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films may have to be shot in a studio when natural settings are unavailable, as in historical films, or are too remote. On the other hand, the effect of certain films can be utterly lost when inauthentic locations are substituted for genuine ones. The 1948 British Technicolor epic «Scott of the Antarctic», for example, was shot in the Swiss Alps, which facilitated filming but ruined the documentary aspect of the film. In some cases, rear screen projection can be used to provide a background setting against which the actors perform.

Notes:

1.on location – на натуре (место натурных съемок);

2.background setting – художественное оформление заднего плана.

COSTUME

Actors in motion pictures have been dressed in noticeable and often significant ways since the beginning of film history. The Italian epics made before World War I displayed Roman and Egyptian styles that the public had come to expect from popular paintings and stage plays dealing with these ancient subjects. After World War I, Ernst Lubitsch gained fame directing historical dramas, such as «Madame Du Barry» (1919), that were termed «costume dramas» even in their own day.

From the 1920s to the 1950s various national cinemas, but particularly those in France and the United States, vied with one another in using the cinema to promote fashion. Christian Dior’s rise in the world of haute couture was accelerated by his experiments with, and his advertising of costumes in motion pictures. In Hollywood a motion picture was often an opportunity for an actress to wear one gorgeous costume after another, and many screen designs initiated popular offscreen fashion trends. After World War II the Italian Neorealist movement proved that audiences could also be drawn by authenticity of dress. Since then, many films attempting to convey a realistic effect have been outfitted not from the costume shop but from second-hand clothing stores.

Costume also once played a more important role in an actor's identity. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and other stars of the 1920s and '30s all created characters in which costume was an integral part of the total identity. Audiences were often able to discern the type of character an actor was portraying – hero, villain, comic foil, romantic rival – by the clothes that he was wearing.

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Notes:

1.to gain fame – приобрести славу;

2.to promote fashion – рекламировать моду;

3.haute couture – высокая мода, моделирование и пошив одежды высокого класса;

4.advertising of costumes – реклама костюмов;

5.to be an opportunity for – быть возможностью для;

6.offscreen – закадровый;

7.to be an integral part – быть неотъемлимой частью.

THE SECRETS OF MAKE-UP

What are the basic techniques of make-up? You must always remember that light colours make features stand out, and dark ones make them recede. So, for example, if you want to make the person look older, put a light colour on the bony parts of the face – the forehead, the cheekbones, – to make them protrude. Then apply a dark colour on the fleshy parts, because these parts become thinner in old age – that is the hollows on the cheeks, the hollows under eyes and the temples. You then tell the actor to frown, then to laugh so that you can see the lines of the face and you exaggerate these lines with dark colour. If a person has to look old and haggard, you stretch an area of skin and cover it with a film of latex in liquid form. When it dries, you release the skin, the film creases, giving the effect of wrinkled skin. This can sometimes take up to 3 hours to complete this make-up. Then you should also remember that most people need more colour because the lights make the skin look much paler than it really is.

Film makeup differs significantly from that of the stage, where heavy lines are required to convey a characteristic expression to the audience. By means of the camera, the motion-picture audience can study the actor's face quite closely. The makeup must be flawless to stand up under such scrutiny, but, since it need not be applied nightly for several months running, as in theatre, elaborate preparations are feasible. Many of the greatest filmmakers have favoured naturalism in makeup – the unadorned lines of old age or a face caked with dust, running with perspiration. Whatever the style of makeup, its purpose is to make the face a more photogenic object, whether monster or ingenue. The efforts of wig makers, dentists, and plastic surgeons, as well as cosmeticians, are aimed at a heightened reality.

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The cosmetics industry grew up in the 1920s alongside motion pictures. Max Factor's fame owes much to the work his company did in modifying makeup to adjust to new types of film and lighting, including the shift to colour cinematography. With changing audience perceptions, caused by television and other factors, more natural makeup styles became just as popular as the «idealized» methods applied to the great studio stars. Sylvester Stallone is one actor whose makeup is exceedingly important in emphasizing his craggy, often sweating features. Ironically, the «natural look» is often the result of extensive makeup tests.

While makeup generally is meant to remain unnoticed or to play servant to the beauty of a face, in science fiction and horror films it may take centre stage. Although it is an art as old as society itself, makeup, like other aspects of cinema, is subject to technological development. Advances in contact lenses, prosthetics, and chemistry have made possible magnificent and startling displays such as those in «Planet of the Apes» (1968), «Time Bandits» (1981), and «The Lord of the Rings» trilogy and the never-ending flow of creatures that terrorize horror-film audiences.

Notes:

1.to protrude – выдаваться (наружу);

2.the effect of wrinkled skin – эффект морщинистой кожи;

3.by means of – посредством;

4.ingénue – инженю (простая, неопытная девушка);

5.natural look – естественный вид.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF FILMING

The technical aspects of the filming process include operating the camera, lighting the scene, and recording the sound. Once the film has been shot, it then must be processed and printed. During this process or after it, special effects can be added to the film to create dramatic visual images. The last step in the production of a movie takes place in the film laboratory, where the visual and sound elements of the final cut are combined into a composite print. When the composite print is run through the projector, action and sound together create for the audience the vision of the story intended by the filmmaking team.

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OPERATING THE CAMERA

The most important elements of a motion-picture camera are the lens, the shutter, and the two reels that supply the film and take it up again. When a motion-picture camera is in operation, the shutter opens and exposes the film, which receives an image formed by the lens. The shutter then closes and a mechanism called a pull-down claw moves the film along so that it can be exposed once again. In normal operation this cycle occurs 24 times per second, creating 24 separate still photos.

By operating the camera at speeds much faster or much slower than 24 frames per second, the apparent time of a motion can be lengthened or shortened. For example, filming a scene at a fast frame speed, but projecting it at the normal speed of 24 frames per second, slows down the action so that what happens in one second takes three seconds on screen. Operating the camera at a slow frame speed produces the opposite effect and is useful for viewing a very slow process, such as the growth of a plant. When a plant's growth is filmed at one frame every three hours and the film is projected at 24 frames per second, 72 hours of growth are compressed into every second, and on film the plant will appear to spring from the earth.

Notes:

1.operating the camera – работа камеры;

2.pull-down claw mechanism – грейферный механизм.

LIGHTING THE SCENE

A scene can be shot in a studio or on location, meaning that it is filmed in a place that has not been specially constructed for the film.

Two types of light source are used for interior shooting, whether in a studio or on location. Incandescent lamps, which range from a few watts to 10, 000 watts in power, resemble household light bulbs and are used for most filming. Arc lamps are stronger and cast a wider and more direct beam of light. They are used when the crew must illuminate a large area or when the scene demands extremely bright light.

Much location shooting occurs outdoors, where unpredictable weather can make lighting difficult. Even in daylight, the film crew uses lights and reflectors to increase the brightness of the scene or to fill in patches of darkness or shadow. When the shooting environment outside is too bright, film

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crews use devices such as butterflies, large pieces of silk or diffusion material, to cut down on brightness or to create shadow.

Sometimes a director elects to use day-for-night shooting, in which a scene is shot during the day but made to look as if it occurred at night. To achieve this effect, the film crew must manipulate the amount of light that reaches the film. Their methods include placing the subject in shade, positioning the camera so that it does not shoot the sky, and choosing certain types of filters to place on the lens.

Notes:

1.lighting the scene – освещение сцены;

2.day-for-night shooting – съемка, сделанная днем «под ночь»;

3.to choose certain types of filters – выбрать нужные фильтры;

4.light source – источник света;

5.direct beam of light – прямой луч света;

6.to cut down on brightness or to create shadow – уменьшить яркость или создать тень.

MONTAGE

Perhaps the most essential characteristic of the motion picture is montage, from the French word, which means «to assemble.» Montage refers to the editing of the film, the cutting and piecing together of exposed film in a manner that best conveys the intent of the work. Montage is what distinguishes motion pictures from the performing arts, which exist only within a performance. The motion picture, by contrast, uses the performances as the raw material, which is built up as a novel or an essay or a painting, studiously put together piece by piece, with an allowance for trial and error, second thoughts, and, if necessary, reshooting. The order in which the segments of film are presented can have drastically different dramatic effects.

Three types of montage may be distinguished – narrative, graphic, and ideational. In narrative montage the multifarious images and scenes involve a single subject followed from point to point. In a fiction film, a character or location is explored from multiple angles while the audience builds a comprehensive image of the situation being explored or explained. Graphic montage occurs when shots are juxtaposed not on the basis of their subject matter but because of their physical appearance. Some avant-garde works depend on the spectator's ability to match the graphic relations of assorted images, such as

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the people, objects, and the shapes of numerical and alphabetical figures or the torpedoes, swimming seals, and blimps. In graphic montage, cutting usually occurs during shots of movement rather than ones of static action. This cutting on motion facilitates the smooth replacement of one image by the next. In ideational montage, two separate images are related to a third thing, an idea that they help to produce and by which they are governed.

These three types of montage seldom appear in their pure form. Most ideational montage proceeds on the basis of the graphic similarity of its components, as does narrative montage when relying on graphic cutting to cover its movement. Similarly, the graphic matches between torpedoes, seals, and blimps in «A Movie» ultimately construct an idea of movement toward explosion and destruction. Besides the complications brought about by the intermixing of these types, the addition of the sound track multiplies the possibilities and effects of montage. Eisenstein and Pudovkin referred to such possibilities as «vertical» montage, opposing it to the «horizontal» unrolling of shot after shot. Because sound permits the establishment of relations between what is seen and heard at each moment, the film image can no longer be said to be a self-contained unit; it interacts with the sound that accompanies it. Sound relations (including dialogue, music, and ambient noise or effects) may be built in constant rapport with the image track or may create a parallel organization and design that subtends what is seen. In all, montage appears to be the most extraordinary factor differentiating the motion picture from the other arts.

Notes:

1.to convey the intent – выражать смысл;

2.narrative, graphic, and ideational montage – описательный (вербаль-

ный), графический и мыслительный (относящийся к мышлению) монтаж;

3.ambient noise – акустический фон окружающей среды.

RECORDING THE SOUND

In filmmaking, sounds are picked up by microphone and recorded on tape. During production a boom generally holds the microphone above the actors and out of camera range so that it is not seen on screen. Whenever possible, the original recording includes only dialogue. Additional sound can obscure the dialogue.

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Microphones of many different types have been used for sound recording. These may differ in sound quality, in directional characteristics, and in convenience of use. Conditions that may dictate the choice of a particular microphone include the presence of minor echoes from objects in the set or reproduction of speech in a small room, as distinct from that in a large hall. Painstaking adjustments are made by careful attention to the choice of microphones, by the arrangement and sound absorbency of walls and furniture on the set, and by the exact positioning of the actors. For recording a conversation indoors, the preferred microphone is sensitive in a particular direction in order to reduce extraneous noises from the side and rear. It is usually suspended from a polelike «boom» just beyond camera range in front of and above the actors so that it can be pivoted toward each actor as he speaks. Microphones can also be mounted on a variety of other stands. A second way to cut down background noise is to use a chest microphone hidden under the actor's clothing. For longer shots, radio microphones eliminate the wires connecting actors to recorders by using a miniature transistor radio to send sound to the mixer and recorder.

Sometimes shooting outdoors results in too much noise, rendering some of the dialogue unusable. In this case, the actors later record replacement dialogue, and their lines are then synchronized with the picture. During postproduction, sound experts create special sounds, such as a train wreck or the clinking of silverware and dishes during a dinner scene.

A complete sound track is built from tracks that have been recorded separately. The dialogue is on several tracks, the music on others, and sound effects on yet others. Many large, elaborate productions such as musicals have 30 or more separate tracks. Sound engineers combine, or mix, the individual tracks electronically in a recording studio while viewing the final cut of the picture.

Notes:

1.original sound recording – первоначальная, оригинальная, подлинная запись;

2.sound absorbency of walls – звукоизоляция стен;

3.painstaking adjustment – тщательная настройка;

4.the clinking of silverware and dishes – звон серебряных приборов и посуды;

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5.sensitive in a particular direction – чувствительный в определенном направлении;

6.a chest microphone – нагрудный микрофон.

MIXING

The final combination of tracks onto one composite sound track synchronous with the picture is variously known as mixing, rerecording, or dubbing. Mixing takes place at a special console equipped with separate controls for each track to adjust loudness and various aspects of sound quality. Although some of the new digital processes employ the record-industry technique of overdubbing, or building sound track-by-track onto a single tape, most mixing in films is still performed by the traditional practice of threading multiple dubbing units (sprocketed magnetic film containing separate music, dialogue, and sound effects elements) on banks of interlocked dubbers.

The mixer strives to strike the right dramatic balance between dialogue, music, and effects and to avoid monotony. Mixing procedures vary widely. Some studios use one mixer for each of the three main tracks, in which case the effects tracks have probably been mixed down earlier onto one combined track. In the early days of magnetic recording, stopping the rerecording equipment produced an audible click on the track; if a mistake were made, mixing would have to be redone from the beginning of the tape reel. The advent of back-up recording in the 1960s eliminated the click, making it possible for mixers to work on smaller segments and to correct mistakes without starting over. This enables the mix to be controlled by one person, who may be combining as many as 24 tracks. An even greater advance is the computerized console that enables the mixer to go back and correct any one track without having to remix the others.

Because of narrow track width, optical stereo sound tracks require a system of noise reduction such as Dolby Type A. The Dolby system works by responding to changing amplitudes in various regions of the frequency spectrum of an audio signal. The quieter passages are boosted to increase the spread between the signal (desired sound) and the unwanted ground noise. When played back, normal levels are restored, and the ground noise drops below the threshold of audibility.

Notes:

1.special console – специальный пульт;

2.to avoid monotony – избегать монотонности;

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