FS/UG/ 1.

1: BASIC ASPECTS OF FILM LANGUAGE This course is designed to introduce students to certain basic concepts and vocabularies of Film Studies and cinematic form at large. Classroom lectures will be heavily illustrated with audio-visual clips from films, while examples from other arts and media like painting, literary forms might be cited too. The aim of this course is also to accustom the student visually and aurally to a wide range of cinematic styles and representative instances from canonical phases of cinematic history. Another aim of the course will be to impart skills of making meaning in cinema. Any four of the following modules shall be covered in a semester. Properties of the shot and sequence: Introduction to devices like frame, shot, sequence, cut etc. and different transition devices and conjunctions used in films. Illustrations of shotscales (Close-up, Long-shot etc.), varieties of durational modes (long take, movement within shots), modes of connecting multiple shots etc. Film Space and Film Time and mise-en-scene: Detailed discussions of how cinema uses and collates fragments of space and recorded time within and across frames and shots in order to present a distinct experience of spatiality and temporality. There will be illustrations and elaboration of how space and time is sculpted in different cinematic styles, across different phases of cinematic histories. Film Sound: Apart from introducing various aural devices used in cinema and critical concepts needed to understand how recorded and played back sound functions in cinema, this module will also locate important moments in history of cinema when sound played a defining role on how cinema will be experienced, comprehended and imagined. Representation and Narrative: This module will introduce concepts which might not involve cinema only, but run through different representational and narrative media like painting and literature. Technology, technique and culture: image and sound production in historical perspective: A discussion of basic cinematic tools and techniques is bound to involve a cursory glance at how they are connected to the history of technology. Instead of attempting an historical overview, this module will provide models of how the interface between technique and technology within a context can be studied using key moments, events from history along with relevant texts. Basic Reference: Film Art: An Introduction (D. Bordwell and K. Thompson) How to Read a Film (J. Monaco) Cinema and Technology: Image, Sound, Colour (S. Neale) Theory of Film Practice (S. Neal)