Exploring the application of practice-based research on affective cinema to the teaching of creative cinematographic techniques within UK higher education

This article outlines an exploratory approach to the delivery of film practice education, as developed and tested with a second-year undergraduate module in cinematography. Students were provided with two existing creative sound pieces composed by a professional sound designer within the context of an AHRC-funded practice research project entitled Affective Cinema. These aspects of sound design inspired and informed the students’ work, while allowing them to focus upon the module’s key learning outcomes as related to camera and lighting skills. Above all, the approach allowed for aspects of the film theory synthesised through the preceding research – and pertinent to the nature and unique expressive potential of film – to be partially absorbed and learned by the students through practical experimentation, thus becoming an embodied, tacit practitioner knowledge. In this respect, I argue that such approaches help transcend the fraught divisions between film practice and film theory

Affective cinema : experimenting with feelings of meaning

Affective Cinema is an AHRC-funded practice research project in film, informed by art cinema, experimental film traditions, film theory and philosophy. The outcomes of the research are films that combine aspects of cinematic style, nuances of performance and elements of chance. When all these attributes align in an unpredictable way, a feeling of meaning can be produced: a moment of cinema that is engaging and captivating without trying to tell a story or communicating something specific or intentional through the film. The research thereby aims to expand the potential of the cinematic form by producing experimental film structures in which this feeling of meaning can be identified, and by testing and developing methods that can lead to its emergence. The research also seeks to unite the practice and theory in a unique way – bringing the theory directly into the practice through a poetic voice-over. This submission to IJCMR represents a new version of Affective Cinema, one that was designed especially for the MediaWall at Bath Spa University, and which was exhibited between March 26–April 5 2019

Nonhuman flow : audio-visual affects and the expressive potential of film

Nonhuman Flow emerged from a wider AHRC-funded research in Affective Cinema, which seeks to experiment with and explore the unique expressive potential of film linked to its direct capturing of the real (light). This can give rise to affects: impersonal, undifferentiated-yet-singular, nonhuman sensations and feelings contained in the work, as opposed to the human world of meaning and language (Deleuze and Guattari 1994). The research synthesises various sources in film theory and philosophy, making them the guiding principle of the practice; this results in original works of film art, expands the understanding of the theory and leads to the development of innovatory film production techniques, such as the complex lighting experiments demonstrated in the visuals of Nonhuman Flow

Exploring the application of practice-based research on affective cinema to the teaching of creative cinematographic techniques within UK higher education

This article outlines an exploratory approach to the delivery of film practice education as developed and tested with a second-year undergraduate module in cinematography. Students were provided with two existing creative sound pieces composed by a professional sound designer within the context of an AHRC-funded practice research project entitled Affective Cinema. These aspects of sound design inspired and informed the students’ work, while allowing them to focus upon the module’s key learning outcomes as related to camera and lighting skills. Above all, the approach allowed for aspects of the film theory synthesised through the preceding research – and pertinent to the nature and unique expressive potential of film – to be partially absorbed and learned by the students through practical experimentation, thus becoming an embodied, tacit practitioner knowledge. In this respect, I argue that such approaches help transcend the fraught divisions between film practice and film theory

Chance semiotics : the value and application of contingency in cinema art practice

As this paper argues, chance is the key defining aspect of film, distinguishing it from other forms of art and communication. This is because film has the ability to capture a direct, mechanical imprint of the unpredictable movement of reality as a series of equidistant static images. Through the enhanced visibility (such as the close-up or slow-motion) and replayability of this static state, film can reveal contingent nuances of this movement. Therefore, film can be seen as uniquely positioned on a semiotic threshold between movement and stillness – the infinitely complex movement of the real, and the conceptual stillness of language – translating randomness and chaos into aleatory significance, or revealing the unpredictable, contingent foundation of seemingly ordinary, habitual events. On the basis of a creative synthesis of particular aspects of the philosophy and theory of Bergson, Deleuze, Barthes and others, this paper sets out chance as the defining semiotic aspect of film. Furthermore, the paper discusses and presents outcomes of a practice research in film, which used this theoretical synthesis as a rationale for practical exploration and experimentation – establishing chance as a significant expressive tool and aesthetic element of film practice. In this way, the paper presents new filmmaking methods uniquely rooted in film philosophy, while contributing to the expansion of the understanding of the nature of film and to the narrative/stylistic potential of cinema art

Affective space : a conceptual and practical approach to cinematography

This article seeks to provide a theoretical justification and context to the understanding of cinematography as affective space, both in the aesthetic effects in the film image and in how this understanding can inform a specific approach to cinematography in experimental camera practice, with a potential application to larger film productions. Affective space, as this article argues, depends on a film’s aesthetic impulse against the seamless impression of reality; the notion of affective space rests on the assertion that the aspects of the filmed reality and the aspects of the camera (such as framing or depth of field) merge into a single two-dimensional surface in the moment of capture, and that these two sides are inseparable on the level of the image, forming a new aesthetic reality, which has the potential to transform and partially abstract a sense of representation of ordinary space. The notion of affective space synthesises various sources in film theory and ontology, but then applies these concepts through film practice, leading to the development of new cinematographic techniques. Affective space represents an understanding of film developed through a wider AHRC-funded practice research entitled Affective Cinema, and relates to Deleuzian affect theory and Marks’s haptic visuality. This article explains the conceptual field surrounding affective space, and then presents a set of experimental methods and insights resulting from the practical application of the theory. In this way, the underlying research transcends the division and distinction between theory and practice

‘I’m Not There Anymore’ : film performance affects and the loosening of narrative

The film emerged from a wider, AHRC-funded practice-as-research PhD entitled Affective Cinema, which experiments with cinematographic and directorial techniques, and methods of working with performers, in order to generate film structures that disrupt or offset narrative, semiotic and/or spatial coherence by the production of audio-visual affects. In this way, a certain boundary is being explored between the representational and the non-representational, which gives rise to a sense of ‘affective significance’ – a meaning that is felt before it can be thought

Affective cinema : between style, chance and the moving body

Affective Cinema is a practice research project in film, informed by art cinema and experimental film traditions, and by conceptual fields derived from film theory and philosophy (specifically film ontology, and the philosophy of Deleuze, Bergson and Barthes). The primary outcome of the research is a series of short films, or ‘Affective Signs’, which are structured on the basis of affective significance – an original concept identified in various film moments from the history of cinema, and subsequently developed through the project. Affective significance is a sense of meaning that is felt before it can be thought: it eludes language, and transgresses the boundaries of traditional knowledge and (inter-subjective) communication. Affective significance is produced by chance being captured and revealed on film, in combination with stylistic aspects and decisions that do not coherently assimilate these flashes of contingency into the film’s ordinary signification, but instead amplify their nonhuman origin in the real outside of the human world of reason, concepts and understanding. Through experimenting with film performance, and its ability to expose the nonhuman nature of the moving body as the real (below the human surface of intention, self-control, subjectivity, and meaningful gestures), the sense of affective significance can be amplified, when combined with the aforementioned aspects of style and chance. The research expands the potential of cinema by producing experimental film structures in which affective significance can be identified, and by analysing and describing the methodological and aesthetic conditions needed for it to arise. In the process, both established and new methods of film production are tested, and formulated into an applicable set of approaches to filmmaking, cinematography and directing performers. Furthermore, the research contributes to the ontological understanding of film by defining the conceptual field surrounding affective significance, which is rooted in established film scholarship on affect, semiotics and the movement/stillness paradox of film, but also uniquely acquired through and embedded in practice