Description
In The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement, author Jordan Schonig provides a new way of theorizing cinematic motion by examining cinema's "motion forms": structures, patterns, or shapes of movement unique to the moving image. From the wild and unpredictable motion of flickering leaves and swirling dust that captivated early spectators, to the pulsing abstractions that emerge from rapid lateral tracking shots, to the bleeding pixel-formations caused by the glitches of digital video compression, each motion form opens up the aesthetics of movement to film theoretical inquiry.By pairing close analyses of onscreen movement in narrative and experimental films with concepts from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Henri Bergson, and Immanuel Kant, Schonig rethinks longstanding assumptions within film studies, such as indexical accounts of photographic images and analogies between the camera and the human eye. Arguing against the intuition that cinema reproduces our natural perception of motion, The Shape of Motion shows how cinema's motion forms do not merely transpose the movements of the world in front of the camera, they transform them.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction Moving toward Form The Problem of "Movement"Perceiving FormImaged MotionDescribing MotionChapter 1 Contingent Motion Kant's Beautiful ViewsEarly Cinema's Water-Effects FilmsCGI's Fuzzy ObjectsFrom the Novelty of Motion to Forms of MotionChapter 2 Habitual GesturesWays of MovingWays of Moving DifferentlyThe Cultivation of HabitCapturing the In-BetweenChapter 3 Durational Metamorphosis Cinematic Slowness and DurationDuration Made VisibleFrom Natural to Supernatural Metamorphosis: Silent LightFrom Sleeping to SeeingChapter 4 Spatial Unfurling From Moving to UnfurlingLateral Camera MovementSeeing DoubleAspects of the Moving CameraChapter 5 Trajective Locomotion Approaching TrajectivityA World of TrajectivitiesExploring ExceptionsThe Ethics of the Moving CameraChapter 6 Bleeding PixelsMovement-Sensitive SpectatorshipA Pedagogy of Motion PerceptionSeeing Movement MoveConclusion Movement as Excess
