Acrobatics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriano D’Aloia
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Original Proposal ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Contemporary Cinema

The chapter ‘Acrobatics. On the wires of empathy’ takes as a starting point Edith Stein’s critique of psychologist Theodor Lipps’ notion of empathy (Einfühlung) and her original proposal for a phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Since this debate revolves around the example of an observer watching an acrobat walking on a wire in mid air, the chapter offers an analysis of acrobatic actions in contemporary cinema (such as in Zemeckis’ The Walk) and reflects on both disembodied and embodied accounts of empathy in film studies. Recovering the filmological meaning of this term (introduced into film studies by psychologist Albert Michotte) and developing a model of cinematic empathy along the lines of Stein’s theory, the chapter illuminates the importance of the unbalancing/rebalancing dynamic in creating the spectator’s proprioceptive experience of disequilibrium.

Deepfaking Keanu: YouTube deepfakes, platform visual effects, and the complexity of reception

2021 ◽  
pp. 135485652110304
Author(s):  
Lisa Bode
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Digital Rhetoric ◽  
Visual Effects ◽  
After Effects ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Media Creation ◽  
Media Practices

On July 14, 2019, a 3-minute 36-second video titled “Keanu Reeves Stops A ROBBERY!” was released on YouTube visual effects (VFX) channel, Corridor. The video’s click-bait title ensured it was quickly shared by users across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Comments on the video suggest that the vast majority of viewers categorised it as fiction. What seemed less universally recognised, though, was that the performer in the clip was not Keanu Reeves himself. It was voice actor and stuntman Reuben Langdon, and his face was digitally replaced with that of Reeves, through the use of an AI generated deepfake, an open access application, Faceswap, and compositing in Adobe After Effects. This article uses Corridor’s deepfake Keanu video (hereafter shorted to CDFK) as a case study which allows the fleshing out of an, as yet, under-researched area of deepfakes: the role of framing contexts in shaping how viewers evaluate, categorise, make sense of and discuss these images. This research draws on visual effects scholarship, celebrity studies, cognitive film studies, social media theory, digital rhetoric, and discourse analysis. It is intended to serve as a starting point of a larger study that will eventually map types of online manipulated media creation on a continuum from the professional to the vernacular, across different platforms, and attending to their aesthetic, ethical, cultural and reception dimensions. The focus on context (platform, creator channel, and comments) also reveals the emergence of an industrial and aesthetic category of visual effects, which I call here “platform VFX,” a key term that provides us with more nuanced frames for illuminating and analysing a range of manipulated media practices as VFX software becomes ever more accessible and lends itself to more vernacular uses, such as we see with various face swap apps

Fall

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriano D’Aloia
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Homeostatic Process ◽  
Found Footage ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Film Experience

A common outcome of acrobatics, and a motif often combined with it, is the fall. The chapter ‘Fall. Descent to equilibrium’ discusses the recurrence of the motif of the falling human body in contemporary cinema, taking as a starting point Oliver Pietsch’s found footage film Maybe Not. Relying on Torben Grodal’s application of the notions of telic and paratelic to the film experience, referring to the use of cinema as metaphor for the mind proposed by Antonio Damasio, and interpreting several experiments on the perception of movement in film sequences whose temporality is manipulated, this chapter describes the modality through which cinema ‘regulates’ the fall by adopting a homeostatic process that reduces its traumatic character and, at the same time, enhances its expressive effectiveness.

scholarly journals Surrounded by Ear Candy?

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (s1) ◽  
pp. 251-262
Author(s):  
Svein Høier
Keyword(s):  
Best Practice ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Surround Sound ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Contemporary Cinema

AbstractThis article looks at surround sound in contemporary cinema, with the aim of discussing practices of sound design and, more particularly, pinpointing a ‘best practice’ of surround sound today – focusing here on the practices in the US. The empirical starting point for the analysis is a study of ten Oscar-nominated movies, analysing their soundtracks and especially comparing their stereo and surround versions. The method can be described as a ‘directional’ listening mode, analysing how the different channels and speakers are used when presenting sonic elements like voices, music, atmospheres and sound effects.

Vertigo

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriano D’Aloia
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Embodied Simulation ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Contemporary Film

The chapter ‘Vertigo. Towards a Neurofilmology’ offers an introduction to the book’s contents and methods. The implementation of psychology of perception, philosophy of mind, and suggestions from cognitive neuroscience (in particular the role of ‘mirror neurons’ and the hypothesis of ‘embodied simulation’) has the capability to renew contemporary film theory and to reduce the distance between competing approaches (i.e. cognitivist and phenomenological film studies). ‘Neurofilmology’ adopts an enactive and embodied approach to cognition and provides interpretative tools for the exploration of contemporary cinema. Through a series of recurrent ‘aerial motifs’ in which the film character loses his/her equilibrium—acrobatics, fall, impact, overturning, and drift—the cinema offers an intense motor and emotional experience that puts the spectator’s somatosensory perception in tension. At the same time, it provides compensation by adopting embodied forms of regulation of stimuli and a dynamic restoration of gravity and orientation (the so called ‘disembodying-reembodying’ dynamic).

Wat is nationaal aan nationale cinema?

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmijn Van Gorp
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Transnational Cinema ◽  
National Cinema ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Heated Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Academic Debate

What is national about national cinema? The academic debate unravelled What is national about national cinema? The academic debate unravelled The concept of national cinema has been the subject of a heated debate in film studies for almost 20 years. In this article it is argued that the debate should be seen in the light of the discussion on the concepts of nation and national identity. The starting point is Higson’s pioneering article ‘The Concept of National Identity’ (1989), identifying four views on national cinema (i.e., art cinema, textual, productional and consumptional approach). A fifth approach is being formed by the antipode of national cinema: post- or transnational cinema.

scholarly journals Translation, Systems and Research: The Contribution of Polysystem Studies to Translation Studies

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Descriptive Research ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Translation Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Ambiguous Position ◽  
Specific Profile

Abstract Translation, Systems and Research: The Contribution of Polysystem Studies to Translation Studies — The aim of this article is not at all to examine Polysystems theory nor Polysystems research as such, but rather to discuss the impact Polysystems research has had in the development of a new discipline, i.e. Translation Studies. The ambiguous position of PS research within Translation Studies is due to its interdisciplinary claims and, on the other hand, to the necessity to work in a real world of disciplines where institutionalization is inevitable and even needed. The starting point of PS theory is not translation at all, but rather the dynamic functions fulfilled by translation within (inevitably) heterogeneous cultures and societies. On the basis of such hypotheses about culture(s) a rich panorama of new questions for research on translation has been worked out, as well as methodological models, and individual and collective descriptive research has been started in many countries on many cultural situations. Hence it may be accepted that descriptive research on translation would hardly have existed without the programmatic PS contribution and that the establishment of Translation Studies as an academic discipline is greatly indebted to PS. The gradual extension through various countries and disciplines (film studies, media studies, social organization, etc.) has favoured combinations with other approaches while making less clear the specific profile of the PS approach. It may be said that PS has served research as such, much more than its own sake, but wasn't this exactly the goal it wanted to achieve?

scholarly journals Fakes of reality. Do we really need the paradigm of the documentary? From the ontology to the epistemology of movie images, i.e. there and back again

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (30) ◽  
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Jakubowska
Keyword(s):  
Main Body ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Epistemological Perspectives

The starting point for this paper is the statement that we are witnessing a “mock-documentary boom” in contemporary cinema. Viewers today can be surprised and confused by the variety of “intercrossings” that are used in documentary and fictional strategies. The fact that there has been a growing number of films that do not respect the traditional division between fictional and non-functional cinema deserves deeper consideration. The introduction of the paper is focused on historical sources and classifications of this complex phenomenon (for example: the brothers Lumière tradition contrasts with that of Méliès). The main body of the paper is concentrated on the question of what cinema can offer in lieu of a documentary paradigm. It also tries to explore ontological and epistemological perspectives which can clarify some of the reasons for the popularity of mock-documentary and docufiction productions. It ends with a suggestion that the cinema is a domain of fakes of reality regardless of whether fictional or non-fictional narration is used to tell their stories. 

Impossible Puzzle Films

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miklós Kiss ◽  
Steven Willemsen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Specific Category ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mulholland Drive ◽  
Blind Spots

Narrative complexity is a trend in contemporary cinema. Since the late 1990s there has been a palpable increase in complex storytelling in movies. But how and why do complex movies create perplexity and confusion? How do we engage with these challenges? And what makes complex stories so attractive? By blending film studies, narrative theory and cognitive sciences, Kiss and Willemsen look into the relation between complex storytelling and the mind. Analysing the effects that different complex narratives have on viewers, the book addresses how films like Donnie Darko, Mulholland Drive or Primer strategically create complexity and confusion, and, by using the specific category of the ‘impossible puzzle film’, it examines movies that use baffling paradoxes, impossible loops, and unresolved ambiguities in their stories and storytelling. By looking at how these films play on our mind’s blind spots, this innovative book explains their viewing effects in terms of the mental state of cognitive dissonance that they evoke.

scholarly journals Media convergence of video games and films: Narrative, aesthetics and industrial synergy

Kultura ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 246-262
Author(s):  
Manojlo Maravić
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Multidisciplinary Approach ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Film Language ◽  
Film And Video

The starting point for defining the relation between film and video games is the well-known thesis that each new medium assumes some formal and contentual characteristics of its predecessors, although the previous medium reconfigures its own and absorbs the properties of the new medium as well. The aim is to present a broader theoretical framework, which would serve as a basis for further exploration of this relation. A multidisciplinary approach will be used based on the concepts of media studies, game studies, film studies and cultural studies. Video games are often based on cinema's thematic, narrative and genre models, while the recursive narrative logic of games is present in films. The use of film language is noticeable in video games, while in movies, it is modified by the aesthetic properties of games. Hollywood industry and the video games industry are synergistic and offer users many ways of consuming products in different media.

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