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. 

—- 

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

Virtual Camera on an Epic Scale

One of the cinematic constructs that fascinates me, and which i have written about extensively as a key subject of my research and PhD thesis, is the Virtual Camera. 

As much a concept as a technology, the Virtual Camera represents an viewer vanishing point in space that is not only infinitely flexible in movement and position but is not bound by physics and physicality. The virtual camera can move through walls, move across miles in seconds, be infinitely small or finitely large. Thus at once the Virtual Camera is a simple evolution on from extant cinematic language and at the same time a massive paradigm shift in visual expectations.

This concept returns the notion of filmmaker as fundamentally being what William Mitchell described as the ‘Perspective Artist’. (Mitchell, W J 1992, p118) At once both derivative of all other arts and unique amongst them, cinema rises out of the collective influences of painting, theatre and photography as creations wrought by “perspective artists” and  from a selected perspective it delivers itself as the Art of the Moving Image. The word Perspective derives from the latin ‘perspicere’ with the implication of ‘peering-through’ and the innate positioning of viewer and subject, audience and content, is at the heart of visual aesthetics. As Mitchell observed, “the perspective artist can control the image by varying the parameters of situation point” (1992, p118) When time and space are added to perspective we engage with Greek derived terms of ‘Kine’ and ‘Kinema’ meaning movement; thus functionally cinema is a perspective experience of movement in time and space.

This idea, and the techno-concept of the Virtual Camera, takes on an interesting conundrum in the context of an assertion by seminal film theorist John Gibbs where he saids;

“to discuss the lighting of a shot without reference to the position of the camera is to misunderstand how films are made - one does not light a set and then set about deciding where the camera is going to be placed.”

And more succinctly, Borge comments boldly that;

“it is quite feasible to produce a film without actors but a film without a camera is a sheer impossibility” 

These two quotes give us the strangeness of the Virtual Camera. If we adopt the common and casual understanding of the camera as a physical machine for recording images then the Virtual Camera is not this and as such Borge’s assertion is rendered bunk. At the same time, Gibbs’ insistence on a predefined knowledge of where the camera is as essential to all other parts of filmmaking is likewise deeply flawed in the modern age. Rather than pre-decided, the very process of creating and utilizing a virtual camera is one where its position and vantage is the last or final step in the process, not the first. CGI layers and composited layers come first, before the virtual camera as vanishing point is inserted into a virtual space.

The Virtual Camera really upsets the apple cart for a lot of traditional thinking and yet there is nothing new or even innately digital about the Virtual Camera. It in fact has a long history drawn from animation and predicated on the idea of being an ‘impossible’ camera.

I recently viewed the very interesting Scale of the Universe flash graphic online and saw that it was simply the digital virtual camera remix of the famous (and quite fabulous) Eames film, The Powers of Ten.

It is included here for your virtual camera enjoyment.

 Scale of the Universe can be seen here - www.scaleoftheuniverse.com

Wim Wenders' 3D film is ill conceived

Pina is arguably an important film, less for what it’s about and more for what it represents. Pina is a part of the new wave of digital Stereoscopic 3D films which is the latest attempt in a long history of efforts to extend the theatrical cinema experience. Yet unlike all other current 3D efforts, Pina is not a Hollywood action blockbuster nor a CGI-stuffed adventure film. So with 3D glasses on and the opening titles hovering extruded from the screen into the space of the theatre auditorium, celebrated auteur Wim Wenders presents us a vision of dance and movement. Can 3D be used for Art as well as Action…? Does 3D deliver a deeper experience of space and movement?

Ostensibly the subject of the film is renowned dance choreographer Pina Bausch and yet the film is not in any real way a character documentary or a study of Pina herself. If you expect an insight into the life of Pina Bausch - her history, motivations, personal and artistic triumphs and challenges - then you will be disappointed. There is no character insight to be found in this film, nor is there any dramatic tension or story-telling. Instead the film presents and focuses exclusively on Pinas work, extracts from four of her more famous dance productions. The closest the film comes to character documentary is in the brief, poetic, expressions of the dancers in her company reflecting upon working with her which are interludes between set-piece dance scenes. But these voice-overs are brief and stand only as tribute and loving praise rather than insight, critique or observation. The dance productions themselves may hold their own narrative arcs and meanings but as they are presented only as edited extracts rather than complete works, only those familiar with Pina’s work will be likely to make sense of them beyond their physicality and spectacle.

In this regard Pina seems a confusing film. Carried without documentary rigour or narrative dramatics, the film is really a collection of theatrical stage performance extracts punctuated by connecting voices and interludes of dance in real-world settings. Yet there is doubtless beauty in the orchestration and execution of the film. The 3D image is used with a great deal more subtlety than standard Hollywood 3D fare. The focus is on depth not protrusion. Rarely do the subjects extend out from the screen, instead the space of the performance stage, and the performers themselves, stretch back - drawing the viewer into the space rather than pushing the space into the theatre. 

In some scenes the effect is mesmerising - a single dancer on ballet point, in front an industrial complex whose spires and steel pipes enclose a deep sense of perspective and scale - raining water seeming to fall in the auditorium as dancers splash and exalt. However in many other, much longer, scenes depicting bland theatrical stages, the 3D experience seems negligible at best. Visually the film is at its most engaging when it moves outside into real-world urban and rural landscapes. Here the 3D image is able to bring fresh scale and imagery to the performers movements - to engage with making the dancer cinematic. However these moments of visual delight represent but a small fraction of the screen time. Much more of the film is devoted to performances on rather static and largely bare stages where the intimacy of the camera and the magnification of experience 3D offers, seems lost and out of place. 

