200X, Part 3: Society & History

Film as Culture

new film.vtheatre.net

VISUAL LITERACY

2007? Composition and Design Elements, Principles, and Visual Effects

Theatre with Anatoly Tarkovsky

How do you understand this composition (shots)? Alienation? All in one room (next to each other) looking in different directions. (Tarkovsky, long shots) The forms of conflict; dynamics of inner and outer conflict.

Bergman Page
Bergman, closeup. The foreground is out of focus. Why? (Reversed perspective in icons).

Amazon Books

Art, Architecture & Photography

What is "literacy"?

Everything is "text"? That's why we can UNDERSTAND things? "Do you read me?"

In order for to "read" film, or body language, we need to know that language. We understand the laws of, because we developed many languages for that purpose: math, physics, chemestry, biology. The same with history or philosophy. And this is what we do in this class; learning the language of art.

In order to understand the meaning, we need to understand the form; depending on HOW the message is formated, we communicate different ideas. Think about the English grammar -- think about how the meaning is formed on stage, screen, canvas or mosical score.

POV and pomo files + film600

popCult [ popular culture ]

Visual Literacy

.... stage : composition & film
2007 -- video-pages
stories and myths
rewriting history
global village


Film is a new universal language. What could be more more universal than music, dance or painting?
Interesting enough, film surpasses their ability to go over language barriers because its extreme mimetic qualities. Camera records life without processing each picture through an individual with his cultural codes. How the shots are destorted and arranged together is the place when an artist steps in.

Film's believability is unmatchable. We see "objective" reality on the screen, no matter how fantastic the story could be. (That is why science fiction of horror movies can exist, we are forgetting that this REALITY is fictional).

After 1968: next -- digital era, we, the postmodern.

See METHODS page.

...

Short Overview of History (Aesthetics): pre-historical, old cultures (Egypt, China, India), Greeks, Romans, Christianity, Age of Reason, Reformation, Age of Revolution, Modernism, Postmodern.

[No special pages yet.]

Learning to See

Reniassance: perspective, recognition of reality, Newton, Age of Science and becoming of Realism. !9th century > Photography. Late and High Modernism (Impressionism, Expressionism, finally, Abstruct) -- man as a center of universe (each man).

Learning to Hear

Architecture (churches) and (classical) music: symphony and opera.

Sound and Image: Ear and Eye

Oral > Text > Visual

20th Century (American Century): Radio, TV, PC, Digital Revolution

My Met Gallery

Visual Composition examples from the great classic paintings: V-Composition page from Directing class.

Summary

I need at least three hours of lectures (week) to arrive again to the Age of Cinema!

Questions

More Theatre and Art (and Music) for history topics?

Homework

Theatre test? See Theatre Dictionary

Notes

How to introduce the timetable (history of ideas and art periods). Pre-history, Antiquity, Christianity, Middle Ages and etc. How detailed it should be?

directing.filmplus.org

Next: Visual Economics
film.vtheatre.net

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