59
CHAPTER 3
Coda: Provocations on Filmic
Retrieval, Hunting, Meandering, and
Browsing
3.1 HOW ARE WE TO FIND AND MAKE SENSE OF FILMIC
DOCUMENTS?
e meaning of a moving image document is bound up in its structure. Tarkovsky and Eisenstein
have very dierent notions of structure, yet both make lms that work. We developed a suite of
analysis tools to enable close structural analysis of the time-varying signal set of a movie. We take
an information theoretic approach—message is a signal set—generated (coded) under various
antecedents—sent over some channel—decoded under some other set of antecedents. Cultural,
technical, and personal antecedents might favor certain message making systems over others; the
same holds at a recipient end—yet, the signal set remains the signal set. Starting with Hitchcock,
moving through Looney Tunes and numerous feature lms, and ne-tuning with Warhol and Ver-
tov, we honed ways to provide pixel level analysis, forms of clustering, and precise descriptions of
what parts of a signal inuence viewer behavior. ese can be used across critical platforms.
We do not make a distinction between analysis of structure and retrieval; if content is retrieved
by any means, knowing the structure can help determine if the content will be meaningful to an
individual seeker and if content requires hunting, having topographical maps can aid that hunting.
3.1.1 RETRIEVAL MAY NOT BE A SUFFICIENT TERM
Retrieval scarcely covers the range of scenarios of nding and using lmic documents, as it is de-
rived from 15th century French roots meaning “to nd again” such as when a hunting dog nds
lost game. Retrieval implies that a document has been discovered/described (cataloged/indexed)
and that when a party seeking useful information comes to the system, the document can be found
again. We have been speaking structural analysis rather than "retrieval" in order to provide tools
for nding useful lmic information; to provide means for understanding documents; to provide
ways of nding one’s way in a collection of lmic documents. It is relatively easy to do a search for
a feature lm or television program or documentary on a particular topic by using words, yet it is
not so simple to nd lmic documents that will t individual preferences for style, to sift through
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.