PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #10 - Grant Scott: Do we need it?

Article by Grant Scott, founder/curator of United Nations Photography writing for Medium.

Let me put my cards on the table. I came to photography as a fan. A fan of the images I saw in magazines and on record covers in the Seventies and early Eighties before starting to work as an art director on magazines in the United Kingdom. Magazines that exist to be aspirational, entertaining, informative and most importantly profitable. My view of photography was formed within that commercial context, I never studied photography (I studied graphics at art school) so I was never introduced to the sacred tomes of Sontag or Barthes. I had seen John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Robert Hughes’s Shock of the New on television but this was as intellectual entertainment not as academic doctrine to support dissection, deconstruction and debate.Despite this ‘commercial background’ whilst art directing magazines I commissioned photographers such as Abbas, Leonard Freed, Don McCullin, Jane Bown, William Klein, Steve Pyke, Sylvia Plachy, Chris Steele Perkins, Corrine Day, The Douglas Brothers and Kurt Markus amongst many others. Photographers whose work could sit as easily within areas of traditional photo-journalism or contemporary art as it did within the pages of a glossy magazine, but most importantly the photographers that I commissioned were those whom I admired, respected and enjoyed purely from a photographic perspective.
Fast forward to today and I find myself within an academic, a commercial, a photographic and perhaps most importantly an online environment. Photography is intrinsic to all of these environments but it is the way in which it is viewed and interpreted in each that I believe creates a series of unnecessary barriers for many to engage with photography and navigate its highways and byways.
In a recent interview the photographer and Magnum member Martin Parr declared “Photography is the most democratic art form we have in the world.” I agree with Martin, a photographer whose exhibitions and books are much reviewed, dissected, revered and as often dismissed and vilified but whose work helping to sell frozen food products, luxury clothing brands and streetwear is largely ignored by the theoretic photographic cognoscenti. Which makes me wonder if the writing about photography is as democratic and open as the art itself?Let’s start with the word ‘commercial’. Despite the influence that this work has on our daily lives, it’s creative impact on our visual awareness and its positive impact in supporting a photographic economy ‘commercial photography’ is too often and quickly dismissed by the critics, commentators and academics who deem it to not be ‘serious’ photography. It is this compartmentation of photography based upon critical, academic and theoretical premise that I take issue with.
I can enjoy all forms of photography from the brash image created to sell me a hamburger to a body of work created over decades shedding light upon a narrative of global importance. I do not feel the need to place either in a position of photographic importance both have their place in our cultural awareness. So why do so many ‘cultural elite’ commentators feel the need to do so? Well, let’s think about that.My personal experience of conversations with those who adopt and propagate these views, listening to talks and reading too many linguistically verbose articles illustrates one common factor. That is that few of those speakers and writers have any real knowledge of ‘commercial photography’ and even fewer have worked within it in any capacity.
This may take us some way to understanding the dismissive attitude many have towards it but it also I believe explains why other areas of work are so often exalted beyond their actual importance.To theorize about a subject with any level of authority requires understanding, without that understanding theory is too clearly revealed as ill-informed opinions to those who have the understanding the writer does not have. Many of the critics and theorists I am referring to have never worked as a photographer in any context, they have studied art based theory and continued their studies into a career focusing on themes based on their academic studies and reading. They also continue to use a form of unnecessarily complex academic language (often described as ‘art speak’) in their writing. Within an academic context this is theory as research and when I say research I mean research as is defined by institutions, through papers created to appear within academic journals and at conferences with little if any relevance or impact on or to the wider photographic community.
I have no issue with this. It exists within a niche created for a specific reason. Just as ‘commercial photography’ is created to meet a need and provide an income this academic approach to photography provides a career for those involved with it. In turn reflecting on work created within personal areas of exploration outside of the commissioned market makes sense for those reviewing works that accepted theories and understanding can explain through the academics best friend the attributed reference.
We all benefit from insight into work, to question is vitally important and context helps us with our understanding of all creative endeavour. However, impenetrable academic text, agenda heavy theory and ill-informed criticism does none of these things.The ability for everyone to have an opinion and the easy availability of online publishing (I know just as I am doing here, the irony is not lost on me at this point) has resulted in a tsunami of theory based journals and articles. But how much of it is of any real importance or relevance to us as photographers? We are constantly being told that the proliferation of images online is devaluing photography and in turn the role of the professional photographer. Surely, the same could be said of photography based writing.
I love photography but despite my passion for and knowledge of the subject I find myself, regularly confused, frustrated and quite frankly bored by so much of the criticism and theory I am presented with.I want to understand more about photography, I want to read informed criticism and I’m happy to have these insights come from an academic perspective. But I want that writing to be based upon informed personal knowledge, not just referenced texts. I want it to be open to all areas of practice and I want it to be written in a language which is accessible to all. Great writing is not based on linguistic gymnastics but clearly communicated thoughts, ideas and beliefs delivered with panache and imagination.
Just as my tastes in photography are varied I’d like the writing on the subject to demonstrate a similar level of variety. I believe that we need critics, theorists and rigorous academic reflection on photography but we do not need it to be narrow focused, ill-informed, unreadable and elitist. Critics, theorists and academics are all writing for a reason, to be paid by a publication, to raise profile, to develop a book concept and to fulfil academic research commitments. Just as a commercial photographer shoots to a brief to please a client so the critic, theorist and academic fulfils their brief.
I am not a philistine when it comes to my understanding of photography but I do find myself agreeing with Albert Einstein who said that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”.My call to all critics, theorists and academics is for them to think about why they are writing what they are writing and for them to be honest about that intention with the reader. If you don’t want anyone to understand what you are writing, then at least be honest about it. But if you want to communicate with me, inform and maybe even entertain me. Then bring it on. I want to read it!

