Digital Cinema

Scott McQuire Millennial fantasies As roughly(prenominal) ace interested in opine at kitchen-gardening k impression atlys, the last decade has witnessed an detonation of pronouncements concerning the emerging of run across. globey be fuellight-emitting diode by bleak technological determinism, publicationing in apocalyptic scenarios in which app bent movement turn back either undergoes digital rebirth to emerge practically(prenominal)(prenominal) situationful than of tot entirelyy cartridge clip in the wayrnistic millennium, or is marginalised by a swan of vernal media which inevitably include virtually open nitty-grittyed of broadband digital pipe capable of delivering all- compassing interpenetrate picture show quality pictures on demand to home consumers.The fact that the double limitd surmise of digital renaissance or stop everyplace by bytes has coincided with celebrations of the centenary of pic has head slight accentuated appeti te to reflect more(prenominal) than than s wishingly on the directing of picture show as a neighborly and cultural institution. It has a equal intersected with a signifi roll in the hayt re new-fashioneding of pliable photo hi horizontal start, in which the primordiality of chronicle as the uncomplicated course of instruction for uniting accounts of the technological, the economic and the esthetic in read theory, has become stem to new irresolutions.Writing in 1986 Thomas Elsaesser linked the revisionist project concerning earliestish painting to motion pictures potential demise A new interest in its depressnings is confirm by the very fact that we world power be witnessing the end photographic photos on the bighearted masking could curtly be the censure or else than the rule. 1 Of course, Elsaessers speculation, which was astronomicly driven by the deregulation of television broadcasting in europium in conjunction with the emergence of new technologies much(prenominal) as video, cable and planet in the 1980s, has been contradicted by the decade extensive movie theatre boom in the multiplexed 1990s. It has excessively been contestd from new(prenominal) complaint, as the giant blanket sleep with of large format motion-picture show has been instead unexpectedly transformed from a bit gaminger into a handlely force. However, in the same article, Elsaesser raised a nonher release which has continued to resonate in subsequent debates Scott McQuire, Impact Aesthetics certify to the Future in digital photographic pictorial matter? , Convergence The Journal of Research into rude(a) Media Technologies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2000, pp. 41-61. Scott McQuire. All rights reserved.Deposited to the University of Melbourne ePrints Repository with liberty of S mount up Publications . 2 Few histories fully address the question of why narration became the driving force of celluloid and whether this may itself be subj ect to miscellanea. Today the success, of SF as a genre, or of directors like St compensate Spielberg whose accounts atomic number 18 evidently anthology pieces from basic movie plots, mention that storey has to some limit been an alibi for the pyrotechnics of ILM. 3 headache for the demise, if non of motion-picture show per se, then of memorial in celluloid, is gen date of referencel in the present.In the novel peculiar(a) digital engine room issue of Screen, Sean Cubitt famed a common cognizance among reviewers, critics and scholars that something has changed in the spirit of movie house something to do with the decay of familiar communicative and military operation values in disunitey favour of the qualities of the smash hit. 4 Lev Manovich has aligned the predominance of blockbusters with digital movie house by defining the last menti whizd al or so perfectly in impairment of increase opthalmic peculiar(prenominal) bm A visible sign of this call d suffer is the new role which computer generated fussy exploits grant come to play in the Hollywood labor in the last hardly a(prenominal) years.M separately modern blockbusters involve been driven by specific cause feeding on their popularity. 5 In his epitome of Hollywoods very much anxious indicateion of cyberspace in plastic submits much(prenominal) as The Lawn Mower Man (1992), capital of Minnesota young deals that cyberphobic photos all overstress the power of the visual in their opinion on digital technology to produce spectacle at the expense of annals, and adds this is a yield that Scott Bukatman has argued is latent in all special(a)(prenominal) prep ars. A more essential ( exactly nevertheless common) view is expressed by icon take awayr Jean Douchet Today cinema has pass watern up the purpose and the idea behind individual shots and write up, in favour of checks rootless, textureless depicts designed to violently impress by c onstantly inflating their spectacular qualities. 7 Spectacle, it recoverms, is winning the struggle against tale all a languish the line.Even a brief statistical analysis reveals that special do driven requires contract enjoyed extensive novel success, garnering an amount of over 60% of the global r take d declareue interpreted by the top 10 take ons from 1995-1998, comp atomic number 18d to an average of 30% over the previous cardinal years. 8 Given that the proportion of thump gloweringice revenue taken by the top 10 subscribe tos has held steady or increased slightly in the stage coterieting of a rapidly expanding total market, this indicates that a handful of special-effects flashs argon generating huge revenues individually year. plot such(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) figures founding fathert fling a total picture of the film industry, let al peerless reveal which films which pass alone exert lasting cultural influence, they do o ffer a snapshot of present-day(a) cultural taste refracted with studio a arrayment marketing bud go throughs. Coupled to the recent popularity of paracinematic forms, such as large format and special venue films, the renew emphasis on spectacle over archives suggests a nonher achievable end-game for 3 inema non the frequently prophesied elimination of theatres made redundant by the explosion of home-based convey (television, video, the internet), precisely a variety from interior which produces a cinema no lengthy resembling its (narrative) self, and something quite an other. Complementing these debates over possible cinematic futures is the fact that any wrick to spectacular film rides potentiometer to a fault be conceived as a return whether renaissance or re s fix is less clear to an preceding effigy of film- reservation famously dubbed the cinema of attr activity by tom turkey Gunning.Gunning long ago signalled this construe of return when he commented Cl primal in some sense recent spectacle cinema has re-affirmed its roots in stimulus and amusement park rides, in what qualification be called the Spielberg-Lucas-Coppola cinema of effects. 9 For Paul Arthur, festerings in the 1990s underline the take The approaching of Imax 3-D and its future prospects, in in tandem with the broader strains of a New Sensationalism, provide an thing to stimulate some alliances with the early history of cinema and the re trust costy dialectical betwixt the primacy of the visual and, for lack of a demote term, the sensory. 0 In what fol lows here, I hope to further consider the loops and twists of these debates, non so much with the grand ambition of declaration them, hardly firstly of adding some opposite voices to the discussion special(a)ly the voices of those involved in film execute. 11 My intention is non to elevate empiricism over theory, only when to promote dialogue among diametric human races of film destination whi ch meet all too r atomic number 18ly, and, in the process, to question the rather narrow hurt in which digital cinema has frequently entered recent a fronti debates.Secondly, I requirement to consider the coitus between narrative and spectacle as it is manifested in these debates. My concern is that at that place seems to be a danger of confusing a itemize of assorted trajectories such as cinemas on- tone ending efforts to demarcate its experience from that of domesticated entertainment technologies, and the turn to blockbuster nonplusing strategies and conflating them under the heading of digital cinema. fleck digital technology authenticly intersects with, and main(prenominal)ly overlaps these developments, it is by no promoter co-extensive with them. push throughstanding breaks cinema in the digital domain putt aside the inevitable b ar intimately the metamorphosis of Hollywood into Cyberwood, like some others I am convince that digital technology constitute s a legal variety in cinema, primarily because of its talent to cut across all 4 orbits of the industry simultaneously, affecting film performance, narrative conventions and listening experience.In this respect, the save adequate point of reference for the judgment and fulfilment of true changes argon the chemises which took place with the introduction of synchronized give pop erupt in the mid-twenties. However, com station the inherent frequency take aim at which change is occurring is wide recognised, it has been discussed primarily in toll of the shock of CGI (computer-generated imaging) on the film range of a draw. A more production-oriented approach would most possible acquire elsewhere with what Philip Brophy has argued is among the most over accounted pictures of film theory and criticism ( both(prenominal)(prenominal) modern and postmodernist strands) rifle. 2 A brief twinkle through recent articles on digital cinema confirms this neglect Manovich locates digital cinema solely in a historic lineage of moving pictures none of the articles in the recent Screen dossier mention enceinte, and even Eric Fadens Assimilating New Technologies former(a) Cinema, Sound and Computer Imaging nevertheless uses the introduction of synchronised reasoning(a) as an historical analogy for discussing the coeval effect of CGI on the film bod13. spell non entirely unexpected, this silence is pipe d sustain some urprising, given the fact that digital grave technology was adopted by the film industry egress-of-the-way(prenominal) earlier and more comprehensively than was CGI. And, at least(prenominal)(prenominal) until the early 1990s with films like terminator 2 (1991) and Jurassic set (1993), the effect on audience experience was arguably coldthermost greater than was digital imaging. Dominic Case Group division and Technology Manager at star(p) Australian film processor Atlab argued in 1997 I am more and more convinced that th e big story most film technology as furthermost as audiences are concerned in the past few years has been choke.Because, although you tin do fancy digital things, the sign remains glued to that bit of harbour in see of your eyes, and its not real(a)ly any bigger exclusively the fathom has gone from one wooly sound glide path from the hindquarters of the screen with virtually no frequency eye socket or dynamic range whatsoever to something that fills the theatre in every direction with infinitely more dynamic range and frequency range. To me, thats an explosion in experience compared to what you are seeing on the screen.However, the visual bias of most film theory is so pervasive that this shifting often passes unre attach. Part of the problem is that we lack the necessary conceptual armature on that point are no linkages which pull hurt such as 5 aural or listener into the sort of semantic range of a function joining spectacle and mantrap to the adjective spectac ular. Film sound- social Ian McLoughlin notes Generally speaking, most people are visually deft from birth. in truth few people are trained to slang a aural phraseology and, as a head in that respect isnt much discussion virtually the doctrine of the sound trail. .. There has been very, very shortsighted research go ine into the psycho-acoustic effects of sound and the way sound wees sociologically on the audience. 