You should be able to define the following terms and relate them to the creative choices made by filmmakers:
Long shot
Full shot
Medium shot (waist shot)
Close shot
Two shot
Establishing shot
Oblique (canted) angle
Selective focus
Deep focus
High key lighting
Low key lighting
Overexposure
Underexposure
Linear distortion
Pan
Tilt
Boom (crane)
Dolly
Cut
Dissolve
Wipe
Fade out
Fade in
Continuity
Cross-cutting
Aspect ratio
Anamorphic lens
Mimetic acting
Narrative structure terms:
Exposition
Complication
Crisis
Climax
Denouement
Turning point
Protagonist
Antagonist
Flashback
You should be able to explain how each of the following concepts relates to the creative choices made by filmmakers:
Apparent camera distance
Selective focus
Camera angle
Lighting variables
Lens distortion
Color variables
Image texture variables
Compositional variables
Camera movements
Subjective sound
Editing to compress time
Editing to make rhetorical points (that is, to express an opinion or commentary)
Editing to create content
Narrative structure variables
You should be able to explain the significance of the following to the development of the history of American cinema:
Persistence of vision
Beta movement
Magic lantern
Stroboscopic toys (Thaumatrope, Phenakistoscope, etc.)
Camera obscura
Joseph Nicephore Niepce
Louis Daguerre
Daguerreotypes
Franz von Uchatius
John Wesley Hyatt
Hannibal Goodwin
George Eastman
cellulose nitrate film stock (volatility of, chemical instability of)
Eadweard Muybridge
Louis & Auguste Lumiere
Cinematographe
Thomas Edison
Kinetograph
Kinetoscope
Vitascope
Phantasmagoria show
Georges Melies
Edwin S. Porter
The Great Train Robbery
Nickelodeon
The Motion Picture Patents Co.
“Independent” film companies
Carl Laemmle
IMP (Independent Moving Pictures Co.)
The “Patent War”
Exchanges
Two-reelers
D.W. Griffith
G.W. Bitzer
The Birth of a Nation
Intolerance
Mary Pickford
Douglas Fairbanks
Charles Chaplin
Adolph Zukor
Famous Players Film Co.
Famous Players – Lasky
Paramount
block booking
vertical integration
First National
United Artists
Thomas H. Ince
“Inceville”
Universal City
You should be able to comment in some depth (paragraphs/essays) on the following:
The Motion Picture Patents Company, the Patents War, and how and why the first attempt to monopolize the industry failed.
Zukor’s business strategy at Paramount, the beginnings of vertical integration and why that was important, how and why the second attempt to monopolize the industry failed.
The evolution of the art of telling stories with the movie camera from the beginnings to the late teens/early twenties, how Griffith and Bitzer’s work exemplifies that evolution.
