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.
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.
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.
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.
Brings together several essays by seventeen scholars to explore the complexity of the essential connection between film and modernity. This volume shows us the significant ways that film has both grown in the context of the modern world and played a central role in reflecting and shaping our interactions with it.
Most histories of Soviet cinema portray the 1970s as a period of stagnation with the gradual decline of the film industry. This book, however, examines Soviet film and television of the era as mature industries articulating diverse cultural values via new genre models. During the 1970s, Soviet cinema and television developed a parallel system of genres where television texts celebrated conservative consensus while films manifested symptoms of ideological and social crises. The book examines the genres of state-sponsored epic films, police procedural, comedy and melodrama, and outlines how television gradually emerged as the major form of Russo-Soviet popular culture. Through close analysis of well-known film classics of the period as well as less familiar films and television series, this groundbreaking work helps to deconstruct the myth of this era as a time of cultural and economic stagnation and also helps us to understand the persistence of this myth in the collective memory of Putin-era Russia. This monograph is the first book-length English-language study of film and television genres of the late Soviet era.
Written by senior compositor, technical director and master trainer Steve Wright, this book condenses years of production experience into an easy-to-read and highly-informative guide suitable for both working and aspiring visual effects artists. This expanded and updated edition of Digital Compositing for Film and Video addresses the problems and difficult choices that professional compositors face on a daily basis with an elegant blend of theory, practical production techniques and workflows. It is written to be software-agnostic, so it is applicable to any brand of software. This edition features many step-by-step workflows, powerful new keying techniques and updates on the latest tech in the visual effects industry. Workflow examples for: Grain Management Lens Distortion Management Merging CGI Render Passes Blending Multiple Keys Photorealistic Color Correction Rotoscoping Production Techniques for: Keying Difficult Greenscreens Replicating Optical Lens Effects Advanced Spill Suppression Fixing Discoloured Edges Adding Interactive Lighting Managing Motion Blur With brand new information on: Working in linear ACES Color Management Light Field Cinematography Planar Tracking Creating Color Difference Keys Premultiply vs. Unpremultiply Deep Compositing VR Stitching 3D Compositing from 2D Images How Color Correction ops Effect Images Color Spaces Retiming Clips Working with Digital Cinema Images OpenColorIO A companion website offers images from the examples discussed in the book allowing readers to experiment with the material first-hand.
Russian and Soviet cinema occupies a unique place in the history of world cinema. Legendary filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Dziga Vertov, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Sergei Paradjanov have created oeuvres that are being screened and studied all over the world. The Soviet film industry was different from others because its main criterion of success was not profit, but the ideological and aesthetic effect on the viewer. Another important feature is Soviet cinema’s multinational (Eurasian) character: while Russian cinema was the largest, other national cinemas such as Georgian, Kazakh, and Ukrainian played a decisive role for Soviet cinema as a whole. The Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema provides a rich tapestry of factual information, together with detailed critical assessments of individual artistic accomplishments. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema contains a chronology, an introduction, and a bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on directors, performers, cinematographers, composers, designers, producers, and studios. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Russian and Soviet Cinema.
In Tracking King Kong Cynthia Erb charts the cultural significance of the character of King Kong, from the early 1930s, when Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's classic film King Kong was first released, to Peter Jackson's 2005 remake. Although King Kong has received much academic attention over the past twenty-five years, the bulk of these analyses deal with the film's human characters rather than Kong himself. In this revised edition of an influential study, Erb argues that King Kong is a particular kind of cultural outsider who represents a cross-penetration of American notions of exoticism and monstrosity. Tracking King Kong considers problems such as race and gender in the King Kong tradition, as well as historical, international, and contemporary audience and fan responses to this classic film and its popular protagonist. Erb begins her examination of King Kong in the 1930s, when the original film was produced and released, extending through the 1970s, when the film and its hero reached the height of their cultural visibility in a remake by Dino De Laurentiis, and concluding with a look at Peter Jackson's version in 2005. The book includes a detailed production history of the original 1933 film based on primary historical and archival sources; a genre study examining Kong's relations to horror, jungle adventure, and travel documentary genres; an analysis of Kong's influence on the Japanese film Godzilla; and a look at sequels, remakes, and spinoffs related to King Kong, such as Mighty Joe Young. Erb also analyzes Jackson's remake of King Kong, to determine how and why Jackson revised the main character, casting him as a melancholy hero. The revised edition of Tracking King Kong updates a groundbreaking study of King Kong as the iconic character enters the twenty-first century. Scholars of film and television studies as well as general readers interested in film and popular culture will appreciate this significant volume.
Martin Scorsese's current position in the international film community is unrivaled, and his name has become synonymous with the highest standards of filmmaking excellence. He is widely considered America's best living film director, and his Taxi Driver and Raging Bull appear frequently on worldwide surveys of the best films of all time. Here, in the first biographical account of this artist's life, Vincent LoBrutto traces Scorsese's Italian-American heritage, his strict Catholic upbringing, the continuing role of religion in his life and art, his obsessive love of cinema history, and the powerful impact that the streets of New York City had on his personal life and his professional career. Meanwhile, the filmmaker's humble, soft-spoken public persona tells only part of the story, and LoBrutto will delve into the other side of a complex and often tortured personality. Scorsese's intense passion, his private relationships, his stormy marriages, and his battles with drugs and depression are all chronicled here, and, in many cases, for the first time. In addition, the book includes an interview with the director, as well as filmographies cataloging his work as a director, producer, actor, and presenter. As his Best Director award at the 2007 Oscars clearly demonstrated, Scorsese has become something like Hollywood royalty in recent years, finally enjoying the insider status and favor that eluded him for most of his career. But these recent developments aside, Scorsese is also notable as a distinctly American type of artist, one whose work-created in a medium largely controlled by commercialism and marketing-has always been unmistakably his own, and who thus remains a touchstone of artistic integrity in American cinema. In Martin Scorsese: A Biography, readers can examine not only the work of one of the form's genuine artists, but also the forces that have propelled the man behind it.
