In his essay Introduction to Film Studies Oxford Guide to Film Studies Richard Dyer draws a
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In his essay 'Introduction to Film Studies', Richard Dyer describes 'formal-aesthetic' and 'social-ideological' as being two ways in which film can be studied. Though they are very different from each other, the two ways can be used together to arrive at an all round view of a film. Formal- aesthetic analyses looks at the internal elements of the film, and not at its context in society and history. In itself there are two different but related ways of analyses: the Formal and the Aesthetic. The Formal is concerned with the structure of film, the way that it is put together, looking at camera, editing, narrative and other building blocks of film. On the other hand, Aesthetics looks into film as an art form of its own, with its own beauty and rules, without having to attach itself to other art forms such as literature. As Dyer explains, 'a film could be as profound, beautiful, or important as any other kind of art, provided, [it follows] a dominant model of value in art, it was demonstrably the work of a highly individual artist'. Film reviews and journalism is mostly or fully made of Formal-aesthetic analyses. In contrast, the Social-ideological approach looks at the cultural, historical and social effects on the film and those that the film has on the world. In a way this fits in with the famous literary idea of 'art imitates life imitates art'...