Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Drawn To Peace: Comics As Multimodal Narratives In Peace And Conflict Education, Laurence Stacey

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Comics, a type of multimodal narrative, have historically been used as platforms for political discourse. Through a combination of visual, verbal, and spatial devices, comics often explore issues of peace, conflict, and justice “from below,” in ways that reveal the complexities of narrative and identity. In doing so, they have the potential to interrogate grand narratives that often go undisrupted. Humanities scholars have long recognized the value of literary and visual arts in preparing students to engage the salient themes of peace education. However, the medium of comics remains undertheorized in that field, despite the increasing popularity of comics as …

You Were There : An Exploration And Analysis Of The Filmmaking Process, Regan Emfinger

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the process of writing, shooting, and editing my short film You Were There. My process involved scriptwriting with several revisions, shooting with a cast and crew, and editing the raw footage. This paper will not only serve as a timeline leading up to the final product of the film but also will explain the function of each artistic choice. This paper will also outline the biggest lessons I learned about fictional narratives, and discuss the successes and failures of the film as a whole. I also plan on discussing how those lessons will further my academic and …

Identity And Memory, Ryley Hinton

Philosophy Summer Fellows

For my Summer Fellows project, I researched personal identity in a philosophical way. The goal was to disambiguate the concept of self-identity, understand what the main notions of identity are, and look at how they apply in different circumstances. My philosophical approach is to treat films as philosophical thought experiments, imaginative situations that reveal the meaning and limits of concepts. Films are great for exploring the topic of identity because they present characters struggling with their self-identity as situations change around them. A major focus of my research is the role of memory in the formation of one’s identity and …

'Tomboy' Is Anachronistic. But The Concept Still Has Something To Teach Us, Lynne Stahl

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article explores the tomboy trope in film and literature and the "taming" that characterizes it, framing both in relation to contemporary debates about gender and sexual identity as well as cultural anxieties around queer, trans, and nonbinary identity. Examining texts from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women to the 1980 film Little Darlings, the article argues that even while the term tomboy may be obsolete, tomboy narratives document processes of rebellion that hold continuing value.

A Geocritical Approach To Coloniality And Aesthetics: Mapping The Spatial Narratives Of The Amazon Basin, Michael Wang

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Coloniality, or the living legacies and practices of the 500 years of European colonization, has produced racial, political, and cultural hierarchies around the colonial difference dividing East from West, center from periphery, civilization from the Global South. This dissertation examines a particular strand of coloniality in the Western narration and aesthetics of the Amazon basin, particularly the consequences of travel writing, science fiction and cinema of Amazon’s tropicality and its enduring effects on spatial cartography. In addressing Western representations of the jungle terrain, this paper focuses on the dichotomous relationship between the metropolitan center and the colonial outer-periphery exemplified by …

Free Views To Pay Per Views, Andrew York

Honors Thesis

The purpose of this research was to analyze three different narrative web series that were adapted into traditional television formats within the past ten years. Delving into how the creators marketed themselves, created the content, and distributed the content allows the reader to notice strategies that worked in the past to sell stories to production companies.

The Effect Of Post-Production On Storytelling In Narrative And Documentary Filmmaking, Natalie Pace

Senior Honors Theses

Documentaries and narrative films both tell stories in different ways. A common saying states that narrative filmmakers write one movie, shoot another, and edit a third. In postproduction, timelines are rearranged, montages are created, new dialog and voiceovers are written, and the score can alter the mood and meaning entirely. Documentaries can change even more over the course of their creation. Usually, the script of the documentary is not written until the edit, after most of the interviews and B roll have been shot. This paper examines whether documentary post-production makes more or less use of storytelling techniques than does …

The Construction Of Truth In Fiction: An Analysis Of The Faux Footage Genre In Television, Samantha Richards

