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2 books match the query 'Multimedia'
Communicating Ideas with Film, Video, and Multimedia
A Practical Guide to Information Motion-MediaS. Martin Shelton
Southern Illinois University Press, 2004
Written for a broad audience of professional informational and corporate filmmakers, film students, technical writers, and clients, Communicating Ideas with Film, Video, and Multimedia: A Practical Guide to Information Motion-Media is an insider’s perspective on the informational media industry. With over thirty-five years of experience, award-winning filmmaker S. Martin Shelton presents his astute views on the state of the profession and offers sage, constructive advice for the successful design and production of information motion-media.
Forgoing discussions of technology, Shelton instead concentrates on the communication principles that can motivate an audience to achieve a particular goal—a goal that must be realistic, worthwhile, and appropriate. His inventive approach coalesces theory of the media with its philosophy, analysis, history, and application, as well as his own informed personal opinions. This valuable guide examines how to effectively encode information in motion-media by using in-depth communication analysis and pertinent filmic design. Throughout, Shelton emphasizes that kinetic visuals, rather than audio, are the defining elements of the best motion-media communication. Organized into five parts that can be used independently or in sequence, the volume frames key topics in the industry that collectively form a cohesive strategy for motion-media design and production. First, Shelton discusses the essence of the medium as a communication tool. In the second part, he addresses the forms and functions of motion-media. The third part details communication analysis and its application. Next, Shelton delves into script design, distribution, and career growth. Lastly, he offers advice on business aspects of the profession. Told from the vantage point of a seasoned expert, Communicating Ideas with Film, Video, and Multimedia is a “how to do it” book as well as a treatise on “why to do it.” Shelton’s narrative is complemented by twenty-six illustrations (including multimedia flowcharts, sample forms, and photographs of some of the great documentary filmmakers), a variety of script formats, and a listing of the all-time best documentary films.
Forgoing discussions of technology, Shelton instead concentrates on the communication principles that can motivate an audience to achieve a particular goal—a goal that must be realistic, worthwhile, and appropriate. His inventive approach coalesces theory of the media with its philosophy, analysis, history, and application, as well as his own informed personal opinions. This valuable guide examines how to effectively encode information in motion-media by using in-depth communication analysis and pertinent filmic design. Throughout, Shelton emphasizes that kinetic visuals, rather than audio, are the defining elements of the best motion-media communication. Organized into five parts that can be used independently or in sequence, the volume frames key topics in the industry that collectively form a cohesive strategy for motion-media design and production. First, Shelton discusses the essence of the medium as a communication tool. In the second part, he addresses the forms and functions of motion-media. The third part details communication analysis and its application. Next, Shelton delves into script design, distribution, and career growth. Lastly, he offers advice on business aspects of the profession. Told from the vantage point of a seasoned expert, Communicating Ideas with Film, Video, and Multimedia is a “how to do it” book as well as a treatise on “why to do it.” Shelton’s narrative is complemented by twenty-six illustrations (including multimedia flowcharts, sample forms, and photographs of some of the great documentary filmmakers), a variety of script formats, and a listing of the all-time best documentary films.
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The Democratic Surround
Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic SixtiesFred Turner
University of Chicago Press, 2013
We commonly think of the psychedelic sixties as an explosion of creative energy and freedom that arose in direct revolt against the social restraint and authoritarian hierarchy of the early Cold War years. Yet, as Fred Turner reveals in The Democratic Surround, the decades that brought us the Korean War and communist witch hunts also witnessed an extraordinary turn toward explicitly democratic, open, and inclusive ideas of communication and with them new, flexible models of social order. Surprisingly, he shows that it was this turn that brought us the revolutionary multimedia and wild-eyed individualism of the 1960s counterculture.
In this prequel to his celebrated book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Turner rewrites the history of postwar America, showing how in the 1940s and ’50s American liberalism offered a far more radical social vision than we now remember. Turner tracks the influential mid-century entwining of Bauhaus aesthetics with American social science and psychology. From the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the New Bauhaus in Chicago and Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Turner shows how some of the most well-known artists and intellectuals of the forties developed new models of media, new theories of interpersonal and international collaboration, and new visions of an open, tolerant, and democratic self in direct contrast to the repression and conformity associated with the fascist and communist movements. He then shows how their work shaped some of the most significant media events of the Cold War, including Edward Steichen’s Family of Man exhibition, the multimedia performances of John Cage, and, ultimately, the psychedelic Be-Ins of the sixties. Turner demonstrates that by the end of the 1950s this vision of the democratic self and the media built to promote it would actually become part of the mainstream, even shaping American propaganda efforts in Europe.
Overturning common misconceptions of these transformational years, The Democratic Surround shows just how much the artistic and social radicalism of the sixties owed to the liberal ideals of Cold War America, a democratic vision that still underlies our hopes for digital media today.
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