history of the cinema

history of the cinema..

 

The IMR

The key code is the international language of film or Institutional Mode of Representation (IMR)
IMR is the style of films that developed during the Classic Era of Hollywood.
Elements of IMR are:

• Invisible camera and editing
• Psychological realism
• Linear narrative
• Continuity editing
• Codes of sound and image mean the same in every film

The Primitive Style

All cinema started with the primitive style which was very simple and like normal life, some features of Primitive Style are:

• Frontal staging
• Tableau style - long shots
• Exaggerated gestures
• Hardly any camera movement
• No point of view shot
• Silent, unsophisticated - more like melodramatic mime (e.g. Lumiere Brothers 1895)

D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation in 1915 is a great example of a morally wrong film but applied great film making at the time, for example the use of long shot to close-up. It was also the first very long film - lasting 3 hours long!


The Jazz Singer by Al Jolson in 1927 was the first ever film to feature sound.

Classical Hollywood Cinema (CHC)

Bordwell and Thompson had a theory there are 6 principal characters of CHC, these were:

• Individual characters as casual agents
• Desire
• Change in characters
• Appointments/deadlines
• Opposition that creates conflict
• Closure

Markers in Cinema

A marker provides information to the audience quickly and economically. Markers can provide information about:

• Location - Geographical marker
• Time/era - Temporal/historical marker
• Genre - Generic marker
• Information about a character - Character marker