Animated films present a unique set of challenges and questions to scholars examining films from a cognitive perspective. When the confines of the real world don’t exist as they do in live action films, the filmmaker is confronted with creating the entire narrative space from scratch (Buchan, 2011; Buchan, 2006). How do animators manage this seemingly enormous task? This question certainly pred...

This paper describes recent developments in the use of the "absent but implicit" in narrative therapy. Michael White used the term "absent but implicit" to convey the understanding that in the expression of any experience of life, there is a discernment we make between the expressed experience and other experiences that have already been given meaning and provide a contrasting backdrop, which "...

Like Hollywood cinema, gong’an drama seizes upon the dramatic and narrative potential of legal trials. Yet, while Hollywood trial films turn viewers into jurors, pushing them back and forth between the competing stories that emerge from the adversarial process, gong’an drama eschews any recognition of opposing narratives, instead centering on the punishment of decidedly guilty criminals. The mo...

This paper analyses the changing use of shot scales and shot types in the films of Alfred Hitchcock from The Pleasure Garden (1925) to The Birds (1963) in the context of the introduction of sound technology to British cinema in 1929 and the director’s move from Britain to Hollywood in 1939. A sample of 42 films was divided into 3 subgroups (British silent films [ = 9]; British sound films [ = 1...

In this media theoretical and critical elaboration we intend to close the gap between music in static linear and non-linear interactive media. We will give a brief overview on media music perception and its historical development that enables us to recognize parallels between music in films and games and, thereby, uncover future perspectives of interactive media music. According to this, we wil...

This paper argues for a robust notion of collective identity which is not reduced to a psychological conception of identity. In a first part the debate on the concept of identity raised by several authors is taken up critically with the intention to defend a strong sociological conception of identity which by definition is a collective identity. The basic assumption is that collective identitie...

While writing these sentences the composer Weill remained skeptical about the working process and the pressure put on the composers in the film industry (Weill, 1946), but at the same time he admired the knowledge and the work of the composers in developing and integrating an audio-visual composition. This chapter will explore our recent knowledge of how (film) music modulates affective respons...