Classical Hollywood movie making involves the use of a style which seems to be very invisible and hard for most spectators to comprehend and view. The story is usually performed so effortlessly and efficiently to the audience that it appears to have no source. Simply put the invisibility which is systematically developed means to conceal the fundamental choices filmmaking makes on the substance and manners of screen appearance. The invisibility origins form its capacity to conceal the “artificial” choices filmmakers make and simultaneously present a “natural” and acceptable work to the audiences.They will want to ‘suspend disbelief’. Deep down, people know it is tomato, but they really want to believe it is blood. In a conspiracy with the audience to make movies believable, classical Hollywood narrative has developed the following features.
It also uses a three-act narrative style. Hollywood plots are set out according to the three-act structure of orientation, complication and resolution. A situation is presented, a disruption is introduced, and then the resolution ties everything up in a strong closure. The second style used is objective storytelling style. The audience in a Hollywood film knows more than the characters do. This makes the style of storytelling objective, according to film academics David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson. It also allows us to accept simultaneous time or parallel editing.The third style used is Mise-en-scene which is an important aspect of Hollywood style is the mise-en-scene, whose sole function is to manufacture realism.
The fourth style involves time and space. American movies have a strong sense of movement – either through time or through geography. The story movement through time most often follows a straightforward line of episodic events. Flashbacks or flash forwards may be used, but the overall linear direction is maintained. Whether through time or space, movement is totally subordinate to the action, say Bordwell and Thompson.
Only the bits that are important to the story are shown.
