MacVideo has conducted a two-part interview with Walter Murch which explores a broad range of topics overviewing both the past and the future of cinema editing.
As always, Murch is eloquent and thoughtful. Parts 1 and 2 are well worth the watching. Part 1 is HERE
There are inherent problems in the way we think about, understand and
even make cinema in the digital age and this is an area i'm persuing in
a new book. Here's some of those thoughts in attempting to re-define
cinema space.
?cinema, as we know it, is based upon lying to the viewer. perfect example is the construction of cinematic space.?- Lev Manovich
In
all its forms, modes and manifestations cinema is a construction; an
artificial built environment where communicative meaning is assembled
through the leverage of tools, processes, mechanics and methodologies.
Whether viewed from the perspective of experience, process, medium or
entity; cinematic form is never divorced from the collaborative and
inter-disciplinary notion of assembly. Of disparate pieces put into
place and meaning derived from both the placement and the act of
placing ? placement in time and composition, placement in the frame,
placement in perception and experience and, at the core of all these, a
placement in space.
Of course, defining what that space is and
considering how that space is understood, in both broad and
holistically complex terms, is no simple task. In order to make that
investigation in a meaningful way, one that ultimately provides a
robust and flexible new theoretical framework for understanding the
full extent of cinematic form in the twenty first century, we need to
start with the axioms of what cinema is. Or, more importantly, what
cinema has long been known and accepted to be. These axioms then become
the tangible pillars at which we can hurl the stones of of new
technologies, new modes of seeing and new concepts of media making like
a techno-cultural Hajj.
Borge has commented that:
"It
is quite feasible to produce a film without actors, but a film without
a camera is a sheer impossibility. So the history of the film is to
some extent the history of the camera, for it is the camera which
actually takes the photograph, arranges all the separate shots in
sequence, and which evokes the illusion of a live picture, an illusion
which depends on the imperfection of the human eye."(Börge, V. 1962)
Whilst
this idea of cinema being inextricably linked to the camera as a
physical and photographic-based apparatus is highly questionable in the
current era (indeed this issue will be specifically dealt with in
subsequent chapters) the concept of cinema being inextricable from
mechanical and technical construction of illusion is certainly
difficult to question. So what we have is a distinct techno-cultural
form whereby technology and culture, mechanics and aesthetics, are
conjoined ? howwe make effecting whatwe make.. Similarly, whilst the
visual and aural aesthetics of cinema may consistently vary and morph,
the cinematic form itself remains rooted in technological components.
What are the accepted techno-cultural pillars of cinema; those elements
born of technology and technical process that dictate the cinematic
experience?
There are essentially three key axioms that we
might adopt from the outset from which to govern an understanding of
the established and accepted modes of cinematic form as a
technologically mediated process, experience and medium. These axioms
are not gospel-like in their rigidity and the cannon of cinematic work
is peppered with exceptions and fringe works that challenge such
axioms. But they do, none the less, present, and are therefore useful
as, guides for understanding the established patterns and dominant
discourses of cinema; for it is these discourses that have served as
the pillars for established cinematic theory over the past century ?
mise-en-scene, montage, the role of the viewer and the role of the
maker are all built from their accepted norms.
[Read More]
The history of cinema there have been an array of seminal moments that represent major turning points in the artform. Colour and Sound obviosuly strike as the most profound but there are others no less impactful but often far less obvious. The move to building and shaping cinematic form and moving images in 3D space represents such a shift.
In his work-in-progress essay series, Velvet Revolution (word DOC), Lev Manovich regards the encompassing of 3D space into motion graphics tools as the driving element of a new visual language; "it offers a new method for representing physical reality... With 3D computer grapics we can represent three-dimensional structure of the world versus capturing only a perspectival image of the world, as in lens-based recording." Manovich sees 3D space compositing as influencing all media making "the way 3D computer animation organizes visual daya - as objects positioned in a Cartesian space - became the way to work with all moving image media." All media objects - 2D, 3D, moving, still, animated and live action, can all occupy this singular space. In the context of the 'frame' which remains the base of cinematic composition, Manovich comments that "frame based representation did not dissapear - but it became simply recoded. An output format rather than the space the actual design is taking place... not simply a mechanical sum of the previously existing parts but a new species."
What Manovich skirts around here is the impact on viewers and their aesthetic expectations. He speaks effectivly of Composition happening in 3D space but delivery (and by proxy utreception) still occupying a 2D space. Yet inevitably a sismic shift in the space of composition cannot help by profoundly impact aesthetics and in doing so change reception and viewership.
A comparative analogy might be seen in architecture - the flying buttress of gothic church design allowed for an architectural shift in the space of construction of buildings such as Notre Dame. The church was designed and 'composed' in a different conceptual space made possible by a shift in technology. The result however was not confined to the act of Composing, the space in which the composition took place, but also very much in the experience of that architectural space. The church building itself was still engaged in the same manner by the congreation, still idetified as a church, but the experience of that engagement, the shift in what was spatially possible for such a building, altered forever the expectation of what a building of that type could be and could do. And buildings were never the same again.
I had a recent opportunity to spend a long lunch with seminal New Media theorist and practitioner Lev Manovich discussing all manner of topics and ideas related to New Media aesthetics.
In
particular Lev prompted me towards a notion of thinking of cinema in
broader IT terms - of visual information as 'data-sets'. This idea
really set my intellectual hamster among the pigeons and the result
that sprang forth was a new frame work to re-consider the taxonomy by
which we discuss cinema aesthetics.
"There
is a misconception we are surrendering something of art to a technology
that will do it for us. That is never the case, Cinema IS technology." Francis Ford Coppola
Whilst
this statement has irrefutably always been true the digital age has
made the distinction between Cinema Technology and broader categories
of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) distinctly vague and
indeed arguably irrelevant.
Simply put, where once the tools and
technology of cinema production were unique and specialized they are
now largely one and the same with those of a broad category of ICT.
Essentially the same technology tools and concepts used to create and
distribute cinematic media are the same tools and concepts used to
build databases, control systems and all manner of other products that
have nothing to do with either cinema or art.
Any Editor worth
their salt in the 21st century is as well versed in RAID storage, Local
Area Networks (LAN) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) as they are with
EDL's, Timecode and Video Formats.
With
this in mind it stands to reason that the language by which we discuss,
analyze and understand cinematic process has drawn ever closer, whether
we want it to or not, to the common taxonomy and discourse of IT.
[Read More]
For digital content creators working across a rnage of mediums and media a new magazine as risen out of Australia that delivers a clean, fresh and very friendly approach.
M9Media Magazine stems form the dynamic M9Media GFX forum and clearly positions itself as simultaneously accesible and yet sophisticated. Not an easy combination to achieve and yet it would seem M9 have pulled it off. The first three issues are availible right now online as PDF downloads and are well worth the read with a good combination of interviews, reviews and tutorials.
The history of human creativity is a long one, but the history of copyright, intellectual property, distribution control and the fusion of creativity with economy is remarkably short. This lecture from Eben Moglen (Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center, Professor of Law and Legal
History at Columbia University Law School, and General Counsel of the
Free Software Foundation) puts a broad range of issues, concepts and historical contexts into clear perspective to frame creativity and creative works in the 21st century.
Episode 3 in the Motion Sketches documentary series is now in the wild. This episode examines sound and the opportuntieis to embrace sound as part of the 'writing' process.
Cinema is an audio-visual experience and
yet so often SOUND is not a part of the process of developing cinema.
This episode looks at the importance of sound, writing sound and
techniques for making the conception of sound a key part of your
production process.
You can view all the Episodes in the Motion Sketches series at celtx.blip.tv
Earthsim, the Virtual Camera and the feeling of flying.
We don't see the world any more as we once did...
Earthsim takes the GoogleEarth concept and drags it from what is effectively a glorified map into a complete virtual earth simulation. From the macro-level of the solar system and all the planets, down to the personal and intimate encounter at human-size on the micro-level; Earthsim is a wildly ambitious and visually glorious construction. Just as a child's first encounter with an atlas re-shapes their thinking of the world forever so to does Earthsim promise to fold the conceptual paradigm of how we see our planet.
But there's something else at play here, a distinct embodiment of new visual languages.
