This special issue grew out of the 2024 Parametric Summer Series, an online workshop organized by Ariel Avissar to explore the creative and analytical possibilities of parametric, constraint-based videographic scholarship (Avissar, 2024). Parametric exercises – whose prompts impose specific formal constraints – have long served as a core pedagogical method in videographic scholarship, as established by the influential Middlebury College Scholarship in Sound & Image workshops (Grant et al., 2019). The Parametric Summer Series invited participants to experiment with a more specific use of constraint, creating their own videos based on parametric prompts derived from existing works of videographic criticism. This follows the example of Alan O’Leary’s explication of 'Payne’s Constraint' (O’Leary, 2020 and 2021) from Matthew Payne's 'Who Ever Heard?...' (Payne, 2020), and other videographic projects that emphasize scholarly dialogue through making, such as the Ways of Doing initiative (Donaldson, Laird, McLeod, and Peirse, 2023). 

Taking 'Payne’s Constraint' as a starting point, Avissar developed three additional exercises for the workshop. One of these was 'Laird’s Constraint,' based on Colleen Laird’s 'Eye-Camera-Ninagawa' (Laird, 2023), in which Laird visually deconstructs the opening montage of Helter Skelter (Ninagawa Mika, 2012) and places it in dialogue with the opening sequence of Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958). 'Laird’s Constraint' invites scholars to analyse a montage sequence, following a similar method of visual deconstruction: breaking the sequence down into its component shots and grouping them into visual or thematic categories. Next, the sequence is placed in conversation with another media object released 54 years earlier or later, as with Ninagawa’s and Hitchcock’s films – a constraint that is both arbitrary and generative, and encourages surprising juxtapositions and insights. Of all the videos created during the workshop (70 in total, made by 19 participants), this constraint yielded some of the most thought-provoking results, highlighting its potential as a method for videographic analysis and argumentation. This special issue presents a selection of the 'Laird Constraint' videos made for the workshop, each applying the same basic parameters to a different media object.

At All Times, Avissar's own contribution to this special issue, applies 'Laird’s Constraint' to the testing-room sequence from The Parallax View (1974), disassembling it by frequency rather than thematic or visual motifs. The video then places this montage in dialogue with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), enabling patterns of paranoia, repetition, and historical trauma to (re)surface. 

Viktoria Paranyuk’s Women at Work examines women’s labor and solidarity by dissecting a sequence from Man with a Movie Camera (1929), regrouping its images around embodied gestures and industrial processes. The sequence is then juxtaposed with Sans soleil (1983), both films thus engaging in a cross-historical reflection on the use of montage in the essay film, and on the (gendered) politics of looking. 

In Dance With Me, Lindsay Nelson breaks down a shopping montage from Mannequin (1987), then places it in conversation with Busby Berkeley’s choreography in 42nd Street (1933), enabling a shared, playful exploration of consumerism and excess, connecting Depression-era Hollywood dreams to 1980s consumer culture. 

Daniel O’Brien’s Everybody Dreams analyzes the rapid closing montage from Vanilla Sky (2001), regrouping its constituent shots into thematic clusters. The video culminates in a split-screen dialogue with Hans Richter’s Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947), which results in surprising thematic and visual parallels.

In Watch for Joy, Quan Zhang interrogates the promises and limits of split-screen comparison across unequal archival and cultural contexts. Pairing a sequence from the 1999 Chinese New Year Gala televised broadcast with a sequence from Anchors Aweigh (1945), the video partakes in – while at the same time questioning – cross-cultural videographic juxtaposition. 

Finally, with The Most unCertain Hour, Colleen Laird turns the constraint back on her own practice, responding reflexively to patterns established in her earlier work, 'Eye-Camera-Ninagawa'. Reworking multiple iterations of the Marvel Studios logo, one of which is later paired with the opening credits of the televised anime Astro Boy (1963), the video foregrounds the habits of creative analysis itself as grounded in personal impulse and subjective historical context.

Taken together, these videos illustrate the generative potential of constraint-based approaches to videographic scholarship, with works such as 'Eye-Camera-Ninagawa' expanded centrifugally, offering themselves as prompts, as structures to think with, against, and beyond. 'Laird’s Constraint' is thus a testament to the ways in which iterative use and reuse can activate existing pieces of audiovisual scholarship, their contribution to the field exceeding their original context and intention through an open-ended, constraint-based dialogue.

References

Avissar, A. (2024) ‘The Parametric Summer Series.’ Ariel Avissar (online). Available from: https://www.arielavissar.work/the-parametric-summer-series [Accessed 22 July 2025]

Donaldson, L., Laird, C., McLeod, D., and Peirse, A. (2023) Ways of Doing (online).  Available from: https://waysofdoing.com/ [Accessed 22 July 2025].

Grant, C., Keathley, C. and Mittell, J. (2019) The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound and Image. Montreal, CA: Caboose Books.

Laird, C. (2023) ‘Eye-Camera-Ninagawa.’ [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 10.2 (online). Available from: https://intransition.openlibhums.org/article/id/11328/ [Accessed 22 July 2025]

O’Leary, A. (2020) ‘Payne’s Constraint.’ Notes on Videographic Criticism, 1.11 (online). Available from: https://thevideoessay.substack.com/p/volume-1-issue-11-paynes-constraint [Accessed 22 July 2025]

O’Leary, A. (2021) ‘Workshop of Potential Scholarship: Manifesto for a Parametric Videographic Criticism’, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies 10.1 (online), https://necsus-ejms.org/workshop-of-potential-scholarship-manifesto-for-a-parametric-videographic-criticism/ [Accessed 22 July 2025]

Payne, M. (2020) ‘Who Ever Heard…?’ [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 7.1 (online). Available from: https://intransition.openlibhums.org/article/id/11344/ [Accessed 22 July 2025]

This special issue has been curated by Guest Editor Ariel Avissar and edited by Screenworks Editor in Chief, Professor Charlotte Crofts. If you are interested in submitting a Special Issue Proposal please see our Special Issue Guidelines. We also publish a rolling volume each year, which runs from September to July, with the editorial team taking a well-deserved break in August. To submit work please read our Submissions Guidelines and use our Online Submission Form. If you are interested in submitting your practice and want further advice, then please contact us on admin@screenworks.org.uk with “Submissions” in the subject line.