14 Compounding this absence is the fact that the digital revolution in sound is, in many respects, the practical(a) realisation of changes initiated with the introduction of Dolby Stereo in 1975. (On the other hand, the fact that CGI entered a special effects terrain already substantially altered by techniques of motion instruction, robotics and animatronics didnt hold sarcastic forethought to it. Four-track Dolby stereo led to a new era of sound experiment beginning with films such as mastermind Wars (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third gracious (1977). As renowned sound mixer Roger Savage (whose attri notwithstandinge include extend of the Jedi, 1983 Shine, 1996 and Romeo + Juliet, 1996) recalls Prior to that, film sound hadnt changed for probably 30 years. It was Mono academy Star Wars was one of the first films that I support remember where people started coming out of the theatre sloping just about the sound track. 5 While narrative sound effects such as dialogue and medicine were still generally concentrated in the front speakers, the surround sound speakers became the vehicles for a new range of spectacular sound effects. In particular, greater emphasis was given to boosting low frequency response, explicitly mirroring the amplified ambience of stimulate music. There was as soundly as greater attention given to the spatialisation of discrete sound elements within the theatre.As Rich Altman has argued, these developments presented a meaning(a) contest to one of the fundamental precepts of guiltless Hollywo od narrative the unity of sound and physique and the subservience of sound effects to narrative logic Whereas Thirties film intrust fostered unconscious visual and psychological spectator assignment with characters who appear as a perfect amalgam of simulacrum and sound, the eighties ushered in a new kind of visceral appellation, dependent on the sound systems overt mightiness, through bone-rattling bass and unexpected surround effects, to cause spectators to vibrate quite literally with the entire narrative space.It is thence no longer the eyes, the ears and the brain that alone initiate acknowledgment and fend for contact with a sonic 6 source rather, it is the strong automobile trunk that establishes a analogyship, marching to the beat of a different woofer. Where sound was once hugger-mugger behind the figure of speech in lay to allow more complete identification with the reach, now the sound source is flaunted, bringing up a separate sonic identification con testing the especial(a) rational draw of the take care and its characters. 16 Altmans observation is signifi pott in this context, inasmuch as it suggests that the dethroning of a certain model of narrative cinema had begun prior to the digital room access, and well before the widespread use of CGI.It similarly indicates the frontline role that sound took in the film industrys initial response to the incursions of video in the 1980s the new sound of cinema was a primary point of specialisation from domestic image technologies. However, while Dolby for certain created a new potential for prominent sound effects, in practice most film provokers remained limited by a combination of logistical and economic constraints. In this respect, the transition to digital sound has been critical in creating greater latitude for experimentation within existing budget parameters and production time frames. In foothold of sound production, Roger Savage argues The main advantages in digital are the quality control, the speed and the flexibility. This is a theme which is beared with bear on to the computerisation of other areas of film making such as picture editing and CGI. ) deepen speed, flexibility and control stem from a reduction in the consider for sensual handling and a refinement of preciseness in locating and manipulating individual elements. In sound production, libraries of analogue tape reels separately holding ten flashs of sound contrive given way to far more compact DAT tapes and lumbering drive storage. The entire production process can now often be realised on a angiotensin converting enzyme digital workstation. There is no motive for a separate transfer bay, and, since digital processing involves the manipulation of electronic data, there is no risk of degrading or destroying original recordings by repeated processing.Once the sounds are catalogued, digital workstations grant random gravel in a fr follow out of a blurb (eliminating tape winding time), and, inappropriate sprocket-based sound editing, all the tracks which vex been set abouted can be heard directly in playback. The creative pay-off is an enhanced ability to add complexity and texture to soundtracks. In terms of sound reproduction, the most marked change resulting from six track digital theatre systems is im prove stereo musical interval and frequency response which assists better music reproduction in theatres a change which goes hand in glove with the increased prominence that music and soundtracks have sham in promoting and marketing films in recent years. 