MDA1700 - Week Two

For the second week of MDA1700, we discussed the film from the previous week's screening (Chaplain's 'Modern Times') and we also discussed the visual styles of film, and continuity styles, referencing them to Silent Comedy.

While a lot of what we looked at in the class was useful revision (such as the different elements of visual style, camera movements and some of the 'rules' of continuity style', there were many terms and examples of terminology I learned which were new to me.

For example, I had never really considered some of D.W. Griffith's 'rules' of continuity, such as Articulation of Space and the Consistency of Screen direction (mainly because I hadn't heard of them prior to the Seminar,) and I found it interesting how even though I had previously overlooked them, they're integral to the idea of continuity in film, as seen in the scene from Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds' which we watched, in which a woman drives up to a house, and enters it to find a man dead and then proceeds to flee the scene.

Consistency of Screen direction was exhibited in the opening and ending of the sequence, as the woman drove into the scene and entered the house from screen left to screen right, and then as she fled she was moving from screen right to left.

We also noted the use of 'Slow Disclosure' in the above scene, which is a term used to describe when vital visual information is slowly reveal to add to the build up in tension.

The Proscenium style of silent cinema, and how it affects editing and the visual style was also discussed, and the prison canteen scene from modern times was used as an example of this, as it clearly shows how certain details are picked out for the viewer. The main example if when the criminal puts drugs in the salt shaker, and the camera (while still looking forwards onto the action like Proscenium style dictates,) pans down to show only the salt shaker, then back up to the criminals face. This shows how the camerawork manipulates the style of silent cinema for the desired purpose.

Due to the initial screening (The Ten Commandments, DeMille, USA, 1923) being cancelled we watched 'East of Eden' (Elia Kazan, USA, 1955).