Scott Lord
Previously having had been writing a novel online, as well as essays on film history and theory.
Location Cambridge, Massachusetts
Activity
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Scott Lord replied to Sandra Harris
I took a second look at Grammar and it made me write, by the way, the semicolon was my thing and now I find there can be two in one sentence, not just twenty on one page
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Scott Lord replied to soren korshoj
I look forward to studying with you. Thank you
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Scott Lord replied to Ann Russell
@ValJ.S. I think we sometimes write as if we were old when we are young, ie omnisciently, but good luck. I was taking online courses at fifty five and had a heart attack that put me in a similar perspective, which I am still getting used to at sixty one. By now I’m stalling too much and already have the poetic voice
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Scott Lord replied to Pablo Müller
Thank you Pablo. Use https://academia.edu quite frequently to find peer reviewed papers on Film history and I hope this course helps me to interact with PHD papers to create my own research.
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Scott Lord replied to Karin L
Nice studying with you.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I am hoping this course will help me with reading PHD thesis papers on Film.
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Scott Lord replied to carmen fernández
Thank you. My friend's father played Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke and I'm still piecing together the sets and costumes. This week I found out they used the same shoot out scene at the opening for ten seasons and then changed it. Every week my friend's father would draw his gun from its holster and shoot the outlaw, like in the European duel.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I happened to see Sidney Lumet who directed the first Murder on the Orient Express lecture when I was a young rake, but I’m sure I don’t have a favorite instructor yet. Thanks.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I had a computer disaster while previously taking this course but would like to look at week three. Hope it’s ok.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I collect trailers. They divulge a little plot or synopsis. I had the theatrical trailer to the HItchcock, if anyone has the need or time.
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Scott Lord replied to Valentina Chiari
Valentina, the train tracks are a metaphor, thank you. They also are spatiotemporal in that the two men are approaching each other inevitably, no matter how long it takes, and during that interim we see the train on screen as HItchcock squeezes the hourglass with the movement of their legs. Nice studying with you. Perhaps it is a metaphor for their present...
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Scott Lord made a comment
Thanks for the wipe from Star Wars, it an homage to early American filmmakers.
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Scott Lord replied to Scott Lord
@IanWall Thank you. I put a PDF copy in my bookmarks. Heath, as you know brings in The Absent One of Oudart; psychoanalytic. For our purposes I included the phrase “the signifying chain of images” into my notes for now. Something to read after time for this class runs out !!
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Scott Lord made a comment
Ian,
I skimmed a little Christian Metz that I would be familiar with, and honestly, a this point we are discussing editing albeit the “linguistic sign” seems to be a unit and decoupage seems to be a whole, with segments falling in between. So although semiology seems to be about parts of the film and the order or symbolic order- can I hold off to lean... -
Scott Lord made a comment
Trailing behind.
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Scott Lord made a comment
The Haunting uses really nice close angles of characters that are far apart from each other.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I added the theatrical trailer of Marnie to my collection during this class.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Ian, good scene. (I saw Lady in the Lady more than fourty five years ago when I had a super eight movie camera.)
I add films to my collection occasionally and did happen to have the trailer of Lady In the Lake on my You Tube page, if that lends the story meaning before you get a chance to view the whole film.
The mirror...
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Scott Lord made a comment
We just saw a dance sequence on Netflix where the camera movement was almost counter to the dancing. Rather than full shots, the entire human figure, it followed the direction of the dancers in close shots, angled oddly. It may have been jarring, but was unique to that film.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Just to follow the conversation, Ian, it seems your holding on to there being a subjectivity embedded in the shot-reverse-shot when distinguishing the over the shoulder shot from the point of view shot and what might be categorically one of each. Thank you.
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Scott Lord replied to Hatem El-Sayed
Theme? Perhaps thematic editing. My wife and I visited a building on the Atlantic titled Motif Number One, the most widely painted building in the U.S because it belonged to an art colony. She beautifully said,”It’s nice if you just like to stare at a shack.” There’s nothing to do but paint. So my idea is that Motif, although thematic, has less action, if any....
