Spectatorship

A spectator is a person who observes any event. He gives his reviews and views on it. In film studies, a spectator observes a movie and gives its reviews. The nature of spectatorship is to look at how the viewer is involved, implicated and engaged in the viewing experience. Varieties of terms are used in this. They are distanciation, self-reflexivity, focalisation and subjectivation. It is important that an individual participates in his own role and activity in determining a film.

Spectatorship is not only the act of watching films, but to enjoy each and every bit of it that how much an individual is enjoying the film while watching. The spectator interacts in the action of the film, enjoying the movie and giving meaning to it. The spectator sometimes can be a decoder. It is the work of the spectator to decode them and give the meaning because the film totally relies on the signs of the spectator.

Films have become the most important part of today’s lives. People watch films and learn for it, whether it is good or bad. Its impact is very high on today’s audiences. Today’s film industry is a money making industry and so the spectator should know their tastes, likes and dislikes.

Kabuki

Kabuki is Japanese traditional form of dancing and singing. It is performed in a performed in a greatly stylized method. For almost four centuries, kabuki was the major theatrical form in Japan. Kabuki is the combination of music, dance, costuming, makeup, mimic, etc. The word is written with three characters: ka, signifying “song”; bu, “dance”; and ki, “skill.” Actors of kabuki have carried this tradition from one generation to other.

Kabuki, in Japan took place in 17 century. Female dancers here were named as OKUNI because they use to perform only at the place of worship. Okuni’s was the first dramatic entertainment for the tastes of the common folks in the Japan.

Make up is very important when it comes to Kabuki. Kabuki makeup which is called as kesho,is of two types. One is ‘standard makeup’ which is applied to most actors and other is ‘kumadori makeup’ which is applied to villains and heroes.

To punish the wicked or reward the honourable is the purpose of Kabuki. It entertains and allows the actors to demonstrate their skills and this whole process is called as “kanzen-chōaku”. Regular performances of Kabuki are held at the National Theatre in Tokyo. Kabuki thus moved away from its origins, an unsteady form of dance, and towards a formalist style of drama with a more rigid framework.

RASA

Rasa refers to the emotional flavors/essence of a person. It is crafted into the work by the writer and a good taste by a positive taste and mind. They are described by Bharata Muni in the Nātyasāstra, an ancient work of dramatic theory. RASA is most important in Indian drama and literature.

Poetry and Rasa both belongs to each other. The attractiveness of poetry is because of the Rasas. In the case of poetry and drama this taste is to be tasted with the help of the ears and the eyes.

There are eight primary rasas. Śṛngāram (शृङ्गारं) Love, attractiveness, Hāsyam (हास्यं) Laughter, comedy,Raudram (रौद्रं) Fury, Kāruṇyam (कारुण्यं) Compassion, Bībhatsam (बीभत्सं) Disgust, Bhayānakam (भयानकं) Horror, Vīram (वीरं) Heroic mood, Adbhutam (अद्भुतं) Wonder.

The theory of Rasa is still is been used in the entire Indian classical dance and theater such as Bharatanatyam, kathak, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Manipuri, Kudiyattam, Kathakali and others. Classical Indian dance form is referred to as Rasa-abhinaya expressing Rasa. The Nātyasāstra carefully potrays the bhavas used to create each rasa.

Rasa has the important influence on Indian cinema. Emotions, which are very important in any of the cinema and it is the only thing which differentiate it from the western culture. Rasa is the method of conveying the emotions which is thus felt by the audiences. 

Dhvani

Dhvani (meaning- sound) Theory is the most important poetic theory of ancient India. Dhvani Theory is basically a semantic theory. The term dhvani (sound) is derived from the root 'dhvan' to make sound. If we go back to Atharva Veda, it was the older term used in the sense of sound, tune, noise etc. In the Veda, there are many magical speculations regarding speech and sound. The Braahmana texts analyze the words into their elements in the context of meaning. The problem of the relation between sound and meaning is fully discussed by the ancient Indian thinkers. AudumbaraayaNa and VaarttaakSa, the thinkers, were the first to explore in this field. Regarding the eternal character of the sound, even Yaaska, in his Nirukta, records the view of AudumbaraayaNa.

