Collected Data
Watch: "Cutting the Edge: Freedom in Framing"
A few thoughts;
While the author acknowledges that mixing aspect ratio’s predates digital, they under play how old of an idea it is. Cinematographer Robert Richardson was experimenting with this in the early 90’s. Long before even digital editing was the norm.
How many films today mix aspect ratios as a reality of having limited access to the IMAX format? IMAX is very expensive. Most American films that shoot IMAX only do so for select scenes.
Watch: "Noël Carroll on the paradox of horror"
There are entire industries dedicated to delivering frights, thrills and gross-outs. So why do audiences line up and pay up in droves to experience horror and disgust – two emotions almost universally thought of as negative? In this Aeon Interview, Noël Carroll, distinguished professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), dissects why horror fiction gets its hooks so deeply into audiences despite putting them in states of discomfort.
Noël Carroll on the paradox of horror
Watch: "In the Cut Part III: I Left My Heart in My Throat in San Francisco"
Jim Emerson;
Wrapping up the series with looks at William Friedkin's "The French Connection" (1971), Peter Yates' "Bullitt" (1968) and Don Siegel's "The Lineup" (1958).
Watch: "In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight)"
A great video essay by Jim Emerson.
A (very) detailed look at the first part of a famous TDK car/truck chase sequence, analyzing how it is put together and whether the filmmaking grammar makes sense.
You can read a transcript here.
Watch: "Chaos Cinema Parts 1 - 3" by Matthias Stork
The video essay Chaos Cinema, administered by Indiewire's journalistic blog PRESS PLAY, examines the extreme aesthetic principles of 21st century action films. These films operate on techniques that, while derived from classical cinema, threaten to shatter the established continuity formula. Chaos reigns in image and sound.
Read: "Pesky brats, adventurous ducks, and jiving swamp critters"
We never need an excuse to write about comic strips or comic books. We’re fans and, just as important, we think of them as having important connections to film. We’re particularly fond of classic funny-animal comics, from Krazy Kat (the greatest) onward. So I got a double dose of pleasure reading Mike Barrier’s Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books. It taught me a lot about the history of some favorites, and it set me thinking about some overlaps and divergences between film and graphic art.
Pesky brats, adventurous ducks, and jiving swamp critters
"Today’s television assumes that viewers can pay close attention because the technology allows them to easily do so."
As shows craft ongoing mysteries, convoluted chronologies or elaborate webs of references, viewers embrace practices that I’ve termed “forensic fandom.” Working as a virtual team, dedicated fans embrace the complexities of the narrative – where not all answers are explicit – and seek to decode a program’s mysteries, analyze its story arc and make predictions.
Why has TV storytelling become so complex?
Read: "1932: MGM invents the future (Part 1)" by David Bordwell
This is what we have come to expect in mainstream cinema. Not only inner monologues but all channels of subjectively tinted information are usually slanted toward one character per scene. So a film might have several point-of-view characters in its overall running time (e.g., Psycho), but any given scene is likely to be anchored around one.
1932: MGM invents the future (Part 1)
Read: "The Getting of rhythm: Room at the bottom"
Filmmakers solve the problem of rhythm in practice, often brilliantly. Those of us who want to understand how films work, and work upon us, want to get specific and explicit. What is this thing called cinematic rhythm? What contributes to it? Can we analyze it and explain its grip? Very few scholars have tackled these questions; they’re hard. In her new book, Film Rhythm after Sound: Technology, Music, and Performance, our friend and colleague Lea Jacobs takes us quite a ways toward some answers.
The Getting of rhythm: Room at the bottom
Read: "Filling the box: The Never-Ending Pan & Scan Story"
It’s been years since I clicked my cable remote to the Sundance Channel and the Independent Film Channel, now known as IFC. Seeing them a couple of weeks ago was a mild shock. Now each boasted a bug in the lower right corner, and swarming over the image were lots of texts plugging other programs. Worse, there were commercials for weight-loss scams, Burger King, and Portlandia. More to the point here, these services give us a new version of pan-and-scan.
Filling the box: The Never-Ending Pan & Scan Story
"The way I see it, from a formalist perspective, most videogames aren't particularly interesting."
Everywhere *we* look we see pretend worlds and childish make-believe, imaginary dragons, badly written dialogue and unskippable cutscenes in which angry mannequins gesture awkwardly at each other.
More Thoughts on Formalism
The above quote more or less sums up my thoughts on most video games and why I don’t play very many.
I used to work at EA. At the time, the first HD consoles were about 9 months away. It was a very interesting time to be there. I’m a “Formalist” and proudly so. I like to know how and why things work. That’s what I consider Formalism; the study of the basic mechanics of a medium. No one I met at EA was at all interested in exploring game mechanics, they were just interested in rendering.
I’ve found this to be true in the film and television industry as well. No one is very interested in trying to understand the mechanics of how the mediums function. Which is a shame, because I’ve seen a lot of great ideas wasted.
The comments to the blog post are interesting too.
Sam Stephens;
The problem I have with a term like formalism is the implication that those who have an interest in "mechanics and systems" (i.e. gameplay) believe these elements are the most important element of an artistic medium and that they are denying the importance or value of other elements of that medium.
I’d say this is not a problem with the term “Formalism” but with the writer of the comment. The term Formalism does not implicate anything other than what the term means. The definition IS open to debate, but regardless, just because it is not inclusive does not make it a ‘problem’; that’s what makes it useful.
There are people who believe the mechanics of a medium are more important than the content. There are people who believe the content is more important than the medium. Giving these positions names makes debate easier and more productive. (Even if that debate is over the meaning of the terms.)
Stephens comments further;
It's difficult to argue BioShock and Grand Theft Auto don't present themes, messages, aesthetics and world views. It's just that the art of these products is irrelevant to the gameplay.
This is false. The themes, messages etc of both of the example games are deeply tied to the game play and design choices made by their creators.
James Margaris comments;
That's the elephant in the room in most of critical discourse: it's for other critics and a specific, narrow type of developer interested in philosophical and semantic arguments, not for game developers as a whole. People arguing about what formalism is or is not, what sorts of games formalists are interested in, whether people are too or not enough interested in ludo-whatever or who would win in a fight, ludozealots or narratologists - almost totally irrelevant to the actual act of creating video games.
This is essentially a version of “Those who can Do. Those who can’t Teach” A lot of people in creative industries think this way.
It’s bull shit.
It is a very narrow minded and arrogant view point. Critical thinking, theory creation and discussion can add a great deal to creation. It’s a great tool to use. Critical thinking and theory is creative. It can be used as inspiration just like any other cultural artifact.
He does go onto add something I agree with;
Which matters "most" is irrelevant - they all matter. Good video games, and even good board games, have good rules and good presentation / theming that supports the rules and adds to the experience.
And then, the foot attempts to go in the mouth again, but misses and create comedy gold;
There aren't that many specialized words in film criticism - most of them are invented by practitioners, not critics, and describe something specific that comes up in day-to-day work, like a "two shot" or an "insert." But you can read film criticism without coming across a single invented-by-critics word.
He obviously isn’t up to date on film criticism.
Even though I think he’s wrong, Luis Guimaraes makes a very well stated comment.
Games are not Form, games are Function, so "games formalism" would actually mean the opposite of what it's used to say (again, just "scientism" by other name), as "formalist" implies a focus on "form" over function.
Games are Form AND they are Function. They are both. “Formalist” does not ‘imply’ a focus on form over function. It is the study of how form allows or creates function.
Lastly, Joe McGinn’s comment is spot on;
even narrative has formal aspects, related to game systems, especially if one is innovating in the area as in 80 Days or The Walking Dead.And it's like anything. If you break the "rules" without understanding them, results will be more random. So I teach my students formal game design elements, in part so that they can break the mold on purpose rather than by accident!
Intention is everything. If you do not understand your tools, you will never master your trade. It’s as simple as that.
"A problem/solution way of thinking can clarify some problems in the history of filmmaking"
Asking why? about something in an artwork actually veils two different questions.The first is: How did it get there? The answer is a causal story about how the element came to be included.The second sense of why is: What’s it doing there? That’s not a question of causes but of functions. How does the element contribute to the other parts and the artwork as a whole?
Problems, problems: Wyler’s workaround
A new Bordwell blog entry is a great way to start the New Year.
"Visual storytelling is seldom purely visual."
The result is nice case study in visual storytelling. It also indicates how even a pure instance needs non-visual elements to be understood.
Visual storytelling: Is that all?
Read: "Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film" by David Borwell
Today, most films are cut more rapidly than at any other time in U.S. studio filmmaking. Indeed, editing rates may soon hit a wall; it's hard to imagine a feature- length narrative movie averaging less than 1.5 seconds per shot.
(PDF) Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film
Read: "ADIEU AU LANGAGE: 2 + 2 x 3D” by David Bordwell
The brute fact is that these movies are, moment by moment, awfully opaque. Not only do characters act mysteriously, implausibly, farcically, irrationally. It’s hard to assign them particular wants, needs, and personalities. They come into conflict, but we’re not always sure why. In addition, we aren’t often told, at least explicitly, how the characters connect with one another. The plots are highly elliptical, leaving out big chunks of action and merely suggesting them, often by a single close-up or an offscreen sound. Godard’s narratives pose not only problems of interpretation but problems of comprehension—building a coherent story world and the actions and agents in it.
ADIEU AU LANGAGE: 2 + 2 x 3D
And a follow up...
Say hello to GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE
Listen: "On Narrative with David Bordwell" Podcast
Read: "A Celestial Cinémathèque? or, Film Archives and Me: A Semi-Personal History" by David Bordwell
Fascinated by film as a teenager, I quickly absorbed the tastes that created the canon. I read books celebrating the great silent films and the major studio pictures of the 1930s and 1940s. I bought an 8mm copy of the Odessa Steps sequence and projected it on my bedroom wall.
A Celestial Cinémathèque? or, Film Archives and Me: A Semi-Personal History
Read: "The Art of Film Editing" P.O.V. Issue 6
the splice, in cinema, has more dialectical properties. It serves not merely as a pause or cæsura - something that separates or provides a brief breathing space - but on the contrary something that joins: "syntactic" in the root sense of the word. And if we are talking about magic, the magic of cinema is surely sensed to lie here: in the strange alchemy arising out of the juxtaposition of images
Taken from Issue 6 of P.O.V., dedicated to the subject of Editing.
Watch: "Situationist International"
Film Theory: SYNOPTIQUE - An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies
Synoptique publishes articles covering a wide array of subjects related to Film and Moving Image Studies, be it aesthetic, film history, technology or theory. We also publish festival and exhibition reports, as well as book reviews.
via Film Studies For Free
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