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What is Film?

This is the most basic question you can ask someone that is involved in this art; What is film?

We should start with the bare bones and give a definition of film, so I will define film as; an art that combines light, motion, and sound to portray a recorded story. In it's essence that is the basics of what a film is but there are many elements to what a film is which I listed as light, motion, and sound. Lets go through each of them to show how this adds to the making of a film.

Starting with light. Light sets the tone of the film, in a way it can be one of the first things that can help define the film that you are about to watch. It goes without saying that if the lighting is darker you are going to see a darker film, if it's lighter then you'll see a lighter film. Though this can be switched up to help create a sense of irony, or dark comedy. Light would also include the coloring of the film, which I'll go into more in a later post.

Next up we have motion. Motion would be anything on screen object or person or animal. Motion is what is portrayed on the screen that helps convey the story/plot which is a big point of film in itself. Motion also conveys the emotions of the characters in the scene, it acts as the bare bones that can make or break the scene. Motion is essential to film.

Then we end up with sound. Sound is the dialogue that is spoken, the music that is played, the car horn that is being honked annoyingly at our heroes. Sound is an interesting one because you can have a "silent" film, yet there is still music usually. Sound is the medium we use to convey the emotion of a scene or lack of sound can be used to drive up tension that can explode into a film climax that has been built up too. Music is a big topic for sound, if the song is in a major key it can portray the scene as comedic, happy, or excitement (like the character's just achieved their goal), and tension; but if the song is in a minor key it can portray, sadness, fear, and tension. Those are just the basics for music though if you caught it, tension can be built whether you are in a major key or minor key.

Now you use the above mentioned to help you create story, which is the script so essentially light, motion, and sound are the building blocks. Use these elements to bring the script off of the pages and bring it to life!

So those are the basic elements of a film but what else goes into it? Script, acting, editing, filming, set design, act... I will delve into some of these in later posts but for now the above mentioned items are the bare bones that can make a movie, and if you wish to make a movie you must be a student of light, motion, sound, and story.

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