FMS 100 Final Exam Questions With Answers Updated 2024/2025 | Scored A+

Analog vs. Digital - ANSWER--*Analog*: Film is an analog medium in which the camera creates an image by recording through a camera lens the original light given off by the subject, and stores this image on a roll of negative film stock. We call it analog because the image is analogous, or proportional, to the input. Requires: camera, processor, and a projector. -*Digital*: Involves an electronic process that creates its images through a numbered system of pixels. Digital images do not have a physical relationship to the original. They are not exactly images but rather thousands of digits stored on a flash card or a computer hard drive. *The essential difference comes down to how the light is captured as an image. Digital uses a sensor, which transfers light as data onto a memory chip; film uses silver nitrate particles embedded on celluloid*. 3 Phases of Moviemaking - ANSWER--*Preproduction*: Consists of planning and preparation. It takes as long as necessary to get the job done, on average a year or two. Initially, filmmakers develop an idea or obtain a script they wish to produce. Once the rights to produce are contracted and purchased, producers spend months arranging and financing for production. Another two or three months may be spent rewriting the script. They estimate and reestimate budgets. -*Production*: the actual shooting, can last up to six weeks to several months or more. -*Postproduction*: Consists of three phases: editing, preparing the final print, and bringing the film to the public (marketing and distribution). In brief, editing consists of assembling the visual images and sound recordings, adding musical score and sound effects, adding special effects, dubbing. Preparing the final print consists of timing the color print, which involves inspecting each shot of a film and assigning color corrections and printer light values to maintain consistency of brightness and color. Bringing the film to the market consists of determining the marketing and advertising strategies and budgets, setting the release date and number of theaters, finalizing distribution rights, and exhibiting the film. Vertical Integration - ANSWER-*Studios that followed a top-down hierarchy of control, vesting ultimate managerial authority in their corporate officers and board of directors.* -The early studios relied on a system dominated by a central producer, a person in charge of the well organized mass production system that was necessary for producing feature films. This began in 1912 and was dominant by 1914. Central producers controlled the overall and day to day operations of their studios. They supervised a team of associate supervisors, each with an area of specialization, who handled the day to day operations of production but the central producer retained total control. -By the late 1920s= central producer systems encouraged quantity over quality. Studio System vs. Independent System - ANSWER--*Studio System*: practiced vertical integration up until 1931, then the film industry adopted the producer unit system (an organizational structure that included a general manager, executive manager, FMS 100 Final Exam Questions With Answers Updated 2024/2025 | Scored A+ production manager, studio manager, and individual production supervisors. Each studio had its own configuration. This system valued profitability above all else. The studio system established an industrial model of production through which american filmmaking became one of the most prolific and lucrative enterprises in the world. By the mid 1930s, Hollywood was divided into four kinds of film production companies: majors, minors, "B" studios, and independent producers. -*Independent System*: Sometimes called the package unit system coexisted within the studio system through the 1930s and 40s. The package unit system, controlled by a producer unaffiliated with a studio is a personalized concept of film production that differs significantly from the industrial model of the studio system. It governs the creation, distribution, and exhibition of a movie. An independent producer makes one film at a time, relying on rented facilities and equipment and a creative staff assembled for that one film. Decline of the Studio System - ANSWER-By the mid 1930s, the system had reacher a turning point due to numerous factors: -The studios were victims of their own success -Several actions taken by the federal government signaled that the studio's old ways of doing business would have to change (labor unions, 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act). -The studios began to reorganize their management into the producer unit system. -A shift in relations between top management and creative personnel that loosened the studio's hold on the system. -WWII: severely restricted the studios' regular, for profit operations. -The rise of television. Financing, Marketing, Distribution - ANSWER--*Financing*: no rules govern the arranging of financing. Money can come from the studio, the producer, the investment community, or a combination of these. In the old studio system, the general manager determined the budget. Today, usually the producer or a member of the producer's team prepares the budget with the assistant director. -*Marketing*: Preview screenings, focus groups, final changes to the film, media coverage, festival screenings and awards, and audience word of mouth. Determination of the release date, number of theaters, etc. -*Distribution*: exclusive and limited releases, key-city releases, and wide and saturated releases. Hollywood is planning to bring movies to homes at the same time, or close to it, that they are released in theaters. Blaxpoitation - ANSWER-the exploitation of black people, especially with regard to stereotyped roles in movies. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song - ANSWER-No studio would finance the film, so Van Peebles funded the film himself, shooting it independently over a period of 19 days, performing all of his own stunts and appearing in several unsimulated sex scenes. He received a $50,000 loan from Bill Cosby to complete the project. The film's fast-paced montages and jump-cuts were unique features in American cinema at the time. The picture was censored in some markets, and received mixed critical reviews. However, it has left a lasting impression on African-American cinema. Narrative/Narration/Narrator - ANSWER--*Narrative*: The story and how it is told. -*Narration*: the act of telling the story. -*Narrator*: Who/what tells the story. Narrative entails narration and implies a narrator. No such thing as third-person narration—there is always a subject, even if it never says "I". No objective point of view. If the narrator never refers to her-/himself as a character, then s/he may be considered an external narrator. An internal or character-bound narrator is identified with a character in the text. In the case of a frame narrative (story within a story) character-bound internal narrator at one level may be external to the other level. Types of Narration - ANSWER--*Voice over narration*: when we hear a character's voice over the picture without actually seeing the character speak the words. -*Direct Address narration*: the narrator interrupts the narrative to speak directly to the audience, breaking the fourth wall. -*Omniscient* knows all and can tell us whatever it wants us to know. -*Restricted Narration*: limits the info it provides the audience to things known only to a single character. Round vs. Flat Characters - ANSWER--*Round*: Complex characters; possess numerous, subtle, repressed, or even contradictory traits that can change over the course of the story. More life-like. -*Flat*: Uncomplicated characters that exhibit few distinct traits and do not change significantly as the story progresses. *One is not more legitimate than the other* 3 Act Narrative Structure - ANSWER-This three-act structure dominates Hollywood and Hollywood-style productions: *Exposition*, rising action, *climatic moment*, falling action, *resolution*. -Central character, external goal or internal goal signified by external symbol ("objective correlative"). -Overcomes obstacles and rising stakes to make final victory or defeat more impactful and satisfying. Story vs. Plot (Fabula vs. Syuzhet) - ANSWER--*Story*: the story. Capital S Story (Fabula). Sum total of events plus character backstories and relevant events in the storyworld. Ex. In any post-apocalyptic narrative, the apocalypse and its causes are part of the story, even if they are not depicted in the film. -*Plot*: how it is told= Syuzhet = Roughly, "plot"; The order and manner in which the Story events occur. May be linear or shuffled by flashbacks or flash forwards. Crosscutting- shows Story events that occur simultaneously but reorders them in plot sequence. Duration (Summary, Sketch, Real Time) - ANSWER--Summary: screen duration is shorter than plot duration. -Sketch: screen duration is longer than plot duration. -Real Time: screen duration corresponds directly to plot duration. Suspense vs. Surprise - ANSWER-Suspense: a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen. Surprise: an unexpected or astonishing event, fact, or thing. Diegetic vs. Nondiegetic - ANSWER--*Diegetic*: The total world of the story- the events, characters, objects, settings, and sounds that form the world in which the story occurs. -*Non-diegetic*: The things we see and hear on the screen that come from outside the world of the story, such as musical score and voice over comments from a third person voice over narrator.