Films Research Articles

The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers Officers

The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers Officers

Russian Musicals Against the Background of the History of the Genre

The article presents a generalisation of some features of Russian musical in the context of its history. Against the background of the worldwide promotion of the genre, musical in Russia has its own distinctive features and original history. The notable role in it was played by the “Thea-Jazz” of the artist, singer and conductor Leonid Utesov and the fi rst musical fi lm comedy “Jolly Fellows” (1934) directed by Grigory Alexandrov with the participation of Utesov and his band (the music by Isaac Dunaevsky). The further fate of Russian musicals is also associated with the parallel development of the musical fi lm genre, on the one hand, and theatrical performances in Soviet theatres of outstanding examples of foreign composers, on the other hand. Acquaintance with such works as the jazz opera “Porgy and Bess” by George Gershwin, “The Threepenny Opera” by Kurt Weill, the “My Fair Lady” musical by Frederick Loewe and “West Side Story” by Leonard Bernstein increased the interest of composers and the public in the genre and led to the appearance of their own successful versions.

EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATIONS IN INDIA: AN EMERGING NEW MEDIA ART FORM

Since the beginning of civilization, humans have always been inquisitive about ways to uniquely express their sides of stories. Traditional Art forms like drawing, painting, sculpting, literature, music, and many others have helped to make it possible. More unconventional new art possibilities have emerged with the introduction of new technologies and industrial revolutions. Motion Pictures and Animation are the two most fascinating forms of artistic expression in these areas.Often, animation is considered a fascinating medium of entertainment for kids and the younger generation. However, many artists have demonstrated that it also has enormous potential to articulate and express life experiences and their minds creatively. As Walt Disney rightly said Animation can explain whatever the mind of men can conceive Thomas (1912-2004). It can take you as far as human imagination can go.This paper delves into how animation has been used as an alternative medium in contemporary New Media Art practices in India. It explores the potential of animation as a medium for creative expression and representation of complex ideas, and how it reflects changes in society brought about by technological advancements. The paper examines the approaches and experiments of Indian contemporary artists, such as Akbar Padamsee, Nalini Malani, and Vivan Sundaram, who have used animation to break free from the confines of traditional mediums and push the boundaries of visual storytelling through technology-based art.

Ecological experimentations

The goal of this paper is to highlight the ecological aspect in the works of fi lmmaker Rose Lowder. Her fi lms are shot outdoors, in nature, and aim to modify visual perception and image-based representation, foregrounding the materiality of the fi lmic medium. Her fi lmography, characterized by its use of unique shooting and editing techniques, is remarkable for its calculation regarding creative possibilities. The parameters of investigation outlined in this study are the fi lmic procedures that stress the aesthetic and ecological qualities of this artist’s work

Direct Observation of Transient Flow Kinematics of Environment-Friendly Silica-Based Alcogel at Instantaneous Gelation

This study was intended to exploit the possibility of using the quick gelation of alcogel that is induced by adding catalytic imidazole into a silicate-oligomer-based solution. For this purpose, the experimental viability of the direct observation of the gelation behavior was actually examined. The silicate oligomer, derived from tetraethyl orthosilicate hydrolyzed under an acidic condition (pH ~ 5), was used as the quickly gelling mother solution. The capability of the oligomer solution to form a non-flowable matter in only a few seconds when triggered by the addition of the catalytic solution of imidazole is promising, for example, for stabilizing a sandy ground surface, due to its simplicity. From the practical viewpoint, how long the gelation could take (=gel time) is a crucial parameter when the choice of an appropriate gelling chemical species needs to be made. Thus, this study focused its interest on as simple an experimental method as possible for evaluating the gel time of the gelling systems that actually underwent instantaneous gelation. The silicate oligomer solution was an appropriate material both in its quick gelling behavior and environmental friendliness. For such quick gelation, rheological approaches are not applicable for detecting the boundary in the mechanical properties that delineate the regime of “gel”. In this study, instead, direct observation was employed to capture the short interval during which the gelation was completed. The silicate-oligomer-based gelling solution was observed to lose its flowability within only 0.2 s, as it was seen to come off the bottom of the shaken cylinder at 5 Hz. For a more quantitative estimation, the same gelling solution was observed by high-speed motion picture. The high-speed motion picture could clearly capture the instantaneous gelation as a sudden arrest of the flow. The sub-millisecond direct observation of the gelation behavior revealed that the timescale of the instantaneous termination of the flow was as quick as 1 ms in order of magnitude. Such instantaneous gelation in the sub-millisecond-order timescale could not be forecasted from the observable megascopic gelation, which appeared to last from 102 ms to 103 ms in our naked-eye observation. The noteworthy gap between the timescale of the naked-eye-observed gelation and that of the true gel time at a localized spot determined by the high-speed motion picture should be noted to avoid excess agitation, which can result in total collapse into gel fragments of the just solidifying or already solidified gel under strong deformational influence by mechanical agitation, for example.

