| 1. |
- Audissino, Emilio, Senior Lecturer, 1981-
(författare)
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2 Broke Girls: Flattening Kat Dennings into Max Black : Screenwriting and Character Complexity in the Sitcom Format
- 2019
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The CBS sit-com 2 Broke Girls – aired for six seasons from 2011 to 2017 – represented a watershed in Kat Dennings’ career. Up to that moment she had been consolidating a resume as ‘indie rising star’ with a gallery of rebellious and emotionally-complex leading characters – for example, Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist (2008) or Daydream Nation (2010) – interspersed with comedic supporting roles in mainstream films – for example, The House Bunny (2008). And when she landed the principal role of Max Black in the CBS show she had two very different films in the pipeline: on the one hand To Write Love on Her Arms (2012), an indie drama about addiction and depression; on the other hand, the supporting comic-relief role in the Marvel kolossal Thor (2011). Dennings brought to 2 Broke Girl this dual screen-persona that she had been honing: talented dramatic actress plus witty comedian. The mix soon proved too complex to handle for a sit-com, particularly for a conservative/traditional one like 2 Broke Girls that neither sought the formal experimentations of Arrested Development nor would manage to give its characters the depth and development arc as The Big Bang Theory managed to. Throughout the six seasons, the Max Black character made a journey from complexity to simplicity. In Season One Max is a young woman with a traumatic childhood, working two minimum-wage jobs and still struggling to make the ends meet, hiding her desperation behind a facade of cynicism and sarcasm. In Season Six Max has turned into a hollower stand-up-comedian-like type, a stereotypical street-smart slacker dispensing one-liners about booze, sex, and her own breasts. The writers kept the facade and dropped the inner anguish that was originally hidden behind it. Dennings gradually had to flatten out her original multifaceted persona into a more mono-dimensional type. The paper surveys this transformation process across the show, tracing how this ‘involution’ and ‘flattening’ may have been determined by the constraints of the traditional live-audience multi-camera sit-com format, as well as by some overly-formulaic writing and short-sighted decisions in both the planning of the multi-season development and in the design of the character arc – which might have had some weight in the eventual cancellation of the show.
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| 2. |
- Audissino, Emilio, Senior Lecturer, 1981-
(författare)
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A Gestalt Approach to the Analysis of Music in Films
- 2017
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Ingår i: Musicology Research. - Derby, UK : University of Derby, UK. ; 2:1, s. 69-88
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the field of Film-Music Studies, Cognitive Psychology remains perhaps the stronger approach as an alternative to Post-Structuralism and Cultural Studies. Yet, Gestalt Psychology has recently seen a revival of interest. Gestalt can offer enlightening concepts not only to theorise how music and visuals combine in an audiovisual whole, but also productive tools to analyse concrete instances in films. While Cognitivism tends to be concerned with single mechanisms of how the brain processes the perceptual data and gives much salience to the higher cognitive operations, Gestalt is concerned with the holistic nature of our experience and attributes more importance to the lower perceptual operations. As Donnelly points out, the combination of sound and visuals into an audiovisual whole has not so much to do with cognitive elaborations as with that hard-wired orientation of our mind towards completeness and stableness that is studied by Gestalt.Employing the Gestalt concepts of Isomorphism, Prägnanz and Dynamic Self-Distribution, I propose an approach to the analysis of music in films based on the similarity/difference between the configuration (gestalt) of the music and that of the other cinematic components (cinematography, editing, acting, lighting, colour palette...). A stabilised experience of the audiovisual whole – the basis for both a formalistic analysis and a critical interpretation – is reached when their encounter makes the gestalts of the cinematic components reciprocally reconfigure and fuse to produce a wider all-including gestalt: the macro-configuration of the audiovisual experience. This Gestalt approach – being based on the fusion of the aural and visual factors into a whole that is 'different from the sum of its parts' – is also helpful to supersede the long-standing visual bias that influences Film Studies, which leads to think of music as something that is externally added to either reinforce or subvert what is already there in the visuals.
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| 3. |
- Audissino, Emilio, Senior Lecturer, 1981-
(författare)
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Archival Research and the Study of the Concert Presentations of Film Music : The Case of John Williams and the Boston Pops
- 2013
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Ingår i: The Journal of Film Music. - : Equinox Publishing. - 1087-7142 .- 1758-860X. ; 6:2, s. 147-163
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Film music has increasingly populated the concert programs in the last twenty years. Yet, the presentation of the film-music repertoire in concerts is a corner of the film–music field that has received little scholarly attention. Archival research combined with the study of audio–visual documents in particular is the key to reconstruct the story of the presentation of film music in concerts. As a case study, I present the findings of the research that I conducted in Boston, U.S.A., in 2010 and 2011. Its aim was to demonstrate John Williams's seminal contribution to the legitimization of film music as a viable concert repertoire during his tenure as conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra—“America's orchestra”. The results showed very convincingly that John Williams's association with the most trend–setting and visible orchestra in the U.S.A. has been a major force and a seminal influence for the acceptance of film music as a legitimate concert repertoire.
