Film as a Subject of Study Essay

The tremendous expense involved in producing motion pictures reminds us that icon is both an Industry, and an Art. Each moving picture is the child of a turbulent marriage betwixt businessmen and artists. Yet despite an ongoing battle between aesthetic and commercial considerations, film is now recognized as a unique and occasionful art form on a par with Painting, Sculpture, Music, Literature, and Drama. As a form of hu small-arm expression, the moving picture is similar to other artistic media, for the basic properties of other media are woven into its own rich fabric. mental picture employs the compositional elements of the visual arts line, form, mass, volume and texture.Like painting and photography, film exploits the subtle interplay of light and shadow. Like sculpture, film manipulates three-dimensional space. But, alike pantomime, film focuses on moving images, and as in dance, the moving images in film have rhythm. The complex rhythms of film resemble those of music an d poetry and like poetry in particular, film communicates through imagery, metaphor, and symbol. Like drama, film communicates visually and verbally visually, through action and gesture verbally, through dialogue. Finally, like the allegory, film expands or compresses time and space, change of location indorse and forth freely within their wide border. Despite these similarities, film is unique.1. It is set apart from all other media by its quality of free and never-ending motion. The continuous interplay of sight, sound, and motion allows film to transcend the static limitations of painting and sculpture in the complexity of its sensual appeal as well as in its ability to communicate simultaneously on several levels. Film even surpasses drama in its unique capacity for revealing various points of view, portraying action, manipulating time, and impartation a boundless sense of space. 2. Unlike the stage play, film ordure provide a continuous, unbroken flow, which blurs and m inimizes transitions without compromising the storys unity. Unlike the novel and the poem, film communicates directly, not through abstract symbols like words on a page but through concrete images and sounds. Whats more, film base treat an almost infinite array of subjects.3. at that place is almost nothing that the eye might behold or the ear hear, in actuality or imagination, which throw outt be represented in the medium of film. From the North and South poles to the Equator, from the Himalayas as a vast mountain range to the minutest flaw in a piece of steel, from the whistling flight of a bullet to the slow growth of a flower, from the flicker of though across an almost impassive face to the manic ravings of a madman, there is no point in space no degree of magnitude or speed of movement within the apprehension of man which is not within reach of the film. To simplify what Im getting at, recall the many faces of Gabbar Singh in the film Sholay, and you recall the power of fi lm.4. The Elasticity of conviction in a FilmFilm is unlimited not only in its choice of subject but also in its approach to that material. A film can look to the remote past or probe the distant future it can make a few seconds seem like hours or compress a whole century into minutes. Film can run the gamut of feeling from the most fragile, tender, and beautiful to the most brutal, violent, and repulsive. 5. Of even greater brilliance than films unlimited range in subject matter, however, is the overwhelming Sense of Reality it can convey. The continuous stream of sight, sound, and motion creates a here-and-now turbulence that immerses the viewer in the cinematic experience. Thus, through film, fantasy assumes the shape and emotional impact of Reality. The technological history of film can in fact be viewed as an ongoing evolution toward greater realism, toward erasing the border between art and nature, between fiction and reality. In sum, Film is a uniquely powerful crew of the Seven Arts.IIA. In the two pages above, a way of looking at films has been offered which says that films are more than just an entertaining way to pass the time. There is an art, and a science to them, which usually goes unnoticed. When you begin to notice these two dimensions, your understanding of cinema will be much smarter and sharper. To take an example, please go back to pt. 2 above, and especially the observation that film does not communicate through abstract symbols. How then does it communicate?The answer through concrete, flesh and blood symbols. With the foster of camera angles and special lighting, almost everything becomes symbolic on film. The protagonists hair style, dimpled cheeks, the clothes they wear, the voice in which they speak, the way they walk, the way they smoke, the solitary glass on a table, the chair, the curtain anything and everything can be loaded with extra meaning in a film shot, and through the device of repetition be made symbolic. For sheat h if you see the empty glass on the same table in more than one scene, it becomes symbolic.B. Let us now go to pt. 5 which stresses the power of the camera in creating a sense of reality. This is the cinematic experience, in a nutshell. You may be watching computer-created beings as in the Hollywood film Avatar, but they succeed in feeling and sounding like humans. The same perhaps can be said about the Tiger in the film The Life of Pi.This ability to convey the sense of reality endows the filmmaker with tremendous power which can be used to great public benefit, or it can be abused. Try and think of examples of both use and abuse