[Commlist] CFP: Making Monsters Symposium

*Media Journeys Symposium 2021*

*Making Monsters: The Production of Terror*

*DATE: 7^th June 2021*

Monsters stalk through modern media. They are heard howling from radio, 
film and television. They are even spinning their tales on every corner 
of the World Wide Web. Whether adapting illusory techniques from stage, 
like Pepper’s Ghost, or creating new and experimental forms of 
monstrosity that range from classic film monsters to urban legends like 
the Slender Man, our media worlds are crawling with monsters. This 
symposium will explore the audio and visual processes, techniques and 
materials used to create these monsters.

Making monsters often requires skilled and thoughtful approaches to 
adaptation, making the monster in media texts a locus for debates around 
creativity, invention and innovation in technology and media culture. 
These monsters are always constructed, but their construction varies 
wildly from the use of in-camera effects and sound effects, to make-up 
effects, to animatronics and puppetry through to animation and 
post-production CG work.

However, the often villainous presence of monsters in across media types 
and genres has pushed them into liminal spaces, which means that their 
significance and centrality to issues of media production and innovation 
have been under-interrogated in academic scholarship to date. This is 
particularly the case within current debates about special effects and 
animated media. Therefore, this symposium takes the production of 
monsters as its focus as a means to explore and reconsider the wider 
implications of monsters in media, seeking to reimagine monsters as a 
crucial nexus point in creativity.

We seek papers of 10-15 minutes on topics including:

  * Make-up effects and monsters**
  * Animatronic and puppet creatures**
  * Computer generated monsters**
  * Suitmation**
  * Animated monsters**
  * Audio monsters from radio to sound effects**
  * Monstrous transformations**
  * Costuming and making over actors into monsters**
  * Stuntwork and monsters**
  * Monstrous performances**
  * Social media and urban legends**
  * Adaptation of monster effects across media platforms**
  * Monster “makers”: creature designers, make-up artists, special
    effects artists**
  * Monsters and otherness: gender, sexuality and race in monster design**

Proposals of 300 words to be sent to: *(ueamakingmonsters /at/ gmail.com) *by 
*Date 1^st Match 2021*. Please provide your talk title, content summary, 
name and affiliation, and contact details.


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