As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, I wrote a couple of critical pieces which approach mathematical modeling for moving-image composition. I call them experiments in Feminist quantitative film models (because they just so happen to be rather feminist).
“Cane and Mabel”: Mabel’s Blunder, the Working Woman, and the Geometry of Silent Film
This essay, originally written for a course taught by Dr. Dan Morgan, uses a quantitative schematic for blocking and editing in Mabel’s Blunder (1914) to interrogate the short as a work of historiography, and asks what can be made of such an account of workplace sex-integration in the modern age.
Alice Soprunova
“A Penthouse Divided Cannot Stand a Womanizer”: How Connie and Carlo Rizzi’s Home Got “Cut”
This essay, originally written for a course taught by Dr. Ian Bryce Jones, uses a quantitative diagram for blocking in a scene from The Godfather.
Modeling The Philadelphia Story (Blog post)
This is a model for the structure of The Philadelphia Story wherein the left-to-right axis represents runtime (1 pixel per second) and the bar graph tracks the presence of characters in the room. I originally made this graph while writing my undergraduate thesis.