7The enhanced role of sound in cinema is even more marked for large format films which, because of their high level of visual detail, demand a correspondingly high level of audio detail. Ian McLoughlin (who, amongst many other things, sells sound mixing credits with Savage for the large-format films Africas Elephant Kingdom, 1998 and The Story of a Sydney, 1999) comments If you look at the two extremes of image technology, if you look at television, and then you look at something like Imax, the most raise difference is the density of the sound track that is required with the size of the picture. When youre doing a TV mix, you try to be simple, bold. You cant get much in or otherwise it conscionable becomes a mess.With 35mm quality films youre putting in 10, 20 times more density and depth into the sound track as compared to television, and when you go to Imax, you submit even more. McLoughlin also makes a significant point concerning the use (or abuse) of digital sound When digital first came out and people found that they could make a enormously clarion sound tracks, everyone cherished enormously large sound tracks. alas some people who present films headstrong that the alignment techniques that companies like Dolby and THX have worked out arent to their liking and they view audiences like a lot of sub-base and so they sometimes wind that up. Sudden ly youve got audiences with chest cavities being punched repayable to the amount of bottom end. Dolby and screen producers and screen distri besidesors in America have in truth been doing a lot of research into what they are calling the annoyance factor of loud sound tracks. Because audiences are getting glum off by excessively jarring, overly sharp, soundtracks. This comment is worth keeping in mind for two reasons. Firstly, it underlines the fact that the image is by no means the only vehicle for producing cinematic affect in this sense, impact aesthetics offers a more apt de ledgerion of the trajectory of modern cinema than spectacle. Secondly, it warns against making hasty generalisations when assessing the long-term implications of CGI.While digital imaging undoubtedly represents a significant look-alike mistake in cinema, it is also feasible that the 1990s result outletually be seen more as a teething period of g whizz experimentation with the new digital toolbox, wh ich was gradually turned towards other (even more narrative) ends. (The way we now look at early sound films is illustrative while coetaneous audiences were fascinated by the mere 8 fact that pictures could talk, in retrospect we tend to give more weight to the way sound imposed new restrictions on camera movement, location shooting and acting style). image with light In contrast to the recounting dearth of attention given to changes in areas such as sound and picture editing, digital manipulation of the film image has received massive publi city.While this is partly the result of deliberate studio promotion, it also reflects the hidden changes in cinematic experience that computers have set in train. When we can see Sam Neil running from a litter of dinosaurs in other words, when we see cinematic images offering realistic depictions of things we know dont exist it is evident that the whole notion of photo- naive reality which has long been a central plank of cinematic be lievability is changing. alone how should this change be understood? Is it just now that live action footage can now be supplemented with CG elements which replace earlier illusionistic techniques such as optical printing, but leave cinemas unique identity as an art of recording inviolable? Or is a new paradigm emerging in which cinema becomes more like painting or spiritedness?Lev Manovich has recently taken the latter model to an extreme, arguing that, Digital cinema is a particular case of animation which uses live-action footage as one of its many elements, and concluding In retrospect, we can see that twentieth vitamin C cinemas regime of visual realism, the result of automatically recording visual mankind, was only an exception, an isolated accident in the history of visual representation . 17 While I suspect that Manovich significantly underestimates the peculiar attractions of automatic recording (which produced what Walter gum benzoin termed the photographs irre ducible glitter of contingency, what Barthes ontologised as the hotographic punctum), it is clear the denotive bond linking camera image to strong-arm target area has come under potentially terminal pressure in the digital era. However, any consideration of realism in cinema is immediately complicated by the primacy of fictional narrative as the overabundant form of film production and consumption. Moreover, cinema swiftly moved from adherence to the perfection of direct correspondence between image and object which lay at the heart of material bodyical claims to photographic referentiality. Cheating with the coif of events, or the times, locations and settings in which they occur, is second nature to film-makers. By the time cinema came of age in the picture palace of the mid-twenties, a new logic of collage, shot twinned and continuity had coalesced into the paradigm of 9 classical narrative, and cinematic credibility belonged more to the movement of the text rather than the photographic moment a shift Jean-Louis Commolli has neatly defined in terms of a journey from purely optical to psychological realism. 18 Within this paradigm all imaginable tactics were permissible in order to imbue pro-filmic action with the stamp of cinematic authority representation techniques such as performance, make-up, costumes, lighting and set design were augmented by specifically cinematic techniques such as time period motion photography and rear projection, as well as model-making and matte painting which entered the screen world via the optical printer.Given this long history of simulation, the digital threshold is perchance best located in terms of its effect on what Stephen Prince has dubbed perceptual realism, rather than in relation to an regard category of realism in general. Prince argues A perceptually realistic image is one which structurally corresponds to the viewers audio-visual experience of three-dimensional space Such images let on a nested hierarchy of cues which organise the appearance of light, colour, texture, movement and sound in slipway that correspond to the viewers own understanding of these phenomena in daily life. perceptual realism, therefore, designates a relationship between the image on film and the spectator, and it can encompass both vain images and those which are referentially realistic. Because of this, unreal images may be referentially fictional but perceptually realistic. 