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• 1 2016-03-10T06:10:10-08:00 Supercuts 24 plain 2016-07-24T03:30:35-07:00 According to Andy Baio, who coined the term in April 2008, “‘[s]upercuts’ are obsessive-compulsive montages of video clips, meticulously isolating every instance of a single film, usually cliches, phrases, and other tropes” (Baio 2008).[47] In short, supercuts are condensed representations of a film or multiple films; commonly exhibiting recurring patterns of directorial trademarks or salient tropes. The most common means of portrayal are either successive examples that take up the entire video frame one after another, split-screen representation where examples are paralleled or juxtaposed, or, in some cases, successively edited clusters of multiple frames across the screen, resulting in a kaleidoscopic view. The ‘common’ supercut has no voice-over; it features a single piece of music throughout the entire montage and exempts diegetic sound, unless sound and music is (part of) the focus, as it is the case, for example, in Kogonada’s Sounds of Aronofsky (2012), or in Nelson Carvajal’s Pacino: Full Roar (2013) video.
  The supercut can be accompanied by a write-up, contextualizing the tone, scope and aim of the video, or simply listing the films cited. As for ways of listing the cited films, Zach Prewitt's The Last Thing You See: A Final Shot Montage (2013) provides an elegant solution where each fragment is individually and chronologically noted in the description box with clickable timecode-links that jump to the corresponding film scene in the video.
  Often curators of videographic platforms preface or contextualize the video with a write-up. This is a common alternative to the video’s author writing the accompanying article him or herself. Most notably, this is the set-up for [in]Transition, where audiovisual works are peer-reviewed and accompanied by a more scholarly – analytical and reflexive – write-up. In such processes, videos might be (re-)contextualized for specific audiences. More often than not, however, online videos are presented as without aid of any accompanying text or lists of quoted titles, thus trusting the viewer’s inferential judgment in figuring out the intention or ‘point’ behind their compilation – as it is the case in the completely non-annotated critical take on Claire Danes’s acting style in Slacktory’s The Claire Danes Cry Face Supercut (2012).
  Videos with identical aesthetics are offered in scholarly, as well as non-scholarly, circles – examples include Vimeo groups and channels, like “The Filmmakers”, or entertainment websites such as Flavorwire.com. Curiously, the expression ‘video essay’ is most often mentioned in video titles or descriptions by scholars and critics, while other, mostly non-professional, groups and platforms tend to label such videos (with identical rhetoric) as ‘tributes’ or simply ‘supercuts’.
              ​Bluntly summarized, the supercut elucidates a single phenomenon from a body of work or works as its thesis, made known implicitly through the title – see, for example, Kogonada’s Kubrick // One-Point Perspective (2012), and Breaking Bad // POV (2012).
  The videos themselves commonly provide a parade of examples underpinning the same single observation. In order to drive their points home, supercuts often embellish their compilations through technical manipulations, such as increasing the tempo of editing, superimposing corresponding shots, or employing graphic overlays. Superimpositions and graphic overlays are common in, but not exclusive to, Kogonada’s work. For an example of the latter, look at his Wes Anderson // Centered (2014) and, once more, Kubrick // One-Point Perspective [Figure 13].
  An extreme and, in terms of argumentative value and convincing reasoning, somewhat questionable example of graphic overlays can be found in Ali Shirazi’s There Will Be Blood / Through Numbers (2013).[48]
  Shirazi’s exploration of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 film denotes its focal points in the video description, and graphically superimposes its ‘findings’ (more like its ‘assumptions’ in form of graphs and calculations indicating the ubiquitous presence of the golden ratio in Anderson’s work) onto the video [Figure 14].
  Though aesthetically pleasing, the function and explanatory value of the graphics presented here become increasingly vague as the video progresses, rendering the already frail argument questionable [Figure 15]. Ultimately, the shaky status of the video is directly related to the lack of a clearly formulated thesis.
  In the years 2008-2014, supercuts commonly did not provide references to the films shown, perhaps thought of as redundant thus unnecessary when only one filmmaker is portrayed (halfway through 2015 there seems to be a gradual shift towards presenting lists with links). Kogonada’s videos, with titles in the line of “[subject] // [focus]”, as in the aforementioned Kubrick // One-Point Perspective, Breaking Bad // POV, as well as in his Tarantino // From Below (2012), and Wes Anderson // From Above (2012), followed the characteristics mentioned above: implicit thesis, video set to a piece of music, no works cited list.
  Similarly, Flavorwire introduced a collection of supercuts of “[name actor] Loses His Shit” that compile excerpts of climactic moments where actors deliver emotionally explosive performances – see, for example, Robert De Niro Loses His Shit (edited by Jason Bailey in 2013).
  The video by Nelson Carvajal follows the exact same principle – presenting a compilation of Al Pacino having a mental breakdown –, yet it is titled Press Play Video Essay – Pacino: Full Roar (2013).
  While, on the one hand, Flavorwire merely presents “details and credits” in its supercuts’ Vimeo description boxes and adds links to Flavorwire.com, Carvajal’s description, on the other hand, promises a “full article” by Matt Zoller Seitz and Carvajal himself – although it features little more than a discussion of specific Pacino-moments or the thrill of watching a video like this (and thereby it represents a work, once again, closer to celebratory fandom than systematic criticism or analysis). Neither the text nor the video allude to any form of ‘essay’ in terms of rhetoric or even content, yet the term is mentioned in the video title as well as in Seitz’s Press Play article (Seitz 2013). The main, and actually only, difference between the two supercuts is that one is featured on Flavorwire, which is a general site for cultural news and commentary, and was made by a staff member, while the other is on Press Play, which, according to the late Roger Ebert, is “[t]he best video essay source on the web” (see Press Play’s ‘about’ description), and made by a professional critic with an established online profile [Figure 16].
  A sub-genre of this approach to audiovisual rhetoric is what we propose to call compilational supercuts. This type of video demonstrates an inversion of variables, such as multiple directors being analyzed with one film example per filmmaker as opposed to multiple film examples per one director. Notably, Nelson Carvajal produces these types of videos for both educational as well as entertainment or celebratory purposes. Videos of the first category would be Video Essay: I Love Chocolate (2013), Video Essay: Slow Burn (2013), and the gamut of videos in Vimeo groups “35mm – A Group for Cinephiles”, “The Filmmakers” and “Cinematic Montage Creators”. An example of the latter category was just discussed above.
  Nelson Carvajal and Max Winter’s later work ​Women in the Works of Martin Scorsese (2014) shows the lack of evolution within this (sub-)genre. The first three minutes juxtapose footage of women verbally lashing out, and then, across Liza Minnelli’s rendition of New York, New York (in the film by the same title from 1977), a sequence shows women in roles as objects of affection. Though the video is thematically clear-cut, its ultimate goal is undefined beyond the simple aim of clustering and cataloging female performances in Scorsese’s films (even the types and roles are implicit).
  Although the supercut’s written accompaniment clarifies a lot regarding Carvajal and Winter’s aims (the write-up reveals an intention to display powerful women), one may wonder why the video’s authors did not work this information into the video itself (for example by giving a more suggestive and explanatory title). The accompanying information, in a form of an article, is revealed only through a link in the video’s description box on Vimeo; technically as well as rhetorically speaking, the moment the video is embedded, one loses such contextual information that actually could reveal the ‘point’ of the video. This is one of the key problems with this kind of video-plus-text clusters, especially when the text has such significant role in directing one’s reading and interpretation of the video in question.
  
  Examples of kaleidoscopic supercuts arrived somewhat later to the game, and certainly in smaller numbers. Salient and aesthetically quite powerful examples can be found in Kevin B. Lee’s Andrei Tarkovsky’s Cinematic Candles (2014) and Catherine Grant’s Intersection (2014).
  Both videos focus on one filmmaker and one film, yet attempt to represent their findings as visually condensed as possible: while Lee’s video shows all of 123 shots featuring a candle in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (1983), fanned out in 36 frames across the screen, Grant’s Intersection simultaneously shows all the sequences from Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) that play out to the same cello-theme waltz that recurs throughout the film [Figure 17].
  Similar ‘soft montage’[49] ​examples of split-screened and picture-in-picture paralleled presentations can be found in Ali Shirazi’s P.T. Anderson // Close-ups (2014) or in Kogonada’s Ozu // Passageways (2012).
  Both Lee’s and Grant’s videos are supplied with links to accompanying texts, ​indicated as “full description” (Lee) and “[y]ou can read more about this video” (Grant). The linked articles feature hermeneutic work that is exemplified and amplified in the videos: both authors isolate and then centralize a single trait that, they argue, unifies the film’s intricacies. The supplementary writing contextualizes, or better yet, warrants the approach and production of the videos. To show the range of the film trait – candle props and cello music – that these videos single out, they produced video that renders all of that singular device’s incarnations in a condensed perspective, which is more encompassing and aesthetically appealing than if one were to go through all of its manifestations one at a time, or present them via static stills. Though technically speaking more a dataset than an analysis, the kaleidoscopic supercut is a very potent form.
• 1 2016-03-10T06:25:10-08:00 Essay / essai / criticism / analysis / theory / research paper / experiment / play 15 plain 2016-07-01T07:46:41-07:00 At this point we would like to return to Erlend Lavik, who aptly stated that

