There are a ton of links to different videos on this page. They are divided by categories which you can find in the table of contents. We also listed out key terms and movies for some of the videos, so you can also use the search feature to find specific topics on this page.
Pro study tip: Go to YouTube and watch trailers for the videos you are learning about. The trailers summarize the plot and tell you what the goals and themes of the film are (e.g. social commentary, good vs. evil).
This page was originally designed for USC’s CTS 190: Introduction to Cinema. However, it is helpful for other GE cinema courses like El Camino’s FILM 153: American Independent Cinema.
Videos about Cinema History
Inventing the Movies
The First Movie Magic: Thomas Edison, W.K.L. Dickson, Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, Étienne-Jules Marey, Celluloid Filmstrips, George Eastman, Sprocket Holes, Sprocket Gears (Shutter, Aperture, Lens, Pull Down Claw, Drive Sprocket, Supply Spool), Synchronous Sound, Andrew Holland, Black Maria, Vaudeville Circuit, Harry Houdini, Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Buster Keaton, Mass Production, The First Film Studios, Stage Performers
Movies are Magic: film definition, Peter Mark Roget, frame, Phi Phenomenon, Max Wertheimer, Phenakistoscopes, Stroboscopes, Stereoscopes, camera obscura, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre, Daguerreotype, George Eastman, Motion Studies, Étienne-Jules Marey, Zoopraxiscope, Thomas Edison, W.K.L. Dickson, Sequential Images, Technological Leap
The Lumiere Borthers: Thomas Edison, W.K.L. Dickson, Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, Cinématographe (Hand Crank, 35mm Film, Projector Machine), Auguste Luiére, Louis Lumiére, Sprocket Gears (Shutter, Aperture, Lens, Pull Down Claw, Drive Sprocket, Supply Spool), Oskar Messter, Maltese Cross (Film, Shaft, Sprocket, Cam, Maltese Cross), Geneva Drive, Woodville Latham, The Train Arrives at La Ciotat Station, Parisians, Magic Lanterns, Illusion of Reality, Actualités, Bioskop, Theatrograph, Woodville Latham, Latham Loop (Film Path, Loop, Lens), C. Francis Jenkins, Thomas Armat, Vitascope, Arsenic as Medicine, Seances, Victoiran “Teaar Cathcers,” Mass Communication, Amazon Basin, Pyramids of Giza, Ruins of Ancient Rome, Public Screenings, Movie Goers, Exploring the World
Georges Melies – Master of Illusion: Latham Loop (Film Path, Loop, Lens), Editing, Fades, Wipes, Dissolves, Psychological, Emotional, Political, Georges Méliés, Théátre Robert-Houdin, Double Exposure, Split Screen (Black Painted Glass Matte), Matting (Painted Matte), In-Camera Effects, Illusions, Proscenium Framing, Magic, Alice Guy-Blaché, A Trip to the Moon, Hugo, Tonight, Tonight, Knight of the Legion of Honour, Speical Effects, Longer and More Complex Narratives
The Language of Film: Language of Narrative, Grammar, Syntax, Punctuation, Illusion, Extravagance, Surprise, Presentation, Cinema of Attractions, Edwin S. Porter, Projectoscope, Synchronous Sound, Stories, Camera, Directing, Assembling, Parallel Action, Cross-Cutting, Life of An American Fireman, A Trip to the Moon, The Great Train Robbery, The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola, Parallel Action, The Dark Knight, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Fugitive, The Silence of the Lambs, Pans, Tilts, Revealing Narrative Information, Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese, Simultaneous Events
The Birth of the Feature Film: Storytelling Machine, D.W. Griffith, Studio, Production, Distribution, Exhibitor, Independent vs. Monopoly, Assembly Line, Write, Shoot, Edit, Distribute, Screen, One Reelers, Public Domain, Thomas Edison, W.K.L. Dickson, Patent Wars, Motion Picture Patents Company, The Trust, Motion Picture Patents Company, Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company, Hollywood, Feature Film, The Crusaders, The Loves of Queen Elizabeth, Quo Vadis, D.W. Griffith, Close-Up, Insert Shots, Flashbacks, Cross-Cutting, Birth of A Nation, Master of Cinema, Within Our Gates, Oscar Micheaux, Racism
Early German and Russian Cinema
The American Studio System
