhood. It represents that, despite all of his success in life, the sled from
his childhood represented simplicity, comfort, and his mother's love. In the 1992 Director’s Cut of BLADE
RUNNER, the seemingly odd prop of an origami unicorn represents that (SPOILER ALERT) the main
character is in fact, a robot. Though it’s a bit more complex than that!
TASK: THINK OF AND/OR RESEARCH, EXAMPLES OF PROPS CREATING A DEEPER MEANING OR
UNDERSTANDING.

PROPS REPRESENT CHARACTERS
A prop can represent and provide insight into a character in many different ways. It can show or suggest
a way of life, a character’s social status, or can even become a character itself. When a character has
an emotional connection to an object, such as Thor and his hammer, the prop becomes a key part of the
story. But in THOR, Mjölnir is not only used to provide and support Thor in his physical strength, it is also
represents the journey he must go on as in order to become a worthy, mature leader. It later becomes
Thor’s best hope for survival, and as such, is an essential part of his identity and then as a result, a
symbol of hope for others. In RUSHMORE, props are used to show the hobbies that the protagonist Max
fleetingly adopts. In the example below we can see his stamp and coin collection but notice how large
the collection is and how he’s looking after it very carefully. Not only does this implicitly suggest that
he’s taking this seriously and caring for the things he’s collected, but stamp collecting can be said to be
quite a boring hobby for many, so the props here suggests that he’s also somewhat of an outsider.
TASK: THINK OF AND/OR RESEARCH, EXAMPLES OF PROPS REPRESENTING CHARACTERS, EITHER
EXPLICITLY OR IMPLICITLY.
PROPS DEVELOP THE PLOT
Some props are so important that they put entire plots in motion. An example of this is
the pregnancy test from the opening scene of JUNO. A single shot of a positive test
result sets the entire story in motion. Props can not only
propel the story but can be so important to the story that
the film is named after them! In THE MALTESE FALCON,
the object of a statue of a bird is central to the mystery
of the film and therefore is the reason for the entire story. In THE LORD OF
THE RINGS, the Ring in the title also becomes the whole reason for the
story and the prop of the ring is not only important to every character in
the film but has become an iconic object in its own right.
Objects like these are often referred to as a plot device and their main, if not sole purpose, is purely to
drive the plot, to maintain the development in the story or to resolve situations within it. These objects
could be something everybody wants to obtain or a device that must be destroyed. It may also be an
object or gadget introduced early in the story for the sole purpose of solving or saving someone later on
in the film. To take this even further, an object which initially seems to be insignificant on the screen in
the setting or mentioned in passing, but later turns out to be important, is known as “Chekov’s Gun”.
Named after Anton Chekov, this Russian playwright and author once wrote that "If you say in the first
chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.
If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

The Winchester rifle from Shaun of the Dead, a literal
gun and a perfect example of Chekov’s Gun.
An obvious example of this is the rifle in the Winchester pub in
SHAUN OF THE DEAD. This gun is mentioned early in the film
as a seemingly random discussion piece but later turns out to
be an important object that the characters need to use.
Over time, Chekhov's gun has come to be synonymous with
foreshadowing and when you realise how often this is used in
films, you quickly become suspicious of any object that a
character mentions early in a film!
In some ways, the opposite of a Chekov’s Gun is a MacGuffin. This is an object, though not always
actually shown, that is a term for an object that is used to drive the plot but serves no further purpose. It
won't pop up again later in the film once it’s been used or tracked down, it won't explain the ending,
and in some cases, it won't even be shown. It is usually a mysterious package/artifact/superweapon that
everyone in the story is chasing. An example is the briefcase in PULP FICTION — it adds mystery and
intrigue to the moment while effectively building tension every time it makes an appearance because the
contents of it are never shown on screen-we just know that it’s important, that characters want it and that
it makes people’s faces glow golden when it’s opened.
PROPS SET THE TONE
As we discovered when looking at setting, the mood of a film or an individual scene can be established
through the things we see on screen, no matter how briefly or if they’ve been referred to. Whilst
Cinematography plays a large part of this, a character selecting a weapon will instantly suggest a tone
of conflict, anxiety or aggression. We can see in the example below from TERMINATOR 2 that the tone
of the scene is one of aggression and of being very serious, creating a sombre tone, created in part by
the selection of and need for, the weapons. Similar props are used in KICK ASS, but here the tone is
lighter and slightly more comedic because of the absurdity of having so many options, especially when
there is a small child in the room and her father who seems very blasé about the props and the situation.
TASK: THINK OF AND/OR RESEARCH, EXAMPLES
OF PROPS WHICH MOVE THE STORY ALONG.

TASK: take a close look at the image to the left,
and using the ideas above, aim to analyse what
you can see and then what these props suggest.
In another example we can see how this shot from HOME ALONE, which is a comedy, not only
establishes the time period through use of props, but by having the festive props to the side and back of
the frame, it allows the dark boots to be central to the frame. Whilst boots are part of costume, which
we’ll cover later, the tone here is much more dramatic and almost threatening because the bright and
colourful props are not the most immediate things in the frame. Finally, this shot from the beginning of
BLADE RUNNER 2049 shows large vats of a strangely coloured chemical. When you combine with the
pipes coming from these into the water and the in a strange suit which looks like a cross between an old
diving suit and an astronaut’s suit, you get a very strange, mysterious tone which make the audience feel
quite uneasy but also intrigued.
TASK: THINK OF AND/OR RESEARCH, EXAMPLES OF PROPS WHICH HELP TO CREATE MOOD.
In this shot from the end of INCEPTION, the table reveals a
lot of information through the use of props. We’ll start at the back of
the table where the amount of fruit suggests a healthy person or
people live there. To the left are some toy dinosaurs which suggest that
a young person or people not only live there and this is reinforced by
the child’s paintbrushes and paint and the toy monkey. Because they
have been left on the table perhaps they left them in a hurry or that
they’ve been recently playing with them and stopped. The neat and
empty side of the table could imply that the adult likes to keep things
today where they can. Notice also the spinning object-it has a lot of
significance from the film, but for now, simply note how it’s still
spinning, suggesting that people have only recently been at or near the
table.

HINT: What do the props here tell us about character? How?
HINT: What do the props here tell us about the world of the
film? How?
HINT: Look closely! What do the props here tell us about tone of
the character? What do the How?
TASK: Below are 3 shots that each feature an array of props.
Look at them closely and pay attention to what you can see and consider why those props have been
included. Working your way through them, from top which is the easiest to hardest at the bottom, firstly
explicitly identify what you can see. Then, consider the ideas from the previous pages as to the 5
reasons props get used and then write down what you think each shot is implicitly suggesting. To help
you, each comes with a small hint or clue of what to focus on.
SUMMARY
Overall, props are placed in films for very specific reasons. Whilst there are many of these reasons,
we’re focusing on just 5 of them but all involve firstly identifying then and then working out why they’ve
been included. Props work in tandem with other aspects of film form and language, we need to be able
to analyse them and recognise their importance in their own right.
Complete the tasks on the next few pages to show your understanding of prop use in film.
2
3

KNOWLEDGE CHECK: PROPS
TASK:
Below is a list of film genres. For each, list a range of props that you would expect to see in any scene in
a film from that genre.
Action: Sci-fi
Western: Romantic comedy:
Fantasy: Horror:
TASK:
List the 5 main reasons why props are used in a film. In your own words, summarise what each means.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
TASK:
Below are a list of props you might find in many films. Next to each, note what tone you think each
could enhance or create and aim to explain why. Avoid describing what might happen.
A gun: A teddy bear:
Some pots and pans: A jumper:
Some food: A bottle of alcohol:
PROP HOMEWORK/EXTENSION TASK:
Watch a scene from any film of your choice. Ensure it has props in it! List the props used in that scene. If
there are many props, list the most important ones. Then, explain why those props have been included,
referring to the implicit idea in their inclusion and at least one of the 5 main reasons props are used.

PROPS MINI-ASSESSMENT:
Watch the following clip from JURASSIC PARK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsoQzBLkA1g&t=17s
Firstly: identify what type of setting this is from 34 seconds in and then what genre of film you think it is
based just on what happens in this scene.
Then: identify the relevant props based on our 5 reasons to examine a prop.
Next: what mood do you think the film is seeking to achieve for the audience? How do the props and the
setting help to achieve this?
Finally: what is the significance of choosing this setting for this scene and how do the props contribute
towards this?
GLOSSARY
artifact
Chekov’s Gun
insight
MacGuffin
plot device
production
production designer
prop master
verisimilitude
PLAYLIST:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVCkuJFnA4k&list=PLeNerb9lxe3mFwo9AjIwGzmqz2CN32Lty

SECTION 2: THE POSITION OF PEOPLE AND OBJECTS
INFORMATION:
We’ve explored how settings and props work to provide information to an audience.
Often, this is done implicitly through use of connotation or inference. A key aspect in this
is where on the screen in relation to the word of a film someone or something is placed.
Therefore, the position of people and objects is important as it helps to inform the
audience as to where to look first or what to focus on, if the scene is especially busy. Of
course, every person and prop on screen is important in some way-that’s why they’ve been included in
the scene, so the key is to first explicitly describe where someone/something is and then to analyse what
the implicit suggestion is of them being in that place is. As we’re exploring mise-en-scene in this unit, it’s
important to remember that this literally means, ‘putting on stage’ and therefore, has developed since
the original use in theatre. A theatre stage is a 3D space, almost a large box, in which the characters
can move around in it in any direction. When we watch a film and to analyse position, we need to
consider both what we can see, the film on a screen, but also consider the world that we are watching to
be a 3D space. We’ll look at this in more depth later, but at its most basic, someone, or something, close
to the front, or the middle of the screen suggests importance or power. The further away they are and
the less central they are, the less important they are.
TASK:
Look closely at the cube below. Imagine that the front is the screen and that the ‘cube’ area behind it is
the world of the film (if it helps, think back to that idea of a stage in a theatre. Then, use the words below
to accurately label the blank cube. This will allow you to explain positions in film studies accurately.
Front | Middle | Back | Left | Right | Top | Bottom
TASK:
Below is a screenshot featuring two people. Firstly, describe, using the words above, where they are in
the shot. Then try to analyse why they are where they are. Consider what the reasons might be and why
these two people are in two very different positions in the frame.
The shaded area indicates
the 2D screen that we
would watch the film on.
Where are the people in this scene? What does their positioning suggest?

TASK:
Now have a go at analysing the position of these people in these shots. Remember to again describe
where people are in the shot first and then try to analyse why they are where they are. You may need to
consider the setting and any relevant or prominent props to help do this.
TASK: Now combine what we’ve looked at so far in total and analyse positions, props and
settings. Annotate the image with explicit details and then, aim to develop your annotations to
then include implicit suggestions from all 3 aspects of mise-en-scene.

We can see how the vast amount of negative space here in THE
DARK KNIGHT creates the sense that our protagonist, Bruce Wayne
is isolated and lonely, whilst his placing in the centre of the frame
shows his importance.
In this shot from THE RAID, note how the negative space works in
two main ways here: it firstly draws attention to the characters
and their own situation, but it also allows us to clearly see what
the apartment looks like.
As we’ve seen so far, positioning, like props and setting, can be used to communicate ideas to the
audience but given that people and objects can move, or be placed anywhere, it’s difficult to say for
certain that there are rules. However, we’re going to dip into the worlds of art and photography and the
ideas of composition. This is an area that is vital key in cinematography and we’ll revisit composition
when we look at that Unit, but it’s also important in mise-en-scene as it helps to inform the ideas about
the position of people and objects on our screen. Therefore, we’re going to use these 10 rules of
composition when analysing position or people and objects:
1. Negative space
2. Rule of thirds
3. Top intersections
4. Leading lines
5. Diagonals
6. Foreground
7. Background
8. Symmetry
9. Centre framing and
10. Close up.
NEGATIVE SPACE
The first of our rules of composition then, is negative space. This is an idea that has come from the world
of photography and art and as a result the effect of it is a recognisable feature in the composition of film
shots. Negative space is simply the space around and between the subject of a composition. For
example, in a wide shot of a man standing in an empty field, the sky, ground, and everything in between
would is the negative space. The power of negative space is that it can be used for many different things.
More than anything, it's used to isolate a person or object to focus our attention on them/it. This can be
done to show that someone is important, to show us the answer to something or, as in the case of horror
films, to allow something to pop into the negative space to scare the audience. Of course, this means it
can also be used for comedy by using the negative space as a place to add a surprise.
We can then combine the idea of negative space with other aspects and rules of composition to provide
different reactions and experiences for the audience.
TASK:
Summarise what negative space is in the box below, aiming to fill it as much as possible, but not writing
outside of it!

The lines on this image from CHINATOWN have been added by
me to show the shot has our protagonist positioned so that he
is ‘on’ the intersecting lines created when using the rule of
thirds. Notice how it also allows us to see the character in the
background and our main character.
In this shot from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the inclusion of lines
not only shows how the characters have been separated and
are equally positioned on screen, but that the background is
now what we should be looking at. In the next shot, it’s
revealed that the background holds some interesting secrets.
Note how the rule of thirds and negative space have been used
here in combination with the lines created from the walls and
doors of the corridor to create some leading lines. If you follow
the lines and look into the background, you might see
something strange…
Just like the shot on the left, see how this shot from TAXI
DRIVER uses the rules of thirds to position the character to the
left but being in the foreground means that we still appreciate
that he’s important. Notice though, the leading lines on the
right. What are we being told to look at. And why?!
RULE OF THIRDS
Our second ‘rule’ is a compositional guide that trisects the frame vertically and horizontally, dividing the
shot into small sections which then creates a dissected composition. The idea is that your characters or
object are placed at the intersection of some of the lines which then psychologically, creates for an
interesting composition.
TOP INTERSECTIONS
If we look at the top section of the frames above, the lines along the top, the intersections, are important
because they help to suggest power. Note that in both images, the eyelines are near the top
intersections rather than the bottom. This is because, as we’ll continue to see throughout our work on
mise-en-scene and cinematography, the idea of power is deeply attached to the power that someone or
something has. Generally, the lower an object or person, the less power they have, literally or
metaphorically and therefore, the top intersections of a frame can help to indicate power.
LEADING LINES
A key aspect of composition is where you are being asked to look at. This is achieved, in part, by using
the intersections from the rule of thirds, but also using the setting and often lenses that allow the camera
to focus on a range of things at once. Just like all of these techniques, there is no literal lines put on the
screen, rather we notice these would imaginary lines, also called vertices. Often there might be a lot on
screen, or it’s clear that we should be looking elsewhere,, rather than our main character or object.
sometimes much of the frame goes ignored by the human eye, certainly, we can't focus on every element
in an image at once. As well as this, because we can’t focus on everything at once, a clear use of
leading lines can help to guide our eye toward a specific point in the frame.

In this famous shot from THE EXORCIST, the diagonal line we’re
looking for is created by the light from a room in the house,
which then highlights the fog. Notice how the diagonal here
links the person in the foreground to the room, indicating that
that, as our eyes have gone, he will also have to go.
This shot from STAND BY ME is a clear example of how
diagonals lines can work. Notice that they don’t cover the
whole screen, but work as classic leading lines here, moving
the focus from foreground to background and showing how
large and dominant the train tracks are.
DIAGONALS
Diagonals are part of leading lines because they lead the viewer's eye towards something in particular.
However, instead of the audience being lead into the image, they're instead lead across the
composition, which creates "movement". This is because diagonal lines are more ‘intense ‘than
horizontal ones. Take the first image below: notice how the diagonal lines cover the entire image, not
just from left to right and also up to down but also from front to back. Therefore the diagonal, crossing
so many of the intersectional lines of an image separated by the rule of thirds, creates the sense that the
birds are inescapable and dominating the sky line. These lines do not have to be a literal diagonal line
and can be suggested by the outline of things, be part of the environment or even created via light.

FOREGROUND
At the start of this we began by referring to the screen, or the part of a theatre stage
nearest the audience as the ‘front’. The correct terminology for this however, is the
foreground. This is such an important area for film, photography, art and the theatre because placing a
person or object in the foreground not only brings them closer to the audience but also puts them in front
of others in the scene. This reinforces the importance of that person/object as it shows that they’re
essentially "first in line" and as we tend to look at the things in the foreground first and then move
backwards through the image, being at the front gives objects and people power. The use of the
foreground doesn’t mean that there is nothing of interest in the background, simply that it’s not the thing
we should concentrate on just yet.
BACKGROUND
Just like placing something of importance in the foreground is a useful compositional element, as is using
the background. Again, the thing/s in the foreground are still important, but the inclusion of something in
the background has been done for a specific reason. One key part of this is the use of focus depth and
this is something which we’ll look at in the cinematography Unit, but if there is something clear and
perhaps dramatic in the background, that suggests we should look there first. The reason for use of the
background is an important area of the scene is that it creates an interesting juxtaposition; because we
naturally look at the foreground and now need to look at the background too, it creates a relationship
between them that allows us to make new meaning.
For example, in the shot on the left from ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN, the inclusion of the man in the
background, hidden in shadow, suggests to the audience that he is hiding and is distant from us and the
people who will be standing in the foreground. In the shot from CITIZEN KANE on the right, consider
why this shot isn’t just the man in the foreground watching, or just the rally with Kane. This is because the
composition is designed to suggest that there is a clear relationship between the two.
TASK:
Using the boxes below, draw (to the best of your ability) one shot that places something of emphasis in
the foreground (remember to draw a background though) and then one shot that places something in
the background of the shot that suggests a relationship between the foreground and the background.

SYMMETRY
Symmetry is the visual arrangement of something being made up of exactly similar parts
facing each other. This creates a visual balance-things look very similar, if not identical, on
both sides of the image. This in turn brings balance to the image we’re looking at and it’s
believed that balance creates peace and tranquillity-essentially this means that we like to see symmetrical
things. Asymmetry creates the opposite-a sense of chaos, imbalance and an overall feeling of things
being complicated.
Consider these two shots below. Notice how other aspects of composition such as leading lines and
diagonals can be used to help create symmetry. Also note how the two sides do not need to be identical
but do need to be as visually similar as possible to each other and this often means that the two sides
have similar sizes, shapes and angles to each other. This also ties in with the idea of the one point
perspective or vanishing point which we’ll look at in more depth in Cinematography and below, in
‘centre framing’.
TASK:
Using the boxes below, draw (to the best of your ability) one shot that places something of emphasis in
the foreground (remember to draw a background though) and then one shot that places something in
the background of the shot that suggests a relationship between the foreground and the background.
You can see that I’ve drawn on a line through the center of the
image to help highlight that the image is very, very similar on
both sides, therefore creating symmetrical image. This has
been achieved via the framing of the shot, something done as
part of cinematography, but here the mise-en-scene contributes
to the meaning of the scene in its visual serenity.
Another classic shot here, this time from 2001: A SPACE
ODYSEEY, and again you can see how the added line through
the centre of the image helps to make the symmetry clear.
Note that the image is not perfectly symmetrical, but the
overall appearance is that both sides are generally the same,
part of the style of the film but also creates a pleasing image.
This shot on the left from SNOWPIERCER, you can see that the shot
isn’t symmetrical-the random nature of the plants and the trees
mean that the shot isn’t the same on both sides. However, the use of
architecture of the room in terms of the lines on the wall and ceiling
and the use of the fountain in the centre of the frame create a sense
of symmetry. In such a tranquil and peaceful scene the symmetry
really helps to sell the idea that this is a pleasant and enjoyable
place to be.

In SOME LIKE IT HOT, we can see how the choice of using centre
framing helps to really emphasise who we should be looking at
and paying attention to, even on a beach where some people
are sat in similar positions and with similar props.
There is a lot to consider in this shot from SPIDER-MAN: INTO
THE SPIDERVERSE, but for the moment, consider how the centre
framing highlights that, of all the things going on in the city,
it’s our protagonist that we should be following.
CENTRE FRAMING
The centre of the frame is one of the places which are eyes are drawn to first. As a result, it’s
an important area for placing people and objects as it tends to dominate our first initial
glimpse at a shot. As we’ve seen though, it doesn’t necessarily mean that placing something in
the middle of the shot makes for a particularly nice image to look at and it can make things a touch too
‘obvious’. Of course, it's still a vitally important part of the screen and therefore placing someone or
something in the middle of a shot can be a useful way of communicating ideas. It can also help to
contribute to other ideas involving composition. For example, notice how the image below from THE
SHINING uses ideas of leading lines, diagonals, symmetry, foreground AND background to help
emphasises the idea emphasised here from centre framing-that our protagonist is important but that
they’re now in direct sight of something, or someone, sinister at the end of the journey that they’ve been
on.
With centre framing, be sure to consider not only why something may be positioned in the centre of the
frame but also why something may not be in the centre. Don’t forget our other aspects of composition
though-something in the centre of the frame in the foreground may mean something entirely different to
something framed in the centre in the background.
TASK: First of all, describe in detail
what is in the centre of this
screenshot.
Next, analyse why you believe this
shot has been constructed in this way.
What does it suggest? And how does
the centre framing do this?

THE CLOSE-UP
Our final idea of positioning is, perhaps more than many other aspects of composition, an
example with of cinematography rather than mise-en-scene. However, by using a close-up, the
film is placing an object or person in the foreground of the image and therefore making it
larger than it would normally appear. We can therefore explore some it as an idea in relation to mise-
en-sine because the size of an object within the frame directly determines how much importance it has:
the bigger it is, the more "important" it is. When we think back to other aspects of mise-en-scene we also
need to remember that a larger object will also likely be first thing that an audience is most likely to look
at and therefore suggests power or dominance. Of course, the opposite then applies-the smaller the
object, the less important or powerful the object. This does not mean that the object or person themselves
need to take up the whole screen, but that it’s make bigger or more prominent than other aspects of the
shot and therefore provides more immediate focus on that object.
POSITION OF PEOPLE AND OBJECTS SUMMARY
The placement of people or objects on the screen is done for a specific purpose and aims to
communicates ideas of power, influence, focus and importance. As a film student we need to be able to
accurately describe where the person or object is using the correct terminology to indicate within a 3D
space, as if describing a position on a theatre stage.
From there, we then need to consider why the positions have been chosen, considering the basics of the
front of the shot being an area which suggests power and prominence. We should also consider
relationships between people and objects, as the closer things are, the closer their relationship, with
distance suggesting the opposite.
To develop our understanding of positioning we can refer to composition. This is something which is an
aspect of cinematography but we can consider it here as it can move people or objects into specific
places. If you want to extend your knowledge even further, research the topic of ‘blocking’ online.
This iconic shot from JURASSIC PARK is famous for a reason:
how often do you see a glass of water in such a big close-up?
So why is it used here? Well, as we can see from the water
movement, it’s telling us something that’s happening off
screen and therefore, we need to see nothing else in the shot.
In BACK TO THE FUTURE, there’s a lot happening in this scene,
but the key part involves Marty playing the guitar. The way in
which this is communicated is by taking a vital, but small
aspect of this, the guitar pick and making it appear in close-up
in the shot to give it emphasis to the audience.
TASK: In the box in the right, draw a scene which
uses the frame to create an object in close-up.
Ensure that this object or person is significant in
some way, so you will likely need to include some
detail in the background to the image to help
emphasise what is in close-up. You should also
consider other aspects of composition in order to
make an especially interesting image.

