source

Per Persson — Understanding Cinema

A Psychological Theory of Moving Imagery

book
reel
stub

Per Persson, Understanding Cinema: A Psychological Theory of Moving Imagery.

Good for

Not yet written up. The measured coverage below says what this book is dense on; the judgement about when to reach for it is still to come.

In the library

Held in Reel, the local research library of scanned and indexed film books. 8 parts, 1,061 indexed passages. Page numbering is unverified.

Cite passages from this book as uc <page> — for example uc 214.

Strongest on

Measured, not guessed. Each figure is how much denser this book is on a concept than the library average — so common words don't crowd out real specialisms.

Non-diegetic sound — 4.6× the library average (18 passages)
Point of view — 4.4× the library average (179 passages)
Structure — 4.0× the library average (161 passages)
Character — 3.3× the library average (347 passages)
Printed language — 2.4× the library average (15 passages)
Conflict — 2.2× the library average (132 passages)

Go on, then

source Aaron Baker — A Companion to Martin Scorsese Aaron Baker (ed.) (Wiley Blackwell)
source Barsam & Monahan — Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film Barsam and Monahan: the most current of the introductions, strong on sound, genre as industry, and the MacGuffin.
source Boggs & Petrie — The Art of Watching Films Boggs and Petrie's classroom text: plain analytical questions, a working glossary, and the flat/round and static/dynamic character pairs.
source Bruce Block — The Visual Story: Creating the Visual Structure of Film, TV and Digital Media Bruce Block's practitioner's grammar of the image: contrast and affinity, the visual components, and story structure drawn as a graph.
source Christopher Kenworthy — Shoot Like Scorsese Christopher Kenworthy (Michael Wiese Productions)
source David Bordwell — Narration in the Fiction Film Bordwell's theory of narration. Only the Soviet montage chapter is in the library — read the shelf mark before citing.