Graphics by Barbara Ebrahim
This book was an attempt to cover the whole of film in 100,000 words. Not possible! However it's not a bad effort. People have told me that it explains the complexities of Screen theory very well; which is pleasing as long as no one asks me to verbally explain what that magazine was on about with clarity!
Chapter 1: Film language
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Introduction to mise en scène
1.3 Production design: sets, props and costumes
1.4 Lighting
1.5 Performance
1.6 Sound (and music)
1.7 Framing: position; depth of field; aspect ratio; height and angle (but not movement)
1.8 Camera movement
1.9 Editing
1.10 Film stars as texts
Chapter 2: Film genre and narrative
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Defining genre
2.3 The repertoire of elements
2.4 Generic evolution
2.5 Approaches to genre
2.6 Twelve uses of genre
2.7 Genre and audiences
2.8 Introduction to narrative
2.9 Todorov and Propp
2.10 Story and plot
2.11 Roland Barthes’ narrative codes
2.12 Other approaches
2.13 Postmodern narratives
Chapter 3: Film as industry
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The beginning of cinema
3.3 Hollywood – the formation of the major studios
3.4 Hollywood and censorship
3.5 Hollywood – the coming of sound
3.6 Hollywood decline: the Paramount decrees and the baby boom
3.7 New Hollywood? The early 1970s
3.8 Package Hollywood
3.9 Hollywood: conglomeration to media corporation
3.10 The importance of Jaws
3.11 Hollywood and the High Concept
3.12 The independent sector in North America
3.13 The arthouse sector
3.14 Selling cinema
3.15 Genre and industry
3.16 How new is contemporary Hollywood?
3.17 Stars
3.18 The publicity circus
3.19 The DVD revolution
3.20 Film festivals
3.21 Conclusion: the shadow of Hollywood
Chapter 4: Film and theory
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Film and realism
4.3 The auteur theory
4.4 Structuralism and auteurism
4.5 Screen theory – ideology
4.6 Screen theory – psychoanalysis
4.7 Screen theory – feminist analysis
4.8 Spectatorship
4.9 Third cinema and post-colonialism
4.10 Postmodernism and poststructuralism
4.11 Audience pleasures
Chapter 5: Film and history
5.1 Introduction
5.2 German expressionism
5.3 Avant-garde
5.4 Soviet cinema in the 1920s
5.5 The British documentary movement
5.6 Italian neo-realism
5.7 The French New Wave (nouvelle vague)
5.8 The British New Wave (1959–63) and the ‘Swinging Sixties’
5.9 Other 1960s new waves
5.10 May ‘68
5.11 New German cinema
5.12 Chinese cinema: fifth and sixth generation
5.13 Iranian cinema
5.14 Denmark’s Dogme
Appendices
A5.1 Australia and New Zealand – the role of the aboriginal
A5.2 The Balkans – civil strife
A5.3 Canada – engulfed by America?
A5.4 Hong Kong – (not) a national cinema?
A5.5 Mexican Cinema – renaissance on America’s doorstep
Chapter 6: Film and Representation
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Types
6.3 African-Americans and Hollywood
6.4 National cinema
6.5 British cinema
6.6 State-of-the-nations films
Chapter 7: Film and Technology
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Precursors
7.3 Projecting frames
7.4 Aspect ratio
7.5 Film stock
7.6 Sound and colour
7.7 Animation
7.8 Special effects
7.9 Digital distribution
7.10 Conclusion
