Updates

ClipNotes for Mac! ClipNotes 2.0 for iPad!

Our most popular request has now been realized: ClipNotes is available on MacOS, which means you can use ClipNotes on iMacs and MacBooks. To download your free copy, just go to the Mac App Store and search for “ClipNoter” (note the name is slightly different).

And the original ClipNotes for iPad has been updated with new features, such as an improved layout and text size adjustment. Find it in the Apple App Store here.

Happy annotating 🙂

Black Lives Matter Film Series

In support of Black Lives Matter, the ClipNotes team is dedicated to building up its collection of annotated Black films. We are at work on a series of Spike Lee films, but for now, we would like to highlight some recent films we’ve added. Click on the links below for the annotation file that can be used with ClipNotes for the following films:

New courses added: “Film & Social Change” and “History of African, Asian, and Latin American Film”

We’ve added annotation files for a variety of films for two core classes at UCLA:

UCLA – FTV 106C: History of African, Asian, and Latin American Film

  • Films annotated for this course: Rashomon, The Goddess, Ugetsu, Black Girl, Chungking Express, and The Killer
  • Form and style topics covered: diegetic/non-diegetic sound, costumes, cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, melodrama, gun-fu genre, symbolism, tone, temporality
  • Thematic topics covered: post-colonialism, race, gender, cultural themes

UCLA – FTV 112: Film and Social Change

  • Films annotated for this course: Selma, Do the Right Thing, White Dog, Fruitvale Station, Network, and The Square
  • Form and style topics covered: cinematography, doubling, strategic anachronism, discursiveness
  • Thematic topics covered: the social problem film, race, scene analysis, and contemporary issues of American culture, politics, and media

That makes three UCLA classes in total, including FTV 6A: History of the American Motion Picture.

ClipNotes Publication in Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier Vol 3.3

An article about ClipNotes has been published in the latest issue of Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier, which summarizes how ClipNotes works, how it can be used as a teaching tool, and some of the broader aspirations of the project. Check it out here:

ClipNotes in the Classroom: Video Annotation Software for Instruction and Collaboration by Andrew deWaard

The article is part of an issue entitled “DH and Media Studies Crossovers.” Edited by Melanie E.S. Kohnen & Leah Shafer, this special issue brings:

the lively discussion about the points of connection between media studies and DH into the classroom so that we may forge a closer connection between methodologies and technologies. This issue of Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier asks how DH work, with its emphases on innovative scholarly architectures, multimedia components, and cross-disciplinary hybridity, speaks to evolving trends in media studies pedagogy. Significantly, this cross-over reveals that approaches adapted from the Digital Humanities have shifted media studies pedagogy from relying on conventional essays toward an embrace of critical media production as a means of analysis.

ClipNotes 1.8 for iOS!

  1. Both video and xml files can now be selected within the app. If both files have the same header (e.g. mymovie.m4v and mymovie.xml) selecting the movie will automatically load both. (xml note files can still be loaded manually). “Settings” for these selections will automatically be saved.
  2. Video start and stop times are now even more accurate.
  3. Text layouts have been adjusted to allow for slightly longer notes.
  4. Updated for iOS 9!

iPad Screenshot 1

Scorsese, Altman, and Kubrick XML Collection

A message from Stephen Mamber, lead developer of ClipNotes, as well as professor/vice chair of Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA:

In the Summer of 2015, I taught a graduate class on the films of Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, and Stanley Kubrick. I decided to teach for the first time by having all my lecture/presentation/discussions in ClipNotes. I used Apple AirPlay through an Apple TV connected to a monitor in order to display my examples in class, while the notes were intended for my use while presenting the examples. As a result, these notes aren’t always too polished, but I think the ClipNotes xml files here provide a useful sense of the examples and ideas we were able to explore. I consider this experiment highly successful, especially for allowing me to present lots of ideas about many examples throughout these films, which I found to be the ideal way to explore the questions of visual style, especially as they apply to individual great directors, which I was interested in presenting. Put simply, it’s really useful to be ready with ten or twenty examples in a film, and to present them this way. This is far from the only manner in which ClipNotes can be put to use, but I hope it is a a helpful example. Here are the film titles we did and the xml files for each title.

– Steve Mamber

FilmDirectorYearCountryFormatFile DescriptionXML Author
Mean StreetsMartin Scorsese1973USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Taxi DriverMartin Scorsese1976USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Raging BullMartin Scorsese1980USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
King of ComedyMartin Scorsese1982USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
After HoursMartin Scorsese1985USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Age of InnocenceMartin Scorsese1993USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
HugoMartin Scorsese2011USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Shutter IslandMartin Scorsese2010USADVDVisual StyleMatthias Stork
M*A*S*HRobert Altman1970USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
McCabe and Mrs. MillerRobert Altman1971USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
The Long GoodbyeRobert Altman1973USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
NashvilleRobert Altman1975USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Buffalo Bill and the IndiansRobert Altman1976USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy DeanRobert Altman1982USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
The PlayerRobert Altman1992USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
The KillingStanley Kubrick1956USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Paths of GloryStanley Kubrick1957USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
LolitaStanley Kubrick1962USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Dr. StrangeloveStanley Kubrick1964USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Clockwork OrangeStanley Kubrick1971USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Barry LyndonStanley Kubrick1975USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
Full Metal JacketStanley Kubrick1987USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber
The ShiningStanley Kubrick1980USADVDVisual StyleStephen Mamber

Throne of Blood Book Supplement

Robert N. Watson, Associate Dean of Humanities and Distinguished Professor of English at UCLA, has just published a book Throne of Blood, about the Akira Kurosawa film of the same name. As a supplement to the book, Dr. Watson has exhaustively annotated the film for ClipNotes and we are proud to host his annotation file, authored in collaboration with Nicole Malek. The XML file is free to download and — used with the inexpensive ClipNotes app and a DVD of the film — instantly launches any of over a hundred sequences from the film with explanatory text underneath.

To use the Throne of Blood Annotation XML file: right-click on PC or control-click on Mac and select ‘save as’ to download the file to your computer, then follow our how-to section to set it up with ClipNotes on your device, which you can download for iOS and Windows. Please browse the rest of this website for more information.

throne-of-blood-bookcoverThrone of Blood is part of the BFI Film Classics series published by the British Film Institute and Palgrave MacMillan.  The publisher’s book description:

Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) is widely regarded as the greatest film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. This fascinating interpretation of the film explores how Kurosawa draws key philosophical and psychological arguments from Shakespeare, translates them into strong visual metaphors, and inflects them through the cultural history of Japan.

Book profile on Palgrave MacMillan
Robert N. Watson’s faculty profile

ClipNotes at Digital Humanities 2014 in Lausanne, Switzerland

Project Director Andrew deWaard presented on ClipNotes at the Digital Humanities 2014 conference, the annual international conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), in Lausanne, Switzerland. He presented as part of the Innovative Teaching Methods and Practices in Digital Humanities workshop, sponsored by Digital Research Infrastructures for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH), and during the conference short paper sessions (abstract here). Below is an edited version of the talk. Download the pdf here.