TASK: Choose your own screenshot from a film. You could copy and paste, draw it or print and stick. Firstly,
identify the leading lines and draw them on. Then, identify where the most important person or object is and
explain how the image reinforces their importance through positioning.
TASK: Finally, draw or take a picture of your own and explain what your positioning of choice is and explain
any techniques of composition you’ve used.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK: PROPS
TASK: You can see three images with pink lines on them that helps to identify the leading lines in the
composition of the two shots. Look closely at the two blank images and neatly draw on the leading lines or key
aspects of composition that you can identify. Then, next to each, identify where the most important person or
object is and explain how the image reinforces their importance through positioning.

POSITION OF PEOPLE AND OBJECTS MINI-ASSESSMENT
Watch the following clip from 12 ANGRY MEN https://youtu.be/TUzp2XUhskY
Firstly: identify a shot or few moments where it seems that the positioning of people and/or objects is
especially important. Describe, draw or copy and paste below.
Then: describe the position used in the scene, especially in relation to rules of composition.
Finally: How does the positioning help to communicate a key idea?
GLOSSARY
background
bisect
composition
foreground
intersection
juxtaposition
negative space
rule of thirds
trisect
PLAYLIST:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeNerb9lxe3nKCs4aYu4uaJA0XZIPuDML

SECTION 3: COSTUME, HAIR AND MAKE UP
INFORMATION:
As we continue to explore mise-en-scene and have paid significant attention to props, we
also need to consider the clothes that people wear and other aspects that help to create
the style and look of characters. In theatre, TV and film we refer to clothing as costume
and it’s a vital aspect of mise-en-scene as it not only helps to establish what and when the
characters are/are from, but also helps to communicate ideas about characters and their
personalities. As with other aspects of mise-en-scene, this is often done implicitly through use of
connotation or inference and whilst some of this can be suggested through colour theory and having an
understanding of fashion and style, it also comes from simply watching many films-often ideas about
costume are repeated and recognisable to people who consume a lot of films. As well as costume, the
hair style of a character and their make-up can also provide insight to them as a person or their history
and beliefs. However, make-up goes further than this as it’s one of the earliest example of a ‘special
effect’-something created and manipulated to make things appear different on screen. As a result, make-
up is not just used in film to make people look a certain way but also provide people with injuries,
fantastical features and a practical and realistic alternative to CGI.
The combination of costume, hair and make-up can dramatically alter how a person looks, to the extent
that they can appear to be genuinely different in each role. However, this isn’t done to simply make
something appear to be different, but rather because these aspects of mise-en-scene provide the
audience an appreciation of what a person is like before they even speak any dialogue or act in a
scene. Johnny Depp for example is an actor who has undertaken many roles that rely on costume, hair
and make-up to really help create a detailed, authentic and interesting character.
TASK:
Begin by describing explicit details first: what you can see. Then analyse what these things tell us about
the character. Consider colour, materials and special effects in the make-up. Then, analyse what you
think this implicitly suggests about the character.
EXPLICIT DETAILS IMPLICIT DETAILS

TASK:
Costume doesn’t always have to be a dramatic thing. For each screen shot below, again
describe what you can see (the explicit) and then describe what the costume tells us about that
character/s:
Costume can also signify change in a character. For this screenshot, explain what the change in costume
tells us about how the character has changed.
TASK:
Around the image, describe what the character is like based on their costume and then describe how the
costume has changed to the image above so that you can then explain what that tells us about the
person and how they have changed.
EXPLICIT DETAILS
EXPLICIT DETAILS
EXPLICIT DETAILS IMPLICIT DETAILS
IMPLICIT DETAILS
IMPLICIT DETAILS

COSTUME AS METAPHOR
Like props, costume can be used to indicate a variety of ideas. As with all aspects of film form
however, it’s important to select only the most important or relevant examples of costume in
order to create a meaningful, accurate and insightful analysis.
Costume then, can help to show what a person is like, or to help reinforce a change in the character. It
can also indicate the time or place of a film, a genre or the potential narrative. It can help build or
emphasise the world of the film, allow the audience to gain an understanding of the character and their
motivations, or can be used in a less dramatic way, such as showing what characters like or don’t like.
They key however, is ensuring that you identify what aspect of costume is relevant and then analysing
something that allows you to be insightful; analysing every aspect of costume may prove futile if,
untimely, you simply describe costume, rather than exploring the significance of it.
One way of doing this lies in colour theory, of which we’ll do in relation to cinematography
later on, and how colours can help characters stand out or show that they’re clearly different
from others or just worth paying attention to.
TASK:
Clothing, as with most things, can be a visual metaphor. Complete the table below:
CLOTHING METAPHOR EXAMPLE
Wearing no/few clothes Vulnerability, fragility Oskar at the end of LET
THE RIGHT ONE IN.
Wearing lots of clothes Armour, protection
Torn clothes
Expensive clothes
Mis-matched colours and styles
Missing clothes from an outfit
Clothes which resemble a
uniform (for example a 3-piece
suit, a whole tracksuit)
An actual uniform (give an
example)
A costume (think fancy dress-
what does the choice of
costume suggest?)

TASK:
Consider the shots below from JOKER (2019) in terms of costume as a metaphor. You’ll see the
costumes on Arthur Fleck change and help to firstly display certain personality traits or aspects
of context, but as the film and the costume develops, so does the range of ideas associated with
them. Begin by writing an adjective (or 3!) in the boxes below that correspond to each ‘version’
of the character. Then, annotate and analyse the costumes by firstly identifying the key aspects
of costume and then then aim to analyse how the overall costume design helps to imply ideas
about character.
COSTUME AS REPRESENTATIVE OF TIME AND PLACE
Costume, when done effectively and accurately, allow a film to determine where
or when a film is set in an efficient and implied manner. Whilst being specific
about the actual date or the place that the film, or scene, is set can be difficult
through clothes along, they can certainly establish some general ideas. Other
aspects of mise-en-scene will contribute towards establishing the setting, but clothing is a useful
and immediate one as an audience will generally have an appreciation of costume through
association of style. Some films are clearly very much of a specific period and the costume can
be almost seen to be a form of fancy-dress if the costume is too cliched and generic. You could
consider examples of pirates and cowboys-generic costumes which an audience is likely to
appreciate and understand the iconography of but can be overly-broad and not reflect a
specific time of place. Costume then, needs a considered approach if being used to reflect the
setting for the film.
JOKER
CLOWN
ARTHUR

TASK:
Choose one of the remaining images and explore how costume helps to suggest a specific setting for the
film. Begin by identifying the costume and refer to it using words which you might ordinarily use to
describe clothing. Then consider what the clothing could be reflecting in terms of possible setting,
referring to examples from the images.
COSTUME AS INDICATION OF GENRE
Costume can help indicate or suggest genre. Costume can use generic conventions or
tropes to ensure that the genre is easily identifiable and recognisable. However, costume
which is too obvious or cliched can almost look like ‘fancy-dress’. In this respect costume
needs to suggest genre but be specific to that particular film so that it can help to indicate
or suggest other ideas that we have looked at, such as character, or time and place. If a costume in a
film for a specific genre is too esoteric or idiosyncratic, this may mean that an audience may not believe
that this is a genre film or at worst, is not worth watching because it doesn’t adhere to the conventions
that an audience would anticipate watching. Therefore, using costume to indicate or suggest genre can
be a difficult thing to do.
The shot on the left, from LES MISERABLES (DATE) has been lightened
slightly to allow us to see some of the more precise details in the
costuming. The low light and the props clearly contribute meaning, but
it’s in the costume that date and a broad sense of place is suggested.
Overall, we can see that the clothing is ‘old fashioned’ and very
functional, except for the man in the right foreground. The bonnets on the
head of the women indicate that they are ‘different’ in some way to
differentiate them from the men in the room. This suggests that the time
period is likely before the turn of the 19th
Century or that this is a very
traditional place which may not see women have equal rights.
1 2
3 4

TASK:
Choose at least two of the images above. For each, explicitly explain what you can see. Then, analyse
what the potential narrative might be, based on the costume. If this difficult, refer to props as well. You
must NOT refer to aspects of the narrative which the costume does not imply.
TASK:
Describe what you’d expect to see for a generic, cliched costume in each of these genres.
GENRE HEAD BODY HANDS/FEET ACCESSORIES
Western
Action adventure
Western
Period drama
Superhero
COSTUME AND NARRATIVE
A key aspect of genre is the developing a sense of what the audience is expecting to see and therefore,
the possible narratives of the film. As we have seen, costume can be used to mostly inform about
character in a variety of ways, but it can be used to also show what is currently happening in the
narrative or, through foreshadowing, could happen later.
1 2 3 4

COSTUME AS REPRESENTATION OF CULTURE
This is perhaps costume as its most ambiguous-an audience is only likely to take meaning from specific
aspects of the costume if it’s related to ideas which the audience is familiar with. Of course, not
recognising or appreciating the cultural value of something does not negate its importance, rather this
use of costume can be very specific and linked with deep-seated cultural norms and expectations that
often border on the religious in their importance. Some costumes can reflect a culture which might be
unknown to an audience but reflect the wearer of the costume in a way. In doing so it can add layers of
meaning and a depth of character that a generic costume may not do.
Culture can refer to a wide-range of possibilities, whether helping to reflect the
camaraderie that comes from the shared experience, such as skating in a specific place
and time as seen in the bottom left image from MID 90s (2019) or reflect the overall
fashion of the time, place and people. In the shot in the middle from CLUELESS (1995) we can see that
the quality and condition of the clothing is helping to not only reflect character, but build upon the
culture of the film, especially in the wide variety of scenes which involve shopping or the discussion
around clothes and clothing. Costume, therefore, helps to emphasise the hobbies, interests, beliefs, laws
and the overall style of a film. Even costume which appears to be austere and without an obvious frame
of reference of time can prove to be illustrative and worth examining. The shot on the right from FIRST
REFORMED (2017), the muted colours, the details of the collar on the priest and the use of the hood on
the coat as a metaphor that represents the clothing of a nun, works to imply key ideas about the culture
of this film. An audience then, can see costume and understand it clearly, or may simply be able to infer
key ideas if they have no specific knowledge or frame of reference.
In this shot from SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE (2018) we could analyse the costume as a whole and there could be plenty to
say about the hooded top for example. However, we’re going to focus on his trainers. At first, these could simply be trainers, of no
importance. However, these trainers are very significant in developing a sense of character and culture as they’re a pair of Air Jordan
1s in the ‘Chicago’ colourway. Without going into specifics about trainer culture, these shoes with this colouring indicate that this
character has a deep love of trainers and an appreciation of trainer and basketball culture. The shoe, the signature model for
legendary basketball player Michael Jordan, was instrumental in helping to develop ‘sneaker culture’ and sneaker collecting. By
deciding to have the protagonist wear this shoe in particular, it helps to suggest the culture of Miles is one that reflects not only his
interests, but also that he is a young, black man living in America. Of course, not all of the audience may recognise and understand
this small, but deeply significant detail and therefore this is not an aspect of the film that must be studied or is of vital importance, but
it does help to add an extra dimension to the character and develop a sense of personality and culture.

Costuming can also be used to emphasise a culture even if it technically doesn’t exist. This
can help to develop and build upon the world of the film by, for example, using details of
culture in the ‘real’ world and then use this to inform the audience of the culture in the
world of the film. In BLACK PANTHER, aspects of some African cultures are used and
referenced to provide an acknowledgement of the importance of and to also provide a style that is
reflective of real cultures. For example, in the details applied to some of the costumes the world we see
on screen feels authentic as each tribe in Wakanda has their own style which is also influenced by a real-
world style. Whilst some of the audience may not recognise these, this idea helps to cement the idea that
these tribes are different and unique, but also that, just like the real world, the culture of Wakanda is
diverse and unique and should be represented and celebrated.
[LEFT] The lip plate of the Surma tribe. They are a
form of ceremonial modification of the body.
Many cultures use these but are perhaps best
known in their use in the Surma tribes of Ethiopia.
[BELOW] These colourful, decorative blankets,
which in the film double as a shield, are based
on Basotho blankets, a ceremonial blanket from
the country of Lesotho.
[RIGHT] General Okoye wears a gold
neckpiece, to indicate her rank, whereas
others wear silver the elite unit. [ABOVE] We
can see Maasai tribes of Kenya where the
beading on their garments as well as the
striking colours serve as inspiration.
The morally ambiguous villain of the film, Erik
Killmonger [LEFT], seeks to repatriate a mask
which he feels has been stolen from Wakanda.
Masks, known as mgbedike, are often large and
have masculine traits or aggressive imagery
associated with the rituals that they are involved
in.

COSTUME AS METAPHOR OF CHARACTER
A final consideration for costume is how it can suggest a difference or a change in people. If we consider
costume as a metaphor, we need to also consider what it tells us about someone who is not in a particular
costume, especially in relation to others. The first two images below offer examples of how costume can
suggest that some characters may be an outsider or don’t belong to a part of a group. Yet. This is because
a small group, or a number of people in a similar costume can imply a togetherness, camaraderie or
connection, but one person not in the ‘shared’ costume can suggest the opposite; individualism, perhaps
rebellion or even naivety and innocence.
COSTUME CONCLUSION:
Costuming is a vital aspect of film form and how mise-en-scene can work together to suggest and imply
ideas without the need to explicitly state them. Costume is especially useful in helping to quickly establish
genre and time and place and can help to reinforce genre through use of conventions. However,
costume is perhaps most interesting when approached a metaphor which seeks to develop a character in
further depth. As with most aspects of film form, consider what you can see and then consider why that
specific costume has been designed.
1
2
3
4
5
TASK:
The two images above, from MEAN GIRLS (DATE) and EDGE OF TOMORROW (2016) feature
protagonists who aren’t wearing the exact same costume as the others, even if the colours are very
similar. To analyse follow the steps:
1. Identify who the protagonist is;
2. List key aspects of the costumes NOT worn by the main character, such as colours, types of
clothing or specific styles;
3. Explain what this suggests about those characters;
4. Identify key aspects of the costume that the protagonist is wearing and finally
5. Explain what ALL of the above suggests about the protagonists.

HAIR AND MAKE-UP
Hair and make-up can work in the same way as costume; in developing setting, genre,
narrative or developing a character further. However, both hair and make-up also offer the
opportunity to do more than this in helping to create a character in that they can
significantly alter and develop the way that a character looks or even behaves. Given the
almost limitless possibilities of make-up and hair, it’s impossible to explore every possible examples or
aspects of them and so instead, the principles applied to costume work well here. This then, means that
we shall begin by firstly exploring how and why make-up has, and continues to be used in movies. Then
we’ll identify the explicit details of hair and make-up (such as colour, shape, size and distinguishing
features) and then explore the implied ideas behind these choices. After this, we’ll focus on make-up in
more detail, given that this aspect of film form is also a key aspect of special effects in a practical sense.
MAKE-UP INFORMATION
It’s easy to dismiss make-up as something which has always sought to make beautiful
people more beautiful or simply as way of ensuring that a character stands out in some
form. While it’s true that make-up has always been a key aspect in creating character, it’s
also true that from the earliest days of cinema, make-up has been something which was used to enhance
and conceal and create fantastical characters. However, the process of using make-up in conjunction
with film technology which has been consistently evolving has, at times, produced results that were
broadly ‘inaccurate’. Black and white film was especially difficult for make-up artists and movie stars to
work with, making dark colours darker and light colours lighter. This created problems and issues which
were not easily rectified, given that cosmetic make-up techniques were clearly not compatible with film
stock of the time, and techniques borrowed from theatre were also problematic: for example, face paint
used to create wrinkles effectively in a theatre looked more like tattoos on chromatic film. Cinematic
makeup, then, was not necessarily derived from vanity and instead it was a solution to problems that
came from shooting on film.
Film itself was problematic, but so too were hot, bright studio lights, long working hours with retakes and
the increasingly physical demands of feature films. Actors soon developed new tips and techniques to
combat issues like lights causing intense shine on their complexion, by adding brick-dust or paprika to
lessen the shine caused by traditional cosmetic powders which now almost glowed under the intense
studio lights. This method of constantly seeking new and often unconventional techniques lead to an
entirely new industry and in-turn created a series of brand-new products which have since become
common-place make-up items.
The colour wheel below demonstrates how colours were generally displayed on when
filmed using a chromatic film stock. As a result, actors and make-up artists had to find
new ways to help ensure that specific colours and
shading appeared on screen in a manner that suited
their overall intention. This led to some unconventional
and divisive techniques as seen on the right, with
complex shading and colouring being deployed to
Make-up generally helps to
establish character and style.

match the complex and unique challenges of filming in black and white.
One person in particular came to define make-up in the film industry:
Max Factor. Max, a Jewish Polish immigrant whose surname was
Faktorowicz but had been misspelled upon his arrival in America, was a make-up
artist of repute after working for years in Russia as a wig-maker and cosmetician. It
was his ingenuity and skill that lead to him inventing products such as lip gloss,
foundation and the eyebrow pencil which were all developed as bespoke products to
serve the very specific needs of film stars in the 1920s and onwards. So skilled was
Max, that he was hired by producers to work with specific actors and produced
solutions to problems that suited on their needs, whether that be applying specific
make-up to Douglas Fairbanks 4 times a day, sprinkling gold dust in Marlene Dietrich’s hair or drawing
on a specific shape to create a unique look for Joan Crawford’s iconic lips. Max also worked with actors
on more discreet terms, helping those who were concerned with issues of vanity, fitting the likes of Fred
Astaire, John Wayne, James Stewart, and Frank Sinatra for toupees. He used his skill in wig making to
go further though, and developed prosthetic for the scalp so that actors switch between hair styles,
including bald, with relative ease.
As camera lenses improved and as film stock evolved from chromatic to
panchromatic and then technicolour, so too the make-up needed to improve
and evolve. It was one such development which became, in time, perhaps the
most important of all, his Pan-Cake Make-Up. At first, it took the form of a very
fine and blendable powder, Pan-Cake was the precursor to foundation or
concealer. Actors, Directors, Cinematographers, Producers and audiences alike
loved the product and it was so successful and popular that it became a
commercial product that anyone who could afford could buy-make-up was no
longer the exclusive preserve of the Hollywood elite.
What then, is the significance of this?
Make-up, like almost everything in the film industry has seen an enormous change and rapid
evolution, bought about by necessity, vanity and a rampant desire from producers and
audiences. The innovations in make-up in the 20th
century arguably lead to the rise of the
commercial cosmetics industry as we know it now but also helped to usher in a new-era of
visual fidelity in film-making, but one based on a lie-what we watch, isn’t what the truth. The techniques,
the products and the skill involved meant that ever-increasing quality and adaptability of make-up could
then inform, and in-turn lead to the evolution of the stories that could be told in film. In 1939 Max Factor
helped create the make-up for THE WIZARD OF OZ, the spectacular Technicolour masterpiece. With
films now able to portray other worlds, dream-like situations and dazzling set-pieces, it was only a
matter-of-time before make-up meant that the appearance of actors could be changed entirely and lead
to dramatic changes in appearances.
MAKE-UP, PROSTHETICS AND TRANSFORMATIONS
Whilst Max Factor won an Academy Award for his work in developing make-up, make-up technicians,
cosmeticians and those in the medical industry had been using a range of techniques and innovations for
years in order to create fantastical looks and appearances, with the use of prosthetics having been seen
in film since 1902, when Melies employed prosthetics to create his
‘moon’ in A TRIP TO THE MOON. It was Jack Pierce who is best
known for early work with prosthetics, especially in his
collaborations with Boris Karloff when making FRANKENSTEIN
(1931) and THE MUMMY in 1932 to create looks that matched the
ambitious storytelling.

The film industry has not looked back. The use of make-up and
prosthetics allowed for a significant and welcome development,
typified by Karloff-that filmmakers could hire the best person for
the role and then use make-up and prosthetics to ensure that they looked like
the character, rather than hiring someone who carried some form of
resemblance to the character. Over time this way of dramatically ‘transforming’
an actor has become the norm, especially for films that seek to be successful in
winning prestigious awards. One of the earlier notable examples was the use
of prosthetic implants for Marlon Brandon in The Godfather (1972) to help create his iconic appearance
that created his unique vocal style. Since then, Hollywood has produced hundreds of examples of actors
using hair, make-up and prosthetics to dramatically alter their appearance for a wide variety of reasons.
Below we can see actors, Brad Pitt, Charlize Theron and Danny DeVito who have all undergone
especially dramatic transformations with their appearances in order to play specific roles. Each actor
was chosen for their specific talent talents rather than their appearance but given the nature of their
characters, the actors required specific uses of make-up in order to meet the requirements of their roles.
Whilst Marlon Brando may have worn temporary cheek implants, the techniques available in modern
filmmaking means that a recognisable face can be buried under fake skin, fillers, implants, contact lenses
and a whole host of other make-up techniques, not to mention manipulation of hair and bespoke
clothing.
These hugely impressive feats of transformation are the product of hundreds of hours worth of research,
development, application, modification and improvement, but are often under-looked in helping to
develop character. Whilst not all aspects of make-up are as dramatic, consider analysing make-up in its
various forms when looking at mise-en-scene as a way of analysing how characters have been
developed and created to emphasise the film.
TASK 1:
Below is a screen shot from BEETLEJUICE (1988. Begin by describe the overall appearance of
Beetlejuice in terms of make-up: explore and make an educated guess at what has been done to the
actor. You can annotate and doodle as much as needed, but be specific.

TASK 2:
Now analyse why these changes have taken place and what they suggest about this character overall.
There are then a series of sections which have been zoomed in on to focus your attention and allow you
to see in close detail. Finish by creating a summary of what the make-up suggests about the character,
giving evidence from your notes.
Overall, the make-up of Beetlejuice suggests…
because…
SUMMARY TASK
Usually, this is the place where I would summarise and conclude the section into a few sentences as
key points to recall.
Instead, this is now your task. Using the space below, summarise what you have learned about make-
up, including the history, use of, examples of and the importance of make-up in the film industry.

