Thinking about films

Introduction

Films can be more than just entertainments and diversions. In today's media-saturated culture films carry a power and influence that is easy to underestimate. Films stimulate discussion, spark debate, and frequently challenge our perception of the lives of others.

In this guide we explore how films can be used in relation to issues of citizenship. The criteria for the selection of the films in this volume are as follows:

• The films
  • Are accessible both in terms of availability and in their narratives
  • Express issues relating to citizenship in vivid and cinematic ways
  • Reflect different cinematic traditions and approaches.

• We also considered:
  • The quality of the film in terms of its ability to challenge and reveal some depth and complexity in its assessment of the situation being dramatised
  • The film's cinematic strength – its effective and creative use of editing, camera placement, music, performance
  • The type of film it is in terms of genre – Antz, for example, is a computer-animated film which is exemplary in its use of the format and which succeeds in combining the fantasy of its setting and scenario with some comment about the individual and society

We have selected mainstream and non-mainstream films, mainly from the United States and the United Kingdom, with one from France. The earliest film in the selection, Twelve Angry Men, was made in 1956, and the most recent film was made in 2002. Hopefully, students' preconceptions about what makes a film enjoyable and worth watching will be challenged by this selection.

Film is an established art form, over a century old. It has become a dominant means of communication and expression worldwide through theatrical releases, home video, DVD and now the internet.

Pictures can transcend the barriers of written and spoken language with powerful effects. As with any art form, film is able to explore a vast range of subjects ranging across the personal, the social, the cultural, the historical and the factual. Like other art forms, film takes many different forms to express its ideas. Most familiar to us is the live action narrative feature film made so popular by Hollywood and now the dominant storytelling form in the world. However, other key forms are the short film, the animated film, documentary and reportage.

This guide focuses on dramatic narratives in live action feature films, documentaries and animations. Our hope is that in demonstrating the educational value of these films, we will prompt further investigation beyond the scope of this guide. In all examples, the films chosen use cinematic devices creatively and intelligently, so that the ways the issues and drama are presented are as important as what is presented. In fact, what you are shown is created by how it is shown. Form and content are essentially linked. This is why we would argue that media education is central to citizenship education.

What makes a film?

Shooting Hoop Dreams

We have selected films that exemplify interesting and challenging treatments of citizenship-related issues as well as compelling use of filmmaking devices and techniques, combined to form a style, to convey their narratives and themes.

The term 'style' refers to the way in which any medium (films, music, literature) uses specific technical elements. In film, with its rich fusion of many of the art and craft forms that preceded its development, style is a term that covers a wealth of individual elements, from the visual and performing arts, music, technology and literature, comprising the motion picture. As such, when discussing how a film creates its emotional and intellectual effects you can break the material into various key features of style:

• Camera movement
• Camera placement
• The use of music
• Sound effects
• Performances
• Décor
• Lighting

In this guide we will not be able to delve into these elements, but we offer an outline of the basic concepts central to film analysis. Like literature, film has a grammar - a range of acknowledged conventions which underlie how the film is constructed - and can call upon considerations of genre, narrative, character, plot and setting.

Film language

The basic elements of film language are camera, sound and editing. These elements are combined in the construction of a film.

Camera

This includes camera shots and angles, as well as what is in the camera frame:

Camera shots include:

Wide shot: often the first shot of a sequence (establishing shot), giving the viewer a clear sense of location and time of day. Wide shots of people will usually frame them in their entirety

Medium or mid-shot: usually frames people from the waist up; emphasises more details of people and objects

Close-up: used for particularly important moments or reactions. Close-ups of people's face are usually framed from the neck up, emphasising the face.

Camera angles include:

High angle: a shot taken from above the subject

Low angle: a shot looking up at the subject

This student handout (PDF) provides a useful summary of camera shots.

In addition, when the term mise en scène is used to refer to everything in a shot – its overall impact: lighting, camera placement, the positioning of actors, what we are shown (or not shown).

Sound

In filmmaking, sound is manipulated independently of the image in film. It can be used representationally (we see a train and hear its engines), impressionistically (we see a rural landscape and hear bird song) and even psychologically (we see a terrified face and hear a high pitched train whistle). Sound can fundamentally change the way we interpret the meaning of a shot or a sequence of images and can be used to emphasise an element of action within the frame. Or it can challenge and upset an expectation in order to achieve a dramatic and emotional effect. Silence – the absence of sound – can also be extremely effective.

