Ethnographies of ‘On Demand’ Films
Ethnographies of ‘On Demand’ Films

Author: Alex Vailati

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-09-30

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 303078911X

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Over the last two decades, the advent of cheap, user-friendly video technologies has contributed to a revolution in representational agency. Videos are now made by production units that are at times composed of families, churches, musical groups, community associations or other institutions. Thus, on-demand videos produced and distributed within local and atypical networks profoundly shape contemporary urban imaginaries. This book explores the intertwined relations among infrastructure, technology, and modernity through an ordinary, yet little studied field of "on-demand" audiovisual production, which involves processes of negotiation and interaction between clients and commissioned video makers. On-demand films are considered as a space of collaboration and self-representation, that allows to reflect on the potential of fiction, artifice, and montage to render material desires, aspirations, and ideas of the future.

The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video
The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video

Author: Phillip Vannini

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-02

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 0429589360

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The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video is a state-of-the-art book which encompasses the breadth and depth of the field of ethnographic film and video-based research. With more and more researchers turning to film and video as a key element of their projects, and as research video production becomes more practical due to technological advances as well as the growing acceptance of video in everyday life, this critical book supports young researchers looking to develop the skills necessary to produce meaningful ethnographic films and videos, and serves as a comprehensive resource for social scientists looking to better understand and appreciate the unique ways in which film and video can serve as ways of knowing and as tools of knowledge mobilization. Comprised of 31 chapters authored by some of the world’s leading experts in their respective fields, the book’s contributors synthesize existing literature, introduce the historical and conceptual dimensions of the field, illustrate innovative methodologies and techniques, survey traditional and new technologies, reflect on ethics and moral imperatives, outline ways to work with people, objects, and tools, and shape the future agenda of the field. With a particular focus on making ethnographic film and video, as opposed to analyzing or critiquing it, from a variety of methodological approaches and styles, the Handbook provides both a comprehensive introduction and up-to-date survey of the field for a vast variety of audiovisual researchers, such as scholars and students in sociology, anthropology, geography, communication and media studies, education, cultural studies, film studies, visual arts, and related social science and humanities. As such, it will appeal to a multidisciplinary and international audience, and features a dynamic, forward-thinking, innovative, and contemporary focus oriented toward the very latest developments in the field, as well as future possibilities.

Beyond observation
Beyond observation

Author: Paul Henley

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2020-01-20

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 1526131374

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This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Beyond Observation is structured by the argument that the ‘ethnographicness’ of a film should not be determined by the fact that it is about an exotic culture – the popular view – nor because it has apparently not been authored – a long-standing academic view – but rather because it adheres to the norms of ethnographic practice more generally. On these grounds, the book covers a large number of films made in a broad range of styles across a 120-year period, from the Arctic to Africa, from the cities of China to rural Vermont. Paul Henley discusses films made within reportage, exotic melodrama and travelogue genres in the period before the Second World War, as well as more conventionally ethnographic films made for academic or state-funded educational purposes. The book explores the work of film-makers such as John Marshall, Asen Balikci, Ian Dunlop and Timothy Asch in the post-war period, considering ideas about authorship developed by Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner and Colin Young. It also discusses films authored by indigenous subjects themselves using the new video technology of the 1970s and the ethnographic films that flourished on British television until the 1990s. In the final part of the book, Henley examines the recent work of David and Judith MacDougall and the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab, before concluding with an assessmentof a range of films authored in a participatory manner as possible future models.

Ethnographic Film
Ethnographic Film

Author: Karl G. Heider

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2009-04-20

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 0292779399

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From reviews of the first edition: “Ethnographic Film can rightly be considered a film primer for anthropologists.” —Choice “This is an interesting and useful book about what it means to be ethnographic and how this might affect ethnographic filmmaking for the better. It obviously belongs in all departments of anthropology, and most ethnographic filmmakers will want to read it.” —Ethnohistory Even before Robert Flaherty released Nanook of the North in 1922, anthropologists were producing films about the lifeways of native peoples for a public audience, as well as for research and teaching. Ethnographic Film (1976) was one of the first books to provide a comprehensive introduction to this field of visual anthropology, and it quickly became the standard reference. In this new edition, Karl G. Heider thoroughly updates Ethnographic Film to reflect developments in the field over the three decades since its publication, focusing on the work of four seminal filmmakers—Jean Rouch, John Marshall, Robert Gardner, and Timothy Asch. He begins with an introduction to ethnographic film and a history of the medium. He then considers many attributes of ethnographic film, including the crucial need to present "whole acts," "whole bodies," "whole interactions," and "whole people" to preserve the integrity of the cultural context. Heider also discusses numerous aspects of making ethnographic films, from ethics and finances to technical considerations such as film versus video and preserving the filmed record. He concludes with a look at using ethnographic film in teaching.