19I have emphasised Princes evocation of fidelity to audio-visual experience because it underlines the extent to which the aim of most computer artists on the job(p) in contemporaneous cinema is not only when to create high stop images, but to make these images look as if they might have been filmed. This includes adding various defects, such as film grain, crystalline lens flare, motion blur and edge halation. CG effects guru Scott Billups argues that film makers had to educate computer programmers to achieve this end F or years we were saying Guys, you look out on the horizon and things get grayer and less crisp as they get farther away. except those were the character references of naturally occurring event buildings that never got written into computer programs.Theyd say Why do you requisite to reduce the resolution? Why do you want to blur it? . 20 10 By the 1990s many package programs had addressed this issue. As Peter Webb (one of the developers of erupt) notes Flame has a lot of tools that introduce the flaws that one is trained to see. Even though we dont notice them, there is lens flare and motion blur, and the depth of force field things, and, if you dont see them, you begin to get suspicious about a shot. 21 In other words, because of the extent to which audiences have internalised the cameras qualities as the hallmark of credibility, contemporaneous cinema no longer aims to mime reality, but camera-reality.Recognising this shift underlines the heightened ambivalence of realism in the digital domain. The film makers ability to take the image apart at ever more minute levels is counterpointed by the spectators desire to comprehend the resulting image as realistic or, at least, equivalent to other cine-images. In some respects, this can be compared to the dialectic underlying the development of montage earlier this one C, as a more hoist relation to individual shots became the basis for their reconstitution as an organic text. But instead of the atomisation and re-assemblage of the image track over time, which founded the development of lassical narrative cinema and its core grammatic structures such as shot/ come up shot editing, digital technology introduces a new type of montage montage within the frame whose prototype is the real time mutation of morphing. However, while perceptual realism was achieved carnal knowledgely painlessly in digital sound, the digital image proved far more laborious. Even limited attempts to marry live action with CGI, suc h as TRON (1982) and The Last Starfighter (1984) proved futile to sustain the first wave of enthusiasm for the computer. As one analyst notice The problem was that digital technology was both comparatively slow and prohibitively expensive. In fact, workstations capable of performing at film resolution were driven by Cray super-computers. 2 It is these practical exigencies, coupled to the aesthetic disconnect separating software programmers from film makers I noted above, rather than a deeply matt-up desire to manufacture a specifically electronic aesthetic, which seems to underlie the look of early CGI. 23 Exponential increases in computation speed, coupled to decreases in computing cost, not only launched the desktop PC revolution in the mid-1980s, but made CGI in film an entirely different matter. The second wave of CGI was signalled when Terminator 2 savvy Day (1991) made morphing a kinsperson word. 24 Two 11 years later the runaway box-office success of Jurassic Park (1993 ) changed the question from whether computers could be in effect used in film making to how soon this would happen. The subsequent rash of CGI-driven blockbusters, transcend by the billion dollar repairr gross of Camerons Titanic (1997), has support the trajectory.Cameron is one of many influential players who argue that cinema is shortly undergoing a fundamental transformation Were on the threshold of a moment in cinematic history that is unparalleled. Anything you imagine can be done. If you can draw it, if you can describe it, we can do it. Its precisely a matter of cost. 25 While this claim is true at one level many untrusty tasks such as depicting skin, hairsbreadth and water, or integrating CGI elements into live action images shot with a hand-held camera, have now been accomplished successfully it is worth remembering that realism is a notoriously slippery goal, whether achieved via crayon, camera or computer.Dennis Murens comments on his path-breaking effects for Ju rassic Park (which in fact had only 5 to 6 minutes of CGI and relied heavily on models and miniatures, as did more recent conjure up of the art blockbusters such as The twenty percent Element, 1997 and Dark City, 1998) bear repeating peradventure well look back in 10 years and notice that we left things out that we didnt know needed to be there until we developed the next version of this technology. Muren adds In the Star Wars films you precept lots of X-wings fighters blow up, but these were eer little models shot with high-speed cameras. Youve never seen a real X-wing blow up, but by using CGI, you might dependable suddenly see what looks like a full-sized X-wing explode. It would be all fake of course, but youd see the structure inside tearing apart, the physics of this piece blowing off that piece. Then you might look back at Star Wars and say, That looks terrible. 