Browsing by Subject "Film"
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Item A Social Semiotic Discourse Analysis of Film and Television Portrayals of Agriculture: Implications for American Cultural Memory(2013-04-27) Specht, AnnieThe U.S. farm populace is declining rapidly, and the majority of Americans are generations removed from food and fiber production. Society now receives the majority of its information about agriculture-related topics from sources removed from the industry itself, including entertainment media such as films and television programs. To better understand how these entertainment media influence societal perceptions of the food and fiber industry, the researcher sought to explicate the content of entertainment media texts related to agricultural production and to compare that content to previously recorded public perceptions of the industry. Using themes outlined by the Kellogg Foundation?s 2002 survey of perceptions of rural life?the pastoral fantasy, the traditional family farm, and the decline of the agrarian tradition?a social semiotic content analysis of 23 films and television programs released between 1950 and 2012 was conducted to identify parallels between the content of those media texts and the findings of the Kellogg study. Films and television programs released between 1950 and 1990 contained narrative and visual elements that closely linked those texts to the three themes identified by the Kellogg researchers, indicating that those perceptual elements could have been influenced by pervasive images of traditional agricultural production practices. Films and programs released after 1990 also contained components strongly tying them to the Kellogg study themes with added emphasis on the decline of the agrarian tradition theme.Item Andy Warhol's cinema beyond the lens(2013-05) Weathers, Chelsea Lea; Reynolds, Ann MorrisThis dissertation examines a small selection of the hundreds of films made by Andy Warhol and his collaborators between 1963 and 1968. Each chapter contextualizes a particular aspect of Warhol's filmmaking in terms of the artistic and cultural circumstances that informed it. Through an analysis of the content of specific films, rather than just their formal or stylistic tendencies, I discuss how the filmmaking process might have functioned for those involved in the films' production, as well as how those films might have functioned for specific spectators. The first chapter is a speculation on how Warhol might have understood filmmaking as a method for creating concrete connections between feelings and things -- for collecting imagery with his camera in order to create a historical catalog of people and their emotions. This first chapter also considers how some art critics in the 1960s used Warhol's early silent films as exemplars for their own anti-formalist art-historical and critical discourses. The second chapter examines the relationship between Warhol's films and the proliferation of amphetamine use amongst his collaborators. Amphetamines functioned to perpetuate for its users a way of life based on an alternative conception of time, and often involved a continued engagement with bad feelings, which fueled much of the creativity of the artistic community whose locus was Warhol's Factory in the mid-1960s. As such, many of Warhol's films from this period exhibit what I term an "amphetamine aesthetic" -- visual clues that suggest the effects of long-term amphetamine use by its participants. The third chapter is an analysis of a single film, Lonesome Cowboys. Participants in the film's production used the conventions of the Hollywood Western film genre to create a circumscribed space for transforming their everyday lives and their relationship to contemporary politics in the late 1960s. All of these chapters explore the effects of Warhol's particular approach to filmmaking, which involved Warhol's own detached style of directing, as well as his cultivation of an ultrapermissive environment in which his collaborators -- actors, directors, writers, and technicians -- felt free to experiment. This environment was predicated on the idea that the boundary between the space in front of the camera and the world beyond it was simultaneously arbitrary and deeply imbricated. Such a fluid boundary between the world inside and outside the scope of Warhol's camera is in part why some spectators, watching his films a half-century after they were made, might still find new meanings for the present in the films themselves.Item Animus, Anima, and Shadow: Gender Role Representation in Fantasy Films of the Third Wave Feminist Era(2012-01-10) Lopez, Caroline; Olson, Beth; Haun, Martha; Verheyen, ClaremarieResearch on representation of gender in 20th century media suggests that traditional attitudes towards gender, which call for aggressive, dominant male behavior and passive, submissive female behavior, have been propagated through negative framing of characters who challenge those attitudes. Traditional attitudes have been especially prominent in fantasy tales, though some research suggests that contemporary (third-wave feminist era) fantasy does support alternative views. A quantitative study of fantasy films of the era reveals that characters who challenged tradition were still more likely to be framed negatively than those who did not. Qualitative analysis was then used to determine the reasons for, and the significance of this continued correlation.Item "Are you getting angry Doctor?" : Madea, strategy and the fictional rejection of black female containment(2014-05) Faust, Mitchell R.; Richardson, Matt, 1969-Within the scope of this thesis, I provide close textual and visual readings of director/actor/producer Tyler Perry's most well-known character, Mable "Madea" Simmons -- a performance he does in full female drag attire -- focusing on his mainstream hit film, Madea