Description
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- Introduction
- About This Book
- Foolish Assumptions
- Icons Used in This Book
- Beyond the Book
- Where to Go from Here
- Part I: Getting Started with Film Studies
- Chapter 1: Becoming a Fantastic Film Student
- Upping Your Cinematic Game
- Going beyond merely watching films
- Connecting film studies to other stuff you can study
- Focusing on creativity, industry and technology
- Writing about films: Reviews, criticism and academic style
- Studying Pictures, Moving and Otherwise
- Reading a painting or drawing
- Reading a photograph
- Capturing movement in film
- Expressing Why Film Matters to the World
- Probing into politics
- Reviewing race and nationality
- Exploring gender
- Chapter 2: Putting Words and Pictures into Motion: The Film-Making Team
- Helming a Film: Directors and Their Collaborators
- Thickening the Plot: Screenwriters
- ‘Authoring’ a film
- Studying screenwriting
- Writing action
- Writing dialogue
- Showing Them the Money: Film Producers
- Giving producers their due
- Producing the studio goods
- Going it alone: Independent producers
- Painting with Light: Cinematographers
- Directing the photography
- Achieving ‘the look’
- Harnessing technology
- Getting the Film in the Can: Production
- Setting the scene: Art directors
- Turning the creative vision into a reality: Technical crew
- Putting the Footage on the Screen: Post-Production
- Cutting and constructing: Editors
- Amplifying the images: Sound designers and composers
- Visualising the impossible: Special-effects artists
- Chapter 3: Watching the Stars Come Out: Film Stars, and Why We Love Them
- Surveying Stars, in All Their Extraordinary Ordinariness
- Distinguishing stars from actors
- Analysing star image
- Seeing stars as commodities
- Identifying with stars
- Sexing up the screen
- Working like a star: Acting, performing, inhabiting
- Exploring a World of Stars
- Pondering European stardom
- Seeing the new Hollywood in Bollywood
- Separating Stardom and Celebrity
- Living private lives in the public gaze
- Star-making in the 21st century
- Chapter 4: Building Movie Stories
- Uncovering Mise-en-Scène
- Analysing a scene
- Looking deeply at all that stuff
- Presenting the world as you know it (sort of)
- Creating emotional pictures: Melodramatic mise-en-scène
- Speaking the Language and Grammar of Film
- Making a scene (and a sequence)
- Selecting shots
- Solving the Puzzle: Editing Film
- Getting the story moving
- Piecing together a film: Continuity editing
- Considering alternatives to the classical model
- Charting the Roles of Characters in Narrative
- Causing an effect with an event
- Characterising heroes and villains
- Meeting sidekicks and helpers
- Listening and Understanding Film Sound
- Playing with emotions
- Distinguishing between diegetic and non-diegetic sound
- Listening to unheard melodies: Film music
- Part II: Taking All Types: Genres, Modes and Style
- Chapter 5: Distinguishing Films by Type: Genres and Style
- Defining Genre
- Banking on genre: The Hollywood Machine
- Enjoying repetition – up to a point
- Bending genres
- Appreciating What a Man’s Got to Do: Westerns
- Linking westerns and the birth of Hollywood
- Seeing why westerns are westerns
- Pitting two sides against each other
- Letting Yourself Go: Musicals
- Showcasing fantastic performers
- Integrating numbers with plot
- Feeling better through musicals
- Lurking in the Shadows: Horror
- Drawing first blood
- Facing your inner demons
- Having nightmares on Elm Street and elsewhere
- Voyaging Beyond: Sci-Fi
- Rocketing to the moon
- Exploring imaginary worlds
- Dreaming of electric sheep and mechanical men
- Peering Through the Darkness: Film Noir
- Testing the limits of genre
- Seeing noir as a style
- Detecting spider women and their prey
- Watching Boy Meet Girl, Time and Again: Romantic Comedy
- Romancing the same old story
- Digging deeper into chick flicks
- Feeling bromantic
- Chapter 6: Getting Animated about Animation
- Considering Much More than Kids’ Stuff
- Bringing images to life
- Making kids (and grown-ups) laugh
- Animating counterculture
- Going full circle: Cinema gets animated
- Touring the Great Cartoon Factories
- Disney: The mouse shall inherit the Earth
- The Fleischer brothers: Betty pops out of the inkwell
- Warner Bros.: Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and related anarchists
