essay on audio visual communication

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Download Free PDF

Writing with Sound and Vision THE AUDIOVISUAL ESSAY IN THE CLASSROOM

2019, Screen Education

A medium that is revolutionising film criticism and bridging the gap between theory and practice, the audiovisual essay is also increasingly being taken up as a pedagogical tool. Providing an overview of the findings and ideas presented in the November 2018 symposium Not Another Brick in the Wall; Teaching and Researching the Audio Video Essay, Catherine fowler and sean redmond argue that the form offers students opportunities to develop their own voices, analytical skills and creative practices. In this era of constant, relentless testing and assessment .of students, it seems as if there is less free space in the classroom for curiosity and discovery. Attainment standards and benchmarking constantly shape the terrain we work within, while the strictures of the marketplace, such as targets and deliverables, have resulted in the slow rationalisation of pedagogy. National curricula in the school system and learning outcomes at tertiary level are clearly necessary, but an overemphasis on results has built new, datafied walls in front of imaginative learning and teaching. As teachers and educationalists, we feel it is our responsibility to lay siege to these walls, since they constrain what and ho we teach- and what is more, they seem to be restricting how our students think and create....

Related papers

Media Practice and Education, 2021

In this special issue our goal is to explore the ways in which the audio-visual essay transforms the relationship between screen theory and creative practice, and creates new learning and teaching encounters for teachers and students to engage with the moving image. By bringing together theory and practice, and teaching and research, the special edition intends to create a dynamic dialogue between them, enriching and extending the ways in which we together can think and make the world anew. As the Journal of Media Practice and Education enters the end of its second decade, the audio-visual essay provides one example of how research and teaching have been ‘joined up’. In the editorial for the first issue of the journal John Adams asserts that, ‘It is in many ways surprising that the rich and diverse culture of practice-based media teaching has yet to give rise to an associated culture of joined-up research’ (2000, 3). The questions that guide this special edition are: What kind of creative practice research does the audio-visual essay offer teachers, artists and scholars? What lessons can be learnt from the history and development of practice-based teaching and research in tertiary and higher education for this emerging form? What new perspectives and models does it present for contesting perceived divisions between those who make and those who think? How may the audio-visual essay liberate our research and pedagogical practices? What research and teaching limitations may the audio-visual essay engender?

Media Practice and Education, 2020

This article explores how the video essay can be part of a radical pedagogy in the arts and humanities. Written as a dialogue between a screen studies educationalist and a researcher in contemporary education theory, the article examines the different ways that the video essay can be argued to reframe and resist dominant forms of pedagogy. Drawing on small-scale empirical research with a cohort of third year undergraduates at Deakin University, each of the authors read the data through a specific lens: Sean looks to the ideas and themes of radical pedagogy; and Jo draws upon contemporary assessment research. While the article starts from their different positions, it comes together to recognise their shared belief in learning and assessment that thinks and creates outside the box. KEYWORDS: Video essay, learning, criticality, creativity, radical pedagogy, assessment policy

International Journal of Film and Media Arts Vol. 5 No. 2 (2020): GEECT Special Issue: Mapping Artistic Research in Film , 2020

This article seeks to foster reflection on film pedagogy and research, encouraging academics to engage in artistic research and teaching methods. It specifically focuses on the video essay as a teaching and learning method, one that requires the willingness to take risks, but also, that can lead to a transformative experience in a still hierarchical educational system. The increasing openness to video essays in film journals shows an awareness of the way in which artistic research may contribute to decolonise academia. The practice of video essays leads to an inclusive, collaborative and polyphonic research environment, which dismantles the idea of a film canon. It contests the privileged position of the written ‘text’, when this is just understood as the written word. It also contributes to blurring the distance between the status of students and that of researchers. It invites them to assimilate work practices, curating and filmmaking, which sometimes happen simultaneously, curating through filmmaking. This article shares the example of the design of the video essay as a creative assessment method for two film modules in the MA Global Cinemas and the BA Creative Arts at SOAS, University of London. It stresses the importance of connecting research, practice and teaching, that is, the recursive study of film through film. It suggests that through making video essays class members become co-curators of the course, where learning is a multi-directional and collaborative experience.

