Transmedia Directors focuses on artist-practitioners who work across media, platforms and disciplines, including film, television, music video, commercials and the internet. Working in the age of media convergence, today's em/impresarios project a distinctive style that points toward a new contemporary aesthetics. The media they engage with enrich their practices - through film and television (with its potential for world-building and sense of the past and future), music video (with its audiovisual aesthetics and rhythm), commercials (with their ability to project a message quickly) and the internet (with its refreshed concepts of audience and participation), to larger forms like restaurants and amusement parks (with their materiality alongside today's digital aesthetics). These directors encourage us to reassess concepts of authorship, assemblage, transmedia, audiovisual aesthetics and world-building.
Providing a vital resource for scholars and practitioners, this collection weaves together insights about artist-practitioners' collaborative processes as well as strategies for composition, representation, subversion and resistance.
Carol Vernallis teaches in the music department at Stanford University, USA. She is the author of Experiencing Music Video (2004) and Unruly Media (2013) and is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics (2013) and The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media (2013).
Holly Rogers is Reader in Music at Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music (2013) and editor of Music and Sound in Documentary Film (2014) and The Music and Sound of Experimental Film (2017).
Lisa Perrott is Senior Lecturer and Programme Convener of Screen and Media Studies at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, and is co-editor, with Ana Cristina Mendes, of Navigating with the Blackstar: The Mediality of David Bowie (special issue of Celebrity Studies, 2019) and David Bowie and Transmedia Stardom (2019).
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
1. Introduction: Intensified Movements
Carol Vernallis (Stanford University, USA), Holly Rogers (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK), and Lisa Perrott (University of Waikato, New Zealand)
PART ONE: Collaborative Authorship: Wes Anderson
2. The Wes Anderson Brand: New Sincerity Across Media
Warren Buckland (Oxford Brooks University, UK)
3. The World of Wes Anderson and Mark Mothersbaugh: Between Childhood and Adulthood in The Royal Tenenbaums
Theo Cateforis (Syracuse University, USA)
4. Analogue Authenticity and the Sound of Wes Anderson
Ben Winters (Open University, UK)
5. The Instrumentarium of Wes Anderson and Alexandre Desplat
Ewan Clark (Victoria University of Wellington, Australia)
PART TWO: Cross-Medial Assemblage and the Making of the Director
6. Our Lives in Pink: Sofia Coppola as Transmedia Audiovisual Stylist
Jeff Smith (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
7. Short-form Media as Style Lab: The Education of Michael Bay
Mark Kerins (Southern Methodist University, USA)
PART THREE: Transmedial Relations and Industry
8. Whirled Pieces: Bong Joon Ho's Snowpiercer and the Components of Global Transmedia Production
J.D. Connor (School of Cinematic Arts, USA)
9. David Fincher's Righteous Workflow: Design and the Transmedial Director
Graig Uhlin (Oklahoma State University, USA)
PART FOUR: Music Video's Forms, Genres and Surfaces
10. A Conversation with Emil Nava
Carol Vernallis (Stanford University, USA)
11. Risers, Drops and a Fourteen-foot Cube: A Transmedia Analysis of Emil Nava, Calvin Harris and Rihanna's "This Is What You Came For"
Brad Osborn (University of Kansas, USA)
12. On Colour Magic: Emil Nava's 'Feels' and 'Nuh Ready Nuh Ready'
Jonathan Leal (Stanford University, USA)
PART FIVE: Music Video's Centrifugal Forces
13. Dave Meyers's Moment of Audiovisual Bliss
Carol Vernallis (Stanford University, USA)
14. The Alchemical Union of David Bowie and Floria Sigismondi: 'Transmedia Surrealism' and 'Loose Continuity'
Lisa Perrott (University of Waikato, New Zealand)
15. Filmic Resonance and Dispersed Authorship in Sigur Rós' Transmedial Valtari Mystery Film Experiment
Gareth Schott and Karen Barbour (University of Waikato, New Zealand)
PART SIX: Audiovisual Emanations: David Lynch
16. The Audiovisual Eerie: Transmediating Thresholds in the Work of David Lynch
Holly Rogers (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
17. When Is a Door Not a Door?: Transmedia to the nth Degree in David Lynch's Multiverse
Greg Hainge (University of Queensland, Australia)
18. On (vari-)Speed Across David Lynch's Work
John McGrath (University of Surrey, UK)
19. Journeying into the Land of the Formless Real with Lynch and Simondon
Elena Del Río (University of Alberta, Canada)
PART SEVEN: Multi-vocality, Synchronicity and Transcendent Cinematics: Barry Jenkins
20. 'Let Me Show You What That Song Really Is': Nicholas Britell on the Music of Moonlight
Dale Chapman (Bates College, USA)
21. If Beale Street Could Talk, What'd Be Playing in the Background?: First Notes on Music, Film, Time and Memory
Kwami Coleman (New York University, USA)
22 The Shot and the Cut: Joi McMillon's and Barry Jenkins's Artistry
Carol Vernallis (Stanford University, USA)
PART EIGHT: Community, Identity and Transmedial Aspirations across the Web
23. Multimodal and Transmedia Subjectivity in Animated Music Video: Jess Cope and Steven Wilson's 'Routine' from Hand. Cannot. Erase. (2015)
Lori Burns (School of Music, Canada)
24. Jay Versace's Instagram Empire: Queer Black Youth, Social Media and New Audiovisual Possibilities
Gabrielle Veronique (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
PART NINE: Diagramatic, Signaletic and Haptic Unfoldings across Forms and Genres: Lars Von Trier
25. The Demonic Quality of Darkness in The House That Jack Built: Haptic Transmedial Affects Throughout the Work of Lars von Trier
Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen (School of Communication and Culture, Denmark)
26. Diamonds, Wagner, the Gesamtkunstwerk and Lars von Trier's Depression Films
Linda Badley (Middle Tennessee State University, USA)
27 Lars von Trier, Brecht and the Baroque Gesture
Donald Greig (University of Nottingham, UK)
Notes
Bibliography
Index