Film Noir and the Art of Film Making

We will wrap up our Foreign Films unit tomorrow, March 8th, with an exam. The exam will cover our units on Sound, Animation, Snow White and The 400 Blows. As we move away from Foreign language films, we are jumping into another genre whose name is derived from the French language. You got it, our next film is Mildred Pierce, and its genre is film noir. While we will not start Mildred Pierce until Monday, we will be looking at it through the eyes of film scholars. To prepare for this viewing, it will be the student's responsibility to know the following terms:

shot/scene/sequence
cut/transition
establishing shot/long shot
close-up
extreme close-up
medium shot
tilt shot
high angle
low angle
pan
zoom
'dolly'/dolly shot
'boom'/boom shot
tracking shot
fade-in
fade-out
dissolve
wipe
stock insert
master shot
dailies/rushes

These terms will not be on the Macrh 8th exam, but students should expect to see a test on these terms sometime in the future. Definitions can be found in Chapter 4 of the text, or through a variety of web resources including the glossary found on this page.