Dhvani is a divisible and has independent existence.  It is produced and in a particular sequence and the same qualities of sound is superimposed on sphoTa.

Dhvani is the term of an earlier origin. Though, its nature is already met with in the works of scholars like AudumbaraayaNa and many others. Its relation with the abstract level of sphoTa, was defined only at the time of PataNjali. 

Natya shastra

The Natya Shastra (Sanskrit: नाट्य शास्त्र, Nāṭyaśāstra) is an ancient Indian Culture. It is the Indian Tradition of performing arts, theatre, dance and music. Natya Shastra was written in the period between 200 BCE and 200 CE. It was classical India and is traditionally attributed to the Sage Bharata. Bhara muni was the one who introduced Natya Shastra. It is based on the Gandharva Veda. To influence music, dance and literature, Natya shashtra took place in Indian Culture.

Natya shastra is very important in the history of Indian classical music. It is the only text which gives such detail about the music, instruments of the period. The most understood commentary on the Natyashastra is the Abhinavabharati by Abhinavagupta. Natyashastra mainly concentrate on movement, voice, emotional expression, and the stylization of bodies with make-up and costumes as artistic elements in their own right.

It is referred as the fifth Veda. Natyashastra remained an important text in the fine arts for many centuries. The structures of music outlined in the Natya Shastra retain their influence even today, as seen in the seminal work Hindustani Sangeetha Padhathi by Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande from the early 20th century.

Cinema is mere gadgetry without narrativity- hugo munsterberg

Hugo Munsterberg was a German-American psychologist. He was one of the pioneers in applied psychology, extending his research and theories to Industrial/Organizational, legal, medical, educational and business settings. To Munsterberg films were getting closer to 'complete cinema' which is bad because it is getting closer to reality with color/sound/etc, betraying the silent film. He celebrated the flatness of the image, silent films, and the artifice in cinema. The photoplay mirrors how the mind works. Flashbacks are important to him.

In 1916, German-American psychologist and philosopher Hugo Munsterberg published The Photoplay, one of the first printed volumes on the new phenomenon of film. Taking his interest and training in applied psychology as starting point, Munsterberg “casts a psychologist’s eye on the physiology, perception, and mental functioning of the spectator, while the philosopher in him considers the intrinsic aesthetic qualities of the art and the emotions and moral attitudes that the medium can elicit and engender.”

He concludes, for example, that movement in film is not actual but rather created by the spectator; the viewer does not experience reality in the theatre, but rather a mental perception of reality. In essence, cinema stimulates the mental structures of the mind by way of its structural similarity to the mind itself. Munsterberg’s work was remarkably ahead of its time, precipitating a tremendous impact on what was to be the field of Film Studies.

Andre bazin's myth of total cinema

Andre Bazin who wrote the book ‘The Myth of Total Cinema’ was in support of realism. He examined the history and emergence of the technology of cinema. According to him, cinema was brought into this world to reproduce the world around us in perfect detail. Bazin argues for the inventors of photography and cinema were not just satisfied with producing technology for sale. Though he does admit that some were primarily concerned with this – but they were striving for the imitation and reproduction of the “real” world.

The desire for realism derived from the production of technology. Andre Bazin explains ‘The cinema is an idealistic phenomenon.’ He argues that a conception, an understanding of cinema cannot or should not be drawn from the economic and technological development of photography.

As per Andre Bazin, The myth or guiding desire of realism and cinema is the reproduction of the world unburdened, uncoloured, by an artist’s interpretation or subjectivity. Realism is the attempt or aim of objectivity enabled by mechanical reproduction of reality. Bazin believes the desire for realism is the natural, organic beginning and end point of cinema. Bazin believes that the myth of total cinema realism was held in every mans’ heart long before the technology was invented.