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Scott Lord made a comment
Maybe later we can go over inferred-to-be-in-the-scene, ie absent characters referred to in dialogue, non-diegetic sound, the orchestrated soundtrack that is in fact voice over, and other clues to the story that aren’t in the story world.
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Well put. Straight on shot. Pull back shot.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I look forward to the week.
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Scott Lord replied to Ian McGregor
Nice studying with you Ian !!
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Scott Lord made a comment
Ian, thanks very much for all you have done so far and I am looking forward to the other sections with the necessity of quickening my pace to catch up. To be continued.
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Scott Lord made a comment
There is a plasticity to the surroundings in The Third Man created by flat, solid vertical planes in shadow. The interrelation of lighting and mood is expressed by the night exterior being at canted angles.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I have a webpage on Lon Chaney and one of the most iconic moments film is from the Phantom the Opera when he takes off his mask to reveal a skull-like visage and the woman screams. It is most likely the first scene involving a “scream queen” in movie history. A later ballroom scene shows him dressed entirely red.
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Scott Lord replied to Karen Blair-Imrie
Hi Karen. The name of the Robert Redford movie is “The Hot Rock”. Being American, I googled “Robert Redford Park Bench”.
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Scott Lord made a comment
The color scheme is interesting in the Redford photo. If I’m right, Redford is employing the nondescript blend of blue gray so that he won’t be noticed in a crowd, where as the spy he is talking to is so undercover that he is portraying a seventies “swinger” in purple and pink and by looking like he is looking for women to notice the stand out in a crowd...
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Scott Lord replied to Ian McGregor
Bless you Ian, but I don’t think I need anything just now- I haven’t been here due to a computer crash and I just got a replacement this morning. Sorry I’m behind in the class, but everything is now up and running. Thanks again.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Any thought anyone on diegetic and non-diegetic elements of the film?
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Scott Lord replied to Ian McGregor
Hi Ian. If you really like A Trip to the Moon, I have a copy of the 1907 sequel where they travel to Saturn, titled The Eclipse. Nice studying with you.
https://garbo-seastrom.blogspot.com/2022/10/scott-lord-silent-film-eclipse-georges.html
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Scott Lord made a comment
From the background of the shot to the foreground of the shot, at a diagonal.
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Scott Lord replied to Doug Karo
Well done. Cultural meanings accumulate overtime.
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Scott Lord made a comment
You’ve pierced the heart of Dadaism and Surrealism. But yes, the very act of foreshadowing the denouement is to bring about a meaning that is shared with the audience.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I noticed there was reverse screen direction with the way the truck was driving and it made the animation seem more real or more part of the story. The truck drives toward the camera and then the camera cuts to see
It driving away from the camera- the authorial camera or camera as narrator. It pulls us in to the story. -
Scott Lord made a comment
It seems that the meaning of Ascension is clearly contingent upon its having been made after the Atomic Bomb. If it is a European Film there could be a connotation that Europe after the Atomic Bomb has been submerged, perhaps even religiously, by the Cold War superpowers and will slowly rise to the surface through art and culture. Almost to say we have had...
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Scott Lord made a comment
Reading a film would usually imply that we are looking for its meaning, what they images convey, ie. content, topic, subject, thematic plot. It still seems reading a Film is a term about deciphering it’s technique, ie lighting, narrative structure, shot structure, pacing....the grammar of the film.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I mostly write about Silent Film, but try to make it to a mystery when I can.
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Scott Lord replied to Hazel Greenwood
Ethan, I have a You Tube Page with mysteries and thrillers and what you might like are serials. They were Mysteries, some with Bela Lugosi filmed in 15 minute action packed installments- Cliffhangers. Some were made during WWII and involve spy plots but they all are fast paced.
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Great Steven, try Lady in the Lake directed by Robert Montgomery. It’s a gimmick film but it’s just serious enough when you run it with The Big Sleep.
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Scott Lord replied to Jill Hind
Hi Jill, it’s a notorious area for the study of film. I look forward to studying with you and I’ll find you the Oxford magazine from the 1930s with Phillip Rotha et al.
