Film Language —An Introduction


“Unlike all the other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time, to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity. I’d say that film is the sculpting of time.” — Andrei Tarkovsky

“The art of film can only really exist through a highly organized betrayal of reality.” — François Truffaut

“Films are subjective — what you like, what you don’t like. But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it’s the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they’ve done, I want that effort there — I want that sincerity. And when you don’t feel it, that’s the only time I feel like I’m wasting my time at the movies.” — Christopher Nolan

“My distinguishing talent is the ability to put people under the microscope, perhaps to go one or two layers farther down than some other directors.” — David Lean

“I’m just a storyteller, and the cinema happens to be my medium. I like it because it re-creates life in movement, enlarges it, enhances it, distills it. For me, it’s far closer to the miraculous creation of life than, say, a painting or music or even literature. It’s not just an art form; it’s actually a new form of life, with its own rhythms, cadences, perspectives and transparencies. It’s my way of telling a story.” — Federico Fellini

“You make films to give people something, to transport them somewhere else, and it doesn’t matter if you transport them to a world of intuition or a world of intellect... The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film... I’ve been trying to get there from the beginning. I’m somebody who doesn’t know, somebody who’s searching.” — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Anyone can write about what they see on a TV or movie screen. The media studies student who is after good grades in their essays will, however, be using the correct terminology to pinpoint EXACTLY what the film-makers are doing, and addressing the big issues of film theory such as how this medium engages with the representation of reality.

Film is a language all its own, a way of communicating using images which is understood around the globe, perhaps even around the galaxy — how else would we try to communicate with aliens, except by using pictures? However, like any other language it has rules and conventions which can be deconstructed, and, through deconstruction, understood. But in order to deconstruct, you have to be able to give all the pieces a name.

What we see on the screen is the diegesis (the narrative world of the film) and it can be divided up into two areas:

Mise-en-scène The things in the scene - these are literally the things put in the picture for you to look at. All or some may be significant, but nothing is accidental - remember, this is not reality, it is a re-presentation of it. This will include actors (think about the use of stars), set (think about the input of the designer, especially the use of colour), costume, lighting. You should consider how the mise-en-scène reflect the production values of the movie. Location is an important aspect of mise-en-scène: why was that particular location chosen, and what advantages/restrictions would you associate with filming there?
Mise-en-shot The process of translating mise-en-scène into moving pictures, into shots, and the relationship between the two. The main parameters are
  • camera position
  • camera movement
  • shot scale (LS/MS/CU etc)
  • duration of the single shot
  • the pace of editing
  • depth of focus

When describing movement, we consider primary action, ie the movement of characters/objects within the frame and secondary action, ie the movement of the camera in relation to those objects.

Editing

There is an old adage that films are edited, not made. Much important work is done in the edit suite. While a good editor may not always be able to salvage a bad film, a bad editor can certainly ruin what might otherwise

Hollywood movies tend to go for continuity editing, a style also known as transparency (ie you don't notice it). Actions flow smoothly from one frame to another, and the audience simply follow the dialogue. Oppositional to this, and the style employed by many art-house films is framed editing, where the audience are continually reminded that they are viewing an artificially created text. Jump cuts, sudden stoppages of sound,

When shots are placed next to each other in a sequence the link between them is known as a transition. The simplest of these is a cut, ie a straight splice from one section of film to another. There are many others - fades, dissolves, wipes, plus those offered by sophisticated digital software.

Sound

When analysing film you also need to consider SOUND. It is a vital part of the information used for decoding film - whether it comes in the form of a lush string soundtrack or footsteps echoing O/S down a corridor.

Read an excellent Introduction to Film Sound here.

Developing Visual Literacy

As well as being one of the world's leading film directors, Martin Scorsese is a passionate student of film, a fount of knowledge about the history of the medium, and an enthusiastic advocate of valuing verbal and visual literacy equally. He believes firmly in the power of cinema as an art form, something beyond the scope of regular human endeavour, and thinks it should be studied and appreciated as such. The more movies you watch (especially foreign, independent and old movies), the more of a sense you develop of the history and development of the medium, the greater your understanding.

“Whenever I hear people dismiss movies as “fantasy” and make a hard distinction between film and life, I think to myself that it’s just a way of avoiding the power of cinema. Of course it’s not life—it’s the invocation of life, it’s in an ongoing dialogue with life.

Frank Capra said, “Film is a disease.” I caught the disease early on. I felt it whenever I walked up to the ticket booth with my mother or my father or my brother. You’d go through the doors, up the thick carpet, past the popcorn stand that had that wonderful smell—then to the ticket taker, and then in some of the old theaters there would be another set of doors with little windows and you’d get a glimpse of something magical happening up there on the screen, something special. And as we entered, for me it was like entering a sacred space, a kind of sanctuary where the living world around me seemed to be recreated and played out.”

He suspects young audiences have been caught up by the doctrine of box office success, only interested in the biggest, the most expensive, the most profitable global movies — and that does a great disservice to the art of cinema, and the power it has over human imagination.

“We’re face to face with images all the time in a way that we never have been before. And that’s why I believe we need to stress visual literacy in our schools. Young people need to understand that not all images are there to be consumed like fast food and then forgotten — we need to educate them to understand the difference between moving images that engage their humanity and their intelligence, and moving images that are just selling them something.”

If you're really serious about film, and want to go beyond 'fast food cinema', reading Scorsese's essay in full is a good place to start:


Further Reading

This is just a very basic introduction. For more on film theory, try: