the videographic essay criticism in sound & image

• Corpus ID: 218004099

The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound and Image

• Catherine A. Grant , Christian Keathley , Jason Mittell
• Published 2016

18 Citations

Moving cinematic history: filmic analysis through performative research, changing times for scholarly communication: the case of the academic research video and the online video journal, creanalytics: automating the supercut as a form of critical technical practice, star studies in transition: notes on experimental videographic approaches to film performance, video essays: curating and transforming film education through artistic research, exploring film language with a digital analysis tool: the case of kinolab, dhq: digital humanities quarterly: exploring film language with a digital analysis tool: the case of kinolab, evaluating the process and product of a student-staff partnership for curriculum redesign in film studies, introducción: hacia nuevos horizontes de la investigación. la crítica videográfica y los estudios del precine y el cine silente., videographic film studies, related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

• Browse By Year
• Browse By School
• Browse By Research Centre
• Browse By Person
• Browse By Journal
• Browse By Type
• My Research (Login)

The videographic essay: criticism in sound and image

Grant, Catherine and Keathley, C. and Mittell, J. (2019) The videographic essay: criticism in sound and image. Kino Agora. Montreal, CA: Caboose books. ISBN 9781927852118.

Book synopsis: The last decade has seen extraordinary developments in the multimedia presentation of cinema and moving image scholarship via the form that is commonly known as the ‘video essay’. What the finest examples of this videographic criticism have made clear is that such work allows for and even demands a different rhetoric than written film scholarship, which can in turn transform how we engage with and study cinematic texts. Some of the form’s alternative rhetorical approaches to the traditional scholarly goal of producing knowledge were tested in summer 2015 at an NEH-funded workshop, ‘Scholarship in Sound and Image’, organised by Christian Keathley and Jason Mittell at Middlebury College in Vermont. There, fourteen international scholars gathered to experiment with the new form. This volume grows out of that workshop, and out of a follow-up edition in 2017. With special focus on the practice and pedagogy of videographic production, the volume contains detailed descriptions of the assignments that were designed to both stimulate work and teach technology; in addition, a companion page on the caboose website features videos produced by participants during the workshop. This unique volume will be of great value to teachers and students, critics and videomakers, as well as anyone interested in this growing area of critical practice. The volume also addresses issues such as the professional validation of videographic work, copyright and fair use, and technology. Also featured are two scholarly essays by co-editor Catherine Grant and original contributions by the workshop’s special guests: Eric Faden and Kevin B. Lee.

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2 .

Items related to The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound and Image

The videographic essay: criticism in sound and image - softcover.

• 4 4 out of 5 stars 6 ratings by Goodreads

This specific ISBN edition is currently not available.

• About this edition

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

• Publisher caboose
• ISBN 10  1927852048
• ISBN 13  9781927852040
• Binding Paperback
• Edition number 1
• Number of pages 64

(No Available Copies)

• Advanced Search
• AbeBooks Home

If you know the book but cannot find it on AbeBooks, we can automatically search for it on your behalf as new inventory is added. If it is added to AbeBooks by one of our member booksellers, we will notify you!

CATHERINE GRANT

PUBLICATIONS ON VIDEOGRAPHIC CRITICISM AND THE AUDIOVISUAL ESSAY

Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter , “Academic Filmmaking in the New Humanities,” two special issues co-edited with Libertad Gills and Alan O’Leary, Autumn 2024

“On Drill Team [on Beau Travail and The Fits ] and the Musicality of Videographic Criticism,” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media , 27, 2024. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.27.13 (doi: 10.33178/alpha.27.13)

“Split Screens: A Discussion with Catherine Grant, Malte Hagener, and Katharina Loew,” in Nicholas Baer and Annie van den Oever eds., Technics: Media Technologies in the Digital Age (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024). https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/89795

“‘I Learned an Awful Lot in Little Rock’: Laura Mulvey Reflects on her Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Remix,” [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies , 11.1, 2024. https://doi.org/10.16995/intransition.15503

CINEMATIC ORGANISMS: Memories and Memorialisation. A Videographic essay produced for the ‘Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive’ project at Lancaster University, published December 21, 2023. https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/projects/cmda/index.php/cinematic-organisms-memories-and-memorialisation/

“Space Perception / Movement in Water [On Catherine Grant’s Liquid Perception ]” by Shira Havron and Ido Harambam, Reviewed by Catherine Grant, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies , 10.4a, 2023. https://mediacommons.org/intransition/space-perception-movement-water

“Falling: 3 x Girls in Uniform : The Video Essay as Curatorial Practice,” Feminist Media Histories , Vol. 9, Number 4, 2023, pps. 44–52. https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2023.9.4.44

“From Here, There, and Elsewhere: In-Between Memories [on  Once Upon a Screen 2],”  [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies , 9.3, 2022. Online at: http://mediacommons.org/intransition/once-upon-screen-vol-2-part-1-introduction-co-guest-editors

Co-author with Paul Merchant, Letter Across Oceans – To Tiziana Panizza/ Carta a través de los oc´eanos – a Tiziana Panizza , a video essay made for Reimagining the Pacific , published in August 2022. It was first shown on 30 July 2022 at the Centro de Cine y Creación in Santiago de Chile, as part of an ‘ Encuentro de Arte y Ecología en Chile .’

