Mike Jones Digital Basin
cinematic media rinse cycle

Shooting virtual and re-thinking cinematography

The shifting and blurring of traditional cinema production roles and structures is something I have written about many times here on The Digital Basin. The evolutionary breakdown of traditional hierarchies and stratified processes is something absolutely central to conceptualizing and engaging with contemporary cinematic media practice. And we see this re-shaping and re-forming nowhere more profoundly or immediately than in the role of the cinematographer. Where once the very name of cinematography was directly correlated to the camera as photographic apparatus, we now find ourselves where this definition is increasingly problematic as the 'camera' itself becomes just one way of capturing an image among a spectrum of means.

Cinematography - under weight of new technologies, virtual cameras, 3D environments and layered spaces - becomes a more broader process of 'image acquisition' than simple 'camera work'; a spectrum of processes that might embrace a broad array of technical and creative means; physical and otherwise.

As I wrote recently in 'Holistic Thinking - Integrated Making' if we are to embrace the future possibilities of cinematic form then we should be investing our training and education institutions with a much broader scope of understanding. In the specifics of 'Cinematography' this would certainly mean that not only do the cinematographers of the future need to be as adept in 'shooting' in virtual spaces as real ones but also to embrace the idea that as much of their work in 'acquiring a moving image' will be done in post-production as on-set.

The dominant tangible example of this shift is the much cited DI - Digital Intermediate - workflow empowering un-precedented levels of control over an image after it is shot. But going much further is the idea of shooting virtually with virtual cameras. The results of the manned and hand operated virtual camera in a virtual space can be seen in the troll fight scene from Peter Jacksons first film of the Lord of the Rings (check out the extended edition DVD's for great detail on this process). Now we have the animated 3D mockumentary Surf's Up choosing a similar path on a greater scale.

Studio Daily have a very interesting article on how this has been done and the implicatiosn for what we consider Cinematogrpahy to be, are nothign short of profound.

Posted at 01:00AM Jul 16, 2007 by Mike Jones in video  |  Comments[1]