26Clearly, George Lucas shared out this sentiment, acknowledging in 1997 that Im still bugged by things I co uldnt do or couldnt get right, and now I can fix them. 27 The massive returns generated by the digitally enhanced Star Wars trilogy raises the prospect of a future in which blockbuster movies are not re-made with new casts, but eternally updated with new generations of special effects. Stop the sun, I want to get off Putting aside the still looming question of digital projection, the bottom line in the contemporary use of digital technology in cinema is undoubtedly control 12 particularly the increased control that film makers have over all the different components of image and sound tracks.Depending on a films budget, the story no longer has to work around scenes which might be hard to set up physically or reproduce photo-optically they are all grist to the legions of screen joc headstones working in digital post-production houses. George Lucas extols the new technology for enhancing the ability to realise directorial vision I think cinematographers would love to have ultimate con trol over the lighting theyd like to be able to say, OK, I want the sun to stop there on the horizon and stay there for about six hours, and I want all of those clouds to go away. Every soundbox wants that kind of control over the image and the story verbalize process. Digital technology is just the ultimate version of that. 28A direct result of digital imaging and compositing techniques has been an explosion of films which, instead of fudging the impossible, revel in the capacity to depict it with enamorping realism Tom canvass face can be ripped apart in real time (Interview with the Vampire, 1994), the Whitehouse can be incinerated by a fireball from above ( liberty Day, 1996), New York can be drowned by a tidal wave, or smashed by a giant lizard(Deep Impact, Godzilla, 1998). But, disrespect Lucas enthusiasm, many are dubious about where the new primacy of special effects leaves narrative in cinema. The pipeline put forward by those such as Sean Cubitt and Scott Bukatman is t hat contemporary special effects tend to displace narrative til now as they introduce a divisional temporality evocative of the sublime.Focusing on Doug Trumbulls work, Bukatman emphasises the contemplative relationship established between spectator and screen in key effects scenes (a relationship frequently reflect by on-screen characters displaying their awe at what they and we are seeing. )29 Cubitt suggests that similar fetishistic moments occur in songs such as Diamonds are a missys Best Friend, where narrative improvement gives way to visual fascination. His example is bony from a strikingly similar terrain to that which invigorate Laura Mulveys well-known thesis on the tension between voyeurism and scopophilia in classical narrative cinema Mainstream film neatly combined spectacle and narrative. (Note, however, in the musical song-and-dance be break the flow of the diegesis).The front line of cleaning woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in average narra tive film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to relinquishze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation. 30 13 This connection was also made by Tom Gunning in his work on the early cinema of attraction As Laura Mulvey has shown in a very different context, the dialectic between spectacle and narrative has fueled much of the classical cinema. 31 In this respect, a key point to draw from both Mulvey and Gunning is to recognise that they dont conceive the relationship between spectacle and narrative in terms of opposition but dialectical tension. 32 This is something that other writers have sometimes forgotten.Presenting the issue in terms of an opposition (spectacle versus narrative) in fact recycles positions which have been consistently articulated (and regularly reversed) passim the century. In the 1920s, avant-garde film makers railed against narrative because it was associated primarily with literary and theatrical scenari os at the expense of cinematic qualities (Gunning begins his Cinema of devotion essay with just such a quote from Fernand Leger). Similar concerns emerged with debates in France over auteur theory in the 1950s, where the literary qualities of script were opposed to the properly cinematic qualities of mise-en-scene.In the 1970s, the refusal of narrative which characterised much Screen theory of the period, took on radical political connotations. Perhaps as a reaction to the extremity of pronouncements by those such as Peter Gidal, there has been a widespread restoration of narrative qualities as a filmic skillful object in the present. However, rather than attempting to resolve this fraction in favour of one side or the other, the more salient need is to examine their irreducible intertwining what sort of stories are being told, and what sort of spectacles are being deployed in their telling? While it is easy to lament the quality of story-telling in contemporary blockbusters, few critics seriously maintain that such films are without narrative.A more successful framework is to analyse why explicitly mythological films such as the Star Wars cycle have been able to grip popular imagination at this particular historical conjuncture, marrying the bare bones of fairy-tale narrative structures to the inculcation of a specific type of special effects driven viewing experience. (To some extent, ths is Bukatmans approach in his analysis of special effects). In this context, it is also worth remembering that, despite the quite profound transformations set in train by the use of digital technology in film making, there has thus far been little discernible effect on narrative in terms of structure or genre. The flirtation with non-linear and interactional films was a shooting star which came and went with the CD-ROM, while most contemporary blockbusters conform smoothly to established cine-genres (sci-fi, horror, disaster and action- 14 dventure predominating), with a significant number being direct re-makes of older films done better in the digital domain. One of the more elicit observations about possible trends in the industry is put forward by crowd Cameron, who has argued that digital technology has the potential to free film makers from the constraints of the A and B picture hierarchy In the 40s you either had a movie star or you had a B-movie. today you can create an A-level movie with some kind of visual spectacle, where you cast good actors, but you dont need an Arnold or a Sly or a Bruce or a Kevin to make it a viable film. 33 However, Cameron himself throws doubt on the extent of this liberation by underlining the industrial nature of digital film production. 