“The film as a visual medium”
from: APIEL Examination Reading Comprehension (extract):
The following passage is taken from an article about film. Read the
passage carefully before you choose your answers.
After reading the text carefully, choose the best answer
to each question. |
Film is a visual medium, presenting in instantaneous
images what takes many paragraphs to describe. In this respect it makes
prose look primitive. On the other hand film is a clumsy vehicle for conveying
concepts of analysis: it has to find visual and dramatic substitutes for
what novels tell us about motives, feelings, contexts and social meanings.
Further, unlike verbal communication, film lacks indication of tense. Its
images always exist in the present, although it has various indirect devices
for suggesting past and future action.
The effects of these differences are profound and far-reaching,
but an obvious consequence in film based on novels is the substitution
of external symbols for internal exploration.Clothes, settings, gestures,
glances all become charged with implication; private thoughts become
spoken statements (which frequently transforms their significance); and
narration becomes enactment.
Whereas fiction evokes mental images, film recreates
physical ones. Novels can suggest mood and atmosphere, the nature of individuals
and communities, without supplying all the visual details. Filmmakers must
decide what everything looks like. The abstractions of language are impossible
in the cinema, which through appearances reveals information - age, gender,
stature, species - that may be unspecified in the book. An 'animal' must
be a tiger or a lion; a "sweet" face must present itself for judgement.
This is the main reason, intrinsic to the medium, why people always
feel that a film of a novel is not quite as they imagined it. It is not
that one set of precise images has been contradicted by another; rather
that the film renders visually specific what is abstract or unstated in
the text.
1. The primary purpose of the passage is to
A. demonstrate the superiority of cinema over literature
B. explain how films differ from novels
C. tell filmmakers how to base films on novels
D. argue that film is as much an art as literature |
2. According to the author, a film is superior to
a novel because a film can
A. convey a social message with conviction
B. present immediately what takes pages to describe
C. depict past, present, and future convincingly
D. appeal to a wide audience |
3. Accoding to the author, what happens when a novel
is made into a film?
A. Mental images become more important in the film.
B. A narrative voice is added to the soundtrack.
C. The number of characters is usually increased.
D. What is described in words is replaced by images. |
4. In the second paragraph, "charged" is best interpreted
to mean
A. indebted
B. filled
C. influenced
D. blamed |
5. According to the author, one of the main challenges
for a filmmaker who makes a film based on a novel is to
A. find visual means to convey the characters' feelings and thoughts
B. maintain the novel's sequence of events
C. have appropriate dialogues written
D. remain faithful to the portrayal of the characters in the novel |
6. The main function of the examples given by the
author in the last paragraph is to
A. illustrate what the author has previously explained
B. allow the author to express personal opinions
C. emphasize the power of the imagination
D. point out to the reader what visual clues to watch for |
7. According to the author, "people always feel that
a film of a novel is not quite as they imagined it" mainly because the
A. images supplied in the film contradict those they imagined
B. filmmakers invent scenes that are not in the book
C. film gives clear images for what is not clear in the book
D. readers differ in their interpretation of cinematic images |
8. In this passage, the point of view is that of
A.a defender of high culture
B. an advocate for filmmakers
C. a historical novelist
D. a dispassionate critic |
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