“ Irresistible instrumentalism: Materially thinking through music-making in the story worlds of silent films,” NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies , S pring 2022_#Rumors. Online at: https://necsus-ejms.org/irresistible-instrumentalism-materially-thinking-through-music-making-in-the-story-worlds-of-silent-films/

With Deborah Martin, Rites of The Passage  [on Lucrecia Martel’s 2021 Eye Filmmuseum installation The Passage ], 2021 – forthcoming online

‘Birbirine Karışan Tutkular: Videografik Derlemede Kurgu Yoluyla Malzemeyle Düşünmek’ (Translated into Turkish by İpek Gürkan). sinecine: Sinema Araştırmaları Dergisi , 11 (2) 2020

Co-Author with Christian Keathley and Jason Mittell, The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy ,  a collection of writings about and examples of videographic criticism, edited by Christian Keathley, Jason Mittell, and Catherine Grant. As an open access, multimodal site of scholarship, this 2019 site will evolve over time, expanding the collection of examples and revising writing as relevant. (Versions of some of these writings were published in 2016 and 2019 by caboose books in the volume The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound & Image ) . Online at: http://videographicessay.org

With Deborah Martin, ‘Water Turtles/Tortugas Aquáticas [on two films by Lucrecia Martel]’, 16:9 , 2019. http://www.16-9.dk/2019/09/water-turtles/

‘El embrujo de La mujer sin cabeza ‘ [‘The Haunting of The Headless Woman’  – Video and text in Spanish with English Translation], Tecmerin: Revista de Ensayos Audiovisuales , 2,  Julio 2019: – Español: https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/revista-2-1/ ; English: https://tecmerin.uc3m.es/en/journal-2-1/ .

Co-Author with Christian Keathley and Jason Mittell, The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound and Image (Montreal: caboose/Rutgers University Press, 2nd ed., 2019.

Co-Editor with Jaap Kooijman,  ‘New Ways of Seeing (and Hearing): The Audiovisual Essay and Television, ‘Audiovisual Essay’ Section on Television in NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies , forthcoming Spring 2019: https://necsus-ejms.org/new-ways-of-seeing-and-hearing-the-audiovisual-essay-and-television/

With Janet McCabe, ‘Flow/Cut, Body/Matter, Law Fear’, in ‘Bodies at the border: transnational co-produced TV drama and its gender politics in the pilots of Bron/Broen and adaptations, The Bridge and The Tunnel ‘, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies , Spring 2019: https://necsus-ejms.org/bodies-at-the-border-transnational-co-produced-tv-drama-and-its-gender-politics-in-the-pilots-of-bron-broen-and-adaptations-the-bridge-and-the-tunnel/

‘Beast Fables: A Videographic Study of Cinematic Deer and Transhuman Children’, The Cine-Files: A Scholarly Journal of Film Studies , 14, Spring 2019: http://www.thecine-files.com/cgrant/

‘ Ecce Homo ‘  – A video assemblage bringing the endings of Zero Dark Thirty and The Hour of the Furnaces , pt. 1, together. Published alongside considerations of the video by Robert Burgoyne, Anna Gjelsvik and Nadège Lourme, Grensesnitt , September, 2018:  https://grensesnitt.org/ecco-homo /

‘Screen Memories: A Video Essay on Smultronstället /  Wild Strawberries’, CINERGIE: Il Cinema e le altre Arti , 13, 2018:  https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2280-9481/7914

Catherine Grant and Amber Jacobs, ‘Persona Non Grata Sonata’, MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture , Issue, 1 (Spring 2018):

Persona Non Grata Sonata

‘Videographic Star Studies and the “Late Voice”: Carrie Fisher, John Hurt and Jeanne Moreau’, In Media Res , September 1, 2017. Originally online at:  http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2017/08/15/videographic-star-studies-and-late-voice-carrie-fisher-john-hurt-and-jeanne-moreau . Now online here: http://mediacommons.org/imr/2017/08/15/videographic-star-studies-and-late-voice

‘Star Studies in Transition: Notes on Experimental Videographic Approaches to Film Performance’,  Cinema Journal , Volume 56, Issue 4, 2017. Open Access PDF:   http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.cmstudies.org/resource/resmgr/in_focus_archive/InFocus_56-4.pdf

‘Creative Possibilities’, Viewfinder , July 4th, 2017. Online at:  http://bufvc.ac.uk/articles/creative-possibilities