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Scott Lord replied to Birgit Hartoft
Hi Birgit. I write about Danish Silent Film on the Internet, I also had an online course on Scandinavian FIlm from the University of Copenhagen, which I highly recommend. I look to studying with you.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Thank you. I’ve been writing on the internet most of the week on D.W. Griffith, most of my writing being presently as a FIlm Historian. I look forward to studying with you.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Could the word teleological be used to describe the characters desires and the obstacles faced?
And could we begin a movie with “pure action”, a character we know nothing about and have barely introduced does something dramatic that has significance, ie. goes to a cemetary, dives from an exploding boat, makes love before the first line of dialogue? My answer... -
Scott Lord made a comment
Tally Ho.
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Scott Lord made a comment
You could say there is a priority of theme, the message of the movie and that from there you construct a fiction that should lead to self questioning, or soul searching, or self realization when an identification is made by the audience with the character, which is to say the dramatic is within a given situation that the audience would usually not experience....
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Sorry, I had a question but reread.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I reworded the Mamet for my notebook: “plot complications and the unfulfilled desires that motivate the character.”
Am I missing anything? -
Scott Lord made a comment
I saw Lady Chatterly’s Lover last night and one way it was different from a stage play was it included long, visual silent sequences, albeit edited and about love making. There happened be a similar scene- recurrent image where she would leave her lover after each time but I have only seen the film once and don’t know how each “aurevoir” was...
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Scott Lord replied to CHANDRIKA JOSHI
Steven, characters on a separate page as plot or motivations? two or three scenes at a time? A separate page for locations?
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Scott Lord replied to Lucy Wallis
Great idea. The play’s The thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.
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Scott Lord replied to rosie t
Welcome. I look forward to studying with you.
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Scott Lord replied to Allegra Miller
Thank you. We had an online course that asked what is it about a Cyborg that tells us how we are human. It went into H.P Lovecraft and his nondescript space visitor. Another course from Switzerland found a novel from 1600 that had extraterrestrials mating with earthlings.@AllegraMiller
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Scott Lord made a comment
establishing shot.
Night Exterior, 19 story apartment building in the United States overlooking the city of Boston.
Cut to dimly lit Interior.
A period of silence fills the screen as an epynonous writer types a lines of correspondence on the occasion of the beginning a new online course on screenwriting. Seated next to him, his wife tries to select a... -
Scott Lord made a comment
Hello Molly,
A holistic approach to getting unstuck makes sense in that writing becomes a little bit of a lifestyle, even when combining the attending of poetry readings, taking day trips and watching films late into the night. Allow me a little more time to find your poems online and I look forward to being your pupil. -
Scott Lord replied to Debbie Holick
Between Two Worlds. What I do know is that Australian grammar is very precise, almost elaborate. Actually, your title would remind me of Patrick White.
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Scott Lord replied to Jay Bee
Good luck
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Scott Lord replied to Michael Lengsfield
Hello Andy,
Are there any novels you particularly look forward to adapting into film in the future? Much like some writers imitate Proust, I had a period where I imitated what my conception of Alain Robbe-Grillet was and it became really just a shooting script in prose in search of a prose poem. -
Scott Lord made a comment
I read Mr. Bristling Sees It Through by H.G. Wells because it was a first edition and it was amazing in that there was no science fiction whatsoever, only the idea that the First World War was the last thing on the minds of Englishmen during 1913, meaning the characters were truly human. I later found a copy of The Thirty Nine Steps and I was completely taken...
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Scott Lord made a comment
Well, Prince William and Wife are here in Boston and today I had to walk passed the stage he spoke on yesterday- so back to thinking about film and I’ll try to catch up. Our schedules clashed, I guess.
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Scott Lord replied to Dawn Blackmore
Thank you. Nice studying with you.
