Post-cinema
(Defined by Lilean Buhl)
“Post-cinema“ is the term media critics use when referring to the media landscape of the 21st century. Denson (2016) characterizes the term as “The collection of media, and the mediation of life forms that ‘follows’ the broadly cinematic regime of the 20th century”. Were television and cinema the main media through which consumers received moving images in the 20th century, the domination of these forums has been broken down into a new paradigm by forces of technological advancement, globalization, mobility, and consumership. A break with as well as a reformulation of the 20th century-paradigm, post-cinematic art has made its way into theaters, TV broadcasts, serials, apps, games, and other channels of consumption. How these new forms of reception influence the production and dissemination of cultural content is one of the central questions of post-cinematic thought. The term also works towards formulating the current media landscape as exactly that – a landscape, diverse and multifaceted in its characteristics, but interconnected in its conceptual roots.
Post-cinematic affect
（Defined by Wei)
Post-cinematic affect is a term coined by Steven Shaviro as an account of “what it feels like to live in the affluent West in early 21st century. Specially, it explores the structure of feeling that is emerging today in tandem with new digital technologies, together with economic globalization and the financialization of more and more human activities”. In the 21st century, it is computer- and network-based digital media that help to shape and represent new forms of sensibilities, rather than the film and television in the 20th century. Movies (moving images and sound works) do not disappear, of course, but they have adopted new forms of production, articulation and distribution, thus as Shaviro puts it, “they address their spectators in different ways than was the case in the 20th century”. The flows of the affect go along with four diagrams of the contemporary social field: “control society”, delirious financial films, post-cinematic “media ecology” in which all activities is under surveillance from video cameras and microphones, and “gamespace”. Some exemplary media works are Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate and Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales in 2007. Nick Hooker’s music video for Grace Jones’ song “Corporate Cannibal” in 2008. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s film Gamer in 2009. For a detailed exploration of these four works’ representation of the so called affect, you can refer to the book Post Cinematic Affect by Shaviro.
Relocation of cinema
（Defined by Wei)
Relocation of cinema refers to the process in which cinematic experience is reborn elsewhere in addition to film theatre, with alternative devices and in new environments. Thus, cinema as Casetti (2012) exemplifies “no longer limited to a darkened theatre dependent on rolls of film stock running through a projector, but now available on public screens, at home, on my cellphone and computer, and still ready, in these new environments and with these new devices, to offer excitement of perception, a sense of proximity to the real, access to fantasy, and investment in that which is represented”.
The cinema is relocated because it makes the objects of viewing available elsewhere, or because it makes the environments suited for viewing available elsewhere. Therefore, there are two paths behind this process. The first path is the delivery of what I want to see: the film. A good example is a film watching on a laptop when one is on a train. From which, one can concentrate on the screen, grasp the story and immerse in the presented world. In this way, in addition to be a passenger, one is also a spectator.
Another path is the reorganization of how I see: the setting. A good example is the home theatre which tries its best to reactivate a feeling in film theatre where there is a wide screen, walls that shut out the outside, dim lights, soft seats and accessibilities of food or drink to hand. Here, the setting of the environments, the modality instead of the film that turns one into a spectator.
Relocation of cinema refers to the process in which cinematic experience is reborn elsewhere in addition to film theatre, with alternative devices and in new environments. Thus, cinema as Casetti (2012) exemplifies “no longer limited to a darkened theatre dependent on rolls of film stock running through a projector, but now available on public screens, at home, on my cellphone and computer, and still ready, in these new environments and with these new devices, to offer excitement of perception, a sense of proximity to the real, access to fantasy, and investment in that which is represented”.
The cinema is relocated because it makes the objects of viewing available elsewhere, or because it makes the environments suited for viewing available elsewhere. Therefore, there are two paths behind this process. The first path is the delivery of what I want to see: the film. A good example is a film watching on a laptop when one is on a train. From which, one can concentrate on the screen, grasp the story and immerse in the presented world. In this way, in addition to be a passenger, one is also a spectator.
Another path is the reorganization of how I see: the setting. A good example is the home theatre which tries its best to reactivate a feeling in film theatre where there is a wide screen, walls that shut out the outside, dim lights, soft seats and accessibilities of food or drink to hand. Here, the setting of the environments, the modality instead of the film that turns one into a spectator.
Media
convergence
(Defined by
Frauke)
Media
convergence is "the
flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation
between multiple media industries, and the migratory behaviour of
media audiences who would go almost anywhere in search of the kinds
of entertainment experiences they wanted" (Jenkins (2006)
Convergence Culture : Where Old and New Media Collide, pg 2 ).
It is not
just a technological shift, but also the
change in industry,
culture and society that encourages consumers to go looking for more
or new content across several media.
The
currently most obvious example is the Marvel Cinematic Universe where
content can be found on paper in the form of comics, posters, news
articles, on cinema screens in several movies, on TV screens or
Internet-based show platforms in several TV series, as well as online
in the form of reviews, interviews, teasers, fan works, and trailers.
