{"id":216,"date":"2014-09-10T14:10:52","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T14:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/?page_id=216"},"modified":"2014-09-15T08:21:14","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T08:21:14","slug":"kevin-b-lee","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/reflections\/intransition-1-3\/kevin-b-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"KEVIN B. LEE"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><\/h2>\n<h2><strong>On THE CAREER OF PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON IN FIVE SHOTS<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>By\u00a0Kevin B. Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Curated at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mediacommons.futureofthebook.org\/intransition\/2014\/08\/26\/audiovisual-essay-my-favorite-things\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>[in]Transition<\/strong>, 1.3, 2014<\/a> by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mediacommons.futureofthebook.org\/intransition\/2014\/08\/26\/audiovisual-essay-my-favorite-things\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Catherine Grant<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/56335284?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0&amp;color=6b1307\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>VIDEO 1:\u00a0<i><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/56335284\" target=\"_blank\">The Career of Paul Thomas Anderson in Five Shots<\/a><\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I made <i><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/56335284\" target=\"_blank\">The Career of Paul Thomas Anderson in Five Shots<\/a> <\/i>for <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/sight-sound-magazine\/features\/video-steadicam-progress-career-paul-thomas-anderson-five\" target=\"_blank\">Sight &amp; Sound Magazine<\/a><\/em> as an online supplement\u00a0to their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/sight-sound-magazine\/features\/video-steadicam-progress-career-paul-thomas-anderson-five\" target=\"_blank\">November 2012 cover story<\/a> on Anderson\u2019s <i>The Master<\/i>.[1. Kevin B. Lee, &#8216;VIDEO ESSAY:\u00a0Steadicam progress \u2013 The Career of Paul Thomas Anderson in Five Shots&#8217;,\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/sight-sound-magazine\/features\/video-steadicam-progress-career-paul-thomas-anderson-five\" target=\"_blank\">Sight &amp; Sound Magazine<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/sight-sound-magazine\/features\/video-steadicam-progress-career-paul-thomas-anderson-five\" target=\"_blank\">November 2012<\/a> ] To account for its making, I\u2019d like to mention another video I made four months prior, a critical homage to Harun Farocki titled <a href=\"http:\/\/framescinemajournal.com\/article\/interface-2-0\/\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Interface 2.0<\/i><\/a>, produced for the inaugural issue of <em>Frames Cinema<\/em> Journal[1. Kevin B. Lee, &#8216;Interface 2.0&#8217;, <em>Frames Cinema Journal<\/em>, Issue 1.1, July 2012. Online at:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/framescinemajournal.com\/article\/interface-2-0\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/framescinemajournal.com\/article\/interface-2-0\/<\/a>.]. At this time I had been making video essays for five years, mostly amounting to cinephile appreciations of different aspects of canonical films and filmmakers. Engaging with Farocki\u2019s acutely observant, systematic yet poetic approach to analyzing images engendered new priorities in my own work.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f5MQ51LEfBM?rel=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>VIDEO 2:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/framescinemajournal.com\/article\/interface-2-0\/\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Interface 2.0<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve produced reflections on Farocki in each of the last three years; taken together they form an extended inquiry into what the video essay could be. In the <em>Frames Cinema Journal<\/em> piece, I came away with a desire for video essays that could free themselves from the conventional dependence on voiceover narration, and fulfill Farocki\u2019s stated vision of \u201cimages commenting on images.\u201d Last year, in writing about the essay film for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/sight-sound-magazine\/features\/deep-focus\/video-essay-essay-film-some-thoughts\" target=\"_blank\">Sight &amp; Sound<\/a> [1. Kevin B. Lee, &#8216;Video essay: The essay film \u2013 some thoughts of discontent,&#8217; <em>Sight &amp; Sound<\/em>, Updated August 8, 2014. Online at:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/sight-sound-magazine\/features\/deep-focus\/video-essay-essay-film-some-thoughts\">http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/sight-sound-magazine\/features\/deep-focus\/video-essay-essay-film-some-thoughts<\/a>], I emphasized the ability of Farocki\u2019s work to stimulate an awareness of how images function within the social systems that govern our daily existence, necessitating a more critical regard for images as the embodiments of those systems.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/73733888?