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper explores the way that “truth” is constructed in a fictional sphere through visual and narrative references. I draw upon Caetlin Benson-Allott’s Paranormal Spectatorship, and Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s Remediation to inform my analysis of these constructions. I look specifically at Roanoke, the sixth season of American Horror Story, to provide examples of the way faux footage horror’s unique use of the subjective shot constructs the spectator as both a witness and an interrogator, and creates an aesthetic language of truth. While being immersed in the story, viewers are simultaneously invited to consider how …

The First But Hopefully Not The Last: How The Last Of Us Redefines The Survival Horror Video Game Genre, Joseph T. Gonzales

Senior Independent Study Theses

For this study, I applied generic criticism, which looks at how a text subverts and adheres to patterns and formats in its respective genre, to analyze how The Last of Us redefined the survival horror video game genre through its narrative. Although some tropes are present in the game and are necessary to stay tonally consistent to the genre, I argued that much of the focus of the game is shifted from the typical situational horror of the monsters and violence to the overall narrative, effective dialogue, strategic use of cinematic elements, and character development throughout the course of the …

The Official Rulebook For Choice In Video Games: An Examination Of Choice In Modern Narrative Games, Tyler Paulley

Undergraduate Theses

Film, drama, and novels are each capable of telling stories in a specialized way. This thesis makes the claim that video games are the newest means of storytelling and that they can tell stories in unique and engaging ways by using choice. The first goal of this thesis is to determine how and why choice is being used by game developers by examining several modern narrative games. After this examination, it is determined that the increase of choice-driven and narrative games have had an impact on the expectations of players, the goals of video games, and on game culture itself. …

Voiceless Victims In Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso, Henry James Morello

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Voiceless Victims in Sin tetas no hay paraíso" Henry James Morello discusses Gustavo Bolívar's Sin tetas no hay paraiso. The novel is, in Bolívar's words, his way of bringing attention to the problem of young women in Colombia using prostitution in order to pay for plastic surgery a very specific problem facing the youth of Colombia. However, at what price is the success of the novel? Or, rather, who is compromised as a result of this cultural phenomenon? The author may have intended to write a novel that called attention to the problems facing Colombian …

Light On, Baby. No Future, Shane Dollinger

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This project is a realistic depiction of the circularity of experience. As Images of ourselves and our experiences become increasingly inescapable, the repetitive and nonlinear nature of those experiences is amplified. This issue is explored in looking at contemporary artists/filmmakers whose handling of inundation in representation and narrative distinctly embraces multiplicity. Queering structures of representation, the work holds a mirror to the way that we experience living, encountering images, narrative structures and memories.

Framing The Future: Imagining The City Through The Lens Of Film, Sofia Zavala Ferreira

Architecture Senior Theses

With a great interest in the relationship between film and architecture, this project establishes its subject matter on the possibilities presented in science fiction cinema and speculative design. By extracting attributes from these that would influence design and architectural concerns, a bridge between the disconnected imagined and real, current and future, can be created through the creation of a speculative scenario and a narrative.

It seeks to utilize cinematic design and storytelling conventions to successfully convey the desired atmosphere, architectural realities, and life conditions of a fictional city. By utilizing advanced digital techniques often used in cinema itself, including but …

Recording Angels: Examining Female Narrators In Vampire Fiction And Film, Jacqueline T. Bashaw

College Honors Program

Authors of vampire fiction often grapple with the shifting gender norms of the late nineteenth century. They explore these shifting tensions through the creation of complex narrative structures, some of which incorporate female narrators. By making these women narrators, these authors carefully consider female perspectives and the authority women can wield, both as narrators in their respective texts, and as women in late nineteenth-century British society who were confined to rigid gender roles. The narrative tension that arises between the narrator and the text then allows these authors to use literature to explore and theorize about broader societal tensions.

This …

Indigenous Representation In The Media And The Importance Of Personal Narrative, Rehana E. Asmi

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Despite globalization, indigenous representation in the media continues to be unequal. Without personal narratives and self-representation in their stories, indigenous people continue to be negatively stereotyped in pop culture, film, television and news coverage.

