The shape of motion : cinema and the aesthetics of movement / Jordan Schonig.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schonig, Jordan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Movement, Aesthetics of, in motion pictures.

Motion pictures--Aesthetics.

Motion pictures.

Physical Description:

xi, 249 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022]

Summary:

"Cinematic motion has long been celebrated as an emblem of change and fluidity or claimed as the source of cinema's impression of reality. But such general claims undermine the sheer variety of forms that motion can take onscreen-the sweep of a gesture, the rush of a camera movement, the slow transformations of a natural landscape. What might we learn about the moving image when we begin to account for the many ways that movements move? In The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement, Jordan Schonig provides a new way of theorizing cinematic motion by examining cinema's "motion forms:" structures, patterns, or shapes of movement unique to the moving image. From the wild and unpredictable motion of flickering leaves and swirling dust that captivated early spectators, to the pulsing abstractions that emerge from rapid lateral tracking shots, to the bleeding pixel-formations caused by the glitches of digital video compression, each motion form opens up the aesthetics of movement to film theoretical inquiry. By pairing close analyses of onscreen movement in narrative and experimental films with concepts from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Henri Bergson, and Immanuel Kant, Schonig rethinks longstanding assumptions within film studies, such as indexical accounts of photographic images and analogies between the camera and the human eye. Arguing against the intuition that cinema reproduces our natural perception of motion, The Shape of Motion shows how cinema's motion forms do not merely transpose the movements of the world in front of the camera; they transform them"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: The Problem of "Movement"

Perceiving Form

The Strangeness of Cinematic Motion

Describing Motion

Cinema's Motion Forms

1. Contingent Motion

Contingent Motion and the Impression of Causality

Aesthetic Beholding and Kant's Beautiful Views

Early Cinema's Water-Effects Films

CGI'S Fuzzy Objects

From the Novelty of Motion to Forms of Motion

2. Habitual Gestures

Ways of Moving

Ways of Moving Differendy

The Cultivation of Habit

Capturing the In-Between

3. Durational Metamorphosis

Cinematic Slowness and Duration

Duration Made Visible

From Natural to Supernatural Metamorphosis: Silent Light

From Sleeping to Seeing

4. Spatial Unfurling

From Moving to Unfurling

The Perceptual Aesthetics of Lateral Camera Movement

Seeing Double

Seeing Aspects of the Moving Camera

5. Trajective Locomotion

Approaching Trajectivity

A World of Trajectivities

Exploring Exceptions

The Ethics of the Moving Camera

6. Bleeding Pixels

Movement - Sensitive Spectatorship

A Pedagogy of Motion Perception

Seeing Movement Move.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Schonig, Jordan. Shape of motion

ISBN:

9780190093884

0190093889

9780190093891

0190093897

OCLC:

1261726651

Publisher Number:

99989631390