Film Analysis as Annotation: Exploring Current Tools

Abstract

This article describes a study of the affordances of a group of information systems (so-called “tools”) that make it possible to do computer-mediated film analyses. Film scholars have started using these tools to annotate and analyze digital film in various ways, yet not much is presently known about the implications of using these computational tools for film scholarship. The authors argue that it is important that scholars discover and use these tools to understand and critically discuss how the systems influence the process of analysis and its results. These systems, which are created and used by different groups of media-related professionals and scholars from different disciplines, include, among others: professional video annotation tools, and computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (QDA). This study presents: (1) an inventory of the different types of existing tools, (2) a use case, where the authors tested these tools in a small film analysis project (specifically, the authors evaluated the tools ELAN and NVivo for the analysis of an excerpt of the silent semidocumentary film People on Sunday), and (3) a preliminary evaluation of the implications of using these tools for film analysis, to better understand and critically discuss their methodological impact in film and media studies. The authors found that, at this stage, the most significant methodological impact is the option of making the analytic procedures more explicit. Consequently, the tools ask users to conceptualize more precisely the methods they employ. While this capability might be disparaged as the “scientification” of a scholarly practice, we argue that the new digital tools encourage more self-reflection about scholarly work and multiply the levels of communication possible with peers, both informally and through scholarly publication.

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