4Action Scenes and Kinesthetic Art — Since the earliest days of cinema, filmmakers have exploited the dynamism of motion, turning their cameras toward athletes, circus performers, animals, and all sorts of moving contraptions. Combat and its comedic equivalent, slapstick, or "physical comedy," quickly became popular cinematic subjects.

4Composition and Mise-en-Scène — Almost every shot in a professional feature film employs some compositional logic that supports the plot, characters, genre, or stylistic approaches of the film. Over the past century, filmmakers derived such compositional logic from the conventions of the graphic arts and still photography, but they have developed compositional conventions unique to the moving image.

4Culture, Nation, Auteur: Four Japanese Filmmakers — Film scholars often focus on the works of particular nationalities and cultures. Scholars have paid more critical attention to Japanese cinema than to most other contemporary national cinemas, in part because Japanese film history extends back to the silent era.

4Design in Historical Dramas — Because time travel is impossible, human beings look to works of art for historically accurate re-creations of the past. From the early days of cinema, for example, historical dramas, also known as period pieces, have attempted to bring us back to other times, eras, places.