Film Scenes Research Articles

Do deepfakes pose a golden opportunity? Considering whether English law should adopt California's publicity right in the age of the deepfake

In 2017, a machine learning algorithm was published online as a tool to insert faces of celebrity actresses into pornographic videos. This “deepfake” phenomenon has since spread across social media, and is no longer confined to sexual contexts. The technology can be used to swap faces in film scenes, or even digitally insert people into their favorite movie clips. Although the results are often comical, deepfake sophistication and realism has rapidly improved over the last several years, making them difficult to spot as fake. There is a growing concern that such videos could be used to extort, intimidate, or otherwise defame an individual. In such instances, could the victim portrayed in the deepfake bring a lawsuit against its creator? In California, perhaps. There, a person has a statutory and common law “publicity right”, which is a cause of action used to prevent or penalize any misappropriation of one’s image, photograph, or voice. By contrast, the lack of a recognized image right under English law can be a source of frustration amongst claimants, and debate amongst lawyers. Drawing upon her knowledge of English and Californian law, the author explores whether or not California’s codified publicity right is superior to that of the English piecemeal approach, using the deepfake phenomenon as a case study.

Sharing the filmic experience - The physiology of socio-emotional processes in the cinema.

As we identify with characters on screen, we simulate their emotions and thoughts. This is accompanied by physiological changes such as galvanic skin response (GSR), an indicator for emotional arousal, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), referring to vagal activity. We investigated whether the presence of a cinema audience affects these psychophysiological processes. The study was conducted in a real cinema in Berlin. Participants came twice to watch previously rated emotional film scenes eliciting amusement, anger, tenderness or fear. Once they watched the scenes alone, once in a group. We tested whether the vagal modulation in response to the mere presence of others influences explicit (reported) and implicit markers (RSA, heart rate (HR) and GSR) of emotional processes in function of solitary or collective enjoyment of movie scenes. On the physiological level, we found a mediating effect of vagal flexibility to the mere presence of others. Individuals showing a high baseline difference (alone vs. social) prior to the presentation of film, maintained higher RSA in the alone compared to the social condition. The opposite pattern emerged for low baseline difference individuals. Emotional arousal as reflected in GSR was significantly more pronounced during scenes eliciting anger independent of the social condition. On the behavioural level, we found evidence for emotion-specific effects on reported empathy, emotional intensity and Theory of Mind. Furthermore, people who decrease their RSA in response to others’ company are those who felt themselves more empathically engaged with the characters. Our data speaks in favour of a specific role of vagal regulation in response to the mere presence of others in terms of explicit empathic engagement with characters during shared filmic experience.

Analysis of the efficacy and reliability of the Moodies app for detecting emotions through speech: Does it actually work?

Apps are software programs that enable users to optimise their resources in different areas. Recent years have seen a huge increase in the number of apps, whose use has spread in step with their perceived efficacy and reliability. This research focused on the Moodies app, designed for the voice detection of the speaker's emotions. Yet does it actually gauge emotions, and does it do so consistently over time? Our study therefore used this app to analyse the soundtracks of 34 scenes from different films in four languages, and the output Moodies provided was recorded in a brief text in English, which was processed using the tool Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). The same procedure was then repeated for a second measure. The analysis of the correspondence between the results obtained with Moodies and the interpretation made by LIWC considered the variables Emotion, prompted by scenes in films (disgust, happiness, anger, fear, tenderness, and sadness), Language (English, Spanish, Italian, and French), and the time of the measurement (Listening 1 and 2); an analysis was also conducted of reliability and concurrent criterion validity. The results show that Moodies correctly analyses emotions in dimensional terms (positive vs negative emotion), but not so in categorical terms, as it has difficulties in distinguishing between the emotions of anger and sadness and those of fear and disgust. In terms of reliability, there was a good correlation between listenings (r's Pearson correlation coefficient = .977), albeit with differences in the percentage of words detected (Listening 1 - Listening 2), which ranged between 0.00 and 22.06 (absolute value). It was also noted that language is not a significant variable, although it identifies a higher percentage of emotion words in scenes of fear in Spanish than in any other language. Based on these data as a whole, it may be concluded that Moodies classifies emotion in a more general way than expected and desired.