Ekphrasis - Images, Cinema, Theory, Media , 2021

Book review of Beyond the Essay Film: Subjectivity, Textuality and Technology, edited by Julia Vassilieva and Deane Williams. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020, 245 pages. ISBN: 978-94-6372-870-6 (hardback)

Comparative Cinema, 2022

Born out of modern cinema, the essay film departed from the dominant forms of fiction and documentary cinema in order to explore an unknown territory defined by subjectivity, hybridization and reflection, evolving to become “a form that thinks,” as Jean-Luc Godard defined it. The final decades of the twentieth century witnessed the consolidation of the essay film, which was enabled by postmodern thought and culture, as well as by the development of video recording technology. In this mode, works by Chris Marker, Roberto Rossellini, Orson Welles, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jonas Mekas, Harun Farocki, Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, Guy Maddin, Peter Watkins, Chantal Akerman, Alexander Kluge or Johan van der Keuken, among many others, developed a practice of audiovisual thinking for which Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988−1998) could be considered the epitome, marking a turning point that also took place at the end of the century. Over the last twenty years, this essayistic practice has proliferated due to the digital revolution, facilitating diverse experiences of subjectivity and intimacy, and multiplying the possibilities of audiovisual editing; that is, of the very thinking process that defines this filmic form. Taking this itinerary into account, this issue proposes to analyze the manifestations of the contemporary essay film in relation to its audiovisual thinking process in search of the connotations, tendencies, specificities and transformations of this audiovisual form in the twenty-first century.

A Pedagogy of Cinema is the first book to apply Deleuze's concept of cinema to the pedagogic context. Cinema is opened up by this action from the straightforward educative analysis of film, to the systematic unfolding of image. A Pedagogy of Cinema explores what it means to engender cinema-thinking from image. This book does not overlay images from films with an educational approach to them, but looks to the images themselves to produce philosophy. This approach to utilising image in education is wholly new, and has the potential to transform classroom practice with respect to teaching and learning about cinema. The authors have carefully chosen specific examples of images to illustrate such transformational processes, and have fitted them into in depth analysis that is derived from the images. The result is a combination of image and text that advances the field of cinema study for and in education with a philosophical intent. " This outstanding new book asks a vital question for our time. How can we educate effectively in a digitalized, corporatized, Orwellian-surveillance-controlled, globalized world? This question is equally a challenge asked of our ability to think outside of the limiting parameters of the control society, and the forces which daily propel us ever-quicker towards worldwide homogenization. With great lucidity, Cole and Bradley offer us profound hope in Gilles Deleuze's increasingly popular notion of 'cine-thinking'. They explore and explain the potential that this sophisticated idea holds for learning, in an easy going and accessible way, and with a range of fantastic films: from 'Suspiria' and 'Performance' through to 'Under the Skin' and 'Snowpiercer'. This extremely engaging and compelling text is likely to enliven scholars and students everywhere. " – David Martin-Jones, Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow, UK

Artha - Journal of Social Sciences

This article aims to explore pedagogic spaces in autonomous institutions and the identities they enable. It situates this exploration in the undergraduate General English classrooms and works with the uses of differing printed-literary and audio-visual media. It also attempts to show how both writing as text and film as text have equal value in undergraduate classrooms. Films, it is proposed, can be more than supplementary/ complementary texts to the much more conventional written-printed ones. They can and ought to occupy an equally privileged position in the teaching-learning process because they provide possibilities for critical understanding and engagement inside the classroom space. It is also argued that films have serious academic and learning potential than is often presumed to be. The article employs for its analysis reports of reception of films within a pedagogic space from student-respondents. In the process of the analysis, the article seeks to construe how classrooms ...

