Studying Film

Ian Bell, Nathan Abrams & Jan Udris

Publisher: Arnold (2001)

(extract)

There have been at least nine different TV and feature films made about the sinking of the Titanic. These range from a silent version made within months of the disaster (Saved from the Titanic, (1912), to the dryly titled A Night to Remember (1958), to S.O.S. Titanic (1979) to two films imaginatively called Titanic (1953 and 1997). The reason for mentioning these films is not to indicatethe long history of the disaster movie genre but to highlight the fact that there is more than one way to tell a story in a film. The scripts for each of these films would of course have been very different, but essentially the story was the same: unsinkable ship makes maiden voyage, ship hits iceberg, ship sinks with a few passengers escaping.

An understanding of how there can have been several versions of the Titanic story can be gained by studying the 'language of film'. All forms of communication have their own language. This book is communicating using the English language; music uses the written language of musical notation; photography communicates meanings by using a language that consists of concepts such as composition, framing, camera angle, shot size, lighting, contrasts between black and white, varying tones of colour; a radio programme may use the English language combined with an audio language consisting of practices such as fading volume up or down at appropriate times and mixing dialogue, music and sound effects together at various volume levels depending on what meaning is intended. Whatever the language being used, it consists of codes and conventions. Codes are particular methods for communicating meanings and conventions are the ways in which those codes are usually used. The English language uses particular words and grammatical structures.

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Film has its own 'language'. A range of techniques are available to a film-maker and those techniques are used to present a narrative through the medium of film, a narrative being a chain of events that are (usually) linked. The language of film is used (usually) to tell stories. A film's form is determined by the ways in which the story is told by the film, and is a combination of style and content. The content is structured by the narrative and style is shaped by the film techniques employed.

Most narratives are what we can call linear narratives. They move forward in a straight line from beginning to end. The vents in such a narrative are linked together via a cause and effect relationship. An event takes place which causes an effect upon something else, thus resulting in a new situation; in turn this new situation has an effect upon other elements within the narrative, again resulting in further change. So taken for granted is this basic narrative requirement that we usually do not think about its function. But consider what would happen to a narrative without this cause-effect process: it would stop, the story would remain static. We would have what is called 'dead time'.

Another way of viewing progression within narratives is as a dialectical process. Dialectics, from Plato to Hegel and Marx, is a method for explaining and creating change. It can be summed up by the idea of a thesis which is challenged by an antithesis (an opposite or opposing position); the result of this conflict of ideas or situations is the synthesis, a new concept or situation. The cause and effect structure of narrative works in a similar way, leading us from beginning to end via events, and these events take place within time and space. They occur in particular locations for a certain duration.