Framing The Future: Imagining The City Through The Lens Of Film, Sofia Zavala Ferreira

Architecture Thesis Prep

With a great interest in the relationship between film and architecture, this project establishes its subject matter on the possibilities presented in science fiction cinema and speculative design. By extracting attributes from these that would influence design and architectural concerns, a bridge between the disconnected imagined and real, current and future, can be created through the creation of a speculative scenario and a narrative. It seeks to utilize cinematic design and storytelling conventions to successfully convey the desired atmosphere, architectural realities, and life conditions of a fictional city. By utilizing advanced digital techniques often used in cinema itself, including but …

“Evil Isn’T Born, It’S Made”: As Communicated In Once Upon A Time, Eleanor Hodapp

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

In the television series Once Upon A Time, evil is portrayed as a circumstance rather than a character trait. Characters shift toward and away from evil; the evil character suddenly shows redeeming qualities and the good character becomes consumed with revenge. This unusual approach to depicting evil in a television adaptation centering upon fairy tales rejects the clear distinction between good and evil typically present in the written stories. A close reading of Regina and Snow’s narratives and rhetorical analysis of visuals in the show reveal good and evil as fluid concepts – developing and shifting within and between …

New Hollywood: Classical Hollywood In A New Light, Wesley D. Buskirk

Cinesthesia

This essay analyzes the manifestations of America’s post-1960 film industry, more specifically the rise of “New Hollywood.” In response to governmental intervention of the studio system, the popularization of commercial television, and the influences of the French New Wave, Hollywood’s emerging “film generation” embraced the commercialization of the star auteur and the blockbuster picture. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, sons of the “Hollywood Renaissance,” capitalized on the potential of “high concept,” “ultra-high-budget” feature films and their associated synergetic marketing systems, a phenomenon referred to as the “blockbuster syndrome.” Jaws, a pioneering New Hollywood megapicture directed by Spielberg, exhibits the “Lucas-Spielberg” …

Agency, Desire, And Power In Schnitzler's Dream Novel And Kubrick's Adaptation Eyes Wide Shut, Ari Ofengenden

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Agency, Desire, and Power in Schnitzler's Dream Novel and Kubrick's Adaptation Eyes Wide Shut" Ari Ofengenden explores Arthur Schnitzler's novella and Stanley Kubrick's adaptation to offer insights into the ways in which desire disrupts and clashes with social structures (i.e., family, relationships, and society in general). Ofengenden shows how the dynamic in which disruptive desire is ideologically narrativized back into acquiescence with the status quo. Ofengenden interprets the narrative of the film as unique intuitions into action and agency where sources of agency are opaque to the subject and arise by an impenetrable combination of desire …

Actuality Or Mystifying Spectacle? War In Cinema And Electronic Gaming, Christopher Robert Workoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay, using as a jump-off point François Truffaut's view that it is impossible to make a true anti-war film, examines the degree to which certain Hollywood films about war treat the subject as a spectacle for the audience. With the aid of critical articles discussing the war film's presentation from the standpoint of narrative and aesthetic, three films are examined for their ability (or lack thereof) to curtail the tendency of war as entertainment. Furthermore, with the increasing prominence of the videogame as a narrative medium, as well as the prevalence of game narratives dealing with war, the question …

Crafting A Compelling Action Hero Movie: A Psychological Inquiry Into The Identification Of Key Elements In Successful Storytelling Through Film, Adrian Sai Hay Lam

CMC Senior Theses

Since the time humans have developed speech, storytelling has been a crucial part of society. Its values lie in the ability to communicate potential dangers about the world to generating laughter and tears as a form of entertainment. A central theme in stories that continues to reoccur over the course of history is the story of the hero. Carl Jung theorizes that the hero is an archetype in the collective unconscious, which explains humans’ innate inclinations towards heroes. Throughout history, the forms of storytelling have evolved due to technological and intellectual advancements. In modern times, film has risen as the …

Beneath Still Waters: An Exploration Of Transmedia Narratives And Twitter Fiction, Anjali Gupta

Scripps Senior Theses

Beneath Still Waters is an original transmedia mystery narrative that explores the possibilities of an interconnected media landscape as a unique platform for creative use and audience engagement. Transmedia storytelling refers to the building of a fictional world comprised of multiple parts across different platforms, where each component makes a valuable contribution to the whole. This project uses the tools and strategies of social media to tell a complex and interactive multi-platform story.