KnE Social Sciences

This essay describes an academic experience that both authors shared during a research visit to Russia in November 2018. The goal of this experience was to introduce participants (students and professors) to the notion of multimodal writing as an alternative to how we create texts in class. The essay first contextualizes the idea of “post-literacy” as part of a worldwide move to rethink literacy, especially in this century. The essay then conceptualizes the notion of multimodality as a feature of these “post-literacies” and contextualizes this concept within the practical experience as both authors undertook in a masterclass at a Russian institution. For the masterclass, the authors asked everybody to make videos using only one smartphone and any other resources they had right beside them. After sharing what the activity was about and what attendants did, the authors provide a final moment of reflexivity for others who may want to consider implementing multimodal texts in their cla...

The Atlantic, 2023

Applied Linguistics, 2019

arini, 2019

Theory and Practice: Implications of social constructivism in education, 2023

DABIR N8, 2021

Yapı Elemanları-I: Temel ve Duvar, 2023

Revista CTS, 2018

Discipline Filosofiche, 2024

Le Bronze moyen et l’origine du Bronze final en Europe occidentale, de la Méditerranée aux pays nordiques (XVIIe-XIIIe siècle avant notre ère), Colloque APRAB “Bronze 2014”, 2017

EPJ Web of Conferences, 2012

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), 2023

Proceedings from the Fifth Annual IEEE SMC Information Assurance Workshop, 2004.

Genes, 2021

Gynecologic Oncology, 2020

ILMU KELAUTAN: Indonesian Journal of Marine Sciences, 2021

Sosiohumaniora: jurnal ilmu-ilmu sosial dan humaniora, 2013

Food chemistry, 2016

Fisheries Research, 2015

Related topics

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Scroll to top

• Book a Demo

Audio Visual Communication – What it is, Primary Components, Impact, & Significance 

• Author Vibhav Singh
• Published May 22, 2024
• 0 comments Join the Conversation

What is Audio Visual Communication? Primary Components & Significances

Audio visual communication combines the power of sound and visual elements to create a dynamic and engaging method of conveying information. This form of communication is crucial in today’s technology-driven world, as it enhances understanding and retention by stimulating many senses. Whether used in corporate meetings, educational environments, healthcare, or entertainment, AV communication employs various tools, including projectors, microphones, video conferencing systems, and interactive whiteboards. The versatility and effectiveness of AV communications make it an invaluable tool for bridging geographical gaps, fostering collaboration, and ensuring that messages are delivered.

Key Takeaways

• Audio visual communication enhances audience engagement by combining auditory and visual elements for more impactful interactions.
• Utilizing audio visual multimedia formats in AV communication improves information retention by stimulating many senses.
• Modern AV solutions like video conferencing systems and interactive displays ease seamless, real-time collaboration across geographical distances.
• AV communication’s versatility is evident in its applications across education, healthcare, corporate environments, and entertainment sectors.
• Features like AI-driven transcriptions and digital signage in AV communications enhance accessibility, inclusivity, and the communication experience.

What is Audio Visual Communication?

Audio visual communication refers to transmitting information using sound and visual components. This dynamic method enhances understanding and retention by engaging many senses. In presentations, educational settings, and corporate meetings, audio visual communication employs projectors, microphones, video conferencing systems, and interactive whiteboards. Integrating these technologies facilitates clearer, more impactful exchanges of ideas and data.

Another important aspect of audio visual communication is its ability to bridge geographical gaps, enabling real-time interaction and collaboration among participants in different locations. Advanced systems can also incorporate artificial intelligence for automated transcriptions and translations, further enhancing accessibility and efficiency. By combining auditory and visual elements, this form of communication improves clarity and supports diverse learning styles and preferences, making it a crucial component in modern information dissemination.

✓ No Credit Card Required.

What Are The 6 Basic Components Of AV Communication?

When we talk about AV communication, the next thing that comes to our mind is what components it includes. Here, we have shared a list of audio visual equipment that can help you communicate better:

Audio and Video Conferencing Solutions

Real-time communication requires audio and video conferencing systems incorporating speakers, microphones, and high-definition cameras. Modern systems’ capabilities, such as virtual backdrops, auto-framing cameras, and noise cancellation, improve meeting quality. Advanced systems may also include AI-driven features like automatic transcriptions and language translation to provide accessibility and inclusion for a worldwide audience.

