Events

Cinemetrics Across Borders

When:
April 30, 2015 - May 3, 2015, Daily, 12:00am - 12:00am
Description:

It takes skills to tell a story. What skills it takes depends on the medium we use. Film is the medium of showing: what to show closer, what to show longer, what to show once, what to show again.  Filmmakers have dealt with these problems since the beginning of cinema. Those who study film history today need to have a clear picture of how and why filmmakers made these decisions throughout time. What were D.W. Griffith’s favorite camera set ups in 1914? What year did Chaplin learn how to cut? Questions like these relate to film editing, and will keep coming up as long as film editing remains art. How many cuts does that seemingly seamless Birdman hide? How did they slice and splice the 12 years of real time in Boyhood?

Cinemetrics is a website that helps to puzzle out such questions. Launched in 2005 as a digital tool designed to assess and compare various ways of editing films, Cinemetrics has grown into a global forum on experimental methods in cinema studies. Hundreds of film students and scholars from different countries, each with their own research agenda, submit shot-length and shot-scale data to the Cinemetrics website. Between 2013-2015, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society has enabled them to communicate with each other about the value of Cinemetrics data. The keynote address by film editor Sandra Adair, "Cutting Boyhood," will take place on Friday, May 1. Conference program is available for download above. Visit the Conference website for details and RSVP.

Please note, the opening program on April 30 will take place at the Neubauer Collegium building, 5701 S. Woodlawn.

Presented with the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society.