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Archive for the ‘Chapter 2’ Category

About a year and a half ago, I posted an end-of-the-summer piece titled A “stink bucket of disappointment” or just some criminally wacky fun? about the movie Suicide Squad, written and directed by David Ayer (whose latest is Bright) and edited by John Gilroy.  For a very interesting critical investigation of editing related to Suicide Squad, I highly recommend this video: The Art of Editing and Suicide Squad It is from the YouTube channel Folding Ideas (by Dan Olson), and you can start at 01’20” into the video where he starts getting into the analysis of the movie’s editing.  

In fact, the piece is as much about cohesive storytelling as it is about the craft of editing.  There are many excellent breakdowns of issues to consider in the process of editing, as discussed throughout Moving Images, particularly in Chapters 1 and 2.  And Olson even references the Kuleshov Effect (at 17’30”) to help explain glaring weaknesses to the opening of Suicide Squad.  It is a revealing example of analyzing the effect of composition choices with editing.  It is worth pointing out that for a full analysis of issues with story and the filmmaking process with Suicide Squad, it would be critical to reference the shooting script by David Ayer.  Many answers to issues posed in the editing analysis could be revealed there.

P.S.: And here is a vlog post by Folding Ideas specifically about The Kuleshov Effect.

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In our series of posts about Women Pioneers of the Cinema, a few years ago we highlighted the work of one of the most important filmmakers in movie history: Alice Guy Blaché.  For some further information about this groundbreaking creator and studio head, you can check out this brief piece with video links from Open Culture.  Or, you can go straight to this short but informative video.  It is titled “The First Woman Filmmaker Nobody’s Heard Of” — well, that might be the case unless you learned about filmmaking and media literacy from Moving Images and mediateacher.net.  

And do you want an exciting piece of news?  There is a documentary in the works about this inspiring pioneer: Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, directed by Pamela B. Green.

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tvWondering what to do with the old curved-screen TV in the corner of the cellar or the school’s repurposed A/V closet?  Maybe it’s time for an art installation — although you may need the “arcane knowledge” (as NYTimes reporter Jaime Joyce puts it) of a TV repairman (well, at least one as masterful as Chi-Tien Lui).

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mononoawareIn earlier posts, mediateacher.net has discussed the relationship of celluloid-based moviemaking, film history, and digital technologies in such posts as The “Film” Word: Language and Moving Images, State of the Process: Digital and Film (concerning the then-recent documentary Side by Side and related topics), Thinking about Light: Emmanuel Lubezki Interviews & State of Cinematography (which is definitely one of this blog’s most visited posts), and Thinking about Light 2.

mono_no_aware_performanceIn news from this year related to the availability and use of celluloid-based filmmaking, the non-profit cinema-arts organization Mono No Aware is working to build the first non-profit motion picture lab in America.  This Brooklyn-based group recently celebrated the ten-year anniversary of its annual festival which features multi-media performances that incorporate Super 8, 16mm, 35mm film, or altered light projections.  Mono No Aware, founded by Steve Cossman, offers workshops on a variety of analogue filmmaking and processing techniques, and the organization has been visiting schools for a number of years to teach young people about analogue motion pictures.  For those interested in verifying that projected strips of images that move in front of us are, indeed, very much alive and inspiring a new generation of moviemakers, multimedia artists, and movie-lovers, check out this piece from Daily Vice

 

 

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Yes, the title of the movie being projected here is "Cock of the Air," a rediscovered Howard Hughes production from 1932. (Photo: Emily Berl for The New York Times)

Yes, the title of the movie being projected here is “Cock of the Air,” a rediscovered Howard Hughes production from 1932. (Photo: Emily Berl for The New York Times)

In a series of articles on mediateacher.net, the importance of how, where, and why media artifacts are accessed and preserved has been discussed from a variety of angles, not only in terms of films from the early years of cinema (or more recent examples like Lawrence of Arabia or the efforts of Christopher Nolan) but also related to students today and their own productions.  An article in today’s New York Times —The Race to Save the Films We Loveprovides a current update by Manohla Dargis on the state of film preservation, which includes topics related to economics, sound recording, chemistry, digital technologies, and a variety of other issues.

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