Movies and Meaning: An Introduction to Film

by Stephen Prince

This comprehensive introduction to film focuses on three how movies express meanings, how viewers understand those meanings, and how cinema focuses globally as both an art and a business. Using clear, accessible, and jargon-free writing, this is the only introduction to film to examine the elements of film style and the viewer's contribution to the cinema experience. How do viewers interpret the effects filmmakers create? How do filmmakers anticipate, and build on, the likely ways viewers will react to certain kinds of stories and audio-visual designs? Accordingly, the text examines how filmmakers create images and sounds and also closely examines the mechanisms and processes by which viewers make sense of images and stories on screen. This approach helps readers understand not only the basic concepts but also how their own reactions and opinions impact the overall film experience, making the course even more meaningful. For anyone interested in film and film appreciation.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Textbooks

432 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1996

About the author

Stephen Prince teaches film history, criticism, and theory at Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts . He received his Ph.D from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was passable for an intro film class textbook, but there were some glaring errors in this version. The author could have done a little more fact checking in order to catch that Robin Williams did not play the "wizard" in Aladdin, but rather the genie, and that "The Great Lebowski" is actually called the _BIG_ Lebowski... ouch.

Sometimes the tone of the writing is sometimes questionable as well, in that it seems to lose some of its academic grounding and authority. Meh. I was pretty unimpressed.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my text book for an intro to film class in college and I loved it. Sometimes when I was reading it I would start to feel guilty about not doing homework...then I would realize that it was homework! Prince uses loads of stills and storyboards to illustrate how movies us techniques such as cross fades, lighting, and props to convey meaning. I would be curious to see the latest edition.

[Xiaoju Bin]

good