Boggs: Chapters 11-13

The Art of Watching Films
By: Joseph M. Boggs and Dennis W. Petrie
Chapters 11-13


President Woodrow Wilson on film: "It's like writing history with lightning" (333). 


The director is the unifying force, making most of the creative decisions. The film's style usually reflects the director's style. 


Auteur- a complete filmmaker (a good example is Orson Welles, who wrote, produced, and directed-all at the same time)


A few helpful style words (335)


David Lynch on a subtle balance between slow and fast pacing while editing: "It's like music. If music was all just fast it would be a bummer. But symphonies and stuff are built on slow and fast and high and low, and it thrills your soul. And film is the same way" (341). 


Boggs says to watch films twice. I think that's a reasonable idea. You just notice so much more the second time, and can look for things more objectively. 


Categories to fill while analyzing the film as a whole: theme, relationship of parts to the whole, level of ambition, objective evaluation, and subjective evaluation


Adaptations- a film based on another work


Problems with adaptations (books to film): change in medium, change in creative artists, literary versus cinematic points of view, length and depth, philosophical reflections, summarizing the character's past, and summarizing events


It's easier to adapt from a play to a film then from a book to a film, but the adaptation of a play to a movie can still have problems, such as: sense of space, structural divisions, difference in film language and stage language, and difference in stage and cinema conventions


One major change that occurs when something is adapted is the "fact to film" phenomenon, which is a change from reality to myth. In A Perfect Storm, the boat's demise occurs by forces outside of the crew's control, but in the movie, the actions of the men cause the demise.