COSTUME, HAIR AND MAKE-UP MINI-ASSESMENT
Watch all of the following clips.
Firstly: for each clip, make notes on the explicit nature of costume, hair and make-up of one character.
Then: choose ONE clip to focus on. Watch that clip again and evaluate what we learn or how we’re
supposed to feel about the character of your choice.
Finally: How does the costume, hair and make-up help to further our understanding of the character of
your choice? Look back at your notes and the work for this section and ensure that you’re familiar with
why or how costume, hair and make-up is used, and use this to inform your own ideas.
EXTENSION: Choose a genre. Now decide on a typical character for that genre. Now use the space
below to describe what they are like as a character and on the right, what their costume, hair and make-
up would be to reflect them as a person.
CHARACTER DESCRIPTION COSTUME, HAIR & MAKE-UP
GLOSSARY
Costume
Practical effect
Generic
Convention
Trope
Foreshadow
Ambiguous
Chromatic
Panchromatic
PLAYLIST:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeNerb9lxe3nLbZCUmpjUVseE6fY_w70h

Mise-en-scene in film then involves 4 aspects, setting, positioning, hair and performance. It is
our role as film students to watch a scene and to decode how mise-en-scene contributes to
generating meaning, and from this, which aspect of is the most important, relevant or immediate.
When looking at all of mise-en-scene, we also need to consider how the overall style of mise-en-scene in
a film can be designed to fit a cohesive style, vision or direction. Whilst the style will be informed by the
script, the Director’s vision and even aspects of production related to budget, the overall design for the
combination of elements of mise-en-scene will be overseen and directed by a production designer. Their
job is to immerse the audience in the world created on screen; to make the unreal believable. When
done well, this allows the audience to fully immerse themselves in a film before the narrative even begins
or the characters begin their journey. A production designer will make sure that the tone and vision for
the project is realised on screen and this is often referred to as the broad term, art direction. This is
where our understanding of mise-en-scene comes to the fore-if we can recognise the props, then identify
the prominent or relevant ones, we can then begin to explore and evaluate the possible reason for their
inclusion, in part how the art or style of the scene has been created.
In looking to analyse an art style, much of the understanding will come from the ability to identify and
explain key aspects of the design. Use the tasks below to try to describe how that scene or shot looks.
TASK:
Below each of these still from films, describe what you can see. Refer to colours, lines, shapes, dominant
aspects, lights or anything else which could allow you to describe the style of the design to someone who
couldn’t see it.
SECTION 4: SUMMARISING MISE-EN-SCENE

TASK 2:
Now look at these sets and the designs of them. Why do you think they look like they do? Move your
analysis from the explicit, what we can see, to the implicit, what is suggested.
Use the space below to choose at least 2 of the shots above and explore what is being suggested by
these places, situations and perhaps even what the narrative/s might be as a result.
TASK 3:
Time to develop this understanding ever further. Below are two shots, both from the HARRY
POTTER series of films. Both have been designed to illustrate something. Your task is to firstly
describe each shot, or setting, and to then explore what each suggests and what, overall, the
filmmakers are trying to say with the production and art design for these settings.

One function of production design is to establish when a film is set, a time period.
TASK:
Look at the shots below. There are 2 for each film. Next to each, label what decade is being
represented on screen. The decades are: 1980s, 1970s, 1960s and 1950s. Then identify aspects of the
production design that has made these clear using words relating to mise-en-scene.
Decade:
Describe the mise-en-scene:
How does production design reflect
the period?
Decade:
the period?

Decade:
the period?
Decade:
the period?

TASK 2:
Production design, developed from mse-en-scene, has many purposes. Take a look at these screenshots
below and firstly describe the mise-en-scene and then aim to explain what you think the production
design is suggesting here. Consider ideas of what mise-en-scene can be used to suggest.

As well as the time period, the production designer and art director will use
a variety of influences in order to develop the style of the film. These may
be a personal choice or decision, such as the work of H.R Geiger on the
original ALIEN film. The style could come from a specific aesthetic choice
that the Director has, such as Tim Burton channelling German
Expressionism, perhaps because they want to suggest something obvious
but then subvert this, such as David Lynch in BLUE VELVET, but others may want to use other references
that may be useful, personal, interesting or all of the above, such as referring to the work of an artist.

One such example of this is how American painter Edward Hopper has been a major influence
of the art direction on dozens of films.
Hopper’s subject matters were generally the common features and buildings of American life such as
motels, gas stations, theatres, restaurants, theatres and the streets, and the people who lived, worked or
used these places plus land and seascapes. His main emotions themes and moods reflected solitude,
loneliness, regret, boredom, and resignation and his paintings presented this through the interaction of
human with the environment or buildings they inhabit. His work can be read as tableaux; as if he were
creating stills for a movie or a play, with characters positioned as if they were captured just before or
just after the climax of a scene. It’s for this reason that his work has been so influential on the art
direction and production design of film.
TASK: In what way does the Hopper painting on the bottom help us to appreciate the shot on the right
from CAROL? Analyse what you can see in the painting and then explore what the screenshot may be
suggesting too.
ANALYSIS: Above is the Edward Hopper Painting, House By The Railroad from
1925. This piece is very typical of Hopper; a building, an isolated location,
evocative lighting and muted, but distinctive colours that clearly define a place
and time. The overall style is expressive and affecting; the house is isolated and
we as the viewer appreciate and perhaps experience this. As inspiration, it’s has
served perhaps most famously as direct inspiration for the house next to the
Bates motel in Hitchcock’s genre-defining slasher, PSYCHO (1960). The isolation,
the elevated position creating dominance and the strong, foreboding architecture
make the house the perfect location to not only create a sense of isolation, but a
feeling of being undermined by a building and therefore, whoever is inside. We
also see how the horror comedy BEETLEJUICE (1988) utilises the sense of
isolation but uses a brighter colour palette to create a warmer welcome, seen in
an even more striking light from DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978) where the setting sun
creates a comforting, if lonely, atmosphere.

ART DIRECTION MINI-ASSESSMENT
TASK:
Look closely at the image from THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017) below. Analyse the production design by
exploring the entirety of the mise-en-scene.
Begin by identifying the aspects of mise-en-scene that stand out to you. Explicitly describe what you feel
is significant and helps to contribute to the what the purpose of the overall design is.
Then with the explicit detail, analyse what you think the design is trying to say or suggest and refer to
specific aspects of mise-en-scene to prove your idea.
Use all aspects of mise-en-scene initially and use your new-found knowledge and skills in order to be
selective about what aspects of mise-en-scene you analyse.

ART DIRECTION MINI-ASSESSMENT
TASK:
Additional space below can be used to add further details from the task on the prvious page.
GLOSSARY
Production Designer
Art Director
German Expressionism
Add any other of your own
words below
PLAYLIST
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeNerb9lxe3lki7iGiT0AuP9O9pySCclq

SECTION 1: Introduction and shot sizes
SECTION 2: Camera angles
SECTION 3: Camera movement
SECTION 4: Lighting
SECTION 5: Colour

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION AND SHOT SIZES
.
INTRODUCTION
Films try to do a variety of things, they might tell a story, aim to make the audience feel
something, they might explore a big, existential question, they might exist solely to
make money or maybe they try and teach the audience or convince them or an idea.
Whatever the film seeks to do, it will need to use film form to do so. Film form, also called film
language, are the range of techniques and tools that filmmakers employ in order to tell their
stories. Having explored how mise-en-scene does this, we’re now going to explore the role of
cinematography.
Cinematography is a word derived from ancient Greek. Cinema meaning ‘movement’, and
‘graphy’ meaning ‘write’. From this, we see how the idea of cinema is one that is fundamentally
about the movement of images-cinematography then is concerned with the idea of ‘writing’ or
creating these images. Throughout this unit, we’ll be looking at the main ways in which
cinematography can help to create these images which, in turn, helps to communicate ideas
from the filmmaker.
In this guide, we’ll examine how cinematography is used and manipulated through:
• shot sizes;
• camera angles;
• camera movement
• lighting and
• precise techniques and psychological manipulation using colour theory and more.
We’ll look at each one over a range of different lessons and then ensure that we can evaluate
the use of cinematography in any film we watch.
Let’s begin with a brief explanation of the history and development of cinematography.
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT
As we discovered in our unit on film history, the evolution of photography was crucial to the
emergence of film and the moving image. Once people were able to manipulate the process
of developing film stock, moving images soon emerged (most notably with the Lumiere
Brothers) and from this experimentation with the form occurred (for example, with the work of George
Melies amongst many others).
As the medium developed and as the technology improved, so did the ambitions of filmmakers. We saw
how in 1916, D W Griffith aimed to tell an epic story of love spanning thousands of years, using gigantic
sets and thousands of extras. He manipulated mise-en-scene to show a clear difference between the
settings, but it’s also likely that if he had access to the camera technology that was later invented, his film
would have looked very different, perhaps in colour. This doesn’t necessarily mean that his film could
have been improved with colour and indeed, films of the time were in monochrome which doesn't always
mean black and white; it means a movie shot in a single tone or colour. However, as the cost of tinted

film was higher, most movies were produced in black and white monochrome and weren’t able to
chemically manipulated in the way in which some filmmakers would have liked or have been to take
advantage of in order to display their ideas on screen. Modern films are able to manipulate colour,
light, the size of the projected image and even time through use of slow motion or speed ramping.
An important tool that filmmakers quickly learned was the power of the shot size and the
camera angle. Whilst they may not have been able to manipulate the colour they used, but
Griffiths was one of the first to use a close-up in the short film THE LONEDALE
OPERATOR (1911). It is reported that actress Lillian Gish, who starred in the film, said:
“the people in the front office got very upset. They came down and said: 'The
public doesn't pay for the head or the arms or the shoulders of the actor. They
want the whole body. Let's give them their money's worth.' Griffith stood very
close to them and said: 'Can you see my feet?' When they said no, he replied:
'That's what I'm doing. I am using what the eyes can see.”
Whilst the quote may be somewhat apocryphal, it makes a key point here: an audience doesn’t view the
world in long shot, so film shouldn’t present the world in the same way. Of course, this is difficult if your
cameras are so large and cumbersome that you can’t easily move them to get a wide variety of shots.
Through technological changes and developments, cameras got lighter, lenses improved and the quality
of film improved, meaning that images became crisper, clearer and more vivid: filmmakers could
represent their ideas in increasingly vivid ways. Throughout the birth and maturity of cinema, a new
language was being developed and a sense of formalism surrounded filmmaking in the west-shot sizes
became formally recognised and standardised, camera movements too and by the 1940s, the role of the
camera as a storyteller had really become a vial one. Camera operators, Directors and
cinematographers too became increasingly innovative and in the 1950s, which American cinema screens
were getting bigger, French filmmakers were trying to be more intimate with their film productions,
placing cameras in ‘natural’ positions and in increasingly original manners; attaching cameras to cars
with no roofs, putting cameras inside cars, placing cameras in the beds of characters, following
characters at hip level and generally avoiding the formal filmmaking structures that came with placing
large, heavy cameras on tripods.
The more films were made, the more that the process developed and the more people experimented. As
more people watched, the more that filmmakers realised that they could emotionally manipulate the
audience through filmmaking techniques, such as the position of the camera in relation to a person or an
object. Whilst there is of course no hand book, or set list of what makes a specific shot and what
response it generates, filmmakers also realised that films could generate a physiological effect on their
audiences too, and whilst the French new wave was an exciting and innovative time for cinema,
cinematographer Garrett Brown noted how made him dizzy being dizzy.
As a result of this he invented the steadicam to enable the camera operator to move through a scene
freely but maintain a steady and stable image. By doing so however, he didn’t just steady stabilise the
screen, but he changed filmmaking forever. The Steadicam opened up the filmmaking process to a whole
range of possibilities and removed the sense of formality and rigidity that had gone before.
However, with fluid cameras or not, we still refer to and use the formal language that was developed
through the early years and golden period of filmmaking in the early 20th
Century. This formalised
approach allows us to identify aspects of cinematography and then explore why that have been chosen;
what the filmmaker sought to make the audience think and feel through their creative choices.
The first example of this in cinematography is through the use of shot size, by which we mean how close
the camera or lens is to the object or person we are watching.

SHOT SIZE
Introduction
When we watch a film, we are being shown what the Director wants us to see. We do not see
everything in that world or the scene in which the characters exist, and we see things from a
perspective and position which is chosen for us. To this extent, our view, via the camera, is one in which
we have no control over and therefore we should ask ourselves why we are being made to watch things
from this position. The first method of doing so is to consider how close, or far away, we’re situated from
what we’re being asked to look at. The reason for this is important because as with most aspects of film
form, the literal choice of something is rooted in suggestion, metaphor and psychological manipulation.
That is to say, the proximity of the camera to subject is chosen in part because of artistic choice, but also
because the audience are being manipulated into understanding or feeling something specific.
One way to consider shot size is to consider how we as an audience would feel if presented with a
person in front of us. If we stand too far away from them we cannot see them clearly and are likely to
not pay attention. Too close and things become uncomfortable. The balancing act then, is for the film to
present us with a view which is comfortable, informative and artistic, presenting things in a manner which
suits the genre, the narrative of the style of the film.
As we have explored, mobile cameras and modern filmmaking often make identifying shot sizes much
harder than it used to be, but we will still refer to the following sizes for relevant shots. A key skill is
aiming to find static shots in films or moments in the film where movement is slow and distinct enough for
a specific shot size to be clearly visible and having been done on purpose.
Extreme long shot XLS
Long shot LS
Medium long Shot MLS
Mid/Medium Shot MS
Mid/Medium Close Up MCU
Close Up CU
Big Close Up BCU
Extreme Close Up XCU

In the image on the previous page we can use the coloured boxes to give an approximate
representation of the screen if that shot size was used. So for example, an extreme long shot,
the yellow box, would show all the person in their entirety. In contrast an extreme close-up,
the white box, would show almost only the eyes on screen. By cropping the image and
keeping the screen size the same, we can see how this works and makes the differences much clearer.
TASK 1:
To complete this task, carefully study what you can see in each shot. Then, complete the table on the
next page by adding the correct number next to the correct description. To do so, carefully read the
description to see what the shot could look like, then find the closest example of this in the pictures and
then write the correct number in the box. One correct example has been done for you.
TASK 2:
Now focus on the shot below and annotate the shot including what we see. Then make notes on how the
shot size helps to show us what the Director wants us to learn with this specific shot size.
1 2
3
4
5 6 7 8

TASK:
As stated on the previous page, to complete this table you simply need to add in the correct number next
to the correct description. To do so, carefully read the description to see what the shot could look like,
then find the closest example of this in the pictures and then write the correct number in the box. One
correct example has been done for you.
SHOT
NUMBER
SHOT NAME DESCRIPTION OF SHOT
3
Extreme long shot The camera is at its furthest distance from the subject,
emphasising the background. You can see the whole person
or object and they will often be quite small.
Long shot Shot which shows all or most of a fairly large subject (for
example, a person) and usually much of the surroundings.
Medium Long Shot In the case of a standing actor, the lower frame line cuts off
their feet and ankles.
Medium Shot In such a shot the subject or actor and its setting occupy
roughly equal areas in the frame. In the case of the standing
actor, the lower frame passes through the waist. There is
space for hand gestures to be seen.
Medium Close Up The setting can still be seen. The lower frame line passes
through the chest of the actor; usually just the head and
shoulders can be seen.
Close Up A shot that shows a fairly small part of the scene, such as a
character's face, in great detail so that it is the dominant
object in the screen.
Big Close Up These focus attention on a person's feelings or reactions,
and are sometimes used in interviews to show people in a
state of emotional excitement, grief or joy. This usually is
seen through a shot of forehead to chin or in the case of an
object, taking up almost all of the screen.
Extreme Close Up When the screen is taken up by an image made of nothing
but the image. You usually cannot see the background. This
is often done to subject's faces when showing reactions or
when highlighting detail.

Let’s take a look at each of the sizes above and explore ideas about each. For each we’ll take a
look at an example shot and consider the shot in three ways: what we can see with the shot
this side, what the purpose of the shot is or, why it’s used and finally, what that shot size
suggests to the audience.
Let’s begin with the ‘furthest’ shot size, the extreme long shot. We often abbreviate this to XLS and it is
sometimes referred to as an extreme wide shot, or EXS. However, we’re going to use extreme long shot
as it makes clear that the camera is far away, and we can see a ‘long’ distance.
EXTREME LONG SHOT (XLS)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
In an extreme long shot, the camera is its furthest distance from the subject (person or object) and as a
result they appear to be small and the landscape appears large. You can see the whole object, though
they could be very small, and the landscape dominates the frame.
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS SHOT?
This shot is often used to establish a sense of place and time by allowing the audience to see the setting
clearly. It can also make the object look especially isolated and vulnerable due to their small size in this
shot.
WHAT CAN IT SUGGEST?
An extreme long shot can suggest isolation and vulnerability for the subject in the shot. Other
impressions and suggestions come from the combination of the small size of the object and whatever else
is in the environment around them.
TASK
Using the ideas above, analyse this XLS from MAD MAX: FURY ROAD in two ways. Begin by describing
what you can see and then what is being suggested to the audience by using this shot size.

LONG SHOT (LS)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
A shot where we can see all or most of a fairly large subject (for example a person) and usually a lot of
their surroundings or the settings.
This shot is often used to show an audience a whole subject. This allows the audience to take in details of
the subject and perhaps their relative size. It helps to establish detail about them as a character.
A long shot can suggest that the audience should pay attention the subject on screen and take in the
details of them. It also suggests that we shouldn’t forget to consider the setting as we can still see this
clearly and as a result, that the two could be connected in some way.
TASK
Using the ideas above, analyse this LS from DJANGO UNCHAINED in two ways. Begin by describing

MEDIUM LONG SHOT (MLS)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
In a shot featuring a person standing, we would be able to see most of the person but the lower frame
may cut off their feet and ankles. An object would mostly be on screen, but not all. Both would be large.
As the camera is getting closer to the subject we need to focus more on the details of that subject,
perhaps the face or body language if we’re looking at a person.
This shot suggests that the audience pay less attention to the surroundings and focus more on the subject.
However, the background is likely to still offer something of use, interest or context. We should
concentrate on the part of the character that we can see and this allows us to understand what their
actions and reactions are communicating. This is also a useful shot to show group dynamics and
relationships.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this MLS from THE USUAL SUSPECTS in two ways. Begin by describing

MEDIUM SHOT (MS)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
In a shot featuring a person standing, we would be able to see the lower frame pass through their waist.
As a result, the subject and the setting occupy roughly equal space.
As the camera gets closer to the subject there is an increased focus on the subject. For example, this shot
size provides space for hand gestures to be seen and facial expressions to be see clearly.
Given that there is a balance between setting and subject, the setting could inform ideas about the
character, suggest mood or simply help to provide the usual contextual information. However, these
shots are generally used to suggest how a person, or people are feeling-we can see faces better and
there is room for movement or others, further helping to show or suggest relationships. As a result,
they’re often used for scenes of dialogue and exposition, meaning that the MS is one of the most
commonly used shot sizes in filmmaking.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this MS from WONDER WOMAN in two ways. Begin by describing

MEDIUM CLOSE-UP (MCU)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
The setting can still be seen but the screen is now largely taken up by the subject in the scene. The space
afforded to setting is there to mostly provide contextual information and atmosphere, but perhaps one or
two specific details may be important. The lower frame passes through the chest area of a standing actor
meaning that it is the head and shoulders that we mostly see.
Given that this shot size usually features a persons and head and shoulders, it’s a classic shot used when
people are talking: we can see their face clearly, we can see some key body language and because the
face and head are quite large in the frame we can also see reactions and facial expressions easily. It
also allows other things in the frame that might support what someone is saying or help to build
atmosphere.
A shot size like this is always going to suggest that we look directly at the object or person, especially if
they’re in the centre of the frame. But it also suggests that should do more than just pay attention to what
is being said, but how the person on screen reacts. In the case of an object, we should be paying
attention to specific details of it. Essentially, it’s being suggested that we need to pay close attention.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this MCU from NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN in two ways. Begin by
describing what you can see and then what is being suggested to the audience by using this shot size.

CLOSE-UP (CU)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
This is a shot that shows the focus of the scene, a person’s face or object, in great detail as it takes up
most of the scene. A small amount of space around the person can be seen but often in small amount of
detail or perhaps even out of focus.
As this shot size features a head or face quite closely, this is a classic shot for allowing the audience to
see and appreciate the emotions and reactions of character. Much like MCUs, this is a shot used a lot for
dialogue scenes but also as a shot used to highlight and emphasise a character’s reaction-see, for
example, how Steven Spielberg uses this shot in this video https://youtu.be/w6hc-Bk6Geg
As the shot is so ‘tight’ to the main object or face, is doesn’t allow for the much to happen in the
background but the small space we can see does help to reinforce key aspects of location or time of
day.
This is an interesting one, because it suggests partly whatever the facial expression suggests. As we are
so ‘close’ to the actors’ face it creates an empathetic response in the audience and if we are invested in
the film, we’re likely to feel what the character feels. It also suggests that we need to pay little attention
on the background, especially if it’s out of focus.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this CU from ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD in two ways.
Begin by describing what you can see and then what is being suggested to the audience by using this
shot size.

BIG CLOSE-UP (BCU)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
A close-up, but bigger. Seriously, that’s kind of it. However, it’s important to note that the difference
between a close-up and a big close-up are quite slight, so don’t always expect to be able to spot the
difference unless it’s clear and the camera does not move. With a BCU though, we’re going to see
mostly the head to the chin if it’s a person, with very little space around the outside of the face.
Given how close we are to the face of someone we now find it difficult to look at anything else and this
almost forces us to pay attention. This means that there is something key that we need to focus on, and
this is why the shot is often used to see when a character is concentrating on something or having a very
dramatic reaction to something. Similarly, this shot is often used to show hands or feet at the same size
so that we can get a very clear sense of what and how someone is doing something, especially if they
have earned a new skill or power.
Much like a close-up it suggests partly whatever the facial expression or the subject suggests. If are
‘forced’ to stare at a specific facial reaction this is key, but if we’re looking at, for example, some hands,
it suggests that the skill this person does or doesn’t have, is clearly important for the whole of the film.
Key here, is to pay attention to what we’re seeing and consider why we’re seeing it so close.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this BCU from TRAIN TO BUSAN in two ways. Begin by describing what
you can see and then what is being suggested to the audience by using this shot size. Here, consider
why we’re looking at his object as a face-what does it suggest in terms of what we’re not seeing.