A simulation such as Earthsim may be many things to many perspectives but at its core Earthsim is Cinema. Without the cinematic, without the art of the moving image, Earthsim is a series of maps and images. Though presented digitally and electronically the language constructs by which we view maps and images are fundamentally different to those communicative tenets by which we experience (rather than view) the moving image.
What is driving this cinematic language - distinct and new from traditional cinema's Mise en scene frame and Montage sequence of frames - is the same language element that is at the heart of so many contemporary cinematic forms, the virtual camera.
The shared element of Gaming, Motion Graphics, 3D animation and Compositing is the Virtual Camera the non-physical vanishing point in space that is the node of resolution from which a viewer experiences the cinematic scene. In live action the mechanical camera apparatus provides this vanishing point for the viewer. But by its physical nature invariably possessed profoundly physical constraints and a tangible awareness of its spatial occupation. The camera couldn't go through walls, couldn't move in infinite directions.
But the virtual camera is non-physical and its spatial occupation infinite. It is the vanishing point of the cinematic space the point at which perspective converges. All genres of Gaming have utilized the virtual camera in various forms from Wonderboy-like Side-Scrollers, to the Doom derived First person Shooter, to the God-View cameras of Total War and The Sims. So to do all forms of Motion Graphics find their common aesthetic platform in the virtual camera via a layered compositional space of multiple and blended perspectives coexisting in a hybrid environment. So to 3D animation and the 3D virtual environment where composition is cartesian; an array of X, Y and Z space with the experience of watching a deliberate composition of the viewer into the architecture; their 'eyes' composed into the space.
The virtual camera is the maypole around which a maelstrom of media hybridity dances and its impact on cinematic language is both subtle and profound. The 20th century was imbued with a language of the cut; the construction of meaning by the sequence of seeing. To construct a 'story' (in the most broad use of the term) we jumped in progressive succession from image-island to image-island forming cinematic land-bridges as we went to make sense of the journey. But in the 21st century we no longer bother with the staccato of the CUT, rather we invoke the infinite positioning of the virtual camera to fly our perspective in infinite and continual progressions along a continuum rather than an archipelago.
We no longer CUT-TO we MOVE-TO.
Hence we come back to Earthsim (and indeed Google Earth to some extent) which is much more than a Digital-Globe or Hybrid-Documentary Atlas. Earthsim employs, as its key mechanism of experience; the experiential paradigm of its engagement, the Virtual Camera. And in so doing becomes a work of pure contemporary cinema employing not the language of the word or the text or the image but of the cinematic.
If the sole desired outcome of Google Earth was to present an on-line global map system then the act of double clicking a point on the globe would JUMP-CUT you to that position. If the sole aim of Earthsim was to provide an interface to view documentary information about the Earth then selecting a topic or environment would be the electronic version of turning a 'page', a jump to the selected viewing. But neither Earthsim or Google Earth function this way; rather they both employ a continuum of perspective whereby both tools Fly the viewer to the destination with the visual, and indeed visceral, journey between the point of selection and the point of arrival is the experience.
Marshall McLuhan strikes again as once more we are reminded that the Medium is the Message with the Virtual Camera quickly becoming the consistent cinematic occupant by which to understand the aesthetics of these new mediums.
>
VANISHING POINT: SPATIAL COMPOSITION & THE VIRTUAL CAMERA - Seminar presentation at the University of NSW school of media theatre
and film looking the construction and perception of the virtual camera
in gaming and cinema and its impact on cinematic spatiality. Presented here as a two-part Podcast. Part1 Part2
The great battleground of the digital age is no doubt the field of copyright and intellectual property as it relates to creative endeavor. The computer, embodying the digital age, is designed to do just two things, Copy and Distribute. So right from the outset there is an unavoidable and inherent conflict when such a ubiquitous technology with these sole purposes collides head on with an established order of pre-digital copyright law that holds Copying and Distribution as the two forbidden acts.
What is needed, and is indeed unavoidable, is a profound paradigm shift in thinking and culture as it pertains to creativity and ownership in the digital age and championing this fight is Lawrence Lessig. Here in this articulate and powerfully considered presentation at TED, Lessig challenges the sacred cows of copyright. It's a presentation that no creator can afford to ignore.
