Tài liệu miễn phí Sân khấu điện ảnh
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Third, we computed VAIs for each shot in each film. The purpose of these calculations
was to determine the relative amount ofmotion andmovement in shots of different duration
and whether that relation had changed over the course of 75 years of popular film. Since both
dimensions, shot length and VAI per shot, are strongly skewed, we transformed each. We
took the logarithmof each shot duration, and because VAI is based on correlations, we used
the r-to-z transformfor VAIs. These transformations created roughly normal distributions
along both dimensions for all films....
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Finally, we computed the overall luminance of each filmby finding themedian luminance
value of each frame, then averaging across frames. For the black-and-white films we simply
worked with 8-bit pixel values of 0 (black) to 255 (white) fromthe jpegs; for the color films we
first converted them to grayscale using the standardMatlab conversion, and then measured
them in the same way. Median values for each frame were then given a reverse gamma
transformof 1/2.2 before the whole-filmmean luminance was calculated....
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It is clear that contemporary films have a quicker pace than those 50 years ago, although
films from the end of the silent era had ASLs not much different from 1995 films (Salt 2009).
Cuts constitute almost 99% of the transitions between shots in contemporary film(Cutting
et al 2011a), and given that Mital et al (2010) have shown that cuts affect eye movements,
generally causing saccades towards the middle of the screen, it is clear that more quickly
paced films demand a reorientation of visual attention to a degree that older films do not....
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Thus, our data show that films have clearly gotten faster, but on the basis of Salt’s data
it seems unlikely that the VAI increase in Figure 1b is due to cameramovement; instead, it
is likely due to the choice of filmmakers in depicting things thatmove.Much psychological
experimentation has shown thatmotion andmotion onsets capture our attention (eg, Abrams
and Crist 2003; Hillstromand Yantis 1994). The progression of filmmaking over the last 75
years would appear to have capitalized on this effect....
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We view this increasing inverse correlation ofmotion and shot length as an amplifying
effect. That is, short shots likely increase viewer response to films and film segments, forcing
observer eye movements to quickly reevaluate each new visual depiction and increasing
heart rate and other bodily responses (Carruthers and Taggart 1973). Addingmoremotion
to these short shots is likely to increase viewer response all the more.We suggest that this
increasing correlationmay help to couple attention to broader physiological responses.We
also find it intriguing that the natural patterns of heart rate, like those of attention (Gilden
2001) and increasingly of film(Cutting et al 2010), follow a 1/f pattern (Saul et...
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There are likely several reasons for the long-termluminance decrease. First, analog film
and its digital successor have increased their dynamic range, allowing for darker darks in a
given image. Second, and also due to filmstock, studio-era films needed to be shot under
very bright lights, whereas for contemporary films that is no longer necessary (Salt 2009).
And third, a darker filmin a dark theater allows for greater dynamic contrast, which in turn
allows for better control over viewers’ attention (Lin and Yan 2011, Smith (2006), and the
potential of viewers seeing a film even more convincingly as an invisible window into the
world in which the narrative...
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The three individuals that have themost control over the final appearance of a filmare
the director, the cinematographer, and the editor. The 160 films we have analyzed hadmore
than 400 different such individuals, and each of themoften led teams of considerable size.
Thus, popular films are a collective and collaborative product, and the causes for the general
changes in film over time as shown in Figure 1 can only be sociological, even cultural.
That is, through the cultural transmission and dissemination of filmmaking practices,
through experimentation and technological innovation, and through continual inspection
and evaluation of their results, the relatively small community of filmmakers has gradually
changed their...
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The physical form of popular film has changed over the last 75 years and seems likely to
continue to do so. Here we have documented four linear changes. We believe that all of
them have been created by filmmakers seeking to control the attention of their viewers,
and possibly to enhance viewer involvement in film. These four dimensions—shot length,
motion, the coupling of shot length withmotion, and luminance—by nomeans exhaust the
potential changes that might be found in popular film over this span, but they do add to our
cinemetric knowledge of how films have been constructed and how perceptually relevant
variables have been harnessed to produce...
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Power has been defined in a variety of different ways by sociologists and political
scientists so it behooves us to review those definitions before launching into an
exploration of the imagery of power. The simplest definition of power is an ability to get
others to do something that they would not otherwise have done. This is sometimes
referred to as power as “capabilities” or “potential” power and is measured in terms of
the attributes of the social actor that allegedly possesses it. An individual is powerful if
she is rich, well-educated, a member of a social elite, etc. A country is powerful if it is
big in...
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A second way to define power is in terms of a relationship in which one actor is
observed to attempt to influence another directly and succeeds. This is sometimes called
“actualized” power. The attempt to influence results from differing preferences over
outcomes, and the attempt is successful if the attempt of actor A to influence actor B
results in an outcome preferred by A. A may convince B that A’s preferred outcome is
also B’s preferred outcome without the threat of force by engaging in persuasive
discourse, but if A threatens B with force to get B to act against B’s preferences then we
are talking about...