Розвиток кінематографа та діяльність кінотеатрів у Кам’янці-Подільському на початку ХХ ст.: за матеріалами газети «Подолянин» (1910-1911 рр.)

The purpose of the study is to use the existing source base to cover the proces- ses of formation and development of cinematographic art and the functioning of cinemas in Kamianets-Podilskyi in the early twentieth century on the pages of the local Podolianyn newspa- per. Th e research methodology is based on the principles of a specifi c historical approach, ob- jectivity, comprehensiveness and integrity, as well as the use of methods of analysis and synthe- sis, historical-comparative, and problematic-chronological. Th e scientifi c novelty is the fact that for the fi rst time in historiography it was shown how cinemas developed in Kamianets-Podilskyi; the sources we identifi ed, namely, publications in the Podolianyn newspaper, made it possible to study the social history of cinematography on the basis of the provincial case, to consider cinema as a phenomenon of culture and history, and to analyze the number and functioning of cinemas in the city in the early twentieth century. Conclusions. Th e emergence of cinema in Kamianets- Podilskyi dates back to 1901, and the popularization of Kamianets cinema was facilitated by the publication of the local Podolianyn newspaper, the fi rst issues of which were published in September 1910. In addition to publishing advertisements with dates and schedules of movie shows, the newspaper also popularized the Humanitarian Society cinema, stating that part of the collected money would be used for charity. In early March 1911, Kamianets-Podilskyi was visited by an authorized representative of a cinematographic company in Russia, who noted that Kamianets-Podilskyi cinema theatres were maintained at a decent level and all worked on elect- ricity. It is also worth mentioning that local photographers produced their own fi lms. Thus, we can conclude that cinematography appeared in Podillia, quite soon aft er its appearance, due to the proximity of the borders with European countries. At the same time, there were several cin- emas in the city, which generated competitiveness. Photographers became interested in the new business, mastered new technologies, bought movie projectors, and created fi lms. In general, the issue of the development of cinematographic art in Kamianets-Podilskyi has not been the subject of in-depth studies by Ukrainian researchers, which requires a detailed study in the future.

The Transformative Magic of Education in Walt Disney’s <em>The Sword in the Stone</em>

The Transformative Magic of Education in Walt Disney’s <em>The Sword in the Stone</em>

The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers Officers

The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers Officers

Transform-Based Feature Map Compression Method for Video Coding for Machines (VCM)

The burgeoning field of machine vision has led to the development by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) of a new type of compression technology called video coding for machines (VCM), to enhance machine recognition through video information compression. This research proposes a principal component analysis (PCA)-based compression methodology for multi-level feature maps extracted from the feature pyramid network (FPN) structure. Unlike current PCA-based studies that independently carry out PCA for each feature map, our approach employs a generalized basis matrix and mean vector derived from channel correlations by a generalized PCA process to eliminate the need for a PCA process. Further compression is achieved by amalgamating high-dimensional feature maps, capitalizing on the spatial redundancy within these multi-level feature maps. As a result, the proposed VCM encoder forgoes the PCA process, and the generalized data do not incur any compression loss. It only requires compressing the coefficients for each feature map using versatile video coding (VVC). Experimental results demonstrate superior performance by our method over all feature anchors for each machine vision task, as specified by the MPEG-VCM common test conditions, outperforming previous PCA-based feature map compression methods. Notably, it achieved an 89.3% BD-rate reduction for instance segmentation tasks.

Competition and Strategic Budget Choices in the Motion Picture Industry*

In this article, we study the effect of differentiation on firms' optimal investments in advertising and product quality in the specific context of the motion picture industry. To guide our empirical analysis, we develop a stylized model uncovering that competition in advertising is the highest for intermediate levels of horizontal differentiation, while product quality increases monotonically in differentiation. We corroborate our theoretical predictions with a large dataset on the movie industry confirming both the inverted U‐shaped relationship between advertising and differentiation, and the monotonically increasing relationship between product quality and differentiation.

