The Shape of Motion Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement

In The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement, author Jordan Schonig provides a new way of theorizing cinematic motion by examining cinema's "motion forms": structures, patterns, or shapes of movement unique to the moving image. From the wild and unpredictable motion of
flickering leaves and swirling dust that captivated early spectators, to the pulsing abstractions that emerge from rapid lateral tracking shots, to the bleeding pixel-formations caused by the glitches of digital video compression, each motion form opens up the aesthetics of movement to film
theoretical inquiry.

By pairing close analyses of onscreen movement in narrative and experimental films with concepts from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Henri Bergson, and Immanuel Kant, Schonig rethinks longstanding assumptions within film studies, such as indexical accounts of photographic images and analogies between the
camera and the human eye. Arguing against the intuition that cinema reproduces our natural perception of motion, The Shape of Motion shows how cinema's motion forms do not merely transpose the movements of the world in front of the camera, they transform them.

Jordan Schonig is a Lecturer in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University.

Acknowledgments

Introduction Moving toward Form
The Problem of "Movement"
Perceiving Form
Imaged Motion
Describing Motion

Chapter 1 Contingent Motion
Kant's Beautiful Views
Early Cinema's Water-Effects Films
CGI's Fuzzy Objects
From the Novelty of Motion to Forms of Motion

Chapter 2 Habitual Gestures
Ways of Moving
Ways of Moving Differently
The Cultivation of Habit
Capturing the In-Between

Chapter 3 Durational Metamorphosis
Cinematic Slowness and Duration
Duration Made Visible
From Natural to Supernatural Metamorphosis: Silent Light
From Sleeping to Seeing

Chapter 4 Spatial Unfurling
From Moving to Unfurling
Lateral Camera Movement
Seeing Double
Aspects of the Moving Camera

Chapter 5 Trajective Locomotion
Approaching Trajectivity
A World of Trajectivities
Exploring Exceptions
The Ethics of the Moving Camera

Chapter 6 Bleeding Pixels
Movement-Sensitive Spectatorship
A Pedagogy of Motion Perception
Seeing Movement Move

Conclusion Movement as Excess