4. Some points in the semiotics of cinema
Cinematographic language: To study the orderings and functionings of the main signifying units used in the filmic message. - 92
Cinema and narrativity
Is the corpus to be made of feature films?
What one wants to study? The cinema possesses various "dialects" and each one these dialects can be a subject of a specific analysis.
But, there is an hierarchy of concern.
Social function of cinematic machine:
1. Whether it was means of preservation or crating archive.
2. Whether it was auxiliary technology for research and teaching in sciences.
3. Whether it was a new form of journalism and or an instrument of sentimental journalism.
Over all these possibilities, cinema emerged as a machine that tells stories. In the realm of cinema, the nonnarrative genres like documentary or technical films are marginalized and realm gets identified with Feature Films. -94
Nonnarrative films are distinguished from "real" films by their social purpose and by their content much more than by their "language processes." -94
Basic figures in the semiotics of cinema: Montage; Camera movement; Scale of the shots; Relationships between the image and speech; Sequences
In filmosemiological exercise, narrative films are priority, not exclusivity; because most of so-called filmic procedure is in fact filmic narrative.
Studies of denotation and studies of connotation in the semiotics of the cinema
The semiotics of cinema can be conceived of either as the Semiotics of denotation or the Semiotics of connotation.
The study of connotation brings us closer to the notion of cinema as an Art. - 96
The art of film is located on the same semiological "plane" as literary art: The properly aesthetic orderings and constraints - versification, composition, and tropes in the first case; framing, camera movements, and light "effects" in the second - serve as a connoted instance, which is superimposed over the denoted meaning. - 96
As for connotation, which plays a major role in all aesthetic languages, its significate is the literary or cinematographic "styles," "genre" (the epic, the western, etc.), "symbol" (philosophical, humanitarian, ideological, and so on), or "poetic atmosphere" - and its signifier is the whole denotated semiological material, whether signified or signifying. 96-97
through its procedure of denotation, the cinema is a specific language. - 97
The concept of diegesis is as important for the film semiologist as the idea of art; the concept, derived from Greek, means "narration" and was used particularly to designate one of the obligatory parts of the judiciary discourse, the recital of facts.
How does the cinema indicate successivity, precession, temporal breaks, causality, adversative relationships, consequence, spatial proximity, or distance, etc.? These are central questions of the semiotics of the cinema. - 98
"Cinematographic language" is first of all, literalness of the plot. - 99
Paradigmatic and syntagmatic categories
An example: The alternating syntagm
Other problems
Film contains nothing corresponding to purely distinctive units of the second articulation; all of its units - even the simplest, like the dissolve and the wipe - are directly significant. The commutations and other manipulations by which the semiotics of the cinema proceeds therefore affect the large significatory units. The "laws" of cinematographic language call for statements within a narrative, and not monemes within a statement, and still less phonemes within a moneme. - 105
If the shot is not the smallest unit of filmic signification (for a single shot may convey several informational elements), it is at least the smallest unit of filmic chain. - 106
Cinematographic language: To study the orderings and functionings of the main signifying units used in the filmic message. - 92
Cinema and narrativity
Is the corpus to be made of feature films?
What one wants to study? The cinema possesses various "dialects" and each one these dialects can be a subject of a specific analysis.
But, there is an hierarchy of concern.
Social function of cinematic machine:
1. Whether it was means of preservation or crating archive.
2. Whether it was auxiliary technology for research and teaching in sciences.
3. Whether it was a new form of journalism and or an instrument of sentimental journalism.
Over all these possibilities, cinema emerged as a machine that tells stories. In the realm of cinema, the nonnarrative genres like documentary or technical films are marginalized and realm gets identified with Feature Films. -94
Nonnarrative films are distinguished from "real" films by their social purpose and by their content much more than by their "language processes." -94
Basic figures in the semiotics of cinema: Montage; Camera movement; Scale of the shots; Relationships between the image and speech; Sequences
In filmosemiological exercise, narrative films are priority, not exclusivity; because most of so-called filmic procedure is in fact filmic narrative.
Studies of denotation and studies of connotation in the semiotics of the cinema
The semiotics of cinema can be conceived of either as the Semiotics of denotation or the Semiotics of connotation.
The study of connotation brings us closer to the notion of cinema as an Art. - 96
The art of film is located on the same semiological "plane" as literary art: The properly aesthetic orderings and constraints - versification, composition, and tropes in the first case; framing, camera movements, and light "effects" in the second - serve as a connoted instance, which is superimposed over the denoted meaning. - 96
As for connotation, which plays a major role in all aesthetic languages, its significate is the literary or cinematographic "styles," "genre" (the epic, the western, etc.), "symbol" (philosophical, humanitarian, ideological, and so on), or "poetic atmosphere" - and its signifier is the whole denotated semiological material, whether signified or signifying. 96-97
through its procedure of denotation, the cinema is a specific language. - 97
The concept of diegesis is as important for the film semiologist as the idea of art; the concept, derived from Greek, means "narration" and was used particularly to designate one of the obligatory parts of the judiciary discourse, the recital of facts.
How does the cinema indicate successivity, precession, temporal breaks, causality, adversative relationships, consequence, spatial proximity, or distance, etc.? These are central questions of the semiotics of the cinema. - 98
"Cinematographic language" is first of all, literalness of the plot. - 99
Paradigmatic and syntagmatic categories
An example: The alternating syntagm
Other problems
Film contains nothing corresponding to purely distinctive units of the second articulation; all of its units - even the simplest, like the dissolve and the wipe - are directly significant. The commutations and other manipulations by which the semiotics of the cinema proceeds therefore affect the large significatory units. The "laws" of cinematographic language call for statements within a narrative, and not monemes within a statement, and still less phonemes within a moneme. - 105
If the shot is not the smallest unit of filmic signification (for a single shot may convey several informational elements), it is at least the smallest unit of filmic chain. - 106