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0&amp;color=6b1307\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>VIDEO 3:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/sight-sound-magazine\/features\/deep-focus\/video-essay-essay-film-some-thoughts\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The essay film \u2013 some thoughts of discontent<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Writing again for <em>Sight &amp; Sound<\/em> this year[1. Kevin Lee, &#8216;Letter to Harun Farocki&#8217;, <em>Sight &amp; Sound<\/em>, August 28, 2014. Online\u00a0at:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/sight-sound-magazine\/comment\/obituaries\/letter-harun-farocki\">http:\/\/www.bfi.org.uk\/news-opinion\/sight-sound-magazine\/comment\/obituaries\/letter-harun-farocki<\/a>.], I elaborated further on a kind of image-making that could stand in purposeful opposition to the dominant ways in which images are deployed. In short, Farocki made me realize that it wasn\u2019t enough for a video essay to analyze the films as self-contained works of art. It was important, even imperative, for video essays to somehow arrive at new forms of audiovisual expression through a critical engagement with established modes of image making. Farocki made me aware that video essays, despite their seemingly secondary or derivative stature, bore a potential to emerge as a transformative form of image-making, bearing a special kind of autonomy engendered by a singular combination of the creative and the critical that is unique to the form.<\/p>\n<p>I must also mention another video, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fandor.com\/keyframe\/video-mapping-the-long-take-bela-tarr-and-miklos-jancso\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Mapping the Long Take: Bela Tarr and\u00a0<\/i><i>Mikl\u00f3s Jancs\u00f3<\/i><\/a>, [1. Kevin B. Lee, &#8216;Video: Mapping the Long Take: B\u00e9la Tarr and Mikl\u00f3s Jancs\u00f3&#8217;, <em>FANDOR: Keyframe<\/em>, September 14, 2012. Online at:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fandor.com\/keyframe\/video-mapping-the-long-take-bela-tarr-and-miklos-jancso\">http:\/\/www.fandor.com\/keyframe\/video-mapping-the-long-take-bela-tarr-and-miklos-jancso<\/a>.] produced for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fandor.com\/keyframe\/video-mapping-the-long-take-bela-tarr-and-miklos-jancso\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Fandor<\/em><\/a> a month prior to the Anderson video and which, seen in retrospect, served as a warm-up piece. It was here that I first experimented with maps as a way of exploring two of cinema\u2019s most renowned auteurs of lyrical camera movement. Mapping was clearly a simple and intuitive approach for accounting for the cinematographic artistry of these films; but the means of mapping proved daunting. What software or animation techniques would I need to learn? In the end, I fell back on a makeshift solution, otherwise it would have taken days if not weeks to learn a more sophisticated technique. I employed Microsoft Power Point, a software with which I was comfortable using, even if admittedly it wasn\u2019t designed for this particular task.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xZcd254VO-c?rel=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>VIDEO 4:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fandor.com\/keyframe\/video-mapping-the-long-take-bela-tarr-and-miklos-jancso\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Mapping the Long Take: Bela Tarr and\u00a0<\/i><i>Mikl\u00f3s Jancs\u00f3<\/i><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But by the time I entered the Anderson project, I was more decisive, even determined, to make the most of this lo-fi solution and embrace it for its own amateurish attributes. There are some video essayists who display remarkable graphical dexterity and sophisticated presentation in their work (<a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/kogonada\" target=\"_blank\">kogonada<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/tonyzhou\" target=\"_blank\">Tony Zhou <\/a>readily come to mind), but somehow I\u2019ve never been able to achieve that degree of polish; there\u2019s something doggedly amateurish that I can\u2019t seem to shake in my work. But I celebrate DIY as an aesthetic identity for those who work from the position of disadvantage, and who must rely on what limited tool set he or she has at their disposal. In this sense, the Anderson video isn\u2019t just a reverential appraisal of an auteur (as so many video essays are, perhaps too many), but an articulation of one viewer\u2019s conflicted relationship to that auteur\u2019s work (and the industrialized filmmaking apparatus he has at his disposal) and in doing so establishes its own aesthetic ethos. This aesthetic position is directly linked to one\u2019s position within film culture, informed by specific economic, social and even political relations (in regards to the film industry\u2019s power over cinephiles as a kind of political power). These concerns would stay with me and eventually find their way into my main video essay project of this year, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alsolikelife.com\/premake\/\" target=\"_blank\">Transformers: The Premake<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.alsolikelife.com\/premake\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.alsolikelife.com\/premake\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/94101046?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0&amp;color=6b1307\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>VIDEO 5:\u00a0<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alsolikelife.com\/premake\/\" target=\"_blank\">Transformers: The Premake<\/a><\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Rewatching the Anderson video, I remember how much fun it was to approximate the geographic layout of the sets on Power Point slides, using the basic shapes the application provided (the one exception being the overhead craps and blackjack table .gifs I found on the internet, which give the map of the shot in <i>Hard Eight <\/i>a goofily literal element). And of course there are the fonts, a silly way to pay homage to each film while also accounting for what was available at that time on the internet for amateur access . I also remember being surprised at how much my esteem of <i>Magnolia<\/i> (which up to the making of this video had been my favorite Anderson film) lessened in the course of engaging with its one shot represented in the video. In deliberating its virtues, I came to realize how gratuitously busy and frantic it was, like the rest of the film. This shift in my evaluation of Anderson\u2019s filmography was accompanied by a shift in my appreciation of different strategies of cinematography: from the more showy and athletic movements through space to a more subtle and resourceful utilization of the camera in coordination with staging and temporal progression.