Special Effects
When it comes to special effects it all depends on what equipment you have. There are basic effects such as filters and gradients or slo-motion which are available on basic software such as Windows Movie Maker. Filters are used to give the images a particular look to acheive a distintct tone, i.e. sepia filters make the images look worn and old, so are used a lot in historic dramas such as Gladiator and Troy. Other filters inculde black and white where the images are drained of colour. This is usually an artistic choice and can impact the images dramatically depending on what image is being shown. Schindlers List is famously in black and white for nearly the whole film and this is to make the images look bleak and lifeless. But if there were images of some people having the time of their lives put into black and white it would have a completely different feel.
More advanced special effects include motion graphics and computer generated graphics (CGI). These are used to create images that are impossible to shoot, or at least practically impossible. These sort of effects are common place in modern day media and that is because directors, writers and producers want to show just how exciting they can make their production. The Star Wars franchise is said to have kicked off the special effects generation because of it's unrivalled amount of action and pace that was made possible because of special effects. The first film released in the franchise was called A New Hope and was released in 1977, so viewers were blown away by waht they saw on screen.
Continuity/Invisible Cuts
Continuity is vital in keeping the images moving and more importantly believeable. When editing a film or TV show together the idea is to go from shot to shot without the viewer really noticing. A shot of a man in a red shirt being cut next to a different shot of the same man in a black shirt does not make a continuous series of images. It isn't just clothes and make-up that has to stay the same from shot to shot; if a person walks to a window in one shot and stands there for a few seconds, the next shot must be of him standing there and not of him approaching the window again. It seems obvious but it is vital to get in right because bad continuity can break a viewers concentration and perhaps most importantly their enjoyment of the media.
Invisible cuts are in the same vain as continuity as they serve to keep the images flowing smoothly. An example of an invisible cut would be of the a man facing a window and turning round. If the shot changes as he is mid-turn then it has to follow exactly from the prervious shot. If it doesn't sync then it becomes visible. If it syncs correctly the it will be an invisible cut and keep the images flowing smoothly and will contine to hold the viewers attention. (2)
Kuleshov Effect
The Kuleshov effect is named after the Russian Lev Kulsehov who was the first aesthetic film theorist who lived from 1899 to 1970. He derived his theories and insight from American films, especially those of D.W. Griffith. He was a huge influence on other famous names, such as Eisenstein and Pudovkin. He was the first to see that montage, the arrangement of shots, was what really created the meaning of the shots and not the content within them. He experimented with this idea when he made a montage using one actor with a neutral face expression. He intercut 3 exact shots of the actor between 3 different shots of unrelated things – a bowl of soup, a woman draped over her husbands coffin and of a little girl playing with a teddy bear. The viewers of this short montage praised the actor for his sensitivity and acting skill, even though the actor had the exact same expression in each shot. This is what is known as the Kuleshov effect. It is a way of creating new meanings simply by choosing what shots to cut together and the order they are cut in. Kuleshov also put this into practice where he took shots of different locations miles apart and cut them together to make them seem like one landscape. An example of how this can be done is to take two different shots of unrelated things and cut them together to create a meaning.(4) An example would be of a shot of a submarine, and then cut it with a shot of some ice caps. These two unrelated things shown consecutively creates the meaning of location. Below is a link to the montage that illustrates the Kuleshov effect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUZCPPGeJ1c&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUZCPPGeJ1c&feature=related
180 Degree Rule
The 180 degree, or line of action, is a technique that is used when filming. It is an imaginary line that should not be crossed once a camera has taken a shot. It is used to keep the action coherent when cutting shots together. Another way of explaining this rule is to say when a line of action has been designated for any give shot, subsequent shots should not go past 180 degrees.If the line is broken and shots are taken from both sides of the line, it makes the edit of the shots look disjointed and the viewer’s point of view becomes disjointed and incoherent. (10) If this explanation doesn't quite make sense enough for you then the image in the link below should clear it up for you.
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