Archive for the ‘Film’ Category
I continue to find it mind-boggling that people seem to think that a good use of AI tools like ChatGPT is to gather accurate information. Any cursory reading on the topic should explain that ChatGPT is designed to predict language in response to a prompt, not actually present information based on “knowledge” or “intelligence.” I […]
Filed under: Academia, digital humanities, Film, Teaching, Technology, Television | 2 Comments
Tags: AI, bullshit, ChatGPT
Like many academics, I’ve been seeing a lot of concerns around how AI tools like ChatGPT might impact the work academics do as teachers and scholars. I don’t want to dive too much into those muddy waters, but I saw one post on Mastodon that piqued my interest and led me to do some experimenting. […]
Filed under: Academia, digital humanities, Film, Teaching, Technology | 1 Comment
Tags: AI, ChatGPT, race
Media Mirrors: A New Website
I am excited to launch a new project called Media Mirrors: Critical Analysis of Film & TV and Film & TV! This website collects undergraduate student writing that has emerged from my course Key Concepts in Film & Media Criticism. The site emerged from a decision many years ago to encourage my students to write […]
Filed under: Academia, Film, Media Studies, Middlebury, New Media, Teaching, Television | Leave a Comment
Tags: 30 rock, adaptation, all that jazz, boogie nights, digital humanities, digital publishing, one cut of the dead, pedagogy
I am quite excited to announce my newest publication, as it marks my first venture into a fully realized work of videographic criticism. “Adaptation.‘s Anomalies” was just published in [in]Transition, culminating a project I began at the Scholarship in Sound & Image workshop we hosted in Middlebury last summer. (I’m also presenting the video on a […]
Filed under: digital humanities, Film, Narrative, Not Quite TV, Publishing, Videographic Criticism | Leave a Comment
Tags: adaptation, videocamp
This is the third and final (and, to me, most interesting) excerpt from my essay draft on “Videographic Criticism as a Digital Humanities Method.” The first laid out my approach to deformative criticism via the format of PechaKuchas; the second explored videographic 10/40/70 analyses. I highly recommend watching some of the musical videos discussed near […]
Filed under: Academia, digital humanities, Film, New Media, Publishing, Videographic Criticism | 3 Comments
Tags: A Hard Day's Night, average shot length, Cinemetrics, Mildred Pierce, Moulin Rouge, Mulholland Drive, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Singin' in the Rain
This is the second excerpt from my essay draft on “Videographic Criticism as a Digital Humanities Method.” The first laid out my approach to deformative criticism via the format of PechaKuchas. This one moves toward another instance of deformation, inspired by the work of Nicholas Rombes. Videographic PechaKuchas take inspiration from another form, the oral […]
Filed under: Academia, digital humanities, Film, Media Studies, Technology, Videographic Criticism | 2 Comments
Tags: Fargo, Mildred Pierce, Nicholas Rombes, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars
Making Videographic Criticism
The last two weeks were some of the most exciting and energizing of my academic career. My colleague Chris Keathley and I hosted an NEH-sponsored digital humanities workshop at Middlebury, called Scholarship in Sound & Image, focused on producing videographic criticism. We define videographic criticism as creating videos that serve an analytic or critical purpose, […]
Filed under: Academia, Film, Middlebury, New Media, Not Quite TV, Open Access, Videographic Criticism | 12 Comments
Tags: adaptation, digital humanities, remix video, videocamp
Best Stuff of 2014
This is not an organized or ranked list. This is a collection of the cultural things (mostly TV, but not exclusively) that I most loved in 2014, presented in alphabetical order. There are many things not on this list – they are absent because either I did not love them or I did not consume […]
Filed under: Animation, Books, Film, Taste, Television, TV Shows, Videogames | Leave a Comment
Tags: bob's burgers, Brooklyn 99, Colbert Report, Fargo, Girls, Hannibal, Her, Jane the Virgin, Last Week Tonight, LEGO Movie, Olive Kitteredge, Review, serial, Sharon Van Etten, Solforge, The Americans, the good wife, The Leftovers, The Wire, This American Life, Transparent, Veep, You're the Worst
I saw Gravity this weekend, and like many viewers and critics, I loved it. And as a sign of that enjoyment, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. As I always do when I encounter a piece of culture that I love, I’ve been reading about it, looking for critics who can explore […]
Filed under: Film, Genre, Narrative, Not Quite TV | 12 Comments
Tags: Gravity
Wednesday was one of the more interesting days on Twitter I’ve ever seen, from the snarking about the new Pope (same as the old Pope), to the anger over Google mothballing Reader, to the more local disappointment of Wes Welker signing with the Broncos. But nothing generated more interest, excitement, and conversation amongst the TVitterati […]
Filed under: Fandom, Film, Film Industry, New Media, Television, TV Industry, TV Shows, Viewers | 8 Comments
Tags: Kickstarter, Veronica Mars
In my 18 years in academia, I’ve never been to the MLA convention – until now. For those who don’t know, the Modern Language Association is the largest humanities organization, and their annual convention is an iconic event, known as a massive academic job meat market and an object of mockery in the press for […]
Filed under: Academia, Conferences, Film, Narrative, Not Quite TV, Television | 4 Comments
Tags: David Lynch, MLA, MLA13, Mulholland Drive, seriality
Lately I’ve become more and more intrigued by Digital Humanities as a subfield/movement/trend/etc. within academia, in large part because the people who are actively driving much of DH are super engaging & welcoming via social networks like Twitter and various blogs. As I am committed to open access publishing, public-facing scholarship, and innovative modes of […]
Filed under: Academia, Fair Use, Film, Media Studies, New Media, Technology, Television, TV Shows | 4 Comments
Tags: captions, digital humanities, text mining, The Wire
Back to the Classroom
Summer is over (even though it remains in the 80s in Vermont this week), which means my sabbatical is completely over. It was a great one, with a wonderful fellowship in Germany, a lot of writing, travel for lectures & conferences, and lots of quality family time. But yesterday, I returned to the Middlebury classroom […]
Filed under: Academia, Books, Complex TV, Film, Media Studies, Middlebury, Narrative, Teaching, Television, TV Shows | Leave a Comment
Tags: Homeland, How to Watch TV, Mildred Pierce, Phineas & Ferb, syllabi
One of the reasons I most enjoy studying the fan culture side of media studies is that fans can come up with some fascinating stuff, a boggling array of creativity discovered through the contraints provided by the source texts. I document some of the most interesting examples I’ve found in my chapter on “Orienting Paratexts,” […]
Filed under: Fandom, Film, New Media, Not Quite TV | 2 Comments
Tags: fan fiction, Under Siege
Just TV 