A distinction in film analysis is often made between diegetic and non-diegetic sound. Diegetic sound is within the world of the film's story, for example, a song being heard from a radio in the room. Non-diegetic sound exists beyond the world of the story, such as a voice over. In practice, the distinction between diegetic and non-diegetic sound is rarely clear-cut however, these definitions are a useful starting point for discussing the different uses of film sound.

Sound effects

A sound which accompanies a corresponding image, such as footsteps, is not necessarily from the same source that we see on screen – it can be created artificially. This kind of sound effect is known as a Foley effect. Foley effects are usually used to enhance believability, making the sound match what is on the screen.

Music

In the early days of cinema, before the use of synch sound, live music always accompanied 'silent' film screenings and, in early sound films, the music was played on set while the film was being shot. This was a natural extension of the way musical accompaniment was used in theatre and vaudeville and is just one legacy of the theatrical tradition which so informed the development of early narrative cinema. With the introduction of synch sound to filmmaking, music became more imaginatively integrated into film.

Film music includes source music (such as classical pieces or popular music) and music specially composed for the film. It can be used as another voice in a film, influencing our response to images. It can enhance the meaning or dramatic effect of an image, or challenge it. It can also be used to link apparently unconnected scenes and situations together. While it is not 'realistic' for music to accompany action, it is an accepted convention of classical-styled narrative cinema, and tends to enhance our involvement in and acceptance of the world of the film. Music operates, like pictures, beyond the confines of language and dialect and so helps universalise film.

Music and film are a strong marriage as they are both based around time and rhythm. In realist films, such as Twelve Angry Men and Hush-a-Bye Baby, music is used sparingly to enhance the moments where it is used in the drama, whether it is an upbeat or downbeat moment. In other films, such as Thelma and Louise, music is used more extensively throughout and plays an integral part in the overall pace and structure of the film. Exploring the way sound, especially music, and image work together, can help students peel away some of the layers of meaning within a film and identify how music and sound effects influence or manipulate audience response.

Editing

Editing is the way the material shot for a film is constructed and organised. While film incorporates many aesthetic devices from other arts, editing plays a particularly important role in filmmaking. Editing allows a series of image sequences to be pieced together across a period of screen time to construct or shape the film. Editing builds the narrative logic of a film, organising the events into blocks based around cause and effect, and shapes the emotional and psychological impact of a given sequence. It creates impressions of events and characters, and sets up tensions, contradictions and unexpected or unusual juxtapositions. As in all art forms, disrupting or breaking the 'rules' is often done for effect.

Editing is the basis of the 'continuity system' in filmmaking. It disguises the artifice of the format. A good example of this is the '180 degree rule', which means that when two characters are speaking to each other the camera cuts from one face to the other without crossing an invisible line of vision. The camera shots and the way they are edited makes it look as if they are talking to each other even if they are not both on the screen at the same time. We do not notice this when we watch the film, because we accept the convention.

Editing can also be used to build suspense and pace, and a key technique here is that of inter-cutting where we follow two separate events happening, more or less, simultaneously. The shorter a shot is on screen for the faster the action appears. Fast edits are frequently used to build a sense of kinetic action and speed, as you can see in any chase scene. The pace of a sequence is slowed down by fewer cuts and longer shots, the technique typically used in scenes to establish characters.

Realism and representation

Most films aspire to a kind of transparency so that the viewer feels they are being given a window on a world that has been captured on film. Filmmakers usually want you to forget that everything in the film has been set up. They want the viewer to submit to the images as being completely believable. Films re-present the world to us, and the visual power of films is particularly effective in making us believe in the world they represent. Furthermore, a film – like a book – can draw you into its world and make you believe it without being 'realistic'.

Studying how films represent the world to us is a useful way of exploring how films are constructed, and how they manipulate or influence our emotions and perceptions of the world. This does not mean that any representations within films should be unequivocally classified as negative. There is little evidence to suggest that even young people take at face value the way films present the world to us – whether in terms of representations of violence, race, gender, sexuality, etc. However, by providing the tools to analyse films, media education can help students develop a critical understanding of the process of representation which can help to inform and substantiate their arguments. In their teaching guide, Representation, Realism and Fantasy (BFI 2003), Roy Stafford and Jackie Newman suggest the following questions can be asked of any film text:

• How close to reality is the world of the film meant to be? This is an aesthetic question about 'realism' and the way the world is re-presented to us.
• How are familiar 'types' used in the film as a form of shorthand to represent people? What kinds of ideas of what is 'typical' does the film entertain? Who or what is representative?
• Who is in control of the representations in the film – whose values and ideas are expressed in the film? (The writer or director may have particular views on the issues in the film. The producers may be concerned to reflect mainstream opinion.)
• What likelihood is there that different audiences will make different readings?
• To what extent are the representations in the film related to changes in the 'real world' context of the film's production?