‘Looking at To-Be-Looked-at-Ness: Feminist Videographic Criticism’, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies , 4.1, 2017. Online at:  http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/2017/03/12/looking-be-looked-ness-feminist-videographic-criticism

‘The audiovisual essay as performative research’, NECSUS : European Journal of Media Studies , Autumn 2016. Online at: http:// www.necsus-ejms.org/the-audiovisual-essay-as-performative-research/

‘Dissolves of Passion: Materially Thinking through Editing in Videographic Compilation’ in  The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound and Image , Eds. Christian Keathley and Jason Mittell (Montreal: Caboose Books, 2016): 37-53. This work included the video essay  Dissolves of Passion , formerly online at the Caboose website:  https://www.caboosebooks.net/node/150  ISBN 978-1-927852-04-0. The most recent version of a preprint of this work is online at The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy  website, including all the quoted videos: http://videographicessay.org/works/videographic-essay/dissolves-of-passion-1

‘Beyond tautology? Audiovisual Film Criticism’ ,  Film Criticism,  Vol. 40, No.1, 2016. Online at:  http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.13761232.0040.113

“Film studies in the groove? Rhythmising perception in  Carnal Locomotive ” ,  NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies , Spring 2015.  http://www.necsus-ejms.org/film-studies-in-the-groove-rhythmising-perception-in-carnal-locomotive/ . PDF:  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/aup/necsus/2015/00000004/00000001/art00007 . DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.5117/NECSUS2015.1.GRAN

“Interplay: (Re)Finding and (Re)Framing Cinematic Experience, Film Space, and the Child’s World,” [Video and text] LOLA , 6, 2015. Online at: http://www.lolajournal.com/6/interplay.html

“TURNING UP THE VOLUME? The Emergent Focus on Film Sound, Music and Listening in Audiovisual Essays”  The Cine-Files: A Scholarly Journal of Cinema Studies  (Spring 2015) 8. Special issue on Film Sound.  http://www.thecine-files.com/turning-up-the-volume/

Solo editor of  [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies  – a  Cinema Journal /MediaCommons Collaboration, 2.3. May 2015. Online at:  http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/theme-week/2014/35/journal-videographic-film-moving-image-studies-13-2014

“Práctica, alcance y valor de los estudios videográficos sobre cine”  Transit: cine y otros desvíos , April 30, 2015.  http://cinentransit.com/practica-alcance-y-valor-de-los-estudios-videograficos-sobre-cine/

‘Las bodas de Laurel Dallas. O el melodrama materno de una espectadora feminista desconocida’, Transit. Cine y otros desvíos, January, 2015. Online at:  http://cinentransit.com/las-bodas-de-laurel-dallas/ . Translation into Spanish of the peer-reviewed video and article: Grant, C., ‘The Marriages of Laurel Dallas. Or, The Maternal Melodrama of the Unknown Feminist Film Spectator’,  Mediascape :  UCLA’s Journal of Cinema and Media Studies , Fall 2014. [Video and text]. ISSN 1558478X Online at:  http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Fall2014_MarriagesMelodrama.html

‘The Marriages of Laurel Dallas. Or, The Maternal Melodrama of the Unknown Feminist Film Spectator’,  Mediascape: UCLA’s Journal of Cinema and Media Studies , Fall 2014. [Video and text]. ISSN 1558478X Online at:  http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Fall2014_MarriagesMelodrama.html

‘The Remix That Knew Too Much? On  Rebecca , Retrospectatorship and the Making of  Rites of Passage ’,  The Cine-Files: A Scholarly Journal of Cinema Studies , Fall 2014. [Video and text]. ISSN 2156-9096. Online at:  http://www.thecine-files.com/grant/

‘The Shudder of a Cinephiliac Idea? Videographic Film Studies Practice as Material Thinking’,  ANIKI: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image , 1.1, 2014, Online at:  http://aim.org.pt/ojs/index.php/revista/article/view/59/html

with Christian Keathley, ‘The Use of an Illusion: Childhood cinephilia, object relations, and videographic film studies’,  Photogénie , 0, June 2014. Co-authored introduction/individually authored text and video. Originally online at:  http://www.photogenie.be/photogenie_blog/article/use-illusion . Now moved to :  https://cinea.be/the-use-an-illusion-childhood-cinephilia-object-relations-and-videographic-film-studies/

with Christian Keathley, ‘El uso de una ilusión: Cinefilia infantil, relaciones de objeto y estudios videográficos sobre cine’,  Transit. Cine y otros desvíos , September 9, 2014. (translation into Spanish of  ‘The Use of an Illusion: Childhood cinephilia, object relations, and videographic film studies’, Photogénie, 0, June 2014). Online at:  http://cinentransit.com/cinefilia-infantil-relaciones-de-objeto-y-estudios-videograficos-sobre-cine/ .

