A Data Set for US Horror Film Trailers

This article presents a new data set comprising audio, colour, motion, and shot length data of trailers for the fifty highest grossing horror films at the US box office from 2011 to 2015. This data set is one of the few available for computational film analysis that includes data on multiple elements of film style and is the only existing data set for motion picture trailers suitable for formal analyses. Data is stored in csv files available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license on Zenodo: www.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4479068.

Different Cinematic Interpretations of Ch’unhyangjŏn: The Same Korean Identity

The article examines the classic Korean folklore fable, 춘향전 (春香傳), Ch’unhyangjŏn (The Fragrance of Spring), The Tale of Ch’unhyang, through the lens of three different successful movie adaptations produced in North and South Korea. Respectively, Yu Wŏn-chun and Yun Ryong-gyu portrayed The Tale of Ch’unhyang (1980) in its modest “Juche realist” North Korean film style, whereas Im Kwŏn-t’aek depicted his work, Ch’unhyang (2000), in a contemporary liberally and daringly revised version, while the romantic portrayal produced in North Korea by the South Korean film director, Shin Sang-ok, in Love, Love, My Love (1984), is performed from a human-oriented and entertaining perspective filled with musical ingredients and brave images of love. The study aims to demonstrate how the story is diversely interpreted through the two divided film cultures by highlighting differences between collectivism and individualism, noting also that all three interpretations emerge from similar roots of cultural and national identity.

THE GENEALOGY OF GESTURE: FROM KIRA MURATOVA TO RENATA LITVINOVA

The long-term creative collaboration between Kira Muratova and Renata Litvinova began with the film “Uvlechen’ya” (“Pastimes”, 1994), in which Litvinova took part both as an actress and a screenwriter. Since then, Litvinova has become one of the most striking personifications of Muratova’s ornamental film style, which brings about a specific regime of visibility by foregrounding the eccentric corporeality of non-professional actors, or gesturality as a category of bodily and speech performance. This article focuses on the primary scene of gestural genealogy linking the two directors: thus, the pathologist’s gesture from nurse Lilya’s monologue, written and recited by Litvinova in her inner eccentric manner in Muratova’s film, unfolds in a full-length film narration of “Rita’s Last Fairy Tale” (2012), with a phantasmagorical plot and spectacular visuals characteristic of Litvinova’s directorial style. The article addresses, on the one hand, this gesture, expressing concisely the manifold and bidirectional relation between Muratova’s and Litvinova’s films, and, on the other, discusses possible ways of theoretical conceptions of gesture in text and cinema. Gesture is conceived of as a borderline figure of speech and/or of body, aimed at an absent object, whereby the grasping function of the hand makes gestures to a figure of metalepsis which, translated into the language of cinema, emphasises the haptic character of the image. The missing object around which gesticulation arises leads to a discussion of the problematic status of gesture as a sign as well as to the disturbed process of signification during its interpretation. Since gesture only indicates and signals but does not signify, one can speak of the semiotic function of monstration. A gesture appears as a monster in the literal sense of the word, that is, the one who shows itself and, in so doing, warns. Thus, using gestures, to some extent requires adopting the position of a monster – to designate by putting oneself on the show, by making oneself the object of spectacle. Both films and the figure of Litvinova therein are viewed through the prism of monstrosity of gesture and language – it is through the disjunction between showing and speaking that gesture becomes exposed as a pure medium.

Use the CGA, Luke: oral and visual elements of narrative in Star Wars film trailers

CONCLUSION: This MRP explores the relationship between narrative structure and oral and visual narration strategies as illustrated in three Star Wars theatrical trailers. The theatrical trailers for Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), and Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) provide an overview of the development of narrative structure strategies utilized throughout the franchise’s forty-year history. By applying William Labov’s theory of narrative analysis (1972) and Bordwell and Thompson’s film style analysis (2012) to the three trailers, this MRP demonstrates that marketers are increasingly attempting to elicit an emotional reaction and connection from audience members through the use of visually compelling narratives that rely on suspense and an awareness of the Star Wars brand in popular culture. This study additionally illustrates that Labov’s model of narrative analysis is useful in the interpretation of film trailers because it can be used to identify patterns of narrative structure which can help illuminate the narrative intent behind marketing strategy. In a broader context, this study is useful in understanding how narrative structures function in film trailers, a relatively understudied marketing paratext that is increasingly important in film marketing and promotional strategies.

