 | This article is missing information about the history of the subject. In particular, nothing is said about dream sequences in literature, and only one sentence addresses anything other than film.(September 2016) |
A dream sequence is a technique used in storytelling, particularly in television and film, to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. The interlude may consist of a flashback, a flashforward, a fantasy, a vision, a dream, or some other element.
Commonly, dream sequences appear in many films to shed light on the psychical process of the dreaming character or give the audience a glimpse into the character's past. [1] For instance, in Pee-wee's Big Adventure , the purpose of Pee-wee's dreams is to inform the audience of his anxieties and fears after losing his bike.[ citation needed ] Other times major action takes place in dreams, allowing the filmmaker to explore infinite possibilities, as Michel Gondry demonstrates in The Science of Sleep . Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett points out in the book The Committee of Sleep that, while the main content of dream sequences is determined by the film's overall plot, visual details often reflect the individual dream experience of the screenwriter or director. For Hitchcock's Spellbound , Salvador Dalí designed sharply angled sets inspired by his own dream space. Ingmar Bergman lit dream sequences in several films with a harsh glare of light which he says reflects his own nightmares (though most people's have dim light), and Orson Welles designed a scene of The Trial to reflect the manner in which architecture constantly changed in his dreams. [2]
Films normally present dreams as a visually accessible or objectively observed space, a discrete environment in which characters exist and interact as they do in the world rather than restricting themselves to the subjective point of view a dream is normally experienced from in real life. [3] In this way films succeed in presenting a coherent dreamed world alongside the diegetic reality of the film. Via transition from one to the next, a film establishes not only the boundaries but resonances between the two worlds. These resonances can reveal a character's subjective observations or desires without breaking away from the objective viewpoint of the narrator, camera, or director with which some theorists, such as Christian Metz, believe the viewer identifies. [3] [4]
It is also possible to retroactively explain past plot elements as a dream sequence in order to maintain a plausible continuity in continuing fiction, such as a television series. Such was the case with Dallas , which had killed off Bobby Ewing, one of the more popular characters on the show; when the show's writers decided to bring Bobby back to the show, the tenth-season premiere "Return to Camelot" revealed that the events between Bobby's death and the end of season nine were all part of a nightmare his wife was having.
Audio or visual elements, such as distinctive music or coloration, are frequently used to signify the beginning and end of a dream sequence in film. It has also become commonplace to distinguish a dream sequence from the rest of the film by showing a shot of a person in bed sleeping or about to go to sleep. Other films show a dream sequence followed by a character waking up in their own bed, such as the dream sequence George Gershwin composed for his film score to Delicious . In classic Hollywood, the wavy dissolve was the standard way to transition between reality and a dream; there would be a close-up of the character having the dream, which would begin shimmering as we crossed over from reality to fantasy. [5] One of the most common contemporary transitions into a fantasy is to zoom in on a character's face and then spin around to the back of that character to reveal that he/she is now standing in an alternate reality. [5] Perhaps the most common technique today is the post-reveal in which a character is shown in an awkward or unusual situation, the scene builds to an even more absurd or unusual situation, and then suddenly there is a cut to the character waking up, [5] as exemplified by the opening sequence of Bring It On where a pep rally with irreverent routines builds into an abnormal moment where a character is revealed topless; she then wakes up to the viewers' realization that she had been dreaming.
