Kabuki

Film Art

The Significance of Form in Film
-in films, a pattern exists; an internal system governs the relations among parts and engages your interest. This system of relationships among parts we shall call form
-we can analyze how a film’s parts relate to one another to create the spectator’s overall experience
-our experience of artworks is patterned and structured. The human mind craves form. For this reason, form is of central importance in any artwork, regardless of its medium. This entire study of the nature of artistic form is the province of the aesthetician
-artistic form is best thought of in relation to a perceiver, the human being who watches the film
-perception in all phases of life is an activity
-the mind is never at rest. It is constantly seeking order and significance, testing the world for breaks in the habitual pattern
-artworks rely on this dynamic, unifying quality of the human mind. They provide organized occasions in which we exercise and develop our ability to pay attention, to anticipate upcoming events, to draw conclusions, and to construct a whole out of parts
-every film coaxes us to connect sequence into a larger whole
-our activity cannot be in the artwork itself. A film is merely patterns of lights and dark on a screen. Objects do nothing. Evidently, the artwork and the perceiver depend on one another
-the artwork cues us to perform a specific activity. Without the artwork’s prompting, we could not start or maintain the process. Without our playing along and picking up the cues, the artwork remains only an artifact
-a painting uses color, line, and other techniques to invite us to imagine the space portrayed, to recall the moment before the one depicted or to anticipate the next one, to compare color and texture, to run our eye over the composition in a certain direction
-any work of art presents cues that can elicit a particular activity from the perceiver
-these cues are not simply random; they are