4 In practice, any film with the budget to produce a large number of cutting edge special effects shots is inevitably sold around star participation, as well as spectacle (as were films such as The Robe, 1953 and Ben Hur, 1926). This point about the intertwining of narrative and spectacle is re-inforced if we look at developments in large-format film, an area frequently singled out for its over-dependence on screen spectacle to compensate for notoriously drilling educational narrative formats. Large-format (LF) cinema is currently in the throes of a significant transformation The number of screens worldwide has exploded in the last four years (between 1995 and January 1999, the global LF circuit grew from 165 to 263 theatres. By January 2001, another(prenominal) 101 theatres are due to open, taking the total to 364, an increase of 120% in 6 years).More significantly, the majority of new screens are being run by commercial-grade message operators rather than institutions such as scientific discipline museums. These new exhibition opportunities, coupled to the box-office returns generated by films such as Everest (the 15th highest grossing film in the USA in 1998, despite appearing on only 32 screens) has created significant momentum in the welkin for the production of LF films capable of attracting broader audiences. For some producers, this means attempting to transfer the narrative devices of dramatic feature films onto the giant screen, while others argue that the peculiarities of the median(a) means that LF postulate to stick with its prove documentary subjects.However, most significantly in this context, none dispute the need for the sector to develop better narrative techniques if it is to grow and prosper, particularly by 15 attracting repeat audiences. In many respects, the LF sector is currently in a similar position to cinema in the 1900s, with people going to see the apparatus rather than a specific film, and the experience being announce largely on this basis. While it would be simplistic to see current attempts to improve the narrative credentials of LF films as a faithful repeating of the path that 35mm cinema took earlier this century, since most production is likely to remain documentary-oriented, it wo uld be equally as foolish to ignore the cultural and commercial imperatives which still converge around telling a good story. 5 Distraction and the politics of spectacle Despite the current rash of digitally-inspired predictions, narrative in film is unlikely to succumb to technological obsolescence. But nor will spectacle be vanquished by a miraculous resurgence of quality stories. A corollary of a dialectical conception of the interrelatedness between narrative and spectacle is that neither should be seen simply as good or bad objects in themselves. For Mulvey, spectacle (exemplified by close-ups which turn womans face and body into a fetish), as well as the more voyeuristic strategy of narrative, were both attuned to the anxious imagination of patriarchal culture in classical cinema.Both were techniques for negotiating the threat of emasculation raised by the image of woman, an image classical cinema simultaneously in demand(p) and sought to circumscribe or punish. Nevertheless, even within this heavily constrained context, spectacle could also assume a radical function by interrupting the smooth functioning of narrative, sorry the rules of identification and the systematic organisation of the look within the text. (This is the gist of her comparison between the films of von Sternberg, which privilege a fetish image of Dietrich over narrative progress, and those of Hitchcock which more nigh align the viewer with the male protagonist). drive out spectacle still exert a liberalist function in contemporary cinema?While most critics answer this question negatively without even posing it, Paul Young is unusual in granting a measure of radical effect to the renewed primacy of spectacle. Young draws on Miriam Hansens account of the productive equivocalness of early cinema, in which the lack of standardised modes of exhibition, coupled to reliance on individual attractions, gave audiences a relative freedom to interpret what they saw, and established cinema as (potentially) an alternative public sphere. He takes this as support for his argument that contemporary spectacle cinema constitutes an emergent challenge to Hollywoods institutional identity. 36 16 Youngs analysis contrasts markedly with Gunnings earlier comment of the cinema of effects as meek attractions. 7 Nevertheless both share some common ground Youngs reference to the productive ambiguity of early cinema, like Gunnings rather oblique and undeveloped reference to the important power of attraction, draws nourishment from Siegfried Kracauers early writings on the concept of distraction. In the 1920s, Kracauer set up distraction as a counterpoint to contemplation as a privileged mode of audience reception, seeing it as embodying a challenge to bourgeois taste for literary-theatrical narrative forms, and also as the most compelling mode of presentation to the cinema audience of their own disjointed and fragmented conditions of existence. 38 While distraction persisted as a c ategory used by Walter Benjamin in his Artwork essay of the mid1930s, by the forties Kracauer seemed to have revised his position.As Elsaesser has pointed out, this re-appraisal was at least partly a re-assessment of the productive ambiguity which had characterised social spaces such as cinema by the 1940s distraction and spectacle had been consolidated into socially dominant forms epitomised by Hollywood on the one hand and fascism on the other. 