Aesthetics: The overall style, feel, and texture of a film. This can involve scenery, costume, and how they all tie in
Realism: an artistic approach and narrative style that aims to represent life, characters, settings, and events as closely as possible to their real-world counterparts.
verisimilitude – the appearance of being real or true (in terms of world building and costume design)
social realism – drawing attention to the social and political conditions (issues) of a particular time period and location.
magic realism – portrays fantastical events in a realistic tone to successfully build a believable world for the spectator.
hyperreality – artificially created media that is perceived to be reality, a heightened reality.
Visual Style: The visual language of a film, the look and feel of the film.
iconography – the use of reoccurring visual images and symbols that convey specific themes, evoke emotions, and build the film’s narrative.
intertextual referencing – the overlap of media, utilised to support the narrative of the film. The media could be other films, music, poetry, and literature.
visual/sound motifs – a visible or audible element that reoccurs throughout the film to carry the storyline, plays a symbolic role.
colour grading -a post-production process to alter the visual appearance of the film/shot. This can either be to make it more vibrant to convey a lighter, happier narrative, or it could be desaturated to convey dullness or negativity.
auteur trademarks – a trademark style, making a directors work immediately recognisable.
Tone: The overall atmosphere or mood of a film.
pathos – appeals to the audience’s emotions, typically sadness.
bathos – an anti-climax or a juxtaposition of shots to create a humorous effect.
suspense – excitement or anxiousness created by tension.
Suspenseful because it’s a Darren Aronofsky film; paranoia, perfectionism, and horror.
comedy – provides the audience with amusement, usually consisting of explicit one-liners, or on the other hand, intellectual pieces which are implicitly/unintentionally ‘funny’.
For context, this episode is particularly funny because in the image on the left, Lestat is reassuring Louis (out of frame) that he is free to sleep with whoever he wants as long as Louis comes home to him. Image 2 completely contradicts Lestat’s plethora of “Of course! Of course!”, Louis comes home after having relations with another man, Lestat is clearly not that calm nor collected. There’s 15 minutes between these scenes.
dramatic irony – when the audience understands more about a situation that most characters do; an ‘inside joke’.
distancing effect – also known as ‘breaking the fourth wall’, is when the illusion of being an unseen spectator is shattered, the characters on screen are directly interacting with the audience.
postmodern humour – Challenges accepted notions and expectations of genre, philosophy, and humanity.
Well done on all your recent posts related to Section C.
Your understanding is best revealed when you take the time to explain how the film example you’ve chosen relates to the word or phrase terminology.