What Does the Statistical Style Analysis of Film Involve? A Review of Moving into Pictures. More on Film History, Style, and Analysis
Warren Buckland · Literary and Linguistic Computing · 2007
An immediate answer to the question stated in my title is: ask Barry Salt. For over 30 years he has almost single-handedly established statistical style analysis as a research paradigm in film studies. In 2006, he published his collected essays under the title Moving into Pictures (Salt, 2006). This is a large-scale anthology of forty-three of Salt's essays on film history, film style and statistical style analysis. It is a large-format (8.5 by 11 inches), double-columned volume of 444 pages, weighing 3.5 pounds, lavishly illustrated with almost 600 stills taken directly from films. Many of the essays were written and published for specific occasions (conferences, anthologies) and others were generated from Salt's personal curiosity in exploring film style. Moving into Pictures begins autobiographically. Salt informs us of his unusual path to the statistical style analysis of film: he was a ballet dancer, worked in computing in the 1950s, and studied for a PhD in theoretical physics under David Bohm. Salt tells us that he researched superfluid Helium and co-authored a paper with Bohm.1 But Salt realized ‘I could have gone on being a mediocre theoretical physicist the rest of my life’ (2006, p. 11). Instead, he turned to his other passion, filmmaking, which he also taught and researched. Between each paper, Salt offers more autobiography as well as background information on who published (or did not publish) the paper, what kind of reaction he received, the various London institutions in which he taught, and the conferences at which he presented his research.