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The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement develops a method for analyzing movement on screen by identifying patterns or shapes of motion-called "motion forms"-across a wide range of examples from the history of cinema. By examining a single motion form, each chapter rethinks persistent assumptions in film studies about cinema as a medium.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Moving toward Form
- The Problem of "Movement"
- Perceiving Form
- Imaged Motion
- Describing Motion
- Chapter 1 Contingent Motion
- Kant's Beautiful Views
- Early Cinema's Water-Effects Films
- CGI's Fuzzy Objects
- From the Novelty of Motion to Forms of Motion
- Chapter 2 Habitual Gestures
- Ways of Moving
- Ways of Moving Differently
- The Cultivation of Habit
- Capturing the In-Between
- Chapter 3 Durational Metamorphosis
- Cinematic Slowness and Duration
- Duration Made Visible
- From Natural to Supernatural Metamorphosis: Silent Light
- From Sleeping to Seeing
- Chapter 4 Spatial Unfurling
- From Moving to Unfurling
- Lateral Camera Movement
- Seeing Double
- Aspects of the Moving Camera
- Chapter 5 Trajective Locomotion
- Approaching Trajectivity
- A World of Trajectivities
- Exploring Exceptions
- The Ethics of the Moving Camera
- Chapter 6 Bleeding Pixels
- Movement-Sensitive Spectatorship
- A Pedagogy of Motion Perception
- Seeing Movement Move
- Conclusion Movement as Excess
About the author
Jordan Schonig is a Lecturer in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University.
Summary
The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement develops a method for analyzing movement on screen by identifying patterns or shapes of motion-called "motion forms"-across a wide range of examples from the history of cinema. By examining a single motion form, each chapter rethinks persistent assumptions in film studies about cinema as a medium.
Additional text
The Shape of Motion is an imaginative and important bookâ¦The Shape of Motion, I have no doubt, will be a fruitful and influential work of film-theoretical scholarship.
