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Widescreen & the American New Wave

Unit 7

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Competition

  • Rise of household televisions in the 1950s
  • Filmmakers & theatres had to adapt
    • High budget films
    • Increasing use of color
    • 3-D & 4-D experiments
    • Stereophonic sound

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Ratio

  • The vertical to horizontal screen size relationship
  • Academy ratio or standard screen format
    • Films of the silent era through the 50s
    • 1:1.33 aspect ratio
  • CenemaScope
    • Widescreen process
    • Wraparound screens
    • 1:2.55 aspect ratio

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CenemaScope Theatre

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Ratio

  • 1:1.85 became the new standard
    • When shown on TVs
      • Letterboxed - top & bottom blacked out
      • Pan & scan - �TV editors would �altering the full �mise-en-scène

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Widescreen

  • Advantages
    • Great for spectacle
    • Great depth of field �in color films
    • Engulfs the audience
  • Disadvantages
    • Sides of the shot need to be filled
    • Shallow focus and close-ups are difficult
    • Handheld shots are often awkward

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8 of 35

Aspect Ratio: Which Should You Choose?

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The New Wave in France

  • Nouvelle Vague, late 1950s
    • Directors grew up with films, mostly sound films
    • Challenged conventional filmmaking, e.g.,
      • narrative structure
      • Long tracking shots
      • Jump-cuts - editing without regard for coherence

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Avant-Garde Cinema

  • Breaks in tradition, e.g.,
    • Filming the back of heads
    • Narrator describing everything that is being seen
    • Wholly sung films
    • Real-time films, like waiting in a doctor's office
    • Length of the film - some pressed 12 hours long!

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American New Wave Cinema

  • Hollywood’s new golden age - mid 1960s to mid 1970s
    • Influenced by French New Wave & Asian films
    • Pressed & defeated the Hollywood Production Code

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American New Wave Cinema

  • Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
    • Both nostalgic & modern
    • Blends satire & political outrage
    • Protagonists are wild & �Temperamental youth
    • Uses the jump-cut & �irreverent humor
    • Ends in the bloodiest scene �made up to that point

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American New Wave Cinema

  • Producers began to back the works of young directors
    • The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967)
    • 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
    • Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)
    • Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
    • The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
    • Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)

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Rule of Thirds

  • Best composed shots utilize the rule of thirds
  • Power-points are the intersections of the lines

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Rule of Thirds

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Music �Video �Concepts

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Documentary

  • Live performance
  • Footage of the musicians playing

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Low Concept

  • Narrative based
  • Contains plot & characters

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High Concept

  • Symbolic
  • Non-linear, non-storytelling

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Not a Value Judgement

Spectrum of Content

High Good

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Low Bad�

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Storytelling Symbolic

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Low High

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