Digital imaging in popular cinema

185 Pages·2013·7.509 MB·English

by  Lisa Purse

How has cinema been challenged and transformed by
the advent of digital imaging? How have digital solutions
to production challenges changed our ideas about
digital and pre-digital production methods? And what
impact does the inclusion of digital imaging have on our
interpretation and analysis of film texts?
Digital Imaging in Popular Culture explores these issues
through analysis of specific film moments and extended
case studies of films including Minority Report, King Kong
and 300. It discusses how digital imaging can mimic,
transform, shape and generate both fantastical and
mundane objects and phenomena from scratch, and how
our cultural ideas about digital imaging can influence
meaning within a film, a scene or even a single shot.
The increasingly widespread use of digital imaging in
cinema means that students and scholars can no longer
afford to ignore it when critically analysing and interpreting
film texts. This innovative and engaging book provides a
blueprint for approaching digital imaging in contemporary
film, and is therefore essential reading for all those working
in the field of Film Studies.
LISA PURSE is Lecturer in Film at the University of Reading.
She is the author of Contemporary Action Cinema
(Edinburgh University Press, 2011).
L
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Cover image: Tron: Legacy, 2010 © WALT DISNEY
PRODUCTIONS / THE KOBAL COLLECTION
Cover design: www.paulsmithdesign.com
ISBN 978-0-7486-4689-0
LISA PURSE
www.euppublishing.com LISA PURSE
Digital Imaging in Popular Cinema
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To my parents, the great encouragers
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Digital Imaging in Popular Cinema
Lisa Purse
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© Lisa Purse, 2013
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF
www. euppublishing. com
Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 4690 6 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 4689 0 (paperback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 4691 3 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 0 7486 7562 3 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7486 7561 6 (Amazon ebook)
The right of Lisa Purse
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Interpretation and the Digital 14
2 Digital Imaging as Metaphor 32
3 Digital Imaging and the Body 53
4 Historicising the Digital 77
5 Representation and the Digital 103
6 The Digital in Three Dimensions 129
Conclusion 152
Bibliography 156
Filmography 168
Index 171
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Illustrations
Figure 1.1 Frame grab from Children of Men (Universal / UIP): An
apparent point of view shot shows the Tomorrow Ship close by. 16
Figure 1.2 Frame grab from Children of Men (Universal / UIP): But a
wider shot shows the ship still in the distance. 17
Figure 1.3 Frame grab from Live Free or Die Hard (20th Century Fox):
McClane watches the Capitol building on a café television. 27
Figure 2.1 Frame grab from Minority Report (20th Century Fox /
Dreamworks): Police chief John Anderton searches the pre-vision
images for clues. 37
Figure 2.2 Frame grab from Minority Report (20th Century Fox /
Dreamworks): Anderton face to face with his memories in the home
movies scene. 46
Figure 3.1 Still from Hulk (Universal / Marvel Entertainment /
The Kobal Collection): The digital Hulk rampages through the
city. 58
Figure 3.2 Still from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
(New Line Cinema / The Kobal Collection): Gollum with hobbits
Frodo and Sam. 59
Figure 4.1 Frame grab from King Kong (1933) (RKO): Denham and
crew spot a dinosaur in the distance. 79
Figure 4.2 Frame grab from King Kong (1933) (RKO): The dinosaur
charges the men, risking a fatal form of contact. 80
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illustrations vii
Figure 4.3 Frame grab from King Kong (2005) (Universal / Wing Nut
Films): Jackson’s fi lm echoes and extends the earlier fi lm’s composition
in depth . . . 82
Figure 4.4 Frame grab from King Kong (2005) (Universal / Wing Nut
Films): . . . before providing a spectacle of repeated contact. 83
Figure 5.1 Still from 300 (Warner Bros / Legendary Pictures / The
Kobal Collection): A high contrast ‘look’ and attenuated vista in the
shot where baby Leonidas is inspected for fl aws. 104
Figure 5.2 Still from 300 (Warner Bros / Legendary Pictures / The
Kobal Collection): King Leonidas spears a Persian in a speed-ramped
sequence. 118
Figure 6.1 Still from Hugo (GK Films / The Kobal Collection): Hugo
watches life go by from behind a station clock face. 143
Figure 6.2 Still from Hugo (GK Films / The Kobal Collection):
George Méliès ‘pinned’ behind his shop front. 146
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Acknowledgements
Iw ould like to thank the colleagues and friends who generously gave their
time to read chapter drafts and off er valuable suggestions and insights,
including John Gibbs, Doug Pye, Jonathan Bignell, Iris Luppa, Ian Banks,
and Tamzin Morphy. Thanks also to those who shared both direct and
tangential insights as the project progressed, including Alison Butler, Tom
Brown, Faye Woods and Lucy Fife Donaldson. I thank Vicki Donald and the
readers who reviewed the proposal for seeing the potential in the project, and
for their astute and very useful comments at the outset. I also thank Gillian
Leslie and the rest of the editorial team at Edinburgh University Press for
their assistance and expertise in bringing the book to completion. The devel-
opment and completion of the study was supported by research leave awarded
under the University of Reading’s Research Endowment Trust Fund, and
benefi ted greatly from the support of colleagues both within and beyond the
Department of Film, Theatre & Television, to whom I am very grateful. The
Sewing Circle, the close reading group based at the department, has over the
years consistently provided a welcoming but keenly stimulating forum in
which to develop one’s ideas, and my thanks extend to current and previous
members of the Circle. I am also grateful to staff and graduate students at the
University of Warwick to whom I presented initial thoughts on King Kong,
and to the delegates of the 2008 Continuity and Innovation conference and
the 2008 Point of Feminism conference at the University of Reading for their
responses to my work on 300. More generally I would like to thank my stu-
dents, who over the years have been both a pleasure to teach and an inspiration
in my own encounters with popular cinema.
A number of particular pleasures brightened the writing process, includ-
ing the generous friendship of Iris Luppa, a series of extremely satisfying
cinephiliac conversations with Ian Banks, the discovery of new ways of getting
away from the computer, and the arrival of the excellent Isla. I am grateful to
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acknowledgements ix
my family for their ongoing unconditional support, encouragement and good
humour, and to Hendrix and Rafi ki for being the Joan Collins and Linda Evans
of the cat world. Finally, and with love, I thank Tamzin for her patience and
her splendid life-enhancing powers.
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