Similar point to Carol Vernallis (click here to read my post on her) who says that music videos can't have a narrative?

PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #7: Roland Barthes

The French semiologist has a wide area of expertise (See this tag for his other theories and how I have applied them)

From a beginner's guide to photography by The Telegraph 

Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes (1980), digested by Tim Clark

Camera Lucida is a short, personal response to photography, so it's strange that it has achieved canonical status, but the magnetism it exerts extends to artists and writers alike. This book is a reflection on longing and loss written after Barthes' mother died. It's curious and affecting, exploring the relationship between photography, history and death.Barthes explains two key concepts that can be applied when looking at photographs. The first he calls the studium – vague details which constitute the photograph’s subject, meaning and context.However it's the second concept, the punctum, that has really resonated. By this he means the aspect of an image that attracts the viewer, something intensely private, unexpected and thus indelible. “A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)” he wrote. The discussion centres on a photograph from 1898, an image of his mother when she was a child, never at any point shown in the book. “For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture, one of the thousand manifestations of the ‘ordinary’”.So subjective, and at times sentimental, is his examination of photography that initial responses to the book were scathing. Conversely, perhaps it is this very act of personalisation and the sense of vulnerability that has continued to capture imaginations in the 30 years since publication. Indeed, the academic Geoffrey Batchen, in his book Photography Degree Zero ventures that Camera Lucida is perhaps the most popular and influential contribution to photography to this day.    

In his own words

“Photography: it reminds us of its mythic heritage only by that faint uneasiness which seizes me when I look at ‘myself’ on a piece of paper.”

“Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels or even stigmatises, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.”

“Not only is the Photograph never, in essence, a memory, but it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory.”  

How to sound as if you've read it 

 All photography tells us death in the future.

PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #6: Fred Ritchn

From a beginner's guide to photography by The Telegraph 

After Photography by Fred Ritchn (2009), digested by Diane Smyth

It takes a brave author to tackle digital media, a medium changing so fast that any attempt to read it looks outdated before the ink is dry. And yet that’s what Fred Ritchin did in After Photography, attempting to describe what’s new about digital photography and how it’s changed us. As the title suggests, Ritchin believes digital photography is a fundamental shift rather than a simple change of tools, and he backs up his argument by considering both its ubiquity and its malleability. Digital photography started when National Geographic modified a horizontal photograph of the pyramids to create a more aesthetically pleasing front cover, Ritchin argues, shaking our belief in the image as proof. The fact that we are all now armed with digital cameras, especially those embedded in our smartphones, means that we are all looking at the world second-hand via images, and also constantly presenting ourselves for image-based consumption. It’s a gloomy reading of a brave new world, but Ritchin also suggests new strategies – a shift into “an interactive, networked multimedia”, in which hotspots link into other images and more information. Ritchin’s references to YouTube and MySpace already feel outdated, and his thoughts on surveillance seem tentative now that Wikileaks has blown the lid off the NSA program but it’s a game attempt to draw a line in the sand.