If 3D cinema is the great white hope many in the theatrical feature film business believe it to be, a way to keep us coming to a cinema when there are so many other screens to watch, then Pina is an important film. It shows 3D beyond the Blockbuster, 3D as a tool for Art in the hands of an art-house filmmaker. But despite the deftness of Wim Wender’s execution in Pina, I’m not confident the film succeeds in what it sets out to do and moreover, does not succeed in being what the filmmakers think it is. By making a dance-film in 3D Wim Wenders is posing that 3D is the best way to show movement and space - the two essential elements of dance performance. And it’s in this hypothesis that I cant help but feel that Wenders is misguided.

There is little doubt that stereoscopic 3D imagery is a good technical means to visually depict space and depth but where 3D fails rather tragically is in the depiction of movement. The 3D image, the way its binocular lenses capture light, causes movement to jitter and shudder. Movements across the screen are not smooth or carried in motion-blur as they would in typical 24 and 25 frame per second 2D cinema, but have a distinct strobbing effect that is not pleasant to the eye, especially in long doses. Whilst space and depth may be important elements to dance, I would suggest that they are not, rather obviously, more important than movement - and indeed may be secondary to movement. To make a dance film using a technical apparatus which - despite its other advantages - is decidedly flawed in the way is captures motion seems entirely ill-considered. 

In probing this hypothesis around 3D and dance further we are compelled also to consider the long history of dance on film - Busby Berkley, Fred Astair, the great legacy of MGM musicals and so on. Where these films somehow lacking in their ability to depict space and movement? Did they have a legitimate flaw that Wim Wenders is trying to solve with 3D? I’m afraid I just don’t see it. In many ways Busby Berkley and Fred Astair made better use of space and depth than Wenders does in Pina. And with smooth motion blur movement rather than the juddering, strobbing of 3D in Pina, they arguably delivered a better sense of motion as well. In the end I cant help but fail in finding a tangible benefit for Pina being in 3D. 

Lets consider alternatives. If we acknowledge that dance on screen demands an aesthetic focus and emphasis on movement then we must look to which technology or apparatus delivers a heightened level of motion fidelity. 3D is clearly not the answer but, rather obviously, high frame-rates are. In this I wonder why Wenders wasn’t drawn to double frame rate shooting. 1080 HD at 50p is very common for high-end sports cinematography (NTSC based 60p in North America) and an increasingly common broadcast standard in both 720 and 1080 varieties (even most DSLR’s can shoot 720p50). Similarly, Peter Jackson is currently shooting The Hobbit in double film rate of 48fps looking for high-fidelity motion in capturing a heightened imaginary world. Surely such temporal resolution would lend itself perfectly to the capturing of dynamic dance motion. I think there is a connection to be found here in computer game graphics where frame-rates are very often well in excess of 50fps, even up to 100fps. Arguably many visually dynamic computer games are essentially digital choreography; a player immersed in, and a part of, a dance of pixels. And the high frame rates of game graphics are integral to the experience of that ‘dance’. When frame-rates drop, when images lag or jitter, gamers get very irate and PC-gamers in particular will spend hours tinkering with their graphics card drivers to juice every last frame-per-second they can. Indeed such gamers will happily trade off some spatial resolution (pixel dimensions) for higher frame rates.

Might I suggest that if Wim Wenders were a gamer, the likely hood of him choosing 3D as tool for dance might never have occcured - he would have known implicitly the power of temporal over spatial resolution for the rendering of dynamic motion. 

Outside of its 3D-ness and technology, Wender’s loyalty to the integrity of Pina’s stage productions is ultimately what holds the film back for appeal to wider audiences and makes it mind numbingly dull. If Wenders had let his movie be a dance-film, rather than a filmed-dance, he might have made something with a broad appeal and great artistic hope for 3D cinema. Instead, ultimately the only people who will appreciate or enjoy Pina are those who are already fans of dance theatre and who are already familiar with Pina Bausch’s work. For everyone else, even with the enticement of 3D, Pina offers not much. As a film it is little more than a glorified show-reel lacking in story, emotion, ideas and cheated by a poor and misguided choice in technology.

For some other perspectives on Pina check out Hopscotch Films 

Perspectives on the Death of Stereo3D

I’ve written about my perspective on Stereo 3D cinema before. A summary of that perspective goes like this:

• Doesn’t make the cinema experience better
• Isn’t worth the cost
• Most people Dont want it or Dont care
• Is a desperate attempt to prop up a failing business model
• It’s a matter of time before someone sues for damage to their eye-sight and this will create a litigation snowball at which point the Risk-Adverse studios will run away from 3D like fleeing lambs.

But who cares what my perspective is? Lets take the perspectives of a few others smarter and more experienced than I.

Phillip Hodgetts

“Wearing the 3D glasses keeps reminding me that I’m outside the experience looking in, something that’s not obvious without the glasses; and Every time we change camera angles, in 3D I need to take a moment to work out where I am in space, taking me out of the movie for just a moment-at every cut!”

Kirsten Thompson

“3-D has been getting less and less profitable, relative to 2-D, over the past five years. It’s an ominous, downward trend that started long before Avatar and Alice in Wonderland and continued after.”

Walter Murch

“The notion that we are asked to pay a premium to witness an inferior and inherently brain-confusing image is outrageous. The case is closed. So: dark, small, stroby, headache inducing, alienating. And expensive. The question is: how long will it take people to realize and get fed up?”

Christopher Nolan

“I find the dimness of the image extremely alienating.”

The Graphs

http://www.slate.com/id/2264927/pagenum/all/#p2

http://www.thewrap.com/movies/column-post/rise-and-fall-3d-19407

VFX Compositing - Montage, Collage and Decoupage

Lev Manovich observes in After Effects or Velvet Revolution (2006) (word *.doc) that compositing is premised on;

“the appearance of multiple media simultaneously in the same frame. Whether these media are openly juxtaposed or almost seamlessly blended together is less important than the fact of this co-presence itself… United within a common software environment, cinematography, animation, computer animation, special effects, graphic design and typography have come to form a new meta medium.” 