Classical & Post Classical Hollywood: movies in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s
The Golden Age of Hollywood (1920-1959)
- American Studio Global Dominance: MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Mutiny on the Bounty; Paramount Pictures, Shanghai Express, The Sign of the Cross, Morocco; Warner Brothers, The Public Enemy, Footlight Parade; 20th Century Fox, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley; RKO, Bringing Up Baby, King Kong, Citizen Kane; antitrust,
- Color Cinematography: toning, James Clerk Maxwell; Technicolor (slit, prism, film negatives, film, glue, rubber cementing rolls, projector) David O. Selznick, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Snow White, Pinocchio
- Aspect ratio, 4:3 (Academy Aperture), 16:9 (Widescreen), 8:3 (Cinerama), How the West Was One, 2.55: 1, 2.35.1 (CinemaScope), anamorphic lens, The Robe
Independent Cinema: 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, Classic Hollywood Cinema with High Key Lighting; Italian Neo-Realism, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Cinecittá, Rome: Open City; French New Wave, Cahiers Du Cinéma, Jean Delannoy, Rene Clement, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Agnés Varda, Cuba, Brazil, Japan, Spain, England, Senegal, Argentina, Columbia, United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., David Newman, Robert Benton, Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, New Hollywood Cinema, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Arc, blockbusters, E.T., Back to the Future, Die Hard, Dirty Dancing, Do the Right Thing, Sex Lies and Videotape, Pulp Fiction
New Hollywood: movies in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s
Redefining the Movies
Experimental and Documentary Films
Cinema Terms
Defining Film Noir
This 9 minute YouTube video called “Defining Film Noir” video defines Film Noir and Femme Fatale.
Realism vs. Formalism
This 5 minute YouTube video called “Realism vs. Formalism” shows the same story done with realism then with formalism.
CTCS 190: Sound Design Quizlet
CTCS 190: Final Terms Quizlet
Videos about Cinema Production
Screenplays
This 6 minute YouTube video talks about film production, screenplay, sluglines, action, dialogue, location scout, production designer, cinematographer, line producer, illusion of reality, protagonist, goal/objective, obstacles, Travis Bickle, Jerry Lungdegaard, humility, comfort zone, hero’s journey (status quo, call to assistance, assistance, departure, trials, approach, crisis, treasure, result, return, new life, resolution), Joseph Campbell, conflict external conflict, internal conflict, three act structure (Act 1, Act 2, Act 3), The Wizard of Oz, The Wrestler, Birdman, Brokeback Mountain, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, M*A*S*H*, Traffic, Magnolia, Pulp Fiction, Memento, Mulholland Drive, Rashomon, Man with a Movie Camera, format of screenplays, and building blocks of a film story.
Pitching and Production
The Film Maker’s Army
Dissecting the Camera
Sound Production
Producers
The Director
The Cinematographer
Designing the World of Film
Grip and Electric
Special Effects
This 11 minutes YouTube video about the editor talks about the editor, narrative film, moviola, Steenbeck, Kem, avid, non-linear editing, non-destructive, assembly cut, rough cut, fine cut, final cut, Star Wars Episode 5 – The Empire Strikes Back, Irvin Kershner, Se7en, David Fincher, Thelma Schoonmaker, Michael Kahn, Sally Menke, Walter Murch, Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, The Abyss, James Cameron, Emotion, Story, Rhythm, The World’s End, Edgar Wright, Eye Trace, Captain America: Civil War, Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Two Dimensional, Three Dimensional, In the Mood For Love, Wong Kar-Wai, history of editing, choices
Marketing
To Film School or Not to Film School
Television Production
Production Quizlet
Analyses of Various Films
These films are listed in alphabetical order. We created more in-depth analyses of the films on the CTCS 190 midterm and USC. However, if you just see the title of the film, click on it because it is a link to a Crash Course Film Criticism YouTube video.
