Panorama - Diorama: 3D tools for the 2D Screen

Whilst much of their legacy stems from animation, the software-based tools of 3D graphics for building, designing and simulating computer-generated 3D objects and spaces are now universal for all forms of cinematic media, be it animated or live-action. In fact the self-same software tools used for 3D animation and digital filmmaking are also those used for architectural and industrial design, computer game development, as well as specialist forms such as visualisation systems for medicine, aeronautics and geological surveys. Contemporary software applications such as 3D Studio Max, Lightwave, Cinema 4D and Maya are all as equally at home in any of these industries, employed for both photo-real and stylised imagery, static and moving designs, the highly technical as well as the highly fanciful. The sharing of common tools across such divergent creative forms and endeavours prompts questions how such overlaps influence or cross-pollinate processes and conceptualisations. More specifically we might ask what is the common denominator between cinema, gaming, architecture, simulation and engineering? The most ready answer is spatial arrangement and construction. 

The ever-increasing power of computer processing ensures an ever upward spiral of image pixel fidelity with the inevitable result being photo realism – the ability to produce a computer generated image indistinguishable from a live-action recording and indeed interchangeable with live-action material. This is not to suggest that photo-realism is necessarily the ultimate goal of computer graphics or that the artworks built from CGI must strive for photo-realism, but with such photo-realism having been achieved (as it clearly is when one observes the seamless amalgam of CGI and live-action in contemporary cinema), the term CGI becomes one no longer by default associated with a particular aesthetic, form, style or genre. Rather more purely CGI is understood as a production process and a tool applicable to any given genre, style or aesthetic. In this light we may then surmise that when CGI doesn’t look like CGI it throws of the cloak of being a style unto itself and simply becomes a part of the mechanics and visual language of everyday cinema. It ceases to be a ‘special’ effect, discernible for its specialness. 

As with any given production technology the mechanics of the tool inform and shape the processes by which work is created with the tool. The 3D CGI artist as a result is not compelled by the software system to set up framed scenes based on pre-determined vantage points. The tools of 3D CGI have more in common with sculpture than painting or photography where vantage and observation point over the work need not be the primary directive in constructing the it.

When an established artform like cinema adopts such tools there is a risk that we may impose a legacy process onto a different creative paradigm. A sculptor shaping clay is unlikely to need to ask where the audience will be in order to begin work. By contrast, a long established understanding of the traditional film set is one predicated on artifice, where - with knowledge of the staging - facades and falsities can be placed to provide an appearance of authenticity from a defined and specific point of view. Lev Manovich makes the connection of fixed vantage point construction with Potemkin’s Villages of 18th century Russia. ³ Catherine the Great, wishing to see how the common people lived, was taken on a tour of the Russian countryside. Unbeknownst to her, from her moving, but none the less fixed and pre-determined vantage point inside the carriage and through the frame of the window, the villages she saw were ‘cinematic’ constructs – false facades that appeared real enough from the carriage window. However if Catherine were permitted to step outside the carriage and adopt a different vantage point, outside of that which was ‘composed’ for her, the artifice of the apparatus would have been revealed. 

The pre-defined position of the viewer, and its pre-determined moving trajectory, ensures that the environment need only present the illusion of authenticity from a particular vantage point; detailed reality on the audience side, artificial façade from the side of production.

In contrast 3D CGI is intended intrinsically for holistic building not framic composing. Virtual objects are built, shaped, formed by modeling tools in three dimensional space as sculptures and architecture. Movement of objects, characters and environmental elements are placed into the three dimensional physically of those generated spaces. The space of 3D CGI is fundamentally cartesian, relying on a  X, Y and Z axis of construction rather than depth-cues, forced perspective and POV constraints of the traditional cinema frame that exploit the faux depth of a theatrically-based stage set. 

Norman Klein explores this relationship between the notion of the cinematic and immersive space with the concept of “scripted spaces” In his work Vatican to Vegas: a history of special effects, Klein engages with the cinematic nature of spatial construction – churches, shopping centres, casinos and museums. He likewise draws connection between this construction of spatial relationships with spectators and contemporary media – interactive forms, computer gaming and, of course, special effects in cinema. He describes that scripted spaces “are designed to emphasise the viewer’s journey – the space between…. The audience walks into the story… gentle repression posing as free will.” He goes on to add that;  “scripted spaces (are) primarily a mode of reception, a way of seeing”.  In this way we might see a correlation in intent, rather than a separation, between the way we view spatial composition as repression posing as free will and the forced perspective of cinematic facade as illustrated by  Manovich with Potemkins’ Villages. 

In both cases the orchestration of space is a constructed illusion to present ways of seeing. The scripted space relies on defining motion and trajectory through composed space, the facade relies on defining a perspective onto and into a composed space. The desires and intentions of each share much common ground but the tools and mechanics of how they achieve those intentions differ. Though subtle, the difference allows us to see spatilised screen production processes as not new or wholly derived from technologies such as CGI, having as they do a deep continuum overlaps with traditional practices. However, to fully understand the implications of technology, tools and processes on film-style we need to recognise the bias of the tools and the shift in process emphasis that new technologies drive. 

What Klein indicates is that, despite the innate differences between composing the Frame and composing the Space, the inherent constructs implied by each share a distinct intent to shape modes of viewership, parameters within which the act of viewing will take place. One distinction that Klein touches on that provides a functional platform to understand what 3D GCI represents for the articulation of film style in a frame-less, camera-less mise en scene is the conceptual difference between Panorama and Diorama. 

