New Media Cultures

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Interesting links, questions and discussions

Subject: the digital rejuvenation of film

At first glance, film would appear to be the most recalcitrant of media forms, its forms of exhibition being roughly the same as they were 80 years ago. As an industry however it has maintained a certain cultural cachet that insures its profitability. Nonetheless, film is also in a period of transition: it is adapting and adopting in an era of digitalization that at least genuflects subtly in the direction of the ‘will-to-produce’, the cultural production elements of new media cultures and its associated audiences.

The New Look of Cinema: Digitalization of the Image
The industry of digital special effects is now quite vast. One of the longest running digital production companies is Industrial Light and Magic, George Lucas’ original enterprise that began with Star Wars (1977) and has most recently worked on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004).

One of the other major digital effects company is Digital Domain, associated with James Cameron, and was involved with digital sequences in Titanic (1997) and The Fifth Element (1997). The television programme Nova broadcast a program on special effects in November 1998 and developed a website to accompany the program (a quick glossary of terms is included as part of this site). Part of the site has a discussion about what was real and what was not real in the production of the Titanic.

The industry standard, which details the world of special effects, is called Cinefex, a brilliant magazine that you need to locate if you are going to do any research in this area. It also has a passable website that, as well as listing the back issues, has a complete listing of effects companies and their projects – which can then be a launching point for further searches both on- and offline.

The transformation of animation via digital needs some more specific explorations. Pixar, which has set the industry aesthetic standard (as Disney was able to do in the 1930s and 1940s), is an interesting and now voluminous company that could be a case study alone. From their shorts such as Luxo Jr (1986) to features such as Toy Story (1995), Toy Story 2 (2000), and Finding Nemo (2003), Pixar has developed a corpus of work derived from different directors and teams of digital artisans. Alex Bunn wrote a useful article in Wired on Pixar in June 2004. Dreamworks, principally via Shrek (2001), Shrek 2 (2004) and Shark Tale (2004) has also established itself in the production of digital animation.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) the completely digital film based on the successful game deserves some attention as well – especially to its ‘real’ rendering of the human image. Here is one example. Other screen shots can be found at rpgamer.

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Film’s Representation of the Digital Future

As discussed in New Media Cultures, film has re-presented the digital world in all its utopian and dystopian glory. What cannot be adequately made to be interactive is made real through the film imaginary. Films discussed in this chapter are listed below. Of particular note is Minority Report (2002), although the scene where John Anderton’s new retina produces a panoply of interactive advertisements speaking directly to him is sadly not included, here is a group of screen shots from Minority Report that you can peruse.

Other films that have played in the dance between utopia and dystopia, between their use of technologies (and celebration thereof in the ‘making of’ documentaries of these films) and dystopian narratives in general:

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The Online World of Cinema

A great deal of ‘films’ can be screened online. This is transforming the exhibition of films – particularly short films. Many film companies put their films online; but the best collections and screening areas are at places like Atomfilms. Shockwave.com presents short animated videos on the web. The Independent Film Channel’s website is another source of the kinds of productions that are circulating both on and off the web. Ifilm has a linked page with its short film/videos.

Here are some other sources drawn from Internet Video Magazine list of their top-ten sites:

120 seconds – connected to CBC 3 in Canada – a site that emphasizes the new aesthetic of the short film/video in its title.
Britshorts
Plugin Cinema is an educational source for making, as well as showcasing, short videos.
Film Watcher – the added benefit of this site is that you can download the films to watch at your leisure.
studentfilms.com – as the name suggests, student films are collected on this site.
The Sync is useful because its films can be downloaded.
Underground Film is a good site for experimental films, but also covers all the main genres.
www.GuerillaFilmmakers.com – an alternative approach to filmmaking and exhibition.

In the development of the Intertextual commodity, some makers of other products also sponsor high-end, high-concept films, and employ major directors to make short films. The most famous of these is BMWfilms.com. These films are amazing to watch – yet somehow they all feature BMWs… Likewise, Budweiser, Skyy Vodka, and a host of other commercial sites have enlivened their sites with interesting shorts.

Independent Film
The Blair Witch Project had one of the most interesting promotional campaigns and intersected heavily with new media forms such as the Internet and has served as a model for future ‘independent’ films. Keep in mind that independence has become as much a brand as a description of a form of production. For instance, there is the Sundance Channel that has emerged from the Sundance Film Festival and serves as a clearinghouse for productions to move into the big leagues of distribution – just as The Blair Witch Project was able to do. In reality, every national cinema is structured as a form of independent film production. Explore the patterns and forms of subsidization of some of the national film cultures of New Zealand, Australia, France and Denmark.

DVD Research
The transformation of film into the DVD format has many intriguing areas to research further. You can explore the emergence of the new generic patterns for the organization of material on DVDs. For instance, there are often selections where you can listen to a running commentary by the director about why they made each scene. In special effects dominated films, each technique is elaborately detailed – a knowledge that is specifically about production. Why is this developing? How is this changing the nature of film consumption/film consumer? Research in this area is expanding and you should regularly consult some of the principal screen-related journals such as Screen, Journal of Film and Video and Television and New Media.

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