Interior: A Micro-Budget Horror Feature, Zachary Beckler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

INTERIOR is a feature-length film written, directed, and produced by Zachary Beckler as part of the requirements for earning a Master of Fine Arts in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema from the University of Central Florida. The project aims to challenge existing conventions of the horror film on multiple levels - aesthetic, narrative, technical, and industrial - while also examining growing importance of workflow throughout all aspects of production. These challenges were both facilitated and necessitated by the limited resources available to the production team and the academic context of the production. This thesis is a record of the film, from concept …

Counter-Narrating The Nation: Homi K. Bhabha's Theory Of Hybridity In Five Broken Cameras, Rachel Evers

Honors Projects

This paper examines the theories of Homi K. Bhabha, a major figure in contemporary post-colonial study. His work on hybridity, mimicry, and counter-narrative helps to illuminate the documentary film Five Broken Cameras, which shows five years in the life of Palestinian farmer, Emad Burnat, under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. The film is shown to be a performative counter-narrative representing Palestinian national becoming.

Organic Interfaces; Or, How Human Beings Augment Their Digital Devices, John Hunter

Faculty Journal Articles

It is a central premise of the advertising campaigns for nearly all digital communication devices that buying them augments the user: they give us a larger, better memory; make us more “creative” and “productive”; and/or empower us to access whatever information we desire from wherever we happen to be. This study is about how recent popular cinema represents the failure of these technological devices to inspire the enchantment that they once did and opens the question of what is causing this failure.

Using examples from the James Bond films, the essay analyzes the ways in which human users are frequently …

Goldfield Studies, Dawn Roe

Faculty Publications

The dialogue within this essay serves as a response to the series, Goldfield Studies, a work itself prompted by the history and landscape of this eponymous region of Victoria, Australia. The imagery produced takes the form of paired and multiple still photographs and a digital video sequence, displayed in triple-projection. The discussion is framed by the artist’s introduction, which defines the project as a critical consideration of cultural memory in relation to the opposing perspectives of indigenous and colonial settler narratives, pastoral landscape representations, folklore and myth. A collaborative dialogue between an artist and art historian who share common research …

Jest In Time: The Problems And Promises Of The Holy Fool In Francesco, Giullare Di Dio, Ordet, And Ikiru, Peter L. Doebler

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper is a study of Roberto Rossellini’s Francesco, giullare di Dio (The Flowers of St. Francis, 1950), Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), and Carl Dreyer’s Ordet (1955) through the theoretical lens of the religious figure of the holy fool. First, I assert that each film employs a foolish character in order to critique the contemporary culture, particularly resisting modern attempts to soften or ignore extreme elements of Christian teaching, such as sacrificial self-giving for others or the hope of bodily resurrection. Second, I argue that the content of a fool character affects the film’s form, creating a subversive …

Literature And The Study Of Intermediality: A Book Review Article On New Work By Grishakova And Ryan And Carvalho Homem, Ioan-Flaviu Patrunjel, Asunción López-Varela

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Cinematic Experience Through The Micro-Budget Paradigm, Jeffrey Lehman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Tailor’s Apprentice is a feature-length, micro-budget, narrative digital motion picture, written, produced and directed by Jeffrey Lehman in partial fulfillment of the requirements of earning a Master of Fine Arts in Film from the University of Central Florida. The film is a result of applying specific monetary, logistical and creative limitations to the production process in order to contribute in defining the micro-budget aesthetic, resulting in a final shared cinematic audience experience. This thesis is a record of all stages from conception to completion of the executed, feature length film with-in the micro-budget production paradigm.

Less Lost: No Touchdown Dance, William Conner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Less Lost is a feature-length film by William Chase Conner, made as part of the requirements for earning a Master of Fine Arts in Film & Digital Media from the University of Central Florida.