Ordinary Media and Cinematic Innovation: Unfriended Part 1

Film & Media Studies
6 May 202111:50
EducationalLearning
32 Likes 10 Comments

TLDRThis video examines the relationship between ordinary technologies like telephones and trains and innovations in cinematic techniques like cross-cutting editing. It explores how new technologies that connect distant spaces laid the groundwork for film's ability to move through space and time seamlessly. The video situates film theory within the broader context of media theory, arguing that the media landscape shapes aesthetic possibilities in artistic media. It aims to reveal unnoticed connections between historical media and film style by analyzing the 2014 film Unfriended's integration of modern communication technologies into its cinematic language.

Takeaways
  • 😀 Films like 'The Lonedale Operator' used technologies like telegraphs and trains to help audiences understand cross-cutting editing
  • 📝 Early filmmakers incorporated new technologies into plots to 'naturalize' film's power over space and time
  • 🎥 Media are extensions of ourselves that transform communication; film is a type of media
  • 🌟 Media theory examines how technologies shape human life and communication
  • 🎞️ The media landscape shapes which aesthetic techniques are possible in film
  • ☎️ Representing simultaneous events became easier after telegraphs and telephones
  • 🚂 Trains and telegraphs 'annihilated' distances, helping inspire cross-cutting edits
  • 🖥️ Today's media like texting continue to influence cinematic language
  • 🔬 Media theory and film theory intersect in studying how media representations evolve film
  • 🎬 The way we use everyday media impacts ongoing innovation in artistic media like film
Q & A

  • What is the relationship between technologies like telephones, telegraphs, and trains and the development of crosscutting in the history of cinema?

    -These technologies helped people get used to the idea of connecting disparate spaces and experiencing temporal simultaneity. This made film techniques like crosscutting, which show two spaces at once, more comprehensible and helped naturalize film's ability to move through space and time.

  • How can we think about the development of cinematic language as influenced by ordinary media?

    -Media theorists argue that our media environments shape aesthetic possibilities in artistic media. So innovations in everyday media like trains, telephones, and today's internet influence cinematic language and editing techniques by transforming people's conceptions of space, time, and communication.

  • How is the film Unfriended an example of integrating ordinary communications technology into cinematic storytelling?

    -As a film that takes place entirely on a computer screen, Unfriended integrates the look, feel, and capabilities of online communication tools like Skype and Facebook into its cinematic techniques. This reflects a lineage of films that have incorporated ordinary media like telephones and trains.

  • What are some key ideas from media theory?

    -Key ideas include: media as extensions of ourselves, media determining our situation, the medium being more important than the message, and the co-evolution of humans and technology/media.

  • How can bringing together film theory and media theory be useful?

    -It allows us to study how historically contingent changes in media environments shape the aesthetic possibilities of artistic media like film. We can analyze how new innovations in everyday media influence cinematic language.

  • What early films helped develop crosscutting and parallel editing?

    -D.W. Griffith's The Lonedale Operator (1911) and Suspense (1913) by Lois Weber experimented with crosscutting and integrating technologies like telegraph and trains. These helped make temporal simultaneity of spaces comprehensible.

  • What is media phenomenology?

    -Media phenomenology involves reflecting on how the ordinary, everyday media we use transform our experiences and sense of self in ways we often overlook. It brings the background ordinariness of media experience to the foreground.

  • How did innovations in trains and telecommunication help naturalize qualities of film?

    -They accustomed people to annihilating distance and temporal simultaneity. This made film techniques like crosscutting between disparate spaces easier to understand, since they mirrored qualities of telegraphs and trains.

  • What techniques are used in film to show two spaces simultaneously?

    -Crosscutting or parallel editing rapidly intercut two spaces. Or split-screen literally shows two spaces at once. These techniques took advantage of new conceptions of space and time enabled by media like telegraphs.

  • What is an example of relating film language to modern media environments?

    -Tony Zhou's video essay on depicting texting in films. As texting changes conceptions of communication and attention, films have adapted with techniques like showing on-screen text messages.

