Beyond the Screen: Emerging Cinema and Engaging Audiences

Runner-up for the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Best Book Prize 2015 Beyond the Screen presents an expanded conceptualization of cinema which encompasses the myriad ways film can be experienced in a digitally networked society where the auditorium is now just one location amongst many in which audiences can encounter and engage with films. The book includes considerations of mobile, web, social media and live cinema through numerous examples and case studies of recent and near-future developments. Through analyses of narrative, text, process, apparatus and audience this book traces the metamorphosis of an emerging cinema and maps the new spaces of spectatorship which are currently challenging what it means to be cinematic in a digitally networked era.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Preface List of Illustrations Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Extending Cinema Chapter 3: Mobile Cinema Chapter 4: Socially Layered Cinema Chapter 5: The Ethics of Emerging Cinema Chapter 6: The Business of Emerging Cinema Chapter 7: The Grammar of Emerging Cinema Chapter 8: Epilogue Filmography Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Sarah Atkinson is Principal Lecturer in Film and Media at the University of Brighton, UK, and an audio-visual arts practitioner undertaking explorations into new forms of fictional and dramatic storytelling in visual and sonic media.

Review :
[Atkinson's] comprehensive survey, coupled with her exacting analysis of emerging trends, remains an invaluable resource for theorists and practitioners alike. A dizzying amount of case studies have been documented in this overview of media texts and viewing platforms ... Atkinson has documented cutting-edge developments in exhibition and distribution in order to demonstrate how audiences might interact with media narratives in the future. Beyond the Screen marks a significant step towards developing a language that may yet have longevity. Moreover, it does so having taken into account textual, industrial and audience perspectives on these 'emerging cinemas' with dexterity, which very few other accounts can be said to have achieved. This is a thought-provoking and fascinating book for all those engaged in navigating and understanding emerging and expanded forms of 'cinema'. We're faced daily by a dizzying new media landscape, to be sure, and Atkinson shows us some compelling ways through it which usefully draw and build on existing film studies conceptualisations. Beyond the Screen offers a fascinating and insightful study into the way that technology is changing the relationship between moving image and audience and how these changes are reshaping the very meaning of cinema. Combining historical, narratological, industrial and audience research of case studies ranging from major studio releases to experimental mobile films and ARGs, Atkinson's book offers essential reading for anyone wanting to understand what cinema is becoming. Beyond the Screen is a welcome and refreshing investigation of the art form we call cinema. However, this century-old form of screen-based storytelling has vaulted over the antiquated definitions of it that we have customarily used, and Dr. Atkinson examines the new world of cinema in all of its many forms. She investigates transmedia storytelling, audience sourced stories, stories told on iPads and many other emerging genres. To help the reader grasp the various concepts she discusses, she not only works out a new grammar for the field but also offers numerous case histories, some of which might already be known to the reader but a number of which are sure to be unfamiliar but fascinating.