Over the last decade, music and sound have been increasingly recognized as an important―if often neglected―aspect of film production and film studies. Off the Planet comprises a lively, stimulating, and diverse collection of essays on aspects of music, sound, and Science Fiction cinema. Following a detailed historical introduction to the development of sound and music in the genre, individual chapters analyze key films, film series, composers, and directors in the postwar era. The first part of the anthology profiles seminal 1950s productions such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, the first Godzilla film, and Forbidden Planet. Later chapters analyze the work of composer John Williams, the career of director David Cronenberg, the Mad Max series, James Cameron’s Terminators, and other notable SF films such as Space Is the Place, Blade Runner, Mars Attacks!, and The Matrix. Off the Planet is an important contribution to the emerging body of work in music and film. Contributors include leading film experts from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Distributed for John Libbey Publishing

Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

John Libbey Publishing

Hyperanimation: Digital Images and Virtual Worlds

Hyperanimation offers a critical overview of a new and expanded form of animation that uses advanced digital technologies to create fresh and innovative works of art. Unlike academic texts or popular surveys, Hyperanimation is composed of interviews with the artists themselves—those creative individuals who are actually shaping this new direction and who, in their own words, provide detailed information about their works as well as insights into our contemporary technological culture. A readable collection of individual perspectives accompanied by historical backgrounds, biographical profiles, and lavish illustrations, this volume explores a broad spectrum of groundbreaking animation projects ranging from interactive installations and virtual environments to digital theater and telematic imaging. Included are interviews with pioneers in the field: Paul Kaiser, Karl Sims, Char Davies, Dan Sandin, Jeffrey Shaw, Rebecca Allen, Miroslaw Rogala, Roy Ascott, Paul Glabicki, and others whose seminal works have significantly transformed the art of animation.

Arts & Photography

Russett, Robert

Graphic Design

"David Gauntlett’s analysis of media effects research is still timely, impressively thorough, and yet a pleasure to read. Published in this edition with excellent new material about his creative new alternatives to traditional ‘effects’ studies, this book is a must-have package for media students." —Annette Hill, Professor of Media Studies, University of Westminster
Television, movies, and the media have been blamed for every kind of social problem and antisocial act, and countless studies have set out to quantify their harmful effects. In Moving Experiences, David Gauntlett argues that much of this blame is misplaced and that the methodology used to justify it is deeply flawed. Screen media are a central part of modern social life and an important influence upon how we see the world, but their "effects" will necessarily be complex and indirect. And many of the ill effects attributed to screen media are really the result of more serious social problems.

Moving Experiences, Second Edition: Understanding Television's Influences and Effects

Gauntlett, David

The Film Work of Norman McLaren examines his films in the context of his objectives. The first part deals with McLaren’s formative years in Scotland and England and examines his early exposure to the social, artistic, and institutional influences that were to shape his filmic output. The second part deals with McLaren’s maturation in the USA and Canada. The third part is concerned principally with his mature output. McLaren’s films contain incongruities, conflicts, and apparent inconsistencies. In exploring these aspects of his work, Terence Dobson examines the technical processes McLaren used in making his films, the oscillation shown in his films between abstract and representational imagery, and the degree of accord between McLaren’s social and artistic objectives, and his filmic achievements.

The Film Work of Norman McLaren

Dobson, Terence

Visual Delights II covers many aspects of popular and visual culture in the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods. Contributors consider topics as diverse as 19th-century circus performers, early cinema exhibition practice, "penny dreadfuls," lantern culture, early color experiments, and popular photography. Lavishly illustrated, this interdisciplinary book provides a rich visual resource for the further study of 19th-century visual culture and performance practice.

Visual Delights II: Exhibition and Reception

Floriane Place-Verghnes examines the work of this great American animator. Focusing primarily on four facets of Avery’s work, the author first concentrates on Avery’s ability to depict the American attempt both to retrieve the past nostalgically and to catch the Zeitgeist of 1940s America, which confronts the questions of violence and survival. She also analyzes issues of sex and gender and the crucial role Hollywood played in reshaping the image of womanhood, reducing it to a bipolar opposition. Thirdly, she examines the comic language developed by Avery which, although drawing on the work of the Marx Brothers and Chaplin (among others), transcended their conventions. Finally, Place-Verghnes considers Avery’s place in the history of cartoon-making technique.

Tex Avery: A Unique Legacy

Place-Verghnes, Floriane

What do we mean by the term "animation" when we are discussing film? Is it a technique? A style? A way of seeing or experiencing "a world" that has little relation to our own lived experience of "the world"? In Animated Worlds, contributors reveal the astonishing variety of "worlds" animation confronts us with. Essays range from close film analyses to phenomenological and cognitive approaches, spectatorship, performance, literary theory, and digital aesthetics. Authors include Vivian Sobchack, Richard Weihe, Thomas Lamarre, Paul Wells, and Karin Wehn.

Animated Worlds

Art in Motion, Revised Edition is the first comprehensive examination of the aesthetics of animation in its many forms. It gives an overview of the relationship between animation studies and media studies, then focuses on specific aesthetic issues concerning flat and dimensional animation, full and limited animation, and new technologies. A series of studies on abstract animation, audiences, representation, and institutional regulators is also included.

Art in Motion, Revised Edition: Animation Aesthetics

Furniss, Maureen

The past 40 years of technological innovation have significantly altered the materials of production and revolutionized the possibilities for experiment and exhibition. Not since the invention of film has there been such a critical period of major change in the imaging technologies accessible to artists. Bringing together key artists in film, video, and digital media, the anthology of Experimental Film and Video revisits the divergent philosophical and critical discourses of the 1970s and repositions these debates relative to contemporary practice. Forty artists have contributed images, and 25 artists reflect on the diverse critical agendas, contexts, and communities that have affected their practice across the period from the late 1960s to date. Along with an introduction by Jackie Hatfield and forewords by Sean Cubitt and Al Rees, this illustrated anthology includes interviews and recent essays by filmmakers, video artists, and pioneers of interactive cinema. Experimental Film and Video opens up the conceptual avenues for future practice and related critical writing.

Experimental Film and Video: An Anthology

"When future cinema archaeologists dig deep into the history of the art form that was animation, and its artists, during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this excellent collection of insightful biographical essays by Chris Robinson, a modern Vasari, will provide invaluable illumination.... Robinson is the perfect guide, viewing as he does over 1,000 animated films a year. His book focuses on a world of little-known, fiercely independent contemporary animators. Robinson writes with keen perception and a critical eye; he is sincere, compassionate, and always passionate about his subjects, many of whom push the borders of film content and technique wide open. His infailingly evocative descriptions of the works make one hungry to see them." —John Canemaker

Unsung Heroes of Animation

ROBINSON, Chris

History & Criticism

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