HARINI THIYAGARAJAN

• Palette - the range of colors used.

• Shot - Close-up, Mid shot, Long shot. (There are many others!)

• Angle - High angle, neutral angle, low angle. Where is the camera in relation to the eyeline?

• Direct/ Indirect address - Is the subject looking at or away from the camera?

• Graphology - The writing in the image - style, size, color, weight.

• Serif/ Sans serif - Two font types. The little tags on some letters (like these ones) are called serifs. Some fonts have them (serif fonts), some don't (sans serif.)

• Foreground/ Midground/ Background How we talk about the depth of the image. Things close to the camera are in the foreground. Things furthest away are in the background.

• Lighting - What kind, where is it coming from, what hue, what temperature?

• Hue - The particular color. 

• Saturation - The 'amount' or depth of the color.

• Contrast - The difference between the blacks (lowlights) and whites (highlights) in the image.

• Temperature - The 'warmth' of the lighting or palette. Blues are cold, reds are warm.

• Ambient lighting - Natural lighting.

• Composition - The arrangement of the image. Look here for more on photographic composition.

• Denotation - What we literally see in the image. 

• Connotation - The 'meaning' of the image - what it suggests to us.

• Icon - A visual symbol, often associated with a particular genre. (A spaceship is an icon of the sci-fi genre.)

• Visual Hierarchy - The order of importance of the things in the text. Main images and titles will be further up the visual hierarchy and they'll be emphasized by position, size, palette, and so on. Less important things like credit blocks or certifications will be low in the visual hierarchy.

 

Lesson 1 - genre 

 

Conventions - conventions are things or sometimes ‘rules’ that filmmakers need to follow in order to duplicate a certain genre of film. For example, when trying to convey a horror atmosphere the filmmaker would want to keep the palette dark and gloomy and have suspenseful music, these things are called conventions 

 

Icons - icons are mostly people or things that stand for and represent something. For example, when thinking of comedy most people would tend to think of clowns or hula hoops these things would be called icons.

 

Hybridity - hybridity is a mix of different genres in one film. For example, if a movie’s main theme is horror it might have many other subgenres such as romance, thriller, comedy and so on when this action is seen being represented in a film it’s called hybridity 

 

Subgenre - subgenres are the genres that take place within another genre. For example, if the main theme of a movie is a comedy, the other stories that take place in the movie might be about romance or drama these extra themes are what are considered subgenres 

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Lesson 3 - narrative basics 

 

Propp’s theory - Propp’s theory is a theory that speculates all the eight-character types that people would most likely encounter in a story: the hero, the villain, the donor, the helper, the heroine, the heroine's father, the dispatcher, and the false hero. Although some stories don’t contain these sorts of characters, the majority of the stories people hear would contain almost half of these basic characters. 

 

Barthes enigma code - what makes us keep watching or reading something is because of that mystery or unanswered questions that linger in your head while you are watching. For example, if watching a romance film, viewers may start to wonder is the two main characters have a happy ending or if they every resolve a current fight, this curiosity is what allows us to keep watching 

 

Todorov’s theory - Todorov's theory is a theory that speculates that there are 5 stages in a story: 1. an equilibrium, 2. A disequilibrium, 3. recognition,  4. Attempt to resolve, 5. New equilibrium. This may not be true for all stories but most stories follow this simple pattern but in different ways and genres. This theory is most liked by readers or watchers since everyone expects a simple ending. 

 

Levi Strauss’s binary opposition - Is the simple idea of introducing conflict between two characters in a story. This conflict, almost always, takes place between the villain and hero, and the conflict is also almost always about the hero correcting the wrong the villain has done. 

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