FAVz043 Looking at Film Structure in Numbers and Visualisations

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2014
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Adelheid Heftberger (lecturer), Mgr. Radomír D. Kokeš, Ph.D. (deputy)
Mgr. Luděk Havel, Ph.D. (assistant)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Jiří Voráč, Ph.D.
Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Supplier department: Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
Not only film scholar Yuri Tsivian refers to film as "the art of timing". Indeed, cinema is at its core a fleeting art form, which involves all our senses both in a visual and visceral way. However, if we want to understand its underlying structure in order to analyse style, genre or the techniques employed by specific directors, it makes sense to "stop time" and look at the individual shots or even single frames. In my lecture I'd like to talk about my own work in this fast evolving field, which can be situated between quantitative analysis, digital humanties, traditional humanities, film studies and visualisation. Specifically, my investigations - carried out in collaboration with New Media guru Lev Manovich - focus on silent film and on the films of Dziga Vertov in particular. In this course, I will provide examples of how the concept of film structure can be approached drawing from my experiences as both a scholar of Russian studies as well as a working film archivist.
Syllabus
  • C34 Monday (14th April) Lecture 1 - 10.50-12.25: Introduction (research corpus of films, excursus: metric films), Digital Humanities Lecture 2 - 14.10-15:45: Measuring (problems of archival frame rates, possible work-around, project Digital Formalism), formal aspects Tuesday (15th April) Video-time (attendance is obligatory): 12.30-14.00 Lecture 3 - 14.10-15.45: Case Study: Dziga Vertov and his films, Kinoglaz-Theory, background (Russian Formalism) Wednesday (16th April) Lecture 4 - 14.10-15.45: Visualisation of filmic structures 1 (Cinemetrics, graphs) Lecture 5 - 15.50-17.25: Visualisation of filmic structures 2 (without reduction, collaboration with Lev Manovich) Thursday (17th April) Lecture 6 - 9.10-10.45: Conclusions, outlook, collaboration with quantitative analysis, further research questions
Teaching methods (in Czech)
Lectures (in english)
Assessment methods (in Czech)
Written test.
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Study Materials
The course is taught only once.
The course is taught: in blocks.
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