The post-urban gaze and Hong Kong independent cinema: An ecofeminist perspective

The city has always been a prominent subject in Hong Kong cinema. Land has been seen only as a profitable commodity, controlled by property developers and the wealthy. Instead of exploring the countryside and the traditional farming and fishing villages, people shifted their focus to Hong Kong: its skyline became the only valid point of perception. This marginalization of nature, however, was challenged in 2008 during the dispute between the villagers of Choi Yuen village and the Hong Kong government regarding the construction of Guangzhou–Hong Kong High-Speed Rail Link, which would demolish the village of 500 people that lay along its path. This article looks at Jessey Tsang’s documentary Flowing Stories (2014) and adopts an ecofeminist perspective on the ways in which Hong Kong’s cultural imaginary has been reinvented in films. The role of documentaries in the independent film scene will be reviewed, especially the social-issue documentaries that have become popular since 2008. An ecofeminist approach to our understanding of Hong Kong could shift the paradigm of our stagnant cultural imaginary – the urban city – and resituate Hong Kong in a closer connection with its surroundings and the world.

Hermann Kretzschmar’s Forgotten Heirs: “Silent”-Film Music as Applied Hermeneutics

Abstract The Allgemeines Handbuch der Film-Musik was published by Hans Erdmann, Ludwig Brav, and Giuseppe Becce in 1927 by the Berlin-based publisher Schlesinger. It represents the most comprehensive and undoubtedly most significant document pertaining to the practice of “silent”-film accompaniment during the 1920s in Germany. The four hundred-page work is divided into two volumes: The first one delivers an elaborate aesthetic and theoretical debate about the prevalent and ideal methods of film accompaniment, and the second volume contains a cinema music catalog, the so-called Thematisches Skalenregister (Thematic Music Index), with over three thousand musical incipits. While the Handbuch was firmly grounded in the musical practice of cinema musicians, the two parts were not solely intended as a manual to facilitate the fast-paced working routine of practitioners, like the numerous cinema music catalogs that were published in Germany in the wake of Becce’s Kinotheken (1919-1929). In these catalogs, music pieces of various origins were organized according to certain parameters in order to satisfy the musi-co-dramatic demands of day-to-day “silent”-film accompaniment. The pieces were interpreted for their extramusical associations and labeled under specific semantic categories in order to be used for specific and recurrent types of film scenes. This labeling of music was based on the tradition of “musical hermeneutics,” and it inspired the conception of the Handbuch’s second volume, the Thematic Music Index, which is a complex and multilayered classification system for cinema music. Thus, in addition to providing a precise method for film accompaniment, the Handbuch contains a theory and an aesthetics that applies the music-hermeneutical ideas of German musicologist Hermann Kretzschmar to the practice of film accompaniment. Kretzschmar (1848-1924) located the core problem of musical hermeneutics—a discipline of music analysis that essentially studies musical meaning and interpretation—in the nomenclature of musical expression, which formed the basis of the musical accompaniment method in “silent” cinema. This essay focuses on the influence of Kretzschmar’s theory of musical hermeneutics on the indexing system of the Handbuch as well as on the author’s intentions to ground their work in academic theory.

Making Sure They Have the Time of Their Lives: Identifying Cocreation Opportunities at the Dirty Dancing Festival

Film-induced festivals are becoming more popular, generated through accessibility of streaming platforms and acceptance for popular culture fandom. This is different than any general film festival, because there is a sense of community and desire for recreation among film-induced festival attendees, who are seeking a very specific feel and experience. This excitement can also spill over into the surrounding community, thus sparking interest with festival organizers and community hospitality and retail business owners. Knowing what experiences film-induced festival attendees are seeking can potentially increase visitation, facilitate positive word of mouth, and promote return intentions. This study explored The 2017 Dirty Dancing Festival at Lake Lure, NC, USA where social media posts were collected to understand how attendees experienced the festival. Informed by cocreation theory and a qualitative content analysis, seven themes related to the lived experiences of festival attendees were identified providing in-depth information on attendees' expectations of film-induced festivals. Their experiences related to recreating film scenes and scouting film locations helped to contribute evidence for how festival organizers can maximize cocreation through film-induced festivals using social media posts.

