I am a HUGE lover of Academic Film Theory, particularly when it comes to horror films. In fact, a dream of mine I have never revealed is that I want to do a comic book adaptation of Carol Clover’s wonderful book Men, Women and Chainsaws. I loved reading the book but a visual learner like me would have appreciated some charts and pictures (okay universe, make this happen for me). The Faculty of Horror is a podcast where a sociologist and a horror magazine editor/writer pick a horror film and do a ton of academic research around them and do a kind of lecture on the topics. It’s bought me so much joy and knowledge since I started listening (probably a decade ago?!).

I also finished Sarah Firth’s (FREE!) Graphic recording course last year and was eager to try out what I had learned, so I started looking for a FOH: Glossary of Gore episode suitable for a graphic recording. There are so many great episodes about things like The Male Gaze, Cultural Cringe, Postmodernism etc! But one episode had been released from behind the paywall so to be respectful to the content creators I choose their episode on Cultural Hegemony, which turns out is insanely interesting (but not as directly linked to horror films as I hoped). Marxism pops up quite a lot in film theory (and in everything these days). This is really an educational resource but the few opinions that pop up in this video are not my own.

It is EXTREMELY difficult to design graphics that accompany complicated ideas like this and even more challenging to draw quickly enough to keep up with the audio. But it’s a fun challenge. In a lot of ways it’s a combination of a few skills of mine:

• Education: Unpacking ideas and reconstructing them for an audience. I did a ton of this when I was teaching at UniSA. Particularly when the subject something complicated or less exciting. 
• Visualisation of ideas. I am definately more of a visual learner and in the past this skill has been used to make explainer videos. Without motion though it adds a new challenge.
• Quick work with room for error. Have spent working on scripts and shortcuts to streamline my photoshop workflow. This task really requires a smart workflow as you have Photoshop set to full screen and essentially are working without menus or toolbars. You’re going in blind essentially.
• Love of learning. I used to love sitting in lectures and taking notes, so it’s really fun to get to sit, read or listen and learn.

I am looking forward to trying this out again sometime soon. If you are a film academic (or Carol Clover’s representation) hit me up!