Six-second cinema: Tracing film language in post-cinema social media

本项目对社交媒体与电影的关系进行了原创性研究。它将通过实践主导的文本分析批判性地质疑网络视频风格，并探索其在后电影视觉文化中的主导地位。最近的后电影辩论展示了数字文化如何使电影作为主导机构和实践的地位复杂化（Chateau and Moure 2020）。在这种背景下，社交媒体平台承载着越来越无处不在的视觉文化，并继承了电影的一些意识形态和叙事功能（Elsaesser 2016）。本项目将探索作为业余电影制作网络的社交媒体，使用视频实践来检验其与早期和连续电影的文本联系。后电影学者探索了数字媒体如何让人想起早期或边缘的电影惯例（Manovich 2016; Ross 2020），在前数字技术的支持下有先例（Humphrey & Hjorth 2020），并重建了一种“吸引人的电影”，这种电影将奇观赋予叙事之上（Gurevitch 2010; Grusin 2016; Ross 2020）。然而，大部分工作都集中在专业制作的电影媒体上。另一方面，在线视频从业余实践发展而来，即使它继续模糊这些类别（Cunningham & Craig 2021）。我打算通过写作和电影制作来分析社交媒体内容与电影后辩论的关系，以及它的视觉语言如何挑战“专业”实践的叙事。社交媒体视频内容的视觉语言能否与电影实践和围绕后电影的辩论相联系？在线视频在多大程度上让人想起“吸引人的电影院”，这对互联网作为电影媒介的功能意味着什么？以实践为主导的电影对在线网络的分析能揭示出它们作为主流视觉媒体的地位吗？方法本项目将采用文本分析的方法来追溯电影视觉语言与网络视频之间的关系。除了一篇书面论文，我还将制作五篇视频文章：每一篇都将追踪一个主要的视觉主题，比如POV和幻觉。这些视频将使用创造性的媒体考古方法，将档案电影片段与原创和在线视频相结合，对美学进行非线性和中间分析（Huhtamo和Galili 2020）。通过这种反思性的、以实践为主导的方法，过去的电影为建立对当代媒体的新理解提供了一个棱镜（van der Heijden and Kolkowski, 2023）。该项目将在一个主流的、高度互文的DIY图像网络中重新定位和评估基本电影美学关注的意义。社交媒体的审美特征——无处不在、模仿和流通——越来越多地形成了媒体参与的主导逻辑（Miltner 2018），甚至渗透到日常文化叙事中（Dourish 2020）。我将通过从技术的线性历史叙事中提取社交媒体来揭示这些趋势，而不是分析它与电影的关系。该项目旨在促进学术界以外的理解，因此将包括电影节和在线网络的发行策略。这将在创新的、高度现代化的媒体辩论的基础上，培养学术界和工业界之间的联系。创造性的传播将为今后在学术界、媒体制作和艺术实践方面的工作提供更广泛的基础。

ContextThis project offers an original study of social media's relationship with cinema. It will critically interrogate online video style through practice-led textual analysis and explore its dominance of post-cinema visual culture.Recent post-cinema debates chart how digital culture complicates cinema's status as a dominant institution and set of practices (Chateau and Moure 2020). In this context, social media platforms host an increasingly ubiquitous visual culture and inherit some of cinema's ideological and storytelling functions (Elsaesser 2016). This project will explore social media as a network of amateur film production, using video practice to examine its textual links to early and continuity cinema.Post-cinema scholars have explored how digital media recalls early or marginal film conventions (Manovich 2016; Ross 2020), has antecedents in affordances of pre-digital technology (Humphrey & Hjorth 2020), and reconstructs a "cinema of attractions" that privileges spectacle over narrative (Gurevitch 2010; Grusin 2016; Ross 2020). However, much of this work has focused on professionally produced film media. Online video, on the other hand, has developed from amateur practices even as it continues to blur such categories (Cunningham & Craig 2021). I propose to analyse, through writing and filmmaking, the relationship of social media content to post-cinema debates, and how its visual language challenges narratives of "professional" practice.QuestionsHow can the visual language of social media video content be characterised in relation to cinematic practices and debates around post-cinema?To what extent does online video recall a "cinema of attractions", and what does this suggest for the function of the Internet as a cinematic medium?What can a practice-led film analysis of online networks reveal of their status as dominant visual media?MethodThis project will use textual analysis to trace the relationship between the visual languages of cinema and online video. Alongside a written thesis I will produce five video essays: each will trace a major visual theme, such as POV and illusionism. The videos will use a creative media-archaeological approach, combining archival film footage with original and online video for a non-linear and intermedial analysis of aesthetics (Huhtamo and Galili 2020). With this reflexive, practice-led method, cinema of the past provides a prism to build new understandings of contemporary media (van der Heijden and Kolkowski 2023). The project will recontextualise and evaluate the meaning of fundamental film-aesthetic concerns in a mainstream, highly intertextual DIY image network.ImpactThe aesthetic characteristics of social media - ubiquity, imitation, and circulation - increasingly form the governing logic of media engagement at large (Miltner 2018), and even pervade everyday cultural narratives (Dourish 2020). I will unpack these trends by extracting social media from a linear historical narrative of technology, instead analysing its relationship with cinema. This project aims to promote understanding beyond academia, and so will include a distribution strategy for film festivals and online networks. This will cultivate links between academia and industry based on innovative, highly contemporary media debates. A creative dissemination will provide a broader foundation for future work across academia, media production, and artistic practice.