Semiotics and Title Sequences - Now Available!

story © Michael Betancourt | published January 25, 2017 | permalink |  |  

My new book, Semiotics and Title Sequences: Text-Image Composites in Motion Graphics is now in print! You can order a copy from the publisher's website today!

Title sequences are the most obvious place where photography and typography combine on-screen, yet they are also a commonly neglected part of film studies. Semiotics and Title Sequences presents the first theoretical model and historical consideration of how text and image combine to create meaning in title sequences for film and television, before extending its analysis to include subtitles, intertitles, and the narrative role for typography. Detailed close readings of classic films starting with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and including To Kill A Mockingbird, Dr. Strangelove, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, along with designs from television programs such as Magnum P.I., Castle, and Vikings present a critical assessment of title sequences as both an independent art form and an introduction to the film that follows.

story © Michael Betancourt | published January 17, 2017 | permalink |  |  

I have some abstract photographs in Blacklie II. Now available here

story © Michael Betancourt | published March 20, 2016 | permalink |  |  

My 25-year long project concerned with windowing and collage/spatial montage is now available on amazon.com. Beyond Spatial Montage: Windowing, or the Cinematic Displacement of Time, Motion, and Space offers an extended discussion of the morphology and structure of compositing, graphic juxtapositions, and montage employed in motion pictures. Drawing from the history of avant-garde and commercial cinema, as well as studio-based research, this study critiques both cinematic realism and Manovich's proposal of "spatial montage." This new taxonomic framework for conceptualizing linkages between media art and narrative cinema opens new areas of experimentation for today’s film editors, motion designers, and other media artists.

You can read a preview here.

story © Michael Betancourt | published December 27, 2015 | permalink |  |  

I made a series of fully abstract darkroom images between 1989 and 1994 that are available in a book from Amazon.com.

They represent an aggressively edited sample of what began as a darkroom experiment with solarization that expanded, to include photograms, but ultimately eliminated physical objects entirely to create complex visual imagery from chemical flows and pure light. The abstract images this process created are unique, produced without the intervention of camera or negative.

story © Michael Betancourt | published April 9, 2015 | permalink |  |  

My new book that explains the basics of what research is for and how to use it when writing critical examinations of motion pictures that do not tell stories. Explained using clear examples taken from published writing, this book shows how to approach a writing assignment from beginning to completion, covering such topics as "The Purpose of Research," "How to Create and Use a Close Reading," "The Relationship Between Writing and Revision," and "Common Problems and Their Solutions." This book is an essential guide for any student writing about motion graphics. The process it presents has one simple goal: writing clearly for publication.