Technical codes: film language
Film language refers to the codes and conventions that are specific to moving image texts. The following notes describe the way camera techniques, sound, mise-en-scène and editing are used to construct film and television texts. Film language is not just the 'naming of parts'. Like grammar in verbal language, it is useful to know the rules in order to be able to effectively analyse how the texts are constructed and what they mean, and in order to manipulate them when producing texts.
Camera techniques
The study and description of the contribution the camera work (cinematography) makes to a film can be approached through four categories: height, distance, angle and movement. These are best presented diagrammatically. This handout can help you to illustrate camera shots and angles. Shot list (PDF, 389kb)
The resource sheet offers the basic descriptions of shots, but does not indicate how or why specific shots are used. In most films we watch, the camera is used to 'narrate' the film as though we were viewing the action directly: the camera is rarely tilted from the horizontal axis (called 'canting'), and most shots are medium or medium close-up. Usually, the film-maker doesn't want to draw attention to the camera work, so the effect (also as a result of editing) is of 'seamless narration'. Among film theorists this is generally referred to as the ' Hollywood realist style'. The camera work in The Little Things is closest to this method.
The Man with the Beautiful Eyes
More artistically constructed films, however, may adopt a more expressive or stylised use of film language. Here the camera is used more consciously and obtrusively, combining with heightened colour, strong contrast lighting and jarring editing to produce a more 'expressionist' style of film. The camera work in The Man with the Beautiful Eyes is almost like a handbook of expressionist technique - every conceivable camera angle, position and move is used, which combine to signal to us the instability of the boys' world and of the man at the heart of the story.
When supporting students' writing, it can be useful to refer to how films use the camera. For example, students could write descriptively the equivalent of a long shot when they are establishing a scene, or 'cut' to a close-up of a character's face at an emotional climax, by depicting the details of expression, or verbally 'zoom in' to the middle of the action.
A note on camera and animation: the language of camera work doesn't literally refer to how the camera is used in drawn or computer-generated animation: instead the sense of scale (close-up, long shot, and so on) is achieved in the drawing or on the computer screen.
Sound
Sound can be analysed under four headings: music, dialogue, sound effects (including both 'spot', ie single, effects, and atmosphere effects - see Tell Me grids) - and silence. Sound communicates a great deal of narrative information.
Play any of the films on this compilation with sound only (the screen can be covered or turned away, and switching the input on a data projector does the same); ask students to listen to the soundtrack and then describe what they think is happening in the film.
A further distinction can be made between diegetic and non-diegetic sound. The word 'diegesis' refers to the world of the film - the day or evening in the life of George in The Little Things, and Romeo and his friends in Two Cars, One Night, for example. Anything that features in the film that isn't inside this world is extra- or non-diegetic. So, the musical soundtrack in The First Time It Hits, Killing Time at Home and the voice-over in The Man with the Beautiful Eyes are all examples of non-diegetic sound. The musical soundtrack in Jus' Gaps, on the other hand, is diegetic as it is music that plays in Lucy's room, whenever there is a cut to her friend, the music stops. The dialogue and sound effects of Two Cars, One Night, 7.35 in the Morning, About a Girl, and Accident are securely diegetic.
A couple of the films present interesting questions for this distinction. For example, The Man with the Beautiful Eyes has an absurdly long reverse zoom out of the town, through a map of the USA, through a badge on a typewriter, which ends up in a shop window owned by Chinaski - author Charles Bukowski's alter ego. At which stage do we leave the diegesis of the story?
Mise-en-scène
A term taken from French theatre, mise-en-scène is quite a simple concept: it refers to all of the things which are 'put in the scene' of a film: the setting and props; people and how they move, look and dress; and abstract design principles in the frame, such as colour, line, shape and plane. The concept enables students to consider and describe what is in a frame or series of frames of a film at a slightly more abstracted level than just 'what's happening'.
Killing Time at Home
For example, the mise-en-scène of Killing Time at Home is devoid of any human interaction, the outside world is completely shut out, movements are minimal and mainly aided by electronic devises, highlighting the insular existence of the main character.
The Most Beautiful Man in the World
The mise-en-scène of The Most Beautiful Man in the World is sparse and empty, with objects moved away from the centre of the frame, to create an edgy, pregnant atmosphere.
Two Cars, One Night
And in Two Cars, One Night the static mise-en-scène, the constant return to the frontal shot of the two cars, separated, mirrors the fixedness of the two children in their different social milieu.
The Little Things
In The Little Things George's listless journey is through a mise-en-scène superficially loud, colourful and exciting - cinema, burger bar, record shop - but it can offer her nothing engaging or sustaining. In effect she is locked out of the cultures around her.
7.35 in the Morning
In 7.35 in the Morning, the mise-en-scène is constantly taking us by surprise: opening with café sounds but a shot of two nervous, sweaty-looking musicians (What are they doing there in the morning?), the singer appearing from behind the pillar just as we hear his voice on the soundtrack - a double surprise, and the patrons bursting into song and dance just as unexpectedly.