2001 – A Space Odyssey
Aliens
All About Eve
All About Eve is a 138 minute film made by Joseph L. Mankiewicz of 20th Century Fox in 1950.
- Staring: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm
- Bette Davis: As a multi-Academy Award winning actress, Davis was sure to draw a crowd at the box office. Warner Brothers made four to five films a year with her in them. Her character in All About Eve leaving her career on Broadway mimics Davis’s choice to leave her short but successful career on Broadway. When she received a lifetime achievement award in 1977, she said that Margo Channing had been her greatest role (Kearney).
- Genre: A women’s film featuring an assertive, independent, sharp-witted woman opposing dominant notions of appropriate feminine behavior and traditional roles of wife and mother. Davis’s “Battling Bette” was a strong, suffering martyr who appealed to women whose husbands left them to fight in World War II. Her character modeled endurance. Margo Channing is a 1950s’ “female in crisis” who struggles to maintain a grip on her career as well as her personal life in the face of a friend’s deceit and her own paranoia about growing old. She tries to guard her younger lover and her career from the clutches of a younger woman. It is a comment on the tragic dependence of female success and self-confidence on youthful beauty rather than talent (Kearney).
- Dumb Blond: Marilyn Monroe plays the role of the dumb blond, which is a stereotype that she would spend her life trying to overcome (Kearney).
- Opening Scene: Davis is a master of non-verbal communication. The camera focuses on her eyes which are inaccessibly looking down until her name is called and she majestically looks up and lets the audience see her emotion. Each of the three shots shows a different position of her eyes (Kearney).
- Subtle Gestures: In addition to her eyes portraying her frustration with Eve (Baxter) throughout the film, Davis also portrays emotion using her fingers, like when she smokes cigarettes. She also paces nervously (Kearney).
- Dialogue: Davis delivers Margo’s quips with a sharp tongue (Kearney).
Apocalypse Now
The Arrival of a Train at a Station
The Arrival of a Train at a Station is a 1 minute film by the Lumiére Brothers made in France in 1895.
- Portable Camera: Louis Lumiére invented one of the first practical cinema cameras which weighed only 12 pounds and could be set up on a tripod. This allowed the brothers to film in public places (instead of inside studios) to show everyday and noteworthy events. It enabled them to create documentaries (Broadwell et. al, 177, 178, 458).
- Framing: Lumiére used framing to transform everyday reality into a cinematic event. Instead of positioning the frame perpendicular to the train, he positioned it at an oblique angle. This created a dynamic composition, with the train arriving from the distance on a diagonal. This allows the audience to see the facial expressions of the passengers and how they walk. Deep space is created with some figures close up and others at a distance. Camera position shapes the way we perceive the filmed event (Broadwell et. al, 177, 178).
- Single shot film: This film is less than a minute long (Broadwell et. al, 177, 178).
- Magic-lantern projector: The Lumiére brothers put this behind their camera so an audience of people could view their film together (as opposed to Edison’s Kinetoscope which only let one person see a film at a time) (Broadwell et. al, 458).
- Primitive Realism: influenced by photography and the stage (Casper)
- The Lumiere Borthers: Crash Course Film History #3
Babette’s Feast
Babette’s Feast is a 103 minute film made by Gabriel Axel of Nordisk Film in 1987.
- Cast: Stéphane Audran, Birgitte Federspiel, Bodil Kjer (Fox).
- Opening Scene: long shot showing the rooftops of a remote Denmark village (Fox).
- Flashbacks: show that both sisters had the opportunity to live a more extravagant life and explain how Babette became their housekeeper (Fox).