Digital Displays and Signage

Digital displays and signage are necessary for distributing information in various contexts, including public and business places. They show dynamic material, such as ads and real-time statistics, on high-resolution screens. These displays are flexible tools for communication since they are simple to update and change and have touchscreen audio visual technology that increases audience participation.

Video Walls

Video walls combine many screens to create a large, unified display. These installations are often used in control rooms, broadcast studios, and public venues to provide expansive and immersive visual experiences. Video walls can be configured in various sizes and shapes, offering flexibility in design. Advanced video wall solutions include features like bezel-less screens for seamless visuals and high brightness and contrast ratios to ensure visibility even in well-lit environments. Additionally, video walls can integrate real-time data feeds and interactive capabilities for enhanced functionality.

Video walls consist of many screens that merge to create a larger screen and a unified display. These installations are often used for large events, control rooms, and broadcast studios.

Interactive Displays

Interactive displays combine touch technology with high-resolution screens to create engaging and interactive user experiences. Used in educational settings and corporate environments, these displays support activities such as collaborative brainstorming, interactive presentations, and digital whiteboarding. Advanced interactive displays come equipped with multi-touch capabilities, allowing many users to interact. They also support various input methods, including styluses and gesture recognition, making them versatile tools for enhancing communication and collaboration.

Audio Enhancement Technology

Audio enhancement technology is critical in ensuring clear and intelligible sound during audio visual communication. This AV technology includes tools like microphones, speakers, amplifiers, and soundbars designed to capture and deliver high-quality audio. Advanced audio enhancement systems feature technologies such as beamforming microphones, which focus on the speaker’s voice while minimizing background noise, and acoustic echo cancellation to prevent feedback. These innovations ensure that every participant can communicate regardless of the environment.

AV Control Systems

Control systems are the backbone of integrated AV communication setups, allowing users to manage various components from a centralized interface. These audio visual control systems can control lighting, audio, video, and environmental settings, streamlining the operation of complex AV systems. Modern control systems often include touch panels, mobile apps, and voice control options for intuitive management. Advanced features like automation and scheduling enhance efficiency, enabling seamless transitions between different presentation modes and environments. These systems ensure a smooth and effective AV experience by providing comprehensive control.

What Is the Impact and Significance of AV Communication?

Professionally designed AV communication solutions offer many benefits, including higher audience engagement, improved information retention, strengthened brand and emotional connections, enhanced experiences, and extended reach. For more insights, check out our article on the power of audio and video communication here.

Improved Information Retention

People tend to grasp information better when presented in audio visual multimedia format. AV communication leverages this advantage to ensure that messages and content are memorable. AV presentations solidify key concepts and enhance memory retention by engaging many senses.

Strengthened Brand and Emotional Connections

AV communication is a powerful tool for fostering emotional connections. Combining visual storytelling, compelling audio, and interactive elements can evoke emotions. Leading to a deeper connection with the audience. This emotional engagement strengthens brand loyalty and creates a lasting impact.

Enhanced Experiences

Whether it’s an interactive training session or an educational presentation. AV communication enhances the experience. It makes the content fun and memorable, leaving a lasting impression on the audience. High-quality visuals ensure that participants engage and invest in the material.

Extended Reach

The digital nature of AV communication allows content to spread far and wide. Live streams and recorded sessions can reach audiences beyond geographical limitations. Ensuring that your message has a broader impact. This extended reach is crucial for businesses and organizations looking to engage with a global audience.

Technical, creative, and communication expertise are essential for the greatest impact. Producing quality AV multimedia content, operating AV equipment, selecting appropriate channels, and distributing content to audiences are critical factors in achieving results.

Applications of Audio Visual Communication

Audio visual (AV) communication technology has various applications across various sectors, enhancing communication, collaboration, and engagement. Here are some of the key applications:

Corporate and Business

In the corporate world, AV communications are vital for meetings, presentations, and conferences. Video conferencing systems enable remote teams to collaborate, reducing the need for travel and saving cost and time. High-quality presentations and digital signage are great for internal communications, marketing, and branding. Ensuring that the message reaches the audience.

