What I Have Learned.

Throughout the process of my inquiry project I feel as though I have learned a ton about film and the ways in which they are shot, framed, and edited. I feel as though this project allowed me to engage with a passion of mine and I really appreciated the opportunity. Even though this inquiry project is over I intend to keep on learning about the medium of film and the intricacies which make it my favourite artistic medium. For this post I am going to list the things which I learned throughout the semester. For each of these sections I am going to include my favourite scene from a film which I included in my previous posts.

Dialogue Scenes

For this blog post I decided to begin my inquiry project with dialogue scenes. For this blog I researched and attempted to understand why dialogue scenes are shot how they are and how different shots make the audience feel a wide range of emotions. This was a great start to the project as there is such a wide range of ways filmmakers can film dialogue and these types of scenes are present in all films.

  1. Shot/Reverse-Shot or Shot/Countershot
  2. Over the Shoulder Shot
  3. Static Shot
  4. Split Screen
  • Favourite Clip:

Fight Scenes

For this blog post I chose to break down and compare different films which include fight scenes which are using the same fighting style whether that be hand to hand, sword, or gunfighting. This was a very large breakdown which, throughout my research, taught me so much about why a fight scene may be shot in a certain way and which filmmaking aspects make for a riveting, impactful, and creative fight scene.

  1. Hand to Hand
  2. Sword Fights
  3. Gunfights
  • Favourite Clip:

Movement

For this blog post I chose to focus on movement in film and how directors can shoot movement in different ways depending on the route of the actor or the feel of the film. For this post I wished I was able to cover more ways directors shoot movement but it was incredibly hard to find examples and different methods. I feel as though this may be because in modern film most movement is shot through the same methods of using booms and dollys.

  1. Dolly Tracking Shot
  2. Boom Tracking Shot
  • Favourite Clip:

Transitions

For this blog post I chose to focus on transition shots in film. This blog post could have gone on forever as transition shots do not necessarily have any uniform rules like a lot of other shot types. Directors can show a lot of their personal flair through their transition shots and directors like the Coen Brothers or James Wan are iconic for the way they shoot transitions. Due to the vast amount of types of transition shots I chose to select some of the more common types of transitions people would more often see when they watch a movie.

  1. Fade (Full Screen and Iris Fade)
  2. Wipe (Clock and Miscellaneous)
  3. J Cut & L Cut
  4. Invisible Cut
  • Favourite Clip:

Sound Design

For this blog post I chose to move away from visual film techniques and instead I chose to focus on sound design and how it was impact and improve the visual aspect of film. For this post I split sound design into eras, spanning pre-1950, 1950-1990, and 2000-current. For this post I did not do any sort of comparison but I just attempted to describe and analyze the different ways in which sound design is present in film.

  1. Pre-1950s Sound Design
  2. 1950-1990s Sound Design
  3. 1990s-Current Sound Design
  • Favourite Clip:

Paul Thomas Anderson

For this blog post I decided to take a different approach entirely. During this week I was finding it incredibly hard to motivate myself to research more shot types or editing techniques so I chose to focus on the films of one of my favourite directors, Paul Thomas Anderson. This was an incredibly fun blog post for me, as I love most of these films and it was great for me to be able to go through his filmography and cement my feelings about his films. It gave me a great opportunity to take a deeper look at a lot of his films and has made me just that much more excited to finish the last two films in his filmography which I have not seen yet.

  1. Hard Eight [1996]
  2. Boogie Nights [1997]
  3. Magnolia [1999]
  4. There Will Be Blood [2007]
  5. The Master [2012]
  6. Phantom Thread [2017]
  7. Licorice Pizza [2021]
  • Favourite Clip: