These slides accompany a University of Calgary class in Smartphone Movie Making in the School of Creative and Performing Arts

1. School of Creative and Performing Arts
University of Calgary
Smartphone Movie Making
Lorene Shyba
www.loreneshyba.ca
E-mail:
lorene.shyba@gmail.com
Drama 571

2. Explores smartphone video and
computer applications to
participate in various styles of
moviemaking; expressionistic,
narrative, and documentary. You
will also be introduced to
screenwriting and cinematic
aesthetics such as composition
and audio design, plus gain
practical skills in editing and
delivery systems.
What is Drama 571 about?Class Wiki Website
lorishyba.pbworks.com
• Slideshows
• Assignments
• Screenings
• Demo Reel

3. Explores smartphone video and computer
applications to participate in various styles of
moviemaking; expressionistic, narrative, and
documentary. You will also be introduced to
screenwriting and cinematic aesthetics such as
composition and audio design, plus gain
practical skills in editing and delivery systems.
What is Drama 571 about?

4. Styles and Types (Modes) of Films
REALISM CLASSICISM FORMALISM
Documentary F I C T I O N Expressionism
Hue: A Matter of Colour Boogie Doodle
Bowling for Columbine 8 ½ Fellini
NB. These are not airtight categories and often overlap.
Styles
Types
(modes)
Gone With the Wind

5. Characteristics of Formalist Cinema
• Emphasis on technique and expression moves formalism
toward the “avant garde” or total abstraction. Conveyed
by distorting the surface of the material world
• Highly subjective experience of reality
• AKA “Expressionists” – concerned with spiritual and
psychological truths
• Formalist cinema excels in dealing with ideas — political
religious, philosophical

6. What About the “Classical”Style?
• Called “Classical” because of its Aristotelian narrative style
with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
• Classical cinema favours of a style of presentation that has a
surface believability.
• Often expensive, story oriented,
• High premium placed on entertainment value conforming to
popular genre.
• Characters often played by “stars” and audience is
encouraged to identify with their goals/values.

7. What are Characteristics of Realism?
• Realist filmmakers attempt to reproduce the surface of reality with a
minimum of distortion.
• We rarely notice the “style” in a realistic movie — concerned with
what is being shown rather than how it is being manipulated.
• Realists try to preserve the illusion that their film worlds are
objective mirrors of the actual world.
• The camera is used as a “recording mechanism” to reproduce the
surface of tangible objects with as little commentary as possible.
• It is a style that excels in making us feel the humanity of others as
beauty of film is sacrificed to capture the authentic texture of reality.
• Also known as documentary.

8. What About Genre?
• Definition: A recognizable type of movie, characterized by certain
pre-established conventions. Common genres are Westerns,
Drama (Romance, War, Action etc.), Thrillers, Sci-Fi, Comedy,
etc. A ready-made narrative form.
• Genre was developed by French directors François Truffault,
Jean-Luc Godard and their Cahiers du cinema associates in the
mid-50s. Simultaneously with their Auteur Theory, they also
developed the theory of film genre.
• Believed that the genius of American cinema was its repository of
ready-made forms saying “The tradition of genres in a base of
operations for creative freedom.”

9. FIGURATIVE TECHNIQUES
Explores the use of artistic devices that suggest abstract
ideas through comparison. (All are “symbolic”)
Motifs can be a technique, an object, or anything that is
repeated but does not call attention to itself.
Symbols can be things that imply additional meaning to the
sensitive observer.
Metaphor is comparison that is not literally true. Cinematic
metaphors can be created through montage and editing.
Other figurative techniques are allegory, allusions
(analogy) and homage.

10. “NARRATIVE” or Story
Aristotelian Poetics distinguished between two types
of fictional narratives - mimesis (showing) and
diegesis (telling). Cinema combines both.
Narratology is the study of of how stories work —
the study of different narrative structures,
storytelling strategies, types of stories (genres)
and their symbolic implications.

11. POINT OF VIEW -- NARRATION
First-person narrative is where the cinematic equivalent to
the “voice” of a literary narrative is the “eye” or lens of
the camera. Eg?
Omniscient point of view is where the lens is the all-
knowing observer that supplies evaluations of the scene.
Eg?
Voice-over narration is common and when there is a
narrator that literally talks over the action. Eg?
Camera as buddy is uncommon but is when the camera is
treated like an active listener in the story. Eg?
Another WAY TO express ORIGINAL INSIGHTS.

12. Homework
Rideshare (Donovan Cook, 2011)
Shot entirely on iPhone (4) on a budget of $34K, Rideshare is a comed
about three strangers who answer a ad to drive a car from LA to DC.
The Trailer | Rent it on iTunes | IMDB complete listings

13. 1. Chart the story. Robert McKee’s Principles
What is the Inciting Incident? (The primary cause of what follows?)
How does the protagonist react to this? (the Quest)
The Progressive Complications? How are the subplots involved?
The Crisis? What is the crisis decision?
The Climax? What’s the “value swing”?
The Resolution? What’s the point of this resolution in terms of
dramatic structure?
2. What other technology is being used besides iPhone?
Rideshare Screening: Think About …