Film%20Studies

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Film Studies

• Reality Effects and Truth Effects

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Table of Contents

• 1. Recap
• 2. Take a Photograph or Make a Photograph
• 3. Reality effects and truth effects

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Recap

• Film Realism - a style of filmmaking in which an
  attempt is made to represent something familiar
  or typical without changing it.
• Realist film - a type of films which are
  characterized for such a style

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Recap

• Film Formalism - a style of filmmaking whose
  primary concern is form to the extent reality is
  willingly altered or new reality is recreated.
• Formalistic film - a type of films which are
  characterized for such a style.

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Recap

• PROBLEMS OF FILM REALISM
• Film is not reality itself but the representation
  of it. Thus, filmed reality is subject to
  filmmakers alteration and manipulation.
• PROBLEMS OF FILM FORMALISM
• It is impossible to create anything which has
  nothing to do with the reality we perceive.

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Recap

• Woody Allens comedy, Annie Hall (1977)
• Real Marshall McLuhan appears
• But he is still his (moving) image and not
  himself.

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Recap

• When the audience takes people on the screen as
  real.
• Imaginary relationship the illusion screen
  reality is part of actual reality
• Jacques Lacan and Christian Metz
• Imaginary and symbolic relationships
• Woody Allens Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

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Recap

• Realism and formalism coexist and interact in
  every film
• Our task is
• - to identify the extent to which a film is
  realistic, formalistic or both
• - to explore how filmmakers achieve realism or
  formalism

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Take or Make a Photograph

• Photography is a modern invention which has
  enabled us to record reality as it really is.
• Question Is photography an objective reflection
  of reality?

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Take or Make a Photograph?

• Choices of exposure and shutter speed
• - reflect photographers intention.

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Take or Make a Photograph

• John Constables two drawings of the same spot.
• Dedham from Langham

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Take or Make a Photograph

• Composition
• Photographer finding an interesting moment
• Photoes by Henri Cartier-Bresson

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Take or Make a Photograph

• The choice of colour or black and white
• - reflects Aesthetic choice

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Take or Make a Sketch

• John Constables series of paintings of the sky

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Take or Make a Sketch

• Constables studies on cloud-formation based on
  Alexander Cozens

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Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• Film is not, no matter how realistic it is, the
  simple, objective recording of reality but the
  rearrangement of it.
• Virtual reality, O.K. You know what virtual
  means? O.K., it is like really real. So virtual
  reality is practically, totally real. But not.
  -- Jennifer Jason Leigh as Lois Kaiser in Robert
  Altmans Short Cuts

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Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• Realism is a relative concept in two senses
• 1) There is no pure or perfect form of realism.
  Some films are more realistic than others.
• 2) The filmmakers and the viewers idea of
  reality is relative.
• An alternative way to describe realism
• To discuss realism in terms of effects which a
  film create on the audience.

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Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• Reality Effects - they come into being when
  representations in moving images give the
  audience the impression that they mimic the
  facticity of the world around us, or surface
  appearance. Roland Barthes

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Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• Truth Effects - they come into being when
  representations in moving images agree with
  viewers ideas of what is true about the world in
  a general sense. They have to do with whether
  texts conform to what she generally believes
  about experience. Michel Foucault

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Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• Impression of authenticity for another type of
  the viewer
• Richard Curtiss Casablanca (US, 1942)

• Impression of authenticity for a type of the
  viewer
• Gino Pontecorvos La Battaglia di Algeri (Italy,
  1966)

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Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• Moving images have truth-effects even when they
  are objectively untrue.
• Samuel Fullers House of Bamboo (US, 1955)
• Louis Gilberts You Live Only Twice (UK/US,
  1967) Roald Dahl (script) and Ian Fleming
  (original novel)

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Reality Effects and Truth Effects

• Truth Effects
• Idealist approach to our cognition
• Things do not exist in themselves. They exist
  only as ideas that each of us has of them.

• Reality Effects
• Materialist approach to our cognition
• Things exist independently of the individuals
  knowledge of them.

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Of the following two scenes which renders reality
effects and which truth effects?

• Michelangelo Antonionis Zabriskie Point (US,
  1970)
• Extreme slow-motion photography and extremely
  graphic rendition of an explosion.

• Roland Joffés Killing Field (UK, 1984)
• More Conventional restaging an explosion.

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Our impression of moving images being realistic

• Our impression of moving images being realistic
  depends on both reality and truth effects that
  they exert on us.