Chasing the Narrative – Re-situating the Action in Point Break – 11th July 2019 @ The University of Wolverhampton

My 3rd conference in pretty quick succession and also a chance for me to return to my undergraduate stomping grounds. Looking back on the presentation (a video run through of it is below) I can also see where my first encounter with making video essays informs the structure of my presentation. There are a lot of videos (although, given that it’s about YouTube and action cinema, not a total surprise) and within the presentation I stop quite a few times to let the audience watch and listen. There is definitely videographic thinking leaking into this.

The paper considers how scenes like the chase in Point Break have another life on YouTube, disconnected from the narrative and presented as an ‘attraction’ of sorts. Again, something of a departure for me in terms of my research interests, but a fascinating project that really stretched me in terms of getting to grips with aspects of cinematography and film history. It also highlighted to me some of the issues that can arise in researching production practice where a simple spelling mistake in a source can prove to be a road-block (in this case, one book referred to the camera used to film this sequence as the ‘Imo’. Only after many hours searching did it become clear that they were actually referring to the Bell & Howell ‘Eyemo’ which has been around since the 1920’s!).