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Empathetic Space on Screen

Constructing Powerful Place and Setting

  • Textbook
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Amedeo D'Adamo

    1. Università Cattolica, Milan, Italy

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  • Deals with the emotional aspect of viewing films, focusing on well-known films that are particularly and popularly powerful
  • Accessible in three ways: in style, in content (being about popular films and TV shows across all genres) and in its methodology, which bridges film theory and practice
  • While focused mainly on film and TV, it also connects forms of storytelling to figurative paintings, sculptures, epic poems, plays and video-games
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xix
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  2. The Building Codes of Narrative Space: The Three Forms of Emotional Entanglements between People and Places in story

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Welcome to Dantean Space!: Empathy and Space in Singin’ in the Rain, Legally Blonde, the Pursuit of Happyness and Aliens

      • Amedeo D’Adamo
      Pages 3-30

    3. The Empty Man of Action vs. The Active Heart: Dispassionate and Dramatic Characters from James Bond and Sherlock Holmes to Little Miss Sunshine, Hamlet and The Hobbit

      • Amedeo D’Adamo
      Pages 31-53

    4. The Frozen Ones: Dantean Moments, Characters and Space in the films Aliens, Amelie, Sunset Blvd, Batman and Others

      • Amedeo D’Adamo
      Pages 55-84

    5. Character Vs. Emotion: How Music and Sound define Space in the films Little Miss Sunshine, 50 Shades of Grey, Twilight and Secretary

      • Amedeo D’Adamo
      Pages 85-106

  3. Boundaries Visible and Broken: Empathy from Shade Space to Showcase Space

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 107-107
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    2. The Library of All Stories: Purgatory, Therapy and Character Arcs in Dante and in Great Expectations, One Hour Photo, The Third Man and Sunrise, in Camus’ Novel The Fall, and in Edgar Allen’s Poe’s Short Stories

      • Amedeo D’Adamo
      Pages 109-127

    3. Ghosts and Shades and Place: Empathetic Hauntology in Gravity, Lars and the Real Girl, and Hiroshima Mon Amour

      • Amedeo D’Adamo
      Pages 129-151

    4. On Collapsing Boundaries Between Protagonist and Antagonist: Dante’s Tricks and Others in La Vie En Rose and Apocalypse Now and in the Documentaries Tarnation, Elena and Waltzing With Bashir

      • Amedeo D’Adamo
      Pages 153-177

    5. Alienated Spaces: DeathStarchitecture in Star Wars, Bleached Space and Dialogue in The Graduate, Showroom Space in Pleasantville and Mad Men, and the Dantean Homes of Homeland

      • Amedeo D’Adamo
      Pages 179-200

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 259-270
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Keywords

About this book

In this book we learn that there is a clear but complex relationship between setting and character on screen. Certain settings stand out above others—think of the iconic gooey dripping tunnels that Ripley stumbles through in Aliens, Norman’s bird-decorated parlour in Psycho or the dark Gotham of certain Batman movies. But what makes these particular settings so powerful and iconic? Amedeo D’Adamo explains why we care about and cry for certain characters, and then focuses on how certain places then become windows onto their emotional lives. Using popular case studies such as Apocalypse Now, Amelie, Homeland and The Secret Garden, this original and insightful book is the first to really explain what makes some settings so effective, revealing an important but as yet uncovered machinery of empathy in visual narrative space. An invaluable resource for students, academics and indeed young filmmakers designing their very own narratives for space on screen.

Reviews

“Amedeo D’Adamo explores a fascinating question for both scholars and filmmakers—what is it in the look of a film that impacts how well the film reaches its audience emotionally? D’Adamo engagingly explains how the design of a film actually helps to tell the story, rather than just providing a setting for it.” (Anna Thomas, Oscar-nominated writer and producer (El Norte, Frida, Mi Familia) and Discipline Head of Screenwriting at the American Film Institute Conservatory, USA)

“An inspiring and thought-provoking study : by revealing the many ways space can be used to make us care about characters in stories, this worthwhile book should be of great value to academics and artists alike.” (Andrew Bienen, co-writer of the Oscar-winning film Boys Don't Cry, Associate Professor of Film in Columbia University's Graduate Film Program, USA)

“Empathetic Space on Screen offers a refreshing contribution to the study of film, television, documentary, transmedia narratology and audiovisual aesthetics. An original schema elaborating the concept of empathetic space." (Lisa Perrott, Senior Lecturer at the University of Waikato, New Zealand)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Università Cattolica, Milan, Italy

    Amedeo D'Adamo

About the author

Amedeo D'Adamo is Professor of Film at the Universita Cattolica, Italy and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Switzerland-Italia, Switzerland. He teaches documentary at the Locarno Film Festival and mentors for the MAIA Producing Workshops and Albascript Plus. A filmmaker whose features have played in top-ranked festivals, he was also the founding Dean of the Los Angeles Film School.

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