Session 1: Close analysis

MA RSP
Session plan
1. Defining close analysis
2. History of close analysis
3. Methodology of close analysis
4. Discussion: Moonlight (2016)
1. Defining close analysis
● Tool for understanding what you see and its impact
● Observing, describing and interpreting
● Breaking down the screen media into its constituent parts
● Asking how they interact to create meaning, emotion or significance
● Cinematography
○ Camera height, position, movement
○ Colour, focal length, framing
● Editing
○ Speed: how does it play with time?
○ Fades, dissolves, jump cuts, etc.
● Sound
○ What can you hear? Music? Dialogue? Sound effects?
○ How does this relate to the visuals? Does it support or undermine them?
● Signs and symbols
○ Are there any visual or aural symbols that you recognise?
● Close analysis is attention to the form of screen media
● A means to understanding:
○ Relationship between form and content (theme and narrative)
○ How the media makes the viewer feel
○ How the spectator is positioned ideologically
○ Movements in the history of screen media
● Uses a particular vocabulary
○ E.g. Jump cut, mise-en-scène, deep focus
● Describes as it analyses
Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger, 1954)
• At an […] army camp, civilian parachute-maker and ‘hot bundle’ Carmen Jones
is desired by many of the men. […] She wants Joe, who's engaged to sweet
Cindy Lou and about to go into pilot training for the Korean War. Going after
him, she succeeds only in getting him into the stockade. While she awaits his
release, trouble approaches for both of them. Songs from the Bizet opera with
modernized lyrics.
– Rod Crawford, IMDb
Handout: V.F. Perkins
• Close analysis of a scene from Carmen Jones
V.F. Perkins on Carmen Jones
• V.F. Perkins, Film as Film (1972)

• ‘In order to comprehend whole meanings, rather than those parts of the
meaning which are present in verbal synopsis or visual code, attention must be
paid to the whole content of shot sequence and film.’
• ‘The fresh angle conveys also a much stronger feeling of movement since it
brings into play what the previous shot had suppressed, the rapid flow of the
background scenery.’
– V.F. Perkins, Film as Film, 80
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Close analysis vs. semiotics
• Handout: V.F. Perkins on Psycho
Perkins on Psycho
• ‘Then, but only then, [the knife] is also a phallus, part of the scene’s
construction as symbolic rape.’
– V.F. Perkins, Film as Film, 110
• The way the knife interacts with other elements of the narrative, mise-en-scène
and editing
• The knife/phallus relationship does not impose ‘a single statement of meaning
and suppress… all but one of the possible interactions within the scene.’
2. History of close analysis
• Sergei Eisenstein (Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, 1949)

• Béla Balázs (Theory of the Film, 1949)

• V.F. Perkins (Film as Film, 1972)

Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948)
Sergei Eisenstein
• Montage theory
– The meaning of a sequence is generated by editing (more than any other formal device)
• Kuleshov effect
– Same image, juxtaposed with another image, could be made to ‘mean’ different things
• ‘Shock to thought’
– Clash of different images carries a political message
– E.g. Strike – image of bull + image of suffering workers = justification of uprising against
brutality of tsarist regime
Béla Balázs (1884–1949)
Béla Balázs
• Works through the potential of film form to express meaning, through dialogue,
visual effects, editing, the close-up and sound, etc.
• E.g. The Close-Up:
– ‘In the days of the silent films, the close-up revealed hidden things of life that we thought we
already knew so well. […] The close-up deepens and widens our vision of life, while revealing
new things and  the meaning of old things. Emphasis can be found in the quality of a gesture, a
speechless face, or an object and it’s importance in a visual life. […] Balazs believes that the
“most subjective and individual of human manifestations is rendered objective in the close-up.”’
– Jarrod Labine, CUNY blog
• Sound:
– ‘It is the business of the sound film to reveal for us our acoustic environment, the acoustic
landscape in which we live [..]; all that has speech beyond human speech, and speaks to us
with the vast conversational powers of life and incessantly influences and directs our thoughts
and emotions, from the muttering of the sea to the din of a great city, from the roar of machinery
to the gentle patter of autumn rain on a windowpane. […] It is for the sound film to let them
speak to us more directly from the screen.’
– Theory of the Film (1949)
Different ways of using close analysis
• Eisenstein used film form to position the spectator politically or ideologically
• Balázs divided up and analysed the different formal elements of film to show
how they each reveal aspects of the real world
• Both theorists use close analysis as a way to reflect on and influence the real
world
V.F. Perkins (1936–2016)
V.F. Perkins
• Film world – not the same as the real world
• Must have internal coherence
• Value judgment of a film based on the above
3. Methodology of close analysis
• Lighting
• Mise-en-scène
• Shot duration
• Editing
• Dialogue
• Camera position
• Performance
• Soundtrack
• Camera movement
• Framing
Perkins’ use of this methodology
• Perkins has his own agenda
• It is not necessarily the only way
• But his approach to close analysis does require an attentiveness to form
• Close analysis skills encourage us to pay attention to the construction of any
screen world
4. Discussion
Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
Moonlight
• A young, African-American gay man [Chiron] deals with his dysfunctional home
life and comes of age in Miami during the ‘War on Drugs’ era. The story of his
struggle to find himself is told across three defining chapters in his life as he
experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love while grappling with
his own sexuality.
– Jwelch5742, IMDb
Discussion
• What is the tone of each sequence, and how does the visual style contribute to
this tone?
• How are the central characters presented?
• Do the different elements of the film sequence cohere, or do some elements
stand out more than others? What effect does this achieve?
Perkins
• ‘Meaning may exist without internal relationship; but coherence is the
prerequisite of contained significance. By this I mean significance which we
find within, rather than attached to, the form of the film.’ 117