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| 4. |
- Audissino, Emilio, Senior Lecturer, 1981-
(författare)
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Archival Research and the Study of the Concert Presentations of Film Music
- 2015
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Ingår i: Audio-Visual Archives conference, the British Library, London, 18 July 2015.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Film music has increasingly entered into the concert programmes in the last twenty years, to become now standard repertoire not only of the so-called 'Pops Concerts' but also of the more classical-oriented ones. Yet, the presentation of the film-music repertoire in concert programmes is a corner of the film-music field that has received little scholarly attention – if none at all. Archival research, particularly using audiovisual archives, is the key to reconstruct how film music has been gradually introduced into concert programmes and in what forms. As an example, I propose to describe the methodology and findings of the research that I conducted in Boston, U.S.A., in 2010 and 2011, the aim of which was to demonstrate John Williams' seminal contribution to the legitimisation of film music as a viable concert repertoire. The research was conducted at the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives – where I compared the concert programmes of the Williams era with the ones from the previous Arthur Fiedler era – and at the WGBH Media Archives – where I watched all the Williams episodes of the TV show Evening at Pops (1969-2004). The archival research was more rewarding that expected, the findings demonstrating my thesis very convincingly. In particular, the videos I watched at WGBH, combined with the study of the programmes at the BSO Archives, were the basis of my classification of the forms and formats in which film music is typically adapted for concert performance. The video materials were also cardinal in showing that Williams has also had a central role in developing the multimedia concert presentations – i.e. an orchestra playing live to projected film clips – in its two formats (“multimedia concert piece” and “multimedia film piece”).
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| 5. |
- Audissino, Emilio, Senior Lecturer, 1981-
(författare)
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Bernard Herrmann e il suono della paura
- 2011
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Ingår i: Almanacco Horror Magazine. - Rome : Delos Books. ; :1, s. 116-119
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Tidskriftsartikel (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- [Bernard Herrmann and the Sound of Fear]: a celebration of the film works of composer Bernard Herrmann upon the centennial of his birth.
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| 6. |
- Audissino, Emilio, Senior Lecturer, 1981-
(författare)
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Bicycles, Airplanes and Peter Pans : Flying Scenes in Steven Spielberg's Films
- 2014
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Ingår i: CINEJ Cinema Journal. - Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press. - 2159-2411 .- 2158-8724. ; 3:2, s. 103-119
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In Steven Spielberg's cinema the flight is a recurring theme. Flying scenes can be sorted into two classes: those involving a realistic flight – by aircraft – and those involving a magical flight – by supernatural powers. The realistic flight is influenced by the war stories of Spielberg's father – a radio man in U.S. Air-force during WWII – and it is featured in such films as Empire of the Sun (1987), Always (1989), and 1941 (1979). The magical flight is influenced by James M. Barries' character Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy, 1911), which is quoted directly in E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982) and, above all, in Hook (1991), which is a sequel to Barrie's story. These two types of flying scenes are analysed as to their meanings, compared to the models that influenced them, and surveyed as to their evolution across Spielberg's films. A central case study is the episode The Mission from Amazing Stories (1985), in which the realistic and the magical flights overlap.