 In his own words

"Photography in the digital environment involves the reconfiguration of the image into a mosaic of millions of changeable pixels, not a continuous tone imprint of a visible reality. Rather than a quote from appearances, it serves as an initial recording, a preliminary script, which may precede a quick and easy reshuffling." 

"The multitudes of photographers now intensely staring not at the surrounding world, nor at their loved ones being wed or graduating, but at their camera backs or cellphones searching for an image on the small screens, or summoning the past as an archival image on these same screens, is symptomatic of the image’s primacy over the existence it is supposed to depict." 

 "Even before the ubiquity of a billon cell phone cameras, we were already in rehearsal for the pose, the look and a diminished sense of privacy." 

How to sound as if you've read it 

The web is all around us; the only solution is to go further into it.

PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #5: Geoff Dyer

From a beginner's guide to photography by The Telegraph 

The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer (2005), digested by Rachel Segal Hamilton 

This is not a history book. True, it covers the work and lives of some of the biggest figures (mainly American) in photography – including Alfred Steiglitz, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, William Eggleston and Nan Goldin. But instead of progressing chronologically as one might expect, the structure is playful, grouping together pictures shot by different photographers of the same subjects: blind people, subways, signs, hands, backs, hats, stairs, fences, snow, windows, roads, cinemas, clouds, petrol stations, barber shops, doors.
Mixed in with the close readings of photographs are musings on life, quotes from writers – such as Wordsworth, Italo Calvino, Jean Rhys – as well as photographers, and colourful biographical anecdotes. We learn about the resentment felt by André Kertész at having to take photographs for money while his personal work went unappreciated, about the time Richard Avedon photographed Jorge Luis Borges and about the intricacies of relationships between Alfred Steiglitz and Georgia O'Keefe.
From the outset Dyer positions himself as a non-expert – he doesn't even own a camera, apparently – and rather than making big theoretical claims about photography as a medium, he writes about how specific photographs have affected him emotionally. Skipping backwards and forwards through time, making connections between photographers and writers, images and ideas, The Ongoing Moment celebrates a personal approach to looking at photographs that reflects the hotchpotch way we understand the world. 

In his own words: 

“Photographers sometimes take pictures of each other; occasionally they take photographs – or versions – of each other's work. Consciously or not they are constantly in dialogue with their contemporaries and predecessors.”
“...there is, I am beginning to suspect, a strange rule in photography, namely that we never see the last of anyone or anything. They disappear or die and then, years later, they reappear, are reincarnated, in another lens.”
“My favourite photographs by Brassai are the ones done in daylight, especially the ones that look like they were done by Lartigue. It's quite possible that some of my favourite Shores were taken by Eggleston, and vice versa. Perhaps it's not such a surprise, then, that my favourite Walker Evans (WE) photograph was taken by Edward Weston (EW).” 

How to sound as if you've read it: 

You know, the development of photography has been much more like a conversation than a story.

PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #4: John Berger

From a beginner's guide to photography by The Telegraph 

'Photographs of Agony' by John Berger (1972), digested by Rachel Segal HamiltonWhat's it about?How much photojournalism can change things for the better is subject to ongoing debate. One of the earlier writers to raise the issue was John Berger in this essay, first published in New Society magazine. Referring to a Don McCullin photograph of a wounded Vietnamese man and child, Berger considers why it has lately become acceptable to publish such graphic images. He gives two reasons. First, that newspapers are responding to readers who want to see the truth. Second, that readers have have become desensitised to these images and newspapers are publishing ever more shocking pictures to win their attention. Dismissing both explanations, Berger suggests a third: that these photographs can be published precisely because they don't make viewers question who might be responsible for the violence. If they did then papers – in thrall, he says, to the political establishment – wouldn't publish them. So what effect do they have? McCullin's images often capture moments in which time suddenly seems to pause – the instant a person cries out in grief, say. For viewers, time is similarly interrupted as we are, briefly, overcome with the victim's pain. But we mistakenly interpret this interruption as our own moral failure because we can't respond directly. We either think, "Well, what can I do?" and do nothing, or try to assuage our guilt by donating to charity. War photographs don't lead us to query the political systems under which wars take place – they just make war seem like some awful but inevitable feature of human life. In his own words:"[Photographs of agony] bring us up short. The most literal adjective that could be applied to them is arresting. We are seized by them.” “The reader who has been arrested by the photograph may tend to feel this discontinuity as his own moral inadequacy. And as soon as this happens even his sense of shock is dispersed: his own moral inadequacy may now shock him as much as the crimes being committed in the war.” “What we are shown horrifies us. The next step should be for us to confront our own lack of political freedom. In the political systems as they exist, we have no opportunity of effectively influencing the conduct of wars waged in our name.” How to sound as if you've read it:War photography - what is it good for? Making us feel bad about ourselves and despairing of humanity.