Manovich’s observation of the juxtaposition of media being less important than the coexistence of the media holds a great deal of truth in the context of the mechanics and logistics of how media elements are handled and treated in production. But the conceptual idea of juxtaposition, and what role such a long-standing artistic mode serves in compositing, is one worth digging into deeper in order to understand the aesthetic spatialities of compositing. A quotation from Sergei Eisenstein sets up some clarity on the idea of what juxtaposition is - the notion that “two film pieces of any kind, placed together, inevitably combine into a new concept, a new quality, arising out of the juxtaposition.” (1947. p4) But whilst this gives us some specificity for the idea in regard to film - conceptually a new thing arising from a combination of other things - it offers little to aid understanding of the techniques by which things are brought together in juxtaposition; how the technique shapes the result. Here there are potentially three terms that provide some insight on the differing methodologies by which visual juxtapositions are arrived at with each one presenting a technique and a spatial imperative that delivers a particular kind of juxtapositional result - Collage, Decoupage and Montage. Each of these three terms has a long and established history in artistic practice across different forms outside of cinema, and by definition the manner by which each is assembled provides a paradigm to view how compositing draws upon all three but doesn’t’ clearly or definitively tesselate with any.

We’ll start first with Collage. Certainly when we view a work like the title sequence from Carnivale we see elements of a distinctly traditional perception of a collage aesthetic. The word collage comes from a rather literal French term meaning ‘gluing’ and the tactile sensation of gluing pieces of media is certainly present in this work. Further, the very idea of gluing itself immediately conjures a sense of mixed media; that of gluing-on disparate objects to collectively make up a whole. However the spectrum of compositing (from a realism with intent to deceive, to an open and overt construction with distinct lack of indexical realism) means that collage isn’t as easy a fit with Avatar as it is with Carnivale. This is, of course, seeing collage as an Aesthetic rather than a Process; judging the terms’ suitability to describe the core of compositing based on how images rendered by the process appear. Obviously Avatar and the Carnivale title sequence do not share a visual aesthetic and thus if collage has value as a term to understand compositing it must be confined within process rather than aesthetic. The idea of collage - as a conceptual ‘gluing on’ - is central to the process of compositing though not necessarily the visual result. Here there is some common ground to be found between Avatar and Carnivale. The placement of a blue alien on the back of a flying lizard and set against a lush tropical world background is in essence a gluing of multiple elements one over the other. Each is (or is potentially) a different media type (CGI, photographic, matte painting, live-action, animation) glued together into a cohesive collage. Yet whilst the base idea of gluing-on disparate elements into a whole might hold weight, the problem of a well documented and rich history of collage-aesthetics in other art forms makes the use of the collage in regard to compositing problematic, or at the very least less than holistic. The core process of gluing on is difficult to separate from a particular aesthetic result and, as we have outlined, the fundamental power of compositing is the diverse spectrum of aesthetic results it can produce from a core set of tools and processes.

Decoupage as an artistic practice, and a particular method of creating visual juxtapositions, provides us a similar and yet distinct mode for thinking about compositing. As with collage, Decoupage is a world of French origin and stems directly from the term meaning to ‘cut out’. In traditional practice decoupage involved the cutting up of elements (usually paper images, photos, drawings, patterns and textures) and then pasting these down on a surface (most often furniture) and sealing them in place with layers of lacquer or vanish. By the nature of this process of cutting-up and pasting-down, decoupage invokes a kind of decorative aesthetic; an act of decorating something by juxtaposing layers of other visual elements on to and over it. As with collage, decoupage stands relevant to compositing as we can look at our case studies of Avatar and Carnivale and see in both some evidence of such a process at work. In both examples, the distinct visual elements might be viewed as lacquered onto a base - a use of layers to ‘decorate’ a scene through a decoupage of elements over the top of the scene’s base layer. Moreover the notion of selective cutting-out that is intrinsic to traditional decoupage holds value as a way of conceiving the chroma and luma keying processes of compositing whereby separations are enabled by removing particular colour or luminance values in the image; greenscreen chromakeying is effectively a kind of cutting-out. However decoupage is also problematic as an holistic reference for understanding compositing as it makes assumptions about hierarchy that are not consistent with the meta-medium of the compositing space. The core element of decoupage is not so much the ‘cutting-out’ as it is the ‘sticking-down’ and here decoupage carries the implicit implication of their exiting a primary base-layer or dominant medium onto which other, lesser/smaller media are to be stuck. Whilst we might look to Avatar and view the large-scale digital matte-paintings of the world of Pandora as serving that role of dominant base-layer onto which the cut-out / stuck-on elements of blue aliens and flying lizards will be decoupaged, this would fail to understand the process by which such composits are conceived and constructed. Greenscreen live-action or 3D CGI Composits need not begin with the background and indeed the background layer may well be the last element produced, let alone added, to the composit. And even then it retains its variability for change and substitution at any time during the process. By contrast decoupage implies an innate hierarchy - that the base-layer is a known and pre-existing entity onto which is juxtaposed the cut-out and stuck-on pieces. Decoupage certainly engages processes of juxtaposition but its assumption of a central fixed element onto which others are imposed is in opposition to the non-hierarchical nature of the compositing environment as Manovich observed.