‘Editorial Introduction’, ‘Bergman Senses’ and ‘Resources’ page,  [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies  – a Cinema Journal/MediaCommons Collaboration, 1.1. 2014 (Co-edited Inaugural issue of the first peer-reviewed journal of audiovisual film studies). Online at: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/theme-week/2014/10/intransition-videographic-film-moving-image-studies

“The Audiovisual Essay: My Favorite Things”,  [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies  – a Cinema Journal/MediaCommons Collaboration, 1.3. September 2014 on The Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory. Online at:  http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/2014/08/26/audiovisual-essay-my-favorite-things

Director/producer/lead editor of  The Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory in Videographic Film and Moving Image Studie s, a companion website with thirty + essays and curated videos. Online at:  http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/audiovisualessay/

‘How long is a piece of string? On the Practice, Scope and Value of Videographic Film Studies and Criticism’,  The Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies , September, 2014. Online at:  http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/audiovisualessay/frankfurt-papers/catherine-grant/

“Editorial Introduction,” “Bergman Senses” and “Resources” page, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies – a Cinema Journal /MediaCommons Collaboration, 1.1. 2014 (Co-edited Inaugural issue of the first peer-reviewed journal of audiovisual film studies). Online at: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/theme-week/2014/10/intransition-videographic-film-moving-image-studies

Director/co­editor of Testament of Cocteau: ORPHÉE on Film and in Opera , 40 minute scholarly video (featuring the work of Ed Hughes and James S. Williams), published at REFRAME Conversation s, September 2014. Online at: http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/conversations/archive2014/testament-of-cocteau-orphee-on-film-and-in-opera/

“ Mechanised Flights: Memories of HEIDI by Catherine Grant ,” Curated by Chiara Grizzaffi, “On Video Tributes ,” [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies – a Cinema Journal/MediaCommons Collaboration, 1.2. June 2014. Online at: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/2014/06/23/video-tributes

“ Intersection [on Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love ],” Curated by Girish Shambu, ‘Intersection’, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies – a Cinema Journal/MediaCommons Collaboration, 1.2. June 2014. Online at: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/2014/06/20/intersection-catherine-grant-chiara-grizzaffi-denise-liege-2014

“Scholarly Striptease. Or, The Unintended Consequences of Film Studies For Free,”  In Media Res (Open Source Academia Theme Week), December 1, 2014. Originally online at:  http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2014/12/01/scholarly-striptease-or-unintended-consequences-film-studies-free . Now online at:   http://mediacommons.org/imr/comment/5012

‘Notes on Mirror Visions in Modesty Blaise (Joseph Losey, 1966)’,  LA FURIA UMANA , 17, 2013 (online) [Video and text] and  LA FURIA UMANA , Paper #3, 2013. ISSN 2255-2812. Online at: http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php/29-issues/numero-17/31-catherine-grant-notes-on-mirror-visions-on-modesty-blaise

‘Déjà viewing’, Filmidée , 7, March 2013. Online at: https://www.filmidee.it/2013/05/deja-viewing/

“Déjà viewing?: videographic experiments in intertextual film studies,” Mediascape : UCLA’s Journal of Cinema and Media Studies , Winter 2013. Now online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20130105070842/http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Winter2013_DejaViewing.html and http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/41656/ ( Originally online at: http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Winter2013_DejaViewing.html )

“Bonus Tracks: The Making of Touching the Film Object and Skipping ROPE (Through Hitchcock’s Joins)”, Frames Cinema Journal, 1(1), 2012. Online at  http://framescinemajournal.com/article/bonus-tracks/

“Film and Moving Image Studies: Re-Born Digital? Some Participant Observations,” [Video and text], Frames Cinema Journal, 1 (1), 2012. Online at http://framescinemajournal.com/article/re-born-digital/ .

“Video Essays on Films: A Multiprotagonist Manifesto.” Film Studies For Free . 2009. Online at:

http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com/2009/07/video-essays-on-films-multiprotagonist.html “Video Essays and Scholarly Remix: Film Scholarship’s Emergent Forms – Audiovisual Film Studies, Pt 2.” Film Studies For Free. 2012. Online at:

http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-essays-and-scholarly-remix-film.html “Knowing that/knowing how? On audiovisual film studies, part 1: practice-led film research.” Film Studies For Free . 2012. Online at: http://filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com/2012/03/knowing-thatknowing-how-on-audiovisual.html .

Share this:

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Scholarship in Sound & Image: A Pedagogical Essay

two equally extreme methods: either to posit a reality which is entirely permeable to history, and ideologize; or, conversely, to posit a reality which is ultimately impenetrable, irreducible, and, in this case, poeticize. [. . .] [w]e constantly drift between the object and its demystification, powerless to render its wholeness. For if we penetrate the object, we liberate it but destroy it; and if we acknowledge its full weight, we respect it but we restore it to a state which is still mystified. [i]

This page has paths:

This page references:.

