My notes from the lecture week 2
The origin and introduction of French new wave cinema and its elements: Notes
The 20th century saw the introduction of film, newspapers, television and radio thus delevoped careers to expand these new industries, ie: Communication, cultural and media stuides which needed journalists, PR workers, advertising, marketers and disigners. Computer related industries demanded need for cyber studies, internet studies, cyber culture and web studies. All new technologies and the need for them can be dated back to France where Ferdinand de Saussure established semiotics: the study of signs.
Semiotics contained 2 components: the signifier ie; the library sign
and the signified; the library itself with all the books
Denotation is the actual meaning of the sign ie: sign reads dangerous curves ahead the denotation would be 'drive carefully'.
There were many new and differnt reasons for communications studies in the 1920's in the US due to the new effect of mass media after times of war which began to have a more minimal effect in the 30's. The 80's saw a return of mass effect which could be due to the increased fear of nuclear war and the hype such theories create lead to mass media frenzies and society beoming more heavily reliant in knowing what is going on in their world.
French New Wave cinema wanted to make films about these more important issues like the looming threat of nuclear war rather then hollywood cowboy movies. They did this by using different techniques such as:
- Shooting on location
- Using natural lighting
- Improvised dialogue and plotting
- Direct sound recording
- Long takes
All of these tehcniques and reasons for using such techniques are talked about in more depth on this website: http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/fnwave1.jsp
French new wave was encouraged by the cheap, cameras and audio equipment and the need for a more cultural take on hollywood cinema They used simple methods to tell complex, challenging stories like La Jetee which became the basis for Twelve Monkeys and Alphaville which might be claimed as the first work of cyberpunk.
I recently watched the movie 12 monkeys to see a modern take on French New Wave cinema and researched the technology elements of the film ie: time travel and why it was relevent in relatin to new technologies and came across an interesting analysis of this element here is the link: http://www.mjyoung.net/time/monkeys.html
The theory behind the time travel element and why it is relevant today, is that in the time these movies were made, the thought of the internet and other such tehnologies seemed just as far fetched as the theory of time travel. In an age where anything is possible, technologically speaking, the idea of time travel in the not to distant future is very plausable.
I found the movie interesting and at times a little confusing but as far as modern cinema goes, there were definitely elements that reflected the simple methods used to tell complex stories of french new wave cinema ie; time travel. I have not read the text however so could not tell whether they stayed true to the story without adding that 'hollywood' element.