Report From the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Science and Technology Council

Report From the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Science and Technology Council

The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers Officers

The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers Officers

Let’s not talk about men: When meaningful female-to-female interaction and dialogue drive higher box office sales

ABSTRACT This study explores two unique aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from the perspective of gender diversity in the field of motion pictures and the dimension of inclusion utilizing the Bechdel-Wallace Test (BWT). A production may pass the BWT if a conversation between two women is not about men, hence the conversation is deemed meaningful. Using a consumer-driven data set, we find a positive effect of the BWT on international and total box office sales. The results also show a unique result in the years following the modern #MeToo movement, leading to enhanced box office returns for domestic, international, and total box office sales. Therefore, in addition to contributing to efforts to better understanding the impact of the addition of gender diversity and inclusion on motion picture performance, female characters’ meaningful conversation with other females will likely lead to higher return on producers’ investment in motion pictures. Practical implications and contributions to feminist film theory and theory of planned behavior are discussed.

Real earnings management in the motion picture industry: strengthening the inferences from academic research

AbstractThe Gong, Young, and Zhou (GYZ) (Gong et al. 2023) paper examines potential earnings management by movie studio companies. Using a large sample of 3094 US-produced English-language movies released between 1997 and 2019, they find that movie studio companies, when faced with a below expected US box office revenue yield from their movies in a specific quarter, move up the release dates of movies with high expected revenues. This “move-up” release is an example of what the accounting research literature calls real earnings management. This commentary on GYZ (Gong et al. 2023) adds more structure to the decision-making context in which movie release dates are set, placing greater emphasis on the role of movie screening companies, which have the final say on the release dates for the movies they show on their screens. It also highlights the rich information setting that exists in the motion picture industry, which can be further exploited to probe the reliability of the earnings management findings reported by GYZ (Gong et al. 2023). This rich information includes security analyst reports and screen days available to quarter-end for each movie released. The commentary has relevance for other research in specific industries where the institutional domain has the potential to provide insight into real earnings management.

Diffusion of intruders in granular suspensions: Enskog theory and random walk interpretation.

The Enskog kinetic theory is applied to compute the mean square displacement of impurities or intruders (modeled as smooth inelastic hard spheres) immersed in a granular gas of smooth inelastic hard spheres (grains). Both species (intruders and grains) are surrounded by an interstitial molecular gas (background) that plays the role of a thermal bath. The influence of the latter on the motion of intruders and grains is modeled via a standard viscous drag force supplemented by a stochastic Langevin-like force proportional to the background temperature. We solve the corresponding Enskog-Lorentz kinetic equationby means of the Chapman-Enskog expansion truncated to first order in the gradient of the intruder number density. The integral equationfor the diffusion coefficient is solved by considering the first two Sonine approximations. To test these results, we also compute the diffusion coefficient from the numerical solution of the inelastic Enskog equationby means of the direct simulation Monte Carlo method. We find that the first Sonine approximation generally agrees well with the simulation results, although significant discrepancies arise when the intruders become lighter than the grains. Such discrepancies are largely mitigated by the use of the second Sonine approximation, in excellent agreement with computer simulations even for moderately strong inelasticities and/or dissimilar mass and diameter ratios. We invoke a random walk picture of the intruders' motion to shed light on the physics underlying the intricate dependence of the diffusion coefficient on the main system parameters. This approach, recently employed to study the case of an intruder immersed in a granular gas, also proves useful in the present case of a granular suspension. Finally, we discuss the applicability of our model to real systems in the self-diffusion case. We conclude that collisional effects may strongly impact the diffusion coefficient of the grains.

Cinematography in V. Nabokov’s novellas from <i>The Return of Chorb</i> [<i>Vozvrashchenie Chorba</i>] cycle

The image of a motion picture emerges in Nabokov’s early works collected under the title The Return of Chorb [Vozvrashchenie Chorba], years before his major ‘cinematographic’ novels. The article considers cinematography as a theme of three novellas in the collection and explores its functions. It argues that, as well as integrating the image of a film in his characteristic system of reflections and refractions, Nabokov employs it to create metatextual self-reflection: in Nabokov’s view, literature has cinematographic potential for conjuring up optical illusions and plunging the reader into a hallucination or a dream, and in doing so denies its own realistic or mimetic qualities. Just like a motion picture, Nabokov’s novellas are first and foremost interplays of colour and light and their movement — features that distinguish a cinematographic image from a photographic one. Nabokov also speaks of audial imagination as another common element between films (silent at that time) and literature: according to the novelist, a verbal image, silent and visual by nature, allows for the inaudible to be heard and challenges the veracity of the visible.

