"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you--trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness." -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English dramatist, poet. Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, sc. 2, speaking to the players Featured Pages: Visual Literacy Site Map * What's New * Search Film Semiotics Summary Too bad I have to leave literature outside of our areas, but nevertheless, I use a lot refernces to great book (What is Art? Leo Tolstoy). Questions Notes Poetics (Dover Thrift Editions) Among the most influential books in Western civilization, the Poetics is really a treatise on fine art. It offers seminal ideas on the nature of drama, tragedy, poetry, music and more, including such concepts as catharsis, the tragic flaw, unities of time and place and other rules of drama. This inexpensive edition enables readers to enjoy the critical insights of one humanity’s greatest minds laying the foundations for thought about the arts. $1.50 "Speech is the Mirror of Action!" -- Solon ...

Language

"#1. In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man." Tolstoy, Chapter 5. Sender --> Medium --> Reciever

Basic Communication Model

The message can't be recieved without forming it one way of another (code). Both, sender and reciever must know the code to DECODE the masses.

Since the focus of this course is cinema, we are talking about film language. Aristotle considered language under texture (principle #4).

From theatre

PS

What is "film grammar"?

Homework

NB

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