Summary of Some suggestions on “how to read a film”

越来越多的人喜欢看电影，但笔者认为，我们可以从六个方面分析电影的含义即：基本元素，场面调度，摄影，剪辑和声音。

As more and more people go to the cinema to watch films, and most of them just watch the films for fun. But the writer and the director must want to express some specific meanings to the audience. So, how the film could be appreciated is the theme of this article. The author advises people to take notes and write down their impression of the film. Then, the author suggests that we can analyze a film from six perspectives: the meaning, basic elements, mise-en-scene, cinematography, montage and sound. If watchers want to fully understand the meaning, they can pay attention to find the themes, intent, metaphor and subtext of the film. And the basic elements of the film include title, story, motivation, motif parallelism, characterization and point of the view. As for the mise-en-scene, setting,, acting style, costumes, lighting, diffuser are all worthy of attention. The fourth perspective is the cinematography, which contains the tone, film speed, camera angle, tracking, angle of view, focus, shot distance frame and shot composition of the film. As the fifth perspective, montage, watchers should pay attention to editing pace, establishing shot, reaction shot, jump cut, freeze frame, crosscutting, cutaway, match cut, scenes, sequence, and accelerated montage. The last aspect, sound, attention should be paid to the dialogue, sound effects, score, sound bridge, direct sound, postsychronous sound, diegetic sound, off-screen sound, non-diegetic sound, simultaneous sound and non-simultaneous sound. In my opinion, it is very difficult for those amateur to adopt all the perspectives in watching film, the most important thing is to take a critical view in watching the film and have their own understanding of the film after watching it. That’s enough.