(Yale Film Studies website: https://filmanalysis.yale.edu/)

Notes on “Basic Terms” :

• Auteur: French for “author”. Used by critics writing for Cahiers du cinema and other journals to indicate the figure, usually the director, who stamped a film with his/her own “personality”.

• Diegesis: The diegesis includes objects, events, spaces and the characters that inhabit them, including things, actions, and attitudes not explicitly presented in the film but inferred by the audience. That audience constructs a diegetic world from the material presented in a narrative film.

• Editing: The joining together of clips of film into a single filmstrip. The cut is a simple edit but there are many other possible ways to transition from one shot to another.

• Flashback and Flash-forward: A jump backwards or forwards in diegetic time. With the use of flashback/flash forward the order of events in the plot no longer matches the order of events in the story.

• Focus: Focus refers to the degree to which light rays coming from any particular part of an object pass through the lens and re-converge at the same point on a frame of the film negative, creating sharp outlines and distinct textures that match the original object.

• There is also Genres, Mise-en-scene, Story/Plot, Scene/Sequence, and a shot.

Notes on “Mise-en-scene” :

• Decor
• Rear Projection: Usually used to combine foreground action, often actors in conversation, with a background often shot earlier, on location. Rear projection provides an economical way to set films in exotic or dangerous locations without having to transport expensive stars or endure demanding conditions.
• The lighting
• 3 point lighting: The standard lighting scheme for classical narrative cinema.
• High key lighting:A lighting scheme in which the fill light is raised to almost the same level as the key light. This produces images that are usually very bright and that feature few shadows on the principal subjects.
• Low key lighting: A lighting scheme that employs very little fill light, creating strong contrasts between the brightest and darkest parts of an image and often creating strong shadows that obscure parts of the principal subjects.
• Space: (Deep Space, Frontality, Matte Shot, Offscreen Space, Shallow Space)
• Costume
• Acting
• Typage: refers to the selection of actors on the basis that their facial or bodily features readily convey the truth of the character the actor plays.

Notes on “Editing” :

• Transitions: The shot is defined by editing but editing also works to join shots together. There are many ways of effecting that transition, some more evident than others.
• Cheat cut: In the continuity editing system, a cut which purports to show continuous time and space from shot to shot but which actually mismatches the position of figures or objects in the scene.
• Crosscutting: Editing that alternates shots of two or more lines of action occurring in different places, usually simultaneously.
• Cut in and Cut away: An instantaneous shift from a distant framing to a closer view of some portion fo the same space, and vice versa.
• Dissolve: A transition between two shots during which the first image gradually disappears while the second image gradually appears; for a moment the two images blend in superimposition.
• Iris: A round, moving mask that can close down to end a scene (iris-out) or emphasize a detail, or it can open to begin a scene (iris-in) or to reveal more space around a detail.
• Superimposition: The exposure of more than one image on the same film strip.
• Wipe: A transition between shots in which a line passes across the screen, eliminating the first shot as it goes and replacing it with the next one.
• There is also Matches. Such as eyeline match and graphic match.
• There is also Duration. Such as long takes, overlapping editing, and rhythm.
• There is also Styles. Such as Continuity editing, montage, and elliptical editing.

Throughout the Birth of a Nation video from 47 – 48:50 the scene is very dark. I feel Griffith wants a viewer to feel sad for the woman and her family. The family is all curled up in a ball together and it looks like the man is trying to keep everyone feeling calm and safe. The family is watching over on top of the hill and looking down at all of the people. The music makes the scene feel even more sad. They have “low-key lighting” in this scene so it makes it feel like a tense moment. The costume makes them seem like they aren’t coming from much and they are a poor family.

Throughout the Birth of a Nation video from 1:32 through 1:37 the scene is differently way different then the scene before hand. This time they are in way different clothing and it seems like they are throwing a party. This scene is more peaceful and doesn’t feel suspenseful. They have “high-key lighting” here. The costumes during this scene are nice and seem like upper quality.

