DPHU1005 Chap.1 What Is Cinema? Film as a Medium
What Is Cinema? Film as a Medium
The first lecture of DPHU1005 asks what cinema is, and answers by giving you a way of looking. Film is treated as a medium with its own resources: the frame that selects and excludes, the control of duration, the layering of sound over image, and the placing of the viewer at a chosen distance and angle.
Those resources are what the course means by film style, and the three learning outcomes all depend on them: recognise and apply film terminology, analyse films through close viewing, and explain how style and context shape meaning and experience.
The Week 1 screening, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989), is discussed in the Week 2 tutorial with two readings, Marilyn Fabe's chapter on political cinema and a collection of reviews from the film's release.
Together they show that a film can be read as a deliberate argument and that its first audiences disagreed about what that argument was. This chapter sets out the vocabulary of film form and the habit of moving from observation to interpretation that every later topic builds on, and it prepares you for Quiz 1, which covers Weeks 1 and 2.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Film form: the system of relations among all of a film's parts, not just its story
- 02
Film style: the patterned use of framing, staging, editing and sound
- 03
Specificity of the medium: selection by the frame, control of time, sound against image
- 04
Close viewing: rewatching a short passage to describe exactly what is seen and heard
- 05
Fiction and documentary analysed with the same toolkit
- 06
Popular entertainment and art: why some set films frustrate expectations of good cinema
- 07
Do the Right Thing as political cinema, read through Fabe and the release reviews
- 08
From opinion to analysis: replacing judgement words with observations
Worked example · free
Rewriting a reaction as an observation
- +1Find a concrete moment that produced the reaction, such as the credit sequence or the final riot.
- +1Name the technique at work: rapid cutting, saturated colour, music on the soundtrack.
- +1Describe how the technique works on the viewer: rhythm, heat, confrontation before any story begins.
- +1State the meaning: the film announces its politics in its form before its drama.
Key terms
- Film form
- The overall system of relationships among a film's parts, including its story, style and structure, which together shape the viewer's experience.
- Film style
- A film's characteristic, patterned use of technique: how it frames, stages, cuts and sounds its material.
- Close viewing
- Careful, repeated watching of a short passage in order to describe its images and sounds precisely before interpreting them.
- Political cinema
- Filmmaking that addresses social conflict or power directly, often using form to provoke the audience into judgement.
- Credit sequence
- The opening or closing passage that presents a film's title and credits, often designed to establish tone or theme.
What Is Cinema? Film as a Medium FAQ
What does the course mean by the specificities of the film medium?
It means the things film can do that other art forms cannot: choosing exactly what the frame shows, controlling how long each image lasts, setting sound against image and placing the viewer at a chosen distance from people and events. A strong answer notices these choices instead of treating a film like a novel.
Why does Week 1 use Do the Right Thing?
It is a film that makes its form part of its argument, from a confrontational credit sequence to an ending that sets two opposing quotations side by side. That makes it a good first test of whether you can connect technique with meaning, and the Week 2 tutorial readings frame it as political cinema.
What is the difference between film form and film style?
Form is the whole system of relations among a film's parts, including its narrative structure; style is one layer of that system, the patterned use of camera, staging, editing and sound. In written tasks you usually describe style and use it as evidence for claims about form and meaning.
How should I take notes during a screening?
Write down specific moments with a rough time, the technique you noticed and a word about its effect, rather than a summary of the plot. Ten precise notes give you material for quizzes, short answers and analyses; a page of impressions gives you very little to cite.
Assessment move
Start a film-terms notebook in Week 1 and keep it all term. For every screening, log five moments with a time, the technique and its effect, then turn one of them into a three-sentence paragraph: observation, implication, context. Read the two Week 2 readings side by side and note one point where the reviews disagree with Fabe's reading.
Before Quiz 1, test yourself on the basic terms of film form and style until you can define each in a sentence.
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