  it is [hard] to gauge the internet’s impact on the quality of film and television criticism, mainly because developments are so diverse and contradictory. Online criticism ranges from brilliant to banal, and it is as easy to argue that film criticism has never been better as it is to argue that is has never been worse. It merely depends on where we cast our nets and on what evaluative criteria we bring into play. (Lavik 2012)

  Subsequently, he expresses his hopes for the development of the audiovisual essay-form as follows:

  First and foremost, I would like to see the audiovisual film criticism offer more ideas, in greater detail and greater depth[.] It is a tall order indeed, of course, but it is possible to envisage audiovisual work as densely informational and intellectually ambitious as a traditional scholarly article. (ibid, our emphasis)

  While we profoundly sympathize with this expression – it is in fact this shared wish that prompted our book –, Lavik’s statement is problematized directly by his own hand, in two-ways. Firstly, note the title of his manifesto: ‘The Future of Academic Film and Television Criticism’. While it is perfectly fair to perform ‘academic criticism’, we have set our hopes for something more elaborate. Secondly, following the criteria Lavik sets up after this definition, it is not hard to see why we would prefer the inclusion of ‘academic’ to propel works of ‘theory’ or ‘analysis’, and why the precise exclusion of these terms is both problematic and telling. It denotes the dominant tendency within audiovisual reflection on film: critique. Mapping authorial tendencies and themes is not academic work in itself; furthering analytical insight informed by existing theory is. But perhaps the best signifier for the work to be done is the way in which Lavik compromises his own instigation: his own otherwise rather superb audiovisual efforts fall short of the high bar he himself wishes to set.[67] This distinguishes Lavik’s case from that of, for example, Catherine Grant, who actively and openly steers away from translating principles of academic writing and autonomous video altogether.[68] In any case, Lavik’s observation that “the video essay is still in its infancy” (Lavik 2012) is arguably still relevant some years after it was formulated, despite vehement efforts to progress the form. As we hope to illustrate, this is, in part, because of the reluctance to emulate more established forms of research with audiovisual means. Those currently working in the form are repeatedly stating they are in search of new ideas, strategies, and criteria. We would argue, however but not against these voices, that translating established principles will garner these new ideas when molded to the new audiovisual form of expression.
  
  During the [in]Transition launch, Catherine Grant posited a rhetorical question; one that can be regarded as undercutting the alternative as a viable option; one that practically disputes the method taken in our plea directly:

  Here is a ridiculous rhetorical question: ‘should we be aiming to ‘translate’ written Film Studies into audiovisual ones? Or should we embrace from the outset the idea that we are creating ontologically new scholarly forms?’ I genuinely believe that despite the fact that this work has an enormous tradition and comes from various different strands of audiovisual work from the past, actually it is ontologically new, because of the digital online context. That added, really spices up the mix a lot in ways we don’t really understand yet. ([in]Transition launch-video, Part II, at around 08:25)