AV communication has transformed education by providing interactive and immersive learning experiences. Smart classrooms equipped with interactive whiteboards, projectors, and sound systems allow dynamic teaching methods. Online courses and virtual classrooms enable remote learning, making education accessible to students worldwide. Educational videos and audio visual media presentations enhance comprehension and retention of complex subjects.

In the healthcare sector, AV communication facilitates telemedicine, allowing doctors to consult with patients, conduct virtual follow-ups, and collaborate with other healthcare professionals. Video tutorials, live surgeries, and interactive webinars enhance training and education for medical staff, and informative videos and presentations improve patient education.

Entertainment and Media

The entertainment industry relies on AV communication for producing and distributing content. From movie theaters with high-definition projectors and surround sound systems to live concerts with video walls and advanced lighting, AV technology enhances the audience experience. Streaming services and video-on-demand platforms also use AV communication to deliver content to viewers around the world.

In retail, AV communication is used to create engaging and interactive customer experiences. Digital signage and video walls can display promotions, advertisements, and product information, capturing customers’ attention and influencing purchasing decisions. Interactive displays and kiosks provide customers with more information and a personalized shopping experience.

Government and Public Services

Government agencies and public services use AV communication for a variety of purposes, including public announcements, training, and emergency response coordination. Digital signage can display important information in public spaces, while video conferencing allows for efficient communication between different departments and locations. AV technology also supports virtual town hall meetings and public forums, enhancing citizen engagement.

Hospitality and Tourism

In the hospitality and tourism industry, AV communication enhances the guest experience through digital signage, interactive displays, and entertainment systems in hotels and resorts. Virtual tours and promotional videos attract visitors and provide them with valuable information about destinations. Conference facilities equipped with audio video technology enable seamless events and meetings for business travelers.

Houses of Worship

Houses of worship use AV communication to enhance services and outreach efforts. High-quality sound systems, projectors, and video screens improve the worship experience for congregants. Live streaming of services and events allows for broader community engagement, reaching individuals who cannot attend in person.

AV Design Mastery + Winning Proposals = 10x Productivity!

• Automatic Cable Labeling & Styling
• 100+ Free Proposal Templates
• Upload & Create Floor Plans
• 1.5M Products from 5200 Brands
• AI-powered ‘Search Sense'
• Legally Binding Digital Signatures

Audio visual communication combines the power of sound and visual elements to create a dynamic and engaging method of conveying information. This form of communication is crucial in today’s technology-driven world, as it enhances understanding and retention by stimulating many senses. Whether used in corporate meetings, educational environments, healthcare, or entertainment, AV communication employs a range of tools including projectors, microphones, video conferencing systems, and interactive whiteboards. The versatility and effectiveness of AV communication make it an invaluable tool for bridging geographical gaps, fostering collaboration, and ensuring that messages are delivered.

Frequently Asked Questions

AV communication enhances information retention by engaging many senses visual and auditory. This multisensory engagement helps to solidify concepts and make them more memorable, compared to text-based or auditory-only communication.

A high-quality video conferencing system includes high-definition cameras, microphones, speakers, and advanced features such as virtual backdrops, noise cancellation, and AI-driven automatic transcriptions and translations. These components work together to provide clear and effective communication.

AV communication benefits remote education by enabling interactive and immersive learning experiences. Tools like interactive whiteboards, projectors, and online collaboration platforms ease dynamic teaching methods, making remote learning engaging and accessible for students worldwide.

In healthcare, AV communication facilitates telemedicine, allowing for remote consultations, virtual follow-ups, and professional collaboration. It also enhances training and education for medical staff through video tutorials and live surgeries and improves patient education with informative videos and presentations.

Vibhav Singh

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This website stores cookies on your computer. Cookie Policy

Explainer: the exciting new genre of the audio-visual film essay

ARC DECRA Research Fellow in Film and Screen Studies, Monash University

Disclosure statement

Julia Vassilieva is receiving ARC funding for a project exploring cinema and the brain.

Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

View all partners

During March, the renowned film scholar Adrian Martin and the film critic Cristina Álvarez López are conducting a series of public workshops and lectures on a new and exciting phenomenon of digital film culture: the audio-visual essay.

Barely ten years old, the audio-visual genre has generated thousands of international works. The growing number of forums for it, such as AUDIOVISUALCY , which contains more than 1,000 essays, demonstrate the scale and diversity of this new genre.

Audio-visual essayists intensively re-edit and recombine images and sounds from preexisting film, TV and digital works.

Coinciding with the rise of YouTube since 2005, the format was first embraced most enthusiastically by film fans, who could pay homage to their favourite works by capturing the thematic preoccupations of a director or the peculiarity of an actor’s performance.

Such analyses and homages might privilege particular scenes, gestures or looks – that kiss between Kim Novak and James Stewart in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) or the cigarette that Humphrey Bogart lights, again and again, in To Have and To Have Not , The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep .

But the new creative and critical potential of the audio-visual essay was also gradually appreciated by film critics, cinema scholars and educators.

Many universities now offer courses on audio-visual practice. Several online film-studies journals, along with the educational blog Film Studies for Free , publish curated sections dedicated to audio-visual criticism.

Since critical and theoretical writing on cinema developed in the early 20th century, there have been three elements to the standard film studies “toolkit”: plot summary; vivid, descriptions of film style; and static, single-shot illustrations extracted from the film.

Single-frame illustration technique was perfected in the 1970s as a methodology of “frame by frame” analysis. It put together sequences of consecutive frames to “get closer” to nuances of facial expression, degrees of movement or interplay of light and shadow.

The emergence of VHS tapes and, later, of DVD allowed greater access to film material, as well as – in the case of DVD – information in the form of commentaries, featurettes, cuts and out-takes.

But it was only with the development of non-linear, video-editing programs (allowing you to dismantle the original footage, even separating image and sound) that it became possible not only to demonstrate and comment on certain features of the film, but to transform it.

Thus digital technology allowed scholars and critics to engage with screen material in a way that was impossible for the most of the 20th century – by directly working on the film’s moving image and sound.

This has led to the development of an innovative performative practice that generates new types of insight, particularly in relation to the way a film evokes feeling and emotion.

Some audio-visual essays relate to a film-maker’s themes or elements of style, such as visual motifs, recurrent settings, or a specificity of framing.

Adrian Martin and Cristina López’s essay Melville Variations astutely identifies a number of props used by the French director of the “noir” era Jean-Pierre Melville, including guns, phones, fedora hats, white gloves, and black and white tiles. It assembles them into a visual montage accompanied by a soundtrack of the signature tune of Le Samourai by François de Roubaux.

Other audio-visual essays are more theoretically oriented, often combining visual excerpts with textual commentaries. Catherine Grant’s work shows how feminist issues, queer issues or interest in the body and affect can be explored through video-graphic work.

Another audio-visual essayist, working under the name of KOGONADA, demonstrates how film history can be illuminated by illustrating the differences between Italian approaches to film-making after WWII and Hollywood cinema of the classical era.

A third group of audio-visual essays tries to do something entirely different – taking the original footage as a point of departure for a deeply reflective, poetic and creative transformation.

What happens if we trace how Ingmar Bergman treats the motif of female characters looking into mirrors in various films and superimpose on these excerpts a reading of Sylvia Plath’s poem The Mirror? KOGONADA’s Mirrors of Bergman is a profoundly moving work that pays homage simultaneously to both Bergman and Plath.

The proliferation of audio-visual essays has prompted various interest groups to pose some anxious questions.

How are we supposed to understand authorship under these new conditions? What is the relative impact of the original author versus the producer of the audio-visual essay?

What about respect for the original work and its integrity or cohesion, which essayists feel increasingly free to cut and splice, dismantle and recombine?

There are also complex questions about fair use or fair dealing for non-commercial, scholarly and critical purposes and contexts.

