8,081,117 research outputs found
An investigation of affect in the cinema: Spectacle and the melodramatic rhetoric in Nil by Mouth
This article argues that the affective, visceral dimension of cinema spectatorship is a central component of our engagment with cinema. With reference to Tom Gunning's work on the cinema of attractions, I suggest that cinematic spectacle is affective by nature and is pervasive in contemporary narrative cinema, buried in the melodramatic tropes of realism as much as it is overtly present in action cinema. Drawing on Christian Metz's work on the nature of our relationship to the cinematic image, I explore the operation of affect via Nil By Mouth's use of close-up, colour, setting and voice. Claiming this intensely realist film as melodrama, I show how the spectacular qualities of its melodramatic mise-en-scene give rise to the film's astonishing affective power
Book review: The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom, Deborah Allison (2013)
This is a review of Deborah Allison's book, The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom (2013), which was published in Film International, Volume 11 Issue 5, DOI: 10.1386/fiin.11.5.77_5
Soul Power (Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, 2008, USA) [Film review]
This is a review of the 2008 documentary, Soul Power, that was published in Film International, Volume 8 Issue 6, December 2010. DOI: 10.1386/fiin.8.6.7
Organising counter-cultures: Challenges of structure, organisation and sustainability in the Independent Filmmakers Association and the Radical Film Network
The Independent Filmmakers Association (IFA) was formed in London in 1974 to represent the various strands of predominantly leftist and experimental independent filmmaking in post-war Britain. For the next fifteen years, the IFA played a key role in the expansion of British independent film, lobbying the establishment for funding and recognition, and even securing its own department within the new Channel 4 upon its launch in 1982. Four decades after the IFA was founded, the Radical Film Network was formed by a collection of artists, activists and academics (including ex-IFA members) involved in the resurgence of progressive and experimental film culture currently ongoing in the UK and elsewhere. Despite almost four decades between them, many of the questions and challenges facing the RFN today were addressed by those involved with the IFA. What constitutes oppositional film culture? How should a counter-cultural network be organised? What roles should different actors – filmmakers, academics, activists, the state – play within that culture? Drawing on archival research, interviews and the growing body of contemporary scholarship engaged in ‘rediscovering’ 1970s independent film culture, this article situates these questions within a conceptual framework derived from various approaches to network theory found in cultural studies, social movement studies, organisational studies and management studies. In doing so, it offers fresh insight into the IFA’s legacy and the lessons it holds for those involved with the RFN. Moreover, the article demonstrates the importance of such network organisations and their crucial role in developing film cultures, and contributes a new methodology for their analysis
The political avant-garde: Oppositional documentary in Britain since 1990
This thesis explores radical left-wing documentary produced in Britain since 1990. Despite constituting a lively and diverse part of contemporary British film culture, oppositional documentary has been overlooked by film and media scholars for much of the last twenty-five years. Indeed, the last book-length study of radical British filmmaking was Margaret Dickinson’s Rogue Reels: Oppositional Film in Britain, 1945-90 (1999). The lack of subsequent research on the topic suggests that a politicised documentary film culture in Britain is now all but non-existent. Yet, on the contrary, the thesis reveals oppositional documentary to be a thriving aspect of alternative British culture, albeit one that has undergone significant changes as it has adapted to the major technological, socio-economic and political developments that have taken place since 1990.As well as recovering this history, this thesis also suggests some reasons for its neglect in the first place. Asserting an admittedly problematic yet necessary distinction between the aesthetic and the political avant-garde, I claim oppositional documentary as a manifestation of the latter: an explicitly partisan and committed kind of filmmaking in which the need for aesthetic innovation is subordinate to the communication of political ideas. The legacy of a trend dominant in political film theory since the 1970s, I argue that the values and priorities of the aesthetic avant-garde have become the benchmark of political film practice such that the very existence of the political avant-garde has been effaced altogether. Exploring both the video-activist and feature-length efforts of oppositional documentary filmmakers over the last two decades, this thesis re-claims the political avant-garde as an important part of contemporary radical filmmaking in Britain
Book review: Migration Documentary Films in Post-war Australia, Liangwen Kuo (2010)
