Screen Media offers screen enthusiasts the analytical and theoretical vocabulary required to articulate responses to film and television. The authors emphasise the importance of 'thinking on both sides of the screen'. They show how to develop the skills to understand and analyse how and why a screen text was shot, scored, and edited in a particular way, and then to consider what impact those production choices might have on the audience.
Stadler and McWilliam set production techniques and approaches to screen analysis in historical context. They demystify technological developments and explain the implications of increasing convergence of film and television technologies. They also discuss aesthetics, narrative, realism, genre, celebrity, cult media and global screen culture. Throughout they highlight the links between screen theory and creative practice.
With extensive international examples, Screen Media is an ideal introduction to critical engagement with film and television.
Introduction: Thinking on both sides of the screen
1 By design: Art direction and mise en sc ne construction
2 Cinematography: Writing in light and movement
3 The invisible magic of sound
4 At the edge of the cut: Editing from continuity to montage
5 Plotting and planning: Storytelling and reviewing techniques
6 Screen narratives
7 Reality and realism: Seeing is believing
8 Genre: Something new based on something familiar'
9 Star struck: Fandom and the discourse of celebrity
10 Skating the edge: Cult media and the (inter)active audience
11 The crowded screen: Transcultural influences and new directions in visual culture
Glossary
Bibliography
Film credits
Game credits
Television credits
Biography
Jane Stadler is Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland. She is author of Pulling Focus: Intersubjective Experience, Narrative Film and Ethics and co-author with Michael O'Shaughnessy of Media and Society. Kelly McWilliam is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology. She is author of When Carrie Met Sally: Lesbian Romantic Comedies and co-editor with John Hartley of Story Circle: Digital Storytelling around the World.
'Screen Media offers a systematic approach to film and television analysis. The examples chosen by the authors are both appropriate and timely, and are presented in a very lively and readable form that will appeal to an international readership.' - Rebecca L. Abbott, Professor of Film, Video + Interactive Media, Quinnipiac University, USA
