Beyond Spatial Montage

Beyond Spatial Montage: Windowing, or the Cinematic Displacement of Time, Motion, and Space offers an extended discussion of the morphology and structure of compositing, graphic juxtapositions, and montage employed in motion pictures. Drawing from the history of avant-garde and commercial cinema, as well as studio-based research, here media artist and theorist Michael Betancourt critiques cinematic realism and spatial montage in motion pictures. This new taxonomic framework for conceptualizing linkages between media art and narrative cinema opens new areas of experimentation for today’s film editors, motion designers, and other media artists.

Film and Video Editing Theory offers an accessible, introductory guide to the practices used to create meaning through editing. In this book, Michael Frierson synthesizes the theories of the most prominent film editors and scholars, from Herbert Zettl, Sergei Eisenstein, and Noël Burch to the work of landmark Hollywood editors like Walter Murch and Edward Dmytryk. In so doing, he maps out a set of craft principles for readers, whether one is debating if a flashback reveals too much, if a certain cut clarifies or obscures the space of a scene, or if a shot needs to be trimmed. The book is grounded in the unity of theory and practice, looking beyond technical proficiency in a specific software to explain to readers how and why certain cuts work or don’t work.

This book bridges the gap between film theory and filmmakers' thoughts and poetics, and proposes a new way to address and elaborate film theory. It brings together primary sources by filmmakers themselves, drawing on their films, interviews, books, texts, and manifestos. Divided into three parts, the book covers the main aspects of this approach. Part one discusses the concepts of 'author' and 'filmmaker'. Part two evaluates the creative processes of a broad range of filmmakers, including Víctor Gaviria (Colombia), Kleber Mendonça Filho (Brazil), Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda (France), Abbas Kiarostami (Iran) Pa. Ranjith (India), Andy Warhol (USA), Maya Deren (Ukraine-USA) and Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey). The final part examines filmmakers' various techniques, particularly the use of multi-images, after-(dialectical)-images, and the use of sound as a sensorial and narrative tool. This curated selection of writings, with contributors from a range of countries including the USA, UK, India, China, Portugal, Brazil, Belgium and New Zealand, reflects the global perspective of this new approach. The volume also discusses the ways in which filmmakers influence each other, the spectator as seen by filmmakers, and ways to critically address a filmography that takes into account filmmakers other than the director.

The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video is a state-of-the-art book which encompasses the breadth and depth of the field of ethnographic film and video-based research. With more and more researchers turning to film and video as a key element of their projects, and as research video production becomes more practical due to technological advances as well as the growing acceptance of video in everyday life, this critical book supports young researchers looking to develop the skills necessary to produce meaningful ethnographic films and videos, and serves as a comprehensive resource for social scientists looking to better understand and appreciate the unique ways in which film and video can serve as ways of knowing and as tools of knowledge mobilization. Comprised of 31 chapters authored by some of the world’s leading experts in their respective fields, the book’s contributors synthesize existing literature, introduce the historical and conceptual dimensions of the field, illustrate innovative methodologies and techniques, survey traditional and new technologies, reflect on ethics and moral imperatives, outline ways to work with people, objects, and tools, and shape the future agenda of the field. With a particular focus on making ethnographic film and video, as opposed to analyzing or critiquing it, from a variety of methodological approaches and styles, the Handbook provides both a comprehensive introduction and up-to-date survey of the field for a vast variety of audiovisual researchers, such as scholars and students in sociology, anthropology, geography, communication and media studies, education, cultural studies, film studies, visual arts, and related social science and humanities. As such, it will appeal to a multidisciplinary and international audience, and features a dynamic, forward-thinking, innovative, and contemporary focus oriented toward the very latest developments in the field, as well as future possibilities.

Beyond Spatial Montage: Windowing, or the Cinematic Displacement of Time, Motion, and Space offers an extended discussion of the morphology and structure of compositing, graphic juxtapositions, and montage employed in motion pictures. Drawing from the history of avant-garde and commercial cinema, as well as studio-based research, here media artist and theorist Michael Betancourt critiques cinematic realism and spatial montage in motion pictures. This new taxonomic framework for conceptualizing linkages between media art and narrative cinema opens new areas of experimentation for today’s film editors, motion designers, and other media artists.

Rather than focusing on the abstract and individualizing character of cinema, Mediated Associations elucidates the collective character of cinematic objects. O'Connor argues that social theory must come to terms with the new mobilities and speed of cinema, and the various ways in which the affect - as a virtual moment of collective experience - is inserted into the flow of movement and structures cinematic events. In considering the primacy of the affect to cinematic forms of power, he examines the way in which cinema controls our associations, reconstituting our manners and habits of sociality and sociability in subtle and complex ways.

Glitch Art in Theory and Practice: Critical Failures and Post-Digital Aesthetics explores the concept of "glitch" alongside contemporary digital political economy to develop a general theory of critical media using glitch as a case study and model, focusing specifically on examples of digital art and aesthetics. While prior literature on glitch practice in visual arts has been divided between historical discussions and social-political analyses, this work provides a rigorous, contemporary theoretical foundation and framework.