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Scott Lord replied to Allan Haines
Hi Allan,
We had an online course from Brown University that featured the Thriller video as an example of “alienation”, the point of the course being “How are cyborgs human?”. It was American Literature and included Die, Monster Die with Boris Karloff and how aliens were non-robotic. So it would be that theme rather than genre served the purpose of literature... -
Scott Lord made a comment
I still hold that the Thriller from the United States is subject to “period” and that all of a sudden, mystery-horror changed to Film Noir in 1947. Essentially there is Film Noir that is purely Crime Drama and was left over from the gangster film. There’s a lack of Agatha Christie adaptations in the 1950’s.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Cary Grant in North by Northwest is thrown into something out of his element whereas Boise Oaks (Rod Taylor) is more comedic in how he reluctantly becomes The Liquidator and Hammerhead.
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I have to pass in that in here the states we are dismayed about PM. Johnson after the Crown having known so many PM’s. Over here we have watched the Royals so far from Churchill to Blair. But true, it is art that imitates life while transcending it. Funny you mention it with all the throwing tomatoes at masterpieces. Nice studying with you and good luck with...
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On television there was The Batcomputer, the Batcave, The Bathook, The Batmobile, but in the movie, they added The Batcopter and the Batboat.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Oh, decidedly Batman has his Robin while the Green Hornet has his Kato and they both were Saturday matinees during the 1940’s whether it was an intentional trick to get children to bring a friend to the movie and play together. In America, Captain America and the Fantastic Four were television cartoons, so being sixty years old we are intrigued by Marvel while...
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Scott Lord made a comment
Because these belong to a period, I have to say that the Superhero genre in America began December 7, 1941 as a sub genre of the Cliffhanger genre that began with The Perils of Pauline in 1914. It was also on radio the entire time, as was the Rathbone Bruce Radio series and was a theater series of Superman cartoons, which are delightful. It went to American...
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Scott Lord replied to Nigel Smith
Nigel, well done. It is a McGuffin in the film I collect, which are “cliffhangers”. (I do adore Hitch, but he is recently copyrighted and they are likely to pull me aside) The mise en scene to the cliffhanger is fun with its trap doors and secret panels and foreign exotic viallanry. One episode of a mystery had a knife being thrown mid air when a “To be...
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Scott Lord made a comment
I may have mentioned that in the United States, Batman, The Green Hornet, and Captain America were 12 episode serials. On my You Tube Page I am currently adding a mystery serial titled The Black Widow. These serials were often “propagandistic” in that they were children’s matinees during WWII directed to the “Yellow Peril”, ie Superman vs. the Emperor of...
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Scott Lord replied to Patricia Cattley
Characters do develop and plots do intertwine. The “flat characters” of D.W. Griffith’s parallel editing do. On Netflix there is a category called “Ensemble” for the Ingmar Bergman type of character based narrative shift where characters may or may not converge. Well done, Patricia.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Derrida generically fits into a signified/signifier ook at literature in that my representation of an object differs from yours, so that the genre encompasses my depiction of a subject as well as yours provided we use common techniques that define the genre. A different treatment of literary tropes, allusions and archetypes. Your feminist film might be a...
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Scott Lord replied to Allan Haines
incidentally, The Crown has returned here in America and the “storybook romance” of Elizabeth has continued into the tabloid turmoil of Charles and Diana having divorced. We were watching untill four o clock in the morning. So perhaps there is a parallel/parallax to our being current and in touch with our world and the “Signs of the Times” that makes us ask to...
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Scott Lord replied to Michael Parkinson
Thank you Michael. You might like E. Phillips Oppenheim.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Silent Film very slowly embraced Art Deco in set design. It can be seen in the silent films of Greta Garbo, where she goes back into the centuries, including Tolstoy, for a Romantic Escapism, and then suddenly makes a film that takes place within Modernism as a twenties flapper. Douglas Fairbanks started in adaptations of Dumas, Lillian Gish in The Scarlet...
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Scott Lord replied to Kathrin Kobus
Hi Kathrin,
I added two films to my webpage by F.W. Murnau, but haven’t written very much yet. I often add the film first, and then research. There is a difference between Murnau and Tod Browning as far as lighting is concerned. -
Scott Lord replied to Scott Lord
Superlative.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I would think that one answer is the title. Jane Eyre implies a protagonist, A Christmas Carol, which has a protagonist, implies a moral, but only if you are familiar with it. A Study in Scarlet implies a tangled skien.
https://garbo-seastrom.blogspot.com
One question for anyone, are genres in cinema transnational. Not the tough ones like Goethe was...