The first episode of his BBC series Ways Of Seeing:



Also later turned into a book:

A 2011 interview from BBC Newsnight:



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PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #3: Walter Benjamin

From a beginner's guide to photography by The Telegraph 

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin (1936), digested by Lewis Bush 

What's it about? 

Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish critic and essayist. In his lifetime he was relatively unappreciated but since his suicide in 1940 he has been reappraised as one of the 20th century’s most important writers. Published in 1936 and originally aimed at a small group of Marxist intellectuals this essay has rather surprisingly become Benjamin’s best known, partly helped by its prominence in John Berger’s influential 1972 television series Ways of Seeing.
Benjamin packs a remarkably wide ranging discussion into a relatively short space, but a key concept is the idea that unique works of art such as paintings possess an "aura" that copies and reproductions like photographs do not. Even though works of art have always been reproducible, whether by hand or through semi-mechanical processes such as stamping, modern forms of reproduction such as photography represent something new, allowing the artwork to be seen in very different contexts to the original, potentially changing how the work of art is understood.
For photography this essay is significant in two main respects. Firstly because it explores the belief that photographs are inferior to traditional forms of art such as painting. Secondly because it’s a very specific example of the way the context of a photograph alters the way a viewer understands the thing that it shows.  

In his own words: 

"Objects made by humans could always be copied by humans….but the technological reproduction of artworks is something new."
"In even the most perfect reproduction, one thing is lacking: the here and now of the work of art, its unique existence in a particular place. It is this unique existence and nothing else that bears the mark of the history to which the work has been subject."
"What withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art."  

How to sound as if you've read it: 

The infinitely reproducible photograph lacks the aura of the unique work of art.

PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #2: Susan Sontag

From a beginner's guide to photography by The Telegraph 

On Photography by Susan Sontag (1977), digested by Rachel Segal Hamilton 

What's it about? 

According to Sontag, photographs turn the world into a set of collectible objects that we can own. This makes us feel knowledgeable, and powerful. But although we still treat photos as evidence, photographers never simply record the world, they interpret it. They might take multiple shots, for example, selecting the ones that meet their preconceptions.
This is true for us non-professsionals, too: we use family albums to connect with the past and take holiday snaps to show our friends what we're up to. Bit by bit, though, photography has started to limit our experience. Instead of photographing what we're doing, we do things so that we can photograph them.
There is a moral dimension to Sontag's critique. By photographing a situation, you can't intervene in it – war photography is horrific, she says, partly because of the way it has become acceptable for a photographer to choose to take a photo rather than to save a life. But images also numb us. The more photographs of suffering we see, the less shocked we are. For Sontag, there is a violence to photography. The camera is predatory because it lets the photographer turn people into objects and to know them in a way they cannot know themselves.
We try to use photography to make sense of reality but the knowledge it gives us will always be sentimental, superficial, never political. To make matters worse, we're hooked. We don't feel we have really experienced something unless we've photographed it. And so we photograph everything. 

In her own words:  

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically posessed.”
“In these last decades 'concerned' photography has done at least as much to deaden our conscience as to arouse it.”
“Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” 

(SOCIAL MEDIA!!!! Tabloid press?) 

How to sound as if you've read it: 

People these days feel the need to photograph everything - it's totally ruining our experience of life.

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag (2003), digested by Diane Smyth 

This was Sontag's update to On Photography (see above). The intervening years hadn’t softened her stance and Sontag pulls no punches in her critique of images of suffering, “those professional, specialised tourists known as journalists” who make them, and our culpability in looking at them.
She starts by tracing the history of images of suffering, arguing that Christian depictions of martyrdom historically gave way to something more secular that saw pain as something to be deplored. Photographs were quickly pressed into service; justified by the idea they could advocate for change.
Photographs were, and still are, she argues, unequal to the task, because they turn disaster into universal, ineffectual denunciations of human cruelty or suffering. Each image is framed by the person who makes it, and “to frame is to exclude”.
Feeling powerless to change what they see, viewers quickly become immune to images of suffering or - worse - take a prurient interest in them. And because we are bombarded with such images, we no longer recognise them as records of real events.
It’s gloomy reading for committed photojournalists and Sontag has little to offer by way of comfort, other than to suggest that narrative texts, longer portfolios of images, and artworks are more likely to mobilise a viewer (or reader) to action against suffering, or any kind of understanding of it. 

