Explain how a director like Gillian Armstrong, through the use of open and closed forms, tackles the problem of period films having a tendency to look stagey and researched

What will be an ideal response?


Answer: The ideal answer should include:
1. Period films often have a tendency to look stagey and researched, especially when the historical details are too neatly presented and the characters are posed in a tightly controlled setting.
2. In Mrs. Soffel Gillian Armstrong avoided this pitfall by staging many of her scenes in open form, almost like a documentary caught on the run.
3. Armstrong photographed the main character and her children in such a way as to almost obscure them with the surrounding foreground and background environment and unimportant details like extras.
4. A more formalist director would have eliminated such foreground and background “distractions” and the clutter and brought the principal characters toward the foreground.
5. Armstrong achieves a more realistic and spontaneous effect by deliberately avoiding an “arranged” look in her mise en scène through the use of open forms.

Art & Culture

You might also like to view...

What important lesson did the members of Fletcher Henderson's band learn from the visiting Louis Armstrong?

a. how to improvise with a looser swing feeling b. how to make successful big-band arrangements c. how to play with a cool, laid-back attitude d. how to faithful follow the written arrangements

Art & Culture

Which of the following terms refers to a place or state free from worry, pain, and the external world?

a. bodhisattva b. dharma c. nirvana d. dhammapada

Art & Culture

In contemporary art, to “appropriate” means that an image _________.

a. is not a controversial one b. is meaningful to the situation c. has been borrowed from another source d. is drawn with a greasy crayon e. has been abstracted and simplified

Art & Culture

Originating in ________, art nouveau ("new art") was an ornamental style that became enormously popular in the late nineteenth century.

A. Germany B. France C. Austria D. Belgium

Art & Culture