On-Demand Culture
On-Demand Culture

Author: Chuck Tryon

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2013-07-18

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 0813567165

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The movie industry is changing rapidly, due in part to the adoption of digital technologies. Distributors now send films to theaters electronically. Consumers can purchase or rent movies instantly online and then watch them on their high-definition televisions, their laptops, or even their cell phones. Meanwhile, social media technologies allow independent filmmakers to raise money and sell their movies directly to the public. All of these changes contribute to an “on-demand culture,” a shift that is radically altering film culture and contributing to a much more personalized viewing experience. Chuck Tryon offers a compelling introduction to a world in which movies have become digital files. He navigates the complexities of digital delivery to show how new modes of access—online streaming services like YouTube or Netflix, digital downloads at iTunes, the popular Redbox DVD kiosks in grocery stores, and movie theaters offering digital projection of such 3-D movies as Avatar—are redefining how audiences obtain and consume motion picture entertainment. Tryon also tracks the reinvention of independent movies and film festivals by enterprising artists who have built their own fundraising and distribution models online. Unique in its focus on the effects of digital technologies on movie distribution, On-Demand Culture offers a corrective to address the rapid changes in the film industry now that movies are available at the click of a button.

Innovation in Ethnographic Film
Innovation in Ethnographic Film

Author: Peter Loizos

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1993-07-15

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780226492261

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In the first coprehensive introduction to the nature and development of ethnographic film, Peter Loizos reviews fifty of the most important films made between 1955 and 1985. Going beyond programmatic statements, he analyzes the films themselves, identifying and discussing their contributions to ethnographic documentation. Loizos begins by reviewing works of John Marshall and Timothy Asch in the 1950s and moves through those of Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner, and many more recent filmmakers. He reveals a steady course of innovations along four dimensions: production technology, subject matter, strategies of argument, and ethnographic authentication. His analyses of individual films address questions of realism, authenticity, genre, authorial and subjective voice, and representation of the films' creators as well as their subjects. Innovation in Ethnographic Film, as a systematic and iluminating review of developments in ethnographic film, will be an important resource for the growing number of anthropologists and other scholars who use such films as tools for research and teaching.

Film As Ethnography
Film As Ethnography

Author: Peter Ian Crawford

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 1992-11-15

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780719036835

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This work examines the reasons why anthropologists have not used the camera as a research instrument or film as a means of communicating ethnographic knowledge. It suggests that images and words in this discipline operate on different logical levels; that they are hierarchically related; that whereas writings may encompass the images produced by film, the inverse of this cannot be true. The author argues for this position further by suggesting that the visual is to the written mode as "thin description" (giving a record of the form of behaviour) is to "thick description" (giving an account of meaning).

Visual Anthropology
Visual Anthropology

Author: Fadwa El Guindi

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9780759103955

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El Guindi provides a comprehensive guide to the methods of visual anthropology and the use of film in cross-cultural research and ethnography. She shows how visual media -- photographic, filmic, interactive -- is now an accepted part of the anthropological process, a vital tool that reflects and produces knowledge about the range of cultures and about culture itself. It preserves the integrity of people, objects, and events in their cultural context, and expands our horizons beyond the reach of memory culture. El Guindi places visual anthropology within an empirically-based, analytic framework, built on systematic observation, identifying the research cycle that begins with data gathering and leads to visual ethnographic construction that is anthropological in method, process, and product. She explains how indigenous, professional, and amateur forms of pictorial/auditory materials are grounded in personal, social, cultural, and ideological contexts, and describes the non-Western critique of the Western traditions of visual anthropology. Her book is an excellent guide for ethnographic research, and for film and other media instruction concerned with cross-cultural representation.

Timothy Asch and Ethnographic Film
Timothy Asch and Ethnographic Film

Author: E.D Lewis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-02-24

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1134336888

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Beautifully illustrated and featuring articles from many of Asch's friends, colleagues, and collaborators as well as an important interview with Asch himself, this is an idea introduction to his work.