In her own words: 

"Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience, the cumulative offering by more than a century and a half’s worth of those professional, specialised tourists known as journalists. Wars are now also living room sights and sounds. Information about what is happening elsewhere, called ‘news’, features conflict and violence…to which the response is compassion, or indignation, or titillation, or approval, as each misery heaves into view."
"The photographer’s intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it."
"Making suffering loom larger, by globalising it, may spur people to feel they ought to ‘care’ more. It also invites them to feel that the sufferings and misfortunes are too vast, too irrevocable, too epic to be much changed by any local political intervention." 

How to sound as if you've read it:  

Photographs of suffering don't rouse viewers to action because they universalise pain rather than explaining what could be changed. There’s no hope, so stop being a voyeur and take action instead.

PHOTOGRAPHY THEORY #1: Henri Cartier-Bresson

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

Still plan things through thoroughly, but still keep an eye out, one image on the digipak may come through serendipity. 

From a beginner's guide to photography by The Telegraph 

In his own words:

“We photographers deal in things that are constantly vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth which can bring them back again.” 

“Composition must be one of our constant preoccupations, but at the moment of shooting it can stem only from our intuition, for we are out to capture the fugitive moment, and all the interrelationships involved are on the move.”  

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression.” 

What's it about? 

"The decisive moment", an idea that has defined street photography and photojournalism as we know it, was first outlined in the preface to a book of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. The essay starts with Cartier-Bresson charting his life so far as a photographer – from messing around with a Box Brownie as a child to co-founding Magnum Photos – before talking through his approach to photography. According to Cartier-Bresson, there is an almost magical split-second in which events in the world – interactions between people, movement, light and form – combine in perfect visual harmony. Once it passes, it is gone forever. To capture such moments as a photographer you must be inconspicuous, nimble and attentive; working on instinct; responding to reality and never trying to manipulate it. Composition cannot be planned, nor can it be added in afterwards. Cropping will invariably make a good shot worse and is unlikely to make a bad shot better. Camera settings shouldn't be something the photographer even thinks about – taking a photograph should be like changing gears in a car. 

How to sound as if you've read it: 

Be ready and reactive. Don't get hung up on kit and, most importantly, keep it real.

EXAMPLES OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Click here.

POSTMODERNISM #2 - High Art Vs Pop Culture

HIGH ART

L'art pour l'art:

Wikipedia defines it as:

the usual English rendering of a French slogan from the early 19th century, "l'art pour l'art", and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral, or utilitarian function. Such works are sometimes described as "autotelic", from the Greek autoteles, "complete in itself", a concept that has been expanded to embrace "inner-directed" or "self-motivated" human beings.

POP CULTURE

Wikipedia definition:

the entirety of attitudes, ideas, images, perspectives, and other phenomena within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid-20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century.^{[citation needed]} Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society. The most common pop culture categories are: entertainment (movies, music, television, games, memes), sports, news (as in people/places in news), politics, fashion/clothes, technology, and slang.^[1] Popular culture has a way of influencing an individual's attitudes towards certain topics.^[2]Popular culture is sometimes viewed as being trivial and "dumbed down" in order to find consensual acceptance throughout the mainstream. As a result, it comes under heavy criticism from various non-mainstream sources (most notably religious groups and countercultural groups) which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist, or corrupt.^{[3][4][5][6][7]}

Oxford Dictionaries entry (click the read more tag for more examples):

APPLIED TO ORIGINAL ARTIST
David Bowie is a good example, he has actually said what he does as a musician is turn high art into low art, what he calls popular culture. Though the wider market of rock music, a pop music genre, he wanted to 

be the instigator of new ideas, I wanted turn people on to new ideas and new perspectives, I always wanted to be that kind of catalytic kind of thing. (Source)

he was:

only using rock and roll as a medium.

APPLIED TO SUEDE
There's a tension to produce pop music and music that's artistically relevant, they now seem to have gone down the direction of arthouse. 

