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The Digital Audiovisual Essay ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Lessons in looking : the digital audiovisual essay https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40215/ Version: Full Version Citation: Baptista, Tiago (2016) Lessons in looking : the digital audio- visual essay. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email LESSONS IN LOOKING: THE DIGITAL AUDIOVISUAL ESSAY Tiago Baptista Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Film and Screen Media) Birkbeck, University of London 2016 1 Abstract This thesis examines the contemporary practice of the digital audiovisual essay, which is defined as a material form of thinking at the crossroads of academic textual analysis, personal cinephilia, and popular online fandom practices, to suggest that it allows rich epistemological discoveries not only about individual films and viewing experiences, but also about how cinema is perceived in the context of digitally mediated audiovisual culture. Chapter one advances five key defining tensions of the digital audiovisual essay: its object is the investigation of specific films and cinephiliac experiences; it uses a performative research methodology based on the affordances of digital viewing and editing technologies; it exists primarily in Web 2.0 and takes advantage of its collaborative and dialogical modes of production; it is a “rich text object” that continuously tests the different contributions of both verbal and audiovisual forms of communication to the production of knowledge about the cinema; and finally, the digital audiovisual essay has an important pedagogical potential, not only for those who watch it, but especially for those who practice it. Chapter two presents the theoretical framework of the dissertation, challenges the ‘newness’ of the digital audiovisual essay, and suggests that any investigation of this cultural practice must address its ideological implications and its role in the context of contemporary audiovisual culture. Accordingly, it relates the editing and compositional techniques of the digital audiovisual essay with modernist montage and suggests that the audiovisual essay has not only inherited, but has also updated and enhanced the dialectical interdependency between critical and consumerism drives that shaped modernism’s ambiguous relation to mass culture. The final chapter examines four case studies (David Bordwell, Catherine Grant, ::kogonada, and Kevin B. Lee) that showcase the contradictory tensions of this cultural practice and broad our understanding of the politics of the digital audiovisual essay. 3 Acknowledgments I am thankful to Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia whose financial support made this research possible, and to the directors of Cinemateca, Maria João Seixas and José Manuel Costa, who kindly allowed me to carry on this work in successive leaves of absence between 2011 and 2014. I am also thankful to Professor Laura Mulvey. Her work was directly responsible for my decision to undertake this project and her dedicated guidance throughout this research contributed in many ways to see it through. The comments of Dr. Joel McKim, Dr. Scott Rogers, and Dr. Michael Temple also helped shape the structure of this dissertation. Parts of this research were presented at post-graduate seminars organized at Birkbeck College by Professor Laura Mulvey and Dr. Dorota Ostrowska. I am especially thankful to Dr. Anahid Kassabian for inviting me to present my work in a research seminar at the University of Liverpool. I am indebted to all the organizers and the participants that engaged with my work on those occasions. Throughout this research, I benefitted from the friendly support of many colleagues and friends that helped me juggle this research with my professional obligations. I am extremely grateful to my colleagues at Cinemateca’s film conservation centre (ANIM), as well as to the current and past members of the direction board of AIM (Association of Moving Image Researchers). The collaborative work at the cinema website À Pala de Walsh got me out of writing isolation and introduced me to a wonderful group of new friends (Luís Mendonça, Carlos Natálio, Ricardo Vieira Lisboa, and many others) with whom the discussion, the teaching, and the making of digital audiovisual essays became a pleasurable reality. I am also thankful for the friendly support of Margarida Sousa, José Filipe Costa, Ana Catarina Pinto, Nuno Dias, Nuno Senos, Martim Martins, Luis Trindade, and Joana Estorninho de Almeida, and the daily encouragement and advices of Paulo Cunha and Daniel Ribas. I am especially grateful to Sérgio Dias Branco and Miguel Cardoso for their comments on an advanced draft of this text. I dedicate this thesis to my parents, who nurtured me in so much more ways than they realize, and to Alice and Leonor, my beloved fellow survivors of this dissertation. 4 Table of Contents Introduction: lessons in looking ................................................................................... 8 1. THe exemplary text of contemporary audiovisual culture ................................... 13 2. Terminologies, corpus and periodization .................................................................. 15 3. Dissertation structure ....................................................................................................... 18 1. The digital audiovisual essay ................................................................................. 23 1.1. Five key defining tensions ............................................................................................ 28 1.1.1. Between academia and cinephilia: a new type and a different object of knowledge about cinema ............................................................................................................................................................ 30 1.1.2. Between theory and practice: a material thinking process ..................................................... 33 1.1.3. Between private and public: a collaborative and dialogical cultural practice ................ 37 1.1.4. Between verbal and audiovisual communication: a self-reflexive “rich text object” ... 41 1.1.5. Between watching and making: the pedagogical potential of the digital audiovisual essay ............................................................................................................................................................................ 48 Concluding remarks ............................................................................................................... 54 2. The double logic of the digital audiovisual essay ............................................ 57 2.1. Contemporary audiovisual culture and modernism ........................................... 62 2.1.1 Contemporary audiovisual culture ..................................................................................................... 63 2.1.2. Back to modernism ................................................................................................................................... 71 2.1.3. Beyond modernism? The ideological functions of remediation ............................................ 84 2.2. THe formal operations of tHe digital audiovisual essay ..................................... 91 2.2.1. Soviet Montage ............................................................................................................................................ 93 2.2.2. Critical montage? The compilation film ......................................................................................... 100 2.2.3. Vernacular montage: the Remix ........................................................................................................ 110 2.2.4. Negating montage: Détournement ................................................................................................... 119 Concluding remarks ............................................................................................................. 122 3. Four examples ........................................................................................................... 125 3.1. David Bordwell: tHe absent lecturer ....................................................................... 130 Video lectures ........................................................................................................................................................ 130 Video examples ..................................................................................................................................................... 137 3.2. CatHerine Grant: continuous experimentation ................................................... 142 A performative method ..................................................................................................................................... 143 Sequential editing ................................................................................................................................................ 148 Multiple-screen comparisons ......................................................................................................................... 155 Superimpositions ................................................................................................................................................
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