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• Jan 14th 2008

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• Todays Class
• Finish Watching Citizen Kane (1941)
• Citizen Kane Analysis
• Scene Analysis

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• How Citizen Kane Transformed Cinema
• Writer/Director Orson Welles, along with
  Cinematographer Gregg Toland, came up with
  several new filming techniques that literally
  changed the world of cinematography.

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• Depth of Field

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• Depth of Field
• Depth of composition of a shot, i.e., where there
  are several planes (vertical spaces in a frame)
  (1) a foreground, (2) a middle-ground, and (3) a
  background depth of field specifically refers to
  the area, range of distance, or field (between
  the closest and farthest planes) in which the
  elements captured in a camera image appear in
  sharp or acceptable focus.

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• Depth of Field Description
• One of the techniques that the movie is most
  famous for is deep focus. As you can see in the
  image on the right, all of the charactersincludin
  g the child in the windoware in focus. Toland
  achieved this through the use of a wide-angle
  lens to create a large depth-of-field. When this
  wasnt possible, he would shoot the scene with
  the foreground fully lit and the background in
  darkness. Then, he would rewind the film and
  shoot the scene over again, with the background
  in focus and fully lit and the foreground in
  complete darkness. This is called an in-camera
  matte shot.

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• Depth of Field Analysis
• Extreme depth-of-field in shots in Citizen Kane
  heighten dramatic value.

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• Lighting

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• Lighting
• Lighting was also an important aspect of Citizen
  Kane. In this shot, the strong backlighting is
  used to make the character in front appear as
  only a silhouette and therefore anonymous to the
  viewer. The smoke that fills the room helps to
  show the light beams coming from the projectors
  as well as the lamp on the table. This use of
  lighting can also be seen in the image on the
  left, in which the high-contrast lighting creates
  a foreboding atmosphere.

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• Low-Angle Shots

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• Low-Angle Shots
• Another thing that made Citizen Kane stand out
  from other movies of its time was the way it used
  low-angle shots. The sound stages in Hollywood
  filmmaking made it impossible to show low-angle
  shots without revealing the microphones and
  lights that hung above the actors. To overcome
  this problem, Welles built whole sets with
  ceilings made of draped muslin, so the
  microphones were hidden above the cloth ceiling.
  Then, he cut holes in the set floor for the
  camera, so it could get the lowest angle
  possible. It made Kane in particular appear
  larger than life.

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• Editing Episodic Sequences - Passage of Time

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• Editing Episodic Sequences - Passage of Time
• One of the story-telling techniques introduced in
  this film was using an episodic sequence on the
  same set while the characters changed costume and
  make-up between cuts so that the scene following
  each cut would look as if it took place in the
  same location, but at a time long after the
  previous cut. In this way, Welles chronicled the
  breakdown of Kane's first marriage, which took
  years of story time, in a matter of minutes.

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• Sound
• Welles brought his experience with sound from
  radio along to filmmaking, producing a layered
  and complex soundtrack. In one scene, the elderly
  Kane strikes Susan in a tent on the beach, and
  the two characters silently glower at each other
  while a woman at the nearby party can be heard
  hysterically laughing in the background, her
  giddiness in grotesque counterpoint to the misery
  of Susan and Kane. Elsewhere, Welles skillfully
  employed sound effects to create a mood, such as
  the chilly echo of the monumental library, where
  the reporter is confronted by an intimidating,
  officious librarian.

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• Sound
• In addition to expanding on the potential of
  sound as a creator of moods and emotions, Welles
  pioneered a new aural technique, known as the
  "lightning-mix." Welles used this technique to
  link complex montage sequences via a series of
  related sounds or phrases. In offering a
  continuous sound track, Welles was able to join
  what would otherwise be extremely rough cuts
  together into a smooth narrative. For example,
  the audience witnesses Kane grow from a child
  into a young man in just two shots. As Kane's
  guardian hands him his sled and wishes him a
  "Merry Christmas" we are suddenly taken to a shot
  of Kane fifteen years later, only to have the
  phrase completed for us "and a Happy New Year."
  In this case, the continuity of the soundtrack,
  not the image, is what makes for a seamless
  narrative structure.