Outlines
00:00
🎥 Cinema and technology: Cross-cutting editing emerges alongside ordinary media like trains and phones

This paragraph discusses how innovations in cinematic editing techniques like cross-cutting emerged alongside the development of ordinary communication technologies like telegraphs, telephones, and trains. These technologies normalized the annihilation of time and space, supporting new narrative devices in early films that interrelate disparate spaces through editing. Griffith's film The Lonedale Operator is analyzed as an example of using trains and telegraphs in a plot to naturalize editing moves through space/time.

05:05
😀 Early filmmakers used ordinary tech in plots to make editing comprehensible

This paragraph continues the analysis of early films' use of ordinary technologies like telephones in their plots to help audiences understand new editing techniques. It discusses how temporal simultaneity introduced through editing demanded new ways of conceptualizing time and space. By showcasing technologies like telephones and trains on screen, filmmakers made editing techniques feel more natural.

10:10
📱 Media theory: How ordinary media impacts aesthetics and our humanness

This paragraph relates the previous film history analysis to media theory, which considers how ordinary/dominant media shapes aesthetic possibilities in artistic media. It overviews key ideas from major media theorists like McLuhan, Kittler, and Stiegler about how media determines and transforms our lives and situations. The conclusion is that studying how film changes with media histories can reveal aesthetics.

Mindmap
Keywords
💡parallel editing
Parallel editing, also called cross-cutting, is a cinematic technique that intercuts two or more scenes occurring in different spaces or times to suggest they are happening simultaneously. The video explains how early films incorporated new technologies like trains and telegraphs to help audiences comprehend the interrelation of disparate spaces made possible through parallel editing.
💡telegraph
The telegraph is presented as an example of a technology that annihilated conceptions of space and time in the early 20th century. Its ability to instantly transmit messages over long distances is tied to parallel editing's technique of linking remote spaces cinematically.
💡phenomenology
Phenomenology refers to the philosophical study of conscious experience and subjective reality. The video relates it to "media phenomenology," which examines how ordinary media transform people's sense of themselves and their lives in ways they often overlook.
💡aesthetics
The aesthetics of a medium like film refer to conventions and techniques developed to convey meaning and engage through style. The video describes tracing aesthetic innovations in film to the influence of new communication media that were emerging concurrently.
💡ordinary technology
This refers to widely used, mundane technologies like telephones and computers. The video positions these as shaping the development of technique in artistic mediums like film.
💡cinema
Cinema is used interchangeably with film to discuss medium-specific narrative and aesthetic innovation. Key claims explore how transformations in cinema relate to the technology landscape out of which films emerged.
💡medium
Medium is a core concept contrasting film and media theory. It refers not just to artistic forms but also ordinary technologies conceived as extensions of human faculties or determinants of the situations they are embedded in.
💡space and time
The annihilation or interrelation of conceptions of space and time is presented as both an effect of modern technologies like trains and a central challenge for early narrative filmmakers to address through editing.
💡media theory
Media theory is contrasted with film theory to highlight broad claims about technology as expanding human abilities, conditioning culture, and transforming artistic possibility rather than just transmitting content.
💡editing
Editing describes film techniques like parallel editing as well as a central process through which ordinary media come to restructure consciousness or artistic approaches to storytelling.
Highlights

Questions about the relationship between technologies like telephones and the development of crosscutting in film history

How can we think about cinematic language as influenced by ordinary media we use every day

How might Unfriended integrate ordinary communications tech into cinematic storytelling techniques

Technology's ability to annihilate space and time supported new narrative devices like suspenseful parallel editing

Temporal simultaneity demands a more abstract sense of space and time interrelation

Early filmmakers incorporated recent technologies into plots to naturalize film's power over space and time

The telephone provides a powerful example of technology influencing narrative film

If media determine our situation, the media landscape shapes aesthetic possibilities of artistic media

Trains and telegraphs were dominant forms influencing early film aesthetics

Texting and internet are changing how we understand the cinematic medium today

Technology and cinematic innovation have a relationship where ordinary tech impacts narrative film

Unfriended's aesthetics may uncover lineages not apparent at first within film history

Media phenomenology brings ordinarity of experience with media to the foreground

Problem of depicting texting in film shows integrating media landscape into cinema

Brief introduction to relationship between technology and cinematic innovation

Transcripts

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