Hebert, Adam
(2023)
Process over Product: Kinesthetic Cinema, Sporting Bodies, and Media Milieux.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
This dissertation examines historically the interplay between sporting bodies, technological experimentation, and the fluctuations of moving-image practice. Each of its chapters revolves around a historical, local collision of sport and media-making, yet it also offers a broader framework through which we can consider how cinema has given sport a particular image while being heavily determined, aesthetically and technologically, by sport and athletics. In analyzing “standard” sports—boxing and Olympic events—as well as those often considered as marginal—freediving, skateboarding, and nineteenth-century athletic motion studies—I offer a more robust account of how these sporting cinematic relations have unfolded. By looking closely at production processes and the often experimental course of technological development, I argue that renewed attention to cinematic devices generated vis-à-vis athletic process and sporting milieux allows us to place significant pressure on a number of film-theoretical assumptions. In this regard, the four chapters and coda of this dissertation provide a reconsideration of cinematic contingency, indexicality, questions of milieu and measurement, embodied image-capture, and the notion of “problems” in filmmaking. Critically, I expand the discussion of sporting bodies to include those on both sides of the lens, paying close attention to how cinematographers and camera operators are often moved by the surprising and kinesthetic movements they aim to track. I develop an approach that rethinks cinematic relationality, providing a thickened sense of experience that accounts for a sporting process that sweeps up both athlete and camera operator. In so doing, I argue that careful attention paid to technical specifications and production particulars can profitably coexist with a close-reading disposition; increased familiarity with the processes of production urges us to see—and feel—in the images themselves certain markers of this relation. Although sports media is a privileged site for such analysis, this approach is also useful in terms of image-making practices far afield from the gymnasium, the boxing ring, or Olympic stadia.
Share
| Citation/Export: |
|
| Social Networking: |
|
Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
|
| Date: |
27 April 2023 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
28 July 2022 |
| Approval Date: |
27 April 2023 |
| Submission Date: |
4 August 2022 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
424 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Film Studies |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
sports; cinema; production studies; film theory; process philosophy; Muybridge; Latham; Hass; skateboarding; Olympics |
| Date Deposited: |
27 Apr 2023 14:17 |
| Last Modified: |
27 Apr 2023 14:17 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/43516 |
Metrics
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}