This brings us to the third of the triumvirate, Montage, a term which has a rich and forceful history with a cinema specific context. Ostensibly Montage possesses much of the same juxtaposing nature of bringing together disparate elements as Collage and Decoupage. Conceptually embedded in Montage is a viewer engagement and reading beyond what is shown. As Eisenstein refers:

“The strength of montage resides in this, that it includes in the creative process the emotions and mind of the spectator. The spectator is compelled to proceed along that selfsame creative road that the author travelled in creating the image.” (1947 p32)

However the techniques and mechanics of how Montage is assembled evoke quite different considerations than those of Collage and Decoupage. Whilst the engagement of the viewer in a process of self-assembly to make meaning is consistent, the aesthetic outcomes are divergent and this has ramifications for notions of the intent for deception and acceptance of the image in compositing. Unlike Collage and Decoupage, Montage doesn’t derive form a particular act of craft-based manipulation. Where Collage means to ‘glue’ and Decoupage to ‘cut-up’, Montage having an origin meaning only to ‘put together’ lacks the same specificity and retains a more macro-conceptual air that theoretically may be applied to any number of more tactile and specific processes. But where we may see difference that marks Montage apart is in the expectations and use of media fragments themselves. The ‘Montage effect’ sits at the heart of the influential theoretical precepts of Eisenstein, Vertov, Kulesov, Pudovkin and which Eisenstein himself observed stemmed from the experience that; “While playing with pieces of film, they discovered a certain property in the toy which kept them astonished for a number of years.” (1947, p4) In a cinema specific context this casual observation indicates the dominant prerequisite for Montage to exist in delivering its audience-centric conceptual result - that Montage relies on the consistency of the media pieces brought together, that they are all of the same form. The famous Kulesov effect - whereby the substituting of an alternative second shot between the same first and third shots in a three-shot sequence, creates holistically different readings of the scene and it’s ‘story - indicates the reliance of a consistent media form in each of the components rather than the bringing together of different media types. In the most famous of Kulesov’s experiments a three-shot sequence of a neutral-faced actor looking off-screen is intercut first with a bowl of soup and then second with an injured girl. The result was observed as the actors ability to “convey with subtlety hunger in the first sequence and pity in the second.” (Ascher, S Pincus, E 1999. p347) For this Montage-effect to be wholly present in its traditional sense there must be a clear element of realism in the image joining - linear indexical coherence within the cinematic diegesis even if the joining is in defiance of the actual space-time of production. If the image of the bowl of soup were animated, CGI or if it was a graphic composited onto the footage of the man with the neutral expression, then we may certainly have juxtapositions (with collage or decoupage overtones, third-meanings arising from the joining but we wouldn’t have Montage as filmmakers have long understood it and used it to great effect. Montage as a practice doesn’t align with the ‘meta-medium’ concept of Manovich where by all media coexist because Montage relies on consistency and uniformity of the pieces being put together. The magic of the Montage effect that had Eisenstein and his contemporaries so astonished for years, is lost without such uniformity.

To return to the Composit, Montage doesn’t serve as a viable descriptor of the conceptual structure or process of compositing for three marked reasons; first the word itself already possess a specific branding and cannot be easily separated from its heritage in cinema studies and cinema practice to encompass a new visual structure and language. Second that Montage is by nature a linear assembly with its juxtapositions predicated on sequence and order rather than coexistence and simultaneity. And third, that Montage avoids the common element that unifies all the technical process of compositing and which dictates the aesthetic results (either realist or formalist) of composited media, Transparency. Indeed whilst all three of Collage, Decoupage and Montage create juxtapositions and drive the proactive engagement of the viewer in constructing for themselves third-meanings from the connection of images, none of the three by-nature possess a natural presence of Transparency. The very core of the compositing process is the generation, management and manipulation of Transparency - the Alpha channel. It is this element (at once both mechanical tool and conceptual idea) that separates out ‘Composit’ as an artistic term of its own unique value from it’s siblings of Collage, Montage and Decoupage. Compositing is, in effect, a unilateral simulation of parallel forms in a singular space with each form bringing its own language tenets to bare on the visual result.

To distill the fundamentals of these three traditional constructs we can view them by how they bring media together. Collage is different media assembled together to form a gestalt without a dominant media. Decoupage is different media adjoined to a single, dominant base media. And Montage is the drawing together of same media in a linear assembly. The simplicity of these descriptors opens up discussion around how each form handles the individuality of each media piece, how recognisable the individual parts are within the construct of the whole and where the viewer’s experience of juxtaposition resides?

Collage : Individual elements identifiable Individually but seen Simultaneously - juxtaposition by spatially adjacent proximity.

Montage : Individual elements identifiable Individually and seen Individually - juxtaposition by sequence and temporal arrangement.

Decoupage : Individual elements identifiable Holistically and seen Simultaneously as belonging to a dominant - juxtaposition by spatial decoration.

These definitions lead us to an understanding of Compositing which positions it as distinctly and divergently separate and apart from traditional methods of visual juxtaposition.

Compositing : Individual elements that may be neither identifiable individually nor seen individually and which are perceived both sequentially and simultaneously - juxtaposition by visual and temporal arrangement with in a uniformity of space.

The difference between the spatiality of collage arrangement and the spatiality of compositing is that transparency and layers makes the identification of independent parts, which is fundamental to the idea of reading juxtaposition, difficult to discern. So the spatiality of compositing is of unity and singularity rather than the variation of collage. Transparency by nature theoretically makes infinite the number of elements that may coexist in a single temporal moment. 

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Bonus podcast of earlier lecture on this topic….

COLLAGE, MONTAGE AND JUXTAPOSITION
The space of transparency - motion graphics, visual fx and compositing
Music videos, TV title sequences, greenscreen shots, digital animation and composited 3D spaces - the language of contemporary cinema has never required such diverse mechanics. And at the heart of all theses processes is Transparency and the construction of seemless visual layers. This presentation, given at the University of NSW May 26th 2009, teases at the unique structures of motion graphics production and the ramifications of multi-layer visual production on traditional notions of montage and collage.
Download audio *.mp3

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Manovich, L., 2006. After Effects, or Velvet Revolution in Modern Culture. Part 1, Available at link

Eisenstein, S., 1947. The Film Sense 1975 ed. Jay Leyda - Translation, San Diego: Harcourt Brace.

History of 3D Stereoscopic imagery

The Australian Film Tv and Radio school (AFTRS) presented a four day Masterclass on 3D stereo filmmaking 12-14 October 2010. Hosted by leading Australian cinematographer Peter James, the class explored the parameters and the world of shooting in 3D. Below is the slide presentation from the lecture I gave looking at a history of 3D and the historical aesthetic implications of 3D space for the art of cinematography. I am most certainly a 3D skeptic - largely seeing it as a desperate attempt to salvage a failing business model (see earlier post here) but the history of Stereoscopic imagery as a phenomenological experience is downright fascinating.

