Film Analysis: Visual Style

Cinematographic Properties

Focus

Deep Focus

Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

Citizen Kane @ 19:26; animated sequence (107k).

Little Foxes (Wyler, 1941).

(Click Little Foxes illustrations for larger images.)

Frame on left combines deep and shallow focus.

Focal Length

Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) Bell Tower Sequence
View QuickTime movie.

Vertigo, Frame One Vertigo, Frame Two

Camera zooms out (toward wide angle) while tracking in--from telephoto (left) to wide angle (right).

Note Scotty's (James Stewart) hands on the railing and how the railing changes shape as the focal length changes. Also, windows that are not in view at the start of the shot come into view as the perspective changes.

View QuickTime movie of similar effect in Jaws (Spielberg, 1975).

Aspect Ratio

Frames from He Said, She Said

1.33
TV and
Pre-1952 Cinema

1.85
Masked
Widescreen

2.35
Anamorphic
Widescreen

	Frames from He Said, She Said
1.33 TV and Pre-1952 Cinema
1.85 Masked Widescreen
2.35 Anamorphic Widescreen

Anamorphic Widescreen

Original CinemaScope frame, displaying a squeezed circle.

Source: Max Smith, released to public domain on Wikipedia.

He Said, She Said (Kwapis & Silver, 1991)
View QuickTime movie.

Letterboxing

Pan and Scan

Masked Widescreen Original (Pee-wee's Big Adventure)
Full-Frame Videocassette Transfer: 1.33 to 1

DVD Transfer: 1.77 to 1

The Mobile Frame
Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)

See Film Art section on "The Long Take and the Mobile Frame."
View QuickTime movie.

Sample Mise-en-scene Analyses:
Monster's Ball and Double Indemnity

Additional cinematography/videography examples

From "Style and the Camera: Videography and Cinematography," Television: Critical Methods and Applications (Mahweh, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001); www.TVCrit.com.

Last revised: August 10, 2006