"Larry Lessig gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, for this elegant presentation of ?three stories and an argument.? The Net?s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the ?ASCAP cartel? to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. "
Try as they might modern computer manufacturers will never be able to replicate the sheer excitement and dynamism of the early computer age - the age of Commodore, Amiga and Atari.
This is not simply nostalgia but rather stems from the sort of excitement and promise that comes from the shock of the truly 'new'. The seemingly limitless possibility that derives from when things 'begin'. To understand the modern concept of the computer as media production platform one needs to look at that inception of gaming, music and graphics on systems such as the Commodore Vic20 and C64, Amiga 500 and Atari ST.
The irony however is not lost that despite the sheer magnitude of innovation and forward thinking from all three, all three ultimately vanished as computer companies.
In the end it was Microsoft/Bill Gates that had the grander vision. Whilst Amiga, Atari, Commodore and Apple were all focused on selling 'Computers' as physical products, it was Bill that had the much bigger and bolder concept of selling an operating system - MS DOS - to all computer manufacturers. Whilst I'm yet to find anyone who has any love for Microsoft there is an undeniable bravery to the vision which was to effectively sell something you could not hold, touch or feel and of itself didn't actually do anything.
The rest is history and Microsoft's system of OS lisencing to any and all computer makers dominates the world. But the same vision that Bill displayed, that shirked the traditional economic model of selling a 'product' in favour of licensing an operating system' may ultimately be the same vision that reshapes Microsoft dominance. Open-source and alternative 'service' based software systems present the same paradigm shift as Bill's original OS concept. Microsoft is facing a future where its economic structure of bulk licensing of OS's and software for premium product fees is undermined by a culture of free lighter, more efficient free software fuelled by service subscription.
Can Microsoft re-invent itself? Or is it to monolithic to change?
I wrote recently here on digital-basin in praise of the book The Power of Film by Howard Suber. In continuing the recurring theme of late here on the blog looking at screenwriting I thought it worth reflecting on what Suber describes as 'Aristotlary' - in simple terms the attribution to Aristotle of things that he never actually said; the act of invoking Aristotle's name to legitimise specific dramatic structures.
Aristotle and the 3 Act Structure is the much loved and lauded backbone of popular screenwriting. But the truth is that whilst the 3 Act Structure is readily attributed to Aristotle he never actually wrote at all about acts or structures. It's only the later applied interpretations that made the attribution. Aristotle was simply a philosopher concerned with the human condition. In drama, and in particular dramatic tragedy, Aristotle saw a means to explore, engage with and understand human behaviour. His work Poetics is really little more than an examination of what it is about human behaviour and actions that is engaging, that struggles and triumphs.
This is not at all to undervalue Aristotle or his contribution to the crafting of 'Drama'. His central philosophical work underpins everything we have come to understand about human drama, about struggle, tension and dramatic action. Status Quo, the notion of a heroes 'darkest hour' and the 'reversal of fortune' all derive from Aristotelian concepts and are crucial to dramatic storytelling of any kind.
But this underpinning is from a perspective of philosophical ideas not formulaic structures. The 3 Act Structure is a very useful framework for understanding how a great many stories work - much like musical forms. It should be studied and understood as a useful scaffolding, but it is not and shouldn't be a formulaic straight jacket or rigid apparatus.
Aristotle's ideas should be embraced as a way to understand the 'Human' that drives 'Character' and 'Story'; Not as formula for creating Story.
Suber articulates this mis-interpretation beautifully : "Making up "laws" about drama and then ascribing them to Aristotle is an ancient game. The point here is not to knock Aristotle, but rather his interpreters. As with the words of many other smart and insightful teachers (the carpenter from Nazareth comes to mind), those who claim to be Aristotle's disciples and speak on his behalf are all too often obsessed with inventing "rules" that choke the life out of human experience and diversity." p.26
Sadly much of the cinematic content that finds its way online does so simply as a repurposing from other more traditional delivery media (broadcast, DVD and so on) without a real consideration of the on line mechanism as a platform to be exploited.
The episodic animated series 'Ninjai: the little ninja' breaks the mold with a series of the highest production values but which is focused purely at on line as the sole delivery mechanism. Ninjai embraces a structure and form that exploits the on line format rather than simply adapting to it as second best.
