News are back! Stay tuned for Cinemetrics-related news soon.
September 15, 2023
The Cinemetrics net hunt continues
Dear Cinemetrics users!
As previously reported on the this News, the cinemetrics.lv URL has been stolen, as a probable result of which the data submitted to either the .lv or uchicago.edu URL are not showing on the cinemetrics database as of this June. We did some quick research and found out that the stolen cinemetrics address points to a German company info@teaminternet.com which allegedly sells their advertising through stolen addresses. We also found a related instruction, which reads: «For any questions or concerns regarding data protection on this website, please contact the website provider and controller. Alternatively, you can also contact the data protection officer of Team Internet AG, Rechtsanwalt Christian Schmoll, via email at privacy@teaminternet.com» If anyone has an idea how to procede please write to Yuri Tsivian at ytsivian@uchicago.edu
Thanks, Yuri
September 9, 2023
MORE INFO REGARDING THE CINEMETRICS TEMPORARY BLACKOUT ANNOUNCED ON SEPTEMBER 9 (SEE "NEWS" BELOW):
Carmen Caswell, a Digital Humanities curator of Cinemetrics at University of Chicago reports:
Hi Yuri,
Michael and I were able to look at the current submission database and can confirm that it has not stored any submissions since June. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to determine why they're being rejected. However, we've made quite a bit of steady
September 7, 2023
ATTENTION CINEMETRICS USERS!
Temporarily the Cinemetrics is under reconstruction, and is only partially functional.
THE GOOD NEWS IS: You can access/work with cinemetrics data submitted before mid-summer 2023.
THE WORSE NEWS: Please refrain from sumbittling new data before further notice. "The system accepts your data signalling "Submission successful!" but your data will not be visible in the database. If you use the downloaded
December 24, 2022 –
Dear Cinemetrics Users!
Naum Kleiman sent me this wonderful Byblical drawing by Eisenstein complete with Holiday greetings, which I forward to you all, adding mine:
August 27, 2022 –
Excellent News
After a year-plus of searching, we were fortunate to find a dream team of IT experts who agreed to restore the FACT tool we lost to the Remove-Flash-from-Browsers campaign and make the Classic tool Mac-User-friendly. Here is an excerpt from the agreement signed today.
"Third North Technologies LLC will develop a Google Chrome extension enabling users to navigate through a
August 9, 2022 –
In the first week of August, a number of data were submitted to Cinemetrics that have no film title (except acronyms like A or TPQS) and year marked. These may be legitimate tests, or a bunch or robotic scams.
I have deleted those, as we usually do with submissions missing essential metadata.
June 3, 2022 –
CINEMETRICS working again
I'm so sorry for that service interruption last night. It seems our sysadmin Peter was performing some quick maintenance yesterday afternoon, and Adam attempted his submission in that very brief window.
There ideally shouldn't be any lingering issues.
June 2, 2022
SUBMISSION ALERT
One of the Alluder team guys, Adam Peterson, tried his hand for the first time to submit a movie to Cinemetrics, and the system foiled him (see details below);
Cinemetrics has a younger sister, named Alluder. While its task is usefully broader than Cinemetrics', one can use Alluder for calculating cut frequency as well. I leanded of Alluder's existence from this email from its creator:
Hi Professor Tsivian,
My name is Aaron Peterson and I'm an undergrad at New York University.
About a year and a half ago, my
December 24, 2021
Happy Holidays to all Cinemetricians!
Yuri
September 13, 2021
Good news: our field is advancing, slowly bur surely. In August, I got this email from Barry Salt: "Dear Yuri,
I have got another piece out in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities in the advance articles online form of that journal, dated 21 May 2021. Lord knows when and if they will put it on paper. Anyway I attach it for you, and it
May 24, 2021
A new original study has been added to the section "Cinemetrics of Film Style: Case Studies" in the Mesurement Theory tab:
"The evolution of form in Andrei Tarkovsky's films" by Filippo Schillaci
Take a look, it's really interesting as far as its methods and results.
March 29, 2021
Good news from China
I just happened to get a message from Shanghai from Prof. 龙井问茶, who had organized and supervised a crash course in Cinemetrics I taught for 4 weeks at one of Guangzhou universities in 2017. Yang has just translated into Chinese and published two essays on Cinemetrics and reports on the growing demand for more Cinemetrics-related literature and cinemetrics-informed teaching. (He was stopped by Covid
January 4, 2021
Happy New Year to all
Dear Cinemetrics users,
I have two news to announce:
The bad news from the past year was that the frame accurate (FACT) Cinemetrics tool became inoperative due to the fact that most of modern-day browsers do not support the "flash" software any more. Now, the good news is, the University of Chicago who hosts Cinemetrics, has procured funds to replace FACT
November 3, 2020
Cinemetrics is back and working, but do check the News from time to time, there are going to be some major changes in the data gathering/submission functions because, as of December, the Flash software on which our tools are based will no longer be supported by major browsers. More on this later.
Meanwhile, Barry Salt has alerted me today, in the process of rebuilding
As I wrote in the comment, “I am Yuri Tsivian, and I approve this message.”
June 10, 2020
Good news from Barry Salt
1) free PDFs of his books are now available on the starword.com website.
2) Barry Salt's study "The style of Ingmar Bergman’s films" has been published in The New Review of Film and Television Studies. Here is an excerpt from the abstract:
After a brief summary of Ingmar Bergman’s filmmaking
career and his films, his individual films are analysed in
May 9, 2020
Good news
Database is back up and running!
May 8, 2020
This afternoon, the Cinemetrics database stopped responding. This is not unfamiliar: this sometimes occurs due to outages or other problems with the University of Chicago Humanities IT servers. Wait and tell your students to wait till this is fixed (hopefully, soon). While your submissions (if I understand it correctly) reach the database, users are unable to access it.
Sorry for the inconvenience!
May 1, 2020
Dear Cinemetricians,
Some news, rather topical I am afraid. Despite (or maybe because) of the international stay-at-home policies, Cinemetrics daily submissions have intensified. Those following the growth of our database may have noticed a new bunch of movie trailers--an interesting and promising research.
Also, I want to report a quick enquiry I made last week about a somewhat mysterious set
June 11, 2019
Good and sad news this spring
The good news: Veronica Schmidt's book "Quantitative Film Studies. Regularities and Interrelations Exemplified by Shot Lengths in Soviet Feature Films" came out recently. Veronica used the Cinemetrics tool for the measurement of 70 Soviet feature films: 1920s-1980s, 5 comedies and 5 dramas per decade.
The sad one: Veronica's teacher and mentor cinemetrician Peter Grzybek (1957 – 2019) died recently. See the obituary
March 10, 2019
A sad anniversary last month.
Last year at the end of February time Daria Khitrova and I received this email from Hilary Cool, English archeologist, and wife of our mutual friend and collaborator Mike Baxter, Professor Emeritus in Statistical Archaeology at Nottingham Trent University, UK:
“I’m afraid I have to relay some bad news. Mike died suddenly and unexpectedly last Thursday. … I want to let you
January 3, 2019
HAPPY NEW 2019 to all Cinemetrics users!
Of many news, the most recent are:
1) A series of (nearly 40) submission of (mainly) Bergman's films by Barry Salt, made in November using his signature hand-measured frame-accurate method.
2) A large number of films submitted by a class of students taught by our regular user Radomir Kokes. It's a regular part of his introductory course on film studies analysis
January 7, 2017
A memorial dedication to Gunars Civjans, my son and co-founder of Cinemetrics, has now been added to the from page of this website, see here.
From now on, I resume posting news -- roughly, on a monthly basis.
I wish a happier new year to all cinemetrics users.
July 26, 2016
Gunārs Civjans (1975-2016)
I have a tragic news to share. My son Gunārs Civjans whom many Cinemetrics users know as our sole software inventor and developer passed away after a sudden two-day illness in Jūrmala, Latvia, on April 23, 2016, at age 40. Gunārs loved working for Cinemetrics, helping some of you with their data submissions, and working on new generations of Cinemetrics tools. I find no
March 20, 2016
Good news from three quarters into March.
1) A query (+ a reply) about Cinemetrics metadata on our Discussion Board.
2) A letter from a film scholar of China:
I’m taking the liberty of writing to you to pay tribute to you for your outstanding achievements in Cinemetrics, and see if we could find some possibilities of cooperation in film studies.
Please allow me to do some
March 5, 2016
Good news from early March.
On the scholarship front:
1) Our colleague Adelheid Heftberger of Austrian Film Museum published a book, take a look (in German) much of which is based on digital study of Vertov's editing, including measurements done on Cinemetrics.
2) David Hare from Australia contacted me with this message:
I recently submitted my PhD thesis on digital stereoscopy (D3D) for marking.
February 20, 2016
Good news from mid-Feb.
1) a few days ago I got this message from a collegue whom I do not know personally. It gives us some idea of the cross-disciplinary spread of what we all are doing on Cinemetrics:
Dear Dr. Tsivian,
My article on digital representations of film analysis has been accepted for publication in France by Classiques Garnier in the proceedings of the 2013
April 12, 2014
Good news from the month of April.
After a period of consultations and deliberations (see the relevant topic on the Discussion Board) Gunars Civjans and I decided to launch our Database cleansing campaign. Some incomplete, incomprehensible or repeated submission will be as of now disappearing from the Cinemetrics database. This does not mean that these data have been erased forever. None of your data, including "tool-test" data will be eliminated.
March 2, 2014
A quick update on good news
A one-day conference on Cinemetrics took place yesterday (Saturday, March 1) at the University of Chicago. Look here for details.
An article by Kevin B. Lee that acknowledges Cinemetrics and used its method to analyse gendered time distribution in Oscar-nominated films came out today in the Sunday edition of The New York Times. Very interesting, look here.
September 22, 2008
News from software development!
The movie graph is now interactive. You can hover your mouse pointer over the graph to get shot-specific information and add notes to the shot. Here's how it works:
Put your pointer over the shot you are interested in. A box with shot information will pop up. The information contains shot number, timecode (minutes:seconds.deciseconds), shot length, shot type (for advanced measurements),
January 5, 2007
A couple of small technical updates:
- the long promised standard deviation and max/min data now available for every shot type for advanced measurements
- changed how the step adjustment behaves for graphs. If the graph is adjusted automatically to fit the screen, the word 'Step' shows up in red. It doesn't show the nondescript 'Auto' anymore, instead the step size to which it has adjusted to fit the
April 23, 2006
Gunars' Apr 21, 2006 revision solves two problems:
One, we now can pinpoint the shot or scene which is the shortest or longest in the film by way of using the timer to find the wanted segment on the tape/DVD/whatever.
Two, we can now estimate the variance between the shortes and the longest shot of the given film. For instance, Isobel
progress
on
the
new,
improved
site
over
these
past
summer
weeks.
Sandy
and
Jeff
are
completing
OCHRE
upgrades
to
allow
the
system
to
receive
data.
Our
summer
student
worker
has
built
out
much
of
the
replacement
site's
functionality,
and
this
past
week
the
Forum
officially
hired
a
Software
Engineer
who
will
soon
be
able
to
complete
it.
Your message to users is correct that the classic tool will erroneously state that the submission was successful, and users should indeed save their cut data locally.
Best,
Carmen
"classic
tool,
please
make
sure
you
save
your
measurements
for
submissing
later
on.
ALSO: Do NOT use the url "cinemetrics.lv" for at present it leads you to a wrong website. Do use https://cinemetrics.uchicago.edu instead.
Sorry for the inconvenience -- cinemetrics is under a reconstruction.
Best, Yuri
film,
capture
timestamps,
and
transmit
that
data
to
an
existing
MySQL
database.
Developer Deliverables The principal deliverable will be the Chrome extension. Expected features are: 1. User may play a video file stored on user’s machine. 2. User may navigate through the video file at frame-by-frame increments. 3. User may place timestamps at any point in the file. 4. User may input sufficient film metadata for identification: title; year of release; director; country of origin. 5. User may save data, and re-open to continue, at any time; user should be able to re-open an in-progress submission, restoring markers previously placed, to continue the work. 6. User may upload completed data to the existing Cinemetrics database. 7. User may access the extension and make use of the features when not connected to the internet (data will be saved locally as work continues and uploaded to the database upon reconnection). 8. Users will be able to use the tool in both “start-and-stop mode” (using the video player controls) and in “continuous mode” (without using the video player; for example, the user places timestamps while viewing a film in a theater or television set). An additional deliverable will be a written and illustrated tutorial, preferably including a video with instructions how to best use the various features of the toolkit."
experience
with
Cinemetrics
ended
unsuccessfully.
I watched The Night House (2020) and recorded every cut. However, when I submitted the information I experienced a long submission wait time (screenshot below), then was notified my submission was unsuccessful, after which the application crashed and my data was lost.
Adam
Having received Adam’s message, I ran a quick test and got the same “unsuccessful” reply:
I tried the database, and the database works as usual.
IF YOU ARE PLANNING TO SUBMIT NEW DATA TO CINEMETRICS PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR DATA ARE SAFE BEFORE YOU HIS "SUBMIT" OR WAIT TILL THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED.
brother
and
I
formed
an
idea
to
create
a
chrome
extension
that
would
allow
film
researchers
and
makers
to
create
time-stamped
annotations
to
be
used
for
research
and
collaborative
purposes.
We
called
it
Alluder
(our
first
idea
was
to
point
out
every
allusion
in
a
film)
and
have
since
published
it
on
the
chrome
store.
This semester, I've been busy upgrading it with features and showing it to both students and professors. One professor I showed it to yesterday told me it reminded her of Cinemetrics. Being unfamiliar with the tool, I used it last night and made a submission (3:10 to Yuma).
While Alluder doesn't provide the same ability to track shots as Cinemetrics does, I think it could and I'd very much like to connect to hear your thoughts and see if I could be helpful.
I'm also going to include a video I made for a film and tv class I presented to last week to demo Alluder.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts and thank you for your time.
Best,
Aaron
is
available
for
everyone
on
the
starword.com
website.
That
is
the
important
thing.
It
contains
a
new
metric."
Indeed, a break-trhough thing, titled "The end of the Great Speed-Up." Just click and download. Another good news is that a study of editing by James E. Cutting, mostly researched on Cinemetrics, is out from Oxford University Press: Movies on Our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement. Take a look here.
Subject: for the permsion of translation and publication of the essay “A Numerate Film History?"
Dear Yuri,
I am write to tell you that Cinemetrics has genarated more and more warmly discussions science two of you and Barry Salt’s essays translated in Chinese and published in Contemporary Cinema ( “Cinemetrics, Part of the Humanities’ Cyberinfrastructure”;“Statistical Style Analysis of Motion Pictures”). Some have begun to use Cinemetrics as a tool in their Chinese film studies. But my plan to hold (or co-hold with you) an international conference on Cinemetrics has been delayed by covid-19.
I appreciated you two very much for your generous permission for the translation and publication. I am sure that’s the first time for Cinemetrics to appear in Chinese film study journals. Many readers and researchers tell me that they want to know much more about Cinemetrics, some scholars ask me if I can introduce more about it.
Do you remember that last time you mentioned the essay “A Numerate Film History? Cinemetrics Looks at Griffith, Griffith Looks at Cinemetrics,”which I have read many times. Would you please help me get the permission from the authors, including yourself and your wife Daria, for its translation in Chinese and publication in Journal of Guizhou University(Art)? Due to the poor financial status of academic journal, the payments would be poor too. But I would try to pay compensation to the authors in other ways, when I get a chance.
With many thanks and good wishes,
Yang
Shanghai Normal University, China
by
an
updated
successor,
TACT
(Time
Accurate
Cinemetrics
Tool),
and
has
posted
a
search
for
a
software
specialist
to
build
the
latter.
Here
it
is
Cinemetrics Project
Student Position : Javascript Developer
General Job Summary
The Cinemetrics project of the Department of Cinema & Media Studies is seeking a motivated student employee to develop a customized Chrome Extension to record, edit and upload time stamps from browser-based video players into an existing MySQL database.
Job duties primarily include frontend web programming (Javascript; HTML5, CSS) to implement custom functions in a Chrome Extension to 1) save a current time stamp, 2) provide fine navigation (in units of milliseconds) video controls, and 3) upload the time stamp data to the database.
Commitment: 10-20 hours per week for up to 10 weeks.
QUALIFICATIONS
Required
· Experience with web-based programming frameworks, including Javascript, HTML5 and CSS
· Good problem-solving skills
· Good communication skills
· The ability to respond quickly and professionally to stakeholders and beta-testers
Desired
· Experience handling streamed video content within web-based programming frameworks
· Experience developing Chrome extensions
· Experience with web programming for mobile devices and frameworks
· Experience in Cinema and Media studies
· Experience with SQL-based backend database systems
· Familiarity with version control systems such as Github
Apply by sending an email with a cover letter and resume to [email]
some
of
the
writings
on
cinmetrics
theory
have
gone
missing.
This is in the "Measurement Theory" section, under "Dealing with Film data".
In the sub-section "Taking shot Lengths", your contribution is missing with a 404 Not Found error.
In sub-section "Cinemetrics of Film Style" the Barry Salt section: "How They Cut Dialogue Scenes" is missing.
In sub-section "Uses of Cinemetrics" the Keith Brisson, Mike Baxter, and D.W. Griffith sub-sub-sections are all missing.
In sub-section "Shot Lengths and Psychology", Mike Baxter's "Evolution in Hollywood editing", Barry Salt's "Salt on baxter on cutting", James Cutting's "More on the Evolution...", and Mike Baxter's "Further Comments" are missing.
In sub-section "Film & Statistics", all articles are missing,
and finally, Mike Baxter's "Cinemetric Data Analysis" is missing.
Barry found this out, he says, because James Cutting makes extensive references to the pieces in the "Shot lengths & Psychology" sub-section in one of his papers on the topic.
terms
of
the
characteristics of the shots in them, such as length, closeness of camera, camera
movement, POV, and so on. A simple statistical consideration of all these
quantities enables a new separation of Bergman’s career into three phases
from this perspective, with the film Persona being one of the turning points.
Using a new technique of digital frame analysis, other points emerge regarding
the development of his handling of actor movement and camera movement in
his staging of love scenes, which gives rise to what could be called the Bergman
signature shot.
of
data
submitted
massively
a
few
days
ago,
with
numbers
instead
of
movie
titles
and
no
year
or
other
data
provided.
Fortunately,
I
could
trace
the
name
and
email
of
the
submitter
(Luke
Naylor-Perrott,
a
young
but
already
award-winning
filmmaker
and
film
student),
find
below
what
I
wrote
to
him
and,
below
my
email,
Luke's
reply
to
my
email.
As
Gegel
used
to
say,
SIGNS
OF
THE
TIME.
1. MY EMAIL TO LUKE:
My name is Yuri Tsivian, I am in charge of Cinemetrics, the website designed to measure and store average shot lengths of films. The reason why I am writing is that for the last few day you (or your namesake, or someone using your name) submitted a bunch of data with metadata missing. Each of the submission uses a number (like # 410 and so on), without the year or country of origin indicated for each submission. Some are identified by your name, some by the initials LNP2, e.g. https://www.cinemetrics.lv/movie.php?movie_ID=26028
If this set of data originates with you or someone working in your name, could you kindly give me a quick idea of what these submissions are about, what films they stand for and whatever you’d like me to add for other Cinemetrics users to know what we are dealing with?
One of the reasons I need to know is that at time the Cinemetrics site is being targeted by cyber-robots generating random meaningless data. If this is the case this time, and a robot is using your name I will instruct the University of Chicago IT people to erase the submissions as false. If it is you indeed, I will post a clarification and whatever you’d want us to know about your project on the website NEWS.Dear Yuri,
2. LUKE'S EMAIL TO ME:
Thank you for reaching out, I’m so sorry I caused you trouble - I promise that wasn’t my intention!
Firstly, it’s an honour to meet you (albeit electronically) - I have read a number of your articles and you are a big influence on what I am doing at the moment. I’m a Master's Student at the University of Amsterdam and for my thesis I am looking to analyse the formal and aesthetic variety of music videos - your tool is a lifesaver and as you can see I’m using it intensely!
An apologia for my strange (bot-like) behaviour on your site. Essentially, my deadline for data collection is the end of this week - however, I am having to do it all over the next few days: my current situation as an international student is somewhat precarious because of Covid19 - I may have to go home suddenly in the next few days, which will cause a lot of disruption, and a number of my relatives are elderly which means that if they do contract it, I doubt I will be in the right headspace to work. All this is to say that I have been using your site at a ridiculous pace and only filling out the bare minimum and a number, which makes searching back for the data as quick as possible (the number refers to my spreadsheet, as seen in the picture attached).
As part of my plan, once I have finished my analysis and hopefully the pandemic has settled down somewhat, I was intending to comment on each of my submissions with the song name and artist, alongside uploading my thesis onto my website and posting the link with each comment. I am planning to include as an appendix the table of my data and their corresponding numbers for easy access as well.
I realise this isn’t the same as posting the metadata straight away, and I am very sorry for any inconvenience caused. I hope, nevertheless, that my thesis will contribute to the world of quantitative film analysis in some small way.
The annus mirabilis Hilary refers to is 2014, the year when Mike, Daria and I won a Neubauer Collegium grant for the project “Cinemetrics Across Boundaries: A Collaborative Study of Montage” https://neubauercollegium.uchicago.edu/faculty/cinemetrics/. This was the first time I met Michael in person—even though earlier on, in 2013, Mike, Barry Salt and I had been involved in a three-month online dialogue “Films and Statistics: Give and Take” to be found here: https://www.cinemetrics.lv/articles.php
Barry Salt was the first to whom Daria and I passed on the sad news that Hilary conveyed to us. Here is what Barry wrote back:
“Sorry and a bit sad to hear about Mike Baxter's death. He was a generous person and a real statistician. He was also a real scientist, which does not necessarily follow. I regret that I was not able to ever meet him in person.”
As I said, Daria and I did meet Mike, and were quite impressed. What Barry—a trained statistician—says of Mike became instantly evident when you met him. Mike was a true scientist, more at home among modes, medians and means than in the world of palpable realities, the world he never paid too much attention to—except for (in this order) Hilary, movies, and a glass (or two, as in the picture) of Italian wine. Daria and I were lucky: we came to know Hilary, had more than one glass with her and Mike at their summer abode in Sorrento, and spent enough time analyzing film editing with Mike to get a sense of what statistics can reveal about movies. The three of us had a plan: to write a book titled “A History of Film Editing.” We only managed to write two chapters of it, both published under our three names. One, titled “Exploring Cutting Structure in Film, with Applications to the Films of D. W. Griffith, Mack Sennett, and Charlie Chaplin” appeared in 2015 in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, see here: https://academic.oup.com/dsh/article-abstract/32/1/1/2957363?redirectedFrom=fulltext ; the other, “A Numerate Film History? Cinemetrics Looks at Griffith, Griffith Looks at Cinemetrics” in the French journal Mise au Point, see https://journals.openedition.org/map/2108
Mike was a non-stop worker, appearing at a breakfast table half-awake, wearing his pajamas and already carrying his laptop—a machine trained to convert long numeric tables into beautifully colored scatter plots and trend-lines. It would take some time (worth every minute of it) to compile Mike’s full bibliography. Here are some items close at hand:
n Video recording of a talk given in Chicago (UofC) in 2014: “Graphical Griffith: Cutting-Patterns in the Films of D.W. Griffith,” see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw3p_pNz5mU
n MikeMetrics, Mike Baxter’s website primarily concerned with the quantitative analysis of archaeological data, and with cinemetrics, interpreted here as the statistical analysis of quantifiable data descriptive of the structure of film. See https://www.mikemetrics.com/#
3) Since May 2017, students at Izmir University of Economics under the guidance of Serkan Savk have been creating Cinemetrics data for Turkish films. The data set can be viewed under the Cinemetrics lab "Yesilcam 1960s and 70s." An important group of submissions occurred in October 2018. As Serkan tells me, their intention is developing a distant reading model for Turkish films. Serkan says he will share the initial findings of his study at the ECREA 2018 Conference.
Dear Cinemetricians, do send me your project descriptions if you want them to appear on the News. Have fun in the New Year!
words
in
me
to
express
my
love
and
admiration
for
Gunārs
as
a
son
and
collaborator.
Let
me
instead
quote
those
who
met
Gunārs
in
May,
2015
during
the
cinemetrics
conference
he
and
I
conducted
at
the
University
of
Chicago:
BARRY SALT: I will miss him as a person, too, apart from all he did to help create Cinemetrics.
ADELHEID HEFTBERGER: I have no words to describe how this news shocked me. I still remember when Yuri first mentioned Gunars many years ago. It must have been in connection with sailing. Over email conversation I had formed this image of the intelligent and gifted mastermind behind Cinemetrics, who constantly developed the site and added useful features. When I met him finally in Chicago, I was surprised to see that he was also one of the funniest people I had ever met. I admired his dry humor and I can only imagine what a wonderful and loving father and husband he has been too. I am so sorry to hear that Gunars is no more and I cannot understand how this is possible.
LEA JACOBS: I am so sorry to hear about Gunars. It was so great meeting him at the Cinemetrics conference last year. I loved his amused and ironic way of discussing the site, his style was so different from most of the computer experts I have encountered.
CHRISTINA PETERSEN: Although a bit late, I wanted to send you an email to offer my condolences. I heard about Gunnar through the Chicago pipeline and although I only met him in person once, at the Cinemetrics Symposium last year, I was very sorry to hear of your loss. My favorite memory of Gunnar in fact is from the semester in Spring 2007 when he skyped you during International Cinema II and you answered him, telling the class: “This is Gunnar, he helped invent Cinemetrics,” which prompted the class to break into a spontaneous burst of applause. That is the way I hope to remember him, always connected to you despite geographic or other distances in work and play.
self-introduction.
My
name
is
Yang
Shizhen,
a
professor
at
School
of
Journalism
and
communication
in
Guangzhou
University,
China.
My
teaching
and
research
is
centred
on
Chinese
film
studies
and
the
comparative
study
of
Chinese
and
American
film
language,
for
undergraduate
and
postgraduate.I
was
very
excited
when
I
first
visited
your
cinemetrics.lv
last
year’s
September
by
chance.
The
quantitative
methods,
which
you
adopted
in
studying
film’s
style
and
form,
do
give
me
lots
of
inspiration.
I
agree
with
most
of
your
research
methods
and
conclusions.
As we know, China has become the No. 2 movie market of the world in 2015, but the Grand Theory still plays the leading role in Chinese film study. I am far more skeptical about its validity. My voice is so faint to be heard from here. Therefore, I am greatly encouraged by your research when I met with it. Anyway, I should express my gratitude to you for your work.
Actually, in recent years, I have used some very similar methods in my teaching and research, with different tools. I used to guide students to extracts film form data with some editing softwares as a tool, such as After Effects/ Corel Video Studio/DaVinci Resolve and so on. In addition, I also used the data analysis of film form in the student’s practical training of editing and directing, and it has got some positive effect.
Well, I have some thoughts and tentative proposals:
1. I am leading some graduate students to found the database of Chinese film form, which I hope can be a part of the bigger database you established for researchers to compare film forms of different countries.
2. As for CINEMETRICS and FACT, my students and I still have a lot to learn from you. I hope we could attend some relevant academic conferences held by your school, so that we have the opportunity to talk face to face.
3. It’s a great honor for me to invite you to come to Guangzhou University and give lectures. Would you please accept the invitation? If possible, I will apply for all related expenses from Guangzhou University.
4. I truly wish that we could have a variety of cooperation and academic exchanges in terms of Cinemetrics, like the translation of your work, the exchange of the graduate students and teachers, etc..
Eager for your kind reply.
Sincerely yours, Yang Shizhen
Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Guangzhou University
One
of
the
areas
of
interest
was
to
do
with
the
relationship
between
the
uptake
of
the
D3D
screen
technology
and
popular
film
techniques
and
visual
styles.
I
used
the
Cinemetrics
software
to
explore
ideas
about
cutting
rates,
namely
that
D3D
films
in
relation
to
conventional
films
have
longer
cuts
in
order
to
give
the
audience
time
to
process
the
rendering/illusion
of
the
third-dimension.
The
findings
showed
that
this
is
not
necessarily
the
case.
Cinemetrics
was
such
a
great
help.
So,
thank
you
and
Gunars
Civjans
for
sharing
the
program
online.
Conference
of
the
International
Association
of
Comparative
Literature
(ICLA).
My
main
point
consists
in
demonstrating
that
film
analysis
is
no
longer
restricted
to
textual
and
verbal
commentary,
and
has
been
taking
many
graphic
forms
since
Bellour's
work
on
Hitchcock's
films.
I
am
writing
to
request
from
you
the
authorization
to
reproduce
and
publish
the
Cinemetrics
screengrab
(posted
on
the
homepage
of
your
website)
to
illustrate
my
article.
I
thank
you
in
advance
for
your
reply.
Should
you
need
any
further
information,
please
don't
hesitate
to
let
me
know.
Best regards,
Caroline Eades, Associate Professor of Film and Comparative Literature University of Maryland, College Park
2) A newcomer to Cinemetrics Julian Sittel is in the process of submitting Antonioni's body of films distiguishing between differrent shot scales and shots with the static vs. mobile framing. Looks like the beginning of a promising research. I bet fluctuations in shot scales across Antonioni's many films will lead to a meaningful conclusion. Keep measuring, Julian, if this is your plan, I look forward to more submissions
These
data
will
just
be
invisible
to
the
submitter
or
to
the
rest
of
us
the
Cinemetrics
users.
If
you
think
this
or
that
submission
has
vanished
in
error
or
in
vain,
just
write
a
note
about
this
to
Gunars
who
has
the
power
of
turning
your
data
visible
again.
He
may
ask
you
to
supply
this
or
that
missing
info
or
instruct
you
to
resubmit.
In
other
words,
all
our
cleansing
actions
are
reversible
and
negotiable.
So far I have cleansed the whole of year 2014, From January 1 to present. Here are some examples of the types of data I have removed (to repeat: removed from sight, not eliminated).
4) data debris resulting from on-line outages or other counting/submitting errors, for instance Peter Grzybek's recent submission:
5) films with forgotten metadata; for instance, a recent submission by our regular collaborator Cid Vasconcelos the film title and year are missing:
6) In cases of fully identical multiple submission just one has been left visible for Cinemetrics users:
and
the
number
of
shot
notes.
Click
on
the
shot
to
add
notes
to
the
specific
shot
the
same
way
you
add
comments
to
the
movie.
The
shots
with
notes
are
marked
with
green
bars
at
the
bottom
of
the
graph.
For now, this update concludes our toolbox for single film analyses. We will now concentrate on tools for multiple movie comparisons.
For the Mac people waiting for a Cinemetrics tool: it's already here! Use the online version, it's exactly the same as the downloadable one.?� We will not be making platform-specific updates anymore and will start phasing out the Windows version as well. This also means that the Cinemetrics tool can be used on the modern cell phones and handhelds with internet access, so take it with you to a movie theater!
screen.
I moved Yuri's 2006 Summary to a separate page. See news below or in the menu.
Walker
can
now
say
that
even
thought
the
ASL
of
the
silent
version
of
Blackmail
is
longer
that
the
ASL
of
the
sound
version,
this
loss
in
tempo
in
the
sound
version
is
compensated
for
by
a
higher
degree
of
variance
in
the
latter.
Now we know that the range between the shortest and the longest shots in the silent version is only 9 seconds against the range of 11 seconds in the sound version. If earlier we could only say this comparing the steepness of mountains and valleys in the corresponding trendlines, the variance now can be expressed numerically, and we can, if we want to, compare the variance of Blackmail editing to the same parameter in other films. Good news indeed.