Narrative, Screen and Space in Film Influence a Viewers Interpretation - Coursework Example

Manovich draws some ideas from theorists that have made important contributions in cinema.  The parameters for my discussion of realism in cinema come from theorists like Bazin, Bordwell, and Comolli. As the filmmaker stages an event to be filmed, s/he has to establish first what to put in front of the camera and visualize the conflicts of the story as embodied in the script. The approach and style have to be decided first before starting on the setting, space, acting and choreography. The filmmaker can employ a pool of creative people, aside from the writers and actors and all the crew needed.

S/he has to decide on the appearance, gestures, facial expression, what to use whether professional or non-actors. Art and filmmaking, nevertheless, can be performed or made by a team or by one person. The dilemma of the filmmaker or artist is whether his/her message is understood correctly the way s/he wants it to be understood. Some artists do it profoundly, some vaguely, to let the viewer think, or get an instant reaction. These techniques in art and filmmaking, whether digital or in films, are introduced in different ways.

A few of these are discussed in this paper. Art, according to Aristotle, is the realization in the external form of a true idea and is traced back to the natural love of imitation which characterizes humans, and to the pleasure which we feel in recognizing likenesses1. There may be contradictions today of his notion on art by various artists because according to him art is limited to mere copying. It idealizes nature and completes its deficiencies: it seeks to grasp the universal type in the individual phenomenon2.

Such imitation may represent people either as better or as worse than people usually are, or it may neither go beyond nor fall below the average standard. Comedy is the imitation of the worse examples of humanity, understood however not in the sense of absolute badness, but only in so far as what is low and ignoble enters into what is laughable and comic3. When teaching at the Lyceum, Aristotle had a habit of walking about as he discoursed. It was in connection with this that his followers became known in later years as the peripatetics, meaning "to walk about".

What has this to do with art and filmmaking Lecturers and speakers in those times used strategies in conveying their message or in relating to their audience? Aristotle and the peripatetics presented their theories, and the Rhetoric, by giving lectures and telling stories in front of a live audience as if showing a movie without the aid of any technology. "Walking about" in front of a live audience with your mouth uttering words your mind dictates is a form of story-telling, as a film presentation, although what you are doing is life, and the film is recorded.