EXTREME CLOSE-UP (XCU)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
An extreme close-up is called extreme for a reasons-we’re now extremely close to the subject. As we are
so close this shot size isn’t used that often as it’s simply too uncomfortable to be looking at something
that close for too long. Whatever we see though will be large and clear to us. It will take up the whole
screen and won’t allow for anything else to be seen such as the background or setting.
Details. The filmmakers want us to look at something in precise detail. It can replicate a very specific
view such as through a microscope, rifle or binoculars, or just get us incredibly close to someone or
something, but it does so because we need to pay close attention to what we’re being shown especially
in the specific details we’re being shown.
WHAT CAN IT SUGGEST
Usually? Watch closely. Whatever is on screen is there for a reason. It could be a tiny detail that will be
important later, or that something is very small and takes very skilful hands and precise work, or that one
tiny aspect of something will make a huge difference, which is why we’re looking at it. Regardless, pay
close attention and understand why we’re being shown something this close.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this XCU from DEATH BECOMES HER in two ways. Begin by describing
what you can see and then what is being suggested to the audience by using this shot size. You may
need to consider not just what we’re seeing here, but also what it suggests about the person holding the
scalpel.

SECTION 2: CAMERA ANGLES
INTRODUCTION
Whilst the first thing we consider in terms of shot selection is the distance we are in relation to the
subject, another key aspect is the angle from which we’re looking at that subject. Firstly then, we
can consider how close or how far we are from that subject, we secondly consider from what
perspective we’re viewing that subject. In all of the examples we’ve looked at for shot size,
we’ve been looking ‘straight-on’ to the subject, often at eye-level of a person. This means that the eyes of
the person, or the middle of an object, is somewhere near in middle of the screen. However, we don’t
look at the world from this one perspective, so a film that only used this perspective so for all of its run-
time would feel artificial. Therefore, one of the reasons for changing the direction which we look at a
subject is to make the film have variety in perspectives, much like real-life. Another reason however,
is that, much like distance, the angle on which we look at someone or something can have a dramatic
effect on what we think and feel about a subject. This is in part because they will look different when
seen from different perspectives and positions. This is also because we will be able to see different
aspects a person or object from a different position. The decision of where to place a camera in relation
to a subject then, is done for many reasons. These might be an artistic choice to achieve a specific look,
it could be communicating an idea about that subject or to allow us to see a different part of them.
It is our task as film students to identify the angle and then analyse why that angle was chosen.
TASK:
To complete this task, carefully study what you can see in each shot. Then, complete the table on the
next page by adding the correct number next to the correct description. To do so, carefully read the
description to see what the shot could look like, then find the closest example of this in the pictures and
then write the correct number in the box. One correct example has been done for you.
Over the Shoulder OTS
Low Angle LA
High Angle HA
Canted CA
Bird’s Eye BE
Worm’s Eye WE
Eye Level EL
1 2 3
4
5 6
7

TASK:
As stated on the previous page, to complete this table you simply need to add in the correct number next
to the correct description. To do so, carefully read the description to see what the shot could look like,
then find the closest example of this in the pictures and then write the correct number in the box. One
correct example has been done for you.
SHOT
NUMBER
SHOT NAME DESCRIPTION OF ANGLE / SHOT
6
Eye level (EL) The conventional angle for a camera to be placed and
describes the 'flat' angle that the camera show where the
subject or person is centred in the shot, so that the eyes, or
centre of the object match our level in the middle of the
screen.
Bird’s Eye (BE) Named as it represents the angle from which a bird would
view the object or person, essentially, from a very high
angle looking down on someone or something.
Worm’s Eye (WE) So-called as it matches the apparent perspective of a
worm. Is essentially a 'very low' shot that looks up at
someone or something.
Canted/Dutch (C/D) An angle that is at an 'odd' angle to the position of the
viewer so that it make the object, subject or people look as
if it is tilted.
Over the Shoulder
(OTS)
The camera literally looks over someone or somethings
shoulder at another person, object or landscape. The
shoulder being looked over is often in the shot.
Low (L) The camera is not at the 'regular' eye level and looks
slightly up at the subject or person.
High (H) An angle where the camera is placed slightly above the
subject or person.

Let’s now take a look at each of the angles above and explore ideas about each. For each
image we’ll take a look at an example shot and consider the shot in three ways: what we can
see with the shot this angle, what the purpose of the angle is or, why it’s used and finally,
what that angle suggests to the audience.
Let’s begin with the ‘flattest’ angle: ‘eye level’. We can abbreviate this to EL and it is often used as a
medium shot but as with all angles, can be combined with any shot size. Key however, is that for this
camera angle the eyes of the character are positioned roughly in the centre of the frame.
EYE-LEVEL
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
The conventional angle for a camera to be placed and describes the 'flat' angle that the camera
show where the subject or person is centred in the shot, so that the eyes, or centre of the object
match our level in the middle of the screen.
This angle is the most commonly used. It helps us to see things and people clearly and as a result, it
means that it’s often used for dialogue or exposition delivered by characters.
Viewing someone or something as the same angle as the viewer can help to create a link or sense
of empathy. Therefore, an eye-level angle can suggest a sense of connection, familiarity or similarity
between audience and person on screen.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this EL from LIFE OF PI in two ways. Begin by describing what you
can see and then what is being suggested to the audience by using this angle.

BIRD’S EYE (BE)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
The shot size here can vary, but it’s likely to be a long shot or most likely, an extreme long
shot. And why? Well this angle is named after looking at something from the perspective of
a bird looking down, so we’re generally going to the location of a scene and some people
or object, but at a distance and directly from above. This means that, if we’re looking at people,
we’re not likely to see their face but instead where they are what they’re doing.
A bird’s eye angle is useful as it allows us to see a range of ideas at once and therefore, similar to
an extreme long shot, allows the audience to understand a wide range of ideas at the same time.
For example, with a shot like this, we can see not only where people are but their relation to the
location and each other.
By seeing people or objects from overhead, it helps to create the sense that we are not actually
present in this scene: we rarely see the world from this angle, and it makes us feel as though we can
see everything, suggesting that we are omnipotent, like a God.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this BE from THE KINGS OF SUMMER in two ways. Begin by
describing what you can see and then what is being suggested to the audience by using this angle.

WORM’S EYE (BE)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
This is the ‘opposite’ of the bird’s eye angle and is so-called as it matches the apparent
perspective of a worm. This means that it is essentially a 'very low' shot that looks up at
someone or something. This doesn’t mean that we are in the position of a person, or even a worm,
but that as the audience we are looking up at someone or something.
This shot generally has two purposes: to either show that we are in the position of someone on the
floor and possibly being looked down upon, or to make someone or something appear to be bigger
and more important that either the audience or the person we are aligned to in that position.
If the shot is set up so that ‘we’ are looking at someone or something, the shot suggests that they are
dominant or more powerful than us: by looking up they are made to look bigger and they take up
most of the frame. This suggests then, that we can see almost nothing else in the frame and
therefore, that we are not powerful or at least as powerful as what we are looking at.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this WE from KILL BILL in two ways. Begin by describing what you

CANTED or DUTCH (C/D)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
This angle is called both Canted (meaning at an angle to the horizontal or vertical
position) and also as the ‘Dutch’ angle. This angle is a strange one, as it creates the sense
that the object, subject or person look as if it is tilted or ‘off axis’, meaning not upright.
People generally are not ‘off axis’-it is rare that people are at angle which means that we are
looking at things in a ‘wonky’ way. Generally, people only see the world from this angle if they are
falling over or discombobulated in some way, perhaps when drunk. This shot then is designed to
show that things are not right or abnormal in some way. For the audience it allows us to see things
in a manner which visually looks and therefore feels strange. For the character, it shows that
something is not right or is at least different about them or their situation.
This shot generally suggests that something is not ‘normal’ compared to what the audience are used
to or would expect. What this actually suggests will depend on the specifics of the film and the shot,
but consider that we often see this shot used in sci-fi films and films where people are undergoing
some change or experiencing something dramatic.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this Canted angle from SUPER 8 in two ways. Begin by describing
what you can see and then what is being suggested to the audience by using this angle.

OVER THE SHOULDER (OTS)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
A shoulder and someone or something over it! This shot is named as it literally shows the back
of a character and then someone or something else over their shoulder. This angle can be
used with any shot size, but generally is seen with the use of a medium to medium long shot so that we
can see both the person the shoulder belongs to and the subject that they’re looking at too. There is no
rule about how much of a shoulder has to be shown and there are variations of this angle too, such as
over the “hip shot” and the “foot shot”, but the OTS is most commonly used.
As with some other angles, an OTS helps to align the audience to a character or, if they are our
protagonist, this angle helps to emphasise our relationship with them. As the OTS often shows two
people talking it generally places us in a position which feels like we are sitting there. It’s often used as a
way of making conversations more interesting and allows us to see either the reactions of the person
listening or talking. Finally, if shot in a specific way, it can also be used to show conflict between two
characters-showing a ‘stand-off’ between two people who are looking to settle a disagreement.
The specifics of what it suggests depends on the nature of the image and the narrative, but an OTS
generally suggests that we should pay attention to the relationship and dynamic of the people on screen
and how we fit in with this relationship. We should also watch the reaction of a character but in an OTS
it’s especially important and so is the blocking and general positioning in the scene.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this OTS from SICARIO in two ways. Begin by describing what you

LOW ANGLE (L)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
This is the less-extreme version of the Worm’s Eye angle. Instead of being on the floor
and looking right up, a low angle shot still looks upwards but perhaps only slightly. The
camera doesn’t have to be on the floor and even that close to the ground but it will look upwards to
some extent hence the camera being ‘low’ in comparison to someone or something else. The shot is
also useful as it literally looks up, it allows us to see more of the sky or above where we would
usually look.
As we’re looking at an angle that isn’t quite as ‘strong’ as a Worm’s Eye, the same ideas apply
from that angle here, just to a lesser extent. So, this shot will generally either show that someone is
above someone else or to make someone or something appear to be bigger and more important,
just not as fully dominant as in a Worm’s Eye shot. As it looks up, this shot can also be useful in
allowing the audience to see more, perhaps revealing new information.
If ‘we’re’ looking up at someone or something, the shot suggests that they are more important,
powerful or maybe just older than us. It therefore also does the opposite: whoever we are in the
position of, the angle suggests that they are younger, less powerful or less important.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this low angle from TREE OF LIFE in two ways. Begin by describing

HIGH ANGLE (H)
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
This is the less-extreme version of the bird’s eye angle. Instead of being high in the air, the
camera is elevated above the subject and looks down on someone or something. A high
angle shot doesn’t need to be in the air or especially high up, but it needs to be above the person
or object in some way, making it ‘higher’ than them, hence the name. The shot is also useful as it
literally looks down, so it can allow us to see more of an area or the location if framed in a specific
way.
The same ideas apply from a bird’s eye angle here, just to a lesser extent, meaning that this shot
will generally either show that someone is below someone else or the audience. This in turn makes
them appear to be smaller and less important but not in a dramatic way. It can also be used to get
a better idea about a location of situation of a scene if the shot is framed from a distance as we can
now see more of what is below us without losing too much of the sense of what is above us.
If we, as the audience, are looking down at someone or something, this might suggest that they are
less important, powerful or maybe just younger than us. However, it can also suggest that we should
look down and consider what is around us-when we look to our feet or below us, it’s often because
we’re looking for something or seeking specific detail: the same is true for a low-angle shot in film.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this high angle from LOST IN TRANSLATION in two ways. Begin by

KEY SCENE ANALYSIS
When analysing cinematography, we’re almost always going to be exploring a moving
scene, rather than individual shots. As a result, exploring and analysing still shots or
screengrabs is a useful practice, but it is the skill of analysing a moving scene need to
develop.
Watch the clip via the link below. As you watch, try to ignore what is happening and instead focus
on the presentation of the scene through the shot sizes and the camera angles chosen. Most scenes
move quickly and will change shots every few seconds and therefore, it is important that you don’t
worry too much about trying to identify every shot you see. Instead, focus on identifying shots which
stand out. These could be shots which stay on screen longer than most, shots which show the
audience something significant, or simply a shot which stands out to you. What you are aiming to
do here, is to ‘pause’ the scene in your brain at various points and analyse the shot you have
memorised, or paused.
Some screenshots from the scene are provided below, but it’s important that you are able to watch
the clip through and select your own shots, so feel free to watch it through a few times. In fact, my
suggestion is that you watch 3 times, doing the following each time:
1. Watch the scene through, pay attention to the story, which characters are in the scene and what
is being said via the dialogue to establish what the purpose of the scene is.
2. Now aim to watch paying just attention to camera angles and shot sizes, identifying a few-
perhaps no more than 6-shots that stand out or that you feel are important in some way.
3. For the final time watching through, now aim to really analyse how the shots you identified fit in
with, and help to, explain what the purpose of the scene is.
TASK 1:
Watch this scene through, making notes based on the 3 methods of watching and what you need to
watch for. https://youtu.be/yJAf57RL1Kw
1. Watch the scene through, pay attention to the story, which characters are in the scene and what
is being said via the dialogue to establish what the purpose of the scene is.
SUMMARISE WHAT THE PURPOSE OF THE SCENE IS AND THE NARRATIVE OF THE SCENE:
2. Now aim to watch paying just attention to camera angles and shot sizes, identifying a few-
perhaps no more than 6-shots that stand out or that you feel are important in some way.
LIST THE SHOTS THAT STOOD OUT TO YOU IN TWO WAYS. FIRSTLY, EXPLAIN WHAT WE SEE
IN THE SHOT AND THEN EXPLAIN WHAT THE SHOT SIZE OR CAMERA ANGLE IS.
SHOT 1 is:
3. For the final time watching through, now aim to really analyse how the shots you identified fit in
with, and help to, explain what the purpose of the scene is.
EXPLAIN HOW SOME OF THE SHOTS YOU IDENTIFIED CREATE THE PURPOSE OF THE SCENE
Shot 1 shows/suggests:

TASK 2:
Below are some selected shots from the clip along with some example material. The more than we
watch clips and explore the cinematography within them, the easier this exercise will become, but
for now use the examples and the ideas below to help, completing the specific tasks and adding
details along the way.
DESCRIPTION OF SHOT:
SHOT SIZE/ANGLE:
HOW SHOT CONTRIBUTES TO THE MEANING OF
THE SCENE OVERALL:
SHOT SIZE/ANGLE:
THE SCENE OVERALL:
SHOT SIZE/ANGLE:
THE SCENE OVERALL:
DESCRIPTION OF SHOT: In this shot we can see an
angry looking, larger character called Biff-the facial
expression makes clear that he is annoyed with the
person below him. The shorter person at the front of
the screen is called Marty and he is looking upwards
towards Biff.
SHOT SIZE/ANGLE: OTS with a low angle.
HOW SHOT CONTRIBUTES TO THE MEANING OF THE
SCENE OVERALL: The OTS shot means that the two of
them are connected in some way as they are both in
the same shot looking at each other. As it is a low
angle it makes Biff look larger than he is and
therefore more intimidating and this also makes
Marty look smaller and more vulnerable. An OTS is
also often used to suggest a conflict or disagreement,
such as in Westerns with duels. We can also see Biff’s
angry face easier because of the low angle and
therefore this reinforces the idea of conflict.
SHOT SIZE/ANGLE:
THE SCENE OVERALL:
SHOT SIZE/ANGLE:
THE SCENE OVERALL:

TASK 3:
For this task, we’re going to analyse the scene in more detail, aiming towards creating a
cohesive and detailed paragraph.
For this we’re going to use the acronym PEC-Point, Evidence, Comment. Each still image that you
identified and analysed should be able to be written as a PEC paragraph-if there isn’t that much to
analyse, then the shot is likely to not be as useful and you should look to choose another.
We’re going to aim to write 2 paragraphs here, with one example included below. To begin, let’s
take a look at what each section of the paragraph should contain.
POINT: This is where you explain the overall point of the scene and generally why the shot is
used in terms of the narrative.
EVIDENCE: For this part of the analysis, you need to describe and explain what the shot size or
camera angle is. Be specific and precise but keep the detail here brief-the aim is for someone
who is not looking at that shot to be able to picture it in their mind.
COMMENT: Finally, this part of the analysis needs to be the most detailed. The comment is
where you explain how the evidence you identified contributes to the meaning of the shot and
scene and the overall Point you made earlier on.
AN EXAMPLE:
In the beginning of the scene where Marty punches Biff before the skateboard chase takes
place, the scene begins with George McFly standing in the diner, just in front of the doors. This
helps to show how nervous and inquisitive he is as he looks for Lorraine and contrasts with how
confident Marty is who has pushed George through the doors.
George stands almost centrally in the scene in a medium-long shot with his costume looking
slightly dishevelled and flustered with an expression on his face that is a combination of nervous
but inquisitive over where Lorraine is.
The medium-long shot here is used as it allows to see a range of key pieces of information at
once-where the scene takes place and how the location functions, that Marty is more confident
but not wanting to be involved, that George is not confident and that he is the person who
should be the protagonist in this scene and the story of him and Lorraine overall. By using this
shot size we can not only see George and but still see Marty behind him but outside, suggesting
that he does not want to be seen or involved. The wide nature of the shot allows us to see
where people are in relation to the doors and that the diner is slightly busy but that there is a
clear entrance and exit. The MLS also allows us to see body language and costume of George
and we can see that he looks slightly awkward in his stance and that his clothes are not neat
and tidy suggesting that he is flustered, the opposite of how Marty acts at the start of the scene.
The example above is slightly over-elaborate given that it makes a range of points but it is a useful
example of how to structure a possible response and to indicate how much detail you can get from
just one image. Note how the response also refers to and makes use of mise-en-scene in order to
explain and analyse how the shot size helps to suggest key ideas.
Now take a look at the next page and create at LEAST one of your own PEC paragraphs, using the
ideas and examples from above especially paying attention to the structure of the answer.

TASK 4:
Write at least two of your own PEC paragraphs, with each paragraph referring to a different
shot.
POINT:
EVIDENCE:
COMMENT:
POINT:
EVIDENCE:
COMMENT:

SUMMARY
Shot sizes and camera angles then communicate ideas implicitly; the viewer is not in
charge of how we see the image on screen so that use of a camera can make the
audience think and feel specific emotions. One way to do this is for the camera to be
close or far away from a subject on screen and the chosen distance can influence our relationship to
the subject. A camera angle can also influence our emotion, and the direction on which we view
something can alter how we feel about something and we need to be mindful of why a Director
chooses a specific angle. We can then combine both of these and our task as a film student is to
identify what the angle and size is and then offer our explanation of how the shot makes us feel and
the reason as to why the Director has chosen it. To make things even more complicated, we then
need to try and do this whilst watching a moving image and automatically selecting an image as we
see it!
TASK 1
Identify the shot size and/or camera angle in these 4 shots below using the 3 steps that we’re
aiming to use every time we analyse an image.
SHOT SIZE/ANGLE:
HOW SHOT CONTRIBUTES TO THE MEANING OF THE SCENE OVERALL:
SHOT SIZE/ANGLE:
SHOT SIZE/ANGLE:
SHOT SIZE/ANGLE:

MINI-ASSESSMENT
Analyse this clip from EX MACHINA.
https://youtu.be/jF20uFVUowk
To do so, use the same structure as worked on previous pages and analyse at least 2 different
shots in detail using the PEC structure. Remember to begin by watching the clip through 3 times
in order to develop your understanding of the clip in detail, especially what you think the
purpose of the scene is.
Create your response by using the space below but you can add the ‘PEC’ headings if this will
help you to do so.

MINI-ASSESSMENT EXTENSION:
For a slighter harder challenge, choose one of the following scenes and analyse how camera
angles and/or shot sizes are used to generate meaning in either of these two clips:
Nadine and Erwin’s date in EDGE OF SEVENTEEN https://youtu.be/XFLK3npKwLY and
The T-Rex attack in JURASSIC PARK https://youtu.be/WSM8GcShChk
3 4

SECTION 3: CAMERA MOVEMENT
INTRODUCTION
By far the hardest aspect of cinematography to explore on page, camera movement is
concerned with the specific direction of travel that cameras go upon, decided by the
filmmakers for very specific reasons. The movements are just like shot sizes and
camera angles in that they each represent or suggest ideas and feelings. Because of
this, camera movement in film convey ideas and help to emphasise meaning and audience
reaction beyond just the narrative. As with other aspects of film form then, it is up to us as film
students to identify the movements we see and then explore how and why those specific
movements have been used.
In the earliest days of film making, cameras were large and simply too big and too complicated
to move around. As the technology developed and cameras became smaller, lighter and more
reliable, filmmakers engineered ways for cameras to be moved. The use of giant tripods with
wheels, PICTURE and tracks allowed cameras to move around, but still in relatively simple,
limited ways.
As the rise of film an academic study grew, so too did the interest in defining key ideas or film
production and so the terms used in the film industry to describe these camera movements
became more defined and appreciated.
Through time, cameras became even smaller, technology meant that the range of movements
dramatically improved and in modern filmmaking camera movement can be a dizzying and
consistently innovative area to analyse. A whole new visual language is being written as we
study film, so whilst we study camera movement and the importance of it, we must also
recognise that it is an area that is rapidly evolving and developing, meaning that it is
increasingly difficult to accurately analyse, unless we stick to the movements which are
‘traditional’ or ‘classical’.
PAN – The camera horizontally swivels from a fixed position, from right to left, or left to right.
TILT – The camera vertically ‘moves’ from a fixed position, up to down, down to up.
PED – Short for ‘pedestal’, the camera physically moves up or down whilst looking forward.
DOLLY – The camera smoothly moves forwards or backwards.
TRACK – The camera smoothly moves side to side whilst looking forward. Like a crab.
ZOOM – The camera stays still: the camera lens moves forward to, or backwards, from a subject.
CRANE – The camera moves in a variety of directions, but always smooth and stable.
POV – The movement replicates the feeling of being in the position of a character.

PAN
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
The camera horizontally swivels from a fixed position, from right to left, or left to right.
One way to think of this, is to imagine your head: look from right to left and then left to right,
slowly. A bit like saying no, the pan allows you, if you do this slowly and keeping in the direction
that your heads turns, to see a wide angle of the scene in front of you.
A pan allows the filmmaker to show a large part of a scene: the movement itself is crucial in this as it
not only allows us to see a large amount of ahead of someone or a scene, but by doing so as a
movement, (rather than say, through use of an extreme long shot) almost reveals this information a
bit at a time.
Oddly, a pan can be used to suggest two contradictory things by a filmmaker-that we should look to
see what is being shown but also that we can only see what is being shown a bit at a time. In this
respect then, a pan can both show us a lot, but also hide quite a bit, allowing filmmakers to use
pans to provide important information but also potentially surprises. As the movement is similar to
one that we can do with our heads, the movement can also replicate this feeling-the film could be
suggesting someone is saying no, or showing that someone, such as the audience, is looking at
something in the same direction.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this pan from PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3
(https://youtu.be/76gNp5rkFX0) in two ways. Begin by describing what you can see and then
what is being suggested to the audience by using this movement.