Transference and Synaesthesia

Transference was first described by Sigmund Freud, who acknowledged its importance for psychoanalysis for better understanding of the patient's feelings. For instance, one could mistrust somebody who resembles an ex-spouse in manners, voice, or external appearance; or be overly compliant to someone who resembles a childhood friend.

 In The Psychology of the Transference, Carl Jung states that within the transference dyad both participants. Transference (broadly defined) and interpretation tend to intermingle, both in the clinical analytic encounter, and in any reading of art, be it by laymen, analysts or other scholars.

Synaesthesia's display combines information about the frequency, location and diffuseness of sound. The display is sufficiently detailed to let you distinguish several individual instruments, singers, or special effects on screen by their location, shape and color, and sufficiently fast to distinguish individual drum beats and notes.

The interest in colored hearing dates back to Greek antiquity, when philosophers asked if the color chroia, currently we know timbre of music was a quantifiable quality. Isaac Newton proposed that musical tones and color tones shared common frequencies, as did Goethe in his book, "Theory of Color."

Foregrounding

Foregrounding is the part of a scene or representation that is nearest to and in front of the spectator. Though foregrounding theory was developed to understand responses to both literature and film, empirical research concentrated exclusively on reader response, until now. The present article examines whether `literariness' in film causes the same effects as those established for literature. In two experiments participants were shown one scene from Shakespeare film adaptations, either low or high in foregrounded elements.

 It was expected that showing these materials twice would reveal differences in levels of foregrounding effects. It was found that seeing high-foregrounding scenes twice was more enjoyable and made spectators perceive more significant aspects than the low-foregrounding versions of the same scenes did. A third experiment examined the extent to which a foregrounding effect requires spectators' awareness of a `background'.

 Participants in the experimental group were shown a conventional dinner scene (background) before they saw an unconventional one. The control group saw the same unconventional scene but first a (conventional) shootout scene. Results showed that the unconventional scene was considered more interesting and drew participants' attention more in the experimental group than in the control group.

 Also, the first group concentrated more on form aspects of the scene than the control group. These results present strong evidence that deviation leaves clear traces of foregrounding effects in spectators' responses.

Russian formailsm

A school of literary theory and analysis that emerged in Russia around 1915, devoting itself to the study of literariness, i.e. the sum of 'devices' that distinguish literary language from ordinary language. In reaction against the vagueness of previous literary theories, it attempted a scientific description of literature (especially poetry) as a special use of language with observable features. This meant deliberately disregarding the contents of literary works, and thus inviting strong disapproval from Marxist critics, for whom formalism was a term of reproach.

With the consolidation of Stalin's dictatorship around 1929, Formalism was silenced as a heresy in the Soviet Union, and its centre of research migrated to Prague in the 1930s. Along with 'literariness', the most important concept of the school was that of defamiliarization: instead of seeing literature as a 'reflection' of the world, Victor Shklovsky and his Formalist followers saw it as a linguistic dislocation. or a 'making strange'.

In the period of Czech Formalism. Jan Mukarovsky further refined this notion in terms of foregrounding. In their studies of narrative, the Formalists also clarified the distinction between plot (sjazet) and story (fabula). Apart from Shklovsky and his associate Boris Eikhenbaum, the most prominent of the Russian Formalists was Roman Jakobson, who was active both in Moscow and in Prague before introducing Formalist theories to the United States.

A somewhat distinct Russian group is the 'Bakhtin school' comprising Mikhail Bakhtin, Pavlev Medvedev, and Valentin Voloshinov; these theorists combined elements of Formalism and Marxism in their accounts of verbal multi-accentuality and of the dialogic text. Rediscovered in the West in the 1960s, the work of the Russian Formalists has had an important influence on structuralist theories of literature, and on some of the more recent varieties of Marxist literary criticism.