The traditional definition of Panorama is ‘complete view’ and it derives from Greek origin with the term ‘horama’ meaning simply ‘view’. Diorama, by contrast, whilst having specific modern associations with model building and miniature settings, in the broader sense means ‘miniature scene’. However, looking further to the derivation of the word Diorama we can see that it comes to us from the French ‘Dia’ meaning ‘through’ and was itself a play on the existing word of Panorama. Rather than a ‘complete view’ the Diorama was a restricted view seen via an act of ‘looking through’. The simple but important distinction embodied by these two terms goes some way to understanding the shift in bias or emphasis that new technological modes of screen production may represent. mise en scene as prism of style in a process governed by camera and frame is a Diorama, ‘seeing through’ the frame. Where as in a camera-less and frameless process we have a ‘complete view’ framework of Panaorama - mise en space.

Klein discusses this effect in spatial composition as the idea that “the panoramic tends toward the languorous and the picturesque. Thus nature looks endless, without artifice.” Both these concepts of ‘endless’ and ‘artifice’ are important to the discussion of cinematic form in the digital age connected to its tools of production and the position of the viewer in the context of Z-space that drives our understanding of the impact of 3D as a compositional framework. Klein expands on the ideas of Panorama and Diorama by drawing connections with viewer experience based on fixed perspective; such as that experienced by Catherine the Great from the confines of her carriage - and endless perspective; such as is engaged by architecture with its “gentle repression posing as free will.”  Klein makes the distinction between these two as the difference between Fixed-view ‘pausing’ and Multiple-view ‘drifting’ The concept of movement implied by ‘drifting’ is one which unifies the elements that are unique to cinema, time and actualised space; the act of moving the ‘camera’ and so moving the viewer requires both. Bernadette Flynn in analysing the navigational movement in 3D computer games describe the effect as a;

camera on tracks. More akin to the experience of floating through water in a houseboat than the rhythm and tempo of a human stroll, the process of navigation has a mesmeric dislocating effect.” 

Klein expands this further in unifying different screen media forms to claim that; 

all visual media (is) innately cinematic: the desire to animate what cannot move remains constant… Thus all visual media (theatre, engineering, architecture, sculpture) animate stillness, turn perspective awry. 

This movement – and moreover the engrained desire for movement – is fundamental to a compositional mise en space, a mise en scene paradigm with a shifted emphasis toward frame-less, camera-less composition. For without movement through space there is no engagement with the space that is composed, no reason to be three dimensional. The use of spatial compositional tools by cinema makers demands movement on the part of cinema watchers and with movement comes flexibility. One of the dominant hallmarks of the digital creation process and environment is indeed this flexibility. In technical terms the ability to manipulate a media element - be it audio, video or image - in software without degrading or effecting the original source is known as non-destructive editing. This principle of non-destructive manipulation impacts not just the creative output but the process of creative engagement itself. In this regard we will explore the specificity of infinite flexibility in the 3D CGI space and how this freedom impacts both creative process and aesthetic result of digital rendered images. 

What the ideas of Panorama and Diorama highlight is potentially a shift of bias in the way screen production processes are engaged; a bias away from the Diorama and toward the Panorama. And with this bias comes a more intrinsic relationship between cinema and its non-traditionally associated cousins of architecture, landscape and sculpture. If we consider the traditional live-action film process from storyboard cells to shooting we see the construction of a set and of an environment for those framed perspectives represented by, and conceived on, the storyboard. The process is then one of filling in backgrounds for pre-defined and prescribed shots. This is distinctly a paradigm of composing and staging ‘for’ the camera and as such the cinematography process is one whose strength and power lies in the articulation of point-of-view. 

However this focus on point-of-view as the origin of compositional process is what is often absent from 3D CGI whose innate strengths as a tool and process lie elsewhere in a camera-less and frameless mode. A 3D CGI scene does not demand point-of-view, rather its functionality lies in infinite, variable or as yet undetermined, positions within a space. Here it is the environment, the world, the space that is sculpted by the creator in advance of, rather than in response to, the frame. The camera, a position of perspective, can then be immersed into the scene after the major act of ‘composition’ has already taken place. A staging of the camera into a space rather than a staging of a space for the camera. Bordwell and Thompson comment that mise en scène itself signifies “the Director’s control over what happens in the film frame.” and yet because of the very nature of 3D CGI we are returned to the question of what mise en scene is, and how is film style constructed, in a process where the frame can, and often is, be absent from the process. Indeed if we extend the idea of cinematic style to include video games and interactive environs where the player is essentially the cinematographer, the director relinquishes the ability to dictate the frame at all. 

However, in understanding how mise en scene is extended by such new mediums and technologies we can look to spatial arts of landscape architecture to observe that whilst the director may relinquish the ability to dictate the camera and frame they none the less retain the means to control experience and perspective by how the space itself manipulates and guides the viewer. 

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Manovich, Lev. “After Effects, or Velvet Revolution. Part 1”, 2006. 

Manovich, L. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001

Klein, Norman M. The Vatican to Vegas: a history of special effects. New York: The New Press, 2004

Bordwell, D., and K. Thompson. Film Art an introduction. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001