Do Deepfakes Pose a Golden Opportunity? Considering Whether English Law Should Adopt California's Publicity Right in the Age of the Deepfake

In 2017, a machine learning algorithm was published online as a tool to insert faces of celebrity actresses into pornographic videos. This “deepfake” phenomenon has since spread across social media, and is no longer confined to sexual contexts. The technology can be used to swap faces in film scenes, or even digitally insert people into their favorite movie clips. Although the results are often comical, deepfake sophistication and realism has rapidly improved over the last several years, making them difficult to spot as fake. There is a growing concern that such videos could be used to extort, intimidate, or otherwise defame an individual. In such instances, could the victim portrayed in the deepfake bring a lawsuit against its creator? In California, perhaps. There, a person has a statutory and common law “publicity right”, which is a cause of action used to prevent or penalize any misappropriation of one’s image, photograph, or voice. By contrast, the lack of a recognized image right under English law can be a source of frustration amongst claimants, and debate amongst lawyers. Drawing upon her knowledge of English and Californian law, the author explores whether or not California’s codified publicity right is superior to that of the English piecemeal approach, using the deepfake phenomenon as a case study.

Rise and #Fall: The unsuspended revolution

Abstract This article utilizes a multimodal media analysis similar to Parker that takes place on three levels: (1) it connects an interview completed by professor Habib in a 2014 issue of the South African magazine publication Destiny Man, (2) with the events captured in photography of the 2015 #FeesMustFall protest as well as (3) the events recorded an Internet documentary entitled Decolonising Wits. This critical analysis utilizes a psychosocial perspective showing strong links between these events that led to the proliferation of decolonization in South African academic institutions as a result. The #FeesMustFall protests at Wits University is seen as a response to the inegalitarian modes of discourse present in the analysed interview, and the selected scenes of real events in the documentary film. This article includes direct quotes from that written interview, photography from the #Feesmustfall events, and links to specific scenes in the documentary film in order to provide a multimodal approach to analysing psychosocial politics in the media.

Çevirinin pedagojik bir araç olarak kullanılması: Hazırlık sınıfında yazma dersinde bir durum çalışması

There has always been a controversy around the
 use of translation in language teaching. When the word “translation” comes to
 one’s mind, grammar-translation method is echoed at the same time. It is
 criticized as an old-fashioned approach in language teaching. Nowadays, most
 English language teachers agree that the teacher-centred grammar-translation
 method does not make much pedagogical sense and only raises passive learners in
 terms of creative thinking skills. Some scholars feverishly argue that translation
 should be totally banned in language teaching. However, the grammar-translation
 method and translation as a pedagogical tool in language classes should be
 differentiated. Translation is a communicative activity as it takes place in
 the real world. Students can think upon how they are saying something and can
 promote their thinking skills when translation is used as a classroom practice.
 In this case study, 23 B1 level students were asked to translate Turkish songs
 and subtitle film scenes into English as a task in a writing class for a month.
 Students regarded translating task into L2 as a valuable class activity in
 their writing classes. In the semi-interviews conducted with the students, it
 was seen that it helped them to expand their vocabulary knowledge and consider
 pragmatic factors while translating. Moreover, it increased their awareness of
 L1 and L2 differences. Therefore, there is a need for further research on the
 effects of translation tasks on language learning and how it can be used in the
 best way in language teaching.

