Perfectible Products?
"children . . . into products . . . perfectible through technology'"
Marsha Saxton's "Disability Rights and Selective Abortion (1998)
Points
for Reflection
A Rhetoric of Film, chp. 1
- Be ready to distinguish among frame, still, and freeze-frame.
- If the human eye were incapable of persistence of vision, how would this change the viewing experience (assuming playback of 24 frames per second)?
- What do you imagine are the practical differences for the viewer when moving among different aspect ratios, from the 1.33:1 (4:3) of silent films and 20th-century television, to the 2.66:1 of CinemaScope, the modern American standard of 1.85:1, the modern European standard of 1.66:1, and the current HDTV standard of 1.77:1 (16:9)?
- Do any one of the elements of composition seem of secondary importance, or do you consider them all equally significant?
- The elements of composition in film are nearly identical to those in painting; what additional variable does film include?
- Upon what mental ability does film rely when attempting to imply more vertical breadth than can actually be shown on screen?
- Filmmakers traditionally control the viewer’s attention--drawing the eye back and forth between foreground and background--by altering what?
- What is the difference between a “shot” and a “take”?
- How might the length of each shot in series of consecutive shots affect the pacing of a given scene?
- What type of shot is traditionally used to establish a scene’s physical context, and which kind of shot draws our attention towards a character’s emotional experience?
- Upon what types of shot movements do your favorite TV shows rely most?
- Have shots and editing styles become more kinetic over the years, or more stable?
Freaks (1932)
one poster from original film release
Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu
