Ep. 1. My First Education

(The human being as a spectacle)

A self-reflexive documentary about my relationship with film interspersed with an examination of the 1998 film Gods and Monsters, that was a key milestone in forming my understanding of cinema.

Read the full episode 1 outline

 

Ep. 2. Triumph of the Willful Blindness and its Great Dictator

(Perverted spectacles)

A documentary that would have used the rise of Nazi Germany to explore the concept of willful blindness in relation to mass media.

Being polar opposites portraying the same set of events surrounding the allure of Adolf Hitler, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator were the two film texts that would have been analysed in relation to larger mass media, cultural, historical and psychological relevancies and media text references.

Read the full episode 2 outline

 

Ep. 3. Pride and Prejudice and Smartphone Zombies

(Segmented spectacles)

A documentary that would have explored the mass communications phenomenon and technological obsession of the smartphone. It would have touched on how the smartphone has become an additional and inseparable limb-interface of the human body and what impact this is having on our ways of being.

The smartphone revolution would have been explored in relation to the biases around using or not using a smartphone; as well as in relation to the smartphone as a new form of cultural artefact, lifestyle connector and status symbol.

The episode would primarily have been a central group discussion with cutaways of vox pop material and other relevant media content.

Read the full episode 3 outline

 

Ep. 4. In an Auditorium Darkly: The Terror of the Eye-Phone

(Cinema spectacle)

An audio drama that would have been made in the style of old time radio dramas with vintage 1950s advertising included.

The plot would have taken place in a cinema 1953 during a screening of The War of the Worlds. Specifically, the plot would have concerned the protagonist being on a date, popping out for a toilet break during the film, wandering off to have a bit of an explore in the dark recesses of the cinema and then finding the terrifying “eye-phone” and its orchestrator therein…

This would have been the first of a planned five In an Auditorium Darkly episodes that all take place in cinemas at different points throughout the 20th-century. The point of including fictional audio drama episodes was to use the fictional storytelling format to stimulate original thinking and to explore the concept of hypertextuality.

Read the full episode 4 outline

 

Ep. 5. Gamer Girls Galore

(The female as spectator and spectacle)

A documentary that would have explored the topic of adult females who play video games, a demographic which now comprises the largest collection of gamers. It would also have explored female objectification in the media and how the empowered female gamer stands in contrast to that objectification.

The female point-of-view is far too often overlooked in regards to media research and I wanted to open it up and present a thorough exploration.

This episode would have been a combination of my linking narration, contributions from the interviewed guests and excerts from other related media texts.

Read the full episode 5 outline

 

Ep. 6. Spectators of the Spectacles

(Who is a spectator?)

A documentary that would bring film theory into the real world by starting with an analysis of the spectator, not the spectacle. It would have explored the larger psychology of the film experience, as being heavily determined by the psychology and personal history of the individual spectator.

This episode would have been a combination of my linking narration and contributions from a range of interviewed guests who would all have varying interests in film. It probably would also have included clips from other related media texts and some vox pop as well.

Read the full episode 6 outline

 

Ep. 7. The Slow Motion Picture Entity

(What is a spectacle?)

A documentary that would have used a very thorough analysis of the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Often referred to as The Slow Motion Picture, due to it’s slow pace, the first Star Trek film would have been used to emphasize the point of slowing down our thinking and expectations when analysing a film text.

Another key point of the episode would have been establishing the difference between a film text, the two-dimensional images on the screen, and the film entity, the larger culturally embellished version of a film text as it exists in the collective consciousness.

This episode would have been my narration analysing The Motion Picture that would have included clips from the film as well as other related media texts.

Read the full episode 7 outline

 

Ep. 8. Microfilm in a Day

(How to go about making a spectacle?)

A documentary that would have chronicled a group of participants being brought together and set the challenge of going off to make a short film in a single day using nothing but their smartphones.

The point of this episode would have been to explore the idea of using practical filmmaking to better understand film theory and increase the effectives of the education of film.

The episode would have been a combination of my linking narration and the reflections of the participants of the filmmaking challenge. It probably would have included some vox pop.

Read the full episode 8 outline

 

Ep. 9. The Media is the Mentality

(How spectacles go about making us)

A documentary that would have been structured somewhat like a news report and would have analysed how mass media and “the news” voices and dictates the status quo and collective consciousness in both a negative and positive sense.

The episode would have been a combination of my linking narration and contribution from a range of interviewed guests; as well as excerpts from other related media texts and probably some vox pop too.

Read the full episode 9 outline

 

Ep. 10. This is Breaking Cinema

(How to go about constructively breaking down spectators and spectacles)

A self-reflective documentary that would have brought together all the threads of the nine previous episodes and, together with an overview of the development of the podcast and its episodes, would have presented my intentions for the Breaking Cinema podcast.

My intention was to orchestrate the podcast in this particular fashion in order to illustrate and inspire a broader and more flexible approach of thinking about cinema, the media landscape and how human beings play into and grow from these things.

This episode would also have established anticipation for the next season of Breaking Cinema.

It would have been a documentary analysis using a combination of my narration and excerpts and elaborations of the nine previous episodes.

Read the full episode 10 outline

 

All the episode outlines were originally collected together into a document with a overview of the Breaking Cinema podcast as a whole that I wrote for sharing with collaborators.

You can also read about earlier versions of the ten episodes here.