- Pixar: Not just a Toy Story
- Spanning the Globe: A World of Cartoons
- Taking over, one toon at a time
- Playing it straight? European animation
- Drawing a history of violence: Animation from the Middle East
- Chapter 7: Leading from the Front: Avant-Garde Film
- Advance! Attempting to Pin Down the Avant-Garde
- Standing against the mainstream
- Sampling the many facets of the avant-garde
- Determining when a cartoon isn’t just a cartoon
- Exploring Three Important Avant-Garde Ideas
- Playing around with time
- Not worrying about the story
- Embracing abstract images
- Drifting Off into a World of Dreams
- Dissecting cows and priests in chains
- Going into a cinematic trance
- Mixing with the Mainstream: Avant-garde Everywhere
- Chapter 8: Getting Real: The Truth about Documentary
- Shaping Reality with Documentary Films
- Comparing the documentary to fiction and to real life
- Sorting documentaries: Six modes
- Weighing documentary ethics
- Capturing the 20th Century on Camera
- Meeting plain-speaking Russians
- Exploring the world and its people
- Filming poetry or propaganda? World War II on film
- Reclaiming objectivity: Direct cinema and cinéma vérité
- Blending the Real and the Unreal: Documentary Today
- Questioning America the beautiful
- Marching with penguins and other creatures
- Documenting digitally
- Part III: Travelling a World of Wonders: Global Cinema
- Chapter 9: Bringing Hollywood into Focus
- Running the Dream Factory
- Mass producing movies
- Controlling the supply chain
- Dominating international markets
- Appealing to everyone, offending no one
- Re-viewing Hollywood History
- Laying foundations for the Golden Age
- Breaking up the studio system: The United States versus Paramount Pictures
- Rolling with the changes: New Hollywood
- Heading Back to the Future: Blockbusters, Franchises and Indiewood
- Eating Hollywood: Jaws
- Deciphering agent-speak: Packaging, high concept and synergy
- Acting like kids: Family franchise fun
- Behaving like grown-ups: Indiewood
- Chapter 10: Enjoying the British Invasion: From Brit-Grit to Frock Flicks
- Getting Real: Brit-Grit
- Paying for Free Cinema
- Breaking the New (British) Wave
- Finding poetry in common places
- Meeting of the Screens: Big and Small
- Assessing British television’s influence on film
- Coming to the British film industry’s rescue: Channel 4
- Leaping from TV to cinema screen
- Adapting Great Works: ‘Oh, Mr Darcy!’
- Reviving the classics, over and over
- The past today: Heritage films
- Beating Hollywood at Its Own Game
- Producing local films for local people
- Bonding with Bond, James Bond
- Casting a spell: Harry Potter and the magical franchise
- Chapter 11: Admiring European Films: Culture and Commerce
- Answering a Not-So-Simple Question: What Is European Cinema, Anyway?
- Making a Rendezvous with French Cinema
- Travelling from poetic realism to new extremism
- Making an exception for French cinema
- Appreciating a glamorous business: The Cannes Film Festival
- Stepping Out of the Darkness: German Cinema
- Lurking in the shadows: German Expressionism
- Recreating (New) German Cinema
- Melding Style and Substance: Italian Cinema
- Finding heroes on the street: Neorealism
- Featuring swords, sandals and naughty nuns: Italian genre and exploitation films
- Meeting the prince of laughter: Totò
- Watching Freedom Explode: Spanish Cinema
- Considering Fascism and Catholicism
- Returning of the repressed: Pedro Almódovar
- Chapter 12: Mixing Monsters, Musicals and Melodrama: World Cinema
- Expanding Vision: World Cinema and Third Cinema
- Journeying into Japanese Cinema: Godzilla, Anime and More
- Reaching back to classical cinema, Japanese style
- Facing an incredible, unstoppable titan of terror!
- Agreeing that anime rules, okay
- Investigating Indian Cinema: Bollywood and Beyond
- Making a song and dance of Bollywood
- Pondering Bengali film: World or parallel cinema?
- Taking Bollywood global
- Looking to Latin America Cinema
- Brazil: Hollywood in the tropics?
- Cuba: Small cinema, big ideas
- Mexico’s modern auteurs
- Part IV: Bringing In the Big Ideas: Theories and Beyond
- Chapter 13: Theorising about Film: How Movies Work
- Building a Foundation of Film Theory: Text, Context and Spectator
- Formalism: What is a film?
- Realism: Does film reflect reality?
- Reception: What is a spectator?