Body Language and Its Universal Meaning: the Interpretation of Body Language in the Little Black Book Film

This study aims to examine body language, namely facial expressions that appear in film scenes entitled 'Little Black Book'. Therefore, this study discusses two research questions: 1) what conventional meaning is expressed by the facial expressions of central figures in 'Little Black Book' film? 2) what are the forms and patterns of body language that carry important messages besides facial expressions in 'Little Black Book' film? This study uses a qualitative approach to analyze data. The data source of this research is the film "Little Black Book". The data of this study are certain scenes related to body language. Data is collected through observation, which is watching carefully and repeatedly, and cutting or copying images that show gesture or gesture of body language. The result found was facial expressions which specified at upper neck, namely: head, eyes, and mouth. while the other parts of body language were hands and other acts of body language.

Representasi Imigran Timur dalam Film The Visitor

The film is a depiction of meaning made in visual form. The study aims to see the representation of eastern immigrants in The Visitor. Motivated by the 9/11 event which took place in New York, the United States that made a negative stigma of eastern immigrants, the film tells the friendship between Western and Eastern people. Researchers use Dramatistic Pentad analysis to see how Eastern immigrant representations are displayed using act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose analyses. Researchers also used the theory of Orientalism by Edward Said to see Eastern and Western depictions. Researchers examined the six scenes in The Visitor film, using qualitative data analysis. The results showed that the film gave a positive image of eastern immigrants to change the negative perception of Western peoples towards Muslims.

Prefiguring as an Indigenous Narrative Tool in Nigerian Cinema: An Ethnomusicological Reading

Abstract Prefiguring entails the use of music to predict dialogue and scenes in film. It is prevalent in the cinematic productions of both the ethnic-based film industries in Nigeria and mainstream Nollywood. Theoretically, prefiguring is a function of indigenous storytelling practices, the appropriation of which conjures up layers of meaning for the local practice, practitioners, and audiences. Relying on in-depth textual analyses, composers’ accounts, and relevant literature, I argue that prefiguring is a concept of major theoretical importance to the study of music in Nigerian cinema, not least because its existence and efficacy strongly support notions of a localized film music practice.

Pengaruh Film “Ada Apa Dengan Cinta 2” Terhadap Perkembangan Pariwisata Di Kabupaten Magelang


 
 
 Tourism destinations in Indonesia have a variety of interesting tourist attractions and many of these tourist attractions become shooting locations or taking pictures of a film scene. By making a tourism destination and tourist attraction becomes a setting of shooting a film is expected to make tourism developing and films “Ada Apa Dengan Cinta 2” is one of the films that took the place of shooting for the film scene in several tourist attractions in Magelang. the purpose of this research are to know determine the influence of the film “Ada Apa Dengan Cinta 2” product development, market and marketing at the Rumah Do’a Bukit Rhema.
 This research uses qualitative data collected through observation , interview , documentation , informans are selected using purposive procedures. Data analysis method used qualitative data analysis.The result of the research shows are the occurrence of product, market and marketing developments at Rumah Do’a Bukit Rhema after being shooting and appearing on scene films Ada Apa Dengan cinta 2. The government especially tourism ministry is expected to choosing films as a means of tourism promotion.
 Keywords: Scene film, Tourism attraction, Ada apa dengan cinta 2, Rumah doa bukit rhema
 
 

O Milagre do Candeal e a Pedagogia do Ócio Humanista

Pautado nos registros fílmicos do documentário El Milagro del Candeal este estudo teve por objetivo analisar se há relações entre ações realizadas na periferia de Salvador, Bahia, e a pedagogia do ocio humanista. A relação dialógica entre pedagogia humanista e Candeal foi observada nas transformações locais, tanto nas estruturas físicas e urbanísticas, quanto no fortalecimento de seus moradores. A organização em torno da música corrobora potenciais educativos do lazer e suas interferências na transformação social. As ações sócio educativas no Candeal desenvolvidas pelo Pracatum, escola de música, promovem a educação musical em harmonia com os valores da educação cidadã, a partir de uma pedagogia social dinâmica e transformadora. As cenas fílmicas ultrapassam as fronteiras da musicalidade e apontam fortalecer o sentido de pertencimento, reforçando valores, identidade e senso comunitário dos moradores.

