Searching for Contexts: Cinema and Computing Digital resources in humanities
computing largely concentrate on critical encoding of content for access and archiving. Such projects often produce applied critical outcomes however, it appears that such work is constrained in its applicability to other humanities communities by either a concentration on textual artefacts, or on its emphasis on the quantitative
analysis of data. This paper documents two recent film based digital resource projects that offer low scale 'tactical' encoding with applied research and learning outcomes, and models ways in which such 'middle level' resources may be relevant to a broader conception of computing in the humanities.
The SMAFE project (SMIL Meta Analysis Film Engine) is an initiative that explores the viability of broadband networked film analysis systems for the authoring and delivery of screen studies content. In addition, novel applied research and learning methodologies are being investigated within the development of the film engine and its various iterations. Each project relies upon SMIL, custom written CGI scripts utilising PERL and mySQL, and utilises a QuickTime Streaming Server.
The first project utilises the Odessa Steps
sequence from Sergei Eisenstein's _Battleship Potemkin_ (1925), one of the most famous sequences in cinema history. The sequence was digitised and then each shot encoded utilising a series of metadata categories relating to film elements such as shot scale, camera direction, screen direction, and composition. A database provides access to this metadata so that queries can be made for any encoded criteria, and search results list the series of shots that meet the criteria. Users can then view each shot individually, view the shot in context (we automatically roll back 10 seconds before the shot and roll forward 10 seconds after), or elect to view all the matching shots in sequence.
Eisenstein has written extensively, and in considerable detail, about the visual, thematic, and intellectual patterns of montage that he utilised in sequences such as the Odessa Steps, and the metadata utlised for encoding reflect this. As a result the system provides a valuable research resource when used in conjunction with other available material, including the sequence in its entirety, the film, and Eisenstein's writing, as well as secondary commentaries on the sequence, Eisenstein, and other canonical essays on film montage.
However, as a theorist such as Eisenstein argued, cinematic shots only gain their particular significance because of the series they are placed within - it is montage (for Eisenstein) that generates meaning. As a result this project is limited in many ways as it is little more than an quantitative analysis engine. It is valuable when utilised in larger research contexts and it does demonstrate the viability of the engine (keeping in mind that other film content could as easily be encoded utlising other metadata schemas), but its content remains fixed and in some ways intractable - you search for close ups with left to right movement, and it finds them and lets you view them. What the shots mean individually is considerably less than what they mean in their various sequences.
The second project, "Searching" is based on John Ford's 1956 western _The Searchers_ and rather than encoding the film around a particular set of cinematic metadata the project begins from a hermeneutic claim, that "doorways in _The Searchers_ represent liminal zones between spaces that are qualities." Doors, as they appear in the film, are encoded around a small data set (camera is inside, outside, or between, and is looking inside, outside, or between) and still images from the film are provided. Here a search by a user yields all the stills that meet the search criteria, and clicking on any still loads the appropriate sequence from the film for viewing in its cinematic context.