Key Concepts

• Together, film's formal aspects—narrative, design, cinematography, acting, editing, and sound—differentiate movies from other visual media and determine how particular films look, sound, and move.
• When we refer to cinematic "form," we may mean
• the arrangement or order of parts of a movie.
• the elements manipulated by filmmakers to create a movie.
• the commonly accepted ways in which the content of a movie is expressed.
• the system (within a movie) that causes viewers to react in particular ways.
• This chapter describes elements of narrative:
• story and plot
• order
• events
• duration
• suspense versus surprise
• frequency
• characters
• setting
• point of view
• scope

Learning Objectives

Once you have read this chapter, you should be able to

• describe the relationship between form and content in film.
• explain why viewers tend to respond more readily to a movie's narrative than to other elements of form.
• differentiate between the story and the plot of a movie.
• explain the difference between novelistic and cinematic points of view.
• compare and contrast scope and setting.
• explain how cinematic time differs from real time.
• define three kinds of plot duration.