Cinematic

Marcus Woelfel

Philosophy and Film

April 30, 2014

Dr. Langguth

Cinematic

            Cinematic is defined as the clever use of editing.  In every film made it takes a lot of cinematic skills to make a good film.  You can tell in a film if it has a good cinematic or a bad one right when the film starts.  All the films we have watched in class have been considered good in the cinematic category.  One that stands out the most to me is Vertigo, as Dr. Langguth had said it’s one of the best films ever made and the other ones we have watched have been in the top five.  There is really four main parts into making a film good in cinematic.  They are indexing, scaling, sequences, and bracketing.

            Indexing is defined as using the camera like a pointing figure to point something out in the film that is important.  All the films we watched in class have this technique used in it.  The film that I can remember that used this best I think is Night of the Demon.  Another key technique is scaling.  Scaling is defined as making the object fill the whole screen with the camera.  The movie I feel we watched in class that used this the most and best was Night of the Demon as well.  When the camera zoomed in on the note was the best example I can remember from the film.

            Sequences are defined as shots that are strung together.  We didn’t talk about this technique as much as the other three in class but it’s still a big key role in a film.  Majority of films have this in them but not all of them have to have it.  The film that I most remember this in is Point Blank.  This was in Point Blank a lot with it going from one scent to dealing with Mal and Walker.  This is an important technique but not as much so as the other three.  The last technique we talked about in class was bracketing.  Bracketing is defined as splitting the screen into two and seeing the scene from the other side of the door.  I feel this is the one that’s the hardest to do and pick up on while watching a film.  The film I remember most in class using bracketing is the last film we watched Citizen Kane.  It was used a lot in seeing the film from behind the door or the other side of the door.

            When taking about films there is a lot of emotions that go into watching one.  I feel emotions are tested more in horror films more than anything.  Emotions are less rigid, involved beliefs or fear, which means you start to believe something is starting to happen and it’s becoming real when it’s really not.  The example we used in class was after watching a horror film and you look out your window and you see a bush blowing in the wind you tend to think it’s a bear or some kind of animal.