Manovich tells us how computerization affects the concept of moving images - It offers new film language; new forms of cinema (a question carried on from the compositing and illusion chapters)
He says the current problem is not how to create the right images but how to find an existing one (any unique image you desire is probably already on the internet)
With enough time and money everything can be simulated on computers – filming physical reality is just one process.
In the 1970’s film director Tarkovsky said abstract film would not be possible; but with digital cinema, it is returning to hand painted animation, like the Magic Lantern style operators of manual action, until automatic generation and projection were combined. “Photography met the motor and cinema was born”. Through loop action techniques like, Praxinoscope, Thaumotrope, Zootrope. Kinetoscope, were some of the early versions.(some of the examples I posted from You Tube).
Manovich teaches us about how animation admits its character lines where cinema seeks to erase lines and all traces of production - spawning a new genre, “the making of” films (like the one I posted on Forrest Gump and the feather), showing how these digitally animated effects are created. It was cool to see how they do this.
Film making is being replaced by digital technology, (like film cameras were replaced). Live action footage is reduced to pixels digitally and become more like images that were created digitally, giving them plasticity or “elastic reality”.
As in the Forrest Gump feather scene, the original feather was animated them composited to create a new realism. So the effect is that it looks like something that could have happened although in reality it could not.
Now I can better understand how digital film = live action material + painting + image processing + compositing + 2 D + 3 D computer animation.
Manovich concludes that through all of the changes in technology, the hardware limitations never go away; they disappear in one area only to appear in another. It is obvious that technology in always evolving, repairing and improving.
He ties this in with information from a past chapter reminding us regarding the New Media Interface: HCI is an interface to computer data, a book is an interface to text, cinema can be thought of as an interface to events taking place in 3D space, which is more understandable to me now.
Paintings, like cinema, show an image of reality and “since the `1960’s the operation of media translation has been at the core of our culture.”
Film went to video, to digital to floppies CD ROMs to DVD and so on, indefinitely.”
New media strengthens existing cultural forms and languages and opens them up to new definition.
“Manual construction and animations of images gave birth to cinema and slipped into the margins only to reappear as the foundation of digital cinema.”
Manovich tells us the “Star Wars Episode 1: Phantom Menace” filmed in 65 days and they took 2 more years in post production to be constructed on the computer. This is an example of the technology and work involved in computer animation and mixing with reality filming.
“Computational tools for transforming and combining images are as essential to a digital artist as brushed and pigments are to a painter.” But the inherent mutability of photographs is what makes them different than a painting. Music videos as non- linear narratives, don’t have to rely on cinematic realism.
It is fascinating how cinema, graphics, animation – keep coming together, breaking apart, the reuniting again.
“The photograph and the graphic divorced when cinema and animation went their separate ways and then met again on a computer screen, (the making of computer movies) and when graphics met the cinematic we get “cinegratography”. New media needs new language!
From 1895, Lumiers 1st film screening, to 1995 CD Rom moving images, cinema was official reinvented on the computer screen in a new language.
“ Animation comes to challenge linear cinema --- special montage comes to challenge temporal montage, data base comes to challenge narrative, search engines challenge encyclopedias, online distribution of culture challenges traditional ‘off line’ formats. Now it is easier to see where Manovich was going with all of this information.
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