This is akin to the technique wherein a dream sequence is a plot device in which an entire story has been revealed to be a dream. As opposed to a segment of an otherwise real scenario, in these cases it is revealed that everything depicted was unreal. Often this is used to explain away otherwise inexplicable events. Because it has been done in many occasions to resolve a storyline that seemed out of place or unexpected, it is often considered weak storytelling; a particularly referenced example of this is the TV show Dallas in which the entirety of season 9 was revealed in fact to have been a dream. Furthermore, in-jokes are often made in writing (particularly television scripts) that refer to the disappointment a viewer might feel in finding out everything they have watched was a dream. For example, entire sequences of the Family Guy two-part episode "Stewie Kills Lois" and "Lois Kills Stewie" are revealed to have taken place within a virtual reality simulation, upon which a character asks whether a potential viewer could be angry that they have effectively watched a dream sequence, but this technique can also be effective and its use lauded when the status of dream or reality is left more ambiguous as it was in The Wizard of Oz . [6]
The camera angles and movements used to depict dream sequences enable this kind of play and confusion between the diegetic reality and the dreamed world by presenting the dream world as a visually accessible space in which the character moves around the same as he does in the diegetic reality, as opposed to restricting themselves cinematographically to a subjective viewpoint even though dreams are generally understood to be experienced by the dreamer from their own subjective point of view. [3] This point is made salient by the films which choose to employ first-person camera angles such as Strange Days (1995) when it depicts recorded memories experienced via the "SQUID" recorder, the first-person sequence of Doom (2005), the beginning of Enter the Void (2010), and others, and how radically these moments stand out against normal cinematography even when the subject matter is something as subjective as a dream. Many have cited the general impracticality and unattractiveness of sustained first-person perspective in film as a reason for its absence from filmed dream sequences. [3]
The dream sequence that Atossa narrates near the beginning of Aeschylus' Athenian tragedy The Persians (472 BCE) may be the first in the history of European theater. [7] The first dream sequence in a film is more contested. [3] Film critic Bob Mondello claims that the first famous movie with a dream sequence was Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. (1924). [6] Predating this, Leslie Halpern claims the earliest dream sequence was in Edwin S. Porter's Life of an American Fireman (1903). [3] Earlier than either of these, James Walters points out G.A. Smith's use of a dream sequence in Let Me Dream Again (1900), but is careful to note the precariousness of claiming any film the first to feature a dream sequence given the rapid transnational development of cinema in its early years and that so many films from the period have been lost. [3]
Walters traces the dream sequence technique of revealing one thing to be another (revealing what the audience thought was a dream to actually be reality), back to magic lantern shows features "slipping" or "slipper" slides in which; some lantern slides for examples would feature two sheets of glass with different images painted on each, say a cocoon and a butterfly. The first sheet would be projected and then the second sheet slid on top of it to reveal a change, such as a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. [3] Dream sequences became very popular in the early period of film following this change of phase format. [3] Alongside this technique, a dream sequence which is introduced by a character falling asleep and then entering the dream sequence also became popular via such films as Edwin S. Porter's Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906). [3] What is important to note is these films created a model for dream sequences in which a character's inner thoughts are not represented subjectively (from the character's point of view), but from an objective camera angle that gives the audience the impression less of a character having a dream than of being transported alongside the character into a dreamed world in which the character's actions are captured by the camera in the same way they are the films' real fictional worlds. [3]
Mulholland Drive is a 2001 surrealist mystery film written and directed by David Lynch, and starring Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, and Robert Forster. It tells the story of an aspiring actress named Betty Elms (Watts), newly arrived in Los Angeles, who meets and befriends an amnesiac woman (Harring) recovering from a car accident. The story follows several other vignettes and characters, including a Hollywood film director (Theroux).
A point of view shot is a film scene—usually a short one—that is shot as if through the eyes of a character. The camera shows what the subject's eyes would see. It is usually established by being positioned between a shot of a character looking at something, and a shot showing the character's reaction. The POV technique is one of the foundations of film editing.
Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which facts in the world of a fictional work that have been established through the narrative itself are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work that recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former.
The Last Laugh is a 1924 German silent film directed by German director F. W. Murnau from a screenplay written by Carl Mayer. The film stars Emil Jannings and Maly Delschaft.
Meshes of the Afternoon is a 1943 American experimental silent short film directed by and starring wife-and-husband team, Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied.
Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It manipulates human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation between them and the vantage point of the spectator or camera. It has uses in photography, filmmaking and architecture.
The reset button technique is a plot device for interrupting continuity in works of fiction. The reset button device is used to return all characters and situations to the statusquo prior to some major change. It can be employed in the middle of a program to negate some portion of what came before. It is often used in science fiction television series, animated series, soap operas, and comic books. The reset button technique accommodates dramatic changes to characters and the fictional universe that might otherwise invalidate the show's premise with respect to future episodes or other plot details. For example, writers may use the device to improve the audience's experience of the lead character's death, which is usually impossible without effectively ending the work or significantly altering its course.