This is a review of Liangwen Kuo's book, Migration Documentary Films in Post-war Australia (2010), that was published in WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society in 2013
Autonomy and dependency in two successful UK film and television companies: An analysis of RED Production Company and Warp Films
This article analyses the production cultures of two film and television companies in the UK – RED Production and Warp Films – by discussing the companies’ formation and identity, aims and ethos, internal structures and their networks of external relationships. The article argues that although managing directors and senior personnel exercise considerable power within the companies themselves, the companies’ depend on the extent to which they are able to engage with other industry agents, in particular the large scale institutions that dominate the industries. By situating analysis of these negotiated dependencies within shifting macro economic, historical and cultural contexts, the article argues that the increasing power of multinational conglomerates and the cultural convergence between film and high-end television drama marks a threshold moment for both companies which will alter their production cultures significantly
Go West! Bristol's film and television industries
The report, based on two major surveys and numerous interviews, is an overview of the history, evolution and current configuration of the film and television industries in the Bristol region, identified as an important 'creative cluster'. It analyses in detail their social, cultural and economic significance and provides detailed evidence about the number of companies and their location, their size, number of employees and the six sub-clusters - natural history, animation, factual, post-production, corporate and facilities - which compose this sector. It discusses the crucial role played by the BBC and its Natural History Unit, the success of Aardman Animations and the interconnections between the companies, which often share 'untraded interdependencies': ideas, knowledge, expertise and also, informally, freelance labour, rather than enter into formal business arrangements. It shows the importance of Bristol's attractiveness as a location, socially, culturally and economically but also its disadvantages compared to London and the South-East. The report shows the importance of media organisations in cementing relationships and in universities in providing a 'talent pipeline'. It analyses the importance of freelancers but also shows the difficulties they face. The report also locates a lack of social and ethnic diversity in these industries in the Bristol region, which reflects the national picture. The report concludes with a series of eight recommendations to address the issues raised including the significant lack of a major drama production company
Generating trails automatically, to aid navigation when you revisit an environment
A new method for generating trails from a person’s movement through a virtual environment (VE) is described. The method is entirely automatic (no user input is needed), and uses string-matching to identify similar sequences of movement and derive the person’s primary trail. The method was evaluated in a virtual building, and generated trails that substantially reduced the distance participants traveled when they searched for target objects in the building 5-8 weeks after a set of familiarization sessions. Only a modest amount of data (typically five traversals of the building) was required to generate trails that were both effective and stable, and the method was not affected by the order in which objects were visited. The trail generation method models an environment as a graph and, therefore, may be applied to aiding navigation in the real world and information spaces, as well as VEs
A study of event traffic during the shared manipulation of objects within a collaborative virtual environment
Event management must balance consistency and responsiveness above the requirements of shared object interaction within a Collaborative Virtual Environment
(CVE) system. An understanding of the event traffic during collaborative tasks helps in the design of all aspects of a CVE system. The application, user activity, the display
interface, and the network resources, all play a part in determining the characteristics of event management.
Linked cubic displays lend themselves well to supporting natural social human communication between remote users. To allow users to communicate naturally and subconsciously, continuous and detailed tracking is necessary. This, however, is hard to balance with the real-time consistency constraints of general shared object interaction.
This paper aims to explain these issues through a detailed examination of event traffic produced by a typical CVE, using both immersive and desktop displays, while supporting a variety of collaborative activities. We analyze event traffic during a highly collaborative task requiring various forms of shared object manipulation, including the concurrent manipulation of a shared object. Event sources are categorized and the influence of the form of object sharing as well as the display device
interface are detailed. With the presented findings the paper wishes to aid the design of future systems
- …