Elements of Film/Film Form

Performance 

  • Style e.g. comedic
  • Expression and body movement
  • Position and proxemics (the space between others and themselves)

Cinematography 

  • Colour/film stock
  • Saturation
  • German expressionism

Lighting –

  • High key and low key (with high contrast)
  • High contrast and low contrast
  • Vignette

Camera –

  • High angle and low angle
  • Over the shoulder shot (dramatic irony because the audience knows something that a character doesn’t)
  • Point of view
  • Focus/lens

Mise en scene

Everything you can see such as props, costume design and set design.

Sound

  • Diegetic (noises that have not been edited in, can be from off or on screen) and non-diegetic (not visible on screen/edited in)
  • Silence
  • Music
  • Atmosphere and punctuation
  • Sonic perspective
  • Environmental sound (background sound like the wind or office noises)
  • Contrapuntal sound (Usually the sound we hear in a film directly accompanies what we see on the screen; it is appropriate sound, it is the sound we expect.- Film Technology)
  • Foley (sound that is diegetic but added in post production)

Editing 

  • Pace
  • Rhythm
  • Continuity editing – parallel action, actin/reaction
  • Montage
  • Action reaction shot
  • 180 degrees rule
  • Match cut (a match cut is a cut from one shot to another where the two shots are matched by the action or subject and subject matter. – Wikipedia)

 

Leave a comment