'SYSTEM OF FILM DEVICES' sounds kind of "heavy" and cumbersome.
Unfortunately the Russian formalists, with all their illuminating insights,
did not come up with a better term for the specific method of abstraction
and articulation employed in film. Moreover, the phrase 'FILM DEVICES'
calls attention to the devices (cuts, shot scales, angles, camera movements,
compositions, transitions etc), rather than to the dynamics of the
interaction between shots, their juxtaposition, their vicinity, their
repetition, timing and rhythm, which are the essential power in creating
meaning.
The denotation of the term "expression" is neutral to any theory and could
easily be purified of circumstantial connotations and adapted to serve in
the proper sense of "conveying meaning", "creating significance", in this
case cinematic significance or 'CINEMATIC EXPRESSION'. I admit the phrase
may have some flaws in replacing 'FILM LANGUAGE', but can we come up with a
better one?
Haim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hrvoje Turkovic" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2007 3:53 PM
Subject: Re: film mother tongue
> The problem with the term 'expression' is that it assumes particular
> theory
> of film art - expressive theory, which some film analysts may not share.
>
> But, there is already in use a term which is neutral to the concept of
> film
> language and film code, and theirs particular theoretical background.
> Basically, it is a term installed by Russian formalism (though not imbued
> by
> their aesthetics) - 'FILM DEVICES'. It covers all the items usually
> counted
> as 'film language' (shot, cut, shot scale, angles, camera movements,
> compositions, transitions etc) and may include also rhetorical devices
> (inserts, flashbacks, rhetorical figures), but may be streched to include
> also some narrative moves (POV, focalisation, narrative segments etc).
> Since
> such devices are typically highly coordinated at any moment in film, it
> can
> be spoken about the 'SYSTEM OF FILM DEVICES' instead of the generic term
> 'film language', or 'film code'.
>
> Hrvoje
>
>> Daniel Barnett wrote:
>>
>> < I think it's easily possible to construct a descriptive framework
>> wherein the
>>> same terms, used for film and for language would be very (maybe
>>> equivalently)
>>> illuminating about the meaning potentials for each - and which would
>>> create
>>> more clarity than confusion (if barely and only in certain minds.)
>>> dan
>>
>> What do you think of the possibility to give the specific system of
>> articulation employed in the film medium a proper name and call it let's
>> say "CINEMATIC EXRPESSION ", rather than "FILM LANGUAGE". Thus avoid the
>> metaphorical connection to verbal language and sever once and for all the
>> confusion introduced by the allegorical simplistic connections between
>> the
>> two and repair the damage caused to film theory by Metz and other
>> practitioners of the term.
>>
>> Haim
>>
>>
>
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