TILT
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
The camera vertically ‘moves’ from a fixed position, up to down, down to up. If a Pan
is you saying “no” with your head, a tilt is like saying “yes”: look forward and slowly
move your head up and down, as if nodding your head, but slowly and smoothly. This is a tilt. If
you do this slowly and keep looking in the direction that your heads moves, you can see a large
amount vertically than what is just present directly in front of you.
A pan allows the filmmaker to show a large part of the scene horizontally, but a tilt allows the
filmmaker to show more of a scene horizontally. The movement whether up or down is crucial as it
extends and stretches what we can see and doing so as a movement almost reveals this information
a bit at a time whilst almost stretching the height of the screen.
A tilt can exaggerate what the audience can see and how it sees it: it can make somewhere feel
bigger, taller or small or shorter, depending on how long or short the tilt is. The more that a tilt can
show, the longer it goes on for, the bigger the scene must be. As a result, it can also provide
surprise-it could be the case that we initially can’t see everything, but the movement can eventually
show us something that was not there to begin in. As the movement is similar to one that we can do
with our heads, the movement can also replicate this feeling-the film could be suggesting someone is
saying no, or showing that someone, such as the audience, is looking at something in the same
direction.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this tilt from GROUNDHOG DAY (1:42 at
https://youtu.be/7JEryd3Y_G8) in two ways. Begin by describing what you can see and then what
is being suggested to the audience by using this movement.

PED
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
Short for ‘pedestal’, the camera physically moves up or down whilst looking forward.
One way of picturing this is to consider your head and your neck. If looked forward
and could then somehow magically make just your neck travel up and down whilst still looking
forward, this would be a ped. This means that the camera is looking forward and moving up and
down, revealing a small part of whatever is in front of it at a time.
A ped allows the filmmaker to reveal the sheer size of something large or to imply that someone or
something is shrinking if moving downwards. It allows the film to show more than just the initial shot
and by moving up or down but only showing what is directly in front, it means that the audience is
almost restricted from seeing too much.
A ped is used quite rarely in film because it has a specific or effect-by only revealing what is directly
ahead, it helps to make something appear to be taller or far down as it takes longer to show
someone or something than a tilt would. As we can only see a part or section of something at a
time, it also means that we get to focus on specific details that are in front of us, meaning that a ped
can be used to make clear something very specific, such as the props someone is holding.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this ped from PARASITE in two ways. Begin by describing what you

DOLLY
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
Here, the camera smoothly moves forwards or backwards. Why is it called a dolly
then? When cameras were larger, then needed to be mounted on an apparatus in
order to be moved. The equipment used to do this ‘in and out’ movement is called a ‘dolly’-it’s
essentially a trolley but in order to create the smooth motion, this dolly is placed on a track. The
use of the track helps to create a smooth motion that allows the camera to get closer to the
subject in a controlled manner. Moving forward, the subject that is the focus of the shot
becomes larger and moving backward, the subject will become smaller.
Generally, a dolly is used to make someone or something bigger or smaller. By moving closer the
subject takes up more of the screen and allows us to see something about it in more detail and by
moving further away it means that we can see less detail and information on the subject.
Oddly, a pan can be used to suggest two contradictory things by a filmmaker-that we should look to
see what is being shown but also that we can only see what is being shown a bit at a time. In this
respect then, a pan can both show us a lot, but also hide quite a bit, allowing filmmakers to use
pans to provide important information but also potentially surprises.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this dolly out from SCOTT PILGRIM in two ways. Begin by

TRACK
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
The camera moves and looks like a crab: we look forward, but move sideways.
If we continue to imagine your head: look straight on, step from side to side. But make
this really smooth and level! This will mean that you generally focus on the thing directly in front of
you but are also aware of what is around you. Crucially though, you’ll not see everything directly in
front of you but instead will focus on something as you come across it, but there will be plenty of
information around your focused view.
Some filmmakers like to use this (and other movements) as an artistic flourish (because it looks
good!) but a track, much like a pan, can allow the filmmaker to control what the audience sees.
Whilst we can see a large part of a scene the movement itself only focuses on a small amount at a
time, so it makes clear that we should follow what is central to the shot, but be aware of the
surroundings when they crop up.
Most prominently, a track can suggest that we follow the person or object that is being literally
tracked and from this we can begin to explore why we should focus on them and not the things
around them. But because we can see the surrounding areas we still need to be mindful and
consider why we can also see the surrounding area at the same time: what do these two things
suggest together?
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this track from THE SHINING in two ways. Begin by describing

ZOOM
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
This is a movement where the camera doesn’t actually move, rather a lens inside the
camera moves. For a zoom, the lens moves closer or further away from the subject it
is looking at and in doing so this subject becomes larger or smaller as a result. In
making a subject larger, it then makes the environment around them see smaller and the
opposite applies for a zoom out.
Zooms traditionally reinforce the idea of audience focus onto someone or something. As the shot
will be focused on a particular subject (through composition for example) a zoom in will reinforce
that this is where our focus should be. A zoom out will reveal things around the subject and make
the audience consider what we are being shown and why we weren’t shown it initially.
As with other camera movements, the suggestion of a movement will depend in part, on what the
narrative is and also the shot before and after the movement takes place. In this respect, consider
what the initial shot shows (and therefore suggests) before the zoom takes place and then what the
final shot shows and therefore suggest. We then need to consider why the movement was used-what
was it hiding or revealing? Zooms can be great for comedic purposes therefore, but also because
the filmmaker is, generally speaking, suggesting that the audience really focus on the thing we’ve
now zoomed into.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this high angle from INDIANA JONES AND THE RAIDERS OF THE
LOST ARK in two ways. Begin by describing what you can see and then what is being suggested to
the audience by using this angle.

CRANE
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
With a crane shot you generally see either a bird’s eye/extreme long shot move into
something much ’closer’ when the movement ends or the opposite: a close shot
becomes something more distant. This is due to the camera being on a large pole or
literally a form of crane: this allows the camera to move from close to the ground (or
particular subject) to much higher up. The freedom afforded by this means that there is a range
of possibilities for this movement, but one way of considering this is the idea of an ‘extreme tilt’.
This will depend on whether the movement is ‘upwards’ and away from a subject, or ‘downwards’
and towards a subject: it the image is of a subject and the camera moves away, upwards, this
allows us to understand their environment better. If the movement moves downward, from the
air/environment towards a subject, it’s generally done to focus the attention towards that subject.
Cranes are great for suggesting and showing scale-the higher the shot, the more environment we
can see and therefore the smaller people are the bigger the world seems. If you want to show that
one person, or a group of people, are small compared to the world, then a crane can help to
suggest this. Similarly, a crane can help to make clear how big something is: the higher the crane,
the more we can see. Crane shots are also good in to help join people and places: by having the
camera point at one subject and then move to another, no matter how far away, it links the two,
suggesting some form of connection.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this pan from GONE WITH THE WIND in two ways. Begin by
describing what you can see and then what is being suggested to the audience by using this
movement.

POV
WHAT CAN WE SEE?
POV stands for point of view. This movement is also a shot size and form of
composition in that it shows the audience a very specific view-from the perspective of
a person or similar, with their movement then reflecting this-the movement will be
‘shaky’ and suggesting that someone is moving such as walking, running or fighting. Whilst this
is not used often, it can be an effective way of placing the audience in the shoes of a character.
Generally, this movement is used to show the perspective of a character so that we can see things
from their perspective-this allows us to not only see what they see but also experience things as if we
are them. This, in theory, creates a sense of familiarity and creates a form of relationship as we can
relate to the character-we can see and to an extent feel what they are feeling. But it can also do the
opposite-if the character is doing something extraordinary the audience can feel alienated from the
person as we are unable to act, perform or move in the same way.
A POV movement is a useful way to place someone in the position of someone, and therefore
suggest that we as the audience need to feel the same way or, in the case of something extreme
happening, allow us to appreciate how and why they were able to do what they did. In this respect
it works paradoxically-that we are to NOT feel like they do because they are so unique.
TASK:
Using the ideas above, analyse this POV from THE LADY IN THE LAKE (https://youtu.be/Zzdl-
js_mQ4) in two ways. Begin by describing what you can see and then what is being suggested to
the audience by using this movement.

MOTIVATED VS UNMOTIVATED CAMERA MOVEMENT
When analysing camera movement, we’re unlikely to find it useful to analyse every movement for
every scene. Instead, we’re likely to find a useful analysis if we explore motivated camera
movement. These movements are the ones which take place for a reason such as keeping an object
in frame, revealing new information, helping to emphasise audience rection in some form or by
following an eye line. An unmotivated movement by contrast, will instead move despite the object
or where people are looking-the camera seems to almost move away from what we think or should
be concentrating on. OF course, if a camera moves away from our protagonist to an empty pace
for example, it suggests that we should look o that space and consider why we’re no longer looking
at the main character, but both types of movement have clearly been chosen for a reason.
A classic example of this can be seen in RESERVOIR DOGS, where the unmotivated camera
movement takes us away from the torture that is about to occur. In this respect the movement is
technically unmotivated but at the same time is motivated by the need to remove the vision of the
audience from this especially disgusting movement.
SUMMARY
Modern cameras can use in an almost infinite number of directions, but it’s easier to consider
classical camera movements. Instead of considering all movements, we need to look for the
movements that seem to suggest or provide ideas because the movement has allowed the audience
to see something new or to see something in a new way. Where a camera moves then, is likely to
depend on numerous factors or reasons, but a movement will be used for a reason-it is our role to
establish why once we have correctly identified that movement.
MINI-ASSESSMENT: REAR WINDOW
Analyse this clip from REAR WINDOW https://youtu.be/6HTmVslKzDM by watching the clip 3
times if possible and each time, complete the details in each section below.
FIRST WATCH
What is happening in this scene? Who is the protagonist and what do we learn about them? What is
the purpose of this scene do you think?
Hint: look closely at the props at the end of the scene and how they are connected to reveal key
information.
This MCU is framed cleverly so that we’re prevented from seeing
what is happening in grisly detail, but understand that the
person is in the white shirt is about to torture someone.
However, rather than keep the action in the frame, the camera
pans to the left, away from what is happening. This goes against
what we would expect-that we can watch what is happening.

SECOND WATCH
Now pay close attention to the camera movements in the scene. There are a few, around 8, and the
video will even show you when they’re taking place. Note the ones you can see and for each
remember to also note what direction the camera moves to. One has been done for you as an
example:
Movement 1: dolly forwards
Movement 2:
Movement 3:
Movement 4:
Movement 5:
Movement 6:
Movement 7:
Movement 8:
THIRD WATCH
As you watch, pay attention to some of the most prominent movements that you identified. Then,
consider how do the movements help to make clear the purpose of the scene that you identified in
your first watch of the scene.
YOUR EVALUATION
Finally, summarise and explain with evidence, what the purpose of this scene is and how the camera
movements help to reinforce the purpose.

MINI-ASSESSMENT EXTENSION:
For a slighter harder challenge, choose one of the following scenes and analyse how camera
movements are used to generate meaning and to provide information to the audience in either
of these two clips: Sam and Suzy’s first encounter and Erwin’s date in MOONRISE KINGDOM
https://youtu.be/x0Zu8mumg-M & the chase scene in SEVEN https://youtu.be/9qK2MjiA27U
When exploring a clip, aim not to identify all of the movements, instead identify key movements
and then explain how they contribute towards the meaning of the clip.

SECTION 4: LIGHTING
INTRODUCTION
Lighting can have a huge effect on the audience through manipulation of not only
how a film or scene looks, but how it feels for the characters. In this respect, lighting
helps to create the mood and atmosphere of a scene for both those in the film and
the audience as a result. It is a crucial aspect of cinematography and, to an extent, mise-en-
scene as well, as all of the other aspects of visual film making counts for nothing if the audience
cannot see things accurately. As well as this, specific lighting can emphasise key aspects from
other parts of film making helping to really sell a key idea or core emotion. Finally, lighting can
be explicit about where the audience should focus their attention by using specific lighting to
‘shine’ on a particular area or hide something in darkness to surprise the audience.
Lighting can be a complex and detailed aspect of film making and whilst we will explore a wide
variety of lighting styles and techniques, a core tenet for lighting to consider is how basic
pathetic fallacy works. Therefore: good weather is pleasant and bright and suggests happiness.
The opposite applies in bad weather which is miserable and features darker colours and light
Let’s take a look at some examples and the nuances that come with this.
Here, the bright, clear blue skies of Los Angeles in LA LA LAND
creates vibrant lighting that helps to emphasise the excitable
mood of the characters…
…whereas the clear blue skies of England in ANTONEMENT are
much more muted and sombre, reflecting that things aren’t as
happy or excitable…
…and in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, the clear blue skies are washed
out and have almost lost colour, helping to reflect the sandy,
nature of the location and the lack of obvious happiness.
Finally, in ZOOTROPOLIS, the clear blue skies and bright even
light create a calm and relaxing scene with little in the way of
excitement or worry.

TASK:
Below are two shots from HAIL, CAESAR which help to really illustrate how overall light and
colour create an overall mood or atmosphere and how, in part, the weather and time of day
can help to generate these. For each shot, 1. describe the overall light, 2. the general weather
and then 3. how it should make the audience feel. Then, 4. aim to explore and describe what
you think could be happening in the film based just on the lighting and aspects of mise-en-scene
that you feel are relevant.
The lighting in this scene in dark as the weather is overcast. This
creates a feeling of sadness that reflects the scene and the
emotions of the characters in this scene from WHALE RIDER.
In this shot from THE PRINCESS’ BRIDE the overcast weather helps
to create the sense of possible danger or sadness, as if “a storm
is brewing”. Note how the scene feels and looks dark.
Here the lighting and the colours are so dark as to almost be
black. The use of the storm in this shot from MOULIN ROUGE
really emphasises the impending doom.
While here the lighting from LARS AND THE REAL GIRL is difficult
to describe as it’s quite dark but the colour is oddly light, but the
weather and mood is certainly ‘gloomy’ at least.
1.
2.
3.
4.
1.
2.
3.
4.

TASK:
Watch this scene from HIDDEN FIGURES https://youtu.be/W1VZ1-ZdQ7k
Identify and describe what the lighting is like at various points in the scene and then analyse
why you think the lighting is like this based on the narrative? Pay close attention to how the light
is different to explore how it helps the audience to think and feel about what is happening at
different stages. Some screenshots below may give you ideas.
LIGHT SOURCE: AMBIENT LIGHTING
Ambient light means the light that is already present in a scene, before any
additional lighting is added. It usually refers to natural light, either outdoors or
coming through windows etc. It can also mean artificial lights such as normal
room lights. We therefore tend to refer to ambient lighting as ‘natural light’ but should be
aware that it could also be artificial if coming from a
relevant prop. In the examples on previous pages, the
lighting is a result of the weather or the time of day. This
allows the audience to appreciate that this is a natural
and recognisable setting and feeling: that what we are
seeing could be happening outside of our window or
could have happened at some point. However, even
when using ambient light, filmmakers will look to use
equipment to help manipulate the light in some way.
GOLDEN HOUR
A common technique for film makers who want to use
ambient lighting is to film during the “golden hour”. This
refers to the period of time on a clear day roughly an
hour before sunset or just after sunrise when the sun starts
is lower in the sky and nearing the horizon, creating an
almost golden appearance as the rays of light shine
through the atmosphere and interact with nature. This
golden colour makes scenes appear to be especially pleasant to look at, making them look and

feel warm, comforting and ‘soft’. Crucially, the lighting is still light enough for filmmakers to
record scenes clearly, and this allows for clear, natural, pleasant images.
LIGHT SOURCE: 3 POINT LIGHTING
Whilst ambient lighting generally uses natural, available light, this is not achievable
for many films, especially when shot in a studio or an interior scene. Generally, films
will seek to create a similar look as ambient lighting though, with rounded, natural
light with little obvious, harsh lines or shadows to enable an audience to clearly see all aspects
of the scene. Of course, the brightness and warmth or coldness of the colour will also be
manipulated to achieve a specific reaction in the audience, but this can all be achieved using a
classic principle of cinematography 3 point lighting.
3 point lighting is the name of technique whereby the subject in a scene is lit by 3 separate
sources of light, each doing slightly different things. The combination of all 3 work together to
ensure that the subject is lit evenly, clearly and in a way that appears broadly ‘natural’,
avoiding a fake look to the scene.
The name comes from the number of lights and how each is a ‘point’ or source of light and can
therefore be easily adapted to different situations, such as 4 point lighting.
• The Key Light is usually the brightest light. It is used to light up the entire scene and
therefore is often at the front of the scene in front of the subject.
• The Back Light is designed to help stop the Key Light being too ‘fake’ looking and help
cut out the obvious brightness of the Key Light.
• The Filler Light helps to soften the shadows that are created from the other two lights.
There will often be more than 1 filler light used.
3 point lighting also offers the filmmakers to consider how the lights can alter and emphasise
audience reaction to what we are looking at and for us as film students we need to consider
how the lighting can be adjusted. We do this by thinking about 3 things:
• The source of light — where is the light coming from?
• The angle or direction of light — where is the light in relation to the subject?
• The intensity of light — how bright (or not) is the light?
In 3 point lighting, the intensity is especially important as it will help to define what these lights
are; for example, the key light should be much more intense than the filler light.

ANGLE OR DIRECTION OF LIGHT
Much like camera angles, the direction in which something is lit and then shown to an audience
can have a huge effect on how it makes the audience react. Also, just like camera angles, there
are many, many possibilities for directions of the light but we’ll identify and explore just 4:
below, above back and side.
TASK:
Look carefully at the images above and consider what direction the light is coming from. Use the
space below each image to explain or analyse: 1. what type of directional lighting is used in
each, considering the location of shadows to help you with your choice. 2: explain how intense
the light is, 3, the source of the light and then finally for 4, aim to explore what the lighting
suggests or how it may make the audience feel, explaining why by referencing the ideas from
1-3 and your own thoughts based on what you can see.
1.
2.
3.
4.
1.
2.
3.
4.
1.
2.
3.
4.
1.
2.
3.
4.

TASK:
Watch this clip and during the scene first of all consider how the scene wants the audience to
feel. Then, for one crucial moment in the scene, aim to describe: a source of light, the angle or
direction of light and the intensity of light.
When you have done this, then explore how the lighting helps to create the feeling that we have
when watching the scene, giving detailed explanations of how the light contributed to this.
https://youtu.be/7ARFyrM6gVs
THE INTENSITY OF LIGHT
The intensity of light literally refers to how bright or how dull the light is in a scene or
at a given moment. This is especially important as it helps to emphasises how intense
the audience should feel about a scene. A simple approach to this is to consider the
images of the blue skies a few pages ago: the more intense the blue, the happier a scene is. The
same applies for the darker skies: if we appreciate that darker skies mean misery, the darker
the skies, the more miserable the scene is.
In these shots below, both actors have neutral expressions on their faces and are not using
body language to inform the audience of how they feel. For each then, consider how intense
the lighting is, and then how it helps to communicate a specific mood or feeling for both the
actors and the audience.
INTENSITY OF LIGHT:
EMOTIONS OR FEELING:
INTENSITY OF LIGHT:
EMOTIONS OR FEELING:

HIGH AND LOW-KEY LIGHT
High key light is, generally, light that is bright and creates an evenly lit scene or shot. This
means few shadows or those that are there don’t obscure parts of the scene or shot in much
detail. As the scene is bright and clear this generally communicates emotions that are
positive, though it can also be used to ensure that all detail is shown clearly. As a result, the revealing of
information may not be especially positive, so it is important to not make sweeping judgements or
generalisations about a scene or our possible reaction to them. Instead focus on the core idea behind
the lighting: what is the film trying to show us here?
TASK:
Thinking back to the 3 point lighting system, what could you do to the lights in order to create high-key
lighting?
TASK 2:
Look closely at these two images. Each feature high-key lighting. Why?
Low key light then features areas of the shot which are darker, have more prominent shadows
or is generally greyer and darker. As we have previously seen, a darker light or shot will
generally create or suggest a more negative reaction or feeling, though it’s important to
study the whole scene to see to what extent we should be feeling this. For example, is one
particular area especially dark is, are there prominent shadows on anything in particular or is the light
communicating something bigger, such as the time of day or year?
TASK 3:
Thinking back to the 3 point lighting system, what could you do to the lights in order to create low-key
lighting?

TASK:
Look closely at these two images. Each features low-key lighting. Why?
HARD (high contrast) AND SOFT (low contrast) LIGHT
Lighting in film comes from the core aspect of photography and the interaction with
light, lenses and chemicals onto photosensitive film. Modern photography and
cinematography is generally more focused on the interaction with light onto electronic sensors
but many of the same ideas persist and in that regard, the idea of contrast is a crucial one that
is widely recognised because of its role in photography. In film studies, we tend to refer to
contract but the more common terms of HARD and SOFT light, but they are interchangeable
with the terms high contrast and low contrast.
Hard light can be best described as creating harsh shadows that draw attention to a specific
actor or part of a scene. This light is often created with a direct beam from a light source or
from the sunlight and focused on just one or a few areas of the shot or scene. The shadows
created from this help to create that hard look which has lots of ‘contrast’ in it, with contrast
essentially meaning difference. Therefore, hard light or high contrast light, has key differences
between lighting intensity in the scene.

Soft light has little to no harsh shadows and therefore should appear to be bright
and balanced. It’s therefore much more pleasant to look at and is much more
flattering to people on screen as they are lit in a way that is more natural, easier to
see and does not seek to hide them at all. Whilst hard light relies on very specific points of light
or very specific sources, soft light is generally much more natural, ideally ambient, to create a
look that means that the light essentially wraps around everything. To achieve this, the light
source needs to be large and quite far away from the scene so as to avoid creating the harsh
shadows that come from a bright and close light source. As there is little difference in the way
that the scene looks from one part to another, soft light is also referred to as low contrast light.
TASK:
Look closely at the shots below. Using your knowledge gained from lighting so far, identify
lighting source, direction and intensity and explore what the shot not only looks like but what it
is perhaps trying to make the audience feel or understand.

