Multimodal Film Analysis - How Films Mean (Hardcover)

This book presents a new basis for the empirical analysis of film. Starting from an established body of work in film theory, the authors show how a close incorporation of the current state of the art in multimodal theory, including accounts of the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of organisation, discourse semantics and advanced layout structure, provides a methodology by which concrete details of film sequences drive mechanisms for constructing filmic discourse structures. The book introduces the necessary background, the open questions raised, and the method by which analysis can proceed step-by-step with extensive examples drawn from a broad range of films. The book aims to provide an analytic tool set that will enable the reader to approach the study of film organisation with new levels of detail, probing deeply into the fundamental question of film as to just how it is that films reliably communicate meaning.