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Scott Lord made a comment
I’m sorry Ian (Professor Wall) but can I politely ask/query if asa college/university do we need the name of the critic/theorist “that could come later”. There are Andre Bazin and Andrew Sarris. “The proof is in the pudding”, but not the Maguffin. (Initailed). I’ll also keep your question in mind, as asked.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Perhaps Avant garde, ie. The Blood of a Poet, is more popular in the United States
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Scott Lord made a comment
Sorry, may I add, I live next door to an American winner of the Oscar for Documentary. Sven Nykvist was speaking at Harvard University and I missed the screening when the director moved into his new office. His producer has since passed away and I have moved to a different side street. But I have never talked to him about Film theory or technique. He is my...
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Scott Lord replied to Tatyana Roy
In general. Jesus Christ Superstar? West Side Story?
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Scott Lord made a comment
Again, Silent Film is not a genre, but a period or era. Perhaps the period 1929-1945 is a sub genre of the Horror Film,ie. Universal Horror Film, although it also is a period, followed by Mrs and Mrs Alfred Hitchcock.
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Scott Lord replied to Patricia Cattley
Nice contrast, well done
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Scott Lord made a comment
I recommend In and Out of Character, the autobiography of Basil Rathbone, but please follow it with Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, by W.S. Baring Gould.
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Scott Lord replied to Claire Costello
The song Singing in the Rain is in fact from an earlier film, Hollywood Revue of 1929 that was not quite as narrative a film, so the genre in fact developed/changed, which is why I like Hammer film as a continuation of the classic American horror genre.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I recently downloaded a trailer to the film “Billy the Kid vs.Dracula”, so perhaps genre is a technical method that can share dynamics, ie. the rising action of Freytag’s pyramid that analyses Shakespearean plays as sharing a five act structure. I’m guessing that Billy the KId was the victor in that there is a female cowgirl very much at...
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Scott Lord replied to Patricia Cattley
Again, there are American superhero serials, “to be continued”, which necessitated the genre as using a shorter running legnth with the plot at a quicker pace.
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Scott Lord made a comment
I look forward to studying how genres emerged during the silent era. Of course cliffhangers were a genre unto themselves with weekly installments that carried into later children’s adventure serials, each installment fifteen minutes long, the genre having its own technical requirements.
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Scott Lord replied to Rasha Kamal
Let us know if you have a webpage concerning film.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Have there been many American films shot on location in the Holland Park area and if so to what genre would they belong, ie does setting contribute to genre as well as mood and atmosphere? Perhaps a film about RIchard III cannot be filmed in say, a parking lot.
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Scott Lord replied to Lucy Yates
Thank you Lucy. In the U.S we just reopened from CoVid and we were are of it’s impact and severity in Great Britain, so please include that in my thank you as Literature inevitably is one of the Humanities.
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Scott Lord replied to Payal Phukan
I’ll try to look at it tomorrow afternoon. Nice to study with you.
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Scott Lord replied to Charles Pringle
Welcome back. Your sincerity is invaluable.
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Scott Lord made a comment
Thanks. I live in Boston, so we have looked at the relationship between the narrator, or speaker, and the voice of the author and I am certain that in gendered spectatorship study, there is a correlation between the invisible observer and the on screen character. When we looked at William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, personal experiences were...
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Scott Lord made a comment
Where was the stone book kept? In the bedroom, in the dining room, in the children’s room- what part of the house did it appear? What are the extrarextual aspects of it being part of everyday life?
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Scott Lord replied to Mary Ann Atwood
Same thing, there was a copy of Macbeth in a book giveaway box and I had a couple hours to wait.
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Scott Lord made a comment
The Bible was actually printed in Scrolls that were illuminated. The first letter of a passage would include a design.