TASK:
feel. Then, for one crucial moment in the scene, aim to describe: a source of light, the angle or
direction of light and the intensity of light by referring to whether the lighting is generally high or
low-key and/or hard or soft light.
When you have done this, then explore how the lighting helps to create the feeling that we have
when watching the scene, giving detailed explanations of how the light contributed to this.
https://youtu.be/1MAO8mG685s or https://youtu.be/9XBVfwTJ-Ys
KNOWLEDGE CHECK: LIGHTING
TASK: We explore light by naming the source of the lighting, identifying the direction of the
light and finally how intense it is. Read back through your work and for each list some simple
examples:
SOURCE
DIRECTION:
INTENSITY:
TASK: Without looking at notes or previous pages, write a definition of each of these key terms:
SOFT LIGHT:
HARD LIGHT:
HIGH-KEY LIGHT:
LOW-KEY LIGHT:

LIGHTING MINI-ASSESSMENT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSOzdFoZsho or https://youtu.be/BOYwefBM2ac
First: begin by watching the clip(s) and establishing what the scene wants us to learn or feel.
Then begin to spot any lighting that stands out for whatever reason.
Secondly: now consider how the lighting works in the scene in terms of what stands out and
what seems to want us to look at it. Consider the source of lighting and any possibly interesting
examples of direction.
Third: explore what intensity is shown at various stages-what do these communicate and
suggest? How does the variety in intensity help to create different reactions throughout the clip?
Finally: put together all your ideas above write a paragraph that explains how the lighting in
the chosen clip reflects a key idea that the film wants us to learn and discover. Remember to use
the technical terms you have learned in this unit.

SECTION 5: COLOUR
INTRODUCTION
As we have previously seen, colour in feature films didn’t exist until the 1930s and the
release of BECKY SHARP, but given that film as an artform had been around for over
50 years at that stage, we can appreciate that colour perhaps isn’t as important as we
might originally think. After all, if filmmakers had used monochromatic film and still achieved
spectacular audience reactions, would colour help in coercing the audience to think and feel in
certain ways? But from this point onwards not all films were instantly filmed in colour; the
complex technical requirements meant that costs were high and in some cases, the overly
saturated colours produced meant that films often didn’t represent ‘realistic’ colour. Indeed,
some filmmakers continued to work in black and white for many decades after the release of
BECKY SHARP and even today, we see films released in black and white, with films such as THE
ARTIST, THE LIGHTHOUSE and ROMA. Films are also being re-released in black and white (or
‘chrome’) with perhaps MAD MAX: FURY ROAD as the most famous recent example, but
PARASITE and ZACH SYNDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE have also been released in monochrome.
So why explore colour then? For one, its importance is similar to that of light: colour can imply
mood or atmosphere easily and quickly; again consider pathetic fallacy and apply to colour:
the brighter the colour, the happier the mood. But the range of colours that we can see and
indeed control, means that there are many more varieties of mood that we can manipulate and
alter to help create a specific reaction.
Whether we realise it or not, colour works on the subconscious simply because that from the
earliest ages, colours dictate specific ideas to us. Whilst each person is different, there are some
colours to us, which are, rightly or wrongly, universal.
When analysing colour this could refer to a specific prop, costume or other aspects of mise-en-
scene or the overall dominant colour to a scene overall, known as the palette.
TASK:
Below are a list of colours. For each, simply list the connotations you personally have for each.
These should be unique to you and reflect your own experiences.
RED BLUE PINK GREEN YELLOW WHITE
Filmmakers then, play on these ideas to manipulate audience response. It is our role as film
students to identify colours which stand out in some form, explore their meaning and analyse
how these communicate or influence ideas for the audience.

THE HUE, OR COLOUR
The first aspect in analysing colour is to refer to a specific and direct example of
colour, also known as hue. By identifying a relevant colour we can begin to then
consider possible meanings or ideas that may relate to that colour and therefore
inherently suggest key ideas about characters, the story or other aspects of filmmaking that the
crew don’t want to reveal cheaply and quickly via exposition or lazy writing in general.
Individual colours often create or suggest mood, atmosphere or tone and these are used in films
for that very same reason. The graphic beneath is a useful indicator of key ideas related to
many core colours. When exploring the screenshots below be mindful of your own connotations
and the ideas associated with the colours below.
TASK:
Look closely at the images below. For each, identify a colour that stands out, explain what you
think it could represent and then explain what we learn from this.
However, we also need to be mindful of the fact that not all colours have to represent
something. It could simply be the case that the colour chosen by the production team is just what
‘looks’ right or suits a character or environment without creating any deeper meaning. We also
need to ensure that the colour we choose to identity is the colour which we are meant to
explore. One way of ensuring this is to check the composition or shot size of the shot: the prop
or costume that is most prominent is likely to also be especially centrally framed.

For example, take this shot from ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. There are 3 main
colours which stand out, blue, purple and orange. Which is the most prominent? Most likely the
orange hoody, and the purple seat seems to point towards it with the blue
hair helping to add contrast and therefore draw attention. But is the colour
significant beyond showing that she is cold, and the wearing of a thick
hoody and a pair of gloves helps to confirm
this. If we were to try to find a deeper
meaning in the colour we could consider that
the character is called Clementine so the colour here could be an
extension of her name. In this shot from JOKER, is he painting red on his
lips because it has links with blood, because it stands out against the
white paint or because it’s relevant for a clown? These are the kinds of questions we need to
consider when identifying a relevant colour and then exploring the potential significance of it.
TASK:
Look at these shots. Identify a relevant colour, explore what the colour represents and then consider
the significance of it in relation to the film. Perhaps make links to connotations of the colour you
may already have made in earlier tasks.
BRIGHTNESS
The second aspect of colour to consider is the role of brightness. This means the intensity of the
colour. In essence, the brighter and therefore intense a colour is, the more intense the feeling,
emotion, mood or connotation. Consider the images below; yellow is a generally positive, warming
colour that suggests comfort, warmth and life. But something that is ‘too’ yellow, seems to suggest
an ill or unnatural state that may leave the audience feeling uneasy and something that is not quite
yellow enough, suggests that the feelings of comfort and positivity aren’t there. For brightness then,
we consider not just the colour choice but why it is intense, or not.

COLOUR TEMPERATURE AND WARMTH
Colour can also be explored
through the temperature it elicits:
measured in Kelvins, the lower the
value, the ‘hotter’ the colour is.
This is a relatively straightforward
principle the hotter a colour looks
the warmer it feels, the cooler the
colour the colder it feels. The chart on the left
provides a general scale that should be
referred to when considering how specific
colours or palettes feel as it considers not just colour, but
also saturation and temperature. Look at how the slight
variation in each colour value suggests a slightly different
mood or feeling. When we begin to consider not just hue
but also the saturation (how intense the colour is) of the
colour, we can begin to explore how intense the feeling
should be. For example, consider how the colour wheel
on the left has one specific green referring to ‘terror’, but
when the colour becomes lighter, loses saturation and
therefore becomes cooler, it loses the intensity of feeling
and moves to the most less threatening feeling of
‘apprehension’. Whilst the colours will be subject to the same ideas about the individual nature of
connotations, it’s important to consider the idea of saturation and temperature to create precise
analysis.
COLOUR PALETTES
Colour can also apply to the overall palette of a scene-the overall combination of colours. This
is often done in a much more purposeful manner and therefore is worth considering in terms of
the colour but also the warmth of the scene. These will communicate ideas of feelings and
emotions and in modern filmmaking these will often be edited in post-production, emphasising
the deliberate nature of the alteration.
TASK:
Look at the image below and the colour palette of the scene, identified in the swatches at the bottom of
the image. Rather than looking at a specific colour, instead explain the overall palette, explore the
saturation of the colours in the palette and from this then analyse why this colour palette has been used:
what might it suggest in terms of feeling, tone, atmosphere, the characters or possible narrative. To
develop even further, consider how the use of lighting helps to emphasise the use of colour in
combination with the shot size.

TASK:
Take a look at these shots from various films below and their identified colour palettes.
For each one, describe their overall palettes and how they look to you, and then consider the
imagery to then describe why you think that film suits that overall palette, or what that palette
was possibly chosen for that film. To really extend the level of detail and precision of your
answer, consider how lighting may also help, using the knowledge and language learned when
in the lighting part of the course.

The shots below should be analysed in the same way, but are harder as their palettes are not
quite harmonious, similar or complementary. To really get to the heart of the colour choices and
overall palettes, you’ll need to consider the actual film and the narratives within them, or if
you’re familiar with the film, consider all aspects of the image you can see, considering
composition to help give you a focus.
For JAWS, consider why the saturation is slightly less intense than would be expected for a film
set during the summer on a beach.
For THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, consider why the palette is so diverse and there are few
similarities, especially in the characters.
SATURATION
Finally, our last aspect of colour is the saturation of the colour. Whilst not the same as
brightness, often the effect on screen can look similar. However, a key difference here
is that saturation refers to the amount of white light mixed with a hue. Highly saturated
colours contain little or no white light and therefore look more intense and pure, as they do not
have other colour ‘mixed in’ to dampen the purity of the colour. Because of this, saturation can
be measured as a value from 0-100%. 0% has no colour and will therefore always be black,
100% will always be a pure version of the colour and therefore very vivid.
As a simple rule for now, refer to brightness in your work if you’re unsure of the difference, but
the charts below may give you a useful visual guide.
SATURATION
BRIGHTNESS
Notice how the saturation begins at black and
simply becomes more red and more intense.
Whereas the brightness goes beyond red and
becomes dominated by white the more that the
white light is added to it.

TASK:
feel. Then, identify relevant colours or describe the palette, using adjectives and our key aspects
of colour, hue, brightness and saturation including temperature.
When you have done this, then explore how the colour helps to establish mood, the possible
feelings that an audience has when watch the scene and any connotations that may be relevant.
Then, give detailed explanations of how the colour contributes to this, considering light if
relevant or helpful as well.
https://youtu.be/zhOUtSrDF2E or https://youtu.be/_fx12_FLtsc
KNOWLEDGE CHECK: COLOUR
TASK: We explore light by naming the source of the lighting, identifying the direction of the
light and finally how intense it is. Read back through your work and for each create a definition
and list some examples:
HUE:
SATURATION:
BRIGHTNESS:

COLOUR MINI-ASSESSMENT:
https://youtu.be/cT0bGB0eCpI or https://youtu.be/ZcwOApqmJMQ
First: begin by watching the clip(s) and establishing what the scene wants us to learn or feel.
Then begin to spot any colour that stands out for whatever reason or considering the palette.
Secondly: now consider the overall hue/s, the brightness and saturation to explore the intensity
of feeling that you think the audience may have.
Third: explore what the intensity or variety of hues suggests. How does the intensity or variety in
palette help to create different reactions throughout the clip?
Finally: put together all your ideas above write a paragraph that explains how the colour in the
chosen clip reflects a key idea or feeling that the film wants us to learn and discover. Remember
to use the technical terms you have learned in this unit.

SECTION 1: Introduction and history
SECTION 2: Pace
SECTION 3: Style: transitions and cuts
SECTION 4: Visual effects

SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY
INTRODUCTION: HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT
There is an argument that there are two techniques that really set film out as an art form which
was different to any other and as being so fundamental to the medium that they cannot be
replicated in any other format. We’ll come back to these shortly.
As we have seen earlier in the year, the earliest filmmakers simply pointed
a camera at a subject and held the shot until the film ran out or until they
got bored. The Lumiere Brothers for example, depicted scenes from
everyday life in France and whilst these short films are an interesting
historical document and for a contemporary audience these were also an
interesting curio, but they were incredibly limited in scope. Auguste Lumiere
for example, was quite pessimistic about the artform he had helped to
create and said that “cinema was an invention without a future”. Presumably his belief was that when
people had seen the moving images that he and others could produce, why would they continue to seek
out films of things that they could see themselves, simply be walking around and looking at people? In
an indirect response to this, filmmaker Edwin S Porter who, in LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN, took
two separate shots or scenes, that of someone trapped in a burning
building and fireman rushing to the scene, and cut them together to
show that time was passing at the same time for both scenes. This seems
like the most basic of principles now, but in 1903 this was revolutionary
and allowed the filmmaker to manipulate the audience’s emotional
reaction: Porter created suspense through the juxtaposition of the two
scenes and the audience are naturally inclined to want the firefighters to
reach the stranded people as quickly as possible.
In these earliest of days, editing developed, evolved and transformed cinema in a matter of just a few
years. One such evolution was the jump cut. With the film almost literally jumping from one shot to
another, the focus for the audience changes but within the same scene. This then was also combined with
our second key technique, the close-up. Of course, the close-up is a shot size and not an editing
technique, but the use of the close-up directly after a wide shot, achieved via a jump cut, allowed
George Albert Smith, one of the first filmmakers to do this, to show the same image in a new, larger,
more detailed manner. The change from one shot to another was created through editing, something that
other artforms cannot simply manage, and this example from THE LITTLE DOCTOR AND THE SICK
KITTEN, not only changed how audiences saw this film, but changed how audiences would see films
forever more.
How then, were these techniques literally achieved? Editing is the art and craft of cutting and assembling
a film. This work is done by an editor who helps to both complete the director's vision of the movie but
sometimes also offer guidance and advice on how a film could benefit from a change that may occur
during the editing process. As a result, an editor has a range of creative choices that they can make and
these will be a combination of what they think is best for the film and what the director (and producers)
want for the finished project. Editing is mostly done during post-production and in modern filmmaking,
can involve the manipulation of physical strips of celluloid film, digital files, or both. This manipulation

can speed up or slow down time, the timing of a cut can make people laugh or jump, and the length of
time that a shot is on screen can shape our response.
Some Hollywood films with a large budget may shoot as much as 200 hours of
film and one task for the editor is to somehow work through all of this footage
and select the shots that will make up roughly 2 hours of run time. Even then,
with each individual frame making up 1/24ths of a second, the film will be
thousands of shots long and simply cutting from one shot to another wouldn’t
work. In fact, a large aspect of editing is manipulating the shots to create a
feeling, a tempo or a rhythm to a film. In most films, this isn’t literally creating a
noticeable rhythm relating to a song or music, rather manipulating the film to ensure that it flows, that it
never feels as though it’s stumbling or is artificial in any way. This can be done through hundreds of
different techniques or transitions, but whether the technique is a jump cut, a flashback, creating
parallel action or using a match-cut, the key for 99% of films is to use continuity editing to ensure that
the film is fluid and almost forcing the audience to pay attention to something specific, but often without
making this focus seem overtly clear. Because it’s often difficult to spot or because it’s done so well,
editing is often referred to as the invisible art - the ‘better’ the editing, the more invisible it is.
The somewhat clandestine nature of editing is also seen in the INVISIBLE nature of editors, who
generally aren’t as well-known as Directors, actors or producers, and often work alone or in small
groups and do their work well away from the eyes of audiences. These people are generally therefore
‘cutting’ the film down and cutting from one scene or shot to another. In the days of celluloid film, this
process literally involved cutting the film and then gluing or attaching to the next frame so that when
played back through a projector, the film depicted differing shots or scenes next to each other.
It was this process that Russian filmmakers began really exploring in the 1920s, and the experiments of
Kuleshov and Eisenstein with juxtaposition and montage respectively. By placing shots of a person next
to a shot of something, Kuleshov realised that he could manipulate the audience into thinking and feeling
specific reactions. For example, placing a shot of a man next to a bowl of soup made the audience feel
that the man was hungry, and this juxtaposition has been used ever since to connect two separate shots
in a way to make the audience believe that there is not only a connection between the two but also some
make that connection make the audience think and feel something specific. Eisenstein developed this
idea further in his work on montage and he sought to place a variety of shots together for various
reasons, but always doing so in a way which made sense to the audience, even if Eisentstein did things
that humans cannot do, like speed up time by removing parts of a scene and cutting to different shot
sizes during a continuous scene. A typical understanding of montage is that this is the process of cutting
footage in order to collapse several hours into a few short minutes of footage. However, Eisenstein’s
idea around montage were much more complex and whilst we won’t be looking at them here, are
important to recognise given their influence over filmmaking and editing ever since, especially in his
assertion that the editing of shots rather than the content of the shot alone constitutes the force of a film.
The influence of the likes of Kuleshov, Eisenstein with BATTLESHIP POTEMPKIN, and Vertov through his
landmark film MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA, essentially created modern editing as we know, and
almost every editing technique or transition featured in these films are used widely today. Below we can
see how an excerpt, the famous ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence from BATTLESHIP POTEMPKIN (for which I’ve
omitted some shots to focus on just one character) tells a story through the juxtaposition of shots rather
than through dialogue, a narrator or on-screen text.

TASK: Look carefully at the shots below. Summarise below what do you think is happening in this section
here, focusing on shots 1 and 2 to provide the scenario and shot 3 showing the instant reaction? HINT:
you may need to look closely to shots 4, 5 & 6 closely to work out what is being shown.
TASK 2:
TASK 2: For each shot, explain what is happening and even better, refer to the shot size and/or camera
angle for each.
CONTINUITY EDITING
Editing then, essentially seeks to present a series of differing images, shots, and moments into a
cohesive scene, often for the purpose of telling a very specific story or creating a specific
reaction. The process of doing so, is called continuity editing. By combining different
components from generally different shots, whole sequences or scenes can be created and
therefore creating the sense that the scene is continuous, ‘natural’ or has a distinct narrative to follow.
This can be described as temporal continuity as the process allows the audience to appreciate that,
despite the differing shots or images used, the entire sequence is designed to create one cohesive flow of
time. Achieving continuity editing in a way that makes sense can be done in numerous ways, but for now
we’ll consider just three: shot-reverse shot, ellipsis and match on action.
ELLIPSIS
The most direct and obvious way to maintain that temporal continuity is to shoot the entire duration of a
story. This of course, is simply not practical, especially when a story may cover a period of days or even
years! The easiest way to ‘slim down’ a long period of time is to use ellipsis. Ellipsis is a break in the
time that is implied in the film and thereby only showing some moments on screen. For example, a
journey of a young girl to school from her home will not show every step she takes, but might show her
leaving home, waiting for a bus, boarding the bus, sitting in a seat, leaving a bus and walking through
the school gates. This shortens the time on screen of the journey, but still maintains key moments from the
journey as part of the film and as it was edited into order, therefore ensuring temporal continuity.
Removing too much from the journey or omitting key sections may mean that the sequence does not
make sense to the audience so a balance needs to be struck between removing enough of a larger
sequence so that it makes sense, alongside removing enough of the shot footage to make the final
sequence short enough for the good of the film.
1 2 3
4 5 6

TASK: Draw a journey in which a character leaves once place and arrives at another using ellipsis to
highlight at least 4 key parts of their journey.
MATCH ON ACTION
As previously mentioned, a core aspect of achieving successful continuing editing is the process of match
on action. The use of multiple cameras and multiple takes when filming allows the editor to use a take
from one angle, shot size or movement and then seamlessly switch to another angle, shot size or camera
movement whilst the scene is ongoing. By selecting and connected at exactly the right frames, temporal
continuity can be preserved because, despite the unnatural nature of the cut, the audience is not likely to
notice the change in perspective because it appears that the continuity has been achieved.
TASK: Draw a scene where one person walks from outside through a door and into a room using match
on action for each. TIP: ensure that the scene looks like it is continuing throughout but each shot should
look slightly different in shot size, angle or camera movement.
SHOT-REVERSE SHOT
Shot-reverse shot is an example of classical Hollywood editing where one character is shown
looking at another character (who is often off-screen), and then the other character is shown
looking back at the first character. For this reason it’s most often employed as a way to show
scenes of dialogue, with two characters ‘looking’ at each other even if not on screen at the
same time. Viewers will see characters who are shown facing in opposite directions, so the viewer
automatically assumes that they are looking at each other. As these shots are placed directly next of
each other, this is a form of continuity editing which seeks to make the transitions between shots as
‘seamless’ as possible and the audience understands that this continuous action develops linearly,
chronologically, and logically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UE3jz_O_EM

The shot-reverse shot also usually features another example of a continuity editing technique called the
eyeline match. This technique is based on the idea that an audience will focus on what the character on
screen is seeing or looking at. An eyeline match then, begins with a character looking at someone or
something off-screen, followed by a cut to another shot of a person or object: for example, a shot
showing a man looking off-screen is followed by a shot of a television.
TASK: Draw three shots that use shot reverse shot. However, this time ensure that the shot size is quite
large so that the eyes can be seen clearly. Make sure that the eyes are looking in the direction that the
person is sat or stood, even though the characters are not in the same shot.
Continuity editing then is about making the images on screen ‘flow’, seemingly in a ‘natural’ manner. If
certain techniques are used well, continuity editing can fill the gaps that occur in front of us, instead
focusing on what we can see and hear and how these make sense to us. Because editing can manipulate
the images we see, this also means that specific relationships can be created, developed, and
maintained through their inclusion and positioning within a sequence.
CONTINUITY EDITING AND CHARACTERS-THE KULESHOV EFFECT
As we have learned, edited footage can create a mental phenomenon: even if we do not
see everything that occurs, viewers derive more meaning from the interaction of two
sequential shots than from a single shot in isolation. As a result, two shots next to each
other in the same sequence can create a very specific response. This is seen most famously in
the work of Russian filmmaker, Lev Kuleshov, who edited a short film in which a shot of the
expressionless face of an actor which was followed by another shot such as a bowl of soup, a
girl in a coffin and a woman on a bed. The film was shown to an audience who believed that
the expression on the actor’s face was different each time he appeared, depending on whether
he was "looking at" the bowl of soup, the girl in the coffin, or the woman on the bed. The
audience were apparently unaware that the actor’s facial expression was actually the same
each time, but still felt that he depicted various
feelings, namely hunger, grief, or desire. Kuleshov
used the experiment to indicate how effective
editing can be as the implication was that viewers
brought their own emotional reactions to the
sequence of images and then attributed those
reactions to the actor. Kuleshov believed this, along
with montage, had to be the basis of film as being
unique as a form of art and is something that has
been studied by film students and psychologists
ever since. Despite there being some doubt as to
the accuracy and validity of the claims about the
Kuleshov Effect, it is still useful to explore given how
it may explain how shot-reverse shot and continuity editing may work. The Kuleshov Effect may
also allow us to appreciate how it is that audiences are manipulated to think and feel about
characters and relationships.