If cutting is prose, then montage is poetry

Creating a cutting for any event is an art.  It takes patience, knowledge of structure, and a full understanding of the author's story.  Prose is no exception.  Do not assume that because you can make use of short story, or a chapter from a book, that cutting a piece is any simpler.  Because it's not. This event offers its own challenges to cutting that other events do not.  It also offers some of the same hurtles.

 The Prose Interpretation is not like Humorous/Dramatic Interpretation in the sense that full-blown character pops are not used.  That level of physical interpretation and back-and-forth dialogue is anti-Prose.

Montage is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. The term has been used in various contexts. It was introduced to cinema primarily by Eisenstein, and early Soviet directors used it as a synonym for creative editing. In France the word "montage" simply denotes cutting. The term "montage sequence" has been used primarily by British and American studios, which refers to the common technique as outlined in this article.

The montage sequence is usually used to suggest the passage of time, rather than to create symbolic meaning as it does in Soviet montage theory.

Rhetoric keeping film into perspective

Rhetoric Studies examines public advocacy and social expression by exploring influential speeches, internet posts, court opinions, media representations, written documents, and the many ways society engages in persuasive arguments.

 Courses focus on political, legal, environmental, social, activist, identity politics, and cultural argument while providing a solid grounding in the theory, practice, and criticism of contemporary communication. This rhetorical understanding on the kinds of communication is in which they have interest. In the process, they learn what makes rhetoric effective as well as how it affects their and others’ lives.

The simplest definition for visual rhetoric is how/why visual images communicate meaning. Visual rhetoric is not just about superior design and aesthetics but also about how culture and meaning are reflected, communicated, and altered by images. Visual literacy involves all the processes of knowing and responding to a visual image, as well as the thought that might go into constructing or manipulating an image. 

Features of rudolf arnheim's theory of film

Rudolph Arnheim transferred the notion Gestalt, as developed by Gestalt psychology, to aesthetics. In the book Art and Visual Perception he uses the term “configuration” (shape). To him it represents the foremost and simplest aspect of perception, a perception that is not only something sensory which then becomes conceptual during the process of generalization, but one that appears as a general  conceptual formation from the very first moment.

 If I were to say, see a dog, it would appear to me at the very beginning from the aspect of “doglikeness“. And so Arnheim reveals elements in the sensory form which conjoin it with the more abstract, higher mental and spiritual matters.

To observe means to create “perceptive concepts“, each outside vision is in itself already an inner vision which comprehends the object as a three-dimensional whole; this three-dimensional whole has unchangeable configurations and is not limited to a concrete direction of projection.

 Configuration never reveals facts about an individual object, i.e. the category to which the object belongs; it is not the form of a single object, but a whole class of things. A related concept is SCHEME, a term it differs from because it considers the active side of experience as vital. Arnheim is not so interested in repetition and patterns as he is in exploring the world, simplification, integrity and the importance of experience

Constructivism

Constructivism was founded by an artist/architect named Vladimir Tatlin. Tatlin was born in Moscow in 1885 and studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and at the Penza Art School. An underlying feature of Constructivism is that it was promoted by the new Soviet Education Commissariate which used artists and art to educate the public.

Later, as an educator, Tatlin emphasized design principles based on the inner behavior and loading capacities of material. It was this work with materials that inspired the Constructivist movement in architecture and design.

Constructivist art is characterized by a total abstraction and an acceptance of everything modern. It is often very geometric, it is usually experimental, and is rarely emotional. Objective forms and icons were used over the subjective or the individual. The art is often very simple and reduced, paring the artwork down to its basic elements. Constructivist artisits often used new media to create their work.

The context of Russian Constructivist art is important, "the Constructivists sought an art of order, which would reject the past (the old order which had culminated in World War I) and lead to a world of more understanding, unity, and peace."