Goes to Jail (2009). My reading of the character of Madea veers against the common narrative her existence being just another recycled trope of men disguised as women only to perform in stereotypical and demonizing behavior. I argue Madea represents what I refer to as a "trans*female character", within the space of Perry's popular film that feature her. Read through the lens of being trans*female character, I propose this shift in analysis and critique of cinematic displays of drag helps to transgress beyond male/female binaries of acceptable and possible visual gender representations. More in-depth, using the theoretical concept of Gwendolyn Pough's "bringing wreck", I make the argument that while ostensibly representing the "angry black woman" stereotype, Madea's characterization and actions within the film represent strategies and efforts to not be contained within hegemonic ideals of black female respectability politics and the law efforts to put her behind bars. By "bringing wreck", Madea's fictional acts of violence and talking back are read as a strategy that reflects a historical trend of misrecognition that renders black women's concerns and discontent with marginalization as irrational anger.Item BIM Principles to Practice: Using BIM to Create a New Model for Producing Animation(2012-02-14) Naugle, Nicholas D.Computer animation projects, specifically feature film productions, require large teams of artists to manage and coordinate the use of enormous amounts of data containing both aesthetic and technical information within a specific time frame and while using finite resources. Mismanagement through information loss or inefficiency can result in both a compromised artistic vision and a financial loss. This thesis presents the conceptualization of a work management system based upon a successful system used in architecture and construction called Building Information Modeling, or BIM. BIM principles are adapted for use in animation production through the use of images as containers of information. The thesis does not include implementation of the management system described but does predict, based upon comparisons with architecture and construction, that a significant level of information carry-through can be achieved from concept art to final frames and we expect a positive gains in the efficient use of production resources. Adoption of this proposed project management structure could reduce production budgets, improve the communication flow between directors and artists, and develop an empirical based record for predicting the resource usage requirements for proposed projects in the future.Item Border fiction : fracture and contestation in post-Oslo Palestinian culture(2013-12) Paul, William Andrew; El-Ariss, Tarek; Grumberg, KarenThis dissertation delves into a body of Palestinian literature, film, and art from the past two decades in order theorize the relationship between borders and their representations. In Israel and Palestine, a region in which negotiating borders has become a way of life, I explore the ways in which ubiquitous boundaries have pervaded cultural production through a process that I term “bordering.” I draw on theoretical contributions from the fields of architecture, geography, anthropology, as well as literature and film studies to develop a conceptual framework for examining the ways in which authors, artists, and filmmakers engage with borders as a space to articulate possibilities of encounter, contestation, and transgression. I argue that in these works, the proliferation of borders has called into question the Palestinian cultural and political consensus that created a shared set of narratives, symbols, and places in Palestinian cultural production until the last decade of the 20th century. In its place has emerged a fragmented body of works that create what Jacques Rancière terms “dissensus,” or a disruption of a cultural, aesthetic, disciplinary, and spatial order. Read together, they constitute what I term a “border aesthetic,” in which literature, film, and art produce new types of spaces, narratives, and texts through the ruptures and fractures of the border. I trace the emergence of this aesthetic and the new genres and forms that distinguish it from earlier Palestinian literary, political, and intellectual projects through analyses of the works of Elia Suleiman, Sayed Kashua, Raba’i al-Madhoun, Emily Jacir, Yazid Anani, and Inass Yassin. In their attempts to grapple artistically with the region’s borders, these authors, directors, and artists create new codes, narratives, vernaculars, and spaces that reflect the fragmentation wrought by pervasive boundaries. These works, fluent in multiple mediums, genres, and languages, reveal both the possibilities and the limits of this aesthetic, as they seek to contest borders but nevertheless remain bound by them.Item The Borderlanders(2009-12) Rodriguez, Marcel Bernard; Stekler, Paul Jeffrey; Perez, Domino; Ramirez-Berg, CharlesThe following report describes the pre-production, production, and post-production of the short film, The Borderlanders, set and shot in South Texas. Its story centers on an immigrant youth who tries to escape the tensions that arise in one family coming together after many years of forced separation because of current immigration policies. It is a meditation on family dynamics and the intimate politics of the border. The report discusses the thought process behind creating images of Latinos in film, the writing of the film, and analyzes the creative choices that gave shape to the film. The original screenplay is included as well as the credits.Item Cagers(2013-12) Quiroz, Simon; Shea, Andrew Brendan; Lewis, Richard M., M.F.A.This report summarizes the script development, pre-production, production, and post- production stages of making the short film Cagers. The short was produced as my graduate