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• Sound
• Welles also carried over techniques from radio
  not yet popular in the movies (though they would
  become staples). Using a number of voices, each
  saying a sentence or sometimes merely a fragment
  of a sentence, and splicing the dialogue together
  in quick succession, the result gave the
  impression of a whole town talking -- and,
  equally important, what the town was talking
  about. Welles also favored the overlapping of
  dialogue, considering it more realistic than the
  stage and movie tradition of characters not
  stepping on each other's sentences. He also
  pioneered the technique of putting the audio
  ahead of the visual in scene transitions (an
  L-cut) as a scene would come to a close, the
  audio would transition to the next scene before
  the visual did.

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• Dissolves

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• Dissolves
• Opening Sequence The No Trespassing sign is
  the first introduction to the dark, looming
  estate of Xanadu, empire palace of Charles Foster
  Kane. We cut in towards one of Xanadu's windows
  the room in which a light is shining. As we reach
  the window, the light vanishes, and we dissolve
  into a snowy blizzard. We hear the immortal
  "Rosebud" mentioned.

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• Innovative Composition

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• Innovative Composition
• Citizen Kane is a great example of how a movie
  can be considered a series of artistic images. It
  shows that cinematography is like photography in
  that it involves capturing images that are
  visually pleasing to look at. They both require
  skillful execution while trying to find the
  perfect shot. This movie is especially important
  because it used new techniques, which are still
  in use to this day.

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• Bottom Line
• Citizen Kane is an excellent text for formal
  scene analysis.

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• Scene Analysis
• Is an important film production practice that
  allows filmmakers to study, shot-by-shot, all the
  pieces that are used in conveying a message in
  scene.

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• Scene Analysis Definitions
• Scene A scene is used to mean several shots,
  which is more to do with the words origin in
  theater. The term scene and sequence in film
  production are interchangeable.
• Frame A single image (of a series of them) on a
  piece of film.
  
• Shot A shot is the action contained from one
  edit in point, to the out point.
  
• Mise-en-scene The mise-en-scene refers to the
  arrangement of scenery and properties to
  represent the place where a play or movie is
  enacted. They are the physical elements of a the
  composition of a frame.

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• Scene Analysis Assignment
• Choose a scene/sequence from your favourite film
  and conduct a scene analysis
  
• Try to choose a scene that is LESS THAN two
  minutes.

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• Scene Analysis Assignment
• PART ONE Word Document
• What is the title?
• When was it made?
• Who is the director?
• What is the story?
• What is the director trying to tell us?
• What's the main idea the director is conveying to
  the audience?
  
• What is the genre?
• What is the time period?
• What is the location?
• Where is the scene in the story? (beginning,
  middle, or end)
  
• Who are the characters?

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• PART TWO Excel Chart
• 1. Choose 3 out of the following 12 components
  for analysis
  
• 2. Describe Analyse each Shot Using those 3
  components
  
• Describe means list everything you see and hear
• Analyse means what mood, tone or effect does this
  component create for you/the audience

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• PART TWO Excel Chart
• Tools of Analysis
• Acting Styles (characters, age, sex, physical
  traits)
  
• Cinematography (close-up, medium-shot, long shot,
  depth of field, low-angle, aerial, etc)
  
• Lighting
• Editing (pace, etc)
• Dialogue (must be transcribed)
• Sound Effects
• Score (describe genre, instruments must be listed
  as well closely as possible)
  
• Costumes (wardrobe if clothes are contemporary -
  i.e. jeans and Hawaiian shirt hair styles are
  important)
  
• Visual Special Effects
• Set Design
• Mise-en-scene/Set Décor
• Stunts (choreography)

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• Next Class
• Be sure to bring
• a set of headphones
• A DVD copy of the film you chose as your
  favourite. If you cannot locate that specific
  film from Blockbuster or on DVD from the library,
  choose and bring one of your favourite films to
  analyse for the next two classes
• Well be working on scene analysis in Wednesdays
  lab.
  
• Scene Analysis is due at the end of class on
  January 23rd