<\/p>\n<p>In rewatching, I\u2019m also struck by the art history professor quality of the narration, which, from my present standpoint, seems to indulge a bit much in the act of interpretation, to the extent that it risks foisting too much auteurial intention on the work. The pros and cons of such an approach are debatable, but <a href=\"http:\/\/catecinem.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/20\/anderson-narrative-construct\/\" target=\"_blank\">one criticism<\/a> of this video that really stayed with me was posted on the website <a href=\"http:\/\/catecinem.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/20\/anderson-narrative-construct\/\" target=\"_blank\">Catecinem<\/a>[1. M.J. Schneider, &#8216;P. T. Anderson: a narrative of tracking\u00a0shots&#8217;,<em> Catecinem<\/em>, November 20, 2012. Online at: \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/catecinem.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/20\/anderson-narrative-construct\/\">http:\/\/catecinem.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/20\/anderson-narrative-construct\/<\/a>]. Its author expressed reservations about the video\u2019s account of an overarching and evolving singular artistic vision in these films, the classic \u201ccult of the auteur\u201d approach which too often neglects the material realities of the production, such as the contributions of other crew (e.g. director of photography, lighting, Steadicam operator). A few months later at the 2013 SCMS conference, my misgivings were redoubled while listening to Katie Byrd, a doctoral candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, discuss in depth the work of Steadicam operators as an exemplary case of \u201cinvisible labor\u201d &#8211; a moving, floating eye that seems to negate the actual \u00a0body moving it, and how this relation the experience of a work and the labor behind it suggested a larger systematized logic of social alienation perpetuated by the professional film industry. The specific observations on steadicam labor in her presentation provoked larger questions for me about the extent to which the film industry and cinephile culture is consumed by an impulse to escape material reality, and to what extent this impulse needs to be countered.<\/p>\n<p>It was at this point that I took a more active interest in thinking about how video essays could show the unseen hands at work behind every frame, and less about how the cinematic frame presents itself as a finished work of art (which remains the primary concern of most video essay work). This line of inquiry took me back to Farocki &#8211; one of the foremost cinematic investigators of underlying systems of governance and labor within the image &#8211; for another round of viewing and reflection. I can\u2019t say that I have pursued these concerns consistently &#8211; I still lapse into auteurist fawning on occasion &#8211; but having made <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alsolikelife.com\/premake\/\" target=\"_blank\">Transformers: The Premake<\/a><\/i><i>\u00a0<\/i>I can say that I\u2019ve at least given myself a solid signpost to point me further in the direction I think I should go, a signpost that to some extent was planted on the maps of Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s camera movements.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Biographical note<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Kevin B. Lee<\/strong> is a film critic, filmmaker, and leading proponent of video form film criticism, having produced over 100 short video essays on cinema and television over the past five years. He is a video essayist and founding editor of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fandor.com\/\">Fandor<\/a>, and editor of Indiewire\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.indiewire.com\/pressplay\/\">Press Play<\/a>\u00a0blog, labelled by Roger Ebert as \u201cthe best source of video essays online.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lee also serves as VP of Programming and Education for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/dgeneratefilms.com\/\">dGenerate Films<\/a>, the only specialty distributor of Chinese independent cinema in the U.S. Kevin previously served as supervising producer of \u2019Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies\u2019, and has written on film for Sight\u00a0<span class=\"amp\">&amp;<\/span>\u00a0Sound, the Chicago Sun-Times, Time Out and Cineaste.<\/p>\n<p>He tweets at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/alsolikelife\">@alsolikelife<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Notes<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On THE CAREER OF PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON IN FIVE SHOTS By\u00a0Kevin B. Lee Curated at\u00a0[in]Transition, 1.3, 2014 by\u00a0Catherine Grant VIDEO <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/reflections\/intransition-1-3\/kevin-b-lee\/\">Continue Reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">KEVIN B. LEE<\/span><span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":120,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-fullwidth.php","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-216","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P4VcpT-3u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":739,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/216\/revisions\/739"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}