Talking Trailers: Promotional materials, and the value of the paratextual turn

In the last decade, the term ‘paratext’ has become increasingly popular and dominant in studies of promotional materials, applied to study a range of different media forms. Genette’s term appears in Coming Attractions: Reading American Movie Trailers (Kernan 2004), before being developed in Show Sold Separately (Gray 2010) and a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication (Brookey and Gray 2017). The latter issue states that ‘we know that paratexts walk amongst us’ and that paratextual analysis has advanced ‘a wide and impressive range of academic debates’ (ibid, 101), there has been little discussion about the use value of such a term for the broader work that exists around the production and reception of promotional materials (see, for example, Hesford and Johnston 2015; Johnston 2019). What follows is a discussion between three scholars whose work spans different aspects of promotional materials, to think through the advantages and limitations of the paratextual turn, and the future of this field

1991-1992 Course Catalog

1991-1992 Course Catalo

1999-2001 Course Catalog

1999-2001 Course Catalo

The Director’s Method in Contemporary Visual Effects Film: The Influence of Digital Effects on Film Directing

The director’ s method – meant as the organisation of the filmmaking process – is usually characterised by common procedures such as work on the script, shot design and the actors’ performance. For films involving a large-scale use of digital effects, directors consistently approach such procedures with a particular attitude dictated by the digital pipeline, the step-by-step technical procedure through which computer-generated images are created. In light of this, the use of digital effects might influence the director’s method. This thesis aims to define what is considered to be a consensual methodological approach to direct films with no or few digital effects and then compares this approach to when such effects are conspicuously involved. This analysis is conducted through interviews with working directors, visual effects companies and practitioners, and integrated with the current literature. The frame of the research is represented by a large spectrum of contemporary films produced in western countries and which involve digital effects at different scales and complexity but always in interaction with live-action. The research focuses on commercial films and excludes computer-animated and experimental films. The research is intended to address an area in production studies which is overlooked. In fact, although the existent literature examines both digital effects and film directing as distinct elements, there is to date no detailed analysis on the influence that the former has on the latter. In light of this, this dissertation seeks to fill a gap in production studies. The research looks to argue that the director’s method has been changed by the advent of digital effects; it describes a common workflow for digital effects film and notes the differences between this method and the method applied when digital effects are not involved. This is of significant importance for a film industry which is heavily dependent on such effects, as the analysis on contemporary filmmaking reveal