Phenomenology
(Defined by Lilean Buhl)
P. is a field within philosophy that concerns itself with the study of experiences. Theorized by 20th century philosophers like Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Martin Heidegger, p. is conceptualizing the world from the subjective point of view – in lieu of its name, the field does not only deal with phenomena, or sensations, but with the wide range of human experience of the world, which it sees as the epistemological foundation of meaning and reason.
Strongly connected with the idea of ‘intentionality’ (i.e. the directedness of our reasoning and action towards entities in our experience), p. “studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness” (Smith 2013).
Intensified
continuity
(Defined by
Frauke)
David
Bordwell coined the term “intensified continuity”. It means the
trend in the
editing
and filming style most commonly used in Hollywood post 1960s.
Bordwell
claims that continuity is intensified by several factors:
-
a shorter shot length (on average a shot in a modern Hollywood movie
is 3-6 seconds long but can be as short as 2seconds, while in the
1930s to 50s the average shot length was 8-11 seconds and some shots
could even last over 80 seconds),
-
the framing of scenes has grown tighter due to lens choice.
Especially in dialogue scenes we get more close ups of the faces.
-
the use of free-ranging cameras allows for camera movements and far
less static shots
For
a nice example of the changes in shot lenghts and their effects look
here:
Post-cinematic experience
(Defined by Lilean Buhl)
The post-cinematic experience is the multi-leveled reception process of the new media constituting the post-cinematic paradigm. The experience of moving images has expanded from an already mediated program in a cinema or at home to an on-demand, mobile universe, where almost any type of film material can be accessed at anytime, anywhere. This accessibility has obviously led to a different manner of consuming media images, but post-cinema-scholars have also argued that it has had an effect on the production, content, and form of the media consumed. Thus the post-cinematic experience is part of a bilateral dynamic that has shaped (and will shape) our experience of moving images in the 21st century.
Digital cinema
（Defined by Wei)
Digital cinema is a new status of cinema with the employment of digital technologies in every facet of cinema. It embeds pre-cinematic characteristics, especially in filmmaking process which challenging the cinematic realism. As Manorich (1996) puts it, it is “a particular case of animation that uses live-action footage as one of its many elements”. In digital cinema, live-action footage is no longer the final point but only raw material to be manipulated and combined with other elements such as painting, image processing, compositing, 2-D computer animation and 3-D computer animation. All these elements are “either created entirely from scratch or modified by hand” which accounts for the manual construction of images, denoting one of the major characteristics of moving pictures before the 20th century and that “cinematic realism is being displaced from being its dominant mode to become only one option among many”. In the era of digital cinema, has emerged new cinematic forms that are not linear narratives, “which simultaneously give up cinematic realism”. Take music video for example. “music videos often incorporate narratives within them, but are not linear narratives from start to finish…” Moreover, those new cinematic forms “are exhibited on a television, a computer screen or a smart phone screen, rather than in a movie theatre” and can be played forward, backward or looped which can be seen as a rupture of cinematic realism.
Digital cinema
（Defined by Wei)
Digital cinema is a new status of cinema with the employment of digital technologies in every facet of cinema. It embeds pre-cinematic characteristics, especially in filmmaking process which challenging the cinematic realism. As Manorich (1996) puts it, it is “a particular case of animation that uses live-action footage as one of its many elements”. In digital cinema, live-action footage is no longer the final point but only raw material to be manipulated and combined with other elements such as painting, image processing, compositing, 2-D computer animation and 3-D computer animation. All these elements are “either created entirely from scratch or modified by hand” which accounts for the manual construction of images, denoting one of the major characteristics of moving pictures before the 20th century and that “cinematic realism is being displaced from being its dominant mode to become only one option among many”. In the era of digital cinema, has emerged new cinematic forms that are not linear narratives, “which simultaneously give up cinematic realism”. Take music video for example. “music videos often incorporate narratives within them, but are not linear narratives from start to finish…” Moreover, those new cinematic forms “are exhibited on a television, a computer screen or a smart phone screen, rather than in a movie theatre” and can be played forward, backward or looped which can be seen as a rupture of cinematic realism.
Mind-game
film
(Defined by
Frauke)
Mind-game
films is not a genre but rather a tendency in 21st century
cinema.
As
Thomas Elsaesser puts it, this are “movies that are 'playing
games'” and can broadly be seperated into two levels. The first
plays games with a character like in Silence of the Lambs
(1991), The Game (1997),
The Truman Show (1998),
or The Bone Collector (1999).
The second plays with the audience by withholding crucial information
like Fight Club (1999),
or Memento (2000).
Sometimes this information can also be withheld from both audience
and characters as in The Sixth Sense (1999).
Another
focus of mind-game films can be playing with the perception of
reality for the audience and the characters. Movie exampes here would
be A Beautiful Mind (2001),
Sliding Doors (1998),
and Inception (2010).
What
all mind-game films
have in common is the “delight in disorienting or misleading
spectators” (Elsaesser).
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