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| 7. |
- Audissino, Emilio, Senior Lecturer, 1981-
(författare)
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Bringing The Nanny to the Italian Audience : Dubbing as Adaptation and Assimilation
- 2017
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Ingår i: First conference of the Journal for Italian Cinema and Media Studies, American University of Rome, Italy, 9-10 June 2017.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As widely known in Translation Studies, no translation comes without adaptation: translating means converting a source-language text into a target-language text bearing in mind that the cultural context of the target language is likely to be different. Adaptation is typically at work with those puns, proverbs or idiomatic expressions that are not translatable verbatim and thus require some semantic adaptation that should convey the same meaning under a different form – e.g. the meaning of the English “Touch wood!” is rendered in Italian by “Tocca ferro! [Touch iron]”Dubbing is a popular method of audio-visual translation – or better, of audio-visual adaptation – and the preferred one in such non-English-speaking countries as France, Germany and Italy. The major problem with dubbing is that, unlike subtitling, it replaces part of the film: the dialogue track. An audio-visual product can thus undergo radical and even utterly arbitrary adaptation operations without the audience in the target country noticing it, given the unavailability of the original dialogue track for comparison. Dubbing, more than subtitling, often imposes on the audio-visual product a more or less marked process of socio-cultural “assimilation” – in its original meaning of “making similar.” Through significant changes in the dialogue, the audio-visual work is adapted to make it more relatable to the target audience. In some cases, this assimilation leads to a radical modification of the original socio-cultural context of the work, an extreme “assimilating” adaptation that is often unnecessary semantically – a more faithful translation of the dialogue could have been perfectly understandable even without such drastic changes. In these cases the rationale is market-oriented: the audience may enjoy the audio-visual work better if they recognise in the story familiar elements and a world that is “similar” to theirs.The case study presented is the Italian version of the American TV series The Nanny (1993-1999) in which the Jewish characters were turned into Italian characters. This created incongruous formal consequences – e.g. mismatches between the new dialogue track and the original visual track – but assured a wide success on the Italian television.
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| 8. |
- Audissino, Emilio, Senior Lecturer, 1981-
(författare)
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Building an Emotive Framework : The Macro-Emotive Function of Film Music
- 2014
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Ingår i: Music for Audio-Visual Media' conference, University of Leeds, U.K., 4-6 September 2014.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When thinking about film music, the clichéd situation of sentimental violin music accompanying a love scene often comes to mind. This is a classical occurrence of film music performing an emotive function: music projects its own emotive quality onto the visuals and thus boasts the emotive tone of the scene. We can call this “micro-emotive” function, as in said function music operates locally within the scene/sequence. However, music can fulfil a “macro-emotive” function too, i.e. it can work throughout the whole film to build up a global emotive framework. Structurally, through a gradual and consistent development of the music, the film score projects its own coherence and structural unity onto the film, which is then perceived as more structurally solid than it might be. An emotional effect is also produced: the progressive manipulation, gradual unfolding, and recurring reprises of the music produce what musicologist Leonard Meyer called the “Pleasure of Recognition” which ensures a powerful emotional pay-off.The case study is E.T. The Extraterrestrial (S. Spielberg, 1982). John Williams' score is fundamental in strengthening the film's overall form: all the major themes are coherently built around the musical interval of the upward perfect fifth (e.g. C–G), which comes to be the musical representation of Love. The score also creates an emotional extended climax – calibrated throughout the film in a very precise way – that strategically reaches its peak in the key moment, the famous sequence of the flight over the moon.
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| 9. |
- Audissino, Emilio, Senior Lecturer, 1981-
(författare)
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Creative Energy without Creative Industry : Mario Bava
- 2014
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Ingår i: NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies) conference, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy, 21 June 2014.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Compared to Hollywood, Italian cinema is more a matter of craftsmanship than industry. Genre films, in particular, have typically been disregarded and had to struggle with dramatically slim budgets. Mario Bava was probably the most outstanding example: on many an occasion he managed to compensate the lack of a supporting creative industry with his own creative energy. 2014 marks the centennial of Bava's birth and the paper aims at illustrating his deftness in manufacturing very low-budget and yet ingenious films that have eventually come to exercise a seminal influence world-wide. The case study is a comparative stylistic analysis of excerpts from Bay of Blood (Reazione a catena, 1971), an outstanding model for the American slasher films of the 1980s, with Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), a quasi-remake slasher by the Hollywood creative Industry (Paramount Pictures) which replicated some of Bava's set-pieces almost verbatim.
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| 10. |
- Audissino, Emilio, Senior Lecturer, 1981-
(författare)
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Dubbing as a Formal Interference : Reflections and Examples
- 2014
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Ingår i: Media and Translation. - New York : Bloomsbury Academic. - 9781623566463 ; , s. 97-118
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Dubbing is widely used in European countries such as Germany, France, the ex-Soviet countries and Italy. Being a film scholar with a specialization in Hollywood cinema, I am used to watching Hollywood films in their original versions. Being a native Italian speaker, I cannot help but noticing the differences between the original films and the Italian dubbed versions. Inaccurate translations and bad dubbing can severely harm the film's original meaning on the one hand, and lead to aesthetics changes on the other– e.g., an actor's persona or a character's characterization can be modified if dubbed with a voice that is radically different from the original.In this chapter I discuss the theoretical issues and the aesthetic consequences of dubbing, both in general – when the translation is faithful and the dubbing is a good one – and in peculiarly bad cases – when either the translation or the dubbing, or both, are inaccurate.
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