First Light Video CDROM: A Movie Lover's Guide to Film Language: Classic Scenes

The First Light Video CDROM: A Movie Lover's Guide to Film Language: Classic Scenes from Timeless Films consists of a general introduction to film language and five lessons covering the major elements of it. These lessons include: LIGHTING, CAMERA, MISE EN SCENE, SOUND and EDITING. For each lesson, there is a short overview / introduction and a clip of a scene from a classic film. This original clip is followed by an "instructional clip" showing the same scene again, but this time, with synchronized voice-over commentary about the use of film language it illustrates. The scenes come from recognized film classics: Carol Reed's "The Third Man" (Lighting), Buster Keaton's "The General" (Camera), Fritz Lang's "M" (Mise en scene), Sergei Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky" (Sound), and Alfred Hitchcock's "Sabotage" (Editing). The program is interactive, enabling students to go directly from the introduction to any of the five lessons, to supplementary information about the classic films, or to a glossary of film terms used in the program.