Neural responses to shot changes by cut in cinematographic editing: An EEG (ERD/ERS) study

In order to analyze and detect neural activations and inhibitions in film spectators to shot changes by cut in films, we developed a methodology based on comparisons of recorded EEG signals and analyzed the event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD/ERS). The aim of the research is isolating these neuronal responses from other visual and auditory features that covary with film editing. This system of comparing pairs of signals using permutation tests, the Spearman correlation, and slope analysis is implemented in an automated way through sliding windows, analyzing all the registered electrodes signals at all the frequency bands defined. Through this methodology, we are able to locate, identify, and quantify the variations in neuronal rhythms in specific cortical areas and frequency ranges with temporal precision. Our results detected that after a cut there is a synchronization in theta rhythms during the first 188 ms with left lateralization, and also a desynchronization between 250 ms and 750 ms in the delta frequency band. The cortical area where most of these neuronal responses are detected in both cases is the parietal area.

Body and camera in motion — a dialogue between film and contemporary dance theater based on the experience gained in the making of the experimental art documentary Tensity

The paper presents the relationship between the worlds of film and dance theater, and the ways in which the medium of the performing body can be translated onto the screen by the director and cinematographer. By analyzing his own experiences and related artistic decisions made during the realization of the experimental documentary Tensity, the author looks at the clash of two different media and the relations that may result from the effort to translate dance theater performance into traditional film medium. Along with the change of medium, the nature of the work also changes and a completely new artistic value is created, enriched with elements unknown to theater, such as film editing, camera work and, finally, screen time. A film work based on the theatrical medium becomes a separate artistic creation, allowing the director and the cinematographer to build upon the foundation of the performative art of the actor/dancer.

The Cinema Centaur

The 1960s witnessed the transformation of “film factories” from metaphor to lived reality. Lenfilm’s output rose once more to the levels its predecessor studios had reached in the 1920s, but the conditions of production were now far more complex and demanding, with staffs more than ten times the size. And while the 1960s was an era of optimistic emphasis on the Soviet film industry’s capacity to equal and surpass the world in technological terms, during the 1970s, the conviction took hold that the technological superiority of Western films was of direct relevance to audience share. Increasingly, ambitious filmmakers petitioned Goskino for permission to shoot on Kodak and to use Arriflex cameras; criticism of inferior Soviet film stock and GDR-produced film editing tables mounted, both across the USSR and at Lenfilm itself. Yet investment in studio infrastructure and technology remained at best haphazard, particularly at Lenfilm, which enjoyed less generous support from the center than Mosfilm, but also more limited resourcing than film studios in the capitals of Soviet republics. At the same time, Lenfilm had an unusually diverse, energetic, inventive, and loyal workforce, with corporate values that inspired manual workers and porters as well as “creative” personnel. Hierarchical at some levels, the work culture was egalitarian at others, and the frenetic process of scrambling to finish films in trying circumstances created strong bonds. The chapter explores the various conflicts and contradictions, but also rewards, that this situation generated.

Editor as a phenomenon of Soviet art culture

The article is devoted to understanding the image of the Soviet editor in Russian art (using examples of fiction and cinema). The author examines the personal qualities that contributed to the entry of a person into the profession («editorial character») and provides a chronological observation of the «editorial evolution» – in publishing and film production-throughout the Soviet period and the first years of Russia in the 1990s. An important aspect that has been updated since the early 1920s is the active inclusion of women in editorial work. The characteristics of editors of different Soviet periods are analyzed using examples from the prose of M. Bulgakov, V. Shishkov, L. Rakhmanov, A. Tobolyak, V. Astafyev. Portraits of Soviet film editors are considered in the works of J. Gausner, N. Bogoslovsky, V. Makanin, D. Rubina and M. Kuraev. Representatives of the editorial profession are also represented in the films of A. Tarkovsky, V. Zheregy, K. Shakhnazarov and A. Benckendorf. There are two main types in the artistic depiction of editors and their activities: satirical (in a pointed form ridiculing personal and professional shortcomings) and dramatic (reflecting the complexity of editorial characters in their inseparability with the influence of society, historical era). In the final part of the article, the vectors of professional diffusions in the film-editing corps are outlined with the end of the Soviet era and the need to adapt to the new, post-Soviet realities.

Weavers of Film

This article uses AT&T’s 1910s–30s “Weavers of Speech” campaign to read on-screen telegraph and telephone operators as vernacular translators of cinematic syntax and hypervisible avatars for the invisible cutter girls who “knitted the pieces of film together” on studio lots. While operators largely played peripheral roles in classical films, two transitional periods saw them rise to the surface of story en masse, as if temporarily hired to sew over a rupture. A comparative analysis of telephone girls’ enlistment as temp techno-pedagogues during US film’s introduction of crosscutting and European film’s polyglot transition to sound suggests women’s film-weaving labor as an alternative to the surgical rhetoric (suture) and auteur models that dominate theories of film editing. More broadly, the article suggests that the culturally conspicuous feminization of low-level information labor offers feminist film historians a crucial “mediatrix” for uncovering woman workers hidden in the cut of film.

Storytelling Remix (Intermediate)

Students can use storytelling as a source of inspiration to create original music. In this project, students will use existing illustrations from a children’s story to create a new story, complete with a soundtrack and recorded narrations. In this activity, the grade four to nine students must synthesize their own narrative from preexisting material. Students use a DAW, visual art production program, and film editing program to complete their project. By using music and their voice to enhance their chosen story, students will gain confidence in their own creative voice and deepen their understanding of the communicative capacities of sound.

O faux raccord e a montagem discursiva: O que é faux raccord?

This research aims to make an overview about the possibilities of perception and prehension of film editing, from a theoretical deepening and analysis of one of its intrinsic elements: the faux raccord.This paper comes to postulate a precise definition for the term, as well as situate it in theoretical and audiovisual production throughout history, helping understanding the consequences of its use in the discursive construction, and Trying to deepen a reflection about the importance of the sensitive analysis of films and understand how the Faux raccord incurs as a cognitive thruster in reception of the films.To get to a concrete definition of faux raccord, we bring a meticulous bibliographic research on discontinuous cuts and we deconstruct the concept of raccord. Based on this we were able to define what in fact comes to be the faux raccord and which cuts fit this definition.