- Shaping Society with Film: Marxism
- Meeting Marx (Karl, not Groucho)
- Spending time with the Frankfurt School: Fun is bad
- Negotiating between culture and behaviour: Ideology
- Taking Films to Bits: Structuralism
- Linking linguistics and film: Saussure
- Sampling film semiotics: Metz
- Meeting mythic structures: Lévi-Strauss
- Getting into Your Head: Psychoanalysis and Film
- Delving into dreams: Freud and film
- Leaping through the looking glass: Lacan
- Rejecting the male gaze: Mulvey
- Chapter 14: Praising Great Directors: Auteur Theory
- Seeing the Director as God
- Digging to the roots of auteur theory
- Linking auteur, theme and genre
- Seeing the auteur in mise-en-scène
- Debunking auteur theory
- Encountering Old-School Auteurs (1930s to 1950s)
- John Ford: The American landscape
- Howard Hawks: Screwball and highballs
- Alfred Hitchcock: The master of suspense
- Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger: Two for the price of one
- Orson Welles: The self-styled genius
- Meeting the Essential Modern Auteurs (1960s to 1990s)
- Stanley Kubrick: An epic perfectionist
- Martin Scorsese: Storyteller of the streets
- Steven Spielberg: The kid who never grew up
- Quentin Tarantino: Uber-movie-geek
- David Lynch: The American nightmare
- Turning Attention to 21st Century Auteurs (1999 to today)
- Ang Lee: The hidden dragon
- Christopher Nolan: Worlds within worlds
- Kathryn Bigelow: Boys and their guns
- Guillermo del Toro: Monster moviemaker
- Chapter 15: Exploring New Approaches to Film Theory – and Beyond
- Multiplying Meaning: Post-Structuralism
- Discerning the difference between structuralism and post-structuralism
- Deconstructing texts and discourses
- Dismantling empires: Post-colonialism
- Realising Nothing Matters Anymore: Postmodernism
- Narrating the end of history
- Getting super-excited about hyper-realism
- Going for girl power! Post-feminism
- Moving beyond gender: Queer theory
- Reaching the End of Everything: Post-Theory?
- Smashing the SLAB: Bordwell takes aim
- Striking back at Bordwell
- Thinking about thinking: Cognitive theory
- Chapter 16: Outliving Celluloid: Cinema in the 21st Century
- Revising Rumours of Cinema’s Death: Still Watching, Just Differently
- Cinema-going over the decades
- Shifting from celluloid strips to hard disk drives
- Transitioning to digital, holding onto analogue
- Changing Where, How and When You Watch
- Experiencing cinema nowadays
- Watching films amid the comforts of home
- Collapsing the release window
- Converging on the Next Phase: Film and Everything Else
- Reassessing event movies
- Elevating everyone to film-maker status (sort of)
- Raising the bar: TV catches up with cinema
- Stealing pleasure
- Part V: The Part of Tens
- Chapter 17: Ten Film Writers You Need to Read
- VF Perkins: Analysing Film Style
- Richard Dyer: Watching Stars and Developing Queer Theory
- Tom Gunning: Reassessing Early Cinema
- Molly Haskell: Engaging with Feminism and Film
- Yvonne Tasker: Analysing Action Cinema
- Michel Chion: Speaking Up for Film Sound
- Richard Maltby: Investigating Cinema History
- Nicholas Rombes: Discovering Digital Cinema
- Hamid Naficy: Exploring Accented Cinema
- Charles Barr: Battling for British Cinema
- Chapter 18: Ten Must-Watch Movies
- Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
- Casablanca (1942)
- Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
- Rear Window (1954)
- À Bout de Souffle (Breathless) (1960)
- Don’t Look Now (1973)
- Blade Runner (1982)
- Pulp Fiction (1994)
- Spirited Away (2001)
- Cidade de Deus (City of God) (2002)
- Chapter 19: Ten Film-Makers You Need to Know Better
- Feng Xiaogang
- Alice Guy-Blaché
- Ousmane Sembène
- Roger Corman
- Lynne Ramsay
- Abbas Kiarostami
- John Waters
- Christine Vachon
- Andrei Tarkovsky
- Wong Kar-wai
- Chapter 20: Ten Tips for Becoming a Film Student
- Going to the Pictures Often
- Making Sure You See the Classics
- Watching and Re-watching
- Reading about Film in Your Free Time
- Thinking about What Films Mean to You
- Joining a Film Studies Tribe
- Not Taking Awards Too Seriously
- Attending Film Festivals and Events
- Developing a Love for Subtitles
- Being Proud of Your Knowledge
- About the Author
- Cheat Sheet
- More Dummies Products
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