Tracking Color In Cinema And Art

Color is one of cinema’s most alluring formal systems, building on a range of artistic traditions that orchestrate visual cues to tell stories, stage ideas, and elicit feelings. But what if color is not—or not only—a formal system, but instead a linguistic effect, emerging from the slipstream of our talk and embodiment in a world? This book develops a compelling framework from which to understand the mobility of color in art and mind, where color impressions are seen through, and even governed by, patterns of ordinary language use, schemata, memories, and narrative. Edward Branigan draws on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and other philosophers who struggle valiantly with problems of color aesthetics, contemporary theories of film and narrative, and art-historical models of analysis. Examples of a variety of media, from American pop art to contemporary European cinema, illustrate a theory based on a spectator’s present-time tracking of temporal patterns that are firmly entwined with language use and social intelligence.

In 1968, Suzuki Seijun—a low-budget genre filmmaker known for movies including Branded to Kill, Tokyo Drifter, and Youth of the Beast—was unceremoniously fired by Nikkatsu Studios. Soon to be known as the “Suzuki Seijun Incident,” his dismissal became a cause for leftist student protestors and a burgeoning group of cinephiles to rally around. His films rapidly emerged as central to debates over politics and aesthetics in Japanese cinema. William Carroll offers a new account of Suzuki’s career that highlights the intersections of film theory, film production, cinephile culture, and politics in 1960s Japan. Carroll places Suzuki’s work between two factions that claimed him as one of their own after 1968: the New Left and its politicized theoretical practice on one hand, and the apparently apolitical cinephiles and their formalist criticism on the other. He considers how both of these strands of film theory shed light on the distinctive qualities of Suzuki’s films, and he explores how both Suzuki’s works and unheralded Japanese film theorists offer new ways of understanding world cinema. This book presents both a major reinterpretation of Suzuki’s work—which influenced directors such as John Woo, Jim Jarmusch, and Quentin Tarantino—and a new lens on postwar Japanese film culture and industry. Suzuki Seijun and Postwar Japanese Cinema also includes a complete production history of Suzuki’s filmography along with never-before-discussed information about his unfinished film projects.

Taking you on from the earliest feature films to today, Colors of Film introduces 50 iconic movies and explains the pivotal role that color played in their success. The use of color is an essential part of film. It has the power to evoke powerful emotions, provide subtle psychological symbolism and act as a narrative device. Wes Anderson’s pastels and muted tones are aesthetically pleasing, but his careful use of color also acts as a shorthand for interpreting emotion. Moonlight(2016, dir. Barry Jenkins) cinematographer (James Laxton) and colorist (Alex Bickel) spent 100 hours fine-tuning the saturation and hues of the footage so that the use of color evolved in line with the growth of the protagonist through the film. And let’s not forget Schindler’s List (1993, dir. Steven Spielberg), in which a bold flash of red against an otherwise black-and-white film is used as a powerful symbol of life, survival and death. In Colors of Film, film critic Charles Bramesco introduces an element of cinema that is often overlooked, yet has been used in extraordinary ways. Using infographic color palettes, and stills from the movies, this is a lively and fresh approach to film for cinema-goers and color lovers alike. He also explores in fascinating detail how the development of technologies have shaped the course of modern cinema, from how the feud between Kodak and Fujifilm shaped the color palettes of the 20th Century's greatest filmakers, to how the advent of computer technology is creating a digital wonderland for modern directors in which anything is possible. ​Filled with sparkling insights and fascinating accounts from the history of cinema, Colors of Film is an indispensable guide to one of the most important visual elements in the medium of film.

From fan-generated content on TikTok to music videos, the contemporary media landscape is becoming ever more vast, spectacular, and intense. In The Media Swirl Carol Vernallis examines short-form audiovisual media—Beyoncé’s Lemonade, brief sequences from Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, TikTok challenges, YouTube mashups, commercials, and many other examples—to offer ways of understanding digital media. She analyzes music videos by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Janelle Monáe, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, and others to outline how sound and image enhance each other and shape a viewer’s mood. Responding to today’s political-media landscape through discussions of Fox News and Presidential inaugurations, Vernallis shows how a media literacy that exceeds newscasts and campaign advertising is central to engaging with the democratic commons. Forays into industry studies, neuroscience, and ethics also inform her readings. By creating our own content and knowing what corporations, the wealthy, and the government do through media, Vernallis contends, we can create a more just world.