Use the CGA, Luke: oral and visual elements of narrative in Star Wars film trailers

CONCLUSION: This MRP explores the relationship between narrative structure and oral and visual narration strategies as illustrated in three Star Wars theatrical trailers. The theatrical trailers for Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), and Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) provide an overview of the development of narrative structure strategies utilized throughout the franchise’s forty-year history. By applying William Labov’s theory of narrative analysis (1972) and Bordwell and Thompson’s film style analysis (2012) to the three trailers, this MRP demonstrates that marketers are increasingly attempting to elicit an emotional reaction and connection from audience members through the use of visually compelling narratives that rely on suspense and an awareness of the Star Wars brand in popular culture. This study additionally illustrates that Labov’s model of narrative analysis is useful in the interpretation of film trailers because it can be used to identify patterns of narrative structure which can help illuminate the narrative intent behind marketing strategy. In a broader context, this study is useful in understanding how narrative structures function in film trailers, a relatively understudied marketing paratext that is increasingly important in film marketing and promotional strategies.

Radosława Piwowarskiego podróże nostalgiczne. Kreowanie pamięci wspólnotowej i „realizm pamięci” w narracjach o Dolinie Dzieciństwa i Młodości

The article comprises a study of the creative work of the Polish director Radosław Piwowarski, represented by his most characteristic films. The author points out the merger of stylized realism and of the nostalgic (or to be more precise – the realism stylized by means of nostalgia) as constitutive for the film style of this film artist. As a result of film analyses, the narrative structures of Piwowarski’s films appear to be memory structures, as they re-create the reality remembered by the filmmaker, who usually chooses the topos of a trip down memory lane to express his personal and subjective point of view. The film’s story becomes the image of the subjective reality, since it is a product of personal memory, consciousness and imagination. Piwowarski refers to the motif of the Valley of Childhood and Youth, vivid and active in the Polish literature and cinema, as an universum closed up in the past and lost forever, which, however, is accessible through the activity of recalling. The director, by the act of re-creation of a world personally remembered, actualizes the collective memory and therefore creates a community of memory with viewers of his films. The screen image of the past reality therefore gains double reliability – as a personal confession and as a record of the past; in consequence, we achieve the esthetical category of realism of memory.

Symbolika pejzażu (wewnętrznego) w filmach Carlosa Reygadasa

The article describes the representations of landscapes in the films by Carlos Reygadas, whose role is to evoke the transcendental film style (as understood by Paul Schrader), and to express the experiences, thoughts and action of the screen protagonists. Landscapes perform various functions in Reygadas’s films. They are not only a background for film events or emphasize the mood and aura of contemplation of film images, but also a symbolic representation of emotions and experiences of the film’s heroes, and evoke the sphere of transcendence and sacrum, important for spiritual dilemmas and searches of protagonists. The article cites and discusses all of Reygadas’s fictional films made so far, which gives us the opportunity to compare them and demonstrate their mutual inspiration, and to continue the proprietary workshop, stylistic and thematic solutions. The research method in the article is analytical description of selected landscapes that play an important role in Carlos Reygadas’ films and the interpretation of the symbols contained in them, in accordance with the phenomenological and hermeneutic perspective. Interpretative phenomenological analysis enables, as the research tool used in the article, both the description of images (landscapes) appearing in Reygadas’ films and the presentation of their symbolic meanings. The subject of interest in interpretative phenomenological analysis is the life situation of film heroes, entangled in a chaos of various events and forced to make various choices. In accordance with the attitude adopted by the director, which can be described Katarzyna Citko as the syllaptic ‘I’ (a term used in the meaning given to him by Ryszard Nycz), they are also an exemplification of the worldview and the essence of the artistic creation by the author: Carlos Reygadas himself.

Film Style

The fourth chapter of Style in Narrative turns from literature to cinema. Since a great deal of style is common to both literature and film, this chapter is necessarily shorter than its counterpart (chapter 1). Moreover, it focuses on the differences between literary and film style, thus what is not common to the two. The areas of divergence are principally a matter of the medium or perceptual interface. In consequence, the chapter focuses particularly on the visual and aural aspects of film. On the other hand, these aspects are more encompassing than is sometimes recognized, including for example aspects of narration. It also addresses differences in the authorship of films, and the status of Hollywood “continuity editing” as a broad stylistic norm for which there is no parallel in literature. The chapter ends with some brief comments on the way James Franco, in his film adaptation of As I Lay Dying, dealt with the (relatively underdiscussed) levels of perceptual narration and cinematic emplotment.