NARRATIVE THEORY #4/MEDIA LANG - Simulacra + Simulations

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

Wiki on Jean Baudrillard:

was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as simulation and hyperreality.

In 1981 he published a book called Simulacra and Simulation, which outlines four stages (from wiki):

1. The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct, that a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order".
2. The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we come to believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearance—it is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us, but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
3. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the sign pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery", a regime of semantic algebra where all human meaning is conjured artificially to appear as a reference to the (increasingly) hermetic truth.
4. The fourth stage is pure simulacrum, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers' lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, "hyperreal" terms. Any naïve pretension to reality as such is perceived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental.

Red Dress In Schindler's List

UPDATE:

Found out that Steve Spielberg got the idea from a film Don't Look Now

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I have seen the image of something red in black and white in these other formats

• Italian Restaurant in a village close to mine
• Hotel near the school
• Facebook Profile Photo of someone I know (everything black and white apart from shirt)

Depeche Mode - Where's The Revolution




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No mention of the possible simulacra with Schindler's List

Mentioned on the Italian wikipedia.

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Tracing it back even further, colour correction, or colour tinting as it was called, has been used as early as the 1924 silent film, found out about in this YouTube video about Colour In Storytelling:

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MEDIA LANGUAGE A-Z

SEMIOTICS

Anchorage: When you apply multiple signifiers to make the preferred reading clear.

Binary opposition - Any mutually exclusive pair form a binary opposition such as good/evil, happy/sad.

Connotation - The symbolic meanings of the factual details we denote. E.g. the ancient black and white symbols of bad ad evil, red makes you think of blood

Denotation - Denotation is a description of what we see or hear.

Iconic signs - Iconic signs are where the signifier represents the signified. E.g. A picture.

Indexical signs - Indexical signs are very closely related to the concept they signify. E.g. A tin of catfood signifies the catfood inside.

Intertextuality - Meaning of one text is tied to another, earlier text, e.g. to fully understand the slasher genre you would need to see Psycho which is seen as it's staple film. (term coined by French semiotician Julie Kristeva)

Juxtaposition - When two signifiers that don't fit are placed together we can say that they are juxtaposed.

Narrative Enigma - When information is withheld from the audience.

Polysemic - When a sign is polysemic, it means that it is carrying lots of  meanings at the same time.

Sign - The smallest unit of meaning. Anything that can be used to communicate.

Signifier - A signifier is a single detail that we pick out, which we think has a symbolic meaning, which is then the signified.

Signified - The concept that a signifier refers to.

Symbolic signs (arbitary signs) - Signs that do not have an obvious relationship with the signified, meaning that they can keep changing. E.g. A dove signifying peace.  

Target audience - The audience a text is marketed to, divided . To get a mainstream audience some say you need to fulfill the 4-quadrant model.

MISE-EN-SCÈNE

Body Language: Every movement of the body, whether through arms, legs, or no movement, provides exposition for the characteristics/personality. The actors need to consider the fact that every move their body makes provides meaning that can be decoded by an audience.

Costume: What the actors wear

Casting: When evaluating the acting and the look of an actor playing a character, one has to ask whether he was appropriately cast, or maybe miscast. 

Facial Gestures: The more direct and evident way of actors providing information for the audience.

Hair: Often linked to gender stereotypes, women having long hair and men having short hair, also facial hair is often seen as unhygienic and slightly odd and quirky. 

Lighting: Influences the tone/atmosphere that the audience feel from the text. 

Location: Not in the studio, you have less control of your mise-en-scène than in the studio. Doesn't always have to be outside but mostly is

Make-Up: Also often used as gender stereotypes 

Props: Part of the set which is used by the actors like cutlery, cups, weapons, pens. 

Set Design: Everything surrounding the actors that is not worn by them or used, so like furniture, tables, though their can be some blurring with props say for example a character eventually grabbed a television  and threw it on floor out of anger.

Studio: When you're not filming on location but in studios belonging to the production company. Flats and houses which you would expect to be on location and are, also often with music videos, can be faked. If a production is only filming there and not at all on location it is completely studio-based. This is more or less the opposite of what my AS coursework was, other than the green-screen trip.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

CAMERA SHOTS
Aerial shot (AS) - An aerial shot usually taken from a helicopter, often used at the beginning of a film to establish setting and movement.