Annotations of the Wikipedia entry on Birth of a Nation:

• Birth of a Nation is a American silent epic drama film that was directed and co-produced by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish.

• This film was made in the San Fernando Vally (California).
• It premiered in theaters in 1995.
• The film was based on the book “The Clansman”.
• Birth of a Nation is praised for it’s “technical virtuosity” which is how they film, such as moving, tracking, panning shots, crosscutting editing, and close-ups through out the film.
• Birth of a Nation is often panned for it’s demeaning and racist interpretation of African Americans.
• The film portrays the pre-Civil War South in ‘moonlight and magnolias” fashion.

What’s your initial reaction to the film?

“The Birth of a Nation” from 1915 is a very old fashion and I took it as very racist. It is very historical. This film is a great example of discourse and how it shapes worldviews for people and real life events. Watching this film makes me think of everything being proper and perfect.

Notes from today:

Warrant – unspoken vales a writer thinks he shares with his readers.

• These warrants are steeped and come out of the discourse of their specific discourse community

Argument style (evidence, reason, format, genre) comes from the discourse community.

Knowledge – is made through discourse and creates multiplicities for individual to use.  

DuBois’s essay – The rhetorical triangle exercise and the Toulmin method:

The Issue: Black Americans are being denied the vote and public ed. They are not getting the equal rights they deserve.

The Gap: Explains why this is a disadvantage and why access to both is important.

The Readers: This brings out a lot of pathos because it brings out emotion and they effect the reader in a way were it makes it feel this way. I think the readers would be people that love emotion and feeling through reading. Also, I think this is for the same people that feel the day he does with not feeling worthy or equal. He said “It dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.”(p.g. 142 ). I feel he also wants to get his point out to white people and start to evoke change.

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Claim: Black Americans are being denied the rights of white Americans. Also, the black Americans also just feel different then others and shut out from everyone and that their options don’t matter.

Evidence: He shows he feels different. He says “Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?”

Reasoning: He doesn’t even feel comfortable in his own body and home.

Warrant: He is trying to get a crossed that he wants things to change and that whites need to not only just see me feel and understand that it is important that black Americans get the same equal rights and respect as they do.

Come up with any revisions or inclusions you’d like to see in the final draft:

I read everything careful and I feel everything in this draft is great to me. There is nothing I would add to it. Maybe this draft could be more to the point though and not go into much detail. Some bullet points could help. Everything was covered great.

Also the link is wrong, It isn’t for our class. Our class is “English 2089: Intermediate Composition”. The link you put in was “English 1001: English Composition“

Now let’s break into groups and work with John Tyler Morgan’s “The Race Question in the United States”:

• Claim– Morgan thinks African Americans are not to the whites level and shouldn’t be voting. And if they start getting more privileges there will be a downfall. He feels whites are superior and they get the rights and choices to things, more like white men.
• Reasons– He says if you interbreed with people of color you will have inferior off springs.
• Evidence– He tried to say that African Americans have so many things were they shouldn’t get the right to vote. He says why do things need to change, keep them the way they are.
• Warrant– Overall, Morgan feels that letting blacks get the same rights as whites will mess up society and cause a lot of different issues.
• Counterargument– ?
• Rebuttal– He is in fear and panic of things changing for him, so he is trying to convince his readers to not let things change and to do what he thinks is right. He wants us to feel this fear as well so we agree with him and make sure we follow what he says not to do.

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After reading “Striving of the Negro People”, by W. E. B. DU BOIS I felt that it connected most with pathos because it brings out emotion and they effect the reader in a way were it makes it feel this way. Also, I feel it shows ethos in a way of having a good tone to the story.

Annotations of “Strivings of the Negro People”:

• William Edward Burghardt Du Bois established himself as the foremost African American intellectual of the twentieth century.
• Du Bois wrote important works of history, sociology, prose fiction, and essays.
• He was also an important political leader , one of the founders in 1909 of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People “NAACP), which has as a primary goal overturning the Plessy decision.
• Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, he attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, a black school founded during Reconstruction.
• He began his teaching career at Wilberforce University in Ohio and the University of Pennsylvania.