FILM 2120 MIDTERM STUDY GUIDE QUESTIONS WELL ANSWERED LATEST UPDATE 2026

FILM 2120 MIDTERM STUDY GUIDE QUESTIONS WELL ANSWERED LATEST UPDATE 2026 Film Form - Answers the sum of all parts of the film, unified and given shape by patterns such as repition and variation, story lines, and character traits referential meaning - Answers the meaning depends on the spectators ability to identify specific items such as things or places already in the real world explicit meaning - Answers an openly asserted meaning, can be used to describe the "point" of the film implicit meaning - Answers normally said to be an interpreted meaning A generalization that a person makes about a film or other texts or about a subject in a text symptomatic meaning - Answers understanding a film's implicit and explicit meanings as bearing traces of a particular set of social values revealed by ideology evaluation - Answers making claim about the film's goodness and badness analysis - Answers process in which a film is analyzed in terms of mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, and editing. shot - Answers a uninterrupted run of the camera to expose a series of frames, also called a take scene - Answers a segment in a narrative film that takes place in one time and space or that uses cross cutting to show two or more simultaneous actions pattern - Answers patterns of development create expectations process that sharpen our interest, focuses out attentions, and urges us forward motif - Answers any significant repeated element that contributes to the overall form A recurring theme, subject or idea variations - Answers changes, to notice one is to alert another formal systems - Answers formal expectations are what makes us interested in watching a film and keep us interested, expectations are adjusted throughout the film stylistic systems - Answers stylistic elements are ways the camera moves, use of music, arrangement of color in the frame parallels - Answers cue us to compare two or more distinct elements by highlighting some similarity narrative - Answers chain of evenets in cause and effect relationship occuring in time and space "primitive cinema" - Answers examples: The Lonely Villa and Life of the American fireman -old movies -for a time silent films were enough to satisfy until they realized they needed a story D.W Griffith - Answers -came up with the cross-cutting idea -the lonely villa Classic Hollywood Narrative Components - Answers basic components: exposition and enigmas, causality, motivation, goal-oriented protagonist, and tight closure exposition - Answers sets up character traits and important story information we need to follow along enigmas - Answers things we wonder and question, when all enigmas are answered, the film ends sets forth a question based on exposition causality - Answers cause and effect, each scene builds on each other episodic narrative - Answers when some events don't build off one another ex. The Pumpkin Race(1908) motivation - Answers avoids coincidence, justification given in the film for presence of an element Rule of thumb - Answers they are allowed to have one big coincidence at the start of the film, which often times serves as a catalyst goal-oriented protagonist - Answers usually behaves in an unambiguous and consistent way, few traits, character typically develops ex. Jack in Speed the character arc - Answers character development of the goal oriented protagonist ex. Jack's evolving attitude toward the hostages dual plot line - Answers two plot lines are strongly linked, normally dominant and romantic closure - Answers when the plot lines are tied up and all the enigmas are answered plot - Answers explicitly presented diegetic events and added non-diegetic material(credits, non-diegetic music) what we see and hear diegesis - Answers The diegesis includes events that are presumed to have occurred and actions and spaces not shown on screen. story - Answers explicitly presented diegetic events and inferred material(aka back story and ellipsis) a mental construct of the viewer based on the information given in the plot order - Answers storyis always in chronological order; plot can rearrange order(flashbacks and flash forwards) duration - Answers how long events last (diff. b/w plot, story, screen) story, screen, plot duration Titanic - Answers story: 95+ years () from jack as a child to rose dying screen: 3 hrs and 15 mins plot: 2-3 days on the explorer ship screen duration - Answers the duration of the movie screen and plot duration Cleo 5 to 7 - Answers all the same frequency - Answers the # of times we see a story event represented in the plot turning point - Answers the refining of the protagonists goals ex. Casablanca (when rick sees ilsa narration - Answers plots way of distributing story information in an order to achieve specific effects the way the narrative is conveyed range of narration - Answers how much we know compared to what the character knows unrestricted/restricted same as hierarchy of knowledge unrestricted range of narration - Answers when the audience knows more than the characters restricted range of narration - Answers when our knowledge of the plot is the same as one character hierarchy of knowledge - Answers a matter of degree, we learn something the character doesn't know therefore having a greater range of knowledge than the character changing the range of narration changes over the course of the film depth of narration - Answers how deeply we are given to a characters psychological traits objective/subjective objective depth/range of narration - Answers when we see the external behavior the character knows more than we do perceptual subjectivity - Answers we see and hear what the character does ex: the lady in the lake mental subjectivity - Answers deeper into their thoughts most common form = flashbacks psychology narrator - Answers helps tell the story in the film, could be a character or not flashbacks - Answers often motivated by a character's memory flash forward - Answers gives us incite about the future events in the movie realism - Answers Art style which tried to depict life as it really was. loose cause and effect lack of closure Italian Neo-realism - Answers - one of the most influential movements in film history - desire to break from normal italian cinema - used non-actors to make it more realistic - some scenes are not motivated(Bicycle Thieves) - often NOT told the end of the story - uncontrolled mise-en-scene -post WW2 - French New Wave - Answers - casual humor - shot on location - influence from italian neo-realism -cheap and more realistic - young people - hand-held cameras - natural light - government support -1950s-1960s German Expressionism - Answers - highly controlled mise-en-scene - angular performances - heavy make-up - distorted setting - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) -WWI and peak during 1920s art cinema as mode of production - Answers - appears after WWII - inconsistent, meandering protagonist - psychologically complex characters - loose/no cause and effect - loose/no closure - authorial expressivity -realism