Cinema Architecture
Theres little doubt that the past 10 years has seen profound shifts in how the moving image is constructed and subsequently how it is viewed and understood. A range of new technologies and techno-processes - 3D graphics, multilayer compositing, virtual cameras, gaming, surround sound; all point at new ways of conceptualizing the composition of cinema. The question of course is to ask what form this new aesthetic of composition is taking?
It strikes me that there is a distinct shift driven by these technologies away from the dominance of the 'frame' as central paradigm to a broader composition of 'space' and spatial arrangement beyond a singular frame or mise en scene.
In this thinking there is a potential connection to be made here between contemporary composition of cinema spatially and traditional landscape architecture.
Just as with a computer game or a composition of multiple and varied perspectives within a singular space - device, 3D, virtual camera, layers - the landscape architect composes space rather than frame because the frame is infinitely variable and because the work contains, by nature of its making, multiple perspective positions.
The desire artistically for the landscape architect is to ensure a consistency of crafted meaning despite the variable perspective(s). Thus the spatial design seeks to ensure meaning is presented holistically in the space rather that restricted to the specificity of the frame. The 'viewer' may be able to go anywhere in the landscape, effectively building their own 'frames' but a good work of landscape architecture will, none the less, be able to focus the composition of space to ensure the 'viewer' sees what they are intended to see at any given point in that space.
When we nest multiple frames, and thus multiple perspectives, we are invoking the landscape architects paradigm. When we composit multiple layers together, when we build scenes and sets in 3D CGI, when we maneuver virtual cameras around 3D objects, when we mix sound in multi-channel surround we are embracing an aesthetic fundamentally different from traditional mise en scene. A compositional aesthetic that may certainly be understood better or more holistically, through a prism of architecture as through traditional framic sensibilities.
And it would seem I am not alone it seems in this train of thought. DB Weiss who was involved in the screenplay for Halo has expressed a similar connection to re-thinking what we percieve as the central tenant of cinema
I think games have as much if not more to do with architecture as they do to do with movies even though it seems like the current trend is to think of games as movies. I think there are a lot of extra reasons for that trend not only to do with what games are really about but rather peoples desire for some of the acutriments of Hollywood and the kind of adding a Hollywood feel to the game world, like its more about wanting the Hollywood parties than it is about games themselves. Obviously anyone who works in games design knows how much time is spent actually building spaces and working with the way your characters navigate those spaces. And to me thats one of the things I enjoy most about games, something that movies will never ever give somebody, youre never going to be able to explore a movie.
You can hear the podcast of interview here from the Game Developers Conference.
Posted at 01:00AM Aug 21, 2007
by Mike Jones in moving image theory |