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A third way to define power is in terms of the ability to structure an environment
of choice, to determine the “rules of the game” of some sphere of human activity. Also
called structural power, this notion focuses on how individuals or groups of individuals
influence “regimes” –sets of rules, norms, procedures, and institutions in a particular
area. An example of structural power would be the ability of the Motion Picture
Association to prevent government censorship of movies by adopting a variety of self-
regulatory measures (such as voluntary ratings schemes)....
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Power is related to a set of concepts which may be represented by images. We
have already spoken about noncoercive forms of power, influence and persuasion, and
one can imagine various ways of graphically representing those noncoercive activiities.
Power that has been institutionalized in the form of institutions is often represented in
terms of the buildings housing those institutions or symbols of the institution or the
functions it performs. Thus, a picture of the Supreme Court building could be used to
represent the institution and an image of a blindfolded woman in a toga holding a balance
might represent the justice dispensed by that court. Some forms...
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Much theory and research on emotion are based on the facial expressions of amateurs asked to pose
for still photographs. The theory of facial affect programs (FAPs; P. Ekman, 1972) was proposed
to account for the resulting expressions, most of which are patterns consisting of distinguishable
parts. In the present study, 4 Hollywood films noted for fine acting and realism were examined for
the facial expressions that accompany a basic emotion. In keeping with the theory of FAPs, profes-
sional actors judged as happy were found smiling in 97% (Duchenne smiling in 74%) of cases. In
contrast, actors judged as surprised, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sad...
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There is a whole genre of “celebrity” biography that focuses on the
rich and famous, the influential, or the notorious, and within this
category an entire sub-genre devoted to movie-stars and other Hol-
lywood types. They can range from the sleazy and sensational to the
more complex, hefty literary film studies, or historical biography—
the latter varieties seeking to situate the biographical subjects in the
social, cultural, or literary context of the times in which they lived,
without sparing the gossip. This is what makes the literary and film
biography of the British actor Victor McLaglen (1886-1959) so fas-
cinating and appealing...
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Victor McLaglen’s life was greatly influenced by, and mir-
rored, his experiences of the British Empire, an empire he travelled
widely and knew well. He had been a Boer War volunteer, potential
Canadian homesteader, gold and silver miner in Canada and Austra-
lia, farm worker, boxer, wrestler, pearl diver, big game hunter, ma-
cho carnival tough guy, music hall performer, World War I soldier,
Assistant Provost Marshal of Baghdad, and an actor in the early Brit-
ish film industry. Some of his brothers would settle in Kenya and
South Africa. He knew the British Army and its imperial mission. ...
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David Thomson was indeed correct when he said that McLaglen’s
screen persona of imperial tough guy had actual “authentic grounding
in personal experience.”
2
But when McLaglen arrived in California in
1924, he would find that his cinematic career would now become
conflated with the Hollywood mythology of the British Empire, just
as he himself became more immersed in the conflation of California
and British culture in the so-called “Hollywood Raj” of the 1920s
and 1930s, that collection of English actors living in luxurious, if
self-imposed, isolation among the palm trees and Spanish Mission
architecture of Hollywood. So taken was...
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Victor McLaglen, the rambunctious leading man and later
character actor in American films, especially those of the legendary
director John Ford, played so many swaggering drunks and sentimen-
tal Irish sergeants that film critics dubbed him the British-born Wal-
lace Beery. The film critic David Thomson, who was less than gen-
erous in his overall summation of Victor McLaglen’s later film ca-
reer, wrote: “Self-pity and barroom Irish bravado were the keys to his
work.”
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When his two older brothers, Fred and Leopold, enlisted in the
army during the Boer War (1899-1902), the thrill-packed letters
home were too much to resist, and one night fourteen-year-old Victor
ran away from home and joined the Life Guards. He never fought,
however, as his father promptly secured his release from military
service. While in the Guards, Victor first learned to use his fists to
protect himself, developing an interest in boxing, and becoming the
regimental champion. Fatherly care may have kept Victor out of the
Boer War, but returning to school was simply too dull for the...
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This essay explores one manifestation of the popular historicization of
“Hollywood,” the historical film clip montages created—mostly—by former trailer
producer Chuck Workman for the Academy Awards telecasts produced by Gil Cates
during the 1990s. These brief pieces of (televised) film about film history participated
strongly in the reconfiguring and marketing of the cinematic past in the popular
imaginary during the nineties, pivotal years in the globalization of hegemonic American
film culture. The Academy Awards telecast is a surprisingly under-examined televisual
text, considering its longevity and international ubiquity, and deserves further...
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In order to historicize the Workman montages, I want to point first to the Oscars
telecast for 2002, a year in which no Chuck Workman pieces appeared, and the first year
the awards were held in Hollywood. This Oscars was different: the show was held in a
theater that seated 1500 fewer guests than some previous venues (Anderton), but whose
location within the new media complex and mall at Hollywood and Highland offered—
for virtual guests—geographic cachet, ersatz Intolerance elephants, and big-screen video
displays. As commentators and stars alike remarked, this...