The audio-visual essay has also been met with confronting questions within the academy. Is it really a form of film criticism and theorising or is it just a testimony to the fan’s imaginative play – not much different from mash-ups or remixes?

There is still considerable resistance to the genre from a large group of scholars who believe that film analysis should remain what it has been for decades: writing that is grounded in methodologies and infused with theoretical concepts, and only invoking the film material as “evidence”.

Another camp believes that the most productive use of the audio-visual essay format for scholarly purposes is one that combines it with more traditional textual explanation, reflection or commentary.

While these debates will no doubt rage for a while yet, we can be sure of one thing: the rise of the audio-visual essay is now unstoppable.

Its rich and varied artefacts are testimony to the fertility of the encounter between passion for cinema, digital technologies and the tradition of film scholarship within screen studies.

Adrian Martin and Cristina Álvarez López will be giving a public lecture, Hitting the Target: Hou Hsiao-hsien Style , at Monash University on March 15, 5pm to 7pm.

• Film studies

Commissioning Editor Nigeria

Subject Coordinator PCP2

Professor in Physiotherapy

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Editorial Internship

Frames Cinema Journal

Peer-reviewed | open access | annual.

Analyse and Invent: A Reflection on Making Audiovisual Essays

By cristina álvarez lópez and adrian martin.

Not only is the work we do para-textual in relation to the usual academic work on film; we ourselves are para-academics, in the sense that (like many other people) we are freelance film critics who find ourselves involved in occasional lecturing and teaching, programming, translation, the editing and publishing of magazines or journals, and so forth. Alongside all the different types of writing we do, individually or collaboratively, much of our energy these days goes into the ongoing, entirely domestic production of audiovisual essays. Cristina has been a pioneer in this field since the inception of Transit online magazine in 2009; Adrian joined the fun in 2012. Together we have signed 23 audiovisual pieces; there are also solo excursions.

The current trend of the audiovisual essay is the fruit of a complicated and diverse history or genealogy that various folk are still sorting out – usually according to their own polemical or institutional agendas. Suffice it to say, whether we nominate the founding texts as Jean Epstein in the early 1920s or Marshall McLuhan in the early 1960s, the contemporary push toward ‘doing’ media analysis in an audiovisual form emanates from a widely shared sense of a need to embrace multi-modality : to not restrict ourselves, as scholars or critics, solely to the (considerable) powers of the written or spoken word. For the Scandinavian initiative Audiovisual Thinking , since 2010, the audiovisual essay looks to the twin legacies of semiotics in communication studies, and documentary media (see the 2012 survey “ Reflections on Academic Video ” by Thommy Eriksson and Inge Ejby Sørensen); for radical theorists and practitioners of contemporary literary translation, the inspiration comes from artists’ books, design, and music – all the varieties of linguistic and pictorial collage. For us, looking to a more specifically cinematic heritage, montage is king – mixed with notions from a century of appropriation art, and a philosophy of aesthetics that stresses the spectator’s ‘reading’ (or interpretation) of an audiovisual text as always, already a remaking or a figural ‘completion’ of it in some other form.

The audiovisual essay remains – uneasily for some – a hybrid form, in-between art and scholarship. Not yet artistic enough for certain artists and curators, too shackled by exposition and rational argument; too arty and open-ended for conventional scholars of the publish-or-perish variety. Widespread fear that the international copyright police will close in and shut the game down at any moment helps to stall this appropriation revolution. The audiovisual essay is likely to remain nervously wedged in this strange inter-space. But multi-modality does not mean (as it is sometimes, kindly or unkindly, taken to be) the ruthless suppression of all written/verbal/logically argued rationality; it signals, rather, that all elements and media are available to us as critic-analysts, and that we should use them in diverse combinations and permutations. In our experiments, we constantly try to shift our working dispositif into new shapes, along the already famous continuum between creative/poetic and explanatory/pedagogical.