Whether a film is a documentary, a feature film, live action or animation, these questions will help students probe into the film's content, meanings and construction, and explore and analyse their own responses and reactions to the film.

Other aspects of film analysis

The notes on the Recommended films provide key information about each film, using the following labels, terms and concepts.

The director

Since the earliest period of cinema history, the director has had the opportunity to effectively author the film. While filmmaking is a collaborative form, depending on many specialists in art, craft and technology, their contributions will typically be channelled through the director. In effect the director decides on what will and will not best serve the overall meaning and quality of the film. One of a director's tasks is to balance out the contributions of the various departments. He or she is responsible for controlling themise en scene of a film and unifying all of the elements of camera, sound, editing and performance, establishing the style and the tone of the film. There is some debate among film theorists as to how far the director is really responsible for the 'authorship' of the film (in a similar way that a writer is seen as author of a novel), and the idea of authorship is usually applied to directors with a distinctive style and approach to filmmaking.

The cast

Many of the films in this selection feature relatively unknown and, in some instances, non-professional, actors. Some of the films feature famous actors or stars. One of the key issues when considering the cast of a film is the impact on the audience of a star in one of the roles – what do they bring to a role in terms of a range of associations and expectations, which the role may reinforce or challenge? Film stars function in part as a commodity and film producers recognise the value of the star in attracting audiences. Frequently, stars will conform to the identities they have established on-screen but sometimes they will feature in films that offer them opportunities to contradict their established screen personas. A star's presence in a film gives it wider appeal, even if audiences might not be attracted to its subject matter.

Screenplay

The screenplay includes the dialogue and the action of the film, which are key to establishing and structuring the narrative of a film. The final film may or may not closely match the original screenplay.

Form

A film may be live action or animation, a feature film or a short, a documentary or a fiction film.

Language

Most films in this guide are in English, however when they are in another language they include subtitles. Learning to read subtitles fluently will enable students to enjoy and appreciate a far wider range of films.

Running time

This information is given to help you decide when and how to show the film.

Classification

We have noted the certificate rating for each film. Our selection includes films with U, PG, 12 and 15 certificates. This provides only a guide to suitability. You should always watch the film yourself, and decide whether it is suitable for your purposes. A 15 certificate does not necessarily preclude you from using at least part of the film with younger students.

Distributor

This refers to the distribution company who has released the video. To some extent it reflects to what extent the film is mainstream or not mainstream.

Genre

In the National Literacy Strategy for England, genre is 'different types of writing, each with its own specific characteristics which relate to origin (legend/folktale) or reader interest area - the types of books individuals particularly choose to read: adventure, romance, science fiction.' (NLS, 1998, p80)

As in literature, film narratives exist across a range of genres. The films we have included in this guide include science fiction, fantasy, western and drama, but many of the films, in their particular ways, combine various generic elements to create fresh and exciting stories, such as inThelma and Louise.

We use the idea of genre as label to help us define or categorise a film. Knowing the genre helps the audience determine the type of film they are going to watch and the kinds of rules that the film will most likely follow in terms of style and tone, and the kinds of characters, situations and resolutions the story will contain.

Setting

This term describes location and period of a given film's story. In some cases this will in itself prompt discussion. The geographical and historical setting of a film is reflected in mise en scène particularly, but also in other aspects of the film such as characterisation.

Main characters

The main characters help express and develop the themes of the film. Characters are individuals with relationships to other people and situations in the world of the film's story.

Narrative focus

This refers to the character who the film wants the audience to follow most clearly. This character channels the key elements of the drama and themes through their situation and dilemma.

In addition the notes in on the films include:

Synopsis

A brief outline that suggests the basic course of action and the tone of the film.

Background

A summary of information behind the making of the film – for example, why it was made, what other films the director has made, the stars, etc.

Commentary

This provides some analysis of the film and what makes it worth studying as a film, including what themes it covers. A film's theme(s) is not simply the preserve of the filmmaker. Audiences might extrapolate themes from the film, based on their experiences and reactions as they view it, which the filmmaker had not necessarily intended. Furthermore, film may mean different things to different people at different times.