Exploring film language with a digital analysis tool: The case of kinolab

This article presents a case study of Kinolab, a digital platform for the analysis of narrative film language. It describes the need for a scholarly database of clips focusing on film language for cinema and media studies faculty and students, highlighting recent technological and legal advances that have created a favorable environment for this kind of digital humanities work. Discussion of the project is situated within the broader context of contemporary developments in moving image annotation and a discussion of the unique challenges posed by computationally-driven moving image analysis. The article also argues for a universally accepted data model for film language to facilitate the academic crowdsourcing of film clips and the sharing of research and resources across the Semantic Web.