thesis film in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of my Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Production.Item Chasing Afrodite : performing blackness and "excess flesh" in film(2012-08) Scott, Tynisha Shavon; Richardson, Matt, 1969-; Williams, Christine L.How do you address the continued prevalence of black women’s sexuality as commodifiable, censured, and coveted in mass culture? Chasing Afrodite offers one answer to this question through examining explicit cinematic performances of black women’s sexuality in mass media. This project deploys Nicole R. Fleetwood’s performative of “excess flesh” within one of the most visceral mediums proffering authentic renderings of black women’s sexuality: film. Through an analysis of two distinct films featuring non-simulated sexual performances by black women—Afrodite Superstar (dir. Abiola Abrams, 2007) and Ashley and Kisha: Finding the Right Fit (dir. Tony Comstock, 2007)—Chasing Afrodite explores the contradictions and contentions that still make public enactments of sex by black bodies so problematic. Though the directors and participants in both films eschew the label of pornography in favor of erotica or other less pejorative terms, their larger reception places them in a precarious place amongst other films with explicit sexual content. The women in these films refuse to unhinge hypersexuality from blackness and refract the dominant gaze by displaying their desires for a viewing audience. In doing so, their labor in these films intervenes in common discussions in black, feminist, and film studies that assume these images are inherently degrading.Item Children in post-Revolutionary Iranian cinema : visions of the future(2015-05) Houck, Kelly Lawrence; Atwood, Blake Robert, 1983-; Aghaie, KamranThis project focuses on children in Iranian cinema in the Islamic Republic era in order to examine how child characters reveal visions of their future in Iran. This analysis will help the reader understand how privilege functions in relation to citizenship in Iran. Prior research argues that children in Iranian cinema represent humanist themes and utopic images of Iranian society. My thesis builds on this work to argue that images of the child represent more nuanced imaginings of the future, dependent on their ability to confront problems successfully. This study does not consider children's films, but rather films with prominent child characters. It looks at child characters both as agents whose desires and anxieties drive the film's action and as objects with whom the audience can visualize the future. This project includes Children of Heaven (Bachcheh-hā-ye āsemān), The Mirror (Āineh), Where is the Friend's Home (Khāne-ye dust kojāst), Bashu, the Little Stranger (Bāshu gharibe-ye kuchek), Baran (Bārān), The Apple (Sib), Life, and Nothing More (Zandegi va digar hich), The White Balloon (Bādkonak-e sefid), and The Day I Became a Woman (Ruzi ke zan shodam). My thesis argues that the ways in which child characters interact with their environment highlight their level of privilege, revealing what types of individuals are best fit to thrive in Iranian society under the Islamic Republic. I argue that notions of citizenship and nationalism are integral to the characters' identities and indicated futures. Specifically, both ideal children and non-ideal children who maintain Iranian citizenship will have successful futures as participants in Iranian society, while non-Iranian nationals may not.Item Complicit(2011-12) Nehme, Michelle Lee; Howard, Donald Wayne; Schiesari, Nancy; Kearney, Mary C.The following report describes the process by which the thesis documentary film, Complicit, was made by Michelle Nehme. The film is about domestic sex trafficking in the United States and centers around the story of one American-born survivor. The film also includes testimony from anti-trafficking leaders in Austin, TX. The report discusses the issue at large, the process behind researching, pre-production, production and post-production of the film, and the creative choices made around the film. The original treatment is included, as well as the script written for the narrative strand. The report also discusses the struggles the filmmaker faced with the dark themes and the complexity of the issue during the course of making the film.Item Constructing Tibetanness from the 'in-between' : self-representations of hybrid identity in Tibetan fiction films(2016-05) Carlton, Scott Andrew; Frick, Caroline; Ramirez Berg, CharlesTibet is a contested and ambiguous concept perched precariously between multiple and contradictory sociocultural and historical discourses. In this thesis, I examine self-representation in the liminal space of Tibet through twelve Tibetan feature films in order to determine how the filmmakers, crew, and actors use the poetics of film to construe Tibetan individual, cultural, religious, political, and national identity. These films, with Tibetan directors, Tibetan actors, and largely Tibetan crews, have been described in the press as “Tibetan.” I adopt a neoformalist approach informed by postcolonial theory, especially Homi K. Bhabha’s conception of hybridity, to examine Tibetan self-representations in fictional feature films. The twelve films consistently make use of narrative structures in which protagonists embark on physical quests in order to locate ambiguous or unknowable entities. Their stories often take the form of road films, and emphasize internal yearning and development over external plot detail. Internal character development and identity are conveyed through cultural performance of songs, theater, and storytelling that serve as narrational devices for self-expression and identity articulation. Thematically, identity is represented on these journeys through paradigms of tradition and modernity, complex hybridity, and disenfranchised masculinities. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the career and films of auteur Pema Tseden, an internationally respected auteur. In Tseden’s films, the implications of liminality for Tibetan identity are dire, but the possibility for the processual and ongoing articulation and construction of Tibetanness through the medium of film are emphasized. This group of Tibetan film representations may not reveal an essential Tibetanness, but they do constituate an invaluable platform for critical deconstruction, formulation, articulation, and continual rearticulation of Tibetanness.Item Crafting digital cinema : cinematographers in contemporary Hollywood(2011-08) Lucas, Robert Christopher; Schatz, Thomas, 1948-; Strover, Sharon; Schiesari, Nancy; Hunt, Bruce; Hay, JamesIn the late 1990s, motion picture and television production began a process of rapid digitalization with profound implications for cinematographers in Hollywood, as new tools for “digital cinematography” became part of the traditional production process. This transition came in three waves, starting with a post-production technique, the digital intermediate, then the use of high-definition video and digital production cameras, and finally digital exhibition. This dissertation shows how cinematographers responded to the technical and aesthetic challenges presented by digital production tools as they replaced elements of the film-based, photochemical workflow. Using trade publications, mainstream press sources, and in-depth interviews with cinematographers and filmmakers, I chronicle this transition between 1998 and 2005, analyzing how cinematographers’ responded to and utilized these new digital technologies. I analyze demonstration texts, promotional videos, and feature films, including Pleasantville, O Brother Where Art Thou, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, The Anniversary Party, Personal Velocity, and Collateral, all of which played a role in establishing a discourse and practice of digital cinematography among cinematographers, producers and directors. The challenges presented by new collaborators such as the colorist and digital imaging technician are also examined. I discuss cinematographers’ work with standards-setting groups such as the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the studio consortium Digital Cinema Initiatives, describing it as an effort to protect “film-look” and establish look-management as a prominent feature of their craft practice. In an era when digitalization has made motion pictures more malleable and mobile than ever before, this study shows how cinematographers attempted to preserve their historical, craft-based sense of masterful cinematography and a structure of authority that privileges the cinematographer as “guardian of the image."Item Dedh Ishqiya : obscuring the female-bond(2014-08) Giles, Charlotte Helen Graziani; Hyder, Syed AkbarThrough his Bollywood film, Dedh Ishqiya, Abhishek Chaubey addresses matters of comfort and discomfort through the use of typically heteronormative conventions in film. The Bollywood film Dedh Ishqiya, tells the story of a wealthy widow’s search for a new poet husband in the setting of an Urdu poetry gathering (mushaira). She is accompanied and supported by her female friend and handmaiden, Munniya. Their two supposed lovers, Khalujaan and Baban, are thieves, out to steal the love and wealth of these women. However, unbeknownst to these men, the women are lovers themselves and they too are out to steal the love and wealth of a suitor so that they may run away together. Director and co-writer, Abhishek Chaubey, uses conventions drawn from the Sufi, Urdu, and bhakti poetic and literary aesthetic worlds. He builds up an aura of comfort through the use of these conventions. But, he focuses on the complex, but platonic female (sakhi) -bond. Chaubey uses the sakhi bond, as well as other conventions, to draw the viewer into a seemingly heteronormative and conventional (therefore, comfortable) film. But this viewer is then brutally let down when the film subverts those conventional tropes in favor of a non-heteronormative romance. Chaubey does this by referencing Ismat Chughtai’s short story, Lihaaf, and Ridley Scott’s film, Thelma and Louise in his film. Both story and film take the female-bond and complicate it in a way that forces the viewer to examine their own conceptions of comfort, especially those related to sexuality and romance. This thesis focuses on the process of building up comfort through a heteronormative-use of conventions, and then the breaking down of that comfort by referencing Lihaaf and Thelma and Louise.Item Defining Nazi film : the film press and the German cinematic project, 1933-1945(2012-05) Le Faucheur, Christelle Georgette; Crew, David F., 1946-; Hake, Sabine, 1956-This dissertation analyses the roles and functions of the German film press during the Third Reich and explores the changes and tensions that characterized German cinema and, by extension, German society during that time period. A close reading of three major publications -- a trade journal, Film-Kurier, a popular magazine, Filmwelt, and the regime's official publication, Der deutsche Film -- first challenges the traditional view of a monolithic, top down control by the Nazi regime. I show the extent and the limits of the regime's utilization of culture and media and demonstrate how different parties used the film press to pursue different, but not mutually exclusive goals. By delineating the film press as a more dynamic public forum than previously assumed, this study secondly informs us about the multifaceted uses and functions of the film publications, and about the changing relationships between the film industry and the regime, as well as the theater, the music, and the press industries. I combine a media specific approach--demonstrating the central role