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VISUAL NARRATIVE

Sam Cumming & Gabriel Greenberg
Th 3:30-6 • Dodd Hall 325
ANNOUNCEMENTS
  • We've changed class timing to 3:30-6:00, Thursdays.

SYLLABUS


1. Introduction to film narrative
January 9 • SC/GG
Read: ​Bordwell, Thompson, J. Smith, Film Art (2017, 11th edition)
  • Ch. 1: pp. 9-12 (Mechanics of the movies)
  • Ch. 1: pp. 17-26 (Film production)
  • Ch. 4: pp. 143-148 (Screen space, scene space)
  • Ch. 5: pp. 168-178, 181-185, 187-194 (Perspective, framing, camera position)
  • Ch. 6: pp. 216-237 (Editing)

Read: ​Tim Smith, "The Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity" (2012)
  • pp. 4-16 (Editing, change blindness, and continuity)
​
Film clips:
  • Mary Jane's Mishap (George Albert Smith, 1903)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCm51fg5hpk 
  • The Big Swallow (James Williamson, 1901)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5XJjvlydck
  • Life of an American Fireman [3.44] (Edwin Porter, 1903)
    https://youtu.be/nyjceskGZIc?t=224
  • Jump cuts in Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fcRj0SXYh8 
  • The Irishman: 1:40:00, 1.42:20, 1.59:35

2. Discourse coherence
January 16 • SC
​Read: Hobbs, Literature and Cognition, Ch. 5
​Read: McCloud, Understanding Comics, Ch. 3

Film clips:
  • The Last of the Mohicans (1992) [Fight scene 0:23]
    https://youtu.be/Dhrg6SH9yvE?t=23
  • ​Number, Please (1920) [2:49]
    https://youtu.be/pbYPUxNT-qM?t=169
  • ​Salvation Army Lass (1909) [9:41]
    https://vimeo.com/173678596

Extra:
  • Fun: Leff, "How do we understand stories?" (short film)
  • Metz, Film Language, Ch. 5, pp. 124-133
  • Smith, "The Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity," Projections
  • Knott and Dale, "Using linguistic phenomena to motivate a set of coherence relations," Discourse Processes
  • Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Screen

3. Film space
January 23 • GG
Read: Greenberg, "The Structure of Visual Content" (MS), Section 1-4
Read: Klatsky, "Allocentric and Egocentric Spatial Representation" (1998), Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Read: Waller and Nadel, "Frameworks for Understanding Spatial Thought" (2013) from Handbook of Spatial Cognition

Extra:
  • Burgess, "Spatial memory: how egocentric and allocentric combine" (2006), TRENDS in Cognitive Science
  • Levin and Wang, "Spatial Representation in Cognitive Science and Film" (2009), Projections
  • Warren

NO CLASS 
January 30

4. Viewpoint constraints
February 6
Read:  Cumming, Greenberg, and Kelly, "Conventions of Viewpoint Coherence in Film"
watch: Leff, "Spatial Coherence in Film" (short film)
​Read:  Mercado? / Katz? / Arjon?

5. Conventions, focal points, and pragmatics
February 13
Read: Bordwell, "Convention, construction, and cinematic vision"
Read: Lepore and Stone, Imagination and Convention, Chs. 2.1; 14.1-14.3

Fun: Bordwell, "Who Blinked First?"

6. Point of view
February 20
Read: Cumming et al., "Showing Seeing in Film"

Extra: 
  • Abusch and Rooth, "The formal semantics of free perception in pictorial narratives"
  • Schlenker, "What is super semantics?", pp. 406-413

7. Time
February 27
Read: Abusch, "Temporal Succession and Aspectual Type in Visual Narrative"

​Extra: 
  • Lepore and Stone, Imagination and Convention, Ch. 7
  • Webber, "Tense as Discourse Anaphor" 

8. Dynamic update
​
March 5
Read: Lepore and Stone, Imagination and Convention, 14.4
Read: ​Maier and Bimpikou, "Shifting Perspectives in Pictorial Narratives"

Extra:
  • ​Wildfleur (2014), Film Discourse Interpretation

9. Non-Western visual narrative
​
March 12
Read: Munn, Walbiri Iconography (1973), Ch. 3: "The Sand Story"
Read: Wilkins, "Alternative representations of space: Arrernte narratives in sand" (1997)


10. Student presentations
​
[Week of March 16]
 

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