A potted history of the 3D experience on Prezi

Not So Special FX: theorising visual normality

For the purposes of a progressive discussion it is important to dissolve the largely dysfunctional distinctions in how we describe and refer to cinematic events; in particular those seemingly derived from technological advances and indeed the very notion of the ‘Special Effect’. (It should be noted that in production practice there is a clear distinction between Special effects and Visual effects; the former relates to those effects executed on-set and in the real-world, where as Visual effects refers to those largely conducted in post-production and integrated with the on-set footage. That said, for the purposes of the discussion here I will use the term ‘Special’ in a more layman vein to refer to all effects that allow the presentation of the impossible or improbable as realistic.)

The idea of cinema possessing or engaging in ‘special effects’ has immediate implications for what can, is, or should be considered a visual norm. The term Special implies extraordinary or out of the norm and so the term itself is highly problematic as a way of considering what cinema is as it pre-supposes a particular visual ‘normality’ - that anything outside of that is beyond normal and subsequently ‘special’. For example we may take a scene form a science fiction film such as Terminator 2 - two men engaged in a physical fight. Of itself this is live-action performance captured in real-time by a physical, lens-based camera. When one of those men becomes liquefied metal and melts (the result of carefully constructed 3D animation and CGI we have - in common popular language at least - a ‘special effect’. However it would be an un-useful mistake to consider that the melting man image is ‘special’ because it is not based in ‘reality’ as cinema itself, on virtually every level, defies ‘reality’ by nature without necessarily engaging in what would commonly be thought of as a special effect. For example the simple act of cutting a film sequence to show the same events from different angles is not based in ‘reality’ just as the use of a non-diegetic musical score is not ‘reality’. Defining cinematic special effects on notions of what is or isn’t ‘reality’ is simply dysfunctional. Alternativey the distinction between what is or isn’t visually ‘normal’ is a much more sound and dynamic framework from which to examine the changing nature of what can be considered a ‘special effect’ based on what might be perceived as a ‘normal’ cinematic experience.

That said, this idea of ‘Normal’ and ‘Special’ is enormously awkward and relies in large part on the subjectivity of the time the work was made to define ‘normality’. We need only look back on the evolution of cinema to see such common, simple, even (in hindsight) unremarkable, cinematic constructs as a Zoom (where the camera lens moves the viewer’s perspective in closer on a subject) or Deep-focus (where the image in both the foreground and background is kept in focus), to see examples of what where once ‘Special Effects’; cinematic events outside of the prevailing ‘norm’. Both these examples derived directly from advances in technology (zoom-lenses in the former, more light-sensitive film stock with smaller aperture exposures in the later). Both were visual cinema elements that had never been seen before and were outside of the prevailing ‘norm’ of the time. Both have however become common, everyday cinema language with nothing ‘special’ about them. It’s in this environment that we find contemporary cinema; cinema of the digital age infused with the power, flexibility and hybridisation that digital technology affords. It would be a fundamental (and yet all too common) mistake to categorise 3D CGI, composited layers, transparency and virtual cameras as ‘special effects’. By doing so they are denoted as somehow outside of a visual ‘norm’ and yet the ubiquitous nature of the tools for making these cinematic elements, across all levels and modes of cinema production, defies any categorisation of being ‘special’. When near photo-real 3D graphics can be produced on a domestic home computer by a hobbyist or amateur creator, we can hardly continue to define these elements as ‘special’ when they have such broad democratised accessibility.

By proxy the ever increasing saturation of hybridized forms and of mixed media in traditional cinema (along with a much broader and holistic definition of cinema itself) it cannot be logically argued that such constructs as 3D graphics are exceptional in any way when they function as commonplace mainstream media assets. This process of popularisation and ubiquitous dispersal across cinematic forms simply embeds the visual aesthetics of such things as 3D, CGI and virtual cameras into the common language of viewers. Virtual objects, hybrid animation/live-action sequences, motion-graphics, virtual cameras, blended multiple images, these are all simply part of the milieu of contemporary cinema; they are neither extraordinary nor are they rare. These elements have become not just a commonly understood part of cinematic imagery but rather, more importantly, become part of common visual expectation on the part of the viewer. It’s here that we might return to computer and video gaming to see the impact of Mise en space and an aesthetic paradigm of spatial composition prevailing into the common cinema language discourse. When 3D gaming is among the most popular and widespread screen-based, moving-image entertainments available to a mass audience it is inevitable that the aesthetics of gaming, the visual expectations of those for whom gaming is a common part of their cinematic diet, become part of common cinematic language. What we have is a bi-directional influence towards the same socio-cultural result in the context of cinema aesthetics. At one end, gaming being a cinematic form of mass popularity means invariably the visual expectations of gaming are supplanted onto a broader cinema context. Visual language is simply a set of social, cultural and aesthetic codes by which viewers are able to interpret and de-construct what it is they are seeing. If a significant proportion of viewers of any form of cinema are also Gamers it stands to reason that their expectations for how that moving image will, can or should behave, and be read, will be influenced by games aesthetics. From the other direction we have the exertions of the means of production themselves and the creative production processes they engage. That the tools for making games – for designing 3D CGI spaces, animating characters, generating and controlling virtual cameras – are the same toolsets used to create a huge variety of visual elements in non-game forms, it is inevitable that this cross over and interchange between tools and creative processes results in new shared aesthetics between forms. Similarly the paradigms for the composer of cinematic works, the frameworks by which they construct cinematic experiences, are drawn directly from the tools themselves; so the very act of Composing becomes one deeply embedded in the inherent aesthetics of tools built of spatial rather than framic parameters.

