A beginners guide to reading and understanding the language of cinema. This is what I use for my workshop but all the video clips had to be removed to bring down file size. In some cases, the links to the videos have been provided and in some the names of the films have been mentioned.

1. HOW DO WE READ FILM?
Between the lines,
Beyond the text &
Beneath the scenes

2. THE STORY SO FAR
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy4Y6H1
ucew

3. ZOOM OUT
• 13.8 billion years ago – Big Bang
• 4.2 million years ago – First Human
• 2 lakh years ago – Written Language
• 4000 years ago – Epics/Stories
• 1878 – First Film/ 1913 – India
• 1931 – First Talkie

4. Race Horse, 1878
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEqccPhs
qgA

5. Arrival of a train at La Ciotat (1895)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjtXXypzt
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6. FILM AS FORM
• Moving pictures – a series of photographs
• A story or an emotion
• Communicate and/or express
• Unified by a singular idea/thread
• Storytelling > Story
• Crafty structuring of sound and image for
impact

7. FILM AS MEDIUM
• 1600s – Angelo Sala found that silver salt
turned black when exposed to sun
• Photography - a recording of light
• Light turned silver nitrate to black – Negative –
recording the inverse which could be treated
with chemicals to be reproduced on film.
• Black and white first and then colour

8. GEORGE MELIES & EARLY COLOUR
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TStZX18
lsU

9. THE NEMESIS: VIDEO
• Live technology in the 1950s for news and TV
• Electronic form of recording on tape
• 6-8 frames to 120 frames today
• 25 frames/29.97 per second – TV standards
• VHS – 333 x 480 (NTSC) 335 x 576 (PAL)
• Interlaced vs Progressive
• Aspect ratios

10. RESOLUTION
Resolution
name
Horizontal x Vertical
pixels
Other names Devices
8K 7,680x4,320 none Concept TVs
"Cinema"
4K
4,096x[unspecified] 4K Projectors
UHD 3,840x2,160 4K, Ultra HD, Ultra-High Definition TVs
2K 2,048x[unspecified] none Projectors
WUXGA 1,920x1,200
Widescreen Ultra Extended
Graphics Array
Monitors, projectors
1080p 1,920x1,080 Full HD, FHD, HD, High Definition TVs, monitors
720p 1,280x720 HD, High Definition TVs

11. VIDEO vs FILM vs IMAX
• IMAX 12000, can go up to 18000 lines
• 70mm film 12000 lines
• 35 mm 6000 lines
• Phones today can shoot 4K/6K with apps
• Hence, film = video, analog = digital today
• So what happens to storytelling?

12. ANATOMY OF FILM
• Acts: Depending on nature of story
• Sequences: Equivalent of chapters
• Scenes: INT/EXT, LOCATION, TIME
• Shots: Wide, LS, MS, CU, ECU
• Elements: Shot breakdown

13. MEMENTO
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHhlTXy
BxPM

14. SHOT BREAKDOWN

15. EXERCISE
• CLOSING AND OPENING SCENES COMPARISON
• ROOM, THE REVENANT, THE HATEFUL EIGHT
AND MAD MAX FURY ROAD (OPENING &
CLOSING CLIPS REMOVED FROM PPT BUT DIY)
• SHOT DIVISION, WHAT’S CHANGED? SEASON,
COLOURS, POINT A –> B OR BACK TO -> A BUT
DIFFERENT?

16. EVOLVING LANGUAGE
• Conventional definitions are changing (Film)
• New forms of storytelling being born (Victoria,
Taxi)
• Technology is reinventing the language
(Tangerine)
• Split-screen is enabling stories not told before
(Timecode, GNGM)
• Visual effects firing up imagination in 3D (Avatar)
• Virtual Reality is opening up new possibilities
• Interactive Cinema – Personalising the story

17. FRAME OF REFERENCE
• Representation – Who is represented & how?
• Technology – Does it change the story?
• Social Relations – How does it engage with the
world?
• Context – What happened before and after
this in the bigger picture

18. STORIES ARE INCOMPLETE
• They have a past and a future
• Documents of a place, time and way of life
• Text, subtext and context
• Heroes and villains change with time
• Conflicts are triggers for stories and thoughts
• Films need open minds
• Ability to read and understand to criticise

19. FILM AS JOURNEY
• We travel with a bunch of people
• Connect with them (or not)
• See the world through their journeys
• Relate or empathise and sometimes,
transform
• But most of all, we also see what they don’t

20. DOES INTENT MATTER?
• Not to an art critic
• Film as communication
• All stories are political
• The responsibility of criticism
• Times of outrage
• Medium is the message – meta narratives

21. THE STORYTELLER’S SOUL
• Commercial and arthouse; happy and angry
• Transcends all rules and codes
• Films are not always a series of images
through shots, scenes and sequences
• Series of emotional beats per moment or a
series of moments that keep us hooked till the
end
• Films are like people we meet. Soul shines.

22. For workshops: sudhish.kamath@gmail.com