Il Sistema Sceneggiatura

Il sistema sceneggiatura

Concept TV

What is a television series? A widespread answer takes it to be a totality of episodes and seasons. Luca Bandirali and Enrico Terrone argue against this characterization. In Concept TV: An Aesthetics of Television Series, they contend that television series are concepts that manifest themselves through episodes and seasons, just as works of conceptual art can manifest themselves through installations or performances. In this sense, a television series is a conceptual narrative, a principle of construction of similar narratives. While the film viewer directly appreciates a narrative made of images and sounds, the TV viewer relies on images and sounds to grasp the conceptual narrative that they express. Here lies the key difference between television and film. Reflecting on this difference paves the way for an aesthetics of television series that makes room for their alleged prolixity, their tendency to repetition, and their lack of narrative closure. Bandirali and Terrone shed light on the specific ways in which television series are evaluated, arguing that some apparent flaws of them are, indeed, aesthetic merits when considered from a conceptual perspective. Hence, to maximize the aesthetic value of television series, one should not assess them in the same framework in which films are assessed but rather in a distinct conceptual framework.

Lights! Camera! Action and the Brain

Lights! Camera! Action and the brain: The Use of Film in Education is about an innovative pedagogy whereby performing arts and digital production play a key role in teaching and learning. The book combines theory and practice; as such, it lays solid neurological foundations for film and media literacy, and provides several relevant practical applications from worldwide scholars. The book contains thirteen chapters three of which address a number of theoretical issues related to the camera and the brain while the remaining ten are practical illustrations of the extent to which film and video are used as pedagogical tools. In the book preface, Nikos Theodosakis, author of ‘The Director in the Classroom’, writes that the book contributors ‘have built a wonderful bridge for us to travel over’. In fact, the book chapters transcend age restrictions to include diverse age groups, children and young adults. The topics range from learning language and philosophy to learning about one’s self, one’s environment, and one’s cultural identity. Much more importantly, the book addresses the needs of regular and special needs learners. Arts in general, and films in particular, are shown to display salient and dynamic roles in appealing to a wide variety of regular and special needs learners. In short, the book is highly beneficial to educators and to education managers; it ‘will have the power to change teaching and the way the curriculum is perceived’ for several generations to come.