La imagen digital
La Marca, Buenos Aires 2005. ISBN: 950-889-063-0
Les images de synthèse
De la technologie à l’esthétique
(Computer-Generated Images, from Technology to Aesthetics)
128
pages . Published by Nathan in November1998. ISBN : 2-09-191049-X.
In the commercials, in the plane cockpits, the room in the movies, in the hospitals, one cannot escape from the CGI world. Is this a representational revolution, or a new kind of glance ? Will the things which surround us be the same once virtually duplicated ? Do painters, architects and film director must change their way of practising or even thinking ?
First,
this book describes the way CGI are calculated, and their fields of
application. So, its reading does not require preliminary knowledge in digital
data processing. Its ambition is to give conceptual tools necessary to an
aesthetic and epistemological debate.
Star Wars, anatomie d’une saga
(Star
Wars, anatomy of a saga)
244
pages. Published by Armand-Colin in March 2005. ISBN : 2-200-26911-0.
Star Wars is " so much more than
cinema ", his fans say : six films, tens of video games,
hundreds of novels, thousands of Internet websites and derived products …
without speaking of the Star Wars U.S. national defense program…
This
book intends to approach this plentiful continent in an objective way, by
raising simple questions : How to explain the world success of Star
Wars? Is this a commercial
product without heart or a bunch of narrative universals in which each
one of us can find his account ? Does it still belong to cinema or is it
rather a data-processing laboratory? Is history of Jedi the mirror of its time
or the equivalent of the mythological ones ? Does it deliver a doubtful
moral or gives it envies to carry out our dreams? Does it provide
infantilization or does it ask some existential questions under cover to amuse
us ?…
To
answer, it is necessary to closely analyse the six films and to compare them
with classical cinema rules, it is necessary to establish the difference
between the Knights of the Middle Ages and the Jedi Knights, it is
necessary to play Rogue Leader
and to read the dedicated websites, to look at the short films directed by the
fans, to analyze homages and parodies, cheers and mockeries… and maybe one see
results which were not those one waited for…
A book « dedicated to every child who grew up wanting to fly an X-wing », and written to search for the essence of popular cinema.
Hollywood
et la difficulté d’aimer
(Hollywood
and the difficulty of loving)
304 pages.
Published by Stock in March 2004. ISBN : 2-234-05661-6.
« Best
SFCC 2004 essay » (Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma)
How can one still seriously
consider old Hollywood romances? « Realism » today directs the way of
considering love, pushing back romance in ghettos (Mills & Boon books, soap
operas in the afternoon…), as « chewing-gum for the heart ». The
defeat of « great love » seems complete : old movies turn into
kitsch, with unbelivable happy ends,
romantic sunsets, sexist quotes and languid violins... But is this really the
case? The truth is : a lot of people (less or more secretely) like old
Hollywood romances.
Perhaps
they like it because passionate love here is taken by serious. Perhaps because
they feel some sad secrets are hidden by sunsets and violins…
While
choosing a dozen of Hollywood romances (some famous and some not so famous),
Laurent Jullier follows the rituals of « great love turning
bad » : love at first sight, seduction games, social troubles,
« unlikely couples », failures, then death. Here lies a
« practical philosophy », subtle and dark, tuned with what evolutionary
biology calls human universals.
In spite of beeing produced by
a dream factory, these films are intended to show the difficulty of loving, and
maybe they do not lie.
Qu’est-ce qu’un bon film ?
(What is a good
movie ?)
256 pages.
Published by La Dispute in December 2002. ISBN : 2-84303-060-9.
Why do we love a movie and hate an other
one ? It is hardly difficult to locate certain strongly recurring
criteria. From the more naive to the more distinguished, six criteria of
judgement are analyzed: success, technique, didacticism, emotion, originality,
coherency. Starting from many examples borrowed from critics or everiday life,
the conditions of validity of these criteria are established, using
sociological and aesthetic tools.
It thus
explodes some of our dogmas, our ritual or our crazes. But this book does not
concern the cinema only, it constitutes, more largely, a kind of introduction
to a reasoned use of the aesthetic appreciation, even if the matching of these
terms apparently sounds antithetic.
Cinéma et cognition
(Cinema
and cognitive science)
224
pages. Published by L’Harmattan, May 2002. ISBN : 2-7475-2327-6.
How far can
cognitive and evolutionary psychology lead film studies ? The goal of this
book is to describe what occurs in the spectator’s mind when watching to a cinematic
narrative. In a more precise way, the task is double : 1. To describe,
within mental processes commune with all the human ones, the perceptive,
cognitive and and emotional mechanisms brought into play by the
cinematographic device. 2. To observe interactions between these processes and
the films. The book covers both sides of the cinematic apparatus, from the
micro-level of data-driven perception to the macro-level of narrative pleasure,
where cognitive science can combine with sociology and aesthetics.
L’analyse de séquences
(Analyzing film
sequences)
188
pages. Published by Nathan-VUEF in January 2002. ISBN : 2-09 191 227-1.
Others ed. in 2002, 2003, and 2005 by Armand-Colin.
This is a handbook, a toolbox. It is intended to help whoever is intented to
analyze a sequence. By where to start? Are there a lot of manners of reading an
image? What does the professor exactly expect ?
Tools
are given in the first three chapters, applicable whatever the film. The
essential technical concepts (point of view, focal distance, depth of field...)
are explained in details with helps of frames and diagrams.
An
equal importance is attached to the soundtrack. Examples are taken in all film
genres, from Titanic to
Jean-Luc Godard, from Love me
to Charlie Chaplin...
The tools are
supplemented by descriptions of academic tests used by french and belgian
schools of cinema.
It ends with
analyzed sequences in the most various kinds, narrative cinema from Gladiator to Rosetta, music video, documentary and commercials.
L’écran
post-moderne
Un cinéma du recyclage et du
feu d’artifice
(Postmodern Screen. A cinema of
pyrotechnics and quoting)
208
pages. Published by L’Harmattan in February1997. ISBN : 2-7384-5083-0
Star Wars, The Big Blue, Raiders of the Lost Arch, Pulp Fiction... What is postmodern cinema ? Exciting
entertainment for the ones, death of the cinema for the others, what does this
style mean anyway? In which way is it linked to poststructuralist theory,
failures of Great Narratives and DWAMes, digital technology, and
« cool » ideology ? Is it really new, or Avant-Gardes was
already here in the Twenties ?
After
exploring conceptual ways of thinking the relative « novelty » of
these images, ten analyses confront postmodern cinema with music videos,
commercials, video games and Disneyland Star Tours.
Les sons au cinéma et à la télévision
Précis
d’analyse de la bande-son
(The
soundtrack. Howto analyze it)
224
pages. Published by Armand Colin in 1995. ISBN : 2-200-21659-9
The
purpose of this work is to rationally describe how the spectator listen to the
soundtrack and links it to the visual flow.
It
articulates around three questions: What ? : what source does this particular sound
intend to construct ? Where ? : in which space, more or less depicted by the film, is this
source supposed to lie ? Why ? : which useful narrative or emotive information is it
brought precisely by this sound ?
This way of
analyzing soundtracks can apply to all types of sounds, words, musics and
noises, and to all cinema genres : classical narrative, modern
deconstructivist cinema, postmodern “film-concerts”, TV shows...
Contains ten
film analyzes and a glossary of technical and theoretical terms.