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This hyperbolic collapsing of film-historical specificity within a spatially-based
and marketing-driven, postmodern nostalgia bath on live TV is only possible in the
digital media environment. The 2002 Oscar show introduction performs a mapping of
first, a visual and aural take-off on a current film, and next, old movie posters, onto the
contemporary Hollywood street, collapsing cinematic space onto at once marketing
discourse and geographic space. Such “presti-digital” cinematic feats point to new
geographies of movie marketing, and more precisely, movie heritage marketing, that have
broader implications. As recent conjunctions of...
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For some time now, movie marketing has expanded its boundaries beyond discrete
paratexts such as posters, TV ads, trailers, or featurettes, and into such publicity-driven
entities such as “Entertainment News” shows, actual news segments covering movie
premieres or milestones, and other nebulous promotional venues. The digital environment
accelerates such embedments and boundary-crossings. Marketing becomes an
increasingly elusive and crucial subject for film historians interested in ecologies of
cinematic knowledge. The current phenomenon of digital media about film history owes
much to the Oscar show’s use of montage, and particularly its...
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The Academy Awards have been broadcast on television since 1953, when the
show was sponsored by RCA Victor and televised by NBC. (Levy, 24) The show is
currently contracted to the ABC network and has consistently captured very large
audiences. The impact of Academy Awards on films and their creators has been widely
discussed. As Emanuel Levy notes,
[W]inning an Oscar means not only prestige but hard cash at the box office. Winning the Best Picture
award can add up to twenty or thirty million dollars in movie ticket sales....
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Like trailers for individual films, these “trailers” for film history (made by a former
trailer-maker) use a montage structure which both elides and reconfigures the narrative
they promote. When that “narrative” is the entire history of Hollywood cinema—indeed
world cinema mapped onto Hollywood cinema under the rubric of “the movies”—as
summed up within a brief montage of very short clips, the ideology of cinematic
representation as a magic act is overdetermined and foregrounded, bringing it in line at
once with other advertising rhetoric (Williamson 140-145) and with that of the...
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Susan Stewart has argued that the appeal of miniature writing, specifically of the
miniature book, coincided with the transition from one technology to another (with the
invention of printing):
On the interface between the manuscript and printing, the miniature book is a celebration of a new
technology, yet a nostalgic creation endowed with the significance the manuscript formerly possessed.
(Stewart, 39)
The appeal of the excess rapidity of these montages likewise redoubles a nostalgic
immersion in cinema’s past, by way of the new media discourses of the millennial
globalized “Hollywood,”...
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Several Oscar shows during the decade presented themed montages by other
filmmakers, on women in cinema (by Lynne Litman), the work of the cinematographer,
and on the activity of going to the movies (by Mike Shapiro and John Bloom respectively,
both uncredited). The 67th show (1995) presented a tribute to comedy that incorporated a
credited Workman montage with a dance number where onstage stars interacted with the
screen. And Workman montages were highlighted in the 70th through 72nd shows (1998-
2000), on Oscar acceptances, “great moments,” and history in film. Interestingly,...
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I focus here on a description of the first, 1990 montage, which originates the format,
utilizing many of the clips from Precious Images and establishing conventions for
subsequent montages. It followed an almost giddy opening speech by Academy president
Karl Malden emphasizing the newly global reach of the satellite-assisted Academy
Awards telecast (the previous year was the first time it was seen in Russia): “How can
you have a closed society when the skies are open from Moscow to Beijing to—you
name it—Gary, Indiana?” In that context, Malden introduces Workman’s...
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While this and the other Workman montages ultimately elude any causally or
narratively-based rhetorical analysis as persuasive marketing devices, their very anti-
causality within a broadly thematic framework is of interest in terms of what is and isn’t
valorized by these montages as constituting “the movies.” The montage’s argument could
be summed up as: “Movies: there’s old ones, new ones, lots of kinds, lots of emotions,
there are heroes and the women they fight for, and most of all, there’s love and light.”
Again, the overarching rhetoric, mentioned by Malden himself,...
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The great majority of the clips in the “100 Years” montage comprise iconic
moments from significant performances: Al Pacino shouting “Attica!” in Dog Day
Afternoon; Sally Field holding up a “Union” sign in Norma Rae; Whoopi Goldberg’s
body being “taken over” by Patrick Swayze in Ghost; Cagney and the Public Enemy
grapefruit; Diane Keaton’s “La-di-dah” as Annie Hall. And while there is no coherent
narrative per se, the montage does contain an overall structure guided by the music: there
is a clear introduction, followed by a dramatic build-up, then a...
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At the same time, the montage emphasizes the sheer variety, quantity, and
accumulation of images, which are endowed with apparent magical qualities by the rapid
cutting and the introductory fanfare. It seems coherent, yet mysterious—why the
“Rosebud” clip just there? It’s hardly a documentary about film history; it doesn’t create
a new film out of these clips; yet even as its meanings are elusive, the audience is
encouraged to congratulate itself for grasping them (indeed, just for recognizing
individual images within the headlong rush of the montage)....
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