  This statement explicates what is excavated in our first two chapters. Though we have tried to provide a relatively descriptive diachrony of mediatized Film Studies in those chapters, we would now like to elaborate on the theoretical lacuna that inspired this book. The inclusion of media beyond text in Film Studies has served to attain a mode of research where the object of study and the results of study could fold into one another. The shorthand we used earlier for this was ‘Bellourian’, due to the fact that it resembles the construct Raymond Bellour mused on in a time when this was technologically impossible. However, and without dramatizing the situation, one could say that the moment when we were finally able to achieve this ‘Bellourian’ mode of film analysis marks exactly the moment that signifies a scholarly wish of disconnecting from traditional scholarship. If we follow these scholars’ train of thought, from this point on, Film Studies resembles creative efforts like personal filmmaking or multimedia paratexts more than a written presentation of scholarly findings. Earlier we ascribed this to the fact that new technological possibilities usually incline their early adopters to dive into the medium specifics, but in the light of the build-up to a ‘Bellourian’ possibility of Film Studies, this disconnect becomes historically ironic. We will discuss the relativity of this shift and the intricacies of film’s multimodal character in greater detail later on.[69] But first let us consider the second part of Grant’s statement: despite the fact that videos could suffice without online connectivity, the ‘2.0’ (however dated that term may seem) interconnectivity is ingrained in their structure. We have touched upon one side of this question in our Introduction,[70] and now we will regard another. The following example serves to illustrate the ease by which online sharing can instate a fast spurt of production, and stress both Grant’s statement about the yet unknown potential and workings of the form, as well as our disclaimer according to which it is impossible to make this book an encompassing work. Shortly after we started to write the first draft, a succession of videos surfaced that, to us, signified a new phase in the video essay development – one of re-mixing and re-essaying others’ video essays.
              ​On March 17th, 2014, Kogonada uploaded Wes Anderson // Centered, a compilational supercut-video displaying a succession of shots with central compositions, taken from Anderson’s oeuvre to date.[71] To accentuate his point, at given moments Kogonada superimposes a dotted line from top to bottom down the center of the screen, lining up perfectly with Anderson’s tableaus.
  Two days later, on March 19th, film student Megan Devaney uploaded Wes Anderson // Mirrored, showing the same video, only now with half of the image folded onto the other side of the dotted line, thus further underpinning the centralized character of Anderson’s compositions, as well as playfully referencing Kogonada’s work.[72] 
  This, in turn, inspired Luis Enrique Rayas’ Wes Anderson // Kaleidoscoped, which was uploaded on Vimeo two days after Devaney’s video (March 21st).
  Rayas’ version says little about Anderson’s work anymore, but all the more about the ability to pull footage off the Internet, remix, and then (re-)upload it.[73] Precisely so, in an attempt to broaden the lexicon in video essays considering ‘auteurs’ and users of central composition, Vimeo user LaurentG made Peter Greenaway // Centered, presented in a similar fashion as the initial Kogonada video (with the added goal of having someone outside of the ‘usual suspects’ – Wes and Paul Thomas Anderson, Kubrick, Tarantino, etc. – being featured in a video essay on film visuals). This work was uploaded only one day after said Centered video.[74]
  With each successive reincarnation, the manifestations moved away from analytical work, and become reconfigurations of the medial representation itself, rather than of the source material. They signify explorations of presentational form, not the content of ‘the film object’ [Figure 34].
  Obviously, this phenomenon is yet another example of an instance where attention for the medium overrides the original intentions of the analytical work, and, to a certain degree, overshadows its informational possibilities. More importantly, this particular example illustrates that the 2.0-elements of video essaying do not necessarily bring about the benefits of collectivity from an academic point of view (except for those studying the video essay form itself, or those upholding less rigorous criteria for what constitutes academic research). Connecting this back to Grant’s statement, one can see that evaluation as presented in this book can validly re-direct or re-purpose trends in video essaying: Grant on the one hand advocates to “embrace from the outset (…) that we are creating ontologically new scholarly forms”, while, on the other hand, admitting that the elements that make this format ontologically new mix things up “in ways we don’t really understand yet.” It would be advisable to at least not fully ignore the scholarly tradition that preceded video. Most of the video essays today present themselves as ‘ontologically new forms’, but they are by no means automatically ‘scholarly’ – the only aspect warranting that at the moment would be the fact that a scholar produced and often annotated the video, however, the outcome of these efforts is almost indistinguishable from non-scholars.