- Theme: repression (the lifestyle of the people of the village) vs. expression (the pleasures of the outside world) (Fox).
- Colors of the Village: The village is gray and brown with small windows and candlelight. The people wear plain black and gray clothes. Women have their gray hair pinned back and don’t wear makeup. The weather is always raining, snowing, or with a gray cloud cover (Fox).
- Colors of the Military: The headquarters is yellow with ornate moldings and banisters. Men and women dress up in jewels with fancy hairdos at an officer’s ball. The interiors of the buildings are brighter with candelabras, chandeliers, and big windows. Navy officers where brass buttons on blue and rust colored uniforms (Fox).
- Color of Messenger: The messenger who delivers the lottery winnings to Babette is wearing a crimson red uniform (Fox).
- Juxtaposition: When Martina is with an opera star, elegant decorations of the home that had been hidden in darkness are shown (Fox).
- Babette: She initially appears in a black cloak which gives mystery. She then dresses like the other women in the village, except she has red hair and colored lips. She is repeatedly shown in direct sunlight because she is the major agent of change in the bleak village (Fox).
- Minister’s anniversary dinner: This is the narrative and visual climax of the film. Its splendor comes from its details: candlelight, silver, crystal, golden champagne (Fox).
- Dialogue: There is not much dialogue in this film. The story comes from the actor’s eyes and thematic expression (Fox).
Beasts of No Nation
Citizen Kane
Do the Right Thing
The Eagle Huntress
Get Out
Get Out is a film made by Jordan Peele in 2017.
- Realist: “The film’s cinematographer, Toby Oliver, ACS, worked with director Jordan Peele to create a natural look that grounds the film’s world in reality. Peele explains, ‘The trick was to make sure that nothing so crazy happened so fast that [the audience] wouldn’t believe the characters would stay in this situation'” (CPN_Editor).
- Post Modernist: The post modern era started in the 1980s, and the film was made in 2017.
In the Mood for Love
The Lady Vanishes
The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 Alfred Hitchcock film.
- Realist: “Hitchcock has always emphasized on realism. He has maintained that creating a life-like scenario makes the audience relate to film much more strongly.” (Sengupta)
- Classical: It was a 1938 film which is before WWII, so it was a classical film.
Lost in Translation
The Limey
Moonlight
Pan’s Labyrinth
A Place in the Sun
A Place in the Sun is a 122 minute film by George Stevens of Paramount Pictures in 1951. Here is an article about A Place in the Sun.
Selma
Singin’ in the Rain
Singin’ in the Rain is a 103 minute film made by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly at MGM in 1952.
- Staring: Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Conor
- Asynchronous (out-of-sync) sound: This film creates gags based on asynchronous sound. Within the film, another movie is shown, but the sound is seconds ahead of the images. The humor in this scene depends on our realization that a film’s synchronization of sound and image is a mechanical illusion (Broadwell et. al, 296).
- Gene Kelly: As a star actor and choreographer, he is the one who decided that there should be rain in the film for him to sing in (Broadwell et. al, 342).
- Genre film: This is a musical. Specifically, it is a backstage musical where the action centers on singers and dancers who perform for an audience within the story. The characters are film performers (Broadwell et. al, 328, 342).
- Mobile framing: Mobile framing allows the filmmaker to change the camera angle, level, height, or distance during the shot. Sometimes the speed of the mobile framing functions rhythmically, as in musical films. During “Broadway Rhythm,” the camera cranes quickly back from Gene Kelly several times, and the speed of the movement is timed to accentuate the lyrics (Broadwell et. al, 194, 202).
- Story of film production: This storyline of this movie follows a single film through the entire shooting process, with a gigantic advertising billboard filling the final shot (Broadwell et. al, 29).
Some Like It Hot
Some Like it Hot is a 121 minute film made by Billy Wilder of United Artists in 1959.