The Kuleshov effect is used in this scene to intimate to audiences how they should think and feel in
combination with how Catwoman thinks and feels.
TASK: Identify the shot sizes and/or camera angles in the shots of Catwoman. What are they, how do
they make the audience feel and why do you think that they change slightly each time?
Shot 1: Shot 2:
Shot 3: Shot 4:
Shot 5: Shot 6:
TASK 2: Use the boxes below to draw a short scene where someone watches an event. Aim to use a
very blank looking expression for the person watching and instead draw the event in a way that
suggests to audience how the viewer would be feeling.
TASK 3: Thinking about what we’ve learned about performance and mise-en-scene, can you think why
the idea of the Kuleshov effect might not be entirely accurate?
1 2
3 4
5 6
In these shots on the left, we can
see how the Kuleshov Effect
suggests an emotion for Catwoman
after each shot of Batman being
beaten. We can see how her eyeline
matches the location of Bane and
Batman so that it’s clear that she is
looking directly at them, and as we
see her face in the next frame, we
assume that her reaction is of what
she is looking at. She has no
dialogue here and her facial
expression is quite neutral, not
revealing too much explicitly, but to
an audience it’s clear how she likely
feels due in a large part to the
juxtaposition of the images.

USING EDITING TO CREATE RELATIONSHIPS
Given that we have seen how editing so often features characters in different shots, it may be a
surprise to consider just how powerful editing is in creating relationships and suggesting
feelings and emotions between characters. A large aspect of this is how the cinematography
uses shot size etc to present a character and then the use of performance from mise-en-scene to really
help sell the idea of a feeling. To then create an actual relationship or suggest one, the juxtaposition of
one shot next to another can literally link characters and place them next to one another. A core idea is
to also consider eyelines to see where people are looking (and this is an important job for the director
and crew involved in continuity) but to also see how people react if they are shown directly after
someone or something.
MINI-ASSESSMENT: Below are a series of images of shots and reactions. Pay close attention to
the editing here as well as the use of mise-en-scene and cinematography in order to explore
and explain how the characters think and feel.
Here we see how these three shots are used to create the emotions of our character. Note how the happy facial expression is mirrored in the
open body language and that this can be seen because the medium close-up allows the viewers to see the character clearly. The eyeline is
clear here too, showing that she is looking “off screen” and not directly in front of her so must be talking to someone to the side of the shot
we will see next. The slight lean forward suggests that she is especially interested or is perhaps having to speak up for some reason. In the
second shot we see where she was looking: at a mysterious character in the back of the frame off to one side of the character in the centre
of the shot. This technically makes our character shot in an extreme long shot and now explains why the woman was leaning forward-so
that she can see the character better and be heard by him. The final shot then seemingly moves to his POV as we now see the armchair
from shot 2 in the way and the woman from shot 1 is further away now in a long/extreme long shot. Despite this, we can still see her
reaction: joy, excitement and recognition that the person she saw in shot 2 is really ‘famous’.

GLOSSARY
editing
editor
montage
transition
juxtaposition
continuity editing
eye-line match
ellipsis
match-on action
Kuleshov effect

SECTION 2: PACE
So far, we’ve looked at how one shot or frame is replaced by another and how this suggests
or creates specific reactions. These reactions can be further enhanced by use the use of
pace.
When referring to pace of editing we’re exploring how long the images are on screen for. As we
discovered in Unit 1 on film history, films are generally (though not exclusively) shot in 24 frames per
second (or FPS). This means that for every second of film we watch, there needs to be 24 individual
frames (essentially 24 individual photos) that have been shot and shown. As we have seen in section 1,
these frames do not need to run in the order they were shot and our brains can even fill in temporal
‘blanks’ for these images to make sense.
Pace then is managed in two main ways: by the using more or less frames and by editing how many of
these frames are displayed on screen. With films projected and generally exhibited at a speed of 24fps,
the more frames that are shown in one second, the longer that the shot is on screen. From this, the longer
that a shot is on screen, the slower the pace of the scene and the film. This then, is how slow-motion
footage is created-more frames are shot and then because there are more of them to watch, it takes
longer to play back and therefore appears more slowly. The more frames you shoot then, the slower the
footage when played back at 24fps. (For reference, mobile phones and DSLRs may shoot slow motion at
around 260fps and specialised equipment may shoot as many as 10,000fps or even more.) Over the
years and with the advent of emerging technologies, cameras can film in a variety of frame speeds, and
most modern digital cameras can shoot a variety of speeds including 24, 30 and 60fps. 60fps is also an
especially interesting as it’s becoming an increasingly popular way to shoot amateur footage for projects
online as the sheer number of frames results in a very smooth image when played back at the regular
speed of 24fps. In fact, it’s so smooth that some people find the resulting footage to be ‘unreal’ given
that we are almost trained to see films and video in 24fps and 60fps is so clear and devoid of blurring
that the clarity seems unnatural to audiences.
Of course, the opposite is true: the fewer the frames on
screen the quicker the pace of the imagery. Whilst this is
difficult to replicate using static rather than moving
images, many examples can be found online on
YouTube, the best of which offer examples of how the
same footage looks and feels different when recorded in
differing frame rates.

Whilst it seems obvious to point out, not every shot on screen will last for 24 frames or 1 second.
Some shots may whizz by in just a few frames perhaps to shock, scare or make the audience
question what they’ve seen. Many shots will be of a are fairly ‘standard’ length-the average
Hollywood film today has an average shot length (or ASL) of around 2 and half seconds.
This feels fairly natural-try looking at any object or person and 3 seconds feels comfortable-it doesn’t feel
too brief to take in details of what you’re looking at and crucially it doesn’t feel like it’s especially
‘boring’ by being too long. As is widely recognised though, the ASL in Hollywood has dramatically
shortened. During the peak attendance for cinemas during the golden age of Hollywood (generally
speaking, the 30s), ASL was around 12 seconds, almost 4 times longer.
As an exercise, try to look at something for 12 seconds without looking away-does this feel too long or is
it ok? How does it make you feel? Would looking at somethings for 12 seconds feel more comfortable
than others?
Have a go with these three images below; try looking at each one for 12 seconds without looking away
and pay attention to how you feel, what you pay attention to and how you feel looking at each one
specifically.
TASK: Why do YOU think the ASL has deceased in the last 90 years? What reasons can you think of?
Think back to our unit on film history and consider what has changed since the 1930s and how that
might have an influence on films. What other reasons or aspects of context might have contributed to film
studios and editors reducing the ASL over the last 90 years?
The second way that pace is managed then is simply by editing a sequence and cutting it to shorten
in or by letting it run, making it longer. As we saw in Section 1, the word cut used to literally mean
cutting the film and then attaching the reel to the next frame. Whilst digital, linear editing
software now means that this doesn’t need to happen literally with actual celluloid, the process is
similar and means cutting or stopping one sequence, moment or shot. By cutting, the image on screen
will literally change from one to another and how frequently it does this dictates the pace of the scene. If
a film changes shots often, it means that it has a fast pace, but if a film tends to stay on the same shot for
a longer period of time without cutting, it means the pace is slower. Generally then we can refer to pace
in terms of simply fast or slow. There is the middle ground of ‘normal’ speed but this is especially difficult
to quantify as there is no rule about what makes something technically ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ and whilst it will
seem obvious, pace is generally judged by the feeling that it evokes. No one can count the FPS so an
audience will simply feel that a shot or scene is slow or fast in pace.
So how do we explore pace? Well our first role as a film audience is to feel, to understand and
appreciate what the scene is trying to tell us or make us feel. From this we then identify if the pace is fast
or slow and then we consider why it’s fast or slow-what was the intention of the filmmakers in making
their decision about pace? It’s important to remember that the vast majority of films will have a variety of
paces within one film and will vary depending on the nature of the scene and what the film is trying to
make the audience think and feel.

A quicker pace is generally used for action scenes or moments of intensity in terms of sheer amount of
things happening. A quick pace here may be used as there is simply a lot that people need to see and a
lot that people need to try watch to appreciate what is happening. A quicker pace can also suggest to
the audience a sense of frenzy or excitement-consider when we run we do not focus on one thing that
we run past, things move quickly from our eyeline and in the same way, fast paced films try to replicate
that feeling. This is also why we see fast paced chase scenes in films and the most likely example of a
fast-paced scene.
A slower pace is generally used for moments of important or intense dialogue or to build tension. The
slow pace allows the audience to focus on what they can see and what they can hear without having to
watch many things and many quick changes. The slow pace can create tension as the slower pace
allows the audience to think more, to look around a screen more and to spend time focusing on
something specific, rather than trying to take in everything that is happening occurs during a fast-paced
scene.
TASK: Watch the two clips featuring the images above.
Why does the pace suit the nature of each scene?
What is the purpose of each scene and how does each make us feel and
Overall, why does the pace of each suit the scenes?
In these first images on the left from the
James Bond film QUANTUM OF SOLACE, we
see 13 different shots in 10 seconds! This
makes the ASL less than 1 and makes for a
frenetic pace that is genuinely quite difficult
to follow: rapid cuts after rapid cuts make for
a scene that is quite difficult to follow. Watch
below and answer the questions at the bottom
of the page. https://youtu.be/89aTFgtsXX0
In contrast, another James Bond film SKYFALL
uses an incredibly slow pace with just 1 shot
and NO cuts in 1 minute 30 seconds of film.
The two shots we see are technically different
as the actor moves into a position much closer
to the camera and the camera tilts upwards,
but the editing doesn’t cut at all during this
sequence. This scene is features quite intense
dialogue and is our introduction to the villain
and therefore his personality.
https://youtu.be/g9d3DfDWsEE

MINI-ASSESSMENT:
Watch the following scene from CITY OF GOD, identify pace, describe how that pace was achieved and
then why you think that pace was chosen for that moment.
https://youtu.be/QujbbyEUXjo
Watch the following scene from NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, identify pace, describe how that pace
was achieved and then why you think that pace was chosen for that moment.
https://youtu.be/OLCL6OYbSTw
Now watch these scenes from QUANTUM OF SOLACE (https://youtu.be/yfYC_CBNtiM) and this scene
from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (https://youtu.be/QFSE4dUJYM8). As before, identify pace, describe
how that pace was achieved and then why you think that pace was chosen for that moment, but this time
GO FURTHER and consider how the pace reflects not just what is happening but also allows the viewer
to feel as though they are in that scene at that time. Consider all these ideas to answer the following
question:
How does the pace reflect the movement that the characters are making?
GLOSSARY
pace
frame
tension
FPS
ASL
sequence

SECTION 3: STYLE: TRANSITIONS AND CUTS
So far, we have explored why the editing in a film may place two mages next to each other and
why the filmmakers cut at distinct moments. However, so far we haven’t considered how films
may cut from one frame to another. Once again, the idea of a cut refers to the time when
editors (who were often women) would literally cut the reel of film after a specific frame and
then then continue the film with the very next frame literally attached together, creating a ‘cut’ from one
scene, moment or shot to another. However, there are other techniques, methods, and possibilities in
moving from one frame to the next and these are known as transitions. Whilst an editor will be making
decisions about what shot to use and what exact frame to cut or begin with, they also need to consider
pace and the style of the editing overall. An important aspect of editing style beyond
pace are the transitions used and these can be used much like punctuation in writing-to
help convey tone, mood, time, or narrative.
One thing that we’ve not yet considered when thinking about why to cut, is the idea of
rhythm. As with many aspects of film language, editing borrows some terms from
literature, with one example being caesura. This refers to a rhythmical pause and
break in a line of verse and in poetry, a caesura is a pause that occurs within a line,
with this pause usually marked by punctuation such as a full stop, comma, ellipsis, or
dash. In editing, a caesura can be conveyed using a cut, and just like placing a comma in a line
correctly, a correctly-timed and placed cut will feel very different to a cut or a comma placed at random.
Editors and Directors will generally then seek to find places to cut so that it feels rhythmically ‘right’-not
too early or too late, creating pace that isn’t too fast or too slow. However, the filmmakers may make
the opposite decision, if they want a film with a unique editing style: it’s not uncommon to watch a film
that may be designed to make an audience feel confused, awkward or just slightly off-kilter with cuts that
don’t feel natural, that feel somehow difficult to watch.
These styles of editing can be made even more specific and arguably powerful by introducing music into
the considerations of editing. Whilst the power of the images are important, the use of music and sound
in conjunction with the images can be a much more evocative package. Our first key exploration of
editing style then, is how sound is used in an asynchronous manner; asynchronous sound is when the
sound isn’t synchronized with the video either in tone, mood or style or
not matching the pace, or style of the editing. This may be done to lead
the audience in to a new shot, to emphasise something or draw
attention to someone or something, especially if something is not as
expected as seen in this example from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE:
https://youtu.be/HtRGeyznv7k
The opposite of this is the use of synchronous sound, which sees the music used match the tone, style or
cuts in a scene. If the cuts are set to match the beat or rhythm of the soundtrack very tightly, this may be
suitable for some productions but not many, as matching the cut to occur with the beat of a song is
traditionally what a music video will do. Films by their nature tend not to have obviously synchronous
sound as this is the technique perhaps most readily seen in music videos and therefore, “cutting to the
beat” too tightly can result in a film or sequence which feel especially artificial and drawing the attention
of the artificiality of the situation.
These examples all presume that the music is non-diegetic (we’ll cover this in the next unit of
work), but the use of sound and specifically music, is something which generally will be added
during post-production when the editing process is taking place. As a result, sound and
editing often work closely in tandem and can be excellent techniques in helping to achieve a

specific style. For now, let’s focus exclusively on editing techniques involving specific transitions and
cuts. Editing is a complex area which, because of its unique nature in the work of art, is something which
can be especially exciting because it’s an area of film which manages to combine the traditions
established at the beginning of the development of film with new ideas and techniques all the time. For
the sake of clarity, we’ll be focusing on 8 main transitions and then look at a couple of more advanced
and innovative transitions and cuts.
JUMP CUT
As we have already learned, a jump cut is where the action seems to ‘jump’ from one scene or moment
to another by simply changing from one frame to another, different subject. This is also known as a
straight cut meaning that there is no transition, that’s to say that we see no techniques or effects on
screen. These can also be referred to as a straight cut if the action just cuts from one thing (such as a
new camera angle, shot size or moment in the narrative) another in the same scene, but can be called a
jump cut if it jumps from one scene to another, different one.
A jump cut is key in
cross-cutting, the
process of having
one story or scene
unfolding but then
jumping to another
scene. This does
not mean that the action in the first scene has ‘finished’-indeed it continues as we now watch another
scene or perspective that takes place at the same time as the first scene. By then jumping between the
two scenes we see how the two scenes are different even when they take place during the same time
period. Jump cuts work because the audience does not need to see every moment of a scene and
jumping (and therefore missing parts of a scene) to a later part of the scene or a different scene that
takes place during the same time-period, still makes sense because we’re able to make meaning without
being told what’s happening between the gaps.
DRAMACTIC EFFCT? Because we do not need to see everything that happens during a scene for it t
make sense, jump cuts are great for ellipsis and creating or generally managing pace. Cross-cutting is a
great way to increase tension or to show differences between people and situations. A good example of
these is in the use of montage which show a variety of short sections from various moments in time,
usually to time passing or progress being made. They are often set to music and help to show people
training so are especially useful in showing the passing of time and/or a change that happens over time.
CONSIDER: How might a scene feel if the ‘jumps’ between shots are too long or omit too much
narrative? How can a jump cut be used to manipulate audience reaction? Why are they used so much?
EXAMPLE OF CROSS CUTTING: https://youtu.be/Sjn3ELLcy2U
TASK: CAN YOU THINK OF/FIND EXAMPLES OF FILMS AND SCENES THAT USE THIS TRANSITION?
DRAW AN EXAMPLE USING THE BOXES BELOW:

MATCH-ON ACTION
Match-on action is a cut that connects two different views of the same action at the same moment within
the movement. By carefully matching the movement across the two shots, filmmakers make it seem that
the motion continues uninterrupted. For match-on action to be especially convincing the action should
begin in the first shot and end in the second shot with a classic example being that of a person who
enters a door in one shot but then jumps to a new angle and we see them come through the door in one
seamless movement. A more ambitious film may not have the movement end in the second shot and
indeed may then begin a new movement. We often see these in actions films, especially ones which try
to make the protagonists look especially skilled.
DRAMACTIC EFFCT? The use of match-on action not only helps to make a scene and the action within
that scene much more fluid, but also makes a scene more interesting to watch. It allows for new
perspectives which doesn’t allow an audience to potentially ‘get bored’ of a shot as it changes
frequently. This also allows for some good examples of audiences being able to see cause and effect: a
character does something and then we see the reaction of this in the very next shot.
CONSIDER: Match-on action is used in almost every single film nowadays. How might a film feel if it
didn’t use match-on action?
EXAMPLE: https://youtu.be/fuCe9uaRx_0
FADE OUT
A fade out is a visual transition: the audience can see the images literally change on screen when the
picture is gradually replaced by black screen or any other solid colour. Traditionally, fade outs have
been used to conclude movies but they can be used for a variety of other reasons. Fades though, are
generally used sparingly because they have such close connotations with the end of a major story
segment or because they have traditionally depicted a character falling asleep or dying. Fades are also
utilised to give an audience time to catch their breath after an intense sequence.
DRAMACTIC EFFECT?
A fade to black is the closest example of the literal ‘change of scene’ that humans experience when they
close their eyes, fall asleep or pass out-the word we see almost seems to face to black. For this reason,
the use of a fade, especially a fade to black, is especially powerful as it replicates a feeling that we
recognise and can therefore understand what it signifies.
CONSIDER: What might a fade to white suggest and indicate? If a fade to black suggests a person is
asleep, where might a person potentially not see total blackness, but total whiteness?
EXAMPLE: https://youtu.be/Ywiz8Q88Wrk

DISSOLVE
Dissolves happen when one shot gradually replaces by the next. As one shot disappears, the next shot
appears slowly and the two are both seen on screen as the new shot becomes the dominant image. For
a few seconds then, they seem to overlap and both are visible. Dissolves are often used to signify the
passage of time and it’s also common to see clocks dissolve from one shot of time to a shot of the same
clock with a slightly later time on, again to show the passing of time. These are good examples of
dissolves happening within the same scene, but dissolves can link one scene or location with another,
another, creating or highlighting a connection between the two.
DRAMATIC EFFECT? Using a dissolve is a very purposeful choice because it’s a dynamic transition and is
obvious in its use. One way in which it has an effect is to make clear that the scenes are changing as
both are visible for a while, something that isn’t the case in all transitions, and as a result audiences are
almost directly being told to pay attention as to why we can still see both images. Often, the nature of
the dissolve itself is important-it’s as if the audience needs to consider other things which dissolve and
what the nature of something dissolving means: that one thing takes over or becomes the other.
CONSIDER: For dissolves then, consider why one shot may be disappearing and why we see this.
EXAMPLE: https://youtu.be/Bd3-HakNEGM
CUT AWAY
As the name implies, in the basic cutaway, the film focuses on one aspect of the narrative and then
focuses on another before returning to the first aspect. This is shown by almost having the film ‘moving’
from the action to something else, and then coming back to the action. Cutaways can be used to edit out
boring shots or add action to a sequence by changing the pace of the footage that can be incorporated
when the camera cuts away. However, a cutaway is most used to show someone looking at something
and then returning to their original point, perhaps so that the audience can see something different or to
help align us to the character-we see what they see.

DRAMATIC EFFECT? One way to consider the use of cutaway is to imagine the camera and the editing
like a person looking at one thing, then looking away at something else, and then back at the thing they
were looking at in the first place. For example, imagine looking at something, hearing something that
gets your attention called so you look elsewhere but you then return to looking at the first thing you paid
attention to. In editing, this is shown as 3 separate shots rather than relying on camera movements
(though those can be used too), but eyelines are key so that the audience can appreciate that the
character is looking at something else.
CONSIDER: What is the important need for a cut away in creating a relationship between the audience
and the character ‘looking away’? Why might a film need to cut away in some instances?
EXAMPLE: https://youtu.be/WrIwfImLXOA
WIPE
Wipes are a dynamic transition. This means that we literally see the on screen doing something that
effects and changes the image that we see on screen. We see wipes happen when one shot literally
pushes or wipes over, another shot though they have no set way of moving so come in an almost infinite
number of shapes and movements. George Lucas deliberately used them throughout the STAR
WARS series to show that the film was moving from one story or location to another, and the wipes often
followed the direction of the action on screen. For example, characters moving from left to right might
have a wipe also move from left to right to emphasise the movement on screen. Whilst wipes tend to
happen quickly, they are a useful way of directing the audience towards a specific part of the screen or
helping them to see where the action goes from and then to. Wipes can also be ‘invisible’, using walls or
screens within the world to wipe across the screen and to create a transition or to hide something.
DRAMATIC EFFECT: The dramatic effect of a wipe will depend on what type of wipe is it. A natural
wipe is similar to an invisible cut: it aims to seamlessly transition from one shot to the next to the extent
that the audience might not even notice. An unnatural wipe (traditionally called an iris wipe) is the
opposite and helps to create that link between the two scenes for whatever reason that may be and can
even be emphasised by the shape of the wipe itself-for example a heart shaped wipe could be used to
suggest love for the character who is ‘wiped’.
CONSIDER: How might a film look and feel is too many wipes are used? Why might a film not choose to
use any wipes? How do you think wipes are supposed to ‘feel’ to the audience?
EXAMPLE: https://youtu.be/BF3g_kaUnCA

TASK: DRAW AN EXAMPLE USING THE BOXES BELOW:
GRAPHIC MATCH
This cut helps to show two otherwise disconnected scenes by establishing a relationship between them.
This is done by changing from one shot to another by choosing a compositional elements (shape, colour,
size, etc.) and then matching this to a similar shape in the beginning frame of the next shot. This isn’t
used often and when it’s done well it’s oddly both almost seamless but also very striking.
DRAMATIC EFFECT: Graphics matches are interesting because they’re not strictly dynamic-we don’t see
one shape replace another, rather the edit will jump between one frame and another. However,
because the shapes in the two frames ‘match’, this is another example of a transition creating and
suggesting a direct link between two different objects or people.
CONSIDER: The most famous example of a graphic match is perhaps the use in 2001: A SPACE
ODYSEY, where we see a bone thrown by a money suddenly change into a space station. What does
this graphic match do in the film? What does it tell the audience? What might have changed?
EXAMPLE: https://youtu.be/L2ixDyItm04
SMASH CUT
In the same way that a ‘smash’ is an almost instant and quite shocking thing, a smash cut takes place
quickly and often in a way that is shocking as it tends to occur in a way that feels as though it has
interrupted something rather than at the end of something as many edits will. This can be used as a
“jump scare”, to disorientate the audience in some form by rapidly moving from one scene to another, to
interrupt a moment of action or to add a comedic reveal or change of pace in an instant. A smash cut is
essentially a jump cut, but one that seems to revel in making the cut as jarring as possible-the smash cut
has no respect for the end of a scene or moment and in some instances, such as a smash cut from a
dream sequence back to ‘being awake’. As a result, the smash cut helps to emphasise the difference
between the two scenes and ensures that there is no gentle transition between the two as it seeks to
evoke the sudden, jarring feeling that we experience is waking from a dream with no warning.