of film publications in articulating the contradictions within film culture--with an exploration of the media convergence in place at the time. I thus firmly position the film press at the nexus of politics, business, film professionals, and the audience, and uncover a lively, albeit restricted, discursive system, with theoretical and practical discussions about film, its achievements under the new regime, its weaknesses and the need for improvement. I focus on the three most discussed issues: the relationship between film and theater, between film and music, and, as a correlation of the two previous topics, the need to train a new generation of film professionals, the Nachwuchs. This dissertation thus traces an important moment in German film history characterized by sustained debates about political, technical, aesthetic, and social aspects of film. More importantly, it uses the film press as a mirror to some of the tensions that characterized German society along several divides such as the masses and the elite, the past and the present, as well as the contradictions in its treatment and representation of gender and sexuality.Item Devil's horse(2015-12) Roberson, Michael Jeffrey; Howard, Donald Wayne; Garrison, Andrew; Carter, MiaThis report summarizes the script development, pre-production, production, and post- production stages of making the short film Devil’s Horse. The short was produced as my graduate thesis film in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of my Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Production.Item Entiérrenme(2015-08) González González, Juan Pablo; Raval, P. J. (Paul James); Gopalan, Lalitha; Howard, Don W; Kelban, StuartThis report is about my thesis film Entiérrenme that in English translates to "Bury Me." In the following pages I do a recounting of the entire process for completing this piece from its conception, writing, pre-production, production and postproduction. The report begins with an introduction that explains the genesis of "Entiérrenme": Why I started getting interested in the subject and how I decided to write it. It also speaks about the circumstances that led me to put the project on hold for over one year, how I returned to it and what happened after that. After that it continues to address every one of the stages of production (pre, pro and post) in the form of a diary. It finally concludes with a reflection on what these years at the University of Texas at Austin have meant for me as a filmmaker and future educator.Item Fatakra : the story behind the firecrackers(2010-12) Mehta, Soham Kirit; Shea, Andrew Brendan; Gerald, Stephen; Howard, Donald; Smith, AlexThis report summarizes the process of developing, writing, directing, and finishing Fatakra, a short narrative film. The film was produced as my graduate thesis film in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of my Master of Fine Arts in Film Production. Additionally, this report contextualizes the making of FATAKRA within my development as an artist and filmmaker. Finally, the report looks forward as I complete what is commonly referred to as a “calling-card” film and leave an academic setting to pursue a filmmaking career.Item Finding the third space : a case study of developing multiple literacies in a foreign language conversation class(2010-05) Demont, Brandi Leanne; Swaffar, Janet K.; Schallert, Diane L.; Frizzi, Adria; Moore, Zena; Horwitz, Elaine K.The present inquiry is a qualitative case study of conversations and attitudes of students participating in a non-required, second-year conversation section offered as a voluntary adjunct to required second year courses in Italian. The findings in this dissertation support calls by policy makers in foreign language education who advocate for a more integrated and holistic approach to foreign language education. Through this empirical qualitative case study, I have used the construct of Third Space (Gutiérrez, 2008) to examine students’ development of multiple literacies (Swaffar & Arens, 2005) in a foreign language conversation-based classroom. The theory of Third Space is seen as a kind of authentic intersubjective space, where students’ ways of knowing and learning are accepted and expanded in the learning environment. The study describes the results from the implementation of a language pedagogy based on the model of multiple literacies in an Italian conversation class. Students in the class read and viewed a wide variety of authentic materials, around which they anchored their class discussions. Through activities involving multiple readings of the given text, the students co-constructed their interpretations based on personal experiences and on the socio-cultural background of the text. Students also engaged in self-reflective exercises documenting their own learning processes. Through interpretive analysis of student work produced in the class, the ecology of learner developments and the corresponding classroom talk are assessed. I have identified three major themes that are evident as essential elements to the students’ developing trans-linguistic proficiency in conjunction with their evolving cultural literacy. In particular, self-reflection and identity, expanded practices of knowing and learning, and the influence of semiotic mediation on classroom interactions are the three elements that define how these students articulated their Third Space in conjunction with this particular language learning context.Item Finding your inner villain : the evolution of muhahaha(2009-12) Cheong, Wayne Poh Kiat; Lewis, Richard M., M.F.A.; Garrison, AndrewIn this thesis report traces I detail the process from the conception of the idea through the arduous development and finally the final product of Wayne Cheong’s narrative screenplay. Also included are the numerous revisions that have resulted from his involvement in this project.