- Here is a 10 minute YouTube video about What’s So Hot About Some Like It Hot.
- Formalist
- Post Classical Hollywood: It was made in 1959, during the post classical period which lasted from the end of WWII through the 1950s.
Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard is a Billy Wilder film made in 1950.
- Formalist
- Post Classical Hollywood: It was made in 1959, during the post classical period which lasted from the end of WWII through the 1950s.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a 139 minute film made by Anthony Minghella at Miramax in 1999.
- Genre: This is a thriller which aims to startle, shock, and maintain suspense, but it does not have the disgust factor that a horror film would have. In fact, the villain is quite attractive. Suspense and surprise are important aspects of the storytelling (Broadwell et. al, 332, 333).
- Plot: There are clever plans, clever blocking moves, sudden coincidences that upset carefully timed schemes. It follows a plan that makes the audience wonder if and how the criminal will succeed. Unexpected twists trigger surprise and force the audience to reconsider the odds of the criminal’s success (Broadwell et. al, 333).
- Narration Centered on Criminal: The film causes the audience to have sympathy for the criminal. It does this by painting the murder victims in a negative light and showing that Ripley wants to stop killing. However, he keeps getting into situations where he feels like he has to kill someone. The fact that audiences want this psychopath to avoid arrest stretches their sympathies and challenges them in a frightening way Broadwell et. al, 333).
Those Awful Hats
Those Awful Hats is a 2 minute film made by D.W. Griffith in the USA in 1909.
- Plot: This film has a relatively complex plot in a short span (Broadwell et. al, 461).
- Framing: Griffith sets up his camera in a medium long shot and medium shot to show subtle changes in facial expression (Broadwell et. al, 461).
- Film style: Since he did not have the technology to use synchronized dialogue or lifelike color, Griffith had his actors use over the top facial expressions (Boardwell et. al, 304).
Three Colors
Two For The Road
Two For The Road is a 122 minute film made by Stanley Donen of 20th Century Fox in 1967.
- Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney
- Timeline: There are five time periods, but it is a hard cut with the scenes intercut in visual, verbal, and emotional rhythms instead of chronologically. The contextual structures makes the film humorous and suspenseful. It is a Resnais-like narrative form and introduced the New Wave technique into commercial Hollywood (Casper).
- Road: The Road is a metaphor for being in a relationship and is always in the scene or being talked about. It captures that fact that our society is always on the move. It is a trope (Casper).
- Vehicles: The assorted trucks that they hitchhike in represent their blushing romance. The Ford station wagon represents suffocating domesticity. The MG and Rolls represent exciting possibilities. The red Triumph Herald represents the dangers of intolerance. The Mercedes and airplane represent being wealthy (Casper).
- Dialogue: The dialogue of Raphael is in character, witting, and has pauses and silences. There are jokes and double entendres (Casper).
- Marriage: This is the theme of the film. The marriage of the main characters is paralleled and contrasted against that of the couples they meet (Casper).
- Genre: This is a dark romantic comedy (Casper).
- Time Changes People: This motif is clear as Hepburn changes from a wistful girl to a hurting woman. This is shown by her clothes, hairstyles, facial expressions, and voice inflections (Casper).
- Framing: It is shot with two cameras to save time and money (Casper).
- Editing: Cutting on dialogue, directions of movement, objects, forms, colors, and modes, ironic rhyme scheme, music with a traveling rhythm, shot in late spring and early summer to show emotional states of the couple, six months to edit (Casper).
- Opening credits: The words move around, criss-cross, and morph. This sets the stage for a mobile mis-en scéne. When the Hepburn-Finney credit appears, the shape of a rearview mirror expands to a closeup of the actors, a star entée (Casper).
Where Are My Children
That’s it for cinema, media studies, and film studies. That’s it for cinema, media studies, and film studies. That’s it for cinema, media studies, and film studies. That’s it for cinema, media studies, and film studies.
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