Chapter 2 How to Watch a Movie

    

MOONLIGHT | BLUE from Russell Leigh Sharman on Vimeo.

    Chapter 2 of the book Moving Pictures talks about cinematic language in films. Often times we don’t notice cinematic language but we always feel them and its effects. We can notice patterns in the sound and music, narrative storytelling, and dialogue, which are all called motifs. What is special about film versus still photography is that film has the added effect of movement. Movement can be the camera movement, objects, props, scenery moving, and especially the actor’s movement. These help make the story more dramatic and help pull the audience into the story.

    One element of cinematic language that I like most is the use of color in Moonlight (2016). The entire film is color graded to have vivid deep colors and in deep important scenes the coloration is very blue, or sometimes pink. This gives the audience a distinction between good moments in the movie and intense serious moments. This use of color is called composition which (Sharman) defines as an “arrangement of people, objects and setting within the frame of an image”. The colorations used in Moonlight also served another purpose. As almost all of the actors in the film are Black, it was important to not wash out their skin tone. The deep blue tint enhances the Black actor's faces making them appear more clearly on screen.

    The most important element of cinematic language is theme. This is the deeper indirect meaning behind any film that shapes all other elements of the cinematic language used in the movie. It changes how the cinematographer uses camera angles, filters, and camera movement. How the sound designers use sound effects, music, and ambient noises. Finally how the actors say their dialogue, body movements, and facial expressions. This is also why good casting is important, because you may have a great actor, but their style may not always fit the theme of the movie you are working on. It is critical when analyzing cinema to find the theme or themes as they appear throughout the movie.