The Characteristics of Intelligence Profile and Eye Gaze in Facial Emotion Recognition in Mild and Moderate Preschoolers With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Childhood autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can easily be misdiagnosed, due to the nonspecific social and communicational deficits associated with the disorder. The present study attempted to profile the mental development and visual attention toward emotion among preschool children with mild or moderate ASD who were attending mainstream kindergartens. A total of 21 children (17 boys and 4 girls) diagnosed with mild or moderate ASD selected from 5,178 kindergarteners from the Xi’an city were recruited. Another group of 21 typically developing (TD) children who were matched with age, gender, and class served as controls. All children were assessed using the Griffiths Mental Development Scales–Chinese (GDS-C), and their social visual attention was assessed during watching 20 ecologically valid film scenes by using eye tracking technique. The results showed that ASD children had lower mental development scores in the Locomotor, Personal-Social, Language, Performance, and Practical Reasoning subscales than the TD peers. Moreover, deficits in recognizing emotions from facial expressions based on naturalistic scene stimuli with voice were found for ASD children. The deficits were significantly correlated with their ability in social interaction and development quotient in ASD group. ASD children showed atypical eye-gaze pattern when compared to TD children during facial emotion expression task. Children with ASD had reduced visual attention to facial emotion expression, especially for the eye region. The findings confirmed the deficits of ASD children in real life multimodal of emotion recognition, and their atypical eye-gaze pattern for emotion recognition. Parents and teachers of children with mild or moderate ASD should make informed educational decisions according to their level of mental development. In addition, eye tracking technique might clinically help provide evidence diagnosing children with mild or moderate ASD.

Representasi Ciuman Romantis-Seksual dalam Film Ada Apa dengan Cinta?

This study aims to identify and analyze representations of romantic-sexual kissing in Indonesian fiction films, those are Ada Apa dengan Cinta? (2001) and Ada Apa dengan Cinta? 2 (2016). This study uses the kissing concept of Linda Williams (2008) which links the presence of kisses to the terminology of romanticism and sexuality and Willem Frijhoff’s (2014) shape and type of kissing that influence the meaning of kisses. The kissing scenes in both films was identified by Roland Barthes’s semiotics method. The results of the study indicate that those two films contain romantic-sexual kissing that further strengthens romantic and sexual ideologies.

Jörgen Lindström and the troubled status of the sexualized child on-screen

This article examines the problem of using child actors in sexual scenes in film, with special attention to Ingmar Bergman’s Tystnaden (The Silence) (1963) and Mai Zetterling’s Nattlek (Night Games) (1966), both featuring the Swedish child actor Jörgen Linström. I argue that seeing the sexualized child in film can evoke the viewer’s concern for the well-being of the child actor, thus disrupting absorption in the fictional world on-screen. I further contend that two modes for managing the problematic presence of the sexualized child on-screen – cuteness and queerness – ultimately fail to eliminate our ambivalence about this figure. The article draws attention to the underexamined figure of the child in 1960s Swedish cinema; additionally, it includes material from a 2017 interview with Jörgen Lindström.

Precursor of Pride: The Pleasures and Aesthetics of Framed Youth

This article explores the causal links between the 1983 Channel 4 documentary Framed Youth: Revenge of the Teenage Perverts and the feature film Pride (2014), via All Out: Dancing in Dulais (1986). It will be argued that Pride — the story of miners’ support group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) — would never have been made if it had not been for its precursors, with several members of LGSM having previously ‘cut their teeth’ in queer video activism, including documenting the activities of LGSM on videotape. A case will be made for Framed Youth and Pride as examples of media texts that are radical and educational, but which also have popular appeal and generate pleasure and nostalgia for audiences. The origins of Framed Youth in the conjuncture of radical theatre and community video will be outlined, including the project’s synergy with Channel 4’s original remit (Channel 4 was the majority funder of the project and broadcast Framed Youth in 1986). Attention will be devoted in particular to the neglect of considerations around audiences in the independent film and video scene. Framed Youth and the Miners’ Campaign Tapes (1984) are cited as notable historical exceptions, due to their imaginative and successful approach to building audiences through distribution and exhibition. The article will conclude by considering the ‘pros and cons’ of the fact that the story of LGSM eventually found expression in a feel-good ‘retro’ feature film, rather than an activist or political documentary.

