Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE: PERSPECTIVES
CHAPTER ONE Appreciating the Art of The Filmmaker.
CHAPTER TWO Language and Cinema.
Definitions of Language, Visual vs. Pictorial Films, Cinematic Language as Theft.
CHAPTER THREE The 'Five Domains in Which a Film 'Comes to Life.''
The Fiction, The Screen, The 'Screen of the Mind', The Audience (Heart, Mind, Guts), Audience Memory.
CHAPTER FOUR The 'Five Tasks' of the Filmmaker.
Information, Emotion, Visceral/Tactile/Neural Sensation, Vision, Storytelling.
The 'Two Vectors' of the Filmmaker
PART TWO: CRITERIA
CHAPTER FIVE Dramatic Narrative.
Story, Structure, 'Narrative Units', Characters, World.
CHAPTER SIX The Elements Before the Lens.
Sets and Locations, Actors and Staging, Performance, Props and Equipment.
CHAPTER SEVEN Screen Language.
Grammar and Language, Visual Language-Meaning through Use vs. Meaning inherent in the Language, Ikones, Color, Eye Trace, Uninflected vs. Inflected Cinematic Language, The Image, Visual Language, and Style.
CHAPTER EIGHT The Shot.
Composition and Mise-en-Scene, Aspect Ratio, Selection, Establishing Shots and Masters, Subject, Size, Framing.
CHAPTER NINE Camera.
Camera as Concept, Placement and Angle (Frontal, Profiles and Half-Profiles, Back Shots, Raking Angles, Top Shots, 'Dutched' Angles, Angles on the Axis of the Drama), Camera Movement (x-, y-, z-axes, Editing in Camera, Narrative Moves, Descriptive Moves, Pivots), Lensing (Depth of Field, Wide, Neutral, Long, Spherical, Anamorphic, Modulation of Space).
CHAPTER TEN Editing: the Nature of Cuts and Transitions.
Editorial Art, Walter Murch's Criteria for Making the Cut, Narrative Point of View, Modulation of Time and Space, Transitions.
CHAPTER ELEVEN Sound, Music, and the Screen.
Sound: Verisimilitude, The 'Screen of the Mind', Narrative Point of View, Subliminal Messaging, Tonal Dissonance and Irony, Register, Immersive Experience, Silence.
Music: Diegetic, Non-diegetic, Verisimilitude, Narrative POV and Subliminal Messaging, Tonal Dissonance and Irony, Register, Immersive Experience.
CHAPTER TWELVE Reading the Screenplay.
PART THREE: THE ART OF THE FILMMAKER: THE CASE STUDIES
The Filmmakers
Ari Aster: Hereditary
The Prelude
The Dinner Scene
The Family Seance
Barry Jenkins: Moonlight
Announcing Little
Announcing Chiron
Announcing Black
Chloe Zhao: Nomadland
Empire-Opening and Ending
Storytelling from Life, from the Filmmaker, Resonance from Nature
Fern and Dave-Invitation and Departure
CONCLUSION
Glossary of Abbreviations
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