• 1 2016-05-01T09:16:18-07:00 Epigraph Exercise: Trouble in Paradise 2 A videographic epigraph on Trouble in Paradise plain 2019-11-04T07:46:57-08:00 Vimeo 2015-07-07T09:03:17 video 132819323 Patrick Keating
• 1 2019-06-11T19:31:43-07:00 Abstract Trailer for Transparent 2 Nicole Morse's abstract trailer for Transparent plain 2019-11-04T08:06:40-08:00 Critical Commons 2017 Video Transparent Nicole Morse 2019-06-11T19:30:18Z
• 1 2019-06-11T17:56:14-07:00 The Big Sleep PechaKucha 2 A videographic PechaKucha of The Big Sleep plain 2019-12-20T08:03:25-08:00 Critical Commons 2018 Video The Big Sleep Nat Deyo 2019-06-11T17:59:03Z
• 1 2019-06-11T19:41:12-07:00 Abstract Trailer for Brothers 2 A videographic trailer for Brothers plain 2019-06-12T01:13:56-07:00 Critical Commons 2018 Video Brothers Nguyen Tan Hoang 2019-06-11T19:40:50Z
• 1 2019-06-11T18:46:20-07:00 Gravity Epigraph 1 A videographic epigraph on Gravity plain 2019-06-11T18:46:20-07:00 Critical Commons 2017 Video Gravity Jordan Schonig 2019-06-11T18:44:39Z
• 1 2019-06-11T18:50:18-07:00 Barry Lyndon Epigraph 1 A videographic epigraph of Barry Lyndon plain 2019-06-11T18:50:19-07:00 Critical Commons 2018 Video Barry Lyndon Maria Prammagiore 2019-06-11T18:46:27Z
• 1 2016-04-30T04:39:50-07:00 Stepford Wives PechaKucha 1 A Videographic PechaKucha of The Stepford Wives plain 2016-04-30T04:39:50-07:00 Critical Commons 2015 Video The Stepford Wives Allison de Fren 2016-04-29T14:50:45Z
• 1 2019-06-11T19:05:15-07:00 Blade Runner 2049 Multiscreen 1 A videographic exercise on Blade Runner 2049 plain 2019-06-11T19:05:15-07:00 Critical Commons 2018 Video Blade Runner 2049 Kathleen Loock 2019-06-11T18:55:44Z
• 1 2019-12-20T12:41:50-08:00 Mechanised Flights: Memories of HEIDI 1 plain 2019-12-20T12:41:51-08:00
• 1 2016-04-30T05:38:26-07:00 Belle de Jour Storytelling Voiceover 1 A Videographic Storytelling Exercise Using Belle de Jour plain 2016-04-30T05:38:26-07:00 Critical Commons 2015 Video Belle de Jour Tracy Cox-Stanton 2016-04-30T12:05:43Z
• 1 2019-06-11T19:05:16-07:00 M*A*S*H Multiscreen Exercise 1 A videographic exercise on M*A*S*H plain 2019-06-11T19:05:16-07:00 Critical Commons 2017 Video M*A*S*H Casey McCormick 2019-06-11T18:53:19Z
• 1 2019-12-20T12:44:16-08:00 Games 1 by Christina Alvarez Lopez plain 2019-12-20T12:44:16-08:00
• 1 2016-04-30T12:31:17-07:00 Elephant Man Multiscreen 1 A Multiscreen Exercise on The Elephant Man plain 2016-04-30T12:31:17-07:00 Critical Commons 2015 Video The Elephant Man Liz Greene 2016-04-30T19:13:59Z
• 1 2019-06-11T19:31:42-07:00 Abstract Trailer for Steadicam videographic essay 1 An abstract trailer for Katie Bird's videographic essay on the Steadicam plain 2019-06-11T19:31:42-07:00 Critical Commons 2017 Video Various sources Katie Bird 2019-06-11T19:09:08Z
• 1 2019-06-11T17:46:37-07:00 Fantasia PechaKucha 1 A videographic PechaKucha of Fantasia plain 2019-06-11T17:46:37-07:00 Critical Commons 2017 Video Fantasia Evelyn Kreutzer 2019-06-11T17:48:43Z
• 1 2019-06-11T19:37:53-07:00 Abstract Trailer for Twin Peaks: The Return 1 An abstract trailer for Twin Peaks: The Return plain 2019-06-11T19:37:53-07:00 Critical Commons 2018 Video Twin Peaks: The Return Elizabeth Alsop 2019-06-11T19:34:31Z
• 1 2019-06-11T18:21:57-07:00 Affair in Trinidad Voiceover Exercise 1 A videographic voiceover exercise on Affair in Trinidad plain 2019-06-11T18:21:57-07:00 Critical Commons 2018 Video Affair in Trinidad Susan Harewood 2019-06-11T18:07:54Z
• 1 2019-06-11T19:47:34-07:00 Abstract Trailer for Deadwood 1 An abstract trailer for Deadwood plain 2019-06-11T19:47:34-07:00 Critical Commons 2018 Video Deadwood Sean O'Sullivan 2019-06-11T19:43:01Z
• 1 2019-06-11T18:21:58-07:00 Captain Blood Voiceover 1 A videographic voiceover exercise on Captain Blood plain 2019-06-11T18:21:58-07:00 Critical Commons 2017 Video Captain Blood Derek Long 2019-06-11T18:06:08Z

