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French for placing on stage

Taxi Driver

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Staging of the action
Physical setting & dcor How these elements are framed How these elements are photographed

Manhattan

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Frame dimensions Aspect Ratio 1:33:1 (Pre-1950s & TV) 1:85:1 (standard) 2:35:1 (widescreen)

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Dominant
Where is our eye attracted first?

Bend It Like Beckham

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Silence of the Lambs

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Subsidiary contrasts
What are the main eye-stops after taking in the dominant?

The Black Swan

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Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo

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Lighting key
High key? Low key? High contrast? Some combination of these?

The Philadelphia Story

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The Grifters

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The 40 Year-Old Virgin

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Shot and camera proxemics
What type of shot? How far away is the camera from the action?

Silence of the Lambs

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Manhattan

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The Hurt Locker

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Austin Powers

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Angle
Are we (and the camera) looking up or down on the subject? Or is the camera neutral (eye level)?

Red Eye

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Red Eye

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Kill Bill

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The Last Picture Show & The Blind Side

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Silence of the Lambs & Ondine

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Color values

American Beauty

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Cinderella Man, Red & Taking Woodstock

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Kill Bill

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Raging Bull, The Last Picture Show & Manhattan

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2001: A Space Odyssey, Barbershop, Let the Right One In & Oldboy

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Density
How much visual information is packed into the image? Is the texture stark, moderate, or highly detailed?

The Scarlet Empress

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Density
How much visual information is packed into the image? Is the texture stark, moderate, or highly detailed?

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

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The Kings Speech

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The Scarlet Empress

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The Godfather

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From Here to Eternity

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Composition How is the twodimensional space segmented and organized? What is the underlying design?

Hud

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Composition The Rule of Thirds From painters of the Renaissance (14th century) Interest should be at the interersecting lines as our eyes do not go to the center of a photograph

Botticellis Venus & Mars & Up in the Air

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The Godfather

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The Departed

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Hot Tub Time Machine

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The Black Swan

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Form Open or closed?
Does the image suggest a window that arbitrarily isolates a fragment of the scene (character is very inportant) while the world outside of the frame continues? (Open also considered realistic) Have you been invited in?

Training Day

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or a proscenium arch, in which the visual elements are carefully arranged and held in balance and the frame defines the world? (Closed can be considered more formalist)
The Departed & Hugo

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Does the composition suggest action or confinement? Beauty vs truth
Traffic

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Framing Tight or loose? Do the characters have no room to move around, or can they move freely without impediments
Silence of the Lambs

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Silence of the Lambs

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Depth On how many planes is the image composed? Does the background or foreground comment in any way on the mid-ground?

Midnight Cowboy

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The Grifters

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Character placement What part of the framed space do the characters occupy? Center? Top? Bottom? Edges? Why?

Citizen Kane

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Double Indemnity

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Staging positions Which way do the characters look vis-vis the camera?

The Graduate

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Silence of the Lambs

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The 400 Blows

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Character proxemics How much space is there between characters?

Double Indemnity

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The Last Picture Show

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Broken Flowers

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The Wedding Crashers

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Notes on a Scandal

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The Last Picture Show, 1971
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich Starring Ellen Burstyn, Cloris Leachman, Cybil Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges Dir. Of Photography Robert Surtees first mainstream Hollywood film shot in b&w since the early 60s Homage to Howard Hawks & John Ford as well as friend Orson Welles Largely unknown cast - Oscars for Cloris Leachman & Ben Johnson

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Peter Bogdanovich, 1939 Began as an actor A rabid cinephile, he programmed films for MOMA, wrote many seminal books on early cinema (bios of John Ford, Howard Hawks & Orson Welles) as well as writing for the esteemed journal Cahiers du Cinema LPS released when he was 32

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While Paper Moon & Whats up Doc? Were critical & box office successes, Daisy Miller & At Long Last Love (both with Cybil Shepherd) were critical & box office disasters Murder of girlfriend and Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten and subsequent marriage to his younger sister a huge factor in later career Considered an ultimate autuer, it could be also considered that if he were a real auteur, he would have bounced back & made some better movies Returned to acting & writing his unrealised potential echoes that of his admired friend and fellow wunderkind, Orson Welles