Diegesis is a style of fiction storytelling in which a participating narrator offers an on-site, often interior, view of the scene to the reader, viewer, or listener by subjectively describing the actions and, in some cases, thoughts, of one or more characters. Diegetic events are those experienced by both the characters within a piece and the audience, while non-diegetic elements of a story make up the "fourth wall" separating the characters from the audience. Diegesis in music describes a character's ability to hear the music presented for the audience, in the context of musical theatre or film scoring.
A film transition is a technique used in the post-production process of film editing and video editing by which scenes or shots are combined. Most commonly this is through a normal cut to the next shot. Most films will also include selective use of other transitions, usually to convey a tone or mood, suggest the passage of time, or separate parts of the story. These other transitions may include dissolves, L cuts, fades, match cuts, and wipes.
Continuity editing is the process, in film and video creation, of combining more-or-less related shots, or different components cut from a single shot, into a sequence to direct the viewer's attention to a pre-existing consistency of story across both time and physical location. Often used in feature films, continuity editing, or "cutting to continuity", can be contrasted with approaches such as montage, with which the editor aims to generate, in the mind of the viewer, new associations among the various shots that can then be of entirely different subjects, or at least of subjects less closely related than would be required for the continuity approach. When discussed in reference to classical Hollywood cinema, it may also be referred to as classical continuity.
In the post-production process of film and video editing, a dissolve is a type of film transition in which one sequence fades over another. The terms fade-out and fade-in are used to describe a transition to and from a blank image. This is in contrast to a cut, where there is no such transition. A dissolve overlaps two shots for the duration of the effect, usually at the end of one scene and the beginning of the next, but may also be used in montage sequences. Generally, but not always, the use of a dissolve is held to indicate that a time has passed between the two scenes. Also, it may indicate a change of location or the start of a flashback.
This article contains a list of cinematic techniques that are divided into categories and briefly described.
In film, a match cut is a cut from one shot to another in which the composition of the two shots are matched by the action or subject and subject matter. For example, in a duel a shot can go from a long shot on both contestants via a cut to a medium closeup shot of one of the duellists. The cut matches the two shots and is consistent with the logic of the action. This is a standard practice in film-making, to produce a seamless reality-effect.
In filmmaking, television production and video production, the single-camera setup or single-camera mode of production is a method in which all of the various shots and camera angles are taken using the same camera.
French impressionist cinema refers to a group of French films and filmmakers of the 1920s.
Scenes of City Life is a 1935 Chinese comedy-drama film directed by Yuan Muzhi. It is also translated as Cityscape. It is noted for being the first film directed by Yuan, as well as the first film appearance of Jiang Qing, who later became Mao Zedong's fourth wife. The film deals with themes of struggle under a capitalist system. It is a type of Shanghai film from the 1930s that were all involved in music, cinema, fashion, advertising, which contributed to the "Shanghai mystique". This film shares the style at that time with other movies like music, cinema, fashion and advertising which contributed to "Shanghai mystique" which embodied Shanghai's sophisticated pride.
Bontoc Eulogy is a 1995 docudrama directed by Marlon Fuentes and distributed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It was produced, written, directed, edited by, and stars Marlon Fuentes in the main role of a screen narrator going through an excruciating internal conflict regarding his heritage and following his thoughts as he recounts his grandfather's journey to the St. Louis World's Fair. It is the fifth film produced by Marlon Fuentes, following Arm in 1994.
Diegetic music, also called source music, is music that is part of the fictional world portrayed in a piece of narrative media and is thus knowingly performed and/or heard by the characters. This is in contrast to non-diegetic music, which refers to incidental music or a score that is heard by the viewer but not the characters, or in musical theater, when characters are singing in a manner that they would not do in a realistic setting.
The psychology of film is a sub-field of the psychology of art that studies the characteristics of film and its production in relation to perception, cognition, narrative understanding, and emotion. A growing number of psychological scientists and brain scientists have begun conducting empirical studies that describe the cognitive and biological underpinnings of motion pictures or what has been called "psychocinematics". Early theoretical approaches included works by psychologists Hugo Münsterberg and Rudolf Arnheim. Cognitive film theorists David Bordwell and Noël Carroll fostered its philosophical underpinnings.
This glossary of motion picture terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts related to motion pictures, filmmaking, cinematography, and the film industry in general.