• Courses for Credit
• Courses & Programs

PMA 3501 The Video Essay

Course description.

This course examines the video essay and its corresponding or emerging forms in videographic criticism, the essay film, and written essays, including personal narrative, creative nonfiction, and hybrid texts. Students explore source material and develop media competencies that encompass video, sound, image and text in order to critically analyze content that explores dimensions of culture. In addition, students collaborate on lo-fi and more developed video projects that explore the formal dimensions of narrative and criticism. While maintaining a focus on the video essay as a form of critique, students address broader concerns about how video essays reflect their role as producers and consumers of media forms.

No upcoming classes were found.

Previously offered classes

The next offering of this course is undetermined at this time.

• Summer Session overview
• Winter Session overview
• Fall & Spring study overview
• Online Learning overview
• Past course rosters

The Place of Voiceover in Academic Audiovisual Film and Television Criticism

by Ian Garwood

The line between academic and non-scholarly videographic film criticism

The production of The Place of Voiceover in Academic Audiovisual Film and Television Criticism (2016) coincided with the release of two books focused on videographic film studies: The Videographic Essay – Criticism in Sound and Image , edited by Christian Keathley and Jason Mittell; [1] and Film Studies in Motion: From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video , by Thomas van den Berg and Miklos Kiss. [2] The most recent instalments in a rich vein of writing exploring the potential of audiovisual research within screen studies, [3] these two works set out distinctive (audio)visions of the format. A shared point of deliberation is the balance the ‘academic’ video essay should strike in its adherence to traditional scholarly virtues and its exploration of the audiovisual form’s more ‘poetic’ possibilities. Essentially, Keathley and Mittell encourage film studies academics to loosen up; they begin with a description of editing exercises that invite participants to play with sounds and images in ways to help them ‘unlearn’ their usual habits of academic research and presentation. Van den Berg and Kiss, by contrast, argue polemically for a considerable tightening of practice in video essay work, if it is to be considered academically credible.

Van den Berg and Kiss advocate the ‘autonomous and explanatorily argumentative research video’ [4] as the ideal form audiovisual work in film studies should take. This is the term I have used to describe my voiceover essay video in the end credits. However, the video is also marked by playful and performative elements that seem more aligned with the approach Keathley and Mittell promote. This explains why I have placed a question mark after my end-credit statement, and I want to extend the questioning of what I have actually produced in this written reflection: is there an essential incompatibility between the video’s performative qualities and its desire to put forward a self-contained and lucid academic argument?

Van den Berg and Kiss consider the authorial position that research videos adopt as key to their academic identity. Such work should occupy a critical vantage point marked by distance, whereby the video essay offers ‘a framed perspective on a case study’. [5] They argue that too often the opposite is true, with the case study (i.e. the audiovisual example[s] being discussed) dictating what is presented. I hope the framed perspective of my video essay is clear. It possesses the TREE structure referenced and advocated by van den Berg and Kiss (‘ Thesis supported by Reasons which rest upon Evidence and Examples ’). [6] It has clearly-defined sections: an introduction that establishes the topic to be investigated (00:00 – 02:13); a main body introducing three key points, with each one delineated (02:13 – 10:13); a reflective section looking back at the three points, providing more evidence and suggesting actions going forward (10:13 – 16:15); and a conclusion (16:15 – 17:41). However, the form the argument takes is clearly influenced (dictated?) by the film/video essay materials on display. For instance, the introduction would not adopt a split-screen aesthetic and the dotted line would be nowhere to be seen had I not chosen to use kogonada’s Wes Anderson // Centered (2014) as my example of a video essay without voiceover. The porosity of the borders between my video essay’s ‘own’ aesthetic and those examples it uses is illustrated most vividly in the cross-contamination of Centered and the elements I have created for the screen. When Centered begins, screen right, ‘my’ content, screen left, begins to ape the former video’s play with symmetry and its use of a dotted line. My content then migrates to the space occupied by Centered , invading its frame (the superimposition of captions between 01:36 and 01:51). Authorial control of this segment of the screen seems to be confirmed by the replacement of Centered with my onscreen appearance. However, kogonada is not to be dismissed that easily, with ‘his’ dotted line returning to hit me on the head (02:09).