Close-up  (CU)- A camera shot taken at a very short distance to show the character's emotion, concentrates the attention and puts the audience in a priviledged position.

Establishing shot (ES) - The first shot of a new scene which is meant to give a general impression rather than specific information.

Extreme close-up (ESU)- A camera shot showing a character's intimate feelings or thinking. This puts the audience in an intimate relationship. It can also be used for dramatic effect.

Long-shot (LS)- A camera shot taken at a relatively great distance from the subject and permitting a broad view of a scene.

Master shot (MAS) - A wide shot that covers the entire action of a scene.

Medium close-up (MCU) - A camera shot focusing on the importance on the emotions and objects but also keeping a sense of the surroundings and action.

Mid-shot (MDS) - A camera shot in which the subject is in the middle distance. This situates the character in an immediate surrounding showing emotions.

Over-the-shoulder shot (OTSS) - A camera shot taken from behind a person looking at someone else. This focuses the audience attention on one character.

Point-of-view shot (POVT) - A camera shot where the audience sees the situation from the character's position and can often be placed in the character's shoes.

Two-shot (2S)- A camera shot of two people framed similarly to a mid-shot; this is often used to provide a comparison between the two characters.

Wide-shot (WS) - A camera shot taken at a great distance which is used to set up a location.


CAMERA ANGLES
Bird's eye view  (BV)- A shot looking directly down on the subject. This can be used to establish an overall shot of a scene or to emphasise the insignificance of the subjects. Very often used for battle scenes.

Dutch angle (DA) - A canted angle also known as the "Dutch angle" is when the camera is tilted. This is usually good for illustrating imbalance, transition or instability. It can also suggest a bizarre environment or psychological state. Effects such as blurring can contribute to this.

Eye level shot - A neutral shot where the camera is positioned as though it is a human observing a scene. The actor's heads are on level with the focus.

High angle  (HA) - A camera shot showing the subject from above. This suggests character's weakness, vulnerability, insignificance or isolation and being looked down upon; the audience is in a powerful position.

Low angle (LA) - A camera shot showing the subject from below. This suggests character's strength, powerfulness or dominance that makes them threatening and being baked up too; the audience is in a weak position.

Rat's eye view (RES) - Often used to show the view of a child or pet. The audience is in a weak position.

Worm's eye view (WEV)- A shot looking up from the ground. This shows strength and dominance and can be used to show the view of a child or pet.

CAMERA MOVEMENTS
Static - When there is absolutely no camera movement.

Crane shot (CS) - A crane shot is achieved by a camera mounted on a platform, which is connected to a mechanical arm that can lift the platform up, bring it down or move it laterally across space.

Hand-held camera - A technique in which a camera is held in the camera operator's hands as opposed to being mounted on a base.

Pan shot - A camera movement technique that involves moving the camera horizontally to the right or left.

Reverse zoom - A reverse zoom is when the camera moves so that the subject appears the same size while the background size changes.

Steadicam - A mechanism for steadying a hand-held camera, consisting of an arm to which the camera is attached to.

Tilt shot - A camera movement technique that involves moving the camera vertically to the right or left.

Tracking shot - A shot in which the camera is mounted on a cart that travels along tracks from side to side.
  Dolly shot  - A shot in which the camera is mounted on a cart which travels towards or   away from the subject.

Zoom - Zooming means altering the focal length of the lens to give the illusion of moving closer to the subject.

CAMERA COMPOSITION:
Deep focus - A camera technique which allows all distance planes to remain clearly in focus, from a close-up range to infinity.

Focus pull - A camera technique where you change focus during a shot. This means adjusting the focus from one subject to another.

Shallow focus - A technique in which one part of the image is in focus while the rest is out of focus.

Framing - This refers to the way a shot is composed and the manner in which subjects and objects are surrounded by the boundaries of the film image.

Rule of thirds - The rule of thirds is when the frame can be divided into three horizontal and three vertical sections and therefore, where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect makes an ideal location for the more important parts of the picture that need to be focused on.

EDITING

Black - When the screen goes black.

Cutting/Match on action - Connecting two shots together in which a character finishes off an action in the second shot that was started in the first shot.

Cross-cutting - A technique where the camera cuts away from one action to another action in order to establish action occurring at the same time in two different places. This is also known as parallel editing and is often used to dramatically build tension and suspense in chase scenes or two compare two different scenes.

