Class 5 (Monday February 9th)

Page 1

How do films work on our emotions:

Bordwell Reading : through narrative

How do films narrate?

- through manipulating time

-> Fabula = story events in chronological order

-> Syuzhet = the way the film presents the story

- through manipulating the camera, but also

The camera as the invisible perfect observer.

- through setting things up in front of the camera

facing the audience

-through editing

Narrators:

More or less omniscient and reliable

-larger or smaller range (one character vs. all character inside knowledge)

-knowledge

-communicative

holding information back is important to certain genres (mystery/noir)

-self-conscious

Godard film very self-conscious (whispering) as well as French New Wave

musicals as very much less self conscious.

Woody Allen Films (ex Purple rose of cairo) highly self-conscious

Type of Narrator heavily dependent on genre

Point of View Editing Reading:

Noel Carrol concentrates on how essential point of view editing is to conveying emotion

- shot of person looking = point/glance

- shot of what the person is looking at = point/object

-> 3 ways this guides our emotions

A. evolutionary behavior to direct attention to the target of that other animal's attention

B. we can read each other's facial emotions

C. ****

Film as mass art

hitchcock clips: The Man Who Knew Too Much + Rear Window

- great visual/audio/montage narrating and storytelling

Three theories of emotion:

James-Lange Theory

arousal then emotion

Cannon-Bard Theory

emotion occurs at same time as arousal

Schachter's Two-Factor Theory

Arousal + cognitive label -> emotion

These models deal with first person experience.

Emotions from outside in?

Botox

- blocks receptors instructing muscles to contract

->no feedback loop

Can impair (mild) emotional experience

- Davis et al. (2010)

What about emotional recognition in others?

- Neal and Chartrand (2011)