New Media Week 2Film aesthetics and narrative: the role of new

media

The seminar tasks handout relating to this lecture also has quotes

The effects of new media on film aesthetics includes:

• SHORT film narratives for distribution online, on phones, etc (existed in primitive cinema)

• SPECTACLE (e.g. digital effects; 3D)• SMALLSCREEN formats -viral videos, mobiles• CINEMA affects game aesthetics /GAMES

affect the look and narrative of films

Cloverfield: combines spectacle and ‘shaky-cam’ home video aesthetic

Viral marketing, fake sites

Short Narratives

• Critics seek new theories of narrative

• YouTube and viral – very short narratives; mass downloaded

• Shorts form part of transmedia storytelling

See primitive cinema e.g.

The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903)12 mins

Rescued by Rover (Hepworth company, GB, 1905) 6 mins

Will Brooker (2003)

• ‘televisual overflow’ – lifestyle experience created by producers around a text

• On watching shows online:• OVERFLOW- viewer may be distracted by all the

other windows• INTERFLOW: some windows are related to the cult

viewing e.g simulated sites related to the show, and fan forums. Deepen viewer’s engagement.

The Society of the Spectacle

• Guy Debord 1967

• A Marxist reading of culture that views spectacle as a commodity

Commodification in Marxism

Commodities are goods to be sold for profit under capitalism

• SPECTACLE sells goods

• SPECTACLE is

what we are sold for leisure

• SPECTACLE justifies the capitalist system

KEY IDEAS from Debord’s book:

The Society of the Spectacle:

In all of its particular manifestations – news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment – the spectacle represents the dominant model of life.…The spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system (Debord 1994[1967]:13)

The Society of the Spectacle

–Global tendency toward the banal in modern spectacles but many spectacles for consumers (see p.38).

–Stars create images for us to identify with as PURE SPECTACLE, to compensate for the lack of diverse and productive things for us to do

SPECTACLE in early cinema:

• Early cinema -fairground attraction

• Late 1890s Kinetoscope in arcades: looped film shorts

• 1894-5 Cinématographe (Lumière brothers)

• The Gay Shoe Clerk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CAxIHvASAg

Record of a Sneeze (Edison, 1894)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wnOpDWSbyw

Tom Gunning,

‘The Cinema of Attractions: Early Cinema, Its Spectator, and the Avant-Garde’’Early cinema

shorts were like fairground attractionsAND foregrounded the spectator.

Primitive or early cinema:The fourth wall convention (straight on angle) little camera movement or editing, lack of close-ups

Melies: trick films, fairy tales, scifi

The cinema of attractions

• ‘directly solicits spectator attention, by inciting a visual curiosity, and supplying pleasure through an exciting spectacle - a unique event, whether fictional or documentary, that is of interest in itself’

• (Gunning 1990: 58)

The cinema of attractions • in later fantasy

and action films AND THE AVANT-GARDE

‘

Clearly is some sense recent spectacle cinema has reaffirmed its roots in stimulus and carnival rides, in what might be called the Spielberg-Lucas-Coppola cinema of effects (Gunning 1986,61).

YouTube - attractions. ‘”Attraction is the

whole aim of uploading clips”(Theresa Rizzo)Rizzo suggests that clips of animals, remediated clips creating political satire, and Bollywood movies given nonsense subtitles on Youtube function

as ‘attractions’

• Cat mom hugs baby kitten• http

://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw4KVoEVcr0

• Cat in box• http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=qrg08BP3xLA&feature=relmfu

Charlie Bit My Finger

Justin Bieber throws up on stage

http://animal.discovery.com/tv/too-cute-kittens/

• Too Cute• (Animal Planet satellite TV

channel)• Remediates YouTube

Digital cinematic spectacle

• Depiction of computers in Tron (1982)

• Cyberspace in The Lawnmower Man (1992)

• Liquid creature for The Abyss

• CGI Dinosaurs for Jurassic Park (1993)

• ‘Bullet time’ for The Matrix (1999)

• Selective digital colour in Pleasantville (1998) and Sin City (2005)

MASSIVE • http://www.massivesoftware.

com/autonomous agent driven animation – developed at Weta for Lord of the Rings to simulate armies