Rescripting experimental trauma: Effects of imagery and writing as a way to reduce the development of intrusive memories

Background and objectivesImagery rescripting is an effective treatment strategy for trauma related disorders, but its underlying mechanisms are still largely unknown. The aim of the present study was to test whether a) imagery (versus writing) is essential in the process of rescripting, and b) rescripting affects emotional memories on an implicit level. MethodsHealthy participants were subjected to an experimental trauma (‘trauma film’), and randomly allocated to four conditions: recall of film + Imagery Rescripting (ImRs), recall of film + Writing Rescripting (WRs), recall only (ImRE), or no recall + no manipulation (NM). Next, participants recorded intrusion frequency and distress during one week, after which they executed a visual interference task (VIT) including neutral and trauma film stills, to access implicit emotional memory. ResultsMain findings were that ImRs and WRs resulted in fewer intrusions than NM, with no differences between both rescripting conditions. We did not find an effect on intrusion distress and the VIT. LimitationsStills in the VIT were distracted from all four film scenes, whereas rescripting was done on one scene only, possibly obscuring the effect. Also, an analogue sample was used, which may limit generalizability to clinical samples. ConclusionsWe replicated previous effects of ImRs on intrusion development. Furthermore, no superior effect of imagery as key modality for rescripting was found; writing seems a viable alternative. Measures for implicit emotional memory such as the VIT may have to be applied relatively soon after the experimental session (e.g., same day as the experimental session).

Schubert’s “Ständchen” in the Voice of the Cinematic Amateur

Scholars who have analyzed performances of Schubert’s Lieder have generally focused on the voices of masterful professionals, whether looking at performances before or during the age of sound recordings. This tendency overlooks one historically important group of performers: the amateurs who made up the broad marketplace for the genre during Schubert’s lifetime and throughout the nineteenth century. Studying this group of performers with any level of aesthetic particularity is, however, difficult: documentary evidence of particular singers in this group in the nineteenth century and even the early twentieth is scarce. Yet as the real-life practice of the amateur singing of Schubert’s Lieder in the home gradually dwindled after the nineteenth century, fictional representations of this nineteenth-century practice began to appear in period sound films across the twentieth. While not a substitute for documentary evidence of real practices, this film phenomenon meaningfully engages with nineteenth-century cultural history, literary sources, and musical practices through presentist conventions and concerns. Such films thus offer a vehicle through which to think about continuity and change in the relationship between Schubert’s song and the figure of the amateur in the nineteenth century, the twentieth century, and today. This article analyzes three period film scenes involving nineteenth-century “amateur” performances of Schubert’s “Ständchen” (Schwanengesang, D. 957, no. 4). It does so in order to think about the combined aesthetic and social ramifications of the figure of the amateur in relationship to Schubert’s Lieder. I look at scenes in the following three films: the operetta-influenced Schubert picture Leise flehen meine Lieder (1933), in which operetta star Mártha Eggerth sings as the Countess Esterházy, the classic novel adaptation Jane Eyre (1934), in which Virginia Bruce sings as the titular character, and a newly written piece of “governess fiction,” The Governess (1998), in which Minnie Driver performs the song as said governess. None of these scenes offers unmed­iated or simple access to amateurism. Instead, in each scene, a professional, twentieth-­century celebrity woman movie star both sings and otherwise portrays the nineteenth-century amateur musician and character onscreen. Keeping this tension in mind, I explore how this contradiction and other elements in each scene would have and can still provide audiences opportunities to think about the relationship between amateurism and Schubert’s most popular songs. In so doing, I explore the term “amateur” in a number of overlapping senses that embrace positive and, to a lesser extent, pejorative meanings. My analysis ultimately shows how these three diverse film stagings valorize the figure and, indeed, the voice of the amateur in relationship to Schubert’s music. These conclusions have implications regarding Schubert’s songs and successful modes of performance that might attend them.