Of course that's all well and good conceptually and on a technical level but Ninjai backs up its efforts with superb story and great characters. Somewhere between satire, action and Zen satire Ninjai follows the journey of a pint sized child Ninjai as wanders the ancient world in search of his own identity and self knowledge. And along the way be prepared for some bloody good belly laughs.
Ninjai is an inspired and engaging body of work that points towards how good dedicated on line media can be.
By simple definition Cinema is the art of the moving image. Within that context of viewing the moving image the artistry of the cinema-maker is built around positioning the viewer to see that moving image and experience the effect of the image in motion narrative, drama, emotion, thrill and ideas.
Following this simple logic the craft of positioning the viewer to see the moving image is about the placement of the camera; where it is placed in order to survey the scene and how it moves in order to explore the scene. But something quite profoundly shifts in our visual language and our expectations of the moving image when the what we have always perceived as a physical apparatus becomes a virtual vanishing point of perception in an infinite space. When the physical camera becomes the virtual camera no longer bound by the physical, the tangible let alone the real.
Regular readers will know this is a topic I've written and spoken about many times. A two-part lecture podcast I've put up for public listening called VANISHING POINT: SPATIAL COMPOSITION & THE VIRTUAL CAMERA (availible here) outlines the concept and argument and how it re-shapes our cinematic thinking. But finding really adventurous and forward thinking examples that explore the theory is not always easy to come by. Thus it is that I was highly excited by the stumble upon ZoomQuilt; on the surface a flash animated painting art work. But to leave it at that would do it no justice for the effect it has on the viewer and what it represents in the context of the virtual camera, the infinite, unrestricted viewing position exploring a spatial composition. The Vanishing Point from which we view a composed space.
Everyone thought the browser wars were over when Netscape went the veritable way of the dodo and Internet Explorer, contentiously embedded in the ubiquitous Microsoft OS, became the defacto winner. But it seems peacetime celebrations were premature and the past years have seen a plethora of browsers spring up eager to steal some of IE's share by capitalizing on IE's numerous short-comings and inadequacies.
Firefox obviously has made the most impact with an open-source fast, efficient browser packed with very functional features (many of which IE took a couple years to finally copy). Also worthy of mention is Safari from the Mac platform which is now cross-platform and offers a robust toolset. And then there's the never-say-die Opera which still has a wide user-base.
Rather than a simple repeat of the browser war we now have a real and viable landscape of browser options. It is into this market that we now have a new player - Flock - but one not just content with status quo of casual browsing but rather conceptually a different tact that seeks to embrace the computer and the Internet as a personal, multi-platform, publishing system.
With the firm belief that you cannot theorize about cinematic media unless you are making it, here is a recent project that explores the technology driven experience of cinema itself. What is it to watch? What is our relationship to the moving image and the apparatus of its delivery? What space do we occupy in the projected story unfolding? How does our perception and experience alter with the evolution of technology? What is it to be watcher? Most importantly how have the evolutions in the technical apperatus of cinema changed our experience of the cinematic form?
The cinematic experience, the art of watching, is one built on a well established contract wrought between viewer and subject. Enforced by techno-cultural constraints we are positioned as viewers into a particular mode. The movie exists in a frame. What is inside the frame is the movie, what is outside the frame is not. We are removed and apart from the cinematic space occupied by story and character, event spectacle. We look into that with voyeuristic eyes but we do not share it. The space is composed by the frame and we observe the frame as a painting in motion; forming concepts, ideas and connections based on the semantics and formalities of the frame as mediator.But technology evolves and our mode of observance cant help but evolve with it. Stereo and wide-screen in tandem lead to positioning; spatial placement and a small step towards an actualization of space. A character positioned left speaks and his heard from the left it is a fundamentally dynamic increment towards an actualization of spatial positioning. An awareness of the composed space that transcends a composed frame.But we creep, are inched, ever deeper into the frame itself and surround sound dissipates the framic screen of division and illusion. We drift into a composition of space itself. Where the frame is but a perspective showing but a fraction of the whole, a whole that is not abstracted but presented in clear and present actuality. We hear as the characters hear. We share a space we once only bore witness to and our derived and evoked meanings are assembled in a complex structure of immersion and cohabitation.