The expectations of viewers, what they expect from the moving image, how they expect it to behave, is fundamentally linked to the cinematic language they have been immersed in, that they have been trained to read. Never before has that language been so diverse, and thus making a distinction about what is and is not a ‘special effect’ is an arbitrary and largely useless distinction to make. Instead what we have constructed is a new relationship between the viewer and cinematic form, one built on very different and diverse set of expectations. Where once cinema was singular and unified, it is now largely hybridised multifaceted with very different connections forged between viewer and creator; between composition and experience. The link that has underpinned cinema to this point has been the tightly connected, even shared, relationship between the act of ‘composing’ by the filmmaker and the act of ‘viewing’ by the viewer. The idea that the filmmaker composed in frames and the viewer, likewise, experienced the work in frames; the act of making the moving image drawn on a shared axis with the act of viewing the moving image. But this connection is arguably a purely techno-cultural one. The tool for acquiring the moving image is traditionally a camera (even in drawn animation) and the camera is little more than an inverted viewing screen; a projector or TV working backwards - framed light in rather than framed light out. Subsequently the tightly wrought relationship between the act of composing cinema and the act of watching cinema, where both are reliant on the frame and the pre-determined position of reception, is one largely derived from the tool itself and its mechanics rather than any aesthetic impetuous. When we change the tool of composition, and therefore the process of making cinema, we unavoidably break this consistency between ‘making’ and ‘watching’. The paradigm for making the moving image is now no longer a shared modality to that of viewing the moving image. Manovich again points astutely at this shift:

“while the term “moving image” can be still used as an appropriate description for how the output of a design process is experienced by the viewers, it no longer captures how the designers think about what they create…. frame based representation did not disappear - but it became simply recoded. An output format rather than the space the actual design is taking place.” (2003)

What is asserted here is that the role of the frame has significantly altered; it is certainly still how the cinematic work is received, movies are watched on screens and screens (no matter how large or small) have frames, finite edge limits. But for the creator, the composer of a cinematic work, the frame is no longer the dominant paradigm for composition because the tools of making cinema no longer hold the frame as the primary compositional axiom. Cinema, by its new found Cartesian framework, inclusive of a z-axis, has become much more akin to architecture than it has to the photograph; the artistic processes of composing cinema now draws upon a new cannon of aesthetic language constructs; constructs which are built on dynamic spatiality and variable perspectives. How we might understand this new aesthetic platform comes, as it so often does, from looking back through the wreckage of past art movements to draw parallels and pre-cursors to the environment we now find ourselves in; precedents by which to measure our current state of affairs. In this regard, some observers have drawn connection between the spatial, layered, technological-derived and visually verbose aesthetics of contemporary cinema and the Baroque art movements of 17th century. The term Baroque has been used to describe an art movement that was built on “extravagance, impetuousness and virtuosity, all of which were concerned with stirring the affections and senses of the individual… considered a chaotic and exuberant form”. (Ndalianis. 2004, p7-8) Indeed there’s much that may be taken from this description to aptly be applied to cinematic form in the digital age of virtual cameras, multiple blended layers, interactivity and 3D animation. Baroque has also been referred to as “possessing traits that were unusual… and beyond the norm” (Ndalianis. 2004, p7) and this idea of a ‘norm’ and of exceeding that normality is particularly useful for defining the impact of what Angela Ndalianis has termed the “Neo-Baroque” (2004). Ndalianis observes that “The baroque’s difference from classical systems lies in the refusal to respect the limits of the frame.” (2004, p360) In the context of the idea of a Mise en space compositional paradigm this would appear to hold a great deal of weight. That the aesthetic impact of 3D tools, CGI and Z-space composition is not simply to work outside of the traditional cinematic frame but rather to more disrespectfully re-position the significance of the frame itself. Gibbs, in his very traditional assessment of the Mise en scene, takes some steps to include spatiality beyond the frame stating that;

“what is in the frame is only a selective view of a wider fictional world and the act of framing an action presents the filmmaker with a whole range of choices including those concerning what is revealed and withheld from the audience.” (2002, p26)

But this perspective is still fiercely adherent to the frame itself, to what we might contend is “the order and reason of neoclassicism” (Ndalianis, 2004, p8) The Gibbs perspective – which is certainly the long established pillar that has informed most cinema thinking over the past century – invokes spatiality, invites it into the discourse, allows it to be part of the frame, but keeps it reigned in, not allowing it to become the infinitely variable parameter of endless view that the Baroque implies. Instead Ndalianis draws upon Deluze to reclassify the role of the frame itself.

“the (neo-)baroque complicates classical spatial relations through the illusion of the collapse of the frame; rather than relying on static, stable viewpoints that are controlled and enclosed by the limits of the frame, (neo-)baroque perceptions of space dynamically engage the audience in what Deluze (1993) as characterized as “architectures of vision”. Neo-baroque vision, especially as explored in the quadratura and science fiction genres, is the product of new optical models of perception that suggest worlds of infinity that lose the sense of a centre.” (2004, p28)

It is this last articulation of infinite worlds without a “sense of a centre” that makes the concept of a neo-baroque aesthetic over contemporary (digital) cinema so applicable. The prospect of the ‘infinite’ is at the heart of 3D CGI and Z-Space – infinite points of view (aka virtual camera positions), infinite perspective, infinite focus in defiance of lens mechanics, and, most significantly, infinite flexibility for all the properties of the cinematic image to remain malleable and variable; indeed multiplicitious. The missing sense of a centre that particularly underpins Baroque ideas of architecture and spatial construction (churches, palaces and landscape gardens) – as Klein observed “Baroque landscaping looks like a video game” (2004, p11) – finds a poignant target in considering the absence, dismissal and dissolving of the ‘frame’ itself. The frame moves from primary ‘facilitator’ of composition to secondary ‘deliverer’ of composition. The ‘frame’ is the centre of traditional Mise en scee cinema, but the Neo-Baroque of the digital age dissolves that centre in favour of the chaos of variability garnered from a frameless compositional world.

