Composite Culture: A Genealogy of Negative Space and Double Exposure, a Talk with Gregory Brophy and Shawn Malley

From its earliest experiments, cinema revealed itself as a constructed medium, using techniques like negative space and multiple exposures to combine separate elements. Today, digital tools make such compositing fast, cheap, and seamless. This ease has transformed compositing from a specialized effect into a dominant visual logic across media, from blockbuster films to social media content. This talk considers how critical videographic experiments from the supercut to the video essay can resist smooth illusions by exposing visual edges and glitches, encouraging audiences to critically reflect on how images (and identities) are assembled in digital environments.

Shawn Malley and Gregory Brophy are professors in the Department of English at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada and co-
authors of the videographic book, Adaptive Forms: Videographic Criticism and Contemporary Science Fiction Film (2025). Their work has appeared in Science
Fiction Film and Television, [in]Transition, and Literature/Film Quarterly. Brophy’s research spans film and literature, including recent work in The New Review of Film and Television, Victorian Review, and The Journal of Victorian Culture. Malley is author of Excavating the Future: Archaeology and Geopolitics in Contemporary North American Science Fiction Film and Television (2018). Their talk is sponsored by the Blythe Bickel Edwards Fund, with additional support from Cinema Studies, Digital and Computational Studies, Visual Arts, and the Bowdoin Film Society.

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