GENDER STEREOTYPING MALICE: CAMOUFLAGING IN STOCK CHARACTERS AND ARCHETYPES

Archetype and stock/generic characters have exhibited an enormous presence in almost all ages, forms and genres of literary texts. The booming evolution of media forms over time caused these types of characters to transition to the newer and popularity-attaining media forms including theatre, cinema, games and most recently the meta-verse. As the norm goes, these characters in return have contributed immensely to the creative arts providing them with a stock medium of expression readily available for narration. However, these characters at the same time have contributed to both, the creation of new gender stereotypes and strengthening of the previously existing ones. Over time, these gender stereotypes have, in multiple ways, consciously or unconsciously contributed to the conditioning of the society at large through media consumption and have also rendered considerable impact on several important domains of human life including education, professional space, society and the people encompassing various disciplines. Modern Indian media, too inculcated these types of characters in their chosen narrations leading to a borrowing of the imbibed gender stereotypes as well. Witnessing shifts of trends, these characters too have undergone updates leading to a variety of changes and alterations with regard to gender stereotypes. However, these newer modifications are not yet so significant than the initial cultural impact of the same while accompanying with them is again a newer baggage of gender stereotypes. The present paper aims at understanding such prevalent gender stereotypes that have been nurtured, strengthened and formulated as a result of the archetype and stock/generic characters thereby enabling identification of such for a wider audience especially those linked to the educational space. Thus, nurturing the underlying aim of helping them (educational professionals) understand the influences hence generated through these recurring character types in multiple media. The paper favours a rather critical outlook upon the roles and impacts of such characters in gender stereotyping and/or their strengthening along with the key issues that they have given rise to considering the population and/or society at large. It aims at a thorough examination of selected and abundantly prevalent archetype stock/generic characters as such including the action hero, chosen one, Christ figure, dark lady, Damsel in distress, dumb blonde, folk hero and the French maid to name a few. It will facilitate an understanding of the sources, backing and flow of gender stereotypes as is lent through these characters. The paper seeks to examine these with regard to Indian Media citing examples ranging from literary works and motion pictures to internet media like memes and short videos. The present paper has employed qualitative approach. Under qualitative approach, it is narrative research examining the various imprints of such characters in various media and their role. The outcomes thus help not only understand, but also trace, segregate and relook towards the inculcation of gender stereotypes lent by these character types.

The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers Officers

The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers Officers

Explore Issues and Challenges Involving Female Characters in Documentary Filming

Purpose: A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion picture intended to reflect reality, typically for the goals of instruction, preservation of history, or training. Documentary filming heroines must always be noble, alluring, and seductive, regardless of the type of roles they perform.
 
 Method: The same method of objectification is employed in Michael Bay's “Transformers” film, on the other hand, are what ultimately influence both male and female filmmakers as well as audiences to make sense of the narratives, reasoning, and symbolisms that the media industry, particularly cinema, uses to construct its framework and establish its method of operation.
 
 Result: As a result, it serves as an essential medium for female creative expression and a source of knowledge for women. The mild paradox that results from this is that women are not hired for jobs where past employment is required to prove one's value.
 
 Conclusion: The fallouts of the review provide a more thorough picture of female representation in documentary filming and how viewers have evolved to perceive it through time. Unfortunately, women face a variety of problems in addition to media underrepresentation.

Behavior takes form: Tracing the film image in scientific research

The use of motion pictures for research has a long history, of course, but beyond documenting a phenomenon and then projecting it for demonstration, scientists using this technology spent much energy figuring out how to extract information from a strip of film. Understanding film (or audiovisual) analysis is therefore necessary to grasping the relationship between an object of study, moving-image technology, and scientific evidence. This article explores one common technique within that history of film analysis: projecting a frame of the motion picture and then tracing the object of study onto paper, which was especially important for behavioral sciences such as developmental psychology or ethology. Behavior became tangible through a variety of means, but for those who relied on film for their observations, such as developmental psychologist Arnold Gesell, behavior took form at least partly through the process of tracing. Gesell's use of this technique reveals the broader functions of tracing as well as the patterns that emerge from its interplay with other inscriptions in the creation of evidence. How does behavior take form? The practice of tracing provides one answer to this larger question.