“The Renaissance ideal” which we may read as traditional Mise en scene framic sensibilities is “of a perspectively guided representation… replaced by a Baroque concern with complex, dynamic motion and multiple perspectives that are dependant on the position of the viewer in relation to the work” (Ndalianis 2005, p360)  The issue this idea raises is the new relationship of perception formed between the Viewer and the cinematic ‘special effects’ that are intrinsically a part of the Neo-Baroque’s dynamic. Neo-Baroque is unable to construct its much desired ‘dynamic motion and multiple perspectives’  without what would otherwise be known as ‘special effects’ and yet since virtually all of the elements that would go into the construction these ‘special effects’ push Neo-Baroque cinema beyond the visual norm, we are left with a very problematic question of what  exactly a ‘special effect’ is? The major transgression for Neo-Baroque in regard to special effects is the decidedly tangible move away from the long-standing attempt to hide or disguise the apparatus to the veritable wearing of the apparatus on the cinematic sleeve. Klein picks up this argument discussing Bazin in the context of Baroque theatre;

“For many film theorists like Bazin, special effects are the hoax that makes the cinema feel artificial. The audience can all but smell the effects machinery just outside the frame. In Baroque theatre however sensing the fake was considered a glory. Special effects were designed to suggest a hoax; that enhanced their art. They were sculptural and painterly artifice invading the stage” (2004, p31)

Aylish Wood goes further with the concept of ‘inscribed media’;

“moving image media are becoming increasingly marked, or inscribed, by visible evidence of the technological interventions used in their creation, and that these inscriptions frame or intercede in a viewer’s engagement” (2007, p1-2)

It is this cross-roads intersection between viewer engagement, technology and the cinematic language of visual expectations, that is the fulcrum of any discussion of the contemporary role of the Mise en scene in cinematic form. As the digital age adds ever deepening layers of visual complexity, around a frameless compositional paradigm of spatiality, the artifices of that construction, and the un-reality of digital cinema’s mechanics viewed through an imposed frame, become an overtly apparent property of the cinema experience. Read in more tactile terms, digital elements such as 3D CGI and virtual environments are an unmistakable and obvious ‘hoax’ on the viewer and furthermore do not pretend to be otherwise. When the cinema space can be explored in ways that a physical space cannot, when the viewer can occupy vantage points that a physical camera could not, when images and objects divorced in space, time and context can seamlessly coexist, then we have engaged a new sense of visual ‘norm’ for the act of viewing. A norm that redefines the relationship to what would otherwise be considered a ‘special effect’. Suffice to say that Mise en space, as a form of Neo-Baroque cinema, a composition of ‘Scripted Spaces’, is one that wears the mechanics of contemporary cinema on its sleeve, that doesn’t pretend to be anything but cinematic; a grand, elaborate and extravagant experience which Klein describes as being designed “to make us feel light-headed, anaesthetized - cheerfully disorientated… because we know the confusion is intended” (2004, p97). It is how the technology positions experience in new contexts of cinematic process that defines a new understanding of what it is to ‘compose’.

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Manovich, L., 2003. Image Future.

Ndalianis, A., 2004. Architectures of the senses: Neo-Baroque entertainment spectacles. In Cambridge: MIT Press.

Gibbs, J., 2002. Mise-En-Scene: film style and interpretation, London: Wallflower Press.

LUMINA - Australian journal of screen arts and business

Is Stereo3D the saviour of cinema or a disaster waiting to happen? What is ‘magic realism’ and why are these films so successful? What opportunities does ‘complex’ narrative bring for off-Hollywood filmmakers? These are just some of the questions tackled in the latest issue of Lumina.

Lumina is the journal of screen arts and business published by the Australian Film TV and Radio School and now into issue 3 is developing into a substantial and detailed journal of industry relevent ideas and perspectives.

My contribution to Lumina this issue deals with Genre and Computer gaming; How can genre in gaming be better understood to make more effective games and better tuned player experiences?

I sorely wish AFTRS would put Lumina online. It seems an anathema in 2010 that such information be only availible in print. But, that said you can order Lumina online through the AFTRS online store.

In the meantime below is an extract from my essay.

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Genre can be a complex, nuanced and often subjective concept. Link it with the challenging paradigms presented by narrative-based computer gaming and it becomes deceptively thorny.

Yet, despite the thorns, two perspectives should stand out for all creative media practitioners in 2010; be they directors, writers, producers, cinematographers, editors, sound or production designers.

The first is that narrative-based computer gaming is an irrefutably vibrant part of contemporary screen culture. Emotive stories and increasingly complex cinematic experiences are being told and felt on screen, through games with dynamism and energy.

The second, on a distinctly more pragmatic level, is that with such a significant cinematic form - one with huge audience draw - now embedded in the mainstream, there are great opportunities to generate new creative opportunities for working cinematic artists. Gaming could provide a significant opportunity to grow, rather than just sustain, an Australian creative screen-media industry.  

The evolution and maturation of narrative-gaming has game developers looking externally rather than internally for skills and inspiration.  Game productions are increasingly employing traditionally skilled writers, designers, editors, cinematographers, composers and sound designers to work creatively in gaming as a narrative and cinematic experience. These game producers recognise that  creators of aural and visual narrative have a set of skills which are as applicable to narrative gaming as they are to film and TV.
 
Which brings us to the idea of Genre. Long present in understanding and articulating literature, genre in regard to cinema similarly serves to mark out a set of common tenets and conventions that appear with consistency across a range of films over time. From an analytical perspective the study of genre is less a method for grouping than it is a process of identifying; a means to observe and recognise traits and characteristics, structures and devices that are extant within a body of films. But for creators, rather than analysts, genre takes on a more dynamic mode: it is a tool by which to leverage, shape and assemble a work, and to access audience desires.

Using genre as a tool for shaping a work with any dexterity or force requires an understanding of what the genre is, how it works and - more importantly - what the audience expects of it.