Our deepest conviction is that in-depth analyses can indeed be formed and carried within a ‘pure’ audiovisual montage, without voice-over commentary (a device often used badly and clumsily). We insist (in our teaching as well) on the radical extremity of such montage action: on principle, we constantly break both the horizontal (linear) and vertical (image-sound synchronicity) dimensions of whatever we analyse; it is never simply a matter of arranging untampered-with ‘blocks’ (which is more common in video art). It has become clear to us that such works pose a new challenge to spectators, even long-trained academics: unlike some written articles, they cannot always be grasped or digested on just one ‘go through’. They demand a different kind of viewing, listening and apprehending skill – just as many movies do. Cristina’s Small Gestures (2014) on Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le silence de la mer (1949) is one such essay, made initially as a classroom demonstration:

We have often used a combination of writing-on-screen – taking in the main title, intertitles, and other graphical inserts of language – with audiovisual montage. This is the case with Phantasmagoria of the Interior (2015), viewable on subscription at Fandor website, or on the Arrow DVD/Blu-ray of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981); and Felicity Conditions: Seek and Hide (2014), our essay on Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door … (1947):

The somewhat simpler mode of such analysis often takes the form, in our work, of the audiovisual ‘study of a motif’ – not simply laid out in its repetitions (the super-cut temptation), but arranged in its transformations, the logic of which we aim to bring out and develop. Our piece on dance in the films of Philippe Garrel, All Tomorrow’s Parties (2014), follows such a method:

Accepting a commission from [in]Transition and Cinema Journal – to respond audiovisually to a written, scholarly, refereed text on Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1977) – we decided to dissolve our own prejudice; we worked, for the first time, with a scripted, voice-over narration, and the result was Against the Rea l (2015):

This assignment got us interested in the possibilities of voice-against-image, and the mix of this voice with a pre-given soundtrack. Just as, in our regular series for MUBI , we explore what it means to ‘accompany’ or collide an audiovisual essay with a critico-poetic text, here we quickly learnt that scripts must be savagely pared down and played off, in timings of literal micro-seconds, against the chosen audiovisual elements. We have since made, in this vein, five separate essays on Hou Hsiao-hsien (three of these commissioned by the Belgian Cinematek), including this one at Fandor, Stirring In: A Scene from Millennium Mambo (2015), originally prepared as part of a live ‘performance lecture’ (like our earlier work in 2013 on Leos Carax):

https://vimeo.com/130262978

Finally, toward the more poetic end of the spectrum, we frequently investigate the notion of what we call an imaginary scene : the combination of fragments from two or more films that, to some extent, are fused into a new unity, while still underlining their different properties for comparative analysis. To Begin With … (2015) investigates what it means to ‘open’ a narrative film; the unfolding of its elements, in audiovisual time and space, mirrors (and this is what we always aim for) the steps of its implicit ‘argument’:

And in Shapes of Rage (2015), we began from the simple observation that certain key scenes in David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979) reminded us closely of passages in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) – and proceeded to work intensively, via re-montage, on ‘superimposing’ the two. Only out of this process did the logic of an analysis emerge: one of the great advantages and joys of audiovisual essay work is that theoretical constructs no longer pre-exist and overdetermine what we find in the films (which is the sorry condition of a great deal of academic screen study). On the contrary, it’s our belief that audiovisual essays can take their makers in two directions simultaneously: both deeper into the text that they discover anew, and beyond it, into the necessary challenge of inventing a new, hybrid work of their own.

Notes on Contributors

Adrian Martin is a film critic and audiovisual essayist who lives in Vilassar de Mar, Spain. His most recent book is Mise en scène and Film Style: From Classical Hollywood to New Media Art (Palgrave), and he is co-editor of LOLA magazine .

Cristina Álvarez López is a film critic and audiovisual essayist who lives in Vilassar de Mar, Spain. Her work appears in (among other publications) Fandor, Mubi, Transit, Trafic, The Third Rail and Sight and Sound , and she is co-editor of the audiovisual essay section in NECSUS .

Filmography

The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963) The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979) Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977) Secret Beyond the Door (Fritz Lang, 1947) La Silence de la Mer (Jean Pierre-Melville, 1949)

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (Walerian Borowczyk, 1981)