Cutaway - A shot that interrupts a continuously-filmed action by briefly inserting another related action, object or person, followed by a cutback to the original shot. This is often used to break up a sequence, ease the transition from one shot to the next, to provide additional information or to hint at an impending change.

Dissolve - A transition effect in which one video clip or image gradually fades out while another image simultaneously replaces the original one.

Ellipsis - A term that refers to periods of time that have been left out of the narrative. The ellipsis is marked by editing transitions, which signifies that something has been elided. However with continuity editing techniques these missing segments are covered up by a seamless flow, in contrast to non-linear jump cuts.

Eyeline match - A cut between two shots that creates the illusion of the character (in the first shot) looking at an object (in the second shot).

Fade-in - A terms used to describe a transition effect where the image slowly appears on screen.

Fade-out -  A term used to describe a transition effect where the image slowly disappears into a black. This usually indicates the end of a scene or film.

Jump cut - A jump cut is a transition between two shots which appears to "jump" due to the way the shots are framed in relation to each other.

One take - When everything is filmed in one sequence, there can still be camera movement, but their is no second take. There a number of film and music video examples that were entirely taken in one take.

Long take - An uninterrupted shot in a film, which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. Long takes are often accomplished through the use of a dolly or steadicam shot.

Match Cut- A transitional technique in which there is a cut between two shot that are joined, matched or linked by visual or metaphorical parallelism or similarities.
  Graphic Match Cut - jumps from one shot to a similiar shot by either matching the   action or the composition", change in space mostly but also in time, it is not cutting on action because we are changing to a different moving subject/action, where as with cutting on action we're still following the same subject.
  Verbal Match Cut - the diegetic sound spoken by one character is, is not the same as an audio bridge, because we there we can't see the first part spoken, here one sentence is completed by the other (like in Candalabra)

Parallel editing - When you see what happens on two different locations, such as a male and female both waking up in a ROM-COM.

Shot- Reverse shot -  A shot photographed from the opposite side of a subject to provide a different perspective.

Short take - Very short takes within a film. 

Shot - The images which are recorded continuously from the time where the camera starts to the time where the camera stops. It basically is an unedited, uncut strip of a film.

Slow Motion - The action of showing film or playing back video more slowly than it was recorded, so that the action appears slower than in real life.

Superimposition - The placement of an image or video on top of an already-existing image or video.

Wipe - When one shot is progressively replaced by another shot in a geometric pattern.

Iris - an alternate way of cutting to or zooming in on a close-up, where part of the frame is singled out by the rest being blacked (pioneered in the French New Wave movement)

TITLES

Ident - A short visual image that works as a logo (e.g. production companies in a film). 

Font - The type and style of writing chosen for text. 

Case -  Upper or Lower-Case

Serif - A font with extended features.

Sans-Serif - A font without extended features.

Size - How the roles and names stand in proportion to each other .

Bold - When a text is marked fatter in order to be more visually evident.

Italic - When a text it is formatted sideways

Underlined - A line under text to emphasize a title

Colour - Red can signify horror, pink romance, blue sci-fi sometimes.

SOUND

Ambient sound - The background sound(s), which are present in a scene or location. Common ambient sounds include: wind, water, birds, crowds, office noises, traffic, etc.

Audio Bridge - A sound, dialogue or sound effect in one scene that continues over into a new image or shot.

Diegetic sound - The diegetic sound is the sound whose source is visible on screen or implied to be present by the action of the film. E.g. voices of characters, sounds made by objects (animals - bird's twitching) or music represented as coming from instruments in the story space etc.

Non-diegetic sound - The non-diegetic sound is is the sound whose source is neither visible on screen nor has been implied to be present in the action. E.g. narrator's commentary, sound effects adds for dramatic effect, mood music etc. It is therefore represented as coming from a source outside story space.

Voice-over - A voice-over is the voice of an unseen narrator speaking. However it can also be the voice of a visible character expressing unspoken thoughts e.g. Bridget Jones's Diary - Film opening analysis.

Ominous Music - When a sense of threat or danger is foreshadowed.

FOR MUSIC VIDEOS:
Diegetic intro: Sound of the real world at the beginning of a music video before the track starts.

Diegetic interruption: It can be either a blip, or a lengthier scene implanted during a mu

Diegetic outro: At the end

Extra track promo: When other tracks are added/teased in the video, mostly at the beginning or end.