Stereo3D - creative boon or desperate financial ploy?

Can/Will Stereoscopic 3D reinvigorate interest in deep-focus staging and a greater utilization of the spatiality of cinema? And Is Stereoscopic 3D ‘all that and a bag of chips?’ Or is it doomed to die?

These were the questions recently posed on my blog by a reader posed in response to a lengthy discussion on deep-focus vs rack-focus cinema techniques and my perspective of the later being vastly over-used. The reader, Dani, speculated that Stereo3D may prompt a revisiting of less common deep-focus techniques.

My response to that first question would be a fairly resounding yes. I think the very nature of Stereoscopic 3D forces directors and DoP’s to think immediately of Staging and Spatial arrangement first and foremost rather than Framing. The nature of what Stereo3D can do puts onus on arrangement in Space rather than arrangement in Frame. Stereo3D innately demands deep-focus as going ultra shallow with blur is effectively composing in 2-dimensional planes rather than deep spaces. So a DoP shooting Stereo3D with ultrafast primes with wide open apertures is totally defeating the purpose of having Stereo3D in the first place.

Now, as for the second question. It would be too easy for me to say that i generally think Stereo3D is a crock of shit that no one is really interested in and which the mass general public is, at best, ambivalent about. But I’ll avoid such provocation and instead entertain a perspective on WHY parts of the film industry are so gung-ho on 3D….?

Lets face it, Hollywood studios are Terrified.

Movie theatre ticket sales are slumping. It’s getting harder for the studios to convince people to leave their homes to go to the movies. The reason..? Well aside from cultural phenomenon factors I think there two more tangible elements.  Home theatre systems are getting cheaper and better and so the enticement of the ‘big screen’ experience is just not as alluring as once was. When our home TV’s were small, 4:3 with convex glass and limited colour and resolution, there was a great ‘viewing quality’ attractor with going to the cinema - an experience you couldnt get at home. But when you’ve got a 40-50” flat-screen LCD on the wall (let alone a home projector) with a multi channel surround sound system playing from BluRay in HD and a VERY COMFY couch; the movie theatre just doesn’t have the pull it once did. Frankly I for one would generally  rather watch a movie on my home  than the  theatre. I can stop whenever i like for a piss-break. I can rewind if I miss a line of dialogue and I can have my friends over and have a better communal experience.

Then we add on top of this the dreaded DownLoad culture…! Shock Horror!

Legalities aside, the much bigger problem for the studios is that they are trying to convince viewers to conform their watching to When and Where the studios say they can in a culture where the viewer otherwise has complete control over how and when they watch just about anything. 4000 years of human history and warfare has told us that people dont like being told what to do and being dictated to.

There was a shift a decade ago when studios started treating Theatrical Releases at the Movie Theatre as simply a ‘marketing exercise’ to drive DVD sales post theatre run. That trend still stands and indeed some big mainstream films actually draw the money to pay for theatrical release prints directly out of the marketing budget for the film. This alone tells you the brave new world we live in. A world the studios are terrified of…

And this brings us to Stereo3D. Why are the studios pushing Stereo3D so hard? Why are they talking it up? Why are they giving huge financial incentives to hardware and software companies to develop Stereo3d technologies…? Because You HAVE to go to the Movie Theatre to see it. I cant download a Stereo3D version to watch at home. I have to go to the movie theatre and buy a traditional ticket to see Stereo3D.

So the major studios are pushing hard on Stereo3D because it is a way to preserve the traditional hierarchical financial structure of the film industry. In maintains the old-school distribution pyramid that trickles down from Theatrical release, through DVD and onto Broadcast in a strict linear privilege. Rather than change the way they operate they are pushing a technology simply to reinforce the status quo they are most comfortable with.

So… I could argue that Stereo3D is a viewing experience the bulk of the world’s movie goers simply dont give a flying rats arse about. Or I could argue that my experience is, as with many others, that Stereo3D is hard to watch, makes my eyes tired and sore and so will be avoided by many on physiological grounds. But, i wont argue either of these because I dont have to. 

My predication is not that Stereo3D will disappear (quite the contrary, i think it will persist in various forms for some time to come) but that it will fundamentally FAIL to do what the Hollywood studios desire so desperately for it to achieve - Get people back into the movie theatres en-masse again. It will fail this overt objective through a) audience apathy and b) because it is simply a matter of time before technology advances and I can watch Stereo3D movie in my home theatre from a file I illegally downloaded (not that i would ever do that ;) Even 2 years ago i tested a prototype laptop computer that could make a Stereo3D image WITHOUT glasses; you just had to sit dead-square in front of it. It wont be long before that becomes mainstream (if people want it)

Thus I draw the conclusion that it doesn’t matter how good Stereo3D is, or how great it looks, it will Fail to do what the studios desperately want it to do. And when it does, they will give up on it and desperately scurry for soemthign else to plug their sinking boat. And because I think audience desire for Stereo3D will always be fringe and marginal rather than mainstream, development of hardware and software for Stereo3D will subsequently cease or slow once the studios let it go.

As a case in point of the culture of apathy I believe exists around Stereo3D (from those outside of the big studio set at least) I can say that I teach a hundred rabidly enthusiastic, drenched in movies, gung-ho film school  brats who eat breath and sleep cinema technology. Are they milling over the internet reading about Avatar and Stereo3D? Are they endlessly talking about Stereo3D between classes? Are they excitedly musing on how they would use Stereo3D when they should be working on their HDV short films? NOPE..! They just dont care…. They really dont. They talk endlessly of video games, 3D animation, CGI, RED camera, 4k, Steadicams but Stereo3D is just NOT on their mind. Some might argue that this will change once they see Avatar…. But im not so sure. This is the next generation of filmmakers, all in their 20’s, and right now  they just dont care about Stereo3D. And if they dont care do we really think the general public is going to care enough to leave their comfy couches…?