Week 4 [Seminar Notes] - Special Effects and the Digital Turn

Digital Hollywood

Since the 90s, digital transformation at every level of business - production/post-production costs, distribution, exhibition and reception.

Digital Visual Effects/CGI

- New working processes and techniques

- Impact of digital FX on narrative and aesthetic conventions 

- Emerging digital aesthetics and tropes

- Realism, authenticity, spectacle

- The discourse of special effects (reception, marketing, behind the scenes)

- Special effects and 3D as commercial strategies

Production: The Digital Backlot

- Digital cinematography - HD cameras

- New techniques e.g. motion capture

- Editing and post-production software

- VFX reel for The Walk (Zemeckis, 2015)

Distribution and Exhibition has gone digital

- Films as files - the DCP (Digital Cinema Package)

- Digita Cinema Initiatives agreement 2005

- Rapid transition to digital projection since mid-2000s

- Multiple platforms - cinemas, DVD/Blu-Ray, iTunes, NetFlix

- Marketing and reception - websites, blogs, social media, viral marketing, new kinds of audience participation and sharing.

Further Reading: Pandora's Digital Box by David Bordwell

Pros for the Industry:

- Cheaper to digitally produce and distribute a film rather than using celluloid.

- Pulling power of CGI films

- Labour intensive and costly VFX

- New marketing and promotion techniques

Cons for the Industry

- Challenging illegal streaming/downloading with Piracy

- VFX and outsourcing: labour issues

Reception and Special FX discourse

- CGI and 3D are used as strategies to revive the business and to draw audiences in, mobilises discourses of innovation, technical mastery, spectacle and wonder.

- Extras and behind the scenes - Audiences are given access into the world of FX but are framed in a particular way.

- Negative media/critical image of special effects, often seen as detrimental to authenticity and narrative values

- What discussions of special effects have you seen recently in the media? What kind of discourse was being deployed?

Digital Multitude 
- Any type of CG applied to the narrative/theme of the film to enhance the visual and narrative pleasure

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