Film Studies

The Pocket Essentials: Film

by Andrew M. Butler

Pocket Essentials is a dynamic series of books that are concise, lively, and easy to read. Packed with facts as well as expert opinions, each book has all the key information you need to know about such popular topics as film, television, cult fiction, history, and more. This book offers a concise introduction to the appreciation and study of film. It begins with the nuts and bolts, an examination of how films are put together—framing, performance, setting, costume and editing—and then examines a number of approaches taken to film over the last half century, such as the auteur theory, structuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, and more. Applying these theories to films everyone will have seen, such as The Usual Suspects and Seven, the book also includes an overview of genres, national cinemas, and film movements worldwide.

Genres: Film, Media Tie In

160 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The world of movies and films is such an expansive universe that it's hard for anyone to say that they have seen them all. At one point that might have been true, but now with so many films and shorts being made every minute, there is just no way to do it. But at least there is a way to understand them all.

Film Studies is not just for film students, it's for anyone that truly wants to understand what it is they are watching. Just as students learn how to read, film studies should be viewed in the same way. People who just sit down and watch movies are probably only getting less than half of what the director wanted you to understand, and just like when you learn how to read certain books in a particular way you begin to understand what the author/director was really trying to say. The same can be said about film. When you study film and learn how to understand and watch them, a whole new world opens up. You begin to see the small details in the dialogue, the settings, the characters, the plot, and mise-en-scene.

Have you ever heard the phrase, watching TV and movies will turn your brain to mush? Probably came from those people we have to call parents, right? So what do they think is the cure-all solution? Read a book, why? Because it engages your imagination and requires you to think about what is going on, which is true. But you can only do that once you understand how to really read. Well, what most parents don't do, is teach their kids how to watch and understand TV and movies, because if they did, they will begin to see that it is just as stimulating as a book, because the viewer is now able to understand why the director moved the camera frame a certain way and what it means for the story. The viewer can understand the plot structured based on the actions of the character, and not only that, but the viewer understands what colors represent in film. At this point the viewer's mind is very much engaged with the TV show or film and so it doesn't turn their brain to mush.

The author of this book talks about all the related studies that film has to offer. The depth of the stories based on psychological perspectives, what Marx would say about certain films and why it matters. How Truffaut understood film and why he made his movies the way he did. Then there is the point of semiotics and the importance of dialogue and character structure in signifying certain actions and objects. Film is a very engaging act and when you begin to see that it is NOT a passive experience like so many (parents) believe, you begin to see why so many people, especially as young kids, felt inspired to do or become what they saw in a certain film. How many people became paleontologists because of Jurassic Park? or how many wanted to study oceanography after watching The Abyss? Film plays a very important role in everyone's life, as do TV Shows, so it should never be discounted as a waste of time, if it makes that big of an impact.

But it is not until you truly understand how to watch a film that you will be able to see beyond the moving images in front of you. Once you get beyond that, it's like stepping into a whole new world, or as they might say in the reading world, now you can read between the lines and see what the author was really saying.

If you truly want to understand movies and enjoy them on a much deeper level, take the time, just like you did when you learned how to read, to learn how to watch films. Find a film studies book and learn what everything means in each frame you see in a movie, because remember, every frame in a movie was painstaking chosen as to what would be in it, so it all has a meaning. If you do that, you will be able to go back and really enjoy some of the greatest classics ever made. "Gone with the Wind" will be even more Epic, "400 Blows" will truly mean something to you, and you will see why, even to this day, "KES" is still one of the greatest films made ever made in Yorksire, and probably the world. So knowing all this, I'm sure there are some films you will want to watch after reading this book, am I right? Can you imagine what Schindler's List will be like after this? Now, go, teach kids how to watch movies correctly!

[Ali]

This was really useful as a brief primer on film stuff as well as Freud and psychoanalysis, Marxist thought and dialectic materialism, ideology in media, and feminism in re media. For me as a neophyte it was really good; being an introductory text it probably won't be of much help to people who already know or study that stuff and that isn't its target audience either, I would assume.

[Serdar SIKICIKOGLU]

duymadıgım beş on film ekledim listeme. onun dışında gayet boş bir kitaptı.