Q1 of 21 Page 162

Vocabulary

Find out and write down the definitions of the following terms used in the film industry


script-


project –


montage-


flashback-
stage-


prop –


Footlights-


script- the written text of a complete film, including instructions for the actors and directions for filming the entire film.

project – an assignment of a complete film


montage- the technique of selecting, editing, and piecing together separate sections of film to form a continuous whole


flashback- showing a past event in a moment at present. It is the recalling of a past event at present.
stage- a raised platform for performances


prop – things used to make the visualisation prominent in a film.


Footlights- a row of spotlights along the front of a stage at the level of the actors' feet.


More from this chapter

All 21 →
1

Autobiographical accounts make interesting reading when the author selects episodes that are connected to the pursuit of excellence. How does this apply to Ingmar Bergman’s narration of the details of film-making?

 2

Comment on the conversational tone of the narration. Compare this with the very informal style adopted by Umberto Eco in the interview.

 2

Grammar

We saw in the grammar section of the unit on Freedom that a sentence can consist of clauses and phrases.
Let us now look at the basic form of a sentence and study its parts. A sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. Take the sentence
My grandmother had a very large old apartment in Uppsala.
The sentence here talks about ‘the grandmother’. ‘The grandmother’ is the subject of the sentence. What is said about the subject ‘grandmother’ is the predicate of the sentence. ‘had a very large old apartment in Uppsala’ is the predicate.
Generally a sentence begins with the subject. The predicate begins with a verb. ‘had’ is the verb in the example above. The subject answers the question ‘who’ or ‘what’ before the verb.


Question: ‘Who had?’


Answer: ‘the grandmother had’.


The object of a sentence generally comes after the verb. It answers the question ‘what’ after the verb. ‘Had what?’ ‘had an apartment’ is the answer. ‘Apartment’ is the object of the sentence. The word ‘apartment’ has an article and two adjectives preceding it.
‘a very large old apartment’; the word ‘very’ is an intensifier for the adjective ‘large’. We are also given information about the location of the apartment, ‘in Uppsala’. This is a prepositional phrase and consists of a preposition and a noun. ‘in Uppsala’ is an adjunct. It gives additional information.


TASK


Analyse the parts of the following sentences according to the pattern above


• My association with film goes back to the world of childhood.
• This is an almost impossible task.
• Thus the script is a very imperfect technical basis for a film.
• I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.
• The ability to create was a gift.

 3

Pronunciation

We have seen that it is not necessary, nor desirable, to pronounce every sound perfectly to be understood. Quite a lot of sounds that you might expect to hear are not actually pronounced. In rapid speech, sounds may be left out or elided, especially when they occur as part of a cluster of consonants. For example, in the phrase ‘next day’, the /t/ is lost
next/ day


TASK
Mark the consonants that are left out or elided in the following utterances


• new textbooks -
• written scripts-
• he must be ill-
• mashed potatoes-