Clearly, in the context of setting up a thesis to be explored in a scholarly fashion, there is something excessively performative and ‘unnecessary’ about this introduction. However, once established as a performing element the dotted line does assist in exploring the issues that the video essay is raising. It is subsequently seen fulfilling scholarly functions, helping to separate two quotations (03:41), dividing the screen into distinct argumentative sections (10:18 – 16:05), and demarcating the four distinctive zones that share the same screen for the conclusion (16:21 – 16:58). As such it expresses, visually, the dilemma that is being grappled with argumentatively, regarding the place voiceover should have in academic audiovisual film and television criticism: the desire to advocate the ‘traditional’ scholarly values of clarity and explanatory force the voiceover can lend to video essays (in the same way the dotted line lends clarity to the organisation of the frame); and the concurrent interest in exploring the expressive potential of the audiovisual format (as indicated by the way a functional element [a dotted line] is brought to life and its activities dramatised).

In my reflection on this moment I am attempting to align the playful and malleable qualities of my video essay with the values advocated by van den Berg and Kiss: the requirement for a defined and logical argumentative structure, as well as the desire to establish a critical distance from the object of study. Rather than representing these values as conflicting ones I have focused on an aspect of my work that attempts a reconciliation. While the recent efforts to construct taxonomies for videographic film criticism have been immensely useful [7] it may be overly limiting to regard as inviolable the boundaries between the invented categories or different approaches (e.g. poetic/argumentative, academic/non-scholarly). Audiovisual film studies has come into being as the result of a number of hybrid influences, and hybridity can still be a valuable concept. In this light the borders between different practices are best perceived as porous ones, allowing for productive interchange and cross-influence – in other words, borders that are composed of lines that are not solid, but dotted…

Ian Garwood is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at University of Glasgow. His video essay work includes How Little We Know: An Essay Film about Hoagy Carmichael (edited by Ian Robertson) and Indy Vinyl: Close Ups, Needle Drops, Aerial Shots – Records in US Independent Cinema . He is a member of the editorial board of [In]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies .

Baptista, T (ed.). ‘Thematic Dossier on Cinephilia’, ANIKI: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image , Vol. 1, No. 1, 2014: http://aim.org.pt/ojs/index.php/revista/issue/view/6/showToc

Bateman, C. ‘The Video Essay as Art: Eleven Ways of Making a Video Essay’, Fandor: Keyframe , 22 May 2016: https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/11-ways-to-make-a-video-essay

Becker, C. and Copple Smith, E (eds). ‘Teaching Dossier: The Video Essay Assignment’, Cinema Journal: The Journal for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies , Vol. 1, Issue 2, Spring/Summer 2013: http://www.teachingmedia.org/the-video-essay-assignment-cinema-journal-teaching-dossier-vol-12/

Bordwell, D. The McGraw-Hill film viewer’s guide . New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001.

Cox-Stanton, T (ed.). ‘Special Issue: The Video Essay: Parameters, Practice, Pedagogy’, The Cine-Files , Issue 7, Fall 2014: http://issue7.thecine-files.com/

Grant, C (ed.). ‘Special Issue: Film and Moving Image Studies Re-Born Digital?’, Frames Cinema Journal , Issue 1, July 2012: http://framescinemajournal.com/?issue=issue1

_____ (ed.). various pieces of critical writing and resources, The Audiovisual Essay: Practice and Theory of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies : http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/audiovisualessay/

Keathley, C. and Mittell, J (eds). The videographic essay – criticism in sound and image . Montreal: caboose, 2016.

Van den Berg, T. and Kiss, M. Film studies in motion: From audiovisual essay to academic research video . Scalar, 2016: http://scalar.usc.edu/works/film-studies-in-motion/index

http://www.filmscalpel.com/ (accessed on 24 October 2016)

Videography

kogonada. Wes Anderson // Centered , 2014: https://vimeo.com/8930284

[1] Keathley & Mittell 2016.

[2] Van den Berg & Kiss 2016.

[3] For example, special issues or dossiers in Frames Cinema Journal (2012), Cinema Journal (2013), The Cine-Files (2014), ANIKI: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image (2014), and the variety of work curated on The Audiovisual Essay website.

[4] Van den Berg & Kiss 2016.

[6] Ibid., quoting from Bordwell 2001.

[7] In their monograph, van den Berg and Miklos Kiss identify six types of essay video, from the annotated excerpt to the thesis video. The Filmscalpel website, set up in 2015 to support a university video essay course, proposes fourteen categories, while the title of a 2016 article by Conor Bateman suggests there are ‘eleven ways of making a video essay’.

Comments are closed.

Recent news, call for papers: data papers – 2024 and 2025, survey on the practices and politics of peer review, call for audiovisual proposals: #coronaseries, necsus – autumn 2024: call for features, #cycles launch: recording online, necsus: call for book reviewers – 2024, cfp: autumn 2024_#enough – call for papers, #cycles: online launch event on 25 january 2024, editorial board.

