The Art of the Filmmaker The Practical Aesthetics of the Screen

The Art of the Filmmaker: The Practical Aesthetics of the Screen explores the filmmaker's intention and method, their creation and capture of the fiction on the screen, and their formulation of the elements of the frame as a designed address to the audience. Positing 'practical aesthetics' as a resource of visual communication central to cinematic art, this book examines the concepts fundamental to the selective processes of the filmmaker and offers the reader highly informed textual analyses of specific films to explain the how and why of cinematic decision-making.

After general consideration of language and cinema, Peter Markham sets out categories essential to the reader in their understanding of the filmmaker's art: dramatic narrative, elements before the lens, screen language, the shot, camera, editing, sound and music. Furthermore, Markham provides insight into how a comparison of the film with its screenplay can reveal the evolution of the filmmaker's storytelling strategies.

This book also includes case studies of scenes and sequences from three films by contemporary filmmakers: Hereditary (Ari Aster), Moonlight (Barry Jenkins), and Nomadland (Chloe Zhao). Screenshots are used to illustrate the concepts articulated in the carefully constructed text.

This book is intended for the student of filmmaking, its practitioners, students and scholars of film studies and film theory, for those in media studies and arts programs, and for lovers of movies.

After a career in production with BBC TV Drama and Films, working with filmmakers such as Anthony Minghella and Martin Scorsese, and directing in Film and TV, Peter Markham was head of the MFA directing program at the AFI Conservatory, Los Angeles. He has taught in Beijing and Shanghai, been a lead instructor with Sundance Collab, and is a consultant and educator in creative filmmaking. He is the author of What's the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay: An Essential Guide for Directors and Writer-Directors (2020).

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART ONE: PERSPECTIVES

CHAPTER ONE Appreciating the Art of The Filmmaker.

CHAPTER TWO Language and Cinema.
Definitions of Language, Visual vs. Pictorial Films, Cinematic Language as Theft.

CHAPTER THREE The 'Five Domains in Which a Film 'Comes to Life.''
The Fiction, The Screen, The 'Screen of the Mind', The Audience (Heart, Mind, Guts), Audience Memory.

CHAPTER FOUR The 'Five Tasks' of the Filmmaker.
Information, Emotion, Visceral/Tactile/Neural Sensation, Vision, Storytelling.
The 'Two Vectors' of the Filmmaker

PART TWO: CRITERIA

CHAPTER FIVE Dramatic Narrative.
Story, Structure, 'Narrative Units', Characters, World.

CHAPTER SIX The Elements Before the Lens.
Sets and Locations, Actors and Staging, Performance, Props and Equipment.

CHAPTER SEVEN Screen Language.
Grammar and Language, Visual Language-Meaning through Use vs. Meaning inherent in the Language, Ikones, Color, Eye Trace, Uninflected vs. Inflected Cinematic Language, The Image, Visual Language, and Style.

CHAPTER EIGHT The Shot.
Composition and Mise-en-Scène, Aspect Ratio, Selection, Establishing Shots and Masters, Subject, Size, Framing.

CHAPTER NINE Camera.
Camera as Concept, Placement and Angle (Frontal, Profiles and Half-Profiles, Back Shots, Raking Angles, Top Shots, 'Dutched' Angles, Angles on the Axis of the Drama), Camera Movement (x-, y-, z-axes, Editing in Camera, Narrative Moves, Descriptive Moves, Pivots), Lensing (Depth of Field, Wide, Neutral, Long, Spherical, Anamorphic, Modulation of Space).

CHAPTER TEN Editing: the Nature of Cuts and Transitions.
Editorial Art, Walter Murch's Criteria for Making the Cut, Narrative Point of View, Modulation of Time and Space, Transitions.

CHAPTER ELEVEN Sound, Music, and the Screen.
Sound: Verisimilitude, The 'Screen of the Mind', Narrative Point of View, Subliminal Messaging, Tonal Dissonance and Irony, Register, Immersive Experience, Silence.
Music: Diegetic, Non-diegetic, Verisimilitude, Narrative POV and Subliminal Messaging, Tonal Dissonance and Irony, Register, Immersive Experience.

CHAPTER TWELVE Reading the Screenplay.

PART THREE: THE ART OF THE FILMMAKER: THE CASE STUDIES
The Filmmakers
Ari Aster: Hereditary
The Prelude
The Dinner Scene
The Family Séance

Barry Jenkins: Moonlight
Announcing Little
Announcing Chiron
Announcing Black

Chloe Zhao: Nomadland
Empire-Opening and Ending
Storytelling from Life, from the Filmmaker, Resonance from Nature
Fern and Dave-Invitation and Departure

CONCLUSION

Glossary of Abbreviations
Bibliography
Filmography
Index