DRAMATIC EFFECT: Given that smash cuts are named after the idea of something “smashing”, we can
assume that the purpose is generally to grab the attention of the audience or to interrupt something
abruptly. Either way, the audience should be instantly draw to the attention of the cut and then
considering why it is that the cut has taken place, especially as they are designed to not simply and
subtly link two scenes like many other transitions but rather draw attention to the differences between the
two scenes.
CONSIDER: Why might a smash cut not always be appropriate for horror films? Why do smash cuts
work for comedies-what connections or similarities do they have to the real world that may be funny?
EXAMPLE: https://youtu.be/1RkWUo0zg88
EDITING USING SOUND
Our exploration of editing so far has focused on the visual connection or change from one
visual frame to another. However, sound is also something that can be utilised to help edit
scenes together and to create connections. Typically, these are called ‘sound bridges’ because
on a literal level these sounds bridge one frame or scene to another. The most frequently used
example takes place during a montage: whilst the screen will show many different scenes across
a period of time, often the same soundtrack is played over all these scenes non-digetically. This
helps to unify the scenes and make it clear that they are all connected, even if they don’t
visually look the same. In this respect a sound bridge can join any scenes whether a montage or
not, as the sound, which can be dialogue, a sound effect or soundtrack, is played across more
than one scene, joining the two together.
Some edits using sound can also help to bridge things that have previously happened or to
signpost what may happen next. These edits are called J and L cuts, named after the pattern the
cut makes on the differing visual timelines on editing software. These usually work like so: in a J
cut, the audio from the next scene plays over video from the footage on screen before the scene
begins. For example, in Scene A we hear audio from scene B even when scene a is still on
screen, essentially meaning that the audio from scene B overlaps the picture from the Scene A.
In an L cut the opposite happens-we watch Scene B take place but we hear sounds from Scene
A even though the scene has visually ended.
In the same way that visual edits and transitions can create connections or connote change,
these uses of sound can be jarring but are used to ensure that the audience is especially aware
of changes on screen and potentially drawn to connections that may exist, even if the scenes
look visually different. Of course, a soundtrack can also help to establish pace, atmosphere and
theme but in this instance works to help make connections across visuals too.

CREATIVE TRANSITIONS
Just like every other aspect of filmmaking, there is no limit or restriction as to how a film could or should
be edited, beyond the imagination of the filmmakers and especially the editors. Whilst we have defined
8 transitions (not including the use of sound) there are an infinite number of combinations and
possibilities that mean that not all edits and transitions will be easily identifiable. When exploring and
analysing editing transitions, the best step is to identify what is obvious, what stands out and what is
clearly recognisable. Even if the transition does something that appears to be new and innovative, it will
still have its roots in classic movements, effects, or transitions in general. Key then, is to ensure that you
focus on WHY the transition is used before struggling to describe the transitions in exhaustive detail. As
with previous work on camera movement in cinematography, focus first on what the filmmakers want for
the audience to think or feel, and then explore how that was achieved via the transition. A great
example of this is in the film SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD, which, as an adaptation of a comic book,
uses a wide variety of traditional editing transitions but also many creative and quite innovative
transitions (something for which Director Edgar Wright is well-known) which create pace, comedy,
intrigue, and often just interesting ways to move through the narrative in a quick but genuinely enjoyable
ways.
TASK: Watch the following visual essay and make notes about how the editing in the film helps to
communicate key ideas about character, narrative and theme https://youtu.be/pij5lihbC6k
TASK 2: Of all of the transitions mentioned in the essay, stood out and why? Which did you find was the
most interesting or inventive?
TASK 3: Imagine you were making a film and had to show a character going to an event that they did
not want to go to. Using what you’ve learned so far, what creative transition could you come up with?
Describe, or draw, in detail below.

MINI-ASSESSMENT:
Watch the following clip: https://youtu.be/YyFGnad27yw and make notes on to help explain what you
feel the purpose of the scene is and/or what we learn watching.
From there, identify any transitions you notice and then note what you think were the 3 most interesting
or useful transitions.
For each, try to describe what you saw on screen (how the transition moved from one scene to another)
and then how that transition made you feel/communicated key ideas to you.
GLOSSARY
pace
frame
tension
FPS
ASL
sequence
transition

SECTION 4: VISUAL EFFECTS
Visual effects in film and TV are now so ubiquitous and advanced that they are in practically
everything we watch and are often so good that we don’t even recognise that they’re being
used. Visual effects, or VFX as we’ll be referring to them as, have become an increasingly
important part of filmmaking and, as they’re mostly completed after a film is made, they’re
often explored in a similar manner to editing, given that that too is completed during post-production.
Whilst VFX to be mostly used in spectacular science fiction movies and big-budget action movies, it can
now be seen in everything from rom-coms to Westerns, and everything in between.
So what is VFX? It is the term used to describe imagery that is
created, manipulated, or enhanced for film that doesn't take
place during the shooting of the film itself. VFX often involves the
integration between the actual footage shot and the crated or
manipulated imagery to create realistic looking environments or
even characters. These created elements can be too dangerous to
shoot, characters which may be too difficult to make using practical effects. Or simply worlds that just
don’t exist. They use computer-generated imagery (CGI), and very specific and complex VFX software to
make it happen. Whilst we won’t be exploring every aspect of the VFX ‘pipeline’ (one way of describing
the method and order of planning, prepared, producing and then adding VFX into a film), perhaps the
most important thing to note is that VFX producers communicate with directors and cinematographers to
determine which scenes require them to shoot with green/blue screens and then work with the VFX teams
in post-production whilst also liaising with the other crew members like editors in order to bring the
whole film together.
It’s important to pay attention to the difference between visual effects (VFX) and special effects (SFX):
generally, SFX are things which can be achieved ‘in real life’,or using practical effects. These could be a
controlled explosions, fake gunshot wounds, a blank gun being shot, a character wearing complex
prosthetics etc. VFX however requires the use of a computer to create something entirely new or to
manipulate something which already existed in the film but needs to be altered, extended or changed in
some form. Examples of these might be people floating in space, dragons flying through the sky, an
android who can quickly change appearance/abilities, superhero powers or just ‘extending’ an already
existing environment.
Before we explore VFX in detail, let’s take a quick look at SFX.
SPECIAL EFFECTS
Practical effects have a long history in cinema, with perhaps the
most famous exponent during the earliest days of cinema being
George Méliès who would hand-paint frames with colour, use
multiple exposures (using the same film more than once to capture
more than one image on the same frames), dissolves and the
‘substitution splice (where essentially one person or object was
replaced from one frame to the next but the environment stays the same making it look like the person or
object has magically disappeared or changed. He, along with others, ushered a new form of storytelling
and playfulness with film and influenced generations of filmmakers and movie goers alike. Through the
last 120 years of cinema, pratical effects have evolved so much that often practical effects movies will
produce a more realistic look and feel than CGI for the simple reason that the ‘illusion’ produced is
simply real.

SO WHAT ARE PRACTICAL OR SPECIAL EFFECTS?
Practical effects include but can be much than, the creation, manipulation and use of props,
sets, creatures, vehicles and makeup-things made by hand, and never computer generated.
They add a sense of realism to a story because they are real and tangible to the world of the film
and therefore ethe audience watching. This is essentially because the effect will be a 3D object that has
weight and dimensions that actors can interact with. While some CGI ages poorly over time due to the
increasing fidelity and quality of the technology, good quality practical effects will look convincing for
decades. There is nothing that practical effects haven't been used for in filmmaking and many are
incredibly famous, in part for their quality but also for their innovation. This video provides a useful
‘highlight reel’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEAihk8QaVc
As an overview, we’ll look at 3 areas where special effects have typically been used: creature and gore
effects; models, explosions and props and sets and camera tricks.
CREATURE AND GORE EFFECTS
Perhaps some of the most memorable and effective (and indeed affecting) example of practical effects
are in the use and manipulation of creature and gore effects. These are also some of the oldest: from the
make-up used on vampires and monsters in the early days of cinema to the arguably peak of special
effects in the late 70s and early 80s, practical effects have terrified audiences for generations. Creature
effects are often made from things such as latex, foam, or other easily malleable materials and are then
used to otherworldly monsters and creatures. These effects have helped to create the harmless and
family friendly E.T., to the horrifying xenomorph alien in Aliens, creature effects allow audiences to
experience creatures from other worlds and dimensions.
TASK: Why do you feel that practical effects are the most convincing and useful for characters,
especially ones which aren’t real? What benefit do they have over CGI characters?
One of the greatest achievements in practical effects movie history is the transformation scene in AN
AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON which sees a person transform into a werewolf in camera, with
no CGI used. Made in 1981, the film used 30 technicians, needed 6 months of prep and a full week of
shooting just for this one scene. The specifics of how it was done, from literally pulling hair through
rubber, to physically stretching out prosthetic limbs, every moment was made and manipulated by hand,
helping to really develop the sense of realism and pain associated with the transformation on screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83WmQdyV1zQ
Some of the earliest creature effects were seen in the film JASON AND
THE ARGONAUTS in 1963. The film used stop-motion animation as a
form of creature effect that isn’t used much today, but produced
fantastic effects for its time using puppets and dolls that were slowly
moved, manipulated and filmed frame by frame. A painstaking process-
full length films created using this method may take several years to be
made, but this film created monster effects that were ahead of the times.
Another movie famous for its creature effects is John Carpenter’s THE
THING from 1982. This film features an alien which can embody almost literally everyone and thing and
during the film takes on many grotesque transformations and with the use of the practical effects of
blood, slime, tentacles and much more (including a scene which appears to show the alien make the

appearance of a man receiving life-saving CPD but then literally bites the arms off another man using
giant teeth in its ‘stomach’!) the creature is entirely believable, if entirely disgusting to watch.
TASK: Why might actors prefer to work with practical effects rather than using CGI? Try to think of and
list at least 3 reasons.
TASK 2: Research and find at least 2 more films that used practical effects and explain why you think
they chose practical effects rather than CGI.
MODELS, EXPLOSIONS AND PROPS
Models have been an important part of practical effects since
the very beginning of cinema and to this day some of the
best practical effects are achieved using models, or
miniatures. Artists and special effects masters to do this day create
boats, spaceships, planes, buildings and more from any material then
require, from wood to concreate, metal to plastic. As with every
other practical effect these miniatures
give a realistic look and feel to film that
employ them well by filming from a perspective that makes the models look
‘normally’ sized. Some of the most famous examples of use of scale
models is the original STAR WARS trilogy, exterior shots of Hogwarts in
the HARRY POTTER franchise and many shots from TITANIC.
Making something small is considerably cheaper and easier than building a full-size version and means
that filmmakers can be a touch more easy-going with the models as they can be easily replaced.
Therefore, many films that use models that may utilise these by creating real, ‘mini’ explosions.
Sometimes though, filmmakers may choose to blow up things for real, using live, controlled explosions.
The director Christopher Nolan is known for his use of miniatures and his use of practical effects as well.
For example, in the famous hospital scene from THE DARK KNIGHT, Christopher Nolan blew up a real
building to create this haunting moment. He has a full-size and fully working Batmobile, motorbike and
(to an extent) ‘Batwing’ plane made for his Batman trilogy and even blew up an actual, real-life Boeing
747 for his latest film, TENET. With this he only got one take, but the execution was flawless, and the
effect is bewilderingly spectacular for an audience.
Finally, as we saw in an earlier unit, props are objects that actors interact with for a wide range of
reasons. Whenever someone in a movie uses a prop, such as a sword, a gun, or a weapon of any kind,
it's a practical effect. From common household items to laboratory equipment, anything the actors use
and interact with is a prop and therefore can be considered a practical effect.
TASK: What examples of props can you recall from our earlier Unit on mise-en-scene? Which of these
were especially impressive and why?
TASK 2: List at least 3 advantages and 2 disadvantages of using miniatures when making a film.

TASK 3: Design, label and describe a prop for a new sci-fi film. It can be a prop of any kind, but must
suit the genre and the possible story lines or character/s that may exist in a film from that genre.
SETS AND CAMERA TRICKS
Another way to use of practical effects is to build sets which,
much like scale models, are built to create places that do not
exist in the real world or that need to be altered or destroyed in
some way. At the ‘Universal Backlot’ in Los Angeles, some of
the most famous sets in the world were built and shot, with
BACK TO THE FUTURE perhaps the most famous. The use of
shooting on set has huge advantages given the control that this
gives filmmakers and the manipulation that is available means
that films can achieve all kinds of results that filming on location
may not afford. As we discovered in the unit on mise-en-scene, shooting on location can provide a high-
level of fidelity, but can be very expensive and not allow the filmmakers to alter or change things in a
way that suits the film. Building a set then, allows the production to tailor the specifics of the set to the
needs of the film, with no better example than that of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, where director Stanley
Kubrick had a giant centrifuge set built at a cost of £750,000 which in 2021 is approximately
£16million. He did so because he needed to simulate the effects of a space station and in the late 1960s
CGI/green screen sets and shooting in space simply weren’t options. The building of the set came at a
huge cost then, but the finished product is mesmerising and absolutely lifts the overall quality of the film
because of the clear relationship between the character/s and the environment that they are in.
Camera tricks can also be classified as practical effects with perhaps the
most famous example is the used of forced perspective in the LORD OF THE
RINGS trilogy. Director Peter Jackson used forced perspective to take two
‘normal’ sized actors and made them seem hugely different in height by
having one person closer to the camera than another. Whilst slightly more
complex that this, the core idea of using perspective to create an illusion,
shows just how simple but effective some practical effects can be.
VISUAL EFFECTS (VFX)
There are many aspects to the VFX process and it’s an aspect of filmmaking
that is constantly improving and evolving. For now then we’ll focus on three main types: CGI,
compositing, and motion capture. The reason why we consider them as a branch of editing is because
each of them, as with editing, typically takes place after principal photography (the filming of at least the
major scenes and set pieces in the film, but usually all live moments) or simultaneously in a dedicated
space such as a motion capture studio (more on this later). Visual effects artists use digital tools that help
in all capacities of blending the line between "real" and "unreal” and it’s the desire to constantly ‘blur’
that line by improving the quality of the CGI that means that CGI from an earlier time period will
invariably not look as good as the CGI produced today.
TASK: Using the space below, write the opening few sentences to a film that would need VFX to be used
in some form, focusing on the description of the setting to make the location vivid but ambitious.

CGI
CGI stands for computer generated imagery, which is the use of computer
graphics in art and media. These can be 2D or 3D animations, objects, or
renderings; the type of art or media can be a film, television program, video
game, or simulation. CGI can be used in films ranging from science fiction
epics to quiet intimate dramas. How the CGI is used varies, from animating
entire locations to subtle work on characters and environments. In recent
years, CGI has been the go-to visual effect for most major movies, whether its
use is subtle or obvious though that wasn’t always the case. The question then
of “When was CGI invented?” can be traced back to the 1960s, when companies were experimenting
with very basic computers. We know that by the 1990s CGI was used much more widely, but it was the
1970s were CGI technology first emerged with use in films. A digital POV was created in WESTWORLD
in 1973, and classic ‘computer screens’ with wire-frame models were used in STAR WARS in 1977 and
ALIEN in 1979. The role of CGI would evolve even further in the 1980s, with films like TRON in 1982,
THE LAST STARFIGHTER 9 1984 and perhaps most influentially YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES in 1985.
VFX work today can include 3D models of people, monsters, buildings,
cars, explosions, and many other things which can then be put into a
live-action scenario, such as a monster attacking a city or a car being
blown up by an explosion. These types of CGI effects are used in many,
many films and though tend to dominate films with a large budget and
with narratives that call for large-scale events or spectacles. However, CGI can also be seen in movies
with a range of genres, with period dramas using CGI to fill out locations with period-specific details,
such as background environments full of buildings, people, and vehicles.
What is important to remember, is that all visual effects are not CGI. Whilst computers are necessary for
nearly all forms of visual effects, but the key difference between VFX and CGI is that CGI imagery made
completely within computers. Other types of visual FX use computers to enhance or combine live action
footage. Examples to of CGI would be CGI animation such as those created by Pixar. CGI is not a
panacea though: not all CGI is great, and is certainly a problem in some movies, but the best type of
CGI is the one where you don’t even notice it. Most movies then, blend a considered use of CGI effects,
other VFX work and practical effects. JURASSIC PARK (1993) might be the gold
standard of this, as it used CGI along with practical effects to create realistic looking
dinosaurs that, 28 years later, still looks flawless, despite the CGI being created on
relatively basic computers and software.
Since movies are using CGI now more than ever, there is a constant churn of
innovation and likely much more to be had yet. Perhaps the most impressive
and possibly revolutionary has come from the home of Industrial Light and
Magic, Lucasfilm with something called StageCraft, aka “the Volume”, which is
used on the Disney+ show THE MANDALORIAN. StageCraft is a development
of the ideas from green and blue screen technology but instead of having a
coloured sheet behind the actors, the Volume has an Ultra High-Definition projection on it so that the
backgrounds are present while the actors are performing on the set. Combined with the real-time lighting
and real props on the set, the Volume uses its LED screens to create the scene as if the actors were there,
whether a desert landscape or icy tundra. The result is a realistic looking scene that is all done in-
camera, on-set, in real time.
TASK: Why do you think that filming with a realistic looking background might be easier for both actors
and for the CGI artists working on the film/TV show after filming has been completed?

COMPOSITING AND GREEN SCREEN FX
As a result of the emerging technologies such as the Volume, the use of green screen may be in its
descent and perhaps with it, a significant decrease in the use of compositing. When using a green or
blue screen, compositing is called chroma keying and simply refers to the process of taking a solid
background colour and replacing with a new background image as compositing is defined by combining
multiple images. Another way of combining multiple images is to use a double exposure, This can be
done on-set and in-camera or during Post-Production. There are dozens of different ways to composite
shots but perhaps the most common example is when a weatherman is placed in front of a greenscreen
with the weather details behind them, but there are many other, more
advanced filmmaking techniques such as green screen capture, computer
generated imagery, and rotoscoping. However, compositing imagery has
existed in cinema since the very earliest days, and can be traced back to
the turn of the 20th century with Georges Méliès, and with his film THE
ONE MAN BAND he used a seven-fold multiple exposure technique to
give the impression he was playing every instrument in a band.
Melies was also a pioneer of mattes or masks, where he would black out or matte out parts of the frame
using black paint and a piece of glass. He would black out one part so no light would reach the film and
then rewind the film to then combine the two or more images into a single shot. Things like a matte
painting for example, could be added to the area that was ‘matted out’ so that the images could then
blend with the rest of the shot and combine to create an entire shot. Before the advent of CGI, this was
the best way to create large expanses or fantastic worlds.
After Melies and others who used multiple exposures, background projection became increasingly
common in film. This technique has the background content of a scene being projected onto a screen to
give the impression of one picture as seen in the image here from TO CATCH A THIEF. Nearly every
driving scene from the Golden Age of Hollywood used background projection and despite it looking less
than convincing for modern audiences, it was still very useful.
RESEARCH TASK: Find some examples of background projection and describe: the name of the film that used it,
a description of the scene when it was used and at east 2 positives and 2 negatives of the technique.
ROTOSCOPE
Rotoscoping is the process in which footage is traced over, by hand, frame-by-frame. This effect was
invented in 1915 by animator Max Fleischer to improve the movement of animated characters and to
make them look more realistic. The technique was originally achieved
by filming scenes and then projecting the film onto glass panels so an
animator could trace the action in every frame and, thus capturing the
movement of the actors. Used by Disney in the 1930s, many of their
most famous and celebrated early titles like SNOW WHITE AND THE
SEVEN DWARVES, CINDERELLA and ALICE IN WONDERLAND were
all created via rotoscoping. This technique also allows filmmakers to trace over and add in part of a
frame that was matted out or to significantly alter how the filmed image looks. More recently, this
manual process has been replaced by computers and adopted by the visual effects (VFX) industry to
manipulate images by doing things like removing stunt wires, placing characters in different settings or,
as seen in the STAR WARS films, creating the light effects for lightsabres.
TASK: Why do you think that rotoscoping was used by animators? What benefits did it give the
animators and how did it improve the quality of the animation?

MOTION CAPTURE
Motion capture (or mocap) is a form of VFX technology that has been
around for a number of years but, as with all VFX work, is improving all
the time. Mocap is the process of recording, or capturing,
the movement of objects or people and is used in a huge range of
industries such as military, sports, medicine and of course, the
entertainment industry. In filmmaking and in video game development, it
refers to taking very precise recording of actions by actors and then using that information to animate
a digital character. This has developed and evolved and is now able to capture very precise and quite
subtle movements beyond just the body and may now include the recording of the face and limbs and as
a result, allows filmmakers to capture a whole performance. This is generally referred as performance
capture and involves capturing the movements of one or more actors are many times per second with
the aim of the movements of the actor. Camera movements can also be motion captured so that a virtual
camera in the scene will pan, tilt or dolly around the stage driven by a camera operator while the actor
is performing, allowing the computer-generated characters, images and sets to have the same
perspective as the video images from the camera.
But a character is not just about movements or actions and whilst it’s
important that a CG character can move like a human or animal, this is not
enough for films to evoke a reaction from the audience. To add personality,
audiences want to see how characters express their compassion, anger, fear,
joy, tension, disappointment and all other sets of emotions just like any actor
would. This is why performance capture is so important and why facial
capture is a vital tool in the post-production stage of creating a CG face. To
do this, both marker-based and marker-less facial capture can be done, using
as many 350 markers that are applied to the actor’s face and the marker
movement is tracked using high-resolution camera and then in post-
production, complex tools can be used using software that allows VFX artists
to create realistic and evocative faces to characters. The markerless technology tracks the minute
features of the face such as wrinkles, nostrils, pupil movement, eyelids etc frame by frame giving a very
precise and detailed set of information for VFX artists to recreate digitally in post-production.
TASK: Without reading back, write a short definition for each of the following terms:
VISUAL EFFECTS
CGI
GREEN SCREEN
COMPOSITING
ROTOSCOPE
MOTION CAPTURE
TASK 2: Rank the different 6 types of VFX above from most effective (which do you think looks best) to
least. Then, explain your ordering with reasons and examples.

An introduction and guide to film studies

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