Martine Beugnet University of Paris 7 Diderot

Greg de Cuir Jr University of Arts Belgrade

Judith Keilbach Universiteit Utrecht

Skadi Loist Film University Babelsberg  Konrad Wolf

Toni Pape University of Amsterdam

Maria A. Velez-Serna University of Stirling

Belén Vidal King’s College London

Andrea Virginás  Babeș-Bolyai University

We would like to thank the following institutions for their support:

• European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS)
• Further acknowledgements →

NECS –European Network for Cinema and Media Studies is a non-profit organization bringing together scholars, archivists, programmers and practitioners.

Online The online version of NECSUS is published in Open Access and all issue contents are free and accessible to the public.

Download The online repository media/rep/ provides PDF downloads to aid referencing. Volumes are also indexed in the DOAJ . Please consider the environmental costs of printing versus reading online.

Scholarship in Sound & Image

Workshop on videographic criticism.

Jason Mittell – Workshop Director and Lead Instructor : Jason Mittell organizes, plans, and supervises the workshop, both in its content and design. He will be present each day during the two-week period, working with participants, leading discussions, presenting assignments, mentoring technology use, and guiding workshop critiques. Mittell co-founded this workshop with Christian Keathley in 2015, and has been teaching and co-directing it ever since. Keathley and Mittell received the Society for Cinema & Media Studies Innovative Pedagogy Award for this work in 2020, and published the multimedia book The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy with Catherine Grant in 2019.

Catherine Grant (PhD in Latin American Studies, University of Leeds) will be in residence for one week of the workshop to mentor the participants and discuss her own videographic works, as she has for every annual iteration since its founding. Grant is Honorary Professor at Aarhus Universitet, Denmark, Honorary Research Fellow and former Professor of Digital Media and Screen Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading, UK. She is also an elected member of Academia Europeaea since 2020, in the Film, Media and Visual Studies section.

Active producer of well over 200 videographic critical works since 2009, Grant is the founder of  Film Studies for Free and  Audiovisualcy , and the editor of two foundational collections of work on digital and videographic forms of film studies ( Frames Cinema Journal, 2012 ) and The Audiovisual Essay ( REFRAME, 2014 ) . She is also the author of more than 30 articles specifically on videographic criticism, including “ Déjà-Viewing? Videographic Experiments in Intertextual Film Studies ” ( Mediascape , ULCA’s journal of cinema and media studies, 2013), “ The Shudder of a Cinephiliac Idea? Videographic Film Studies Practice as Material Thinking ” ( Aniki: the Portuguese Journal of Moving Image Studies, 2014), “ The Audiovisual Essay as Performative Research ” and, most recently, “ Irresistible Instrumentalism: Materially Thinking through Music-Making in the Story-Worlds of Silent Films ” ( NECSUS: European Journal of Media Research, 2016, 2022). See her complete list of publications on these topics  here . In addition, Grant has taught videographic criticism and digital forms of screen studies material thinking since 2011 at the Universities of London, Sussex,  and internationally. She is a founding co-editor of  [in]Transition .

Dayna McLeod (PhD in interdisciplinary studies, Concordia University), is a queer video and performance artist-scholar who actively engages queer and feminist approaches to research-creation through art and media. In 2023, she co-organized and led Embodying the Video Essay , a workshop funded by a 2023 Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection (SSHRC) Grant. Here she presented five exercises that she developed to established film and media scholars and PhD students that centred embodiment in relation to video essay making. Her work on and with sleep includes Restless , a body of work that examines queer sleep, labour, and intimacy using accessible surveillance technologies, and In Dreams , an interactive video installation that continues this work into dream space and was produced for The Sociability of Sleep . Watch Me Sleep is a video essay that examines her live and pre-recorded performances of sleeping, and is in a special issue of Interm é dialit é s that she co-edited with Dr. Alanna Thain and Dr. Aleksandra Kaminska (2023). She is currently working with AI tools to explore human to non-human collaboration, embodiment, and performativity, figuring herself as an AI actor called DaynAI . Find Dayna’s work on Vimeo or on her website . Dayna participated in the 2022 Scholarship in Sound & Image workshop, and we are thrilled to welcome her back to Middlebury.

Ethan Murphy has been part of the workshop team from the beginning in 2015, leading the technological instruction and mentoring participants. He will be present throughout the workshop, giving tutorials on various software platforms and providing general technical and project support. As the Audiovisual Technical Director for the Film & Media Culture Department at Middlebury College (where the workshop will be held), Murphy is thoroughly familiar with the equipment and fully prepared to support the technical needs of the event. Murphy is also a practicing filmmaker and teacher of film production and cinematography.

Co-Founder and Director Emeritus: