The Cinematic Language of Film

What were Edwin S. Porter's significant contributions to the development of early narrative film? In what sense did Porter build upon the innovations of contemporaneous filmmakers, and for what purposes?

Language developed tremendously through the use of silent films in the 1800s and early 1900s. A silent film is that which consists of only the picture, and no sound. This was an era of truly transformative filmmaking, forcing writers and producers to have to step out of a comfort zone in order to allow purely visual expressions to touch their audiences and convey their stories. This was achieved through a greater emphasis on facial expressions and body language.

Article Three – Author: David Bordwell / Title of Article: The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film

Rarely has a film impacted an audience and held the test of time as the film Gone with the Wind. I have always been curious if director, Victor Fleming and producer, David O. Selznick and screenplay writer, Sidney Howard knew what they were creating a masterpiece and how this film would have such an enormous impact on audiences for years to come. Interestingly enough there were some who thought the film should not be made, as Irving Thalberg said to Louis B. Meyer in 1936, “Forget it Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel” (Ten Films that Shook the World).

During the early stages of Hollywood cinema, silent films have been the foundation of early filmmaking and film art. Exaggerated movements and facial expressions by the actors and the use of intertitles were important elements to make sure that the audience could understand the meaning of the plot without the use of sound. Films soon started to incorporate live musical performances to create a sense of synchronized sound to enhance the quality of the film. However, there was not any dialogue between the characters within the film. Filmmakers all over the globe experimented with the development of synchronized sound.

Often children, because they integrate into a more popular language. They do this for an economic advantage.

Eventually, I would like to get involved in the film industry. Although I am not entirely sure of which role I want to be apart of, there are many ways I can see the Rhetorical strategies applied to the industry as a whole. Considering these strategies are about communicating, and film is essentially nothing without communication, all of these have a role in the creation of movies. Understanding the audience is arguably the most important of the five strategies when it comes to filmmaking. What's the purpose of making a movie if no one is going to watch it? Movies are made for conveying messages to the audience by means of storytelling. Throughout the story you can often see the purpose through

film and so captions had to be use to explain what the next section of

In 1927 the first ‘talkie’, a film with synchronized dialogue, was introduced to the public and was met with stunning success. Even with many film studios did not believe the idea would ever catch on, the public loved talkies and wanted more. As such, talkies began to sweep the nation; revitalizing the entire film industry and changing the course of all film production and presentation. But talkies also caused some surprising destruction to the career of many actors who could not make the transition from silent films into dialogue, all the while lifting some to new heights of their careers.

Sound is a vital part of a movie and is manufactured with the intent of helping tell the story in a more effective and creative way. Orson Welles created a deep focus sound for Citizen Kane and in doing so he created an audible Mise-en-Scene of sorts. Sound can be used to raise or lower the anticipation of the audience or to assist with overlapping/transitioning between scenes in a more fluid way, giving the film more continuity. Alred Hitchcock mastered the art of using sound to express a point of view, such as in his movie The Birds. Released in 1963 this movie did not have background music but used electronic bird sounds to communicate chaos and create fear in the audience. I have always noticed how a change in sound or music during a film

Sound films were new and exciting and becoming very popular. Very many people were fascinated by this new technology… creating “talking pictures” was a really big deal. Another positive contribution was the pioneer disc system. This wasn’t talked about very much but it was certainly a big part of sound films. Instead of having an orchestra add sound to the films, a record was used and it was a lot easier. Two negative contributions would be sound films (yes, it was a good and bad thing) and the noises of the cameras. The reason sound films could also be a negative is because of the controversy they caused. Many people disagreed with replacing silent stages with sound proof stages and spending all that money because they didn’t know if the sound films were just a fad. Letters poured in from citizens asking them to stop production because they were used to silent films and they weren’t really sure how to feel about these new films with sound. The other negative contribution is the loud noises of the cameras. Noisy cameras had to be stored in huge insulated sound booths with sound proof covers to avoid picking up camera noise on the soundtrack. Plus, It was hard to record live dialogue because hidden microphones would impede the movement of

The films that we have seen last year in Media Literacy Class are The Truman Show,Bowling Columbine, Becoming the Media, Generation Like, BBC: The century of the self, Happiness Machines (season 1, episode 1) and The engineering of Consent (season 1, episode 2): with many more clips and videos were given to use. The main central idea from this Century of the Self Documentary ties in with the thought of controlling the demented citizens through what they consume in the news. The ideas that were given to us are the basic society needs to be controlled.

The story is about four different versions of events for one account that is told through flashbacks. Some consistent things in all four stories is that a man was walking in the forest with his wife on a horse. A bandit by the name Tajomaur ties up the husband and attacks the wife. The husband ends up died, and what weapon was used is questioned. At least one story says a danger was used while two others say a sword was used.

The first film that showed early signs of a rise in the quality of technology was the Western “The Great Train Robbery.” When this film first came out the audience were so amazed at the fact that they could watch something on a TV or at the cinema. Although this film was very good for the 1900s it still lacked some key features that make films much easier to understand such as dialogue, sound and camera shots. The one feature of a film that developed the quickest over the period of time was sound. Sound was introduced in October 1927 in the film “The Jazz singer”, which had three song numbers and a few lines of spoken dialogue. Apart from these few songs and words, the rest of the movie was silent, but the audience still thought that it was amazing that words had been spoken in the film, they used to call it “the movie that talked”.

Film translation has become a popular field in translation studies as technological developments have changed paper oriented society towards media oriented society (Orero, 2004). Recently, more research are carried out on film translation while film script translation for the purposes of dubbing is one of the most peculiar disciplines within the field of translation; yet, the studies are mainly focus on script translation, i.e. dubbing and subtitling. Although plot is the most important issue in film, we should not ignore an essential element – casting. Characters play a vital role in film as they are the soul of the story. In addition, it is possible to make the plot more attractive through giving an appropriate name to the characters in the target language. Character names are of great worth in virtue of advantages in the film production. In fact, it is possible to catch sight of the character names in film translation. Hence, the power of name translation of character to a film should not be neglected and this will be revealed in terms of the effect created.