Digital 3D remediates earlier 3D formatsFilms are relaunched in 3D (remediation)3D games

Geoff King (2000) early key work

Argues that spectacle functions as part of the narrative of the Hollywood blockbuster, not as a rival to it

Available as an e-book via the library Catalogue

Different kinds of spectaclein Jurassic Park for King:Long takes convince us of the realism of the CGI dinosaur

Fast editing and explosions in action sequences

Jurassic Park remediated formore recent release

Debate:• Michelle Pierson

suggests that the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are bracketed off from the narrative

• King finds the dinosaurs forward the narrative, and create emotion through encounters with characters (see chapter 2)

Michael Allen:

argues that CGI MODIFIES FILM LANGUAGE OR GRAMMAR

• Use of 360 degree shots eg Gladiator arena

• CGI shots often bracketed by live-action shots which give us a reference point

Ron Burnett (2011)

• THE FUTURE OF 3D STEREOSCOPIC CINEMA • The ‘presence’ of 3D images, their force… comes from a

combination of increased intensity produced through a heightened sense that the illusory space of 2D has finally been cracked. This is aided by sound augmented by the use of special effects…..

• special effects are an important component of the story .Take the recent 3D production of Alice in Wonderland … Alice’s imaginary is the site for all sorts of special effects from physical size to animal intelligence…. The depth of the effects, their strength comes from opening up a space for viewing that allows the special effects to at times overwhelm the mise-en-scène and become the story.

• Games use filmic strategies, in some cases first person

• Cut-scenes use filmic strategies for exposition, characters’ goals, and to reward players visually and emotionally at the end.

King, Geoff and Tanya Krzywinska (eds.) Screenplay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, 2002

FILMS AND THEIRLINKS TO GAMES

Films and games

• Brooker, Will, ‘Camera-Eye, CG-Eye: Videogames and the ‘Cinematic’. Cinema Journal 48,3,2009.

Other essays in Screenplay:

Sacha A. Howells on history and

use of cut-scenes

Geoff King, ‘Die Hard/Try Harder: Narrative, Spectacle and Beyond: From Hollywood to Videogame’

• Argues that games extend the ‘impact-aesthetic’ form of spectacle (felt by viewer - pulse racing etc)

Margit Grieb, ‘Run Lara Run’

Run Lola Run references games, reflects on them and uses their conventions

Different versions of the heroine’s quest

Both characters only survive if they follow the ‘rules’ (law and order)People help or hinder Lola. Berlin as virtual environment

Compares it with Tomb Raider

Games and culture journal

• Range of more recent academic essays on topics e.g.

• Silent Hill as art • Video games and escapism• Avatars• Audiences• The Sims/convergence etc.

Bibliography• Allen, Michael, ‘The Impact of Digital Technologies on Film

Aesthetics’ in Harries, Dan (ed) The New Media Book, London: BFI, 2002. 109-.

• Burnett, Ron (2011) The future of 3D stereoscopic cinema. Critical Approaches to Culture + Media A Weblog by Ron Burnett. 1 July.

• Cubitt, Sean, ‘Digital Filming and Special Effects’ in Harries, Dan (ed) The New Media Book, London: BFI, 2002. 17-

• Debord, Guy (1994) ‘The Commodity as Spectacle’ in The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books, 2004, pp. 25-34 .

• Grieb, Margit, ‘Run Lara Run’. King, Geoff and Tanya Krzywinska (eds.) Screenplay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, London and New York: Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press, 2002Howells, Sacha A. , ‘Watching a Game, Playing a Movie: When Media Collide’ . King, Geoff and Tanya Krzywinska (eds.) Screenplay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, London and New York: Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press, 2002

• King, Geoff, ‘Die Hard/Try Harder: Narrative, Spectacle and Beyond: From Hollywood to Videogame’ King, Geoff and Tanya Krzywinska (eds.) Screenplay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, London and New York: Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press, 2002

• King, Geoff and Tanya Krzywinska (eds.) Screenplay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, London and New York: Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press, 2002

• Rizzo Teresa ‘YouTube: the New Cinema of • Attractions’ Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture• http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=109• Wolf, Mark J. P.and Bernard Perron eds. The Video Game

Theory Reader, London: Routledge, 2003.