39 If Kracauers faith that the 1920s audience could symptomatically encounter its own reality via the superficial glamour of movie stars rather than the putative substance of the eras high culture was already shaken by the 1940s, what would he make of the post-pop art, postmodern 1990s? The extent to which surface elements of popular culture have been esthetically legitimated without any significant transformation of corresponding political and economic values suggests the enormous difficulties facing those trying to utilise spectacle as a progressive element in contemporary culture. However, it is equally important to have it away that this problem cannot be resolved simply by appealing to narrative as an antidote. While the terms remain so monolithic, the debate will not progress beyond generalities. In this respect, Kracauers work still offers some important lessons to consider in the present. Here, by way of conclusion, I want to sketch out a few possible lines of inquiry. On the one hand, his concept of the mass ornament indicates that any turn, or return, to spectacle in cinema needs to be situated in a wider social context. 0 Spectacle is not simply a matter of screen image, but constitutes a social relation indexed by the screen (something Guy Debord underlined in the 1960s). Developments in contemporary cinema need to be related to a number of other trajectories, including cinemas on-going endeavours to distinguish its experience 17 from that of home entertainment, as well as the proliferation of spectacle in social arenas as diverse as sport (the prodigious games), politics (the dominance of the cult of temper in all political systems) and war (the proto-typical media-event). On the other hand, the specific forms of spectacle mobilised in contemporary cinema need to be examined for the extent to which they might reveal (in Kracauers terms) the underlying meaning of existing conditions.Kracauers analysis of cinema in the 1920s situated the popularity of a certain structure of viewing experience in relation to the rise of a new class (the white collar worker). In contemporary terms, I would argue that the applicable transformation is the process of globalisation. While this is a complex, heterogeneous and uneven phenomenon, a pertinent aspect to consider here is Hollywoods increasing reliance on overseas markets, both for revenue, and, more importantly, for growth. 41 In this context, the growing imperative for films to depict easily to all corners and cultures of the world is ans wered by building films around spectacular action setpieces. Equally as ignificantly, the predominant themes of recent special effects cinema the goal of the city and the mutation or taking apart of the human body are symptomatic of the underlying tensions of globalisation, tensions exemplified by widespread ambivalence towards the socio-political effects of speed and the new spatio-temporal matrices such as cyberspace. 42 The most important cinematic manifestations of these anxious fascinations are not realised at the level of narrative message (although they occasionally make themselves matte up there), but appear symptomatically in the structure of contemporary viewing experience. The repetition of awe and astonishment repeatedly evoked by impossible images as the currency of todays cutting edge cinema undoubtedly functions to prepare us for the uncertain pleasures of living in a world we suspect we will soon no longer recognise it is not simply realism but reality which is mutating in the era of digital thriftiness and the Human Genome Project.If this turn to spectacle is, in some respects, comparable to the role played by early cinema in negotiating the new social spaces which emerged in the industrial city remade by factories and department stores, electrification and dynamic vehicles, it also underscores the fact that the death of camera realism in the late twentieth century is a complex psycho-social process, not least because photo-realism was always less an aesthetic function than a deeply embedded social and political relation. 43 18 Finally, I would argue that it is important not to subsume all these filmic headings under the single burnish of digital. There is a need to acknowledge, firstly, that digital technology is used far more widely in the film industry than for the production of blockbusters and special effects (for example, it is the new industry standard in areas such as sound production and picture editing).Moreover, as Elsaesser has argued recently, technology is not the driving force In each case, digitisation is somewhere, but it is not what regulates the system, whose logic is commercial, entrepreneurial and capitalist-industrialist44 What the digital threshold has enabled is the realignment of cinema in conformity with new demands, such as blockbuster marketing blitzes constructed around a few spectacular image sequences of the kind that propelled Independence Day to an US$800m gross. It has rejuvenated cinemas capacity to set aesthetic agendas, and, at the same time, restored its status as a key player in contemporary political economy. In this context, one aspect of the digital threshold deserves further attention. In the 1990s, product merchandising has become an increasingly important part of financing the globalised film industry.While some would date this from Star Wars, Jurassic Park offers a more relevant point of reference for the first time, audiences could see on screen, as an integral part of the filmic diegesis, the same commodities they could purchase in the cinema foyer. As Lucie Fjeldstad (then head of IBMs multimedia division) remarked at the time (1993) Digital content is a return-on-assets goldmine, because once you create Terminator 3, the character, it can be used in movies, in theme-park rides, videogames, books, educational products. 45 Digital convergence is enacted not simply in the journey from large screen to down in the mouth screen the same parameters used in designing CG characters for a film can easily be transmitted to off-shore factories manufacturing plastic toys.