(The visual culture reader notes)
(b) cinema after film, television after the networks
What is digital cinema? pg 405
"This 'crisis' of cinema's identity also affects the terms and the categories used to theorise cinema's past. The French film theorist Christian Metz wrote in the 1970s that 'Most films shot today, good or bad, original or not, "commercial" or not, have as a common characteristic that they tell a story; in this measure they all belong to one and the same genre, which is, rather, a sort of "super-genre".' At the time of his statement all fictional films were live action.
This article addresses the meaning of the changes in the film making process that allowed manipulation of film - this includes anything that is not captured purely through the lens. Things that are not based in 'reality'.
When considering the manipulation of frames in a film cinema, at the turn of the twentieth century, would "delegate these manual techniques to animation and define itself as a recording medium. As cinema enters the digital age, these techniques are again becoming commonplace in the film-making process. Consequently, cinema can no longer be clearly distinguished from animation. It is no longer as indexical media technology but, rather, a sub-genre of painting."
2 stages of argument for this conclusion
1 - the historical trajectory of moving images
2 - defining digital cinema by "abstracting the common features and interface metaphors of computer software and hardware."
"Seen together, these features and metaphors suggest a distinct logic of a digital moving image. This logic subordinates the photographic and the cinematic to the painterly and the graphic, destroying cinema's identity as a media art."
A BRIEF ARCHEOLOGY OF MOVING PICTURES
The basic instruments that were the initial players with persistence of vision. Kinetoscope, cinematograph. Initially hand drawn images, sometimes hand drawn after the photos.
Very simple shapes, often eyes moving, a hand raising or a bouncing ball. A common scene may be akin to a butterfly moving above a captivated audience following with their eyes. Very simple vector shapes.
Each experiment developed in loops up to Edison's Kinetoscope using films was a loop of 20 seconds.
Then photography became motorised initiating much longer narratives cutting short the development of a genre based on loops.
The hand crafted techniques were put aside for animation, seen as a separate inferior discipline.
"Twentieth century animation became a depose try for nineteenth-century moving image techniques left behind by cinema."
This opposition between the two defined their styles. Animation was fictional and made no attempt to appear realistic. Cinema was defined by Jean-Luc Godard as "truth 24 frames per second".
Cinemas efforts were geared towards erasing production techniques that might betray it's presentation as anything but the simple recordings of what is 'real'.
This persisted until the 1990s shift towards computer media.
Hollywood blockbusters began to find success through the scale of their effects. A new 'mini-genre' came into being - "the making of…" specialising in the presentation of how the 'truth' of cinema is manipulated.
Computers have collapsed the distinction between editing and special effects. (ish - I do not really agree with this)
a definition of 'digital film' = live action material + painting + image processing + compositing + 2D computer animation + 3D computer animation.
Live action film is now just a raw material to be refined in post production.
This results in a rather amusing conclusion as the the definition of 'digital cinema'. This includes pretty much every form of film / video / show being created now, very rarely are they produced in a purely analogue format. Due to distribution methods, it is virtually impossible for an analogue film to be available for viewing by the extended public.
"Bourn from animation, cinema pushed animation to its boundary, only to become one particular case of animation in the end."
Film and the digital in visual studies: film studies in the era of convergence pg 417
The cinema itself is barley over a century old
Film studies has been under construction for a mere quarter-century. (it began appearing in the 60s and early 70s.)
Lisa Cartwright, a teacher of films studies in a visual and cultural studies program at the University of Rochester whose 'real' appointment lies in the department of English. This essay of hers discusses the fragility of the current definition of 'film studies' and the vagueness of it's specific topic. She questions it's current title and also it's perceived position within Visual Studies. This is presented as part of the process by which a new subject grows - academia attempting to grasp the nature of this new industry. Consider the amount of uncertainty surrounding a subject that began appearing in the 60s and early 70s concerning an object (film) and social institution (cinema) that is barley a century old. With that in mind, now consider the youth of motion graphics and broadcast design. Two industries whose initial sparks came in the 1960s
Broadcast 1930s
Motion graphics (channel 4) 1980s
Saul bass 1950s one of the first to realise title sequences as an art form.
that appeared ____________ and is only now appearing in an academic context. This small thought experiment should give an impression of the challenges to be faced in the development of motion graphics as a subject.
has presented a small reading, 'Where is film studies in visual studies'.
She argues it's necessity as a means through which to "both historicize and reroute the source of global media culture."
Freelance Whales - Enzymes from NEUE on Vimeo.