A director composes a mise-en-scène either to persuade us of the verisimilitude of the diegesis - or to do the opposite.
The Man with the Beautiful Eyes
As with camera, mise-en-scène can be a useful scaffold for students' writing, perhaps by explicitly setting up a task to convey in writing the mise-en-scène of a shot from one of the films: how would you 'write' the equivalent of the opening shots of The Man with the Beautiful Eyes, for example?
(If available, students could then compare them with the poem on which the film is based.) Is there a possible written analogue for the final reverse zoom shot out of the typewriter? The double benefit of this kind of activity lies in the opportunity it affords for students to contrast how films and print present scenes to us differently.
Editing
Editing involves types of cut (cut, dissolve, fade, wipe) and length of shot, as well as more complex processes based on principles of continuity editing and montage. Continuity editing, described below, is the process of ensuring that a film looks seamless and 'real'. Montage editing on the other hand, is an expressive use of juxtaposing shots, often unrelated, with music or sound that may or not be working with the images (synchronous) or counterpointing it (asynchronous). Montage editing is much more common in music video or advertising than realist film drama.
For our purposes here, editing is defined as being the way space and time are created and manipulated in a film, and how the narrative is put together. In these senses there is a macro role for editing which is like composition in writing (Which order shall we put scenes in? How long should they be? Which events shall we cut out?). But there is also a micro role (How much of this shot do we need? Which shot should come next? How should the sound connect with both?).
A function or effect of editing is to surprise, shock, scare or delight, but it can only do this if the norm in editing is for the seamless, invisible transition from one shot to the next. (See Film Art: An Introduction by D Bordwell and K Thompson, 2003, McGraw-Hill ). This system of 'seamless editing' is known as the 'continuity system' and follows a number of rules:
- Maintaining a consistent but artificial 'line' when filming exchanges between people, or spaces, which effectively means that the camera rarely appears to cross over a 180-degree line through the action (called the '180-degree rule');
- Never or rarely moving the camera through an angle of less than 30 degrees to the action between shots;
- Making sure cuts between actions are 'motivated' by, for example, following the sounds (A sound of footsteps will usually be followed by a cut to a shot of someone walking.);
- Using 'graphic matches' when dissolving from one scene to the next (A good example of this is the dissolve from the rising smoke of a snuffed-out candle to the shot of steam rising from a railway engine in Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg, USA, 1993.).
Cuts which don't observe these rules are called 'jump cuts' and can be used deliberately to disorientate or surprise the viewer, or connote the effect of disorientation or surprise on behalf of a character. A jump cut is a move from one shot to the next without either motivation (for example, the sound of breaking glass would 'motivate' a cut to a shot of a window being broken; a jump cut to such a shot would have the sound cut at the same time) or the equivalent of hand-holding (for example, a dissolve enables us to adjust to a change in scene, location or time between shots). In The Most Beautiful Man in the World a jump cut from man's face to mother's face and back to girl's face physically interposes the mother in the scene - even though she's at least 100 yards away from the action. The return of the girl to her prison-like house is reinforced by an unmotivated sound of the front door slamming - we have no accompanying shot to cushion the blow. The girl thus lives in a brutal world of abrupt and motiveless action.
Beyond these rules, it is important to bear in mind the role editing plays in creating the diegetic time and space of a film. Through editing, time in a film can be stretched (by cutting between simultaneous action - called 'parallel editing'), summarised (in a montage sequence), or abbreviated (using ellipses). A typical example of parallel editing is the phone conversation in Jus' Gaps, where the shots of Lucy are intercut with shots of her friend. In the interview scene there the film-maker uses montage sequences to illustrate the shoe shop scenes, which happened in the past. There is an unusual use of ellipses in Accident, where shots fade out and then in again without any appreciable movement in time. The effect is to build up a sense of the waiting and restlessness of the characters. In About a Girl the diegesis is, for much of the film, set within the girl's walk along a canal; throughout though there are cutaways to other scenes, in a generalised past. It would be difficult to string the scenes on a chronological timeline as the cutaways aren't specifically located in the diegesis.
As with camera and mise-en-scène, the concepts which underpin editing can be useful in supporting and developing students' writing. You could explore the notion of parallel editing (moving between two simultaneous actions) to build tension, or using 'cutaways' from the focus of action (such as cutting away from dialogue between characters to a shot of a prop, or item of dress, or scene out of a window). How could students reproduce these effects in their writing?
A final word on The First Time It Hits. This film uses a hybrid of continuity and montage editing systems, where there are sufficient continuities between some of the shots to orient us towards a 'skater boy meets girl' story, but montage techniques are used throughout to comment on the action: inserts of graphics, close-up stills and wide shots all give a kind of scratch-music video feel, which goes with the music soundtrack.
The First Time It Hits
The pace of the editing also fits in with the music video aesthetic, where the purpose is for the editing rhythm to be dictated by the music track, not the story.
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