The story of Eastmancolor's arrival on the British filmmaking scene is one of intermittent trial and error, intense debate and speculation before gradual acceptance. This book traces the journey of its adoption in British Film and considers its lasting significance as one of the most important technical innovations in film history. Through original archival research and interviews with key figures within the industry, the authors examine the role of Eastmancolor in relation to key areas of British cinema since the 1950s; including its economic and structural histories, different studio and industrial strategies, and the wider aesthetic changes that took place with the mass adoption of colour. Their analysis of British cinema through the lens of colour produces new interpretations of key British film genres including social realism, historical and costume drama, science fiction, horror, crime, documentary and even sex films. They explore how colour communicated meaning in films ranging from the Carry On series to Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), from Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to A Passage to India (1984), and from Goldfinger (1964) to 1984 (1984), and in the work of key directors and cinematographers of both popular and art cinema including Nicolas Roeg, Ken Russell, Ridley Scott, Peter Greenaway and Chris Menges.

Between the late 1950s and mid-1970s, British cinema experienced an explosion of X-certificated films. In parallel with an era marked by social, political, and sexual ferment and upheaval, British filmmakers and censors pushed and guarded the permissible limits of violence, horror, revolt, and sexuality on screen. Adult Themes is the first volume entirely devoted to the exploration of British X certificate films across this transformative period, since identified as 'the long 1960s'. How did the British Board of Film Censors, harried on one side by the censorious and moralistic, and beset on the other by demands for greater artistic freedom, oversee and manage this provocative body of films? How did the freedoms and restrictions of the X certificate hasten, determine, and reshape post-war British cinema into an artistic, exploitational, and unapologetically adult medium? Contributors to this collection consider these central questions as they take us to swinging parties, on youthful crime sprees, into local council meetings, on police raids of cinemas, and around Soho strip clubs, and introduce us to mass murderers, lesbian vampires, apoplectic protestors, eroticised middle-aged women, and rebellious working-class men. Adult Themes examines both the workings and negotiations of British film censorship, the limits of artistic expression, and a wider culture of X certificate cinema. This is an important volume for students and scholars of British Film History and censorship, Media Studies, the 1960s, and Cultural and Sexuality Studies, while simultaneously an entertaining read for all connoisseurs of British cinema at its most vivid and scandalous.

"This book explores what art can tell us about "the self," or the sense of interiority that each of us, as separate individuals, experience. Today the "self" is often dismissed because it seems to ignore the ways in which we are all defined by structures and categories of identity (from capitalism and the family to constructs of gender and race). Yet, as Rachel Haidu observes, our feelings that we are singular and individuated--regardless of the structures we belong to--can be intensified, deepened, and negotiated by art. Artworks not only elicit feelings in the viewer that she is profoundly herself, but some even examine how interior lives come to feel private and unique. Haidu investigates this sense of interiority through the work of six contemporary artists who consciously want to provoke the experience in viewers: painters Philip Guston and Amy Sillman; film/media artists James Coleman and Steve McQueen; and contemporary dancers/choreographers Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Yvonne Rainer"--

Make the creative leap to 3D. Realize your artistic vision with this treasure chest of instructional projects. Get the essential concepts and techniques without drowning in the technical complexities. This new edition is an artist's sourcebook for the visionary in you that wants to master 3D-and have fun in the process. It serves as a complete guide for the creative use of CINEMA 4D R10 and all of its modules. This new edition features an engaging full-color presentation of short, playful projects show you how to put this powerful toolset to work. You will master R10's improved workflow, scene management, enhanced animation timeline and searchable object manager, as well as its: * MOCCA 3 system, including Joints, Skin Objects, the Weight Tool, the Morph Tool, Visual Selector and Clothilde * MoGraph module for motion graphics, type manipulation and the animation of multiple forms * Bodypaint 3D for applying 2D drawing and painting skills to 3D models * Advanced modeling tools such as the Brush tool * Interface with third-party applications including Z-Brush, and Adobe's Creative Suite You also get inventive quick starts for other modules including Hair, Sketch and Toon, Advanced Render, Dynamics and Thinking Particles. The companion DVD is bursting to the brim with project source files, extra projects, tutorial movies, guest artist tutorials, inspirational galleries and unique C4D Teacher Files (C4D scenes with embedded step-by-step instruction).