The missing link

I'm really enjoying Gil Bettman's book (see last post). It's sort of the missing link between the various approaches to filmmaking I've been outlining in the blog. So here's what we have so far.

THE FOUNDATION

1. Film requires a series of micro-level and macro-level anticipations. Without these anticipations you get bored or lost.

2. Film is structured around the emotional arcs of the protagonist. It is through these emotional arcs that we are able to "enter into" the film. Film is not a series of events strung together chronologically. The protagonist's emotional arcs determine what events are meaningful and how they are meaningful.

BETTMAN (missing link)

1. The camera must show everything that needs to be seen.

2. The camera must focus attention on the center of the drama.

3. Abstraction enters into the film via narratively-justified mise en scene. (My definition of what Bettman calls "eye candy.")

ART FILM

1. Art film integrates modes of modernist abstraction into filmmaking (e.g., machine approaches, gestural approaches). In more mainstream films, these modes are rationalized within a narrative. In less mainstream approaches, the modes are unjustified.

2. Bettman strongly argues that in mainstream film, technique cannot overshadow a narrative. In other words, when a shot calls attention to itself it draws you out of the moment of the film. I would suggest that the contemporary film audience has learned to be simultaneously both "inside" and "outside" of the film. For example, a lot of the shots in The Matrix call attention to themselves while simultaneously being rationalized within the narrative. Another approach is to break the spell of the film testing the ability of the